Quotes About Horror

With The Exorcist we said what we wanted to say. Neither one of us view it as a horror film. We view it as a film about the mysteries of faith. It's easier for people to call it a horror film. Or a great horror film. Or the greatest horror film ever made. Whenever I see that, I feel a great distance from it.

Anyone can do shock value. Develop enough tension and cue the music right, then have something jump out: It's almost impossible not to jump in your seat. But that doesn't leave any effect on you when you leave the movie theater. To me, the best horror is psychological horror. The Exorcist, The Shining, The Omen, things that kind of stick with you long after you've seen them. It's what you don't see. It's letting the audience think a little bit, not spelling it out for them. Giving them credit for using their own imaginations rather than sticking in gags and tricks.

In The Shining, you love Shelley Duvall. You love Jack Nicholson. You're let into the intimacy of that violence and it's emotional and it's physical. We're let in very close. So I think a good horror film has to pull you in very deeply inside. Halloween is a good horror film because we love Jamie Lee Curtis, we're brought very deeply in right when she's babysitting the kids. She's going from house to house, all those houses have windows that you can look in. We're a very vulnerable and exposed audience.

In our dreams (writes Coleridge) images represent the sensations we think they cause; we do not feel horror because we are threatened by a sphinx; we dream of a sphinx in order to explain the horror we feel.

I wanted to write a horror story. But in some ways, I have always thought of myself as a kind of ghost-story/horror writer, though most of the time the supernatural never actually appears on stage.

Asian horror is really setting a trend. The Pang brothers are from Hong Kong, so they just bring a whole different sensibility to a horror movie. In Hong Kong, they're actually doing stuff that's very artistic and pushing boundaries.

I just want to be with great teachers. If that means I'm in a horror film with good teachers, I'll do another horror film. But I would love to branch out and do more comedy or just more straight dramas.

There’s always been a need for horror fiction, though - ghost stories have been a staple of every human society since the beginning of recorded literature - and while commercially the field may have its ups and downs, it will never go away. Hell, look at the Bible: gods, devils, ghosts, witches, giants, resurrections. That’s one big horror story. And it’s the most popular book on the planet.

The chief difference between horror fans and science fiction fans lies in why they won't walk backwards. A horror fan won't walk backwards because he knows he'll be knifed by a madman. A science fiction fan won't walk backwards because he knows he'll step on the cat.

As a filmmaker, I love the medium. I have a great affection for it and I've been lucky enough to do all different kinds of films. The greatest part of the success I've had comes from horror. I love the idea of mixing humor and horror and to me, it's all a giggle.

Along with supernature and science, there is one other major source of horror movies disorder: the human psyche, most commonly homicidal psychosis. Unlike 'mad' scientists, horror-movies madmen are not visionary obsessives, glorifying in scientific reason as they single-mindedly purse their researches. They are, rather, victims of overpowering impulses that well up from within; monsters brought forth by the sleep of reason, not by its attractions.

I think of horror films as art, as films of confrontation. Films that make you confront aspects of your own life that are difficult to face. Just because you're making a horror film doesn't mean you can't make an artful film.

When people make a horror movie, it's a few months. This is years of horror, that these guys have to play out. It just hit me and I was like, "Wow, that's heavy."

And another thing about German symphonic development. I tell you, our cold kvass soup is a horror to the Germans, and yet we eat it with pleasure. And their cold cherry soup is a horror to us, and yet it sends a German into ecstacy. In short, symphonic development is just like German philosophy and soup-all worked out and systematized. When a German thinks, he reasons his way to a conclusion. Our Russian brother, on the other hand, starts with a conclusion and then might amuse himself with some reasoning.

But men are less used to the idea of being raped than women are, and it strikes them with a fresh horror. With women, that horror comes right along with the female genitals.

I make unpopular versions of popular things. I make a horror film and it's not a horror film. None of my genre movies function as genre movies.

The first horror is there's horror. The second is you accommodate it.

A lot of the main characters in horror movies are outsiders as well, so that outsider syndrome reverberates within horror fans and geeky collectors. It's kind of a rallying call that brings fans and collectors together who are a little socially retarded, maybe.

Although I've said a million times that I'm not a horror writer, I do like horror.

I don't believe terror and horror are just vicarious pleasures. I think it routes itself in your mind. It can affect your mind. Look at what's going on in the America today. The violence is just awful and I think a lot of has to do with what they are showing on the movies and television.

I also love horror movies; I like me a big Peter Berg action movie. I'm a movie lover in general.

There's a lot of laughing on a horror movie set. They're magical in that way.

The idea of bringing someone into the world fills me with horror. I would curse myself if I were a father. A son of mine! Oh no, no, no! May my entire flesh perish and may I transmit to no one the aggravations and the disgrace of existence.

I have never written a book that I wouldn't want to read. The trouble is, I love to read horror, sf, fantasy, mysteries, hero pulps - romantic fiction, in the original, traditional meaning of that term, as opposed to mimetic fiction. But most of all, I love thrillers.

As an adult, I really don't watch much horror, to be honest. I mean, I like a good thrill. Thrillers are my favorite. I like stuff that keeps you on the edge of your seat or maybe makes you jump. But what I don't like is the gore. I don't like gratuitous violence and killing and all that kind of stuff. So it's kind of an interesting paradox.

I have a lot of stories. I had done a thing called Nightmare in Red White and Blue, which was an anthology of horror films. I narrated it with a man named Joe Maddrey, who's a writer. He came to my house and said, "Lance would you consider doing this?," and I like Joe so much that I completely relaxed.

...and horror of horrors, he realized that he was experiencing some sort of a crush. He needed to kill something.

I love horror movies because they're really fun. They tap into those wonderful primal emotions.

It's just assumed that a horror sequel is going to be bad. It's never going to be as good as the first one.

What makes horror movies work is the idea that "oh my God, what would I do if I were in that situation? How would I get out of that alive? What would I do if I saw the door to my closet creaking open in the middle of the night and a doll on a tricycle comes riding out?"

I've always thought the best way to teach a kid not to be scared of the dark is to fill his daylight hours with as much horror as possible.

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.

It’s as hard to explain as a sexual proclivity. Some guys like high-heeled shoes. I like horror.

There's always a tone that you have to hit right in horror. With the blood, you want to make sure that it makes sense all along.

I was struck with a bolt of distilled horror like I have never known before. Far worse than suddenly finding yourself walking through a prison cafeteria wearing Daisy Duke shorts and a Jane Fonda headband.

Memories of the last nine years have turned Ground Zero from a site of horror, to a reminder of grief, to an occasion for ludicrous artistic posturing - and now to something very close to parody.

There is a sweet little horror story that is only two sentences long: The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock at the door... Two sentences and an ellipsis of three dots.

People want to be disturbed when they go see a horror movie.

My knowledge of horror films is pathetic because I can't really watch them.

Horror, let's face it, is basically pretty dumb. You're writing about events that are preposterous, and the trick is to dress them up in language so compelling that the reader doesn't care.

I come to present the strong claims of suffering humanity. I come to place before the Legislature of Massachusetts the condition of the miserable, the desolate, the outcast. I come as the advocate of helpless, forgotten, insane men and women; of beings sunk to a condition from which the unconcerned world would start with real horror.

It's not scary to make a horror film because you get to pull back the curtain and see that none of it's real. When you're watching one, the terror bombards you.

The world was all mud and wire. The war in the heavens was only a faint imitation of the horror men had learned to make.

I just want to make sure that the thing that I see in it initially, that I think it can be, is not just going to be a horror film and reduced to a jump here and a scream there. But that you can take something away from it.

In most cases we attach ourselves to in order to take revenge on life, to punish it, to signify we can do without it, that we have found something better, and we also attach ourselves to God in horror of men.

I mean, horror films in general put humans in these awful supernatural or horrible situations, but 'Cabin In The Woods' cranks it up a few notches and becomes outrageous and totally bizarre.

People who have been made to suffer by certain things cannot be reminded of them without a horror which paralyses every other pleasure, even that to be found in reading a story.

L.A is a huge place, literally and metaphorically. Its beauty and horror. Its unconventional history. Its draw and allure. Its diversity and segregation.