H13: Gary X-Ray – The X-Rays
Written by Gaz E
Sunday, 20 October 2013 02:00
Day 2 of Uber Rock’s 13 Days of Halloween and we have a cellar dweller too dangerous to be trusted mingling with the normal people. The X-Rays formed in 1994 and, after supporting the likes of New Bomb Turks and Supersuckers, imploded….but now they’re back! The band’s frontman, Gary X-Ray, will drag you from the gutter to the garage with his trash-fuelled answers to our 13 horrific questions…..
1.) What are your most vivid childhood memories of Halloween?
Well back in the days when I was a kid it certainly wasn’t so Americanised. There was no trick or treating and definitely no townies, celebrating Halloween, walking round in Misfits T-shirts newly purchased from Top Shop, haha!
2.) Why do you think that the worlds of horror and metal/punk have always been so closely linked?
I never went to Sunday school but if I had I am sure they would have been warning me about punk and metal being the spawn of Satan. Has religion inadvertently turned kids on to Devil’s music and in so doing linked the worlds of horror and metal? I tend to see old school ‘77 punk as being more about boozin’, not getting laid and being a general pain in the ass to society, whereas metal has always been linked to good old Satan. I guess the Misfits have a lot to answer for when you talk about the link between horror and punk (now where’s my newly ripped Top Shop Misfits shirt? hahaha!)
3.) Has there been a horror remake yet that has bettered the original movie?
I have been racking my brains and, you know what, I have to say no. I love my zombie flicks and get so pissed off with remakes where the zombies seem to move with superhuman speed. Zombies are supposed to move slowly, this should be a golden rule of horror movies hahahaha! Half the fun is knowing you can have a drink, maybe roll a fag and still have time to stab a zombie in the head before it has time to bite you!
4.) What’s the greatest ever horror movie kill?
For me you can’t beat a good zombie slaying. I know you probably wouldn’t be able to count it as a movie kill but if you’ve been watching the new series of The Walking Dead you just gotta love Michonne slicing off zombie heads with her samurai sword! Cool as fuck!
5.) Who is the baddest ever horror movie villain…and why?
Hahaha, that’s gotta be Emperor Ming from Flash Gordon cos he’s merciless. Can’t really think of an answer to this question but when you say baddest I do think of a recent film I saw, The Gingerbread Man. The spirit of an evil killer is transplanted into a Gingerbread Man after he is baked at a cursed bakery. The Gingerbread Man actually looks like a less scary SpongeBob. The film was so bad I can’t even remember how they defeated the evil Gingerbread Man though perhaps it could have been someone dunked him in a cup of tea and he fell apart, hahahaha!
6.) Who is the greatest ever Scream Queen?
When you say Scream Queen I automatically think of camp horror (I think it must be hanging out with The Hip Priest’s Brother Lee for so long, hahaha). And they don’t get no camper than Vincent Price (except perhaps Kenneth Williams in Carry on Screaming, hahaha). I do love those old Hammer Horror films with Vincent Price, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. And some of those voluptuous virgins Christopher Lee’s Dracula used to seduce still leave me hot under the collar, hahaha!
7.) Name your Top 5 favourite horror movies of all time…and tell us why!!
Not an easy thing to do off the top of my head, but here goes:
1.) Dawn of the Dead – gotta be the definitive zombie movie for me and really set the template for zombie movies.
2.) The Evil Dead – you just can’t beat the humour in all 3 of the Evil Dead movies.
3.) Dead Snow – a combination of zombies and Nazis…… gotta be a winner. How cool do zombies look in nazi uniforms?!
4.) An American Werewolf in London – hahaha, I’ve only put this in cos I really had a thing for Jenny Agutter after seeing this movie and love the scene where the yanks go into the Slaughtered Lamb pub in the wilds of the Yorkshire Moors and the whole bar just goes silent. I’ve played gigs like that hahahaha!
5.) Return of the Living Dead – purely cos it’s so kitsch and has one of the coolest soundtracks ever featuring the Cramps, the Damned, TSOL and Roky Erickson.
5.1!) 28 Days Later – even though I don’t like zombies moving fast these ain’t technically zombies. They are infected with the rage virus and I like the fact that you can infected just by one drop of blood rather than with zombies you can splattered with blood and it don’t affect you unless you get bitten!
8.) What underrated horror movie would you recommend to our readers just in case they have never seen it?
Gotta be Basket Case. I laughed all the way through this. A guy keeps his evil mutated twin in a basket and, wait for it, as soon as someone says “What’s in the basket?” you know they’re gonna get fucked over by the little guy in the basket, hahahaha!
9.) What is your guilty pleasure, the trashy horror flick that you hold dear but everyone else runs away from?
Street Trash – the classic “melt” movie. It’s real low budget and the actors were real homeless guys. The plot is pretty simple: there’s some contaminated booze that tramps drink, and basically it makes them melt. I think it could have been the inspiration for White Lightning cider hahaha.
10.) What is the greatest ever horror movie poster?
I love the old 50s and 60s B movie posters like The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein meets the Wolfman. I did see a great poster the other day for Boris Karloff’s 1963 film Black Sabbath. Guess some lads from the black country must’ve also seen that poster outside Dudley’s Odeon cinema hahaha!
11.) Have you ever had a ghostly supernatural experience?
The nearest I think I have come was as a kid. Me and 3 mates used to investigate derelict houses (I’d say break in but generally it was just a case of climbing through a broken window). We had all seen Salem’s Lot a few weeks before and got into this old abandoned house. We got upstairs and in one room was a 6 foot box that at that time looked very coffin like. I think our imaginations were in overdrive but we all really believed it was a vampire coffin and honestly the room felt so cold and eerie. Initially we all legged it but then decided that we needed to go back and kill the vampire as they had done in Salem’s Lot. So we went back armed with a fence post and a couple of iron railings we were gonna use to jemmy open the “coffin”. I was in charge of jemmying open one side of the coffin whilst my mate Mark had the stake ready. As we opened the coffin we felt a gasp of air come from within. As we opened it more there was this real odour of decay. Anyway to cut to the chase we opened it up and although there was no vampire there were ashes on the bottom of this 6 foot casket. To this day I wonder “had someone beaten us to the coffin and killed the vampire leaving only its ashes for us to find?”
12.) What ‘star’ of the music world would you like to see slaughtered in gory horror movie style?
I would love to see One Direction in a melt movie. Or how’s this for a movie idea – Boy Bands v the Zombie Apocalypse. A very simple plot of loads of boy bands thrown into a world of flesh eating zombies and basically seeing which Boy Band survived the longest. Or how about Reader’s Wives versus the Zombie Apocalypse. Breasts and Zombies a winning combination hahahaha!
13.) What are your plans for Halloween this year?
Hahaha, I’m basically gonna be a grumpy old git. When the kids come round Trick or Treating I’m basically gonna give em what I used to get as a kid at Halloween ….. Fuck all! And if I see one more chav who thinks Halloween is about dressing up in a Misfits shirt I will not be responsible for my actions hahahaha!
Happy Halloween and please remember a Misfits shirt is for life and not just Halloween!!!!!