Horror Obsession Quotes

I have a complicated relationship with the horror genre. I love it; I loved it as a kid growing up, and I watched Chiller Theater in New York. So I loved it, but then you do feel if you do it too much, you're stuck there.

I watched horror movies way too young and one of my favorite horror movies was The Shining. Jack Nicholson's character in that just bore a hole in my brain, his weird, maniacal controlled stuff. Obviously Mara in Village of the Damned wasn't an alcoholic and didn't have emotional, crazy outbursts. She was very non-emotional. But it was that sort of evil that I was tapping into.

The '80s just had this sense of outrageous fun coupled with great stories and characters. Then there's the practical effects and buckets of gore in movies. These are movies that, for the most part, still stand up to this day. But I guess the real reason for my love and obsession with this period is these were my first horror movies. I was a teenager during the '80s and I think spending that part of your life in that particular time really has an impact on you for the rest of your life.

It is women who love horror. Gloat over it. Feed on it. Are nourished by it. Shudder and cling and cry out-and come back for more.

In my formative years, I never missed the 'Creature Double Feature' on Saturday afternoon TV, even if it meant switching back and forth between 'Gamera' and the Red Sox. I did a book report on Stephen King's 'Night Shift' in seventh grade. Unrated Italian horror movies became a weekly rite of passage once I hit seventeen.

In '82 and '83, that was the rise of the VCR. Every Friday, my brother and I would go to Crazy Eddie's - which was a video store in Manhattan - and rent five horror movies. And that's basically what we did, basically, for three years. Becoming social misfits.

I grew up on genre. If it had a dragon on the cover, I was interested. But horror, especially, really gripped me in its bony fist.

After college, I went on a real big classics kick. Read everything by Faulkner, Hemingway, Woolf, Proust, Dostoevsky. And that classics train dropped me off at 'Dracula.' Halfway through it, I understood I'd never be going back, never 'leaving' the genre again. Since then, I've been on a fairly strict horror diet.

I didn't get a formal introduction to horror until right about the age of 12, when my uncle showed me 'Twilight Zone: The Movie.' When you're 12 years old, and you see that - oh, God. I devoured as many horror movies and novels as possible.

I loved ghost stories, creaky staircases, stormy nights. If it guaranteed nightmares I read it by flashlight, after midnight.

I was horrified of the dark. I realized that the only way I could get over that fear was by scaring other people, so I became obsessed with ghost stories, drawing monsters, watching monster movies, sneaking into horror movies, and it's just been the love of my life forever.