It’s the most wonderful time of the year for horror fanatic Kirk Hammett. Ahead of Halloween weekend, the Metallica guitarist is sharing his go-to movies and more in a new interview with Gibson TV’s “Metal and Monsters” series (Oct. 26) where he explains his love for all things spooky.
Hammett admitted he was “totally and completely” a Halloween kid, and fondly remembers his first costumes as being an attempt to replicate Frankenstein (cardboard across his forehead eventually did the trick). “Even to this day I love Halloween,” he added. And of course that extends to horror movies.
When asked by the show’s host Count D (Matthew Montgomery aka Piggy D from Rob Zombie’s band and The Haxans) if there was one horror movie that really scared him when he was young, Hammett shared that the original version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) “truly frightened” him. As he explained, “There hadn’t been a film like that up to that point that was so graphic and violent in its brutality.” He also remembers leaving the theater with his friends, wondering, “Did we just see that? … It was a real experience.”
The other movie that freaked Hammett out as a child was none other than the 1973 great The Exorcist. As he shared, “I thought the perpetrators of that film were coming after me next … it was an honest fear when we were kids,” especially, he said, since he was a Catholic school kid. “For the next four months I slept with the lights on every single night,” he admitted.
But, when Count D asked Hammett if he had one movie he must watch every year so “it feels like Halloween,” Hammett actually had two responses, though they’re kind of linked.
The first is the 1922 classic Nosferatu. “I never get tired of watching that, it’s so moody, so atmospheric and I love it,” said Hammett, adding, “It seems like every two to three years a better print shows up and you can see more of it or a print shows up with tints … or with a full [orchestral] score.” He also touched on the lead actor Max Schreck, and said, “Even his name sounds evil. You see pictures of that guy and it wasn’t that much of a stretch. All they had to do was put pointy ears on him and some fangs.”
An adjacent film also got a nod from Hammett was the 2000 movie Shadow of the Vampire wherein actor Willem Dafoe takes on the role of Schrek in a dramatic telling of the making of Nosferatu. “I thought it was really great as well as a concept … that’s informative in its own way,” said Hammett.
Later in the interview, Hammett also talked about the horror films he once watched with the late Cliff Burton and the monster influence in Metallica’s music as well as revealing his Top 10 horror rock bands.
Watch the full interview below.
Watch Kirk Hammett talks about his go-to Halloween movies and more
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