Born (worryingly) on Friday the 13th 1967, Alan (or Al Sex Gore as he's sometimes been bemusingly called) grew up on a healthy diet of late night horror movie double bills on BBC TV. In his early years developed a great love for the Universal Monsters and Hammer Horror movies before being welcomingly corrupted by the onslaught of unrated 'video nasty' fare on home video in the early 80's.
In his teenage punk years Alan played drums and bass with several small time punk/goth bands whilst organising gigs and producing fanzines (such as 'Sound and Fury') across the West of Scotland.
In the latter part of the 80's Alan started work on developing a print horror magazine entitled 'Sex Gore Mutants' (the title referring to the fact that all horror cinema since inception has contained elements of Sex, Gore and Mutants in some form; whether that be Universal's Dracula, Last House On The Left or Zomble Flesh Eaters - sex, death and monsters always prevail!) The first edition (in the planning stages) was to contain coverage of splatter/horror/adult movies and even a serialised fully uncut version of (old friend) Shaun Hutson's 'Chainsaw Terror'…sadly (as was the climate at the time with the media backlash to the 'video nasty' scene) every single print firm approached with the project flatly refused to handle the magazine. This early inception of 'SGM' hence had no choice to be scrapped with refunds going to pre-order customers.
It wasn't till many years later with the boom of home internet access in many consumer homes that Alan revisited the idea of 'Sex Gore Mutants' yet again. This time round though concentrating mainly on the (then) newly arrived DVD format in the mainstream UK market.
Since it's launch onto the internet back on Halloween night 1999, 'Sex Gore Mutants' has been one of the longest running mainstay cult movie websites covering all aspects of genre media (Films, Blu-ray, DVD, Books, Magazines etc) with an ever growing global readership.
For Alan, what makes SGM's continued success even more gratifying is that even though it is a non-profit venture with all contributors (Al included) doing it not for any money, but for the love of the genre; he believes that this is core to its success. With no corporate commitment to any media outlet honesty is at the forefront with any critical coverage (which over the years has welcomingly been supported by the industry also). A site produced by fans for fans.
As well as his work at SGM, Alan is also currently employed by (sorry, if we told you he'd have to kill you), he also specialises in various areas of security, health & safety and legal issues (in which he also tutors) as well as assisting in various genre related projects (supporting industry colleagues in festival screenings and licensing projects). He also has a worrying interest in following the Scotland football team across Europe.
To contact Alan via email click here.
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