Jus Oborn Of Electric Wizard's Favourite Horror Films

If you want to talk about the interaction between music and movies, this has it all. The music pushes the movie forward. It's very inspirational. There are whole parts where the dialogue essentially drops out - the music pushes the story forward and the images lock in perfectly with the music. That always excited me: the soundtrack is so much louder than the actual dialogue, the only way you can watch it is at full volume. The music starts to make sense at that volume. It's raw and nasty – but not like so much metal today. It's state of the art now, isn't it? You can sound like a fucking earthquake in your bedroom with the right kit. But is that your real sound? Over the years we've done so many rehearsals in shitty little rooms where they have a shitty 50 watt combo amp and someone'll come in and say 'you're gonna have to turn it down, you're too loud' and we've said 'what do you mean? we're playing through your fucking rubbish amps'. It isn't the equipment: it's the resonation; the sound; the guts; that is the real goal, that's where heaviness comes from. We don't use any pedals. We go straight to the amp. Fingers pressing into the guitar. That's what makes heavy music: that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up more than my balls getting rattled by some Pro Tools bullshit.

This is one of my absolute favorite Jess Franco movies. He had a period in the mid 1970s where he essentially made movies that were like the Italian horror comics – the Fumettis. He churned the movies out in the same way: he wanted to recreate that feeling. It's happening in front of your eyes. Franco lived like a nomad. He had no life outside of his films. It was relentless: making films, going on sets, travelling to the next set, cheap hotels. The touring life is a mad life, but we've not gone down that road of relentless touring. We've had tours not go according to plan, all sorts of shit, getting ripped off, not finishing tours. But over the years we've come to realize there is a certain quality to elusiveness. We don't just play every day. When we do play it's more of an event. That's something we've managed to capitalize on throughout the years – the sense of mystique. We appear like ghouls from the mist and then we're gone again. It's the same with the records. We don't churn stuff out for the sake of it. Some groups come out and they're the hot new thing - they form, release an album, have all the hype, tour and then split up, all in between us recording an album. With our style, part of the attraction is the immersion. I think it was like that with Franco, he was obsessed.

An indescribable film. It's just fucking insane. The elements of the dwarf and the horrible boarding house and his mother, it's all there. There is an odd sort of campiness to it, too. You'd expect a sleazy movie like that would focus on just one element but there is this strange sideshow element to it. It verges on John Waters territory. The whole heroin smuggling side story with the people that own the toy shop. It's like, everything - every aspect of life - is perverted in every way imaginable. It's Danish too, even though the main actors are English. They made another movie called Angels which is pretty much impossible to find. I've got three reels of it. It's a Danish Biker film. The scenes I've seen from it are fucking far out. These bikers break into a church, they crucify the priest in the church - it's fucking insane. It's why I love the 70s. The whole immoral insanity of it. You have the hippy dream gone totally wrong; human greed entering the equation and fucking it all up. Human nature. It goes wrong! But in the early 70's it was just like 'do whatever you want'. You had weird cults in Europe where people were shitting on each other and all sorts. Like Amon Duul had some live sex show as a support act at one point. Or Hawkwind - it's not exactly Traffic, you know? Space Ritual is more like black metal, a full on chug.

Jean Rollin is a film maker Liz and I bonded over years ago before we were in a band together. He made a trilogy of vampire movies in the early 70s that were trying to be more artistic than the average horror movie. Trying to fuse feelings and aesthetics and music together to push things forward. It was raw and basic and primitive, but it really works as a film, it's compelling. I always come back to it. I've never fully worked out the story but I love it.

Also, it has a brilliant rock soundtrack. They got a band of session musicians together to form the band. We recorded one of the songs on Witchcult Today – 'Black Magic Rituals & Perversions' We thought we'd do a cover of somebody nobody had heard of. This is one of the greatest if you like girl vampires, aside from Vampyros Lesbos - which is the most iconic of that scene. It's a French film but it has a very English feel. Fields that go on forever, creepy southern England. I love the idea of exploring those themes in an unexpected place. We're in North Devon now. The West Country has always been part of our sound; we've drawn from that influence. I like looking back on the folklore and the occult history of the area and having a real reason to be able to quote those things rather than just like 'I like horror movies'. We grew up in an area where there really were human sacrifices and altars and the whole lot. It really happened. Look at history, the Romans never got past Dartmoor. Christianity never really reached down to the South West - we've always managed to stay apart from these influences, to some degree.

It is very obviously late 60s/early 70s – they brought it up to date, rather than set it in the 1920s. They brought the whole free love thing in, but as part of the Lovecraftian cycle. I thought that made a lot of sense and brought it forward. It almost felt that Lovecraft was prophesising the future: the movie works on that level and, again, the soundtrack is important to the film. When the soundtrack originally came out it said something like 'Strange Sounds From The Village of Dunwich' on it. That's just fucking awesome. And Roger Corman produced it. He always made incredible horror movies and the visuals are brilliant too - the house looks great.

This was about the darker side of 70s porn, really. The director cast himself as this speed freak sleaze bag who gets out of prison and starts selling snuff movies to people. He has this audience who are up for it but then decide that they want it ever darker and weirder and heavier and more depraved. It's totally fucked. But the music itself is an absolute work of art - the way that the soundtrack works with the images and forces this relentless vision: essentially that the human race is a bunch of filthy fucking perverts and whoever is exploiting them is actually the more righteous character. Like, 'here you are, you freaks, this is all you deserve'. He doesn't approve of what he's doing but he knows that if it isn't him it'll be somebody else. It's really fucking horrible.

It was banned in England for a hell of a long time. The final - fully uncut - version didn't come out until about 2007. It was planned to be the most horrible movie ever made. The original title was 'Sex Crime of the Century'. It was like they were saying 'what can we do - what can we say - to make this the most horrible movie ever made'. There are quite a few levels that the movie works on, for me. The main protagonists are this weird gang; there's one girl in the gang. A few times I've thought 'this is Electric Wizard' (laughs). There is the whole Blood Lust fantasy - supposedly the darkest and most depraved band ever - and they're playing in New York. And it's meant to be like early Alice Cooper mixed with Black Sabbath. And the other strange thing about it is that the music is essentially the exact opposite of what is going on screen. They have this hippie thing going on: hippie music playing as people are getting murdered. It sets the vibe perfectly. The Woodstock vibe gone sour, the fact that there are always going to be people ready to shit on whatever hippie vibe is set up.

It's funny, you know. Sometimes I wonder what happened to rock music? I used to go down to gigs to score weed or score acid. Someone would be selling it. What the fuck has happened? The hedonism was all part of it and it's gone, largely. You were there to get fucking out of it and have a good time. It seems like other music forms have taken that vibe. If Coldplay are representing rock music we're just fucked, aren't we? We're here to have a good time and get fucked. And sometimes getting into the music is about getting bollocksed. Obviously that can be hard if you've got a normal life and a normal job. But I want to experience it properly.

This is brilliant. An artist loses his eye in a gouging incident and decides that he must make art with eyes. Always eyes. He goes round spooning eyes out to use in his artworks. It's one of those things: some things can be so unhorrific that they become horrific. If it had of been with a knife that would have been out and out horror – but there's something quite banal about using a little spoon, isn't there? (laughs). It makes it much more horrific. I always found it warped. And the portrayal of New York is just brilliant. This nasty stinking shithole full of total corruption. Liz is always telling me about New York and how it used to be. It sounded amazing. What happened? I want to go to the old 42nd street and watch the Ramones.

Psychomania is just so fucking British. I think of it almost as a New English Library novel come to life. It has that whole feel. I don't know why it isn't venerated in the same way as The Wicker Man or Witchfinder General. There was a whole generation of us who grew up watching it on TV. In Wimborne there used to be a Safeways with an entrance on one end and the exit right at the other. We used to bike right through it on BMX's kicking stuff over (laughs). It was called 'doing a Psychomania'. It was watched by everyone round here. Shitty BMX's and rubbish cheap hash, you know? I remember the first time we got 'flowering heads' round here, as bud was called then (laughs) that was a big deal. There was red seal and there was black hash which was more like rubber and petrol mixed with a tiny amount of hash and then there was opiated hash which was the most incredible shit imaginable.

Valerie and Terry are off to a manor house. They see a sex attack but she ends up dating the killer. And then everything comes full circle. It's quite a subtle movie – it's a very quiet film, really. Even though the subject matter is quite explicit, it unfolds quietly. It's directed by Jose Larrez who directed Vampyres which was his most famous movie. It's really like Vampyres in terms of the house and the mist, but it has more of a raw skanky thing going on: the guy was fucking his aunt in the movie. He loves the intergenerational sex, doesn't he? I'm not sure what's going on there. Also it has a brilliant anti -soundtrack. It's all quiet: nothing really happens, a bit of synth, a bit of orchestral stuff. I'm not even sure how some of it was achieved but it's very creepy. This weird sublime sort of atmosphere. He was very good at that - the subliminal vibe, slowly creeping into the mist. The whole subtlety of horror has been lost over the years. It's the same with metal: modern metal is like the pornography of sound, like 'Phwoar! I wanna hear that fucking hi hat…now I wanna hear that snare drum….I wanna hear everything in close fucking detail'.

Fulci is one of those names who is always name dropped when people want to talk about horror or gore but nobody remembers he had a career before Zombie Flesh Eaters. He was considered one of the great directors of Italy before that. He always made dark movies. This is great, set in London with whole 15 minute sequences that totally go off on a tangent - the music and visuals take overand everyone is on acid. The whole basis of the story is 'was everyone on acid?' Did she imagine the murders or did they really happen? And I love that jazzy guitar on it. The tone is brutal and it just works so well with horror, I wish there was more of it. I like irritating sounds - sounds that really grate. We were planning to do a soundtrack style album which was just fucking annoying sounds: 'Panic' 'Ominous' 'Sudden Death'. I like the idea of uneasiness and affecting emotions and feelings. I like the idea that you can force people to feel something they didn't ever want to feel or were not expecting to feel - music can often do that, play with emotions. You can be obvious and pluck the harp strings - that Coldplay thing where everybody is in dopey tears. They milk it and milk it and milk it, don't they? It's a cynical bullshit formula.

This is a brilliant movie. It's that whole femme fatale thing. That feeling of doom, being drawn down to hell. But you'll love it anyway. And she'll be wearing boots as well!. I've always been interested in that - it's a classic doom metal theme. The movie variates on that theme - it isn't based on the book. But all Jess Franco movies have the same theme which is essentially this: 'whatever I attempt to do, whoever I attempt to be I will always be a victim of my genetic coding. I quite like his jungle movies too - stuff like Sadomania and all of that. You must have certain scenes with the prison films - the shower scene; the checking for drugs; the lesbian warden; the nice governess. It must adhere to all of it, you feel cheated if they miss one of the archetypal set pieces.