CRADLE OF FILTH // In the dark, black forest of doom with Dani Filth

Dani Filth reveals how he got into the horror genre and how he made Tony ‘The Candyman’ Todd (and Kurn of the House of Mogh, don’t forget – editor’s note) so disgusted during a recording that he left the studio!

John Landis and thriller really horrified me. Before that I asked my father to Hammer House of Horror in the evening on BBC 2. There were a lot of horror and black and white films on Friday nights.

Then I saw as a child An American werewolf in London, what I thought was just another monster movie. I was terrified. I was hooked. There were monsters in it, it was scary and scary. I didn’t see the irony or the black humor the first time I saw it, I just thought, “Shit. This is really scary.”

I think horror peaked in the 80s. There were no problems with CGI or anything like that. Gothic horror peaked in the 90s because there were all these big blockbusters. Interview with the Vampire, Shelley’s Frankenstein, Stoker’s Dracula. There were some of the more thought-provoking films back then. But the 80s were much more emotional. There were the last occult films of the 70s and the Italian gore stuff. In the 80s (David) Cronenberg came to the fore, (Clive) Barker wrote a lot and his books were translated. There were the Chainsaw Massacre Films too. I think there was a lot more movement in the 80s. Films like Robocop And scanner took the genre to a whole new level. The 90s were a hit for me personally because of the Gothic horror. A lot of it became very modern and sophisticated.

When we talked about Hammer Horror, we asked Christopher Lee to tell Twilight and its embrace or Midian: one of the two. He couldn’t, but he got the guy who CandymanTony Todd to make a narrative Have a nice trip on the Devil’s Thunder. He voiced Gilles de Rais. He is a notoriously complicated person, quite irritable. His manager had not really made it clear to him that he was playing a historical figure and that he was reading from court transcripts that had actually taken place. He did not know that it was not the product of a jaded, twisted mind. Which he obviously thought was the case, because it was about the exploitation of young children and stuff. I expected that Candyman Voice like in the film before the effects come on, but he delivered it in this very quiet, eerie way. It was very strange. During one take you can actually physically hear him say, “No, no, I can’t do this anymore,” after which he gets up, leaves the studio and we never hear from him again!

As Tom Valcanis reported for the May 2013 issue of Hysteria Magazine

CRADLE OF FILTH and INFECTED RAIN – Australian Invasion trip

September 2024

Tuesday, 24th – PERTH, Metropolis Fremantle
Wednesday, 25th – ADELAIDE, The Government
Friday 27th – MELBOURNE, Northcote Theatre
Saturday 28th – SYDNEY, The Metro
Sunday 29th – BRISBANE, The Triffid

Tickets available from Metropolis Touring