I’m writing a piece about the stuff that scares me.”
“Yeah? What, like scrutiny? Telling the truth? Exposure …,”
“No, the inside stuff. The things from when you’re young. Spiders. Doll’s eyes. Being eaten alive by flesh-eating plants. An infected blackhead on school-photo day. That kind of thing.”
“Oh, right. You don’t really get scared though, do you? You go for walks in the woods in the dark just so you can feel your own heartbeat. You don’t even jump when something goes bang. That’s what comes from being dead inside.”
“You’re not nice to me.”
“Sorry, go on. What were you scared of when you were little?”
“I don’t know. Weird stuff. The big things that looked after the radishes on Fraggle Rock. Muppets were weird too. The hand coming out from under the bed and dragging me into some slimy netherworld – that never sounded great. Oh, and the thing Peter Duncan stuck his hand inside in Flash Gordon.”
“Out of context, this all sounds a bit mucky.”
“Sorry.”
“Did they proper scare you though? Like, terrify you to the point of paralysis, the way I get with needles and wasps?”
“They’re sensible fears, I think. But no, they didn’t. Oh, actually …,”
“Go on.”
“I do remember being absolutely pant-wettingly frightened at the end of Superman. Lois Lane being eaten alive by the earth when she got caught in that landslide. The soil going into her mouth. Going from alive to dead in these tiny increments – the dirt getting into her nostrils, her ears. And there was a cowboy movie with Sean Connery. Somebody choked Honor Blackman to death by pouring sand down her gullet. I used to wake up choking for breath after seeing that.”
“There you go, see. Nailed it. Does it still scare you now?”
“Well, it didn’t until you mentioned it. How are you with buttons these days?”
“Aaaagh!”

This entire conversation recently took place between myself and Elora, my 15-year-old daughter. She’s the second oldest of my five offspring and the one best placed to give me useful perspective on complicated things like human beings. She’s very nearly human herself, and watches an ungodly amount of Netflix, so she can offer perspective on what the next generation consider thrilling, scary and weird.

Movies we’ve watched together have had quite the effect on her, but really haven’t done much more than entertain me. The Ritual, Mama, Sinister – all reduced her to a shivering wreck, while I devoured popcorn even as the blood spurted and the limbs plopped off in HD. 

At this point, it’s best I make aware that Elora, who claims to a true horror fan, spent months in a state of follicle-bleaching, knicker-wetting terror after she was allowed to watch the movie Coraline at the age of eight. As such, if she’s ever mean to you, just show her a button and look at her eyes with purpose, and she’ll back off.

The conversation got me thinking about what it is that makes the flesh crawl – why it is that watching maggots wriggling about on the TV or spiders scuttling across the page, can produce a physical reaction like gooseflesh, or causing the hairs upon the nape of the neck to rise up as if stroked with a ghostly finger. Are fears formed in childhood ?Are we hardwired to dread things with sharp teeth and yellow claws and eyes that glare like twin peroxide moons? Is the sight of dripping blood and the crunch of gnawed bone a sensory mélange guaranteed to reach into brains and play our nerves until they screech?

I asked the question of my friend Babs, who is utterly encyclopedic on old horror films. She’s seen so much Christopher Lee that it’s genuinely staggering she can sleep without gluing her eyes shut (or replacing them with buttons). She has quite the tolerance for fear, which is why it gives me quite the thrill when she says that my books really freak her out.  I take great delight in this, as the books that have freaked me out have been few in number.  I do recall reading The Rats and Lair by James Herbert and coming to the conclusion that death was infinitely preferable to being nibbled on by blind, hairless, ravenous rodents.  But I think I knew that already.

Babs was quite candid when asked what had scared her the most in all her grisly viewing. It was a sketch in The Muppets that left her gasping for air – a weird dancing puppety thing with an extra head trying to burst its way out, to the tune of Got You Under My skin. She still hasn’t got over it and can’t begin explaining the terror without giving in to tears. 

I told this to Elora and showed her the clip in question. She said it was horrible, but not scary. To be fair, she was distracted at the time, taking herself off for a walk in the woods. She sits in a tree overlooking the river near our house, and reads Supernatural fan fiction. This, in itself, represents a major fear on my part, but we won’t get into that.

My new book takes a fear of mine and lets it drip, spurt and congeal. I have a terror of hospital beds and immobility. I am mortally afraid of coming to in surgery, hands bound, machines whirring, and being unable to move. In Rush of Blood, this scenario is turned into something far more than frightening. It is part of a process of transfusion; the withdrawal and replacement of blood from the veins of unwilling donors – the injection into necrotic tissue of pure and perfect blood. I would tell you who’s doing it and why, but that would spoil the surprise. Incidentally, they’re behind you ….

One final thought on childhood fears. When I was seven I had an operation to remove my adenoids. I had to be put to sleep using a gas mask. On my journey into unconsciousness, I saw things. Truly awful, terrible, evil and repulsive things. Every time I get a high temperature, I see them again.  I sometimes wonder whether I brought something back with me. On my worst days, I wonder if I came back at all. There’s a story in that, I’m sure. 

​Regarding the novel, I've always powerfully disagreed with the consensus: whilst it is questionable that the only LGBTQ characters in the book ultimately end up beaten and murdered, the scene is not disrespectfully rendered; the gay guys are not stereotypes or cartoon characters; they are just a couple out for a night of fun. Meanwhile, the homophobic characters are also rendered realistically, the resultant violence paying of mythologically, as this is the catalyst for the entity known as Pennywise stirring after its decades-long hibernation and convalescence following its defeat by “The Losers Club.”
 
The scene functions in context and warrants itself within the wider work, not only serving as the catalyst for Pennywise's return but also emphasising the aura of negativity that envelopes Derry as a result of its presence (or that allows it to subsist here. The novel is somewhat unclear on that point).
 
The 1990s TV adaptation wisely chose to omit the sequence, as it serves little purpose within that particular adaptation and would likely have been little more than an exercise in shock value, choosing to make Pennywise's return quieter, more subtle and consistent, with ex-Loser Mike realising that the entity is back thanks to the escalating disappearances of children throughout the city.
 
When I heard that the follow up to the 2016 adaptation of the book's first half was going to include the sequence, I felt a degree of apprehension. Not only is the sequence incredibly dark and distressing, it is also based on an actual event; a homophobic assault and murder that occurred in Derry when King was a younger man, that stuck with him and filtered through into his writing. 

There are so many dangers inherent to attempting to render this kind of material, a powerful onus on the creators to warrant its inclusion, to make it pay off and maintain meaning for the wider film. Without that, it runs the risk of not only being tonally inconsistent or baffling but outright offensive and execrable. As with all sensitive subjects or materials, ranging from rape to child abuse, from homophobia to racism, if creators of any stripe, in any medium, are going to include or explore them, they immediately come under immense pressure to ensure they do so meaningfully, respectfully and with sincere degrees of earnestness. These subjects should never, never be treated lightly; they are powerful, profound and meaningful and therefore need to be explored with sincerity. If the creators can't manage that or are hamstrung by other pressures or concerns, then they should simply jettison the effort entirely, rather than risk creating something ill-conceived, incongruous and potentially distressing in all of the wrong ways.
 
This is a particular bug-bear for the horror genre, which does, sadly, have a history of treating such matters with a degree of lightness or lassitude that renders the works in question suspect or morally execrable. Homophobia specifically has historically been rampant within the genre, with LGBTQ characters all too often portrayed either stereotypically or in the hideously limiting category of either victim or monster. Either that, or the genre simply pretends we do not exist, and that everyone on Earth is sexually and romantically cut from the same cloth to the same template.
 
Thus, there is something of an onus on present day creators within the genre to buck that trend, to at least acknowledge the existence of LGBTQ characters etc. in a manner that does not reduce or diminish us as the genre traditionally has.
 
You can therefore imagine my apprehension when I sat down to watch the film. From what I'd seen in trailers, interviews etc, I had high hopes: whilst the first film had some questionable decisions (reducing Beverly to “The Damsel in Distress” at the film's climax, taking the role of town historian away from Mike and giving it to Ben), the overall experience was one of the more positive I've had at the cinema in recent years, certainly regarding mainstream, big budget horror, the adaptation just the right side of distressing and comedic, adapting the book in such a manner that captured its essential ethos whilst removing some of its more problematic elements.
 
There is a phenomena not unique to LGBTQ audiences but quite particular to us when we witness scenes like this: whilst I will not presume to talk for every audience member as though we're part of some hideous, homogenous whole, common experience often results in similar reaction: there is a visceral, powerful jolt, like a physical blow, a sudden projection, in which we place ourselves and our loved ones in the places of the victims. We may even recall situations in which we have experienced something similar or feared that we might, in which we genuinely feared for our lives, not knowing how far our assailants were prepared to go.
 
It therefore becomes something more than just a sequence of brutality and violence; it becomes intimate, it becomes personal, powerful and emotive, in the way that good cinema should be.
 
The sequence is well rendered; atmospheric, beautifully shot and established, the characters clearly defined and recognisable. There are a few issues of stereotyping that, interestingly, do not exist in the original novel, in which the imminent victims throw some fairly eye-rolling sass back at their assailants, but nothing to write home about.
 
Then, the violence happens. It is tonally unlike anything that happens in the previous film, which is not necessarily a bad thing: my initial reaction was one of pleasant surprise, in that it felt as though they were using the scene to demonstrate that the film has moved on from the previous instalment, grown up in the same manner that the Losers Club have. This made me extremely excited for the rest of the film, which I hoped would hit a similarly dark and serious tone, perhaps exploring some of the themes that are present but fairly subtle in the original novel.
 
Nothing of the sort, sadly.
 
The rest of the film is so tonally removed from this opening scene, it could have been cribbed from another project entirely. There is nothing that even comes close to the level of brutality, grit, dirt and human excrement that occurs in this scene. Nothing even close. If anything, the rest of the film plays out like a fairly light horror comedy, with every “scare” punctuated by a gag or visual joke, the film affecting an air of lightness that, if anything, is even more pronounced than in the first instalment.
 
Furthermore, the opening sequence is barely even referenced after the fact. It has no mythological significance or plot closure, as it does in the original novel, rendering it not only incongruous but fairly redundant (here, it is fairly clear that Pennywise is already awake and active when the murder occurs, meaning there is no reason for it to happen).
 
There are positive elements here, the soul of a good film straining to rise through the mire, but it is smothered, almost aborted, by the layers of -clearly studio imposed- jump scares, visual gags, cushioning, highly questionable decisions in editing, writing, characterisation that occur throughout.
 
Beyond the innate problems that the film suffers from -and there are plenty-, that opening sequence absolutely murders whatever positive impact or impression I might have taken from it. Its inclusion, its existence, renders the film not only tonally inconsistent but morally execrable. 

As previously mentioned, as a creator in any medium, if you choose to explore such subjects, then it must be done with a degree of respect and sincerity; it needs to have freight and meaning and wider significance to the story being told. Here, it is simply a matter of shock value and establishing a false sense of tone that never recurs throughout the entire running time. It becomes a sake of shock value for shock value's sake, utilising something innately resonant and “triggering” to elicit reaction that has no wider significance in the rest of the film. Far from carrying that sense of distress and disturbance over to the following scenes, the effect is one of tonal whiplash; the jocular, horror comedy ethos of the rest of the film jars massively and traumatically with the opening scene, which has the effect of confusing and frustrating, rather than arousing in the ways the film makers obviously intended.
 
Regarding the jocular tone the rest of the film hits, cushioning the opening sequence with scenes immediately after that are replete with verbal and visual gags serves to diminish its significance but also dilute the wider concerns and situations it highlights: the fact of the homophobic assault -and murder- is treated as though it's nothing very much, when all is said and done; a matter to be forgotten while we get on with reacquainting ourselves with The Losers in their adult incarnations, which is all well and good, but, given that the subplot isn't even referenced hereafter, begs the question: why include it at all?
 
If you happen to watch the film from beginning to end and cut out that opening sequence, skip directly to Mike calling each of the former Losers in turn and reminding them of their oath, nothing has been lost. Absolutely nothing. The return of Pennywise is established more consistently in scenes that follow, his preying on children specifically becomes more consistent (his presence at the riverside during the opening sequence is somewhat baffling), the film becomes more tonally consistent (though not entirely).
 
There are several other sequences in which this tonal up and down recurs: one that fans of the book will be familiar with, the suicide of Stan Uris; a scene that, once again, tonally and emotionally, doesn't belong here. Stan's suicide is well rendered, believable and emotive, but is, once again, cushioned by surrounding sequences that are infested with gags and jokes that simply don't fit, that serve to render not only the scene but the subject of suicide itself insignificant.
 
Later, Pennywise is depicted preying on several children in fairly graphic manner, scenes that are distressing and hideous by measure of their nature and subject, but which, once again, lead from or into sequences of jocular japes and silly horror comedy, rendering these moments baffling in terms of their true vileness and lacking in the weight they should ostensibly have.
 
Nothing and nowhere in the film's running time hits the same level of despair and degradation as that opening sequence. Nothing has the same sense of weight or gravity. As such, the film peaks far, far too early, but also fails to capitalise on the emotional promise it establishes here, rendering the scene baffling in its incongruity, pointless in its sheer nastiness, akin to including a scene from Jacob's Ladder in a Friday the Thirteenth film or a scene from Seven in The Evil Dead; it just doesn't fit, doesn't work and serves to diminish both itself and the wider film. 

Let me be very clear here: this is not an argument for censorship. I happen to loathe censorship in all of its forms. Nothing in terms of subject is off the table or out of the question when it comes to media exploration, especially in storytelling. As a matter of fact, all forms of trauma, abuse, human horror, are essential to explore in these arenas as a means of coping with them, of working through them on both a personal and cultural level.
 
However, as previously mentioned, if creators wish to explore subjects such as assault, rape, abuse, homophobia, racism etc, they need to earn it, to treat the subject matter with gravity, sincerity and as something worth exploring. Here, there is nothing beyond the superficial violence or the fact of entrenched homophobia, nothing that relates to the wider mythology or story, nothing that warrants this scene existing and certainly not in such graphic, lurid, tonally inconsistent form.
 
One might conceivably make the argument that the sequence, along with others, feeds into the wider mythology King draws of Derry, in that the creature simultaneously feeds and sustains off of the air of negativity and indifference to atrocity that hangs over the town. And that would be a significant point, were it not for the fact that this film completely abandons that particular factor of the back mythology and barely explores it at all. It certainly draws no significance between the opening murder and that phenomena, subtly or otherwise, whereas the book most certainly does.
 
Here, the moment floats free in its own strange mire of confusion and inconsistency; it has no reason to exist, no wider significance or commentary upon the subjects it portrays and serves to actively murder the rest of the film, which becomes morally dubious as a result of its inclusion.
 
IT: Chapter 2 thereby becomes the strangest of phenomena; a work that is subtly homophobic not by dint of any ideological intention but through its sheer ham-fistedness, its lack of restraint or respect for subjects that it hasn't earned the right to portray or explore.
 
There is a wider commentary to be derived from this regarding authorial and creative responsibility, the onus that automatically becomes ours when we presume to explore these matters in our work. We presume to set up territory in the minds and imaginations of others; to alter and reform the abstract landscapes in which others sustain inside their own heads. That is a supremely powerful and profound responsibility; to ensure that we take care of that territory, that we shape it with care and concern, not with frippery or disregard.
 
This factor is emphasised to the power of N when dealing with traumatic subjects such as rape, abuse, assault etc; consideration is essential, but there is precious little of it here, such that this may go down as one of those rare films that leaves more than a last bitterness on culture's palate as time passes. 

THE FIRST HORROR BOOK I REMEMBER READING 

I don’t remember the first one I read, but I was always fascinated by books that felt a little “off.” Even when I was 4 or 5 and I’d read Danny and the Dinosaur with my mom, I’d point out that they were bringing the dinosaur back from the dead.  I collected Garbage Pail Kids which were often just as spooky as they were gross. They weren’t scary, but they fed my underlying addiction.  In 1992, I was 14 years old and found a new set of books called Goosebumps. I couldn’t ingest RL Stine books fast enough… even though he tried valiantly to keep up with me.  My librarian gave me access to Weird Tales and I was just gone. At some point, I started downing Stephen King books, but I couldn’t tell you which I started with, when it was, or even which I enjoyed the most.  Before long, I couldn’t name a book I’d read (outside of those assigned in school) that wasn’t a horror book.

THE FIRST HORROR FILM I REMEMBER READING 

1984. I was 6 years old. My babysitter watched Friday the 13th part 3 on VHS.  She either thought I was asleep or didn’t care one way or the other. I wasn’t. I’ve been partial to Jason ever since. 

More fun story:

The moment that began my obsession with writing horror lives very clearly in my mind. When I was ten years old, I spent weekends at my cousin Kevin’s house. We were always up later than we should have been, watching movies we had no right to be watching. One Saturday night, we happened across The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

I’d heard of the movie. I knew it was a horror movie. I knew it would be scary. But I did not know what to expect. I had even less of an idea how much my entire life was about to shift because I watched this film.

From the opening when the hitchhiker cuts himself and tries to attack the others, I was sold. By the time Kirk took a hammer to the face like a cow in a slaughterhouse, I’d lost it. I was intensely frightened… but I couldn’t stop watching. I didn’t turn away when they impaled Pam. I couldn’t close my eyes as the chainsaw ripped through Kirk’s body. The level of gore far exceeded my miniscule expectations. Just when I thought it couldn’t possibly get worse, the Grandfather drank Sally’s blood.

I barely slept that night; a combination of terror and fascination danced circles in my head like two prize fighters. When the sun rose in the morning, I was beat, but it had been worth it. I made the five-block walk back to my parents’ house; my shoes slapping the concrete a little faster than usual as I looked over my shoulder occasionally.

Easily distracted at that age, I forgot all about the film I’d watched the night before and slid into my bubble-filled bathtub, playing with whatever toys I’d brought with me. It was a lazy Sunday morning with nothing going on and soon I lay completely relaxed without a care in the world.

Until…

Brum… Brum… Brum… Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

The neighbor’s chainsaw roared to life, the whrrring growing louder as the chain sliced through the branches in his backyard. I took the opportunity to do what anyone would do. I cried and cried and cried. Just bawling.

My parents both ran into the bathroom, terrified that I’d somehow been injured. They both asked what was wrong several times, but I was so scared I’d get in trouble for watching horror movies that I wouldn’t tell them.

I never told them.
That festering secret.
That fear that I couldn’t tell anyone else about.
That knowledge that I was completely alone.
That’s the moment I became obsessed with horror.
 
THE GREATEST HORROR BOOK OF ALL TIME 

I don’t know if it’s the greatest, but my favorite horror book of all time is my copy of Weird Tales: Seven Decades of Terror. This glorious 460-page hardcover features four stories from each of the Weird Tales magazine’s seven decades. Almost every story in this book affected me in some way; and I revisited them religiously. Stories by people like Ray Bradbury, HP Lovecraft, Moore, Kuttner, Quinn…  Oh my god I can’t tell you how important this book was to me. Greatness is subjective. The influence of these stories on me as a writer is an absolute fact.

THE GREATEST HORROR FILM OF ALL TIME 

 For me, it’s a no brainer. Psycho is the almighty horror film to me. Maybe it’s not as scary today as it once was… but to me this film holds up like no other. It addresses so many ideas in such a small space. Anthony Perkins was at his absolute best. The soundtrack is insanely good. They kill the big name in the film halfway through!  And I’ll tell you straight out that the ad campaign leading up to this film were just sublime. I don’t even want to ruin it. Just go google them and watch them if you haven’t. You might think you know Psycho, but you can’t understand the hold it had on a nationwide audience until you explore the ad campaign. The reveal when we finally see Mrs. Bates at the end sticks with you forever. And let’s not dismiss the lasting effects this film had on the genre, particularly with slashers. John Carpenter even gave his characters the last name “Loomis” because of Psycho.

THE GREATEST WRITER OF ALL TIME

If you’d asked me when I was 13, I would’ve said Richard Matheson, all day long.  At 18, I would’ve preached the greatness of Stephen King.  Today, it’s Ray Bradbury. No one touches what he accomplished, and no one has stuck with me more than he has.

THE BEST BOOK COVER OF ALL TIME

The cover of my novel Fat Camp is definitely up there.  Just kidding, although I do love it. 
Stephen King’s Cycle of the Werewolf

THE BEST FILM POSTER OFF ALL TIME

I like the poster for THE LOBSTER.
I love the one for Saw VI, where they form Jigsaw’s face.
I’m utterly in love with READY OR NOT, so the poster for that is pretty sweet.
ET is great.
Silence of the Lambs is my favorite.


THE BEST BOOK / FILM I HAVE WRITTEN

Book – Fat Camp
Film – This Stays With The House


THE WORST BOOK / FILM I HAVE WRITTEN

Book – I wrote a Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys wannabe when I was in High School. It wasn’t even a lack of skill at the point. It was just a terrible idea all around.


THE MOSTUNDERRATED  FILM OF ALL TIME

Trick R Treat or Sinister


THE MOST UNDERRATED BOOK OF ALL TIME

You Came Back – Christopher Coake. See next answer. LOL


THE MOST UNDERRATED AUTHOR OF ALL TIME

I used to say Joe Hill, but everyone figured out who that is.  Today I’ll go with Christopher Coake. He hasn’t written anything I’ve read and not loved.

THE BOOK / FILM THAT SCARED ME THE MOST

Texas Chainsaw. See above.

THE BOOK / FILM I AM WORKING ON NEXT

We are working on a short film called Two Urinals From Death about a man who literally meets the Reaper in the men’s room and they have a conversation about what happens after we die.
 
My next book is a tale of how we don’t sell our souls all in one piece like the do in the movies. We make our choices piece by piece, selling off a tad bit at a time. One day, we realize it’s too late to get it back.  I’m hoping to finish it in time for an early release next year.  Follow my author page or twitter page to learn more.

Given that the iconic Doom franchise is set to return with another instalment with the hotly anticipated Doom: Eternal on the 22nd of November this year, I've been considering the legacy of this most legendary juggernaut of video gaming licenses, a title that many entirely ignorant of video games as a culture and art form are aware of, that many who do not generally play video games have encountered and enjoyed.
 
I doubt that way, way back in the mid 1990s, ID Software -as they once were- could have ever anticipated how cataclysmically Doom would reshape the market and what people assumed of video games. As well as putting the company itself on the map, it established the PC as a legitimate -and even superior- video gaming platform, kick-starting the renaissance that only reached its high watermark over a decade later.
 
Doom is one of those rarest of artefacts; one that transcends its cult boundaries and the dimensions of its medium's sub-culture to become part of the fabric of media history. It has transformed the way video game studios produce games, the way they market and distribute, what audiences expect and anticipate from the medium.
 
All of this is well documented in various articles, videos and essays across the internet and beyond; it's difficult even broaching Doom these days without slipping into cliché or rote testimonials. As such, in this series of retrospectives, we'll be focusing on one specific aspect of the game's legacy:
 
Its significance to horror. 

​ 
Whilst it might be difficult for video game audiences of the present day to comprehend, Doom was considered one of the key horror titles of its era, boasting not only a story inolving Hell, demons and demonic possession but an atmosphere the like of which few had experienced in the medium before. In 1995, video games were still in that awkward, transitional phase between adolescence and early-adulthood, Western markets belaboured by assumptions that they were children's toys and could only be such, largely thanks to the manner in which predominant companies such as Nintendo chose to comport themselves.
 
The notion of horror in video games wasn't exactly new, but it was rare and still largely taboo. The likes of Mortal Kombat had already roused the ire of right-wing, reactionary journalism with its ridiculously absurd blood and gore, whilst the ill-fated “Full Motion Video” effort, Night Trap, had earned the entire industry severe reprimand and the earliest instance of regulation (though, in this case, that was largely due to ignorant, media-inspired hysteria). Other instances of horror in video games had certainly raised eyebrows, with the likes of Splatterhouse being heavily censored or banned entirely, numerous other titles that enjoyed releases in Japanese and European markets simply banned from sale in the UK and US.
 
But, the times, they were a changin', and video games were growing up along with their audiences.
 
Whereas many contemporary efforts attempted to by-pass the inevitable parental and media-driven back-lashes by apologising for themselves, attempting to demonstrate that they were not corrupting or perverse to the souls of the innocent, that there was some genuine ethical and perfunctory qualities to their work, ID Software went in the entirely opposite direction. A relatively small studio at the time, the design team took on board every hysteria and claim made against video games -largely by people who'd never played them and wouldn't be able to if they tried- and poured it into their product like fuel into a Hell-fashioned engine. 

 
Video games are Satanic, a very common remonstrance from the Christian right of the era? Well, check this out, motherfuckers: A video game that not only directly involves Hell and its denizens, but actively incorporates genuine Satanic and occult imagery, from icons on architecture to runes and markings, pentangles drawn in human blood, human sacrifices littering every hallway, portals shaped like inverted crucifixes and everything in between.
 
Video games glorify violence? Woah! See the spray of blood from that demon as you empty both shotgun barrells into its snarling face? What about the howls of pain and sprays of pixellated vitae as you bring the chainsaw down on their grotesque, mutated skulls?
 
Video games are disturbing, amoral and evil? There is no sense of morality in Doom; the worst has already happened. Hell has infested the realms of humanity, humanity itself has become a puppet for demons to torture and mutilate as per their leisure. The only option is to ignore any semblance of doubt and plough through, slaughtering anything you might come across, anything even remotely tainted by the foulness seeping through the Hell Gate.
 
ID Software knew exactly what they were doing when they designed and marketed Doom; the aesthetic is less horror film and more Heavy Metal album cover, less designed to genuinely disturb than to satirise. In that, Doom cleverly anticipates every exaggerated, distorted criticism that might be levelled against it and lampoons them through sheer excess. It is not merely violent but, as the game's difficulty levels attest, “ultra violent!” It is not merely Satanic but Satanic to a degree whereby it becomes almost absurdist or surreal. 

 
And, fascinatingly, it worked. Doom could have so, so easily been one of the earliest examples of a home-grown video game that found itself banned or pulled from shelves owing to backlash over its content, but that didn't happen. Certainly, the familiar, self-proclaimed bastions of conservative morality got rather hot and othered by it all, but even their response to the game was largely diminished in comparsion to titles such as the aforementioned Night Trap, which is so tame in every way compared to Doom, it would barely warrant a PG-13 rating these days. Part of that is not only due to the witty and pre-emptive satirisation the game presents (most of the frothing moral-minded in question would likely have been unable to appreciate it in any instance) but also the medium of its marketing:
 
Unlike most games before it, Doom became a child of the then-infant internet, its first chapter (a significant chunk of gameplay) free to download from ID Software's website, the rest available either on disc in stores, by mail order or via direct download. This was an entirely new distribution strategy in video gaming, and one that meant the game erupted first in niche circles, amongst tech-heads and video game fans, carving itself a significant niche before wider culture ever became aware of it (by which point it was far, far too late).
 
So, Doom dropped, or, more appropriately, erupted from the depths of Hades like some demonic leviathan, altering the landscape of video gaming forever with its thrashings and volcanic excretions.
 
But what was it like for us, who were children or teenagers at the time, who were unaware of the wider political and cultural factors at play and just saw it as a new and frightening phenomena?
 
The original Doom games rarely feature in lists or hierarchies of those that have been influential in horror markets. This is due to a number of factors, most notably the efflorescence of horror that occurred in its wake: barely a year later, we had Resident Evil. A short time after that, Silent Hill. In PC markets, the criminally under-appreciated System Shock, which took the base mechanics of Doom and reoriented them in a more concertedly horrific direction. In the wake of Doom, horror became an established genre in video games, whereas before it was either incredibly niche or entirely unheard of.
 
Doom exploded into a market where there was little like it, where we fragile and innocent little souls were still enraptured by the latter-day releases on our Sega Megadrives and Super Nintendos. We had genuinely seen nothing like it before, never encountered imagery of the type it contains or experienced atmosphere as it evokes. Everything about the game now is so enshrined within not only video game culture but culture in general, it's difficult to imagine a time before it, but those of us that were immersed in the medium back in 1995 remember well the cataclysm that rippled through the market when Doom hit, the seismic shifts that altered the topography of our world.
 
For those who know the original Doom titles from their more recent releases, it might be difficult to comprehend how frightening and disturbing the game actually was. Satanic and occult imagery wasn't entirely unknown within video games (certain micro-computer titles such as the works of Horrorsoft here in the UK and the Darkseed titles readily incorporated examples), but there was nothing that threw it in the player's face so consistently, that had entire levels and arenas shaped like pentagrams or inverted crucifixes, that boasted labyrinths or chambers strewn with the mutilated, the sacrificed, the suffering. Albeit crude to the present-day eye, with its pseudo-3D, its pixellated sprites and environments, we had seen nothing quite like it, nothing that immersed quite so completely. This was largely due to the fairly revolutionary first-person format, placing us behind the eyes of the Doom Marine so there's no distance between player and avatar: when the demons emerge from around darkened corners or teleport in before our eyes, it's our throats they leap for, our faces they start to gnaw on. The dissolution of distance created by the first-person format may seem like a negligible concept now, given that it has become an entire sub-genre in and of itself, but it was Doom that originally enshrined that format and made it so essential.
 
Part of Doom's peculiar horror lies not only in its imagery, which escalates as the game progresses (early levels are generally shorn of the occult and Satanic imagery that comes to dominate the latter chapters, favouring instead science fiction motifs and designs), but also in its utter lack of exposition or even, arguably, story. The game is subdivided into chapters, each one boasting a minor, tongue-in-cheek blurb that ultimately boils down to: “time to kick demon ass,” but beyond this, there is nothing in the way of narrative beyond what the levels imply. Beginning in the Mars facility where the extra-dimensional calamity has occurred (a gateway to Hell being ripped open by corporate shenanigans), early levels are laid out in a foreboding manner, the enemies scattered and largely isolated, consisting primarily of the various demonically possessed humans that will be encountered throughout. The game peppers the player with suggestions of what is happening in the form of visuals and symbols (it's possible to find areas where the corruption of Hell has seeped through, altering the architecture, the landscape etc, but nothing anywhere near as dramatic as what latter instalments would include).
 
Later chapters gradually escalate these factors, the machinery and industrial architecture gradually giving way to incongruous, archaic elements such as dungeons, castellations, labyrinths of volcanic rock, rivers of blood, lakes of toxic filth. The game balances these elements brilliantly, given the limitations of its engine, gradually introducing them to ramp up the player's own sense of dread and disturbia, until finally the Doom marine finds himself setting foot on the shores of Hell itself. These latter levels throw out subtlety and gradual escalation for gratuity, the onslaught of disturbing and distressing imagery, bizarre level design, feindish puzzles, death-traps and gauntlets quite beyond anything the player has experienced up to that point.

 Beyond the imagery and atmosphere that the game exudes from every screen, there is often a sincere sense of anticipatory dread as the player navigates the darkened, tight-packed corridors, the distressingly open arenas and exposed chambers, waiting for the tell-tale grunt or growl of an emerging demon, the tortured cry of a possessed soldier. Each of the enemies has their own distinct warning cries, which are used as much for building terror as a tactical factor. Players will come to recognise the grunts, growls and hisses of particular demons, allowing them to best plan their strategies before diving in guns blazing. The various vocalisations also have the effect of inducing dread, especially when they derive from a particularly problematic foe or the enemy can't be seen. The hideous, spider-like hisses of the Cacodemons, the pig-like snorts of the “Pinky” demons, all serve to enhance the sense of threat and escalating dread, as do the various ambient sounds that litter the environments.
 
In terms of sound design, Doom was as revolutionary as it was in every other factor. Whilst it might seem crude to the point of minimalist now, little of the era boasted so much in the way of ambient or environmental cues, the mechanical whirring of doors, the opening of locks, the activation of traps, that often occur whether the player is present or not, serve to emphasise the ethos of these environments as more than merely video game arenas; as actual locales and work-places where people once operated. This is enhanced by the general layout and design of many earlier levels, which are designed to evoke the Martian facilities where the calamity originally took place. Players found themselves enraptured by these environments, by the dark and derelict ethos they draw, the sense as of something unholy seeped into the walls, swelling from the layers and levels below. The original Doom and its sequel stand in that regard as seminal examples of environmental storytelling within video games, quite apart from the FMV sequences, exposition, reams of text etc that would become standard in the years to follow.
 
The game does not waste time cueing the player to be scared; there are no orchestra stings, no environmental signs or signifiers (save the most subtle). Moments of horror occur spontaneously and often without warning: areas in which the lights will suddenly go out, walls audibly peel back and demons start to grunt and growl in hunger, in which the player will find the floor abruptly giving way beneath them, plunging them into strobe-lit, Dario Argento-style nightmare situations in which they must master their disorientation in order to survive the packs of demons that emerge through the shadows. Like all notable works of horror, the game doesn't allow itself the luxury of assumption, the emotions it induces various and distinctly flavoured, from the slow-building dread of its earlier chapters to the outright disturbia and surrealism of the latter, it subtly shifts from moments of atmospheric and environmental dread to symbolic disturbance, from aural suggestion to jump-scares and back again. The escalating Satanic imagery has the effect of suggesting a work that is truly tainted, investing the game with a spiritual dirt that latter instalments would acknowledge and run with to the Nth degree. 

Whilst it's more commonly cited as an influence upon action games and first-person shooters, the legacy of Doom not only within video game horror but in broader mediums is evident: from the Wes Anderson cult classic, Event Horizon, which marries similar settings, situations and back mythology to a more concertedly horrific storyline, to the likes of direct by-products such as the iconic System Shock (the antecedent of the late epoch-making BioShock series), Doom boasts a genetic legacy that is now so enmeshed within popular consciousness, it is all but impossible to chart.
 
Far from merely influencing first-person or action games, Doom opened up the way for types of horror that had never been seen before, acting as a gateway to the efflorescence of entire horror sub-genres within video gaming. Doom demonstrated that video games were and are far from merely children's toys; that they can be works which appeal to adult tastes just as sincerely, allowing for the cultural shift that would define the years after.
 
Whilst it might seem crude and even adolescent in some respects now (the Satanic imagery is so overt and extreme as to be self-parodic, the violence so gratuitous as to be absurd), at the time it redefined where video games sat on a cultural level, opening up the market so that other, far more overtly horrific titles and franchises might follow: Resident Evil, Silent Hill, System Shock et al, all owe a debt to Doom, not only in terms of the techniques and imagery they exhibit but the fact of their existence. Without Doom's impact, they may never have occurred at all, or may have suffered significantly bowdlerised releases, owing to the market still labouring under the assumption of its primarily adolescent audience.
 
Now, we have entire franchises and sub-genres that Doom accounts as its descendents, from the seminal Outlast series to the sublime Amensia: The Dark Descent, from The Call of Cthulh: Dark Corners of the Earth to Half Life.
 
Whilst all of these later generation titles boast sophistication and subject matter far, far in advance of their antecedent, the raw, infernal DNA of Doom can still be felt pulsing throughout every vein, coursing through every corrupted fibre of their beings.
 
Is it still scary now? No, not really; video games have evolved incalculably since 1995. We have had revolutions and entirely new sub-genres of horror cropping up in various markets. Doom's peculiar brand of horror is of its time, an historical artefact, worthy of discussion in that regard, but something that is difficult to appreciate outside of context. The game still plays very deftly, being so simple, and is a lot of fun to navigate, but what was once densely atmospheric has now lost a great deal of its lustre, owing to the inevitable march of time, the numerous generations of children and grandchildren it has spawned.
 
But, for those of us who were its audience at the time? We'll always remember the first time we heard the “Pinky” demon slathering, the Cacodemon hissing, the Baron of Hell roaring its hunger for human meat, and might perhaps permit ourselves a shudder of nostalgia. 

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