Hello, readers! Welcome to a brand new monthly feature here at Daily Dead—Deadly Dialogue: A Conversation on Cinema—where we’ll be catching up with notable folks from the horror and sci-fi genres (both in front of and behind the camera) to discuss the films that inspired them to become the artists they are today. We hope you enjoy this first installment featuring iconic guitarist, producer, actor and all-around genre fan, Slash, and be sure to head back each and every month for new discussions with more of your favorite innovators, artisans and creators.
When I was a little kid, I was that kid that just loved everything that was creepy and dark. I was born in Hampstead, London, right, but I lived in Stoke-on-Trent which is this small little town. My dad was a big horror fan, so he turned me on to Hammer movies like House of Usher or any number of Vincent Price, Peter Cushing movies. There was Trog which was a late ’60s caveman movie—anything like that, I was attracted to.
My dad also taught me how to read using horror books because that was my thing. My first reading was Edgar Allan Poe and he turned me on to H.P. Lovecraft, he turned me on to Ray Bradbury and he gave me a box of the radio cassettes of War of the Worlds when Orson Welles did them over the radio, too.
Horror was a natural thing for me. There was no singular moment when I went, "Oh my god, I am all about horror," but when I was a kid, when I moved to the States, I went with my mom to go see—at a drive-in—a double feature of The Exorcist and Night of the Living Dead. That really stuck with me. I've been a horror fan all this time, but especially in the ’70s, because a lot of that stuff was really, really good. The Wicker Man was great; The Omen was fucking great. There's a bunch of them. Those are just standouts in my mind.
There were so many great movies that were really, really well-acted, great stories, well-told. I've always been into that. Then as we got into the mid- to late-’80s, when franchises really took off, they started out with some really great original stories and great teen movies, but you had some really memorable, iconic characters—villains especially—that came out of those that are still as strong today as they were then. I worked in a video store for a while. But then, going into the ’90s, man, it just went fucking downhill. I lost interest in horror for a while. I just stopped looking.
Then I started to get into this whole thing about producing. It was actually an opportunity that was handed to me by another producer based on my passion for horror movies. I wanted to get into making movies that are story-driven and character-driven, well-acted, more psychological, where it wasn't all put out in front of you and it wasn't about resting on the graphic nature, but it was a story that grabbed you, and as you went along with the story, it sucked you in and you're fucking biting your lip the whole time.
But seeing Night of the Living Dead that night at the drive-in was something that, still to this day, creeps me out. Even in this day and age of fucking zombie saturation, there was something stark and really raw about that movie that has always resonated with me as a fan.
Heather A. Wixson was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, until she followed her dreams and moved to Los Angeles in 2009. A 14-year veteran in the world of horror entertainment journalism, Wixson fell in love with genre films at a very early age, and has spent more than a decade as a writer and supporter of preserving the history of horror and science fiction cinema. Throughout her career, Wixson has contributed to several notable websites, including Fangoria, Dread Central, Terror Tube, and FEARnet, and she currently serves as the Managing Editor for Daily Dead, which has been her home since 2013. She's also written for both Fangoria Magazine & ReMind Magazine, and her latest book project, Monsters, Makeup & Effects: Volume One will be released on October 20, 2021.
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