Seventies fright auteur, synth soundtrack pioneerHow we scare people with film hasn’t changed particularly. Horror is a very adaptable genre: the subject matter has evolved as society evolves, and as styles change. But what frightens us is essential. We’re all born afraid, and we are all afraid of the same things. That’s what makes horror such a powerful genre. Everybody’s afraid of death, disfigurement, loss of a loved one… in any culture. I’m scared by everything. Even badasses get scared, that’s why they become badasses. I still find the idea of being followed scary. I think everybody does. A couple of times people have followed me but it never turned out to be as serious as what was portrayed in [my film] Halloween.  Horror really works when you’re young. It challenges you. When you get old you’re a little bit more aware of real-life horror, and real-life horror is a vision of hell. Right now in America there’s a lot of crazy fear about this election we’re having and the state of our country. It’s terribly divided. There’s a lot of fear going around about the outsider, about the other. This happens during hard times and I think it arises from the recession. Somebody has to be blamed. Trump could be ripe for a horror monster but he’s sort of buffoonish, as opposed to being scary. It’s our response [to him]; it’s us that scares me; the people that follow him blindly. Human beings, and what they’re capable of, are the scariest things of all.John Carpenter plays Victoria Warehouse, Manchester, Sat; The Troxy, E1, 31 Oct & 1 Nov  Star of Sightseers and writer-director of upcoming serial-killer film Prevenge  I’m a sucker for ghost stories. My theory is that when we see the surreal, paranormal and supernatural on film, it represents insanity. Our fear that if everything goes crazy, it means that we have, and there’s no escape then from horror. It’s everywhere. The best example I can think of is Michael Hordern in [1968 BBC drama] Whistle And I’ll Come To You. He’s this pompous, rational know-it-all, but by the end is a gibbering idiot with his thumb in his mouth. It’s the fear of rationality and structure collapsing. I once had a dream that ghosts were laying siege to my family and bombing us with pins. The scariest thing was when I asked my parents in the dream if ghosts existed; their answer was “yes”.  Co-writer-director of the original Blair Witch Project  Jacob’s Ladder and in particular the subway scene. Tim Robbins’s character finds himself trapped on a platform and the passing train is crewed by these entities, these demons. I’ll never forget the shot where, as the train is pulling away, their heads are rattling back and forth rapidly looking back at him. It was a moment that was so elegant in its simplicity, but so disturbing and otherworldly in its execution. It’s the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen. I could only hope to have that effect on people in my work.  Creators of TV horror anthology show Inside No 9  Reece Shearsmith: Things in corners frighten me. I am unsettled by all the great cinematic uses of people or shapes with their backs to us. From the little hooded figure in Don’t Look Now, turning to reveal itself to be a serial-killing dwarf; to the end of The Blair Witch Project with Mike standing in the corner of the room. It is the expectation of the turn, and what it will reveal that is so unsettling. It’s not confined to dark Venetian alleyways or spooky old houses, either. Killer Bob in Twin Peaks, creeping towards us over a sofa in broad daylight, is one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen. In fact I think most of what David Lynch does is pretty terrifying. Just watch Lost Highway. A waking nightmare.  Steve Pemberton: I am terrified of cows. It’s the size of them obviously, and the fact that they could easily crush you to death just by leaning against you. The word ‘bovine’ is enough to bring me out in a sweat with its sickly combination of size and stupidity. Then there’s the liquid black eyes filled with unknowable intent and the big teeth like grinding stones ready to turn your bones to dust. And when one cow turns to look at you, alone in a vast field, and the rest of the herd stop chewing and all slowly look up and stare before lumbering towards you with some evil intent... and that’s before you factor in the flies and the shit-matted hides. Urgh. All we humans can do is send out our bravest teenagers to tip them over in the middle of the night.  Inside No 9 will return to BBC2 for a Christmas special  Director of indie horror flick Under The Shadow  I get easily scared, thanks to my overactive imagination and my desire to look into scary stories. Especially if I’m alone at night, even though I know that they can haunt me. I tend to freak myself out when I’m lying in bed alone in darkness. Only last night I woke up with a panic, thinking someone is in bed because I felt the duvet moved. After sitting up in fear, I realised that one end of the duvet fell off the bed, pulling the whole thing down and that is why it moved. Oh, silly me! Another time, when I was in Amman for the filming of Under The Shadow. I think I was exhausted and stressed. I slept awkwardly on my left arm and it went numb. I woke up in the middle of the night, touching my numb left hand with my right hand and jumping out of bed with a yelp, thinking “THERE IS A HAND IN MY BED!” and ran out of my room screaming as loud as I possibly could, with my numb hand flapping a long. It took me a few seconds to register that it was my own hand that scared me!  What’s truly terrifying is when you sense a strangeness in something that is seemingly ordinary. I have a distinct memory of this lamp that my mum got from my grandmother – as a child I always thought it looked like a scary face that was constantly staring at me. Or when you are on your own and you sense a presence but you look around and there is nobody in the room. Fear is a primal instinct, alarming you about a possible threat. So I always think it’s fascinating and bizarre that your mind sometimes tricks you to panic for no logical reason. Or maybe it’s a sixth sense and in those situations we are being warned about something that is beyond our understanding. You decide.Under The Shadow is in cinemas now  Horror director behind cult gore-outs such as 1985’s Re-Animator  It’s always the little horror movies made for no money that scare the crap out of you. Big studio films usually pull their punches but these talented young newcomers have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Finding new ways to scare people is what every good horror director dreams about and I’ve been seeing terrific new films, many directed by women: The Babadook, Good Night, Mommy and Honeymoon, to name a few. I’m extremely easy to scare if I sense that the director is talented and will stop at nothing to freak me out. And I’ve discovered that most people who make horror films are the same way. I was at a film festival screening of Reservoir Dogs in the early 90s when the film broke, just as Michael Madsen was about to cut off the cop’s ear, and I found myself in the men’s room standing next to Wes Craven at the urinals. “I’m not going back in there,” he told me. “But Wes, it’s only a movie,” I couldn’t help telling him. “Yeah, but it’s too real,” he replied before he took off.  Frontman of ghoulish garage rockers the Horrors and otherworldly duo Cat’s Eyes  Cannibal Holocaust. Not so much blurring the lines between fiction and reality as removing the lines altogether and mashing the two sides into one gory soup, it remains harder to stomach than pretty much anything released since. It provokes a feeling only matched by the hyper-reality of the “true gore” Mexican Cartel videos found in the darkest recesses of the net. As with those clips, the viewer is an uneasy voyeur, compelled to keep watching, as I discovered the first time I saw it, while house-sitting for a gore-obsessed friend.  While admittedly gratuitous in its depiction of sexual violence and real, inexcusable, animal cruelty, it would be short-sighted and too easy to dismiss this film as exploitation horror. In essence CH is a multi-layered scathing social commentary, inspired in part by Italian press coverage of the Red Brigade terrorist organisation. After noticing a pattern in the media’s willingness to disregard journalistic integrity in favour of graphic violence, Deodato decided to create a film that drew on their savagery. “Who are the real cannibals?” asks main character Harold Monroe, and in the end the camera itself turns out to be the feature’s main cannibalising presence. Cannibal Holocaust is both a touchstone for real/fake found-footage horror and brilliant social satire. It is also disgusting; why is this surprising? The turtle-beheading scene in particular renders it unforgettable in the worst sense of the word, and the prospect of another viewing makes me want to vomit. I now own it on DVD after finding a copy in Notting Hill Music & Video Exchange and it sits on the shelf next to the Mexican curse candle.The Horrors DJ at The Borderline, WC1, Saturday 29 October; Cat’s Eyes are touring to 6 November  While I have made many creature films over the years – from Crab Monsters to Dinocrocs – nothing scares me quite like the depravity of man. I once saw a film in which the hero developed the ability to see the most evil thing anyone he came into contact with had ever done. He saw friends’ and strangers’ darkest moments: murder, rape and the various abuses they’d inflicted on others. When I bump into someone on the street, or hand a clerk money for something I’ve bought, sometimes I wonder about what vile deeds might exist in this person’s past and what sinister plots they may be currently hatching against some poor, unwitting victim…  AKA Slipknot’s clown, also a horror director  I’ve never watched the entire Texas Chain Saw Massacre movie from beginning to end. There’s something about the acting and some of the things that go on, it becomes frighteningly real. But I’m also the guy that will do anything to go see a ghost or check out a vampire or a werewolf. I love to believe that that could be. How awesome would it be if a 30-foot tarantula was coming into town and people had to be warned and the community gets together to kill this thing and then we all barbecue it and it tastes like chicken? Life would be way more interesting. I do kinda believe it can exist but you have to go to places that have been here longer and are still unseen and uncovered.Officer Downe is in US cinemas and on demand from 18 Nov  Director of punk horror Green Room  This year has scared the living shit out of me. I feel like we’re all going to start building bunkers and fallout shelters again. But I try not to let the geopolitical landscape or the constant barrage of newsreel carnage interfere with my craft or what I love about the film-going experience. Jump-scares will always be more of a technical feat of timing and misdirection. And creating cinematic tension has less to do with referencing current events than it does building a believable world with relatable characters that ups the stakes and heightens the experience.  Beyond the blood and guts and ghosts, there is no tension without emotional investment by the audience. Real life is scarier simply because it exposes us to mortal danger. The best horror doesn’t necessarily need to stem from real-life events, but it needs to tap into the mechanics of how we’re scared in real life. So the task of the horror filmmaker is to somehow access and stimulate the involuntary response audiences have to true danger. Personally, I like to keep a safe distance from horrific, real-life events ‘ripped from the headlines’. Awareness of such events can creep into the fictional world and pollute the filmgoers’ experience. The last thing I want to think about when eating popcorn and watching an atmospheric horror film is the brutality and injustice of the real world. Escaping all that while experiencing thrills and chills in a safe, dark place is the whole fun.  Director of West End play The Woman In Black  I don’t specialise only in scaring people in my work, but The Woman in Black has led me to become curious about the process. No-one really expects to be scared in a theatre, for how can theatre compete with the special effects of recorded media? The answer, I believe, is that by using very simple effects, some technical, like sound and lighting, and some which simply pay tribute to and the acting skill of the performers, one encourages audiences to use their own imaginations, and it becomes surprisingly possible to entice audiences into scaring themselves. I would say, however, that Roman Polanski’s film Repulsion had a huge effect on me. I watched it in the late 60s and chain-smoked throughout. The notion of a beautiful, vulnerable young woman, played by Catherine Deneuve, who elicits our sympathy, provokes our protective instincts and then turns out to be a insane killer, I found really disturbing. Because she is insane, there is no way she will see that the wholesome boyfriend who has come to save her is actually her friend, and will batter him to death. And when her sleazy landlord tries to get friendly, and three minutes earlier we have seen her pick up a cut-throat razor… Notions of a safe haven that is penetrated and thus no longer secure are explored here.The Woman In Black is at The Fortune Theatre, WC1 and on UK tour until 10 June 2017  Critic and curator of horror festival Frightfest  Psycho is still pretty terrifying. No matter how many times you see it, you still jump at that shower scene. It just shows Hitchcock as the genius he was.The overhead shots of Norman Bates; the shrieking; the music – I could watch it time and time again, and it always gets me. Everyone says it’s because they’re at their most vulnerable in the shower – I was actually having a shower once in my apartment and the police broke through the door. They’d mistaken me on a drug raid! That was really scary. So I suppose it could be something to do with that! I was absolved of anything though. I feel I have to tell you that!  The scariest film I’ve seen is Scum. Also Nil By Mouth. And recently the Louis CK show Horace And Pete. I feel a sense of dread when I think about them. The horror comes because these are properly difficult things for us to look at – physical and emotional abuse and a dismantling of the cosy idea of ‘family’. True terror is to be a kid trapped in these worlds, with literally no escape. David Cameron’s potato face was pretty scary, too. You wouldn’t want that looming over you at night.  The scariest things are what’s inside us – those base or unknown parts of us that co-exit with our ‘rational’ 21st century selves. In Aaaaaaaah!, I made all my characters speak like apes but set the film in ordinary suburbia. It’s funny and scary to think of the things driving us that we cannot understand and rarely acknowledge. That given the right circumstances we could all be axe murderers, or worse! Us Westerners have lived in a bubble for some time now – we’re amazingly well shielded from terrifying realities, that’s the scary thing. The scariest film someone could make for us would be one where the internet, phones and telly got turned off and then a load of barbarian invaders arrived and raped and pillaged suburbia – including pillaged Waitrose and Jamie’s Italian. “Didn’t see that coming!” could be the tag line. I’d love to make that film, it’d be a great date movie.  Metallica guitarist and founder of annual horror convention Fear FestEvil  I went to a Catholic school, so whenever I saw horror movies with a demonic bent it hit me that much deeper because I felt they were singling out my particular religion and my theology; it felt like I was part of the demon’s enemy! So when I first saw The Exorcist I thought I was on the list for demonic possession because I was a juvenile delinquent who wasn’t very Catholic in a lot of his ways. Even when I became a Buddhist, which has a lot more demonic iconography and images, at least there’s an explanation and reason for these demonic images. In Christianity, all demons are agents of the devil and preachers of everything evil and malevolent.  As an avid surfer it’s been really hard for me to get up the gumption to watch that horror movie The Shallows. I’m surprised at how difficult it is for me to press the play button on that movie. When I’m out surfing I don’t particularly feel spooked or nervous about sharks, and the original Jaws movie didn’t keep me out of the ocean like it did thousands of other people. But there’s something about that particular scenario of someone trapped on their surfboard by a shark that’s pretty close to my reality, so that one’s hitting home for me pretty heavily right now. [The prospect of President Trump] isn’t just scary to me, it’s apocalyptic, it’d be a total breakdown of a lot of the principals that are holding our social culture together, and you know what else is kinda terrifying? What’s gonna happen to Britain after Brexit. That’s a cultural horror movie that you guys are experiencing right now. My heart goes out to all the people who were misled or misguided.Metallica’s single Atlas, Rise! is released on 28 October; the album Hardwired… To Self-Destruct is out on 18 November via Blackened Recordings  Co-creator of comedy-horror The Greasy Strangler  I’m not interested in watching absurd surreal horror. Even though I might make slightly absurd films, I am more affected by work that is grounded more in reality. Whether that is Ray Winstone in Scum attacking another inmate with a bag of pool balls, or the artist Chris Burden having someone shoot him in the arm on camera, or watching Hidden by Michael Haneke. The less sensational and the more mundane then the weirder it is. Films without manipulative music, films shot in real time, films shot with real grit and dirt where you can’t tell the filmmaker’s agenda. Look at The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The reason that is disturbing is because it feels so innocent and raw. It doesn’t use tricks or fast pacing to scare. It hangs around, and cuts slowly and awkwardly and it goes on too long. That gives it a sadistic gratuitous feel.  Of course if a film feels like it could really happen then it’s scary. Look at Deliverance with Burt Reynolds. A rafting trip goes horribly wrong in a weird backwater with some local streetcast oddbods inflicting the damage. Totally believable. Totally upsetting. What’s scary in 2016? Anything that the majority don’t understand. That is scary.  Comedian and actor, best known as fictional horror novelist Garth Marenghi  Threads, the 1984 TV drama about a nuclear attack on the UK – I still find it extremely difficult to watch, especially in the current political climate. As a drama it’s brutal, devoid of cliche and unflinching in its depiction of human frailty and savagery. It’s the kind of drama that needs to be made now, to remind us of what we’re again heading towards. I think there’s always been a genuine need to shock audiences, to remind them of the horrors of reality. I remember lying in bed as a child and experiencing deep anxiety at the sound of the news headlines drifting up from the downstairs TV. A fear of the wider world is always a preoccupation for children, no matter how hard adults try to shield them from it. But adults seem to have grown used to being passive consumers of information, with a sense of entitlement and expectation. The most frightening thing in our country right now is the lack of basic human empathy. There aren’t many horror films or stories that truly frighten me anymore, but each ping of a fresh news update on my mobile invariably does the trick.Matt Holness’s Halloween, part of Comedy Shorts, is on Sky On Demand  Writer and director of horror doc Fear Itself  I am so terrified by the notion of eternal nothingness that I can be made to fear everything from cartoonish zombies (how absurd they render the possibility of an afterlife!) to ageless vampires (how cruelly they emphasise the brevity of the human lifespan!) and even darkness itself. No matter how hard I try to reconcile myself to an eternity of non-existence – or remind myself that I already endured one prior to my conception – my fear only gets deeper and wider and more all-consuming the more I weigh it up. As long as there are others like me, horror movies will do just fine.
It’s not just fans who get the chills – even horror’s finest find themselves frightened sometimes. From cows to cannibals, here are their primal fears