H13: Phil Roadkill – Generation Graveyard

Written by Gaz E
Tuesday, 23 October 2012 03:33

Generation Graveyard are set to destroy all monsters at the first Uber Rock/Zombie Crew Halloween Hellraiser this weekend so we had to dig up one of the band to answer the 13 horror-themed questions of our 13 Days of Halloween feature. Step up filthy Phil Roadkill, the four-string frightmare on Earth. If you think you’re safe…you’re dead wrong…..

1.) What are your most vivid childhood memories of Halloween?

 

Putting on a play when I was in the cub scouts which I “wrote” when I was about 8 years old in which myself and three of my friends played four scientists who created a potion which could transform anyone who drank it into a kind or werewolf/Mr Hyde type creature. If you’re thinking “sounds like a crap rip-off of Carry On Screaming,” that’s exactly what I did. Carry On Screaming was the first horror film I ever saw and it scarred me for life, to the point when it influenced my directorial/screenplay/acting debut (in fact my only screenplay, but it was a winner, I bet Tobe Hooper / Wes Craven / Sir Christopher Lee never got a standing ovation from the 5th Whitstable cubs parents).

2.) Why do you think that the worlds of horror and metal/punk have always been so closely linked?

 

I think Black Sabbath probably kicked it off after chosing their name for the reason they did which I understand was Geezer commenting on how people love being scared, hence the name change from Earth to Black Sabbath. Pentagram most definitely rivalled Sabbath in the visual links to the occult, in fact Pentagram exceeded Sabbath’s due to their logo compared to Sabbath adopting “right way up” crosses in their association. Alice Cooper was also a pioneer of the horrific and nightmare-esque theatrics. Then came the likes of Witchfinder General, Venom and the like who flaunted linking supernatural horror and supposedly satanism with their music and imagery. Often as well there is a character in horror films who is isolated and a loner for some reason, young people into alternative music in general and in school life are often made to feel isolated for liking the music and clothes they do, consequently they identify with the characters in films for empathetic reasons. Either that or because it’s fuckin hilarious watching screaming teenagers being massacred in g(l)orious colour with the rewind and pause buttons at the ready.

3.) Has there been a horror remake yet that has bettered the original movie?

 

Evil Dead II is effectively a re-make of Evil Dead 1, and is better in every way in my book…and John Carpenter’s The Thing knocks spots off the original 1951 The Thing (From Another World). Obviously in 1951 it was pretty creepy but by 1982 special fx were obviously miles better.

4.) What’s the greatest ever horror movie kill?

 

Jack Goodman in my favourite horror film of all time, An American Werewolf In London, rivalled by Johnny Depp getting sucked into his  bed, shredded, then spat out in the original A Nightmare On Elm Street. That had never been done before in a horror movie and it reaped the response it deserved for its groundbreaking ingenuity. It’s blatantly not the goriest but I’m not really shocked or horrified by blood and butchering really. I was so into blood and related surroundings at one stage in my life that I got a job in a butchers just so I could sharpen knives and chop stuff up.

5.) Who is the baddest ever horror movie villain…and why?

 

Freddy Krueger. Unkillable, never know where he’s gonna pop up next, unpredictable, fuck ugly, and created as a result off a mass gang raping by criminally insane mental patients. If there is a better way to produce a ruthless sadistic maniac then let’s hear it…or better still make a film about it.

6.) Who is the greatest ever Scream Queen?

 

Jamie Lee Curtis / Jennifer Leigh

7.) Name your Top 5 favourite horror movies of all time…and tell us why!!

 

An American Werewolf in London: Although I know the film backwards, what still creeps me out is how much it scared me when I first saw it. My younger brother and I were staying with my older sister who had a pirate copy of it, which we watched with her and then went to bed. Me and my bro were woken by the piercing screams of foxes fucking in the garden. Not knowing that sound and having watched my second horror film ever in my life that night, petrified we charged into my sister’s room screaming and freaked her out and had to spend the rest of the night in her room. I’ve got goosebumps now writing this. It’s one of the most terrifying times of my life ever.

 

The Thing: Most of my favourite fims are ones I saw when I was much younger, because I was obviously way more impressionable then than now, and they were all full of groundbreaking SFX that you rarely see nowadays cos it’s all nobtwiddling and CGI instead of making models and shooting frames. Also saw The Thing on pirate as well and again at 12 years old: I’d never seen a film in which humans and animals being possessed by a weird shapechanging alien that splits its hosts open and kills in such a variety of ways, so it was a new kind of fear for me.

 

The Shining: My favourite Nicholson performance ever. I remember seeing the classic “Here’s Johnny” still when I was a kid and going on a mission to find what film it was, and watching the film with my eyes wide open nearly all the way through it. Come on, even Shelley Duvall looks pretty freaky in The Shining and Kubrick’s pioneering slow camera panning / zooming techniques all add to the disturbingly surreal atmosphere of this timeless classic.

 

The Exorcist: My sister was well into her horror novels and between her James Herbert and Shawn Hutson collection I found The Exorcist. After skipping pages to find anything violent or upsetting (which was, at that age, my guide for if I should read the whole book and / or see the film), I concluded that a young girl giving herself one with a crucifix seemed like a good bet. Again, spiritual possession was something I’d only ever read about in the bible (and at that age, the bible was my bible!), which portrayed spritual possession as little more than an inconvience as was easily dealt with by the son of God (don’t get me started!!) casting a demon out from a human and into some pigs who promptly legged it off a cliff. Shame Max Von Sydow and Richard Burton weren’t up to date with their staff training by the vatican.

 

28 Days Later: Finally infected / zombie styled agressors you can’t just jog away from! I always found the opening scenes a bit weak in convicing me really as having David Schneider cast as the lab guy just made me think of The Day Today and having Steve Coogan plant a massive cheese on his face. But that aside it really has installed thoughts of “shit, if the living dead COULD move that fast instead of shuffling around like those frequenting Camden Town bus stops with their laces tied together at 6 am on a Sunday morning, it would be pretty fucking scary!”

8.) What underrated horror movie would you recommend to our readers just in case they have never seen it?

 

Deadtime Stories (aka Freaky Fairytales -1986). I don’t know if it’s a B-movie really but still good goofy trash-horror fun.

9.) What is your guilty pleasure, the trashy horror flick that you hold dear but everyone else runs away from?

 

Trick Or Treat without a doubt. I REALLY indentified with certain aspects of it when I was younger, especially the bullying at school, and the freaky dragon rape in the back of the car (but that was more down to Lorriane Davis’s massive applecatcher of a bra getting wrapped round my face on the backseat of a Ford Fiesta XR2 in Safeways car park one night!! Horrific!). I was visually Edward Weinbauer for a while: People giving me shit about my sleeveless denim with my Def Leppard “Pyromania” backpatch…(yeah fuck off alright I had a Motorhead one as well but that was banned from school!) In fact when the environmental science block burned down, who do you think was prime suspect? And why? Cos I had a denim with “Pyromania” on it. I pointed out that Pyromania was a medical condition and that they were looking for an arsonist. The investigating officer agreed with me and once he left the room after thanking me, I got a week’s detention for being insolent. Suppose it was 20 years later and some girl in year 2 got butchered at school, if I’d been caught listening to “fucked with a knife” I’d probably have made the front page…..AND got a week’s detention!

10.) What is the greatest ever horror movie poster?

 

I love the one for An American Werewolf in London that has the wolf’s head on the right, and David Kessler on the otherside naked covering his bits, face to face with the old lady with the brolly.

11.) Have you ever had a ghostly supernatural experience?

 

This happened. I was cashing up very late one night in a basement club I used to manage behind where the Astoria theatre used to be, and the cctv monitor screen was split into 9 different camera angles. There was myself and another member of staff in the office and everyone else had gone home. I know this because I’d locked up. Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement on one of the screens so I moved in front of the monitor to get a clear view and, every few seconds, I saw what looked like a shadow fly past the camera lens. I said to the other guy in the office “Lewis, check this out, what the fuck?” and I started to film the screen on my phone. Sure enough this shadow glided quickly across the screen again. I went out to the dancefloor for a few seconds but saw nothing, so went back to the office. Just before I walked in, Lewis called out “it’s there again,” so I ran back to the dancefloor but again nothing. Lewis was white, and stammered, “we….we ..sh..should get out of here!” so we did. Sadly nothing like this happened again, and my phone with the footage on it got wrecked when I took on that homophobic chav scum after a gig. It got uploaded onto youtube but I’ve lost contact with the guy who put it up so can’t find it.

 

I’ve had recurring dreams where I wake up and am paralysed, can’t make any noise and the bedroom door starts opening, but just before the door is open wide enough for me to see what / who’s there, I wake up. Or do I? Sometimes this has been so vivid it’s terrifying and I’ve developed slight insomnia out of being scared to go back to sleep, especially when the same thing’s happened more than once a night.

Max is convinced it’s alien abduction which has caused me to experience this but he likes Avril Lavigne so the jury has actually had enough and gone home on this one.

12.) What ‘star’ of the music world would you like to see slaughtered in gory horror movie style?

 

Simon Cowell and although it’s not horror, it IS horrific, I would probably sport a raging three quarter watching him get his swede mashed with a fire extinguisher as in Irreversable (SURELY that IS a horror movie??) If not him then Piers Morgan and that Sharon Osbourne in a human centipide scenario (get Ozzy back on the booze etc…first so he’s too preoccupied to notice)….actually in the light of recent events, put Jimmy Savile in Cannibal Holocaust getting his cocked chopped off and eaten alive above Cowell.

13.) What are your plans for Halloween this year?

 

That’s cheeky. You know perfectly well that Generation Graveyard are playing with the awesome A470, Exit International, Black Tamanous and Deathbullet at the EVI cultural arts centre for the Uber Rock/Zombie Crew Halloween Hellraiser, and we’re totally on fire for it. Having been on the the road with “A470”, I know we’re gonna do everything in our performance to make them work for it…in a good way. A good plug and well executed. Like Savile and all paedos should be.

 

https://www.facebook.com/GENGRAVE

 

[Photo kudos to Mozzy Ghoul]