You are now listening to post-mortem with Mick Harris, where the most influential voices in horror cinema will spill their guts, literally.

To the renowned horror director, writer, and producer.

Now here's your host, Mick Garris.

I'm Mick Garris and this is post-mortem. Creativity takes many forms and many expressions.

We write, we draw, we compose, we sing, we play, we perform.

It takes a creative village to construct our culture, our entertainment, our books, our songs, and our movies.

We've talked before about how the horror genre is considered a gutter in books and film by the intelligentsia, that there is a chauvinism

that seeks to exclude the rude, the otray, the less genteel side of the creative coin. I'm not here to dispute that again. It's an old refrain and

there isn't a horror fan among us who hasn't had those endless and pointless arguments

with those who just don't get it.

What's worrisome are those artists who attain success and then turn their back upon it.

I remember years ago when I was a young interviewer chatting with Christopher Lee on my old fantasy film

festival TV show on the Z channel. Lee is a giant in the genre. His portrayal of Count

Dracula in the Hammer Films and Beyond is considered by many to be definitive.

But Lee never wanted to talk about that.

He said all of that was way behind him in his career's rearview mirror.

He wanted to talk about the Wickerman, Star Wars, the Three Musketeers 1941 Sherlock Holmes.

All of these of course were notable and admirable, but very likely they would never

have come to be without the success of those Dracula movies.

Basically, he disowned them and did not at all like it when he was asked about them.

Fair enough, he deserved to focus on the roles that instilled him with pride and that is surely

respectable. But it made me kind of sad that he dismissed the work that made him famous.

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