Guns N' Roses N’ Ghouls: Slash’s 7 favourite horror movies of all time
When he’s not wielding his six-string axe, guitar god Slash likes to take an actual axe to the undead.
Slash isn’t just one of the most iconic musicians of all time - he’s also a horror obsessive, and even a fully paid up genre producer.
“I got into the producing thing in 2012,” he tells Shortlist as we sit down to talk to the Guns n’ Roses guitarist about his true love: all things blood and splatter. At the time, Slash felt genuinely frustrated by how rare truly great horror had become.
“Really good quality horror movies… they just seemed to be so few and far between. It was getting ridiculous.”
So, he decided to make the films he wanted to watch himself, through his production company, Berserker Gang and swapping music festivals for the film variety.
That obsession goes way back. Raised on Hammer movies in the UK, fuelled by Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft, and the iconic horror franchises of the 1980s - and encouraged by parents who “just treated me like an adult” - Slash has been “steeped in really great horror stuff,” he tells us, since before Guns N’ Roses ever set foot on the Sunset Strip.
So here, Slash reveals the films that have fuelled his nightmares most - from zombie hellscapes to stripped back psychological terror - and explains why genuinely scary horror is finally having its moment again…
1. Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Slash: “The first really effective, really scary horror movie that I ever saw was ‘Night of the Living Dead’. I saw it on a double bill with ‘The Exorcist’, when that came out.
"I was able to go to the drive-in with my mom and her girlfriend. ‘The Exorcist’ was great - it was very animated to me and I thought it was great… but it didn’t scare me. Not that it wasn’t genuinely scary. But ‘Night of the Living Dead’ really f*cked me up. That movie really, really stuck with me.
I don’t really have the patience to be a true scoring guy, sitting over a console and monitor with a time clock, composing a whole score. But I can write a theme and pieces of music, then work with a composer to flesh that out.
Slash
"I don’t think any of the zombie movies that came after it could really touch it. There was something about the overall vibe of ‘Night of the Living Dead’ - the quality of the film, the actors, the pacing - that made it one of the most pointedly scary movies I’ve ever seen or experienced."
2. The Omen (1976)
“‘The Omen,’ which I saw in the Seventies - that was a real feature drama that was also a horror movie. Gregory Peck was in it. It was really well made, well written, well acted, and a great concept. Damien, the f*ckin’ five-year-old demon! That was a good one.”
3. The Thing (1982)
“I’ve got a list of favourite horror movies a mile long, but ‘The Thing’ by John Carpenter, was f*cking great. That was in the Eighties and way ahead of its time - what a great remake. Kurt Russell was great, the whole cast was great - Rob Bottin did the special effects, and that was just a tour de force.”
4. Midnight Mass (2021 series by Mike Flanagan(
“Guillermo Del Toro is one of my favourite genre directors. And I mentioned John Carpenter, and obviously he’s great. It’s hard to really pick a favourite horror director - but there’s a guy that’s out right now, Mike Flanagan. He directed ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ and ‘The Haunting of Bly Manor’ - he’s one of my favourite contemporary directors. ‘Midnight Mass’, which he did, is really good. He’s done a bunch of cool stuff.
"There aren’t a lot of directors where you can say you love ‘This one, this one, this one.’ Usually there’s a director that does one horror movie and it’s really good, then the rest of their movies are different genres. But Mike Flanagan is definitely the newest horror-focused guy.”
Shortlist: Would you be up for recording the theme for Mike Flanagan’s next project?
“Yeah! One of the things that turned me on about producing was being able to get involved with music - scoring and stuff. I don’t really have the patience to be a true scoring guy, sitting over a console and monitor with a time clock, composing a whole score.
"But, I can write a theme and pieces of music, then work with a composer to flesh that out. You don’t want to do everything on guitar, so you have to transpose it to different instruments. I like working with composers to produce a really great melody. I’ve done it for a couple of different things.
"So yeah, if Mike Flanagan called me and said, ‘I need a riff or a hook for this movie,’ I’d be all about it!”
5. King Kong (1933)
“The first horror movie I ever saw would’ve been any number of those British horror movies I saw when I was a kid. ‘House of Wax’ is one I remember, and ‘The House That Dripped Blood’.
"But when I was really young, and I moved to Los Angeles from London, I stayed at my grandmother’s house on my mom’s side and I saw ‘King Kong’ for the first time. That really had a huge effect on me.”
6. The Witch (2015)
“The next one for me, which is more recent, is ‘The Witch’, directed by Robert Eggers. I think it’s one of the best horror movies of the last twenty years. It’s another stripped down, very simplistic movie. It’s got minuscule dialogue, but it’s very haunting, creepy, and effective.”
7. Let the Right One In (2008)
“ ‘Let the Right One In’, the Scandinavian vampire movie, I thought it was a really, really simple and ominous movie, with another sort of adolescent demon-type vampire. I thought that was really, really good.”
- Slash’s new live album and concert film ‘Live at the S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival’ is out now. Explore all Live at the S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival, vinyl and album packages here. More at SLASHONLINE.COM
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