Mattias Forshage MY 500 HORROR MOVIES AND ME (2017) Conclusions from seeing 500 horror films: A periodisation of horror film history The role of a single country Statistics and recommendations Remarkable richness of reality – horror cinema and surrealism (2011) I am the kind of person who likes to summarise and evaluate my experiences (not saying that this is actually doable in some radical sense, just that I will keep trying) and try to make them accessible to others. After seeing 500 horror movies I figured I had to do something. (Then it turned out I had made a miscalculation, and it was already clearly above 500, and then I kept seeing new ones rather regularly even though I tried to focus on other areas. The current version of october 2017 is based on a sum of 569 films.) First of all, a schematic history of horror movies. This is the kind of observations I just can’t resist doing. I’m sure many of them are duplicated and some are falsified by academic film history or established nerd conventions, I don’t mind, I don’t keep track of them, I think I ever only read one single book about horror movies 1 , no two, but one of them was not very useful. Certainly, I have no wish to become a film scholar. Then one or two digressions about particular topics. Then a presentation of my statistics, intermixed with a long list of recommen- dations. People keep asking me for recommendations and I always feel uncomfortable about it, I think the genre is so rich and there is so utterly much to pick, so given the opportunity I will always prefer to give an overview and a motivated large selection rather than an arbitrary pick. Finally an earlier summary from a particular viewpoint, but giving very much of the basic reasons and major themes for my fascination for the horror film genre. Perhaps this essay will indeed clarify a little bit of my methodology. It could be seen as similar to the famous lack of method in Ado Kyrou: it’s all about opening up towards the wonders offered, whether the films are strong enough or not to live up to our expectancies of showing us something beyond that which we already knew or could easily figure out. It is hedonistic if you will: anything that moves me enough is good enough, but it is hedonistic in a surrealist framework: to move me enough it will need to be able to teach me some- thing about new ways of experiencing, have new suggestions and new inspiration con- cerning the sense of life to be explored individually and collectively. It is all about fruitful atmospheres for the spirit, ambiances, images and suggestions; elements for an eman- cipatory mythology and for a reenchantment of world: it is all about poetry. 1 A cheap popular British pocket guide by someone named Alan Jones, which was actually really useful.