HIM’s Ville Valo is quite the horror movie aficionado.

Hanging at home in Helsinki, he laughs, “Horror movies, oh lord! Thank God, I’ve got my DVDs here. There are so many. I was in the generation where I had VHS copies of tons of horror movies when I was a kid—all of the Evil Dead, Hellraiser and Friday the 13th movies as well as Nightmare On Elm Street Part 1 through gazillion [Laughs].”

His love for all things dark can certainly be felt on HIM’s latest offering, Screamworks: Love in Theory and in Practice. Underneath a haze of deliciously deadly distortion and cackling percussion, Ville proclaims the perfect kind of love for vampires. Screamworks is HIM’s best work yet—simultaneously evil and ethereal.

Ville sat down with Bloody-Disgusting.com’s Rick Florino (www.bookofdolor.com) to discuss his favorite horror flicks and so much more in this exclusive interview.

The world of horror movies is developing and the genre is expanding. A lot of French stuff is interesting. There’s a movie called Inside and a movie called The Martyrs that I like. French horror movies are really good. They have a different pace and a different set of morals than a lot of American or British movies have.

This film is really good!

This is one of the best vampire films. It’s a great, great movie! The movie’s really good but the book is even better. For me, it’s a very cool film and a great book because I was brought up in a very similar suburb. It kind of describes the area where I lived, even though Let the Right One In happens in Sweden and I grew up in Helsinki, Finland. However, the architecture, the colors and the clothing were a trip down memory lane for me. I really enjoyed this film. For me, the movie feels warm and kind of home-y in a positive sense. It feels comfortable watching that because that’s how it was when I was younger. I have this special relationship with the movie and the book.

I get the same feeling I got from Let the Right One In from Neil Marshall’s The Descent. It’s a brilliant horror movie from a couple years back. Not many people have seen it. It’s really good the way Marshall builds up the tension. Half of the movie is gone before anything really peculiar, strange or visually horror movie-like happens.

Neil Marshall did Dog Soldiers as well—the movie with the werewolves and the soldiers in the forest. It’s a really good film too! The horror movie genre has been resurrected for some reason; I don’t know why. It seems that there are way more people trying different things as opposed to doing the ’80s slasher film. The slasher film never went away, and it’s still going strong, but it’s good that filmmakers are searching for a way to get chills in a bit more psychological, left-of-center fashion over to the audience.

I watched the entire series of Twin Peaks for the first time in ages and I ended it by watching Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. It’s the movie that describes Laura Palmer’s last couple of days. It’s the time before the series started. I think that was pretty scary because it’s so odd. There are scenes that are so wrong. It was old school too. I loved it when it was the biggest thing and it was on TV. We always talked about the series at school and we couldn’t wait for the next episode to come out and figure out who was Laura Palmer’s killer. It’s a big part of my youth as well! It’s not a recent film and it got really bad reviews when it came out because it’s so arty and different as opposed to the bit more palatable Twin Peaks series. It’s funny because I didn’t remember the movie being so weird and left-of-center. Some things stand out, like the ladies at the end that just dance around to that really moody music. There’s nothing going on and it lasts for like five or six minutes. David Lynch is great at setting up a mood. It’s a mood where you’re not sure if you should be scared or you should laugh. I like those borderline emotions. You’re not sure how to feel. That stuff gets me going. It keeps you on the edge of your seat and the tips of your toes. You always remember the scares don’t you? I’m basically looking for anything that’s out of the ordinary. I’m just waiting for new stuff to happen.

I didn’t know anything about the film. Someone told me about the movie, and I think I went to the premiere and I didn’t know what to except. All of a sudden, it was really new, really horrendous and really weird.

I loved The Midnight Meat Train. I’ve always been a big fan of Clive Barker. When he released Books of Blood, it was so different, so violent, so graphic, so horrendous and great at the same time that I just remembered the days really well. I can always remember reading his stuff for the first time. This was a pretty good version of one of his stories put into film. It’s entertaining. It’s funny. It’s got a dark sense of humor. It’s not necessarily spooky, but it’s got a couple of good actors in it. That was really enjoyable.