My favourite horror directors – Matthew Cooper director

Matthew Cooper Director – the best directors of horror movies

As my feature film debut as a director, the horror film Markham is now available to buy or stream, I thought I’d discuss a few horror directors who have influenced me.

John Carpenter

Horror is a broad church as a genre and some director’s dip and out.  Other filmmakers are more out than in – John Carpenter is a director who is firmly ‘in’ and he’s my favourite director in the horror genre.

Halloween, The Fog, Prince of Darkness, Escape from New York  and They Live (to an extent) and of course – The Thing (probably the best horror movie of all time). I even enjoy the lesser works like Vampires and Ghosts of Mars.   

Lucio Fulci

Another director who is firmly ‘in’ the horror genre is the late Italian maestro Lucio Fulci – Lucio worked for years in all kinds of genres but spawned a massive hit with Zombi 2 (known under various names) which is a brilliant, rousing rip off of George Romero. But, given a massive hit in the horror genre let Fulci loose to create a masterful trilogy with City of the Living Dead, The Beyond and House by the Cemetery – known as the Gates of Hell trilogy. 

Lucio drifted back off into the career doldrums after these films, but they stand the test of time.

David Cronenberg

David Cronenberg is another director who stuck to his horror guns for a long period – for Scanners, Videodrome, The Fly and Dead Zone he will always be regarded as one of the most celebrated genre filmmakers – his career outside of horror too has some classics including History of Violence and Eastern Promises in particular.

The horror bunch

Then, there are a bunch of American filmmakers who have dipped in and out of the genre over the years – guys such as – Brian De Palma, Sam Raimi, John Landis  and Tobe Hooper. Between these filmmakers are some genuine horror classics – from The Evil Dead through Body Double, the cult favourite Texas Chainsaw, and up to the best werewolf film of all time (from Landis) An American Werewolf in London.

Stuart Gordon

The late Stuart Gordon also made two masterful low budget classics – Re-Animator and From Beyond.  His career included other good low budget horrors, but nothing to match the quality of these two films.

Matthew Cooper has been a script writer for hire, UK Script editor  and UK script consultant for over 20 years. He’s written for most of the UK soaps, including writing award-winning episodes of Emmerdale, EastEnders, Hollyoaks and Family Affairs and has been BAFTA shortlisted and Royal Television Society nominated as a script writer. His UK script coverage service, Script reading service and script development service are highly sought after.

You can find some of his broadcast credits on the IMDb.

You can contact Matthew directly to purchase his ebook The UK Soap Opera Script Writers Handbook.

His directorial debut, the rubber reality horror thriller Markham was released in 2020. You can find out more about Matthew’s work as a director here.

You can get in touch with Matthew on matcoop23@yahoo.co.uk.