A lot of modern horror doesn’t interest me at all, the torture porn stuff where a bunch of teens are trapped by some psycho or monster and tortured to death, although the most excruciating torture is visited on the audience watching this rubbish.
I started reading horror when I was around 10 or 11, back in the late 50s. My first introduction I think was a huge anthology edited by Dorothy Sayers, Tales of Horror and the Supernatural. Thus I first came across such amazing authors as J. Sheridan Le Fanu, MR James, Algernon Blackwood, EF Benson. Come to think of it, even before that I used to dip in to my father’s huge one-volume edition of The 1001 Arabian Nights, and there were some great tales in there of terrifying djinns and demons.
In my teenage years I’d avidly read Dennis Wheatley’s novels of black magic, Strange Conflict, The Devil Rides Out, etc. Bram Stoker, of course, and there was an annual series from the publisher Pan, The Pan Book of Horror Stories. HP Lovecraft swam into my ken at that period too, along with August Derleth, Robert Chambers (The King in Yellow, The Yellow Sign, I loved that stuff) and Robert Bloch.
This was the 60s so my friends and I were constantly at the movies: all those great American-International horror movies, Hammer, the Corman Poe movies with Vincent Price, etc and the nascent Japanese horror industry - The H-Man, Yonibaba, etc.
Then the 70s and the appearance of two horror giants on the horizon. I missed Carrie when it was published so it wasn’t until around 1976 and Salems Lot that I first read King. I knew instantly this was the guy horror had been waiting for. Salems Lot was amazingly good, I just couldn’t stop raving about it to friends and urging them to read it. Then in 1979 the second giant appeared. Actually he’d been around for a good few years and had written a couple of horror novels already, I’d just missed them. I refer to Peter Straub and the book that blew me away was Ghost Story. As with King this was literate horror, scary horror and the later novels of both authors confirmed that they were far from one-book-wonders.
A host of other horror writers appeared at that time or later, none of the same stature but all writing good, solid, interesting horror. Dean Koontz, Graham Masterson, James Herbert, Robert McCammon, John Gideon, Christopher Pike (who started by writing juvenile horror then turned to adults and wrote some excellent horror), Ramsey Campbell, Bentley Little, and many more.
Then another giant, both in horror and SF (another passion of mine) - Dan Simmons. I first read his Song of Kali in the late 80s and was smitten. Here again was literate and scary horror. Carrion Comfort confirmed his status for me and later books like Summer of Night, Fires of Eden, The Terror, Drood, showed just how brilliant a horror writer he was, as the Hyperion Cantos, Troy, Olympus, showd what a fantastic SF writer he is.
Of course I was following horror in the movies too. The Italians, Lucio Fulci (City of the Living Dead, The Beyond, The House By the Cemetery), Dario Argento (Suspiria), Mario Bava (Black Sunday, Black Sabbath and Lisa and the Devil). The Exorcist. Exorcist III Legion (the true sequel), Rosemary’s Baby, The Tenant. George Romero. John Carpenter (I loved his movies). Wes Craven (I think Deadly Blessing was the first I saw, a really creepy movie with an ending that still blows me away). The Howling. American Werewolf in London. Evil Dead.
I still watch horror, still read it and SF when I want a change from more serious books or more serious movies. Some modern horror films I thought inventive and scary. I like the Aussies behind Insidious, which I thought great, and other horrors. I loved Blair Witch, in spite of the curse of found-footage movies which it laid on the genre. There must be hundreds upon hundreds of these things out there, the only ones which I found not bad were a couple of the Paranormal series (if you could call that found-footage), V/H/S wasn’t bad, I’ve liked anthology movies ever since Dead of Night, the old B&W classic.
I discovered Japanese horror some years ago, I think they really kickstarted the genre again, bringing fresh life to it. Ringu, Ju-On, Kairo, Sairen, the Thai movie Shutter, I enjoyed them all. And the Chinese brought some great horror to the table too. The Eye especially.
So great horror movies are still being made, great horror stories still being written. I thought the Jeepers Creepers movies were good, Sinister, Cloverfield, many more. What I hate are the torture movies (although some of the Saw movies were good, I don’t really see that as torture porn though), the endless zombie movies, most as dead as their subject (some notable exceptions though), the ‘teens go to a remote cabin’ movies, the endless slasher movies, oh shit maybe I’m getting old!
