Quotes About Horror

The definition of horror is pretty broad. What causes us "horror" is actually a many splendored thing (laughs). It can be hard to make horror accessible, and that's what I think Silence of the Lambs did so brilliantly - it was an accessible horror story, the villain was a monster, and the protagonist was pure of heart and upstanding so it had all of these great iconographic elements of classic storytelling. It was perceived less as a horror movie than an effective thriller, but make no mistake, it was a horror movie and was sort of sneaky that way.

Horror grows impatient, rhetorically, with the Stoic fatalism of Ecclesiastes. That we are all going to die, that death mocks and cancels every one of our acts and attainments and every moment of our life histories, this knowledge is to storytelling what rust is to oxidation; the writer of horror holds with those who favor fire. The horror writer is not content to report on death as the universal system of human weather; he or she chases tornadoes. Horror is Stoicism with a taste for spectacle.

Then my first film was something called Cannibal Girls, which sounds like a horror movie but was actually kind of a goofy comedy with horror elements. Like a horror spoof.

I like horror, but I tend to like it as seasoning. I'd get very bored if I was told I had to write a horror novel. I'd love to write a novel with horror elements, but too much, and it doesn't taste of anything else.

Mainly horror movies and exploitation movies and a lot of stuff comes from those press books from those old movies. Lines out of old movies, comic books that we collect, all the old horror comics of the 50s, probably about the only comics that we collect are obscure horror comics, the real sick ones from the 50s. Some stuff comes from there but mainly just old records, old rockabilly records and that stuff, singles mainly, 45s.

I love horror movies! I've loved horror movies since I was about eight years old, not that an 8-year-old should be watching The Shining, but I was allowed to, for some reason. Ever since then, I've loved good horror movies.

I'm not a fan of horror. I don't think a proper horror movie has been done since The Shining.

I have been trying to make the reader believe that we actually are, at present, creatures whose character must be, in some respects, a horror to God, as it is, when we really see it, a horror to ourselves. This I believe to be a fact: and I notice that the holier a man is, the more fully he is aware of that fact.

"That was horrible. Horrible. That poor little guy." Pex was unrepentant. "Yeah, well, he asked for it. Calling us... all those things." But buried alive?! That's like in that horror movie. Y'know the one with all the horror." "I think I saw that one. With all the words going up on the screen at the end?" "Yeah, that was it. Tell you the truth, those words kinda ruined it for me."

The action movie, the thriller and the drama all have safety nets under them. But not the horror film. The horror film can sink to an abyss far darker than the imagination can ever reach.

I sat on the bed. I looked at the Rorschach blot. I tried to make it look like a spreading tree, shadows pooled beneath it, but it didn't. It looked more like a dead cat I once found, the fat, glistening grubs writhing blindly, squirming over each other, frantically tunneling away from the light. But even that isn't the real horror. The horror is this: in the end, it is simply a picture of empty meaningless blackness.

There are very few horror shows, where you have a long running arc. Most horror shows play as a sort of an anthology. Buffy - a terrific show - had the-demon-of-the-week. Twilight Zone - X Files - these things had an anthology approach. Our show is a long running drama with the same creatures every week.

So I was asked to do horror film after horror film, a series of about five, after that, and some of those were a little too gruesome. I wasn't too comfortable all the time in those. I didn't really care for them.

I think there's been a gigantic shift in the way we talk to each other, and the way that we communicate with each other. So as a filmmaker, the stuff's always been really interesting to me, and I sort of considered a lot of my films horror films, the ones that were relationship dramas, because I feel like it was very easy to look at modern communication and the Internet and cell phones and all that stuff as horror movies, basically.

I love horror movies, I wish I would get more roles to do more horror movies. I got to make a living so I take what they give me, but if I could be the next Vincent Price I would be the happiest guy in the world.

No, the horror genre is not my first love. I don't run to the theater to see horror films.

If you focus on the humanity of your stories, your characters, then the horror will be stronger, scarier. Without the humanity, the horror becomes nothing more than a tawdry parlor trick. All flash and no magic, and worst of all, no heart.

Horror is always the same. It changes with the culture and changes with technology. The stories are always the same. There are just two basic stories in horror, two simple ones -- evil is outside and evil is in here [points to his heart].

Horror is a totally different animal. It's intense. You can do drama or comedies, but in horror, you really have to trick yourself into believing a lot of unbelievable phenomena.

I'm a horror movie fan to begin with, so to come back to the genre, I feel like horror has been very good to me.

As far as film goes, I enjoy all Hollywood films and all Horror films like The Bride of Frankenstein, which also might be my favorite. I like 60's and 70's Italian and Spanish Horror films.

The cool thing about making a Western is that people want to be in them. You rarely get the opportunity. With horror movies you are always trying to convince them. People in horror are always worried it's going to be this schlocky thing, and you're always trying to convince them that it's not. With Westerns, people immediately react with, "Oh, I've always wanted to do one."

I don't want you leaving laughing, I want to leave you shaking. That to me is true horror.

His [Ben Okri's] work poses very serious questions for the twenty-first century. Among them: To what extent will we allow the indefinable dynamics of something called "destiny" to maintain grief and horror in the world? How hard are human beings willing to fight to achieve and sustain justice, equanimity, or joy? And should progress be called such when it devours what is best within the human spirit?

Without music in a horror there is actually such a big part missing.

The gross perversion and destruction of motherhood by the abortionist filled me with indignation, and awakened active antagonism. That the honorable term 'female physician' should be exclusively applied to those women who carried on this shocking trade seemed to me a horror. It was an utter degradation of what might and should become a noble position for women.

A study of the Great Malady; horror of home.

Sorrow has the fortunate peculiarity that it preys upon itself. It dies of starvation. Since it is essentially an interruption of habits, it can be replaced by new habits. Constituting, as it does, a void, it is soon filled up by a real horror vacuum.

I don't think he likes girls", I said. "Or boys. Look at the horror on his face. He doesn't look like a people person.

I must go home periodically to renew my sense of horror.

I love watching horror films because I don't get scared easily.

What 'Scream' was great at was presenting ironic detachment and then making you actually care about the people that were having it, and juxtaposing it with their situation, all in the service of making a great horror movie. It was fresh.

I've always said that with a lot of the horror franchises that I've started, it's like directing a pilot. I come in, I direct the first movie and all these directors come in and direct all the sequels after me and hey have to kind of retain the look, the tone, and the characters.

People who sleep around to get roles are frail and scared and most likely without talent. It's their own little horror show that only they can deal with.

For horror movies, color is reassuring because, at least in older films, it adds to the fakey-ness.

Take my wife... please. I'm not saying she's ugly, but when she went to see a horror film, the audience thought she was making a personal appearance.

Well, yeah! Now they're considered golden oldies, which is awesome. I was watching Little Women recently, and I didn't want to get up for fear of missing something. And Heathers is like my own Rocky Horror Picture Show; I recite the lines when it's on. It may seem odd, but I think it's because they're really good movies.

Metal guys are huge nerds. A good percentage of them are either horror or sci-fi or comic book or fantasy nerds.

I think in the late '80s and early '90s horror was dead.

I am very happy making lower budgeted horror movies.

Young, gay and stuck in Arkansas? Sounds like a horror flick.

Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive. Has any act of selfishness ever equalled the carnage perpetrated by disciples of altruism.

The first movie I ever saw was a horror movie. It was Bambi. When that little deer gets caught in a forest fire, I was terrified, but I was also exhilarated.

I do think that once a horror genre is commonly parodied in other movies it sort kills that genre or that specific take on that genre. Once it sort of becomes a joke in and of itself, so you have to push and find something new.

People come back from flights and tell you a story like it's a horror story. That's how bad they make it sound. They're like, 'It was the worst day of my life. We didn't board for 20 minutes and they made us sit there on the runway for 40 minutes.' Oh really? What happened next? Did you fly in the air, incredibly, like a bird? Did you partake in the miracle of human flight you non-contributing zero?'

We're not just horror fans. We're film fans. I love action films. I want to do action films. I want to do romantic comedies. I love all this stuff. So, if I find the good material, I'll do it.

The photographs of one dead terrorist mastermind carry no real news or information about the nature or horror of war. They just create sensation instead of deeper understanding.

There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors, and looking them piteously in the eyes - die with despair of heart and convulsion of throat, on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer themselves to be revealed. Now and then, alas, the conscience of man takes up a burden so heavy in horror that it can be thrown down only into the grave. And thus the essence of all crime is undivulged.