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HIM’s Ville Valo Shares His Favorite Horror Flicks

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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.

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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.

1. Inside 2. The Martyrs

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.

3. Switchblade Romance

This film is really good!

4. Let the Right One In

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.

5. The Descent

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.

6. Dog Soldiers

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.

7. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

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.

8. Silence of the Lambs

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.

9. The Midnight Meat Train

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.

Music

‘Lost Themes IV: Noir’ – John Carpenter Announces New Album & Releases New Music Video!

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Lost Themes IV
(l-r) Cody Carpenter, John Carpenter, Daniel Davies - Photo Credit: Sophie Gransard

John Carpenter has been teasing big news for a couple weeks now and all has been revealed this morning. Carpenter is back with Lost Themes IV: Noir from Sacred Bones Records!

Lost Themes IV: Noir is the latest installment in a series that sees Carpenter releasing new music for John Carpenter movies that don’t actually exist. The first Lost Themes was released in 2015, followed by Lost Themes II in 2016 and Lost Themes III: Alive After Death in 2021.

John Carpenter called the first Lost Themes album “a soundtrack for the movies in your mind.”

From John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies, Lost Themes IV: Noir is set for release on May 3 via Sacred Bones Records. The album pays tribute to Noir cinema!

In conjunction with the announcement, they’ve shared a music video for the album’s first single, “My Name Is Death”, a miniature noir film directed by Ambar Navarro, starring Natalie Mering (Weyes Blood), Staz Lindes (The Paranoyds) and Misha Lindes (SadGirl). “Noir is a uniquely American genre born in post-war cinema,” states Carpenter. “ We grew up loving Noir and were influenced by it for this new album. The video celebrates this style and our new song, My Name is Death.”

Sacred Bones previews, “The scene-setting new single marks new territory for Carpenter and his cohorts, propelled by a driving post-punk bassline that is embellished by washes of atmospheric synth, pulsing drum machine, and, at the song’s climax, a smoldering guitar solo.”

“Sandy [King, John’s wife and producer] had given John a book for Christmas, of pictures from noir films, all stills from that era,” Davies says of the lightbulb moment for Lost Themes IV. “I was looking through it, and I thought, ‘I like that imagery, and what those titles make me think of. What if we loosely based it around that? What if the titles were of some of John’s favorite noir films?’ Some of the music is heavy guitar riffs, which is not in old noir films. But somehow, it’s connected in an emotional way.”

Sacred Bones notes, “Like the film genre they were influenced by, what makes the songs on Lost Themes IV ‘noirish’ is sometimes slippery and hard to define, and not merely reducible to a collection of tropes. The scores for the great American noir pictures were largely orchestral, while the Carpenters and Davies work off a sturdy synth-and-guitar backbone. The noir quality, then, is something you understand instinctively when you hear it.”

“It’s been a decade since John Carpenter recorded the material that became the initial Lost Themes, his debut album of non-film music and the opening salvo in one of Hollywood’s great second acts,” the label explains. “Those vibrant, synth-driven songs, made in collaboration with his son Cody Carpenter and godson Daniel Davies, kickstarted a musical renaissance for the pioneering composer and director. In the years since, Carpenter, Carpenter, and Davies have released close to a dozen musical projects, including a growing library of studio albums and the scores for David Gordon Green’s trilogy of Halloween reboots. It helped that they grew up in a musical environment. Daniel’s dad is The Kinks’ Dave Davies, and he would pop by the L.A. studio – the same one the Lost Themes records are made in today – to jam, or to perform at wrap parties for John’s films. That innate free-flowing chemistry helps Lost Themes IV: Noir run like a well-oiled machine—the 1951 Jaguar XK120 Roadster from Kiss Me Deadly, perhaps, or the 1958 Plymouth Fury from John’s own Christine. It’s a chemistry that’s helped power one of the most productive stretches of John’s creative life, and Noir proves that it’s nowhere near done yielding brilliant results.”

Here’s the full Lost Themes IV: Noir track list:

1. My Name is Death
2. Machine Fear
3. Last Rites
4. The Burning Door
5. He Walks By Night
6. Beyond The Gallows
7. Kiss The Blood Off My Fingers
8. Guillotine
9. The Demon’s Shadow
10. Shadows Have A Thousand Eyes

The following physical variants will be available:

  • Sacred Bones Exclusive Red on Clear Splatter vinyl w/ Screen Printed 7” bonus track “Black Cathedral”, a Silver Foil Stamped Jacket and poster.
  • Sacred Bones Society Exclusive on Black and White Splatter on Clear w/ Screen Printed 7” bonus track “Black Cathedral”, a Silver Foil Stamped Jacket and poster.
  • All retail Transparent Red, with a Gold Foil Stamped Jacket and poster.
  • Indie Exclusive Tan and Black Marble, w/ Screen Printed 7” bonus track “Black Cathedral”, a Gold Foil Stamped Jacket and poster.
  • Rough Trade Exclusive Oxblood Red and Black Splatter, w/ Screen Printed 7” bonus track “Black Cathedral”, a Gold Foil Stamped Jacket and poster.
  • Shout Exclusive Black and Clear cloudy, w/ Screen Printed 7” bonus track “Black Cathedral”, a Gold Foil Stamped Jacket and poster.
  • Black LP, with a Gold Foil Stamped Jacket and poster.
  • CD
  • Tape

You can pre-save Lost Themes IV: Noir right now!

Lost Themes IV Noir

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