It's not an easy place to be - to write a horror film. You go down the stairs to the dark to find these characters. It's not a place anyone can go, and sometimes it's not a place that you want to go.

I didn't even know what a horror film was. I kind of made it up as I went along.

It's a thriller, it's definitely not a horror film, but it has enough of the elements that also work in horror films like suspense.

A friend, Sean Cunningham, who went on to do 'Friday the 13th,' was given a small budget to produce a scary movie, and he told me to write something. I'd never seen a horror film in my life; I'd fallen in love with Fellini.

Everybody's making horror films and, to me, not especially well.

Great horror films don't win Academy Awards.