2014.02.10 - Digital Spy - Slash's Favourite Horror Movie... The Omen

Slash's favourite horror movie... The Omen
The guitarist-turned-horror producer talks about the peak of the genre.

By Mayer Nissim

You probably best know Slash as a founding member of Guns N' Roses, the lead guitarist of Velvet Revolver and the man behind Slash's Snakepit.

All that's true, but he's also a massive horror buff and now the movie producer Slasher Films. To mark the release of his debut Nothing Left To Fear (released on DVD/Blu-ray, on-download and on-demand on February 17), we asked the guitar hero for his best ever horror film.

"My favourite horror movie? That's always a tough one, there's a lot of great horror movies. I think The Omen - the original - is one of my favourites. One great package of horror, so we'll go with that one.

"It was one of the great '70s real feature horror films, that they really haven't made in a long time. Where you had not necessarily a big budget horror movie, but just the presence of a real movie in theatres.

"It had that kind of marketing. Along with The Omen and Invasion of The Body Snatchers - the remake was another one of those - there was a period there where horror movies made it to be on the same par as your average drama or Hollywood-produced movie.

There were a couple that were really, really great. Great scripts, great cast, great director - and The Omen was one of them. I just thought it was a great story, a great concept. A great cast - Gregory Peck's one of my favourites - the whole cast is great.
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"The inspiration I had for actually going ahead and producing movies was to be able to go and follow that path. To go and be able to make story-driven horror movies. Character-driven, where you really establish some sense of empathy for the characters involved and you can invest into the different characters.

"I'm a great fan of monsters in horror movies, so you have to have a great villain. That's what inspired me to go ahead and go, 'I wanna produce', because I wanted to do something that's non-existent for the most part at this point.

"['Torture porn?'] Everything has it's place. I think the quality and imagination and the amount of artistic prowess is really the big thing. There's some great gore movies, but it became the industry standard that everything had to be low budget, quick buck kind of thing, and that's what turned me off of the horror genre for a while.

"A movie like Saw - the first one and the third one actually I think is pretty good - but the first one is really a ground-breaking concept and it was well shot, it was well-storied. It was great, but whenever anything does well you've got to make it into a franchise where you can bleed as much money out of it as possible.


"The first thing that goes out the window is the writing and the characters. It becomes, 'What's the easiest thing to do?'. Which is get some really good make-up guys and just put blood everywhere, because people buy that. That kind of thinking is in the music business as well!

"Hostel you brought up, which is a really well-made movie. I don't think I'm into torture for torture's sake, but it's a well-made movie. But what I think is most exciting for me are really good, scary stories that are about what you don't see and make you use your imagination and have a really great look and feel dark and feel scary. A lot of these movies aren't scary, they're just f**king unnerving!

"I love good music in movies. Be it just a little bit - just a slight score - or be it a big dramatic, majestic score, whatever it is. I actually keep soundtracks. A lot of the music that's been written for movies is just f**king brilliant.

"I definitely wanted to try as best I can to come up with some ideas for the score of the movie that can try and achieve that, where they work really well together. The melodies are good and it fits and makes the story on an emotional level that much stronger.

"I'm hoping to latch on to the right story to focus the next movie. I'm knee-deep in material trying to find the right story. I did the first one, and now I have to do the second one, and the second one has to be better than the first, but I have access to more resources.

"I should be able to do something really cool, I just have to find the right story. The movie business is much slower than the record business. At least the business of making records is faster than when you're trying to get all the different elements together to get a movie made. Some things you just have to get used to. I'm really glad I have my day job!"

Nothing Left To Fear is available on DVD and Blu-ray through Anchor Bay and on-download and on-demand through content from Monday, February 17.

https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a549545/slashs-favourite-horror-movie-the-omen/