Daily Inspiration Quote by David Naughton

There’s something quietly perfect about David Naughton, forever associated with American Werewolf in London, shrugging off the slasher genre. The line isn’t a manifesto; it’s a gentle boundary. Coming from an actor whose name is stapled to horror iconography, it plays like a wink at audience assumptions: you can be a horror touchstone without being a horror obsessive. That tension is the point.

The specific intent is pragmatic self-positioning. “Big” does a lot of work here, lowering the temperature and dodging culture-war absolutism. He’s not declaring slashers trash; he’s declining membership in the fan club. For an actor, that’s also career triage: don’t get boxed into the one lane people think you “should” love. It signals taste, range, and a desire to be understood as a performer rather than a mascot for a subgenre.

The subtext is also about horror’s internal hierarchy. Slashers, especially post-’80s, are coded as formula: bodies, blades, sequels. Naughton’s breakout film isn’t a slasher; it’s a genre hybrid with comedy, tragedy, and formal ambition. Saying he’s not into slashers subtly elevates that lineage - horror as craft and mood rather than mere mechanics.

Context matters: horror fandom often expects loyalty, even gratitude, from the people who benefited from it. Naughton’s mild disavowal resists that transactional expectation. It’s a reminder that participating in a cultural moment doesn’t require lifelong devotion to every adjacent product, and that’s a more honest relationship to art than the brand-consumer script.