An education

My secondary school was a kip. But it had a decent library and in that library was a book that had a genuine effect on me. Kim Newman's Nightmare Movies.

For a young lad who's only access to movies was late night RTE1 and Network 2 and the crappy selection in Xtravision it was mindblowing. Suspiria? What the hell was Suspiria? Who the hell was Dario Argento? Why the hell weren't his films on the shelves instead of Hook and Nightmare On Elm Street part 5? By the time I finally had money and could afford a multiregion Dvd player I knew as much as you could about Suspiria with Dark Side Magazine filling in the bits this book couldn't. Thankfully the film lived up to the hype. So many others didn't but Suspiria was a mindblower.

Chapters on Lucio Fulci films were amazing too. If Argento was off the beaten path then Fulci was at the top of a mountain. His films were so far out of reach it felt like we'd never get to see them. God bless CH4 and Mark Kermode though. The Banned season, laying on the films denied to us by law. Zombie Flesh Eaters was showing at 2am and it was worth waiting up for. Even shorn of the gruesome moments spoken about in Nightmare Movies it grabbed teenage me and shook me awake. My love of film switched from gangster and western to horror instantly. 

Stuff like Blue Sunshine, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Flesh For Frankenstein stayed resolutely out of reach but the book had planted the seed in my head. I had to see them all. More film books followed. Lists of films were made. Massive lists. The internet arrived. So did jobs and money. Full wages packets were spent buying films from Play247, cdwow and ebay. My god the money I spent. No regrets though.

On the last day of secondary school i walked into the library to borrow the book "permanently" but someone had already had the same idea. The bastard. I hope they still love films as much as I do.