Slash: My Movie Life

The first movie that I remember scaring me, was Night Of The Living Dead . I saw it at the drive-thru, along with The Exorcist . And The Exorcist didn't have that kind of visceral effect on me, it wasn't as scary to me. It was great, I loved it, but for me it was more like seeing a cartoon - it was just like, 'This is bitchin'!'

But Night Of The Living Dead gave me the creeps and that really had an impact on me, I've never forgotten that, that raw and very real sort of vibe that it has, that's very ominous. So that was my first real scary movie experience. It still seems, with all the zombie movies that have come out over the years, that one still has a certain quality to it that just makes it eerie and creepy.

The first movie I remember seeing in the cinema when I was a kid - and I remember I went with my mom in London - it was either Fantasia or Pinocchio or Bambi , one of those Disney movies. I think it was Fantasia ...

Disney movies are as dramatic as any live-action movies, especially when you're a kid, because they're filled with metaphors. They have all kinds of dark sides to them, which usually have a lot to do with these sort of life lessons. There are very dramatic right and wrong things going on, and dark characters.

I think a lot of that stuff seems to go over kids' heads and seemed to have a big impact on me, but I didn't have any friends that felt the same way. There were a few Disney movies that I remember very well, and what the point was. I always thought that there was a lot of emotional quality in the old Disney movies.

Since I'm in the horror space, the one movie that's always controversial and it drives people crazy that I don't like it is The Shining . Everybody loves The Shining , and I love Jack Nicholson, so I can't say that I hate The Shining , but I read the book way before I saw the movie, and the book was just fucking brilliant, probably the scariest book I've ever read, and I've read a lot of scary books.

And I remember that book, I was living at my mom's house, I was at high school, and I read it in one sitting. And I was upstairs in the bedroom, and at one point having been up there reading for so long, I felt like I needed something to eat but I was too freaked out to go down to the kitchen, and I don't think any other piece of literature has ever had me in its grasp like that. So years later the movie came out, and I've seen it a bunch of times and it has just never held up for me after having read the book.

Everybody loves The Shining and they get so into it, so they hate it that I'm not a big fan of that movie.

I know recently one movie that I saw that I thought was really, really good was a Michael Bay movie called Pain & Gain , which I thought was just fucking awesome, and nobody else - or at least not too many people - seem to be in the same mindset [ laughs ].

That's the most recent one I can think of. I just thought it was a really, really fucked up, disturbing movie. It's based on a true story and it's as ridiculous as it gets, and I just thought it was really well done.

I might get choked up at the movies, but I'm not really the moviegoing crying type, but I remember when I was a kid, there was a movie called Sounder with Cicely Tyson back in the day, it was sort of like the African American version of Old Yeller , not the same story, but sort of a boy and his dog, and the dog dies. And I can honestly say I cried then [ laughs ].

I haven't seen it in a long time. It might sort of, y'know, choke me up a little bit [ if I saw it now ] but I doubt I'm going to burst out in tears.

There's two that I bring up a lot that nobody seems to be familiar with. One is Trilogy Of Terror with Karen Black, which only real, serious horror geeks really seem to know about. The other one - which is a mystery to me - is The Abominable Dr. Phibes , which is a Vincent Price movie. There’s The Abominable Dr. Phibes and Dr. Phibes Rises Again , and both those movies are fucking great, but nobody seems to be familiar with them.

As a kid, coming out of all the Hammer films that I was raised on, I was a big fan of all those old horror guys: Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Peter Lorre, Christopher Lee, Claude Raines, Charles Laughton, all those guys, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney, Lon Chaney Jr…”

When it comes to concert movies, I’m thinking theatrical - there’s a lot of videos obviously. I’d say probably one of the best ones is The Last Waltz , that’s a great one. It’s just a really, really honest, down-to-earth film essay of a concert, an evening.

There’s a lot of great artists in it, and it’s Scorsese, so it’s really got a nice texture to it. It definitely is coming from the point of view of someone who’s interested in what’s going on besides just the notes. It’s the entire thing.

Funnily enough, a lot of Giorgio Moroder’s stuff I love. Scarface , Midnight Express . There a couple of other ones that he did that are really good. There’s different guys that do different things, I love John Williams. Any of those epic John Williams scores for any of those huge fucking movies are brilliant, memorable melodies, from Jurassic Park to Jaws , and everything in between.

And I love Danny Elfman. I love John Carpenter for the simplistic, catchy fucking melodies that he did for Halloween , The Thing and a couple other of his movies. Another one was The Godfather . I’ve never heard anything else that that particular composer [ Nino Rota ] did, but that’s a really great melody. And Leonard Bernstein. I was listening to An American In Paris, which is unbelievable. Such a great composition.

I remember one tour that I did in like 2001, we were on the bus, and the only two movies that we had were Friday and Pulp Fiction . And we could never be bothered to go and buy some more or whatever, and they were the only two movies we had on the bus for the entire American leg. So I know the entire dialogue for those two movies inside and out.

I think probably one of my favourite comedy movies of all time is Woody Allen’s Sleeper . I just thought that was brilliant, and I’ve always thought Woody Allen’s movies – especially the ones he did in the ‘70s - were hilarious.

There are so many good comedies, I’m trying to think of one that’s a little more recent that I thought was fucking brilliant… Old School ’s a great one. Vince Vaughn and Will Ferrell. Animal House is one of the all-time greats. Those are both two school-based comedies, and I never even went to college! [ Laughs ]

Nothing Left To Fear – produced by Slash – is available on DVD and Blu-ray from Monday 17 February 2014.