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.

This is the post-mortem podcast and I'm

Mick Garas. What scares you? Spiders, monsters, serial killers, killer clowns,

killer kids, mustard gas, ghosts, graveyards, things that go bump in the night, bug-eyed

monsters from outer space, the unknown, love, sex, a creep with a gun, a

president without a conscience, whatever is your greatest fear, chances are you are not alone.

Fear is universal.

Your own fear is personal, but our jobs as the people who write and produce and direct horror films,

television, and novels is to tap into that fear, to find that place deep and old movie on television that had a scene in it that haunted me for years.

It had a snake crawling up a wall and into an open bedroom window late at night.

It gave me the creeps and for years I thought it was called the white snake and I never saw it again.

Well into adulthood one afternoon while

playing TV roulette I came across that scene again totally unexpectedly. It

wasn't really all that much like I remembered it and it was in a cheesy little

Universal International programmer from the

1950s called Cult of the Cobra. Not scary at all and if I'm to be honest not particularly

good either but the power of that image the snake crawling inside the bedroom window, still had me in its

thrall. Fear and horror tap into that part of us that isn't ruled by reason and intellect.

And those who are drawn to horror usually discover it in their youth and never grow out of it.

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