Do you ever wonder about the different ways of dying?
You know, violently.
Nostalgia plays such a heavy part in, you know, what you grow up with.
The thing about horror that I really really love,
it was just kind of counterculture,
"Fuck you" attitude, and it was something that your parents hated.
Sex, drugs and rock and roll in the '80s. Right? Well,
it became a lot more than that.
We were rock stars in the '80s.
We were busier than we'd ever been.
The amount of horror movies that came out in the '80s was enormous.
The output was insane worldwide.
Horror films really did open the floodgates
Horror, splatter, gore.
Great Grand Guignol. That horror stew.
Why did it affect me so strongly? I mean, it really changed everything.
A good horror film can be scary, but it can also make you laugh.
And it just picked something in my brain.
You're taken on this wild ride emotionally.
You're being terrified, you're laughing, they relax you,
they make you laugh, and they scare you again.
I'm a scaredy cat.
When I see a good horror movie,
the first thing I want to do when I get out of there is I want to fight or fuck.
I look now at the '80s,
there's never going to be another time like it. that's for damn sure.
Hey kids, welcome to prime time!
The key to understanding what made the films at the '80s so great,
is to understand the influences that all the filmmakers had as kids.
It was clear that these filmmakers were showing love for the movies of the past.
There's a cycle - people who grew up on something,
relay that back for a younger generation.
So it's always this wheel turning of like what's popular at one point,
comes back around again. Good ones became
all-time classics while the bad ones became cult favorites.
When I was doing "Movie Macabre", I saw myself as kind of a librarian [laughter],
exposing a new generation of new people to these horror
films that I grew up with and that I loved when I was young.
I think it was important to curate these movies from the past for a new audience.
I was eight years old in 1954 when "The Creature
from the Black Lagoon" hit the movie theaters, okay?
But those days I believed that monsters were real - Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, they were real.
It's not until I saw "Man of a Thousand Faces" that that showed me Oh, somebody creates this stuff.
Yes, Lon Chaney was all of these: The Hunchback of Notre Dame,
The Miracle Man, the Phantom of the Opera.
If somebody says "oh, that's an old movie.” Well,
it's not old if you haven't seen it.
I fell in love with horror when I was a young kid,
bride of Frankenstein was my favorite.
She's alive! Alive!
In the early '50s, I saw "Thing From Another World"”. Howard Hawks. Oh my god,
that ah, jeez, I loved that.
It was kind of serendipitous my life in horror movies.
The very first horror movie that I remember seeing was actually
a science fiction film called "It Came From Outer Space” in 3D.
And that meant a gigantic impression, because of the 3D process. A
Meteor in the beginning came out of the screen and blew up in my little face.
I ran screaming, as a kid that's - I just couldn't get enough of.
Horror of Dracula, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.
The iconic first reveal of Dracula with the bloodshot contact lenses and the blood around
his mouth when he snarls at Jonathan Harker, it's just, I'll never forget that image.
Vampires, werewolves were always - they're staples. They're
the original movies to show the manifestation of our monsters.
The film that gave me nightmares for several years, and this is hard to admit,
was "Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."
That movie scared the crap out of me. And you know, it's funny when I look back at it, I
see elements of "Re-Animator” in that film, to turn into Mr. Hyde by getting an injection.
So these guys with syringes are running around,
you know, in this movie, very much like "Re-Animator”.
"The Brain That Wouldn't Die". I was eight. It's really sort of a
early echo of "Re-Animator". All she would say is: "Let me die."”
But the idea was horrifying to me.
The first R-rated horror movie I ever saw was "The Omen".
It's all for you.
I was 13 years old, my dad took me. I was raised Catholic,
so that decapitation of David Warner it had a huge impression on me.
And I've decapitated many people in my movies over the years.
I think it's one of the finest ways of murdering someone.
I was a big horror guy. In the '60s,
we had Chiller Theater. That was my Saturday night go-to, I loved that stuff.
My mother let me watch "The Birds" when it came on television. I remember saying,
"How could you let me watch that?" [laughter] But my mom was super cool.
"Psycho". I was 10 years old, my parents took me. I don't know if they
had a clue what we were going to see, but it certainly impacted my life.
We all go a little mad sometimes.
We're all sitting there with our Chico Bon Bons and our hot
buttered popcorn and our Good & Plenty, you know, waiting for the movie.
That was like this great fan-boy memory for me of how important that was to us.
I'm a "Silly Goose" [laughter], I'm telling you I love that old scary stuff.
Dario Argento kicked off the 1980s with "Inferno”, which was a continuation of his "Mother of
Tears" trilogy after "Suspiria" basically took us into an apartment building in New York City,
and I think shows how the sort of desire to infiltrate
into American cinema was very much there and prevalent.
It feels like an amalgamation of a lot of Argento movies. For me, probably the biggest and
most impressive set piece in that film is the underwater sequence that we see early on,
where it feels impossibly long, you're kind of holding your breath with her. And yet it's so
beautiful and so tranquil. And it's such a fun juxtaposition against everything else in that movie.
And with "Inferno", you don't really get a full on viewing of the way.
She gets sort of these glimpses of her and her hands and the cauldron.
Argento, as opposed to just sort of showing his cards,
he still plays with viewers and kind of still holds back.
There's definitely moments of animal cruelty in
Inferno that I think makes it uncomfortable for a lot of folks.
Ultimately, "Inferno" wraps up with the reveal of the
witch and then basically the building ends up in flames,
which is very similar to how "Suspiria” ends, but then "Inferno” kind of
takes it to another level with sort of death incarnate making an appearance.
Inferno is Argento like really flexing his muscles, like he's got a couple hits under his belt,
he's got some money, and he's going for it in the early '80s. "Inferno” is one of those films.
"Humanoids From the Deep”. This is top notch exploitation from my buddy,
Roger Corman. This one features
fishy mutants trying to accost women so that they can be fruitful and multiply,
not very PC is it?
Corman's mantra for the film was literally the monsters need to kill all the men
and rape all the women. It was actually directed by a woman, Barbara Peeters,
now, whether or not Corman hired her to deflect some of the
criticism from the movie's more exploitative elements - I don't know.
I do know that he requested that a bunch of more violence and nudity
be added in post production, which she was not happy with them about.
The humanoid costumes are actually pretty cool rather than just the typical,
you know, "Creature from the Black Lagoon" style fishman,
"Humanoids From the Deep” was done so quickly. And it was a very low budget
film on the producers part. I ended up playing a humanoid, every time three hours
to get into the suit and three hours to get out of it, because of all the,
you know, putting the slimy seaweed to hide unfinished parts on it.
The finale of the movie just goes completely balls to the wall.
It's fishmen killing people, they're ripping bikinis off of women.
Corman was like, "You know what? This movie is rated R,
we're going to earn that rating."
Barbara really liked the way I took bullet hits. And so
every time you see a humanoid get shot in that movie, it's me.
"Humanoids From the Deep” is a better creature feature than you'd expect from Roger
Corman. The end stinger is pretty much an "Alien Chestburster" rip off,
but it's still fun.
Two depraved brothers kidnap friends who are on a camping
trip and then torture and rape them. This movie is very deranged.
It's very depraved. It's very much something that you could never make in this day and age. lke and
Addley are just two filthy rednecks just psycho monsters and of course all orchestrated by the mom.
[laughter] Darlings you have
made your mother very proud.
The house is just disgusting, it's cluttered. They eat like pigs,
they eat like slobs and she thinks it's funny because she's the fucked up mother.
It's just -- it's a real - it's a dirty movie. One of the best deaths of all times when they finally do
escape, pouring the drain down his throat -- they
just vomiting up like red you assume it's his entrails.
There's another amazing scene where they're trying to escape down the side
of the house with a sleeping bag and the laces are just cutting into her palms.
It just looks real, it looks gross, and like what would you do, you know, it's
your friend. It does have some humor but once again it's very black dark humor.
I swear sometimes you boys are just like little savages [laughing].
It's more of a social commentary gore and comedy and -- but it's a masterpiece, Charles Kaufman
wrote it and directed it. In the '80s, when it came out, it had a full page ad in the New York Times.
Full page, and - and was distributed as if it was a-a-a, you know, an MGM movie. it
was distributed by an independent, they put a lot of money into the -- when it came out.
It was-- would never happen today,
but "Mother's Day" had at least 100 theaters when it opened.
As horrific as it sounds, rape in the '70s and early "80s in horror movies was used as a plot
device, specifically in "Last House On the Left", I mean the whole movie is based around that.
You would never see that now and nor should you see that now, but "Mother's Day" is the
same for that, where it's just over the top horrific things happening to these poor women,
that then have to go get the revenge by murdering
the people who did these horrible things to them.
It's hard to watch, because yeah, they get to comeuppance in the end,
but was it worth it? Like these poor people.
You don't leave those movies going, "Eh, yeah, whatever."” you go like, "Wow", that
really made you feel something and made you leave a piece of yourself with that movie.
Once a picture like "Prom Night" came out and made a lot of money, the genre of the slasher
film, which - which had really kind of started with Halloween, but nobody really called it that.
But once "Prom Night" came out, it was a big hit, and the "Terror Trains" and all
the other following pictures that were made, it became a viable genre unto itself.
Our next movie is an exercise in gruesome stupidity. Now, you might ask what is gruesome stupidity?
That's when everybody in the movie is stupid, and they're also either dead or covered in blood.
This next movie is a horrible example of that.
You know, it's like "Murder on the Orient Express" with teenagers. And the movie itself it's almost structured like
an anthology. Everybody has their own little individual story line until they all kind of start to collide together,
and you finally get where the terror train was going.
That's when I started recognizing Jamie Lee Curtis. I just - I was just like, she's in
everything. Those few years after "Halloween", she was it. You know, she was the final girl.
Jamie Lee Curtis,
she's a terrific every woman. She was an action figure.
And what I do remember is how creepy the killer was. There was this ambiguous,
androgynous sensitive him that as a young
kid who was being picked on a lot, I could see myself in that,
you didn't necessarily see yourself in the survivors.
I said, "Move off, sir."
You saw yourself in the people who were being antagonized.
The mask on the killer, just to see through -- those are the kind of
same type of mask from "Sweet Alice” actually, it was that kind of vibe.
If you like early '80s Jamie Lee Curtis - and who doesn't?
- It's worth the watch.
The Nature Runs Amok movies of the '80s.
Probably my favorite sub genre of horror.
As a Kid, I remember all of my friends telling the urban legend about this, nobody I knew wanted
to go to New York City, because to them, the sewer system was just crawling with rogue pets.
I just love all the humor in "Alligator”, I mean, there's some outrageous
moments like the alligator in the swimming pool with the kid walking the plank,
the running joke about Robert Forster's thinning hair.
You need to see a hair stylist. They let your hair grow down and whip the cross.
There are just so many little moments that humanize the characters and also provide
a good counter point. That's another movie that mixes horror and comedy really well.
The thing that I remember the most about this movie
was how realistic the the gator looked. I mean, the god
damn thing's mouth was enormous! And then every time it would eat somebody,
it just felt like you could feel it.
I mean, just this slamming down and you're like [shrieking],
it always made my skin crawl. Robert Forster is
like he's up trying to get out of the manhole cover
and it's stuck and he's just giving it as much as he can.
And then you see the gator coming up behind him like oh, okay, so they can just climb ladders now?
This is horseshit. I can just remember the panic as a kid, going, "Get out of there! Get out of there!”
Very tense moment for a 10 year old [laughing].
Ken Russell just made the weirdest greatest movies in that time. I think he's totally underrated. I
remember, in "Altered States" the big gag, the really cool thing was with the sensory deprivation tank.
The storyline was really, I thought, intellectually challenging,
and William Hurt, it will always be my favorite actor from that period of time.
And then he did drugs in the sensory deprivation tank. Well,
that sounds like a lot of fun. Right?
That sounds like something you wanted to do.
He has these horrible contortions that either is really happening to him,
or he's imagining happening to him.
"Altered States" was one of the first movies
I saw that had like that crazy makeup effect,
where the arm bubbles.
This whole bladder technology,
I think it actually began with “Altered States” in the '80s,
Dick Smith's work. And it was still, you know,
a groundbreaking technique to take skin,
and have that skin change and be able to
swell and do things that we hadn't seen before.
And he transforms into some kind of a primal
being that only indulges his own elemental appetites,
There are things that happen when you're exploring these altered states,
that are unexplainable and could be liberating, could be terrifying.
At the end, when he's slamming around the room, changing from,
you know, one state to another, is he imagining it?
Is he actually becoming this creature?
It's a mind blow in the best kind of way, but also cautionary tale, right?
Which all great horror films are - cautionary tales.
I recommend it. I'm gonna go make my son sit through that,
because he's a senior in high school and I
want to make sure that he never does drugs.
If you, as I did, in the '80s walked into a movie theater
and didn't know you're walking into an Italian horror movie,
you were kind of caught wondering what the hell you just walked into.
Because it's just a little different. I mean, they're truly foreign films, right?
It's - it's foreign to our experience.
The Italian culture: They love horror, they respect it much more than Americans.
They respect it as a genre like the western or
the gangster film or the film noir or the mystery.
I think there is a reaction to the inherent fascism
that was in or leftover in those cultures at that time.
Italy was also sort of coming out from under a conservative authoritarian regime.
When it comes to Italian filmmakers during the '80s,
I think the three titans of Italian cinema were
Lamberto Bava, Lucio Fulci and of course, Dario Argento.
Argento's is very operatic, it's very colorful,
it's a sensory experience with sound and color and set pieces.
"Suspiria” is one of my favorite
movies. Not only because of the storyline,
but also because of Dario Argento's color palette is so insane [laughing]
And the kills are amazing in it.
Opera to me is a classic Dario Argento's opera. He's a visual stylist, okay.
The shot through the people in the door,
when the guy gets the bullet and it takes out the phone!
That's incredible stuff! Okay.
To me, Dario is a volcano of the mind.
Lamberto Bava was the wild card of the Italian maestros of horse in mid '80s.
He was the guy who was going to take you on some really crazy journeys,
that you possibly could not have ever expected you would go on.
He would just take big swings that would connect in very unique ways.
And then you have somebody like Lucio Fulci, who was sort of the maestro of
these really over the top effects truly gory movies,
where you could almost just feel the residue on your skin.
Fulci is the weirdest to me because he doesn't give a shit about reality.
He is creating a weird surreal hallucination for you
and Fulci clearly has some kind of eye fetish [chuckles],
where he needs to do eye trauma every time and it's horrible.
What's more horrifying than to be stabbed in the eye.
[laughing] They're into eyeballs, a lot of eyeballs.
The Italians just went there immediately [laughing]. Boom.
Argento did a little bit of that too, especially with "Opera",
where you have a character who's completely defenseless,
and is forced to watch these horrific macabre events.
They have needles taped right underneath their eyes, so if they close their eyes,
they will shred their eyelids, which to me,
I can't think of a more terrifying scenario to be put in.
Italian directors were sort of challenging us as viewers, with the eye trauma
being like, well, if you're going to watch this, you know, this is what you get.
Reflective of our willingness to sit there
and bear witness to a lot of this really crazy
and over the top gore that they were willing
to put into their movies for our entertainment.
And "The eyes are the window to the soul".
[snaps fingers] Bingo. And you know those smart Italians had thought about that.
My heart with the Italians is in the style, the stylized horror,
not that I have anything against Italian cannibal horror [laughing],
because I know how influential it is and I know how hardcore it is,
and I know what it represents in the world of - of horror, splatter, gore.
I just was so taken with the sort of stylistics of the Italians.
I am totally in love with Italian Giallo.
There's a different reality in Italian Giallo films.
The reality doesn't have to be so airtight.
One of the things that fans say to me all the time is they go,
"I love those Italian movies! They're just crazy! They don't make any sense!”
Um, sorry - yeah, they do.
But it's based on their culture,
not ours. They make perfect sense within their culture.
Giallo really takes your expectations and then completely
obliterates them and comes at you in a totally different way.
There's definitely motifs that we saw in Giallo movies,
you'd have the the mystery killer who is stalking somebody,
most of the time they were wearing gloves.
It was never usually a gun. It was always
something like a switchblade or a knife,
which gave these movies sort of a sense of intimacy. Ultimately,
like having sort of a collection of victims as well,
Like there is always a larger picture in terms of sort of
the body count that they wanted to amass in Giallo movies.
It's a celebration of horror, of bodies, of bleeding, of screaming women,
it's also the appreciation of the kills. The special effects make up,
the supernatural.
You'll always get a payoff even if it takes a
while to get there and it's gonna make you, "Oh!"
and it doesn't stop, so you can't just close your eyes,
you know, it Just goes and it goes and it goes,
you know, it's right down your throat,
we are going to make you recoil in terror no matter what.
Fear is universal. It's, you know,
it's another reason why horror does well in distribution around the world.
You don't have to know the languages, everyone can recognize running,
everyone can recognize fear.
When you went to see these movies you
didn't go because you knew anything about them,
you went because of the poster, the newspaper ad, the title,
you went because of the titillation of the ad campaign.
All of the Italian horror films, for example, came out during this period,
but nobody knew they were Italian. All the Italian names were changed to
anglicize names and they were dubbed of course.
I'll kill you, you son of a --
Are you trying to those girls are killed by
someone you wouldn't define as a school friend?
Dubbing in Italian horror I think takes a while to get used to.
Because if you're not expecting it, it can be very off putting.
Best bad overdubs for sure, the worst overdubs,
worse than then, you know, old Kung Fu movies.
Listen to me, young lady. We're in a situation where -- You listen,
you gang of bloodthirsty bastard!
[male voice] "Hey, what's going on here? What's in that closet?"
[female voice] "Don't open it." [male voice] "Oh,
it's a zombie. Shoot it" [screaming]
That's the inherent charm of it. Like
that's the rough edges that ll love about it.
Because it doesn't feel super polished.
When we laugh at dubbing we go,
"Well the lips don't match" and for the rest of the world, that doesn't matter.
Smoking is not allowed in here. - Excuse us.
I've dubbed. I've dubbed myself, I've dubbed other
people. It is an art form and it takes a while to get good at it.
Huh, what I think does matter anymore. Bitch.
I think Italian horror filmmakers are fans
of American Horror and American dollars,
that heightened Italian flavor gets into America,
gets into theaters, gets into video stores.
That lurid box art starts to show up on the shelves.
The Italians were churning out splatter movies must
have - must have been like 20 a week or something.
So every week there was something new.
They all have a very special place in my heart,
they're not all necessarily great films.
They were just doing what they wanted
to do and telling these really crazy stories.
And honestly, when you would pick up a movie at the video store,
you'd never knew what experience you were in for. And that was the fun of it.
I think what's interesting about Italian exploitation in general, is that
it all starts as a ripoff, you'll get one hit, and then you'll get 30 copies.
Going back to like a Hercules movie in the '50s,
like they've got a hit Hercules movie, and then there's all the
sword and sandal movies, you've got "Fistful of Dollars",
and then the whole spaghetti western genre,
and the horror genre is no different. They
picked up on what was happening in America
and copied it and then perverted it - I say that as a
compliment - and made it gaudy and loud and funky, and naked.
There's so much American DNA in Italian horror,
but it's all just cranked up to this insane level.
So a lot of times what you may have seen is people doing
the best they can with the financial choices they were given,
people still wanting to make their movie and like anything else,
artistry is on a scale.
So thanks to the Italians and thanks to
"Suspiria” and everything that came after,
suddenly '80s horror is very colorful, in a way that '70s horror was not,
and I think you can tie that directly to the Italians.
"The Funhouse" is a movie that kind of gets lost in Tobe Hooper's filmography,
because it's between "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and then
those crazy movies he made for Cannon Films in the mid '80s.
Which is a shame because it's actually
like a solid little haunted house slasher movie.
Well, it was funny because I was actually dating Elizabeth
Berridge for a while there, so it was great to see her work.
I think that's one of my favorite Tobe movies. I certainly loved the monster,
I thought that was fantastic.
I loved that whole movie.
The monster in "The Fun House", a guy named Gunther,
wears this Frankenstein mask because his actual face is also really horrendous.
And the effects on his face are really memorable. You
got like red eyes and fangs and this stringy white hair,
Just this kind of hair lip fanged mouth with drool coming out of it.
The sort of bastard son of the carnival guy,
just the way he's treated and the way he's deformed,
and you almost feel for him, but yet he's going around killing people.
This has got to be the only movie where the
inciting incident is a guy in a Frankenstein mask
getting some happy service by a psychic.
Nothing to be ashamed, it happens to the best of us.
What's interesting about this movie is that it's a
lot more graphic than "Texas Chainsaw Massacre",
where all the gore is implied and you don't really see it.
You get to see all the backstage parts of the Fun House in a carnival,
all the - the worrying mechanics and the trap doors and the tracks.
It's great to see that space explored.
"Fun House" to me is a movie that was completely made by Fangoria,
and talking about the influence of the magazines at that time.
There was something about,
number one -I saw that on the cover, like, that's disgusting.
It's one of those things where when you're in a fun house ever since then,
I always wonder what if this guy is an actual killer?
“"Omen " was 1981.
That picked up Damien as an adult.
He's a 30-ish politician played by Sam Neill.
I think that was the first time I had ever seen Sam
Neill probably same for American audiences in general.
Take him.
As the movie begins, he has the post that his father
Gregory Peck had a mere five years before him [laughing] in the,
you know, twisted chronology of "The Omen" series, where they would, you know,
fast forward with soap opera speed,
Omen II Damian was 13, suddenly, he's 30 years old.
Anyway, he is the ambassador of Great Britain at the beginning of the story,
as is the want of all of the devil worshipers who surround Damien.
And they're grooming him for his, you know, ultimate world power.
Do you hear me? - We hear you. We hear you.
One of the weird things about that movie is that it
really is all structured around a series of murders of babies,
[laughing] 'cause in the story, the rebirth of Christ has also happened.
And now Damien feels threatened by this,
so he dispatches all of his devil worshiping minions to kill all the babies.
Slay the Nazarene, and you will know the violent rapture of my father's kingdom.
Just kind of hilarious,
because it's just - just like something you could not do in movies anymore,
Liquidate the Nazarene.
There's a woman who she just like somehow has
this weird hallucination of her baby as a monster.
And so she takes a hot [laughing] iron to the baby and goes
[imitates ironing sound] -- it's - it's really kind of unspeakable.
"Friday the 13th Part II", I'd seen the end of that movie so many times
because it was tacked on to the beginning of "Friday the 13th Part Ill",
which I rented a lot as a kid.
There's something really charming about the characters in that film.
The second one to me, is the only true definition of a sequel. Bigger story,
bigger budget, bigger scares.
Massive twist because now you're going,
this is the first appearance of Jason as the killer.
It was the first one that Steve Miner directed.
The way he paced it was that you didn't know who was gonna die.
Jason, he's the shark. You're gonna do something and Jason's gonna knock you off,
you know.
I loved Amy Steel as the lead heroine.
She is just awesome and bad-ass. I love the way
Jason and her interact with each other at the end.
The Chase at the end, to me is one of my favorite final moments,
you know the rat going under the bed and peeing
underneath it and there's moments in there that are
almost a little quirky that I don't feel happened in other films like that.
She psychs out Jason, I love that scene,
where they're in the what we call the chez Jason,
with the head there and all the candles and stuff, and she puts on the sweater
and Jason's like got the sack thing and freaking out.
I wish they had never abandoned the burlap
sack and that's what a lot of people don't realize,
is that he doesn't get the hockey mask until number three.
But it's just overall to me so much
scarier than any of the other ones.
I think that's probably why it's my favorite.
"Graduation Day" is a movie that has a killer who is killing people
specifically who were on the high school track team.
It stars Linnea Quigley, but originally, it didn't have Linnea Quigley.
They had another actress in the place who they filmed some scenes with her,
but then she wouldn't do the nudity that was required with the role.
So they fired her and brought in Linnea Quigley to play the same part.
Now there's a blonde, but she's different. But she's playing the same character.
Your ass is mine. - [mocking sounds]
It was just like a fun film, it was like it's got all these great kills in it.
Like my boyfriend, Billy Hufsey, who teaches acting classes
now and I don't think wants to talk about it was like going to,
of course, "I'll be right back",
and goes and pees in the woods and gets his head chopped off.
I remember doing the running, and I made a mistake,
which I'll never do again, and I ate lunch - a lot!
I remember having to throw up because I
was running so much. I was just like [panting],
and I'm like, oh my God, my stomach. Yeah,
so that was a fun fact too, that I threw up after running.
When they were doing the effects, they had cast the head of the original girl.
So you see Linnea Quigley through most of the film,
and then in the end, when she gets killed,
they're using the head of the girl from the beginning of the movie.
It's not my head, but it's supposed to be.
Which has confused a few people,
Vanna White also appears in the movie, but she doesn't turn letters.
Fuck. It's blood.
It's another example of how popular horror films were,
you had this movie that cost around $250,000,
they put it out there, it made almost $24 million.
Those old trailers from the '80s, they just had a certain magic to them,
where you'd have the voice of something as silly as "The Boogens”,
but they deliver it in "The Boogens". And
that sets off something in your head where
you need to see this movie to see what are The Boogens
And the people involved with the production,
they didn't know what The Boogens was going to look like.
They hired a special effects guy and they said,
"Okay, here's the ideas that we have".
And he came back with this idea of a little monster with like crab claws.
And they were like, "Well, that's really cool,
but that's not what a Boogens looks like".
And they're like, "Well, what is a Boogens look like?",
They're like, "we don't know".
And he went and eventually designed this monster. It was like a turtle,
but the turtle shell was supposed to look like the
brain of a sheep that he saw in a medical catalog.
And it had tentacles, and its head could come out and retract, and it had teeth,
and it was just the most ridiculous hodgepodge of ideas that
could all come together and somehow be thrown into a horror film.
Woman screaming in the background]. Strangest damn thing I ever saw.
That's my second horror film. There's
some great sequences and great images in it.
And we were all up in this great little
town in northern California called Mendocino.
And it's like, you don't have to dress it. It's just there. It
looks like Stephen King's gonna walk out of every door.
It looks exactly like what you think Maine should look like.
And it's James Farentino, the late great Jack Albertson and Lisa Blount,
wonderful,
extraordinary actress. Most people know her from "Officer and a Gentleman".
It's actually an effective little movie.
It turns out that the mortician has been behind
killing the town's people and reanimating them,
basically creating an army of undead puppets.
Stan Winston did the makeup on that film, and there was a lot of us,
he had to make a lot of people, the undead.
Stan, not yet the legend he would become, but a player.
Stan was beginning to push more into puppetry
with some of the effects he created for that film.
There are two that stand out to me as being
the most "Oh that's cool'. One is the burn victim,
he created this shoulders up puppet of this terribly burned character,
where you're seeing the muscles and the ligaments.
It was a hand puppet and it was highly effective.
And I remember seeing that come together in his shop
and thinking that was the grossest thing he'd ever made.
Another sequence that really works is when the evil mortician is
reconstructing this hitchhiker,
played by Lisa Marie and she starts out horribly injured and disfigured,
it's a dummy, a recreation of the actress.
I will make you beautiful again, even more beautiful than before.
Using a series of, you know, wipes and dissolves, you slowly see her being
reconstructed by the mortician until she's finally back intact,
and pretty, and sits up and there she is,
and she's actually undead, but she looks pretty hot.
And ll also remember being freaked out by the burn
victim character who's completely covered in gauze,
All you see is one eye and his mouth. And this nurse just plunges a
needle right in his eyeball. And that was just ahhhh, a cringe moment.
For me, Lisa was the first sort of nurse angel of death, embodies that cold,
hard, blonde sexuality that Hitchcock was so
intrigued by. "We're dead but we're not buried!"
"Nightmare" is a movie told from the point of view of a serial
killer who goes up and down the East Coast of the United States,
And when I say told from his point of view, we told with a point of view camera
"You are the killer" [laughing] he wreaks mayhem
all up and down the East Coast of the United States.
People hated the film,
people pelted the screen in Times Square with the objects [laughing].
People walked out, people demanded their money back.
The eternal principles of a good cinematic story still must be observed,
and there must be a sympathetic protagonist in your story. Otherwise,
the audience will turn against you.
There's a myth.,
and we should destroy this myth because sensors use it to censor movies.
And the myth is that all we want to see is blood and gore. That's not true,
if you look at the movies made in the '80s,
made by clueless idiots who thought that
that was the secret to making a great horror movie,
you end up with films like "Nightmare".
Every time I think of "Saturday the 14th",
I think of sitting at my mom's old apartment and watching HBO.
There was like this handful of fairly risky movies with weird content,
but they would just show them during the day for any
eight to ten year old to kind of catch up on [laughing].
You've got Jeffrey Tambor as Dracula-ish, a Dracula type person.
Well, if you don't trust me after 311 years of marriage...
312
You've got Richard Benjamin running around, basically tormenting his family.
Take this coffee, I can't stand the sight of it.
But just remember how goofy that movie was.
And then the guy who played like the Van Helsing type character was so sketch,
and he scared me more than the monsters did.
If someone should that book,
his soul would be doomed with eternal hell fire and damnation! Yeah!
So many weird things were okay back then, man. The bathtub moment to me,
reminds me of the Freddy moment when the glove
comes up. But this being before that was like the Jaws take.
So who influenced Who?
But then you see the teenage daughter running around being chased by,
you know, the Fishman, you know?
What's the Jesus Christ “#MeToo fish" you know?
I mean, this is a kids movie, what the hell's going on? You're
watching it as a kid, you don't realize the dark undertone of it.
Will I show that to my kids? No, I will not be showing that [chuckles).
Do you see a monster in this room? I can't believe that I'm standing here,
in the middle of the night arguing with a 10
year old kid about the existence of monsters.
As an actor, I get to bring a little joy into someone's life,
every time ll get -- no matter what the genre is,
every time I have an opportunity to work,
it's a great charge. To be, you know, do the best I can
because, you know, somebody is going to enjoy this.
They're killing everybody. - I got to find her.
Wait a minute man, are you crazy?! - I got to see if she's alright.
Just stand back! There's nothing you can do out there!
I didn't think I was going to be an actress. Actually,
I wanted to be an archaeologist, I always
thought that was that would be an interesting thing
to be. So I went to Carnegie Mellon, which is a really
good theater school here in Pittsburgh.
There's different techniques that we were trained,
but one of them was the whole method movement of bringing,
you know, your experiences to the moment.
And I remember using that, especially after Sarah cuts off Miguel's arm,
she has a moment where she just has had it.
She actually breaks down, which, to me was like the art of the character.
She was actually very strong in that moment,
because she was able to be very real in that moment.
Working that with myself and my thoughts, and my technique.
Acting is the art of not acting,
right? Acting is being - acting class 101, right?
Before I made any movies,
I was a stage actor. I was King Arthur, I was Ben Franklin.
When I did the effects on the film, I always tried to play a part of it,
you know, some little part and that just led to more and more parts.
And then suddenly, with George Romero, just parts.
Don't forget, some of us are wearing tinfoil. - That's your problem.
I really wanted to be, you know,
an actor. Makeup effects was kind of what got me in the door.
You get in the door so you can prove yourself that people know who you are,
you know, and who knows where that could lead.
I used to want to be a minister. Well,
the acting as my ministry. You know, that's how I get to,
you know, how my soul gets to speak to your soul about our commonality,
above the oneness that we share, as human beings.
I really thought about it in the '80s, there was no really Asian
representation. We were all kind of stereotypical, and it was a difficult time.
It also made me feel like, 'hmm maybe I should do something else.'
I kept at it only because of the theater, you know,
something like Kelly Who in "Jason Takes Manhattan".
I mean, that was pretty extraordinary, where she didn't have an accent.
Look, I think I'll pass, okay. - what? - See you later.
My first movie movie was "16 Candles".
[clashing cymbals sound] What's happening, hot stuff?
The controversy was good. Because I also think that it started to change things,
and make people aware. If anything, made the Asian community come out
and try to express themselves about why they disagree with this character.
And what they failed to do I thought Was we weren't coalesce together to try
to figure out what to do about it. Unlike today, it's - it's much better today.
I've never been so happy my whole life [chuckling]. - You maniac.
There was no ethnicity mentioned in "“Vamp". So I
thought that was kind of cool. I thought that was a good step.
What time do you get off? - Two thirty. - Can I watch? laughing)
The better your actors are, the better shape you're in. Hire people
that bring a certain kind of credibility and naturalness to the performance.
And then at least you're a step ahead.
Give me a script, let me break this character down,
make some choices. And hopefully I buoy what you're doing here.
Hopefully, I can put some wind and some sails here.
He's dead? - No anymore.
That's what I'm in control of.
If somebody offered me a job, and I liked the script,
and the story and the character, I'm in, I'm all in.
And that's how I just started doing horror movies,
John invited me to be in "The Fog" and we were off.
I don't believe in luck, good or bad.
I hated acting class. It just was torture [chuckles] for me. But you know,
you have to get some tools.
A director told me once, "The best thing an actor can do is
give me choices”. Trusting my instincts when I read something,
and trusting my instincts about a character,
generally ends up being the right way to go.
I've studied a lot of different styles, I've worked with different coaches.
So I've used some stuff from the method, I've used the old "James Cagney,
plant your feet in the ground and tell the truth” method.
The funny thing about it is that if something is written well,
you don't have to do a lot of work with it.
That's why I always want to know, let me see the script. Let's
see how it is. And if you have trouble getting lines out, it's like
it's not written well. That's the problem
[laughing]. And I used to think it was me.
Come on, you little bastard!
What we had back then was people who are learning their craft,
but now we have people that are
yes, learning their craft,
but also passionate about the genre and purposefully going into it.
I mean, you'll talk to people in the '80s and they'll say,
you know, "That's just what I got”.
But now, these people are coming up very focused on doing
horror because they love horror and that's what they intend to do.
You have to be as honest as you can be with your character
and your story and your - the truth of what you're saying.
It's up to them to make it scary for the
audience. And my job is just to tell the truth,
The shit is getting old, real fast. You know,
I was awakened out of a real pleasant dream
to come down here, you're going to straighten it out, Raimi,
or am I going to play poop patrol with your nightstick?
I received a thoroughgoing acting for the camera education from Dennis Hopper,
that was an experience not to be missed. And as time goes on, I cherish it more,
I appreciate it more,
and I apply it more. Dennis encouraged me to look through the lens.
"This is what it looks like. This is where
your light is. This is the side that's best for you."
"When you deliver that line, do this, make that gesture”, it's a visual medium.
You said you were going to do this alone.
Sighing] I need your help, Missy.
That was a takeaway that continues to provide extraordinary benefits for me.
When I hear "cut", I'm Doug. I'm Doug in a skirt and a very
constricting leather jacket with my face covered in latex and pins.
But I'm Doug. I don't carry the character through the day,
and I don't take him home with me.
Before I ever started thinking about doing crazy stuff,
I was very interested in map making.
I've been playing the bad characters for so long,
but always knew that I had other things I could do.
So Charlie's farm, huh? Somebody's feeling great.
It's important as an actor to show versatility, right?
Not only have I done some emotional stuff,
but also recently,
in the past couple years, done some comedy.
I never thought somebody would be interested in me trying to be funny.
As an actor, you have your facial expressions,
and your voice to add to your performance.
It's like way easier. When you have to look scary
and intimidating without either one of those two things,
with a hockey mask on - way harder. And that's why everybody over acts.
People, they think,
"I can do that. You don't even have to show your face or say anything".
You know what? You can't do it. You think you can,
but you try too hard and then it looks phony.
I've worked pretty consistently in the "80s,
I did a lot of soap opera work and a lot of horror movies.
And at the time that I did "Castle Freak", which was in 1995,
I felt like for the first time I really understood what I was doing.
I got it, I know how to act on film, I know what I'm doing.
So I was about 35. And then all of a sudden,
people stopped calling me, I wasn't working.
And at that time,
I feel like I had aged out a little bit. I just wasn't getting any calls.
And I was mad at the time. I thought well,
I'll go back to school. I'll - I'll - I'll get a degree in gardening,
I loved gardening. And then I met my husband, Bob. And he said,
"Well,
I have to move up to San Francisco for my job. Do you want to come with me?"
And I thought yeah, F Hollywood, I'm just gonna go and do something else.
And then I became a mom and I was busy with
that. I took a break because I aged out a little bit, but
now, thank God, I'm playing these older women and
moms and mentors and evil people, and caretakers.
And I'm glad that the producers from "You're Next" took a chance on me and said,
"Yeah, we want to - we want to see Barbara Crampton again,
we want to see her", and because I'm having a lot of fun working again.
"The Beast Within" is another one of these low
budget '80s movies that is super rapey at the crux of it.
You've got character actors in there who have been in Oscar nominated films.
You've got Ronnie Cox in there, you've got Bibi Besch in there.
It's a pretty trashy movie for the caliber of actors that are in it.
R.G. Armstrong - no slouch, really qualified character actor.
Lord save us, he's been embalmed.
Bladder effects are front and center in the
'80s horror movies in the transformation scenes.
You see it in "The Howling" and you see it in "An American Werewolf in London".
Anytime something's changing, that's a bladder effect. And
Beast Within is like a script written around a bladder effect.
"Beast Within" Philippe Mora, whom I dearly love directed it,
all they had at the time were bladder effects,
so all you could do was blow up.
You know, under the latex, the skin.
"The Beast Within" is a very comical version of
it. Tom Berman did the effects and ll love Tom,
he's got an excuse for that transformation scene.
"The Beast Within" is the nadir of - of bladder
effects in which the - the lead monster's head
explodes to a point where he looks like Charlie Brown.
And it just goes and goes, and goes, and goes,
and goes, and goes, and goes, and it's so silly looking.
Tom says in his own defense, that they had already
gotten the scenes for the transformation that he felt were good,
and then they said, "Let's just have fun. Let's just pop it,
let's just film it until it will not go any more".
And then the director used that.
And a friend of mine who said,
"Testing something's limits usually results in finding them".
Bladder effects can be awesome, and sometimes they can be "The Beast Within".
God. - [panting].
"Evilspeak” is a movie that's
starring the outstanding
Clint Howard,
Ron Howard's brother,
and he is a guy who's bullied at school
and figures out the perfect way to get revenge.
He uses his computer to summon the devil.
I conjure in command the prince of darkness!
This is one of those magical movies from the early '80s,
where they were trying to capitalize on the explosion of computers.
"Well,
what can we do to put computers into movies and especially into horror movies?
I got it! Let's have a kid who can summon the devil with the computer.”
Save me!
Even though there are kids being
killed, you side with the killer
because he's a guy who has been bullied and he's really just out getting revenge
for all the stuff that people have done to him.
Makes you wish we all had a Commodore 64 for revenge, doesn't it?
The story revolves around a slumber party and a driller killer,
coming to kill said slumber party,
hence the massacre in the title.
The thing that people forget about this movie is how funny it is.
It was originally written as a spoof lampooning the genre,
but I don't think that people who bought
the script really had any sense of irony,
because they mainlined it and basically made it this fairly ingenious movie.
I love the dynamic between the girls.
Even in the beginning when like they don't realize anything things going on,
but people around them are just dying [chuckles], it's just kind of this weird,
standard J11 killer, you know, just running around with this
incredibly impressive drill. Chock full of really benign monotony.
What do you say we order a pizza? - No anchovies.
Punctuated by savage masculine Kills.
It's really a dissertation on the fact that
any male serial killer is just basically using his, you know.
[gasping]. - How pretty.
The symbolism in the movie when they basically chop that off and go after him,
I mean, it makes Death Ride look like a cakewalk. It's pretty funny.
I love "Alone in the Dark". It's a weird little
'What if movie; like if we didn't fall into this
slasher summer camp thing in the '80s, then something like "Alone in the Dark"
had a chance to shine,
where you're using A-list actors and like a weird "Home Invasion” plot,
Jack Palance is amazing in it,
Martin Landau is amazing in it, so is Donald Pleasence.
"Alone in the Dark"'s poster makes you
think you're going to see another slasher movie,
and not a bananas "Home Invasion” movie by a group of escaped mental patients,
that are all middle to late aged white men,
played by some of the best actors of their generation.
[laughing]. - What are you, some kind of asshole?
That opening has no reason to be in the film. It's just
a crazy Grab Me by the Lapel dream
sequence that goes berserk right out of the gate.
I think it's interesting that "Alone in the Dark" is made by New Line
and it's got a very "Elm Street” opening two years before "Elm Street” happened.
And then Jack Sholder, who directed it, ended up doing "Elm Street" too.
I really wish that there was more of that flavor in the
'80s Horror. "Alone in the Dark" is a weird little movie
that's kind of its own thing.
Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord [laughing].
"Night Beast" [chuckles]. Oh, boy,
"Night Beast" is a gem right here. I mean, it's
a low budget film, but it did an incredible job on the effects.
This alien is here for the body count. I mean,
it just kills people in all kinds of gory ways.
The alien has this very funny facial expression. I don't know what it is,
but there's something very funny about that alien's
face. You don't really understand what the alien's motive is.
It kind of seems like a child that just got a new toy. Like,
Oh, what's this button do?
Oh, wow! And he's just killing people for fun the whole movie.
Guess who did the music? JJ Abrams.
JJ Abrams, who was credited as Jeffrey Abrams did the music in "Night Beast".
Like, if you want a body count, I mean, this movie has it.
They got to bring back the "Night Beast" in some way.
I do enjoy horror,
but only if it's really good. I've tended to like darker films,
even as a child, Film Noir, you know, for instance, I very like that genre.
It just is my favorite form of escape. It's like,
just take me away, I'm a willing participant.
You know, I really want you to - to change my world right now.
Today, I think of '80s movies,
I think of really big hair, to start with [chuckles],
that's pretty scary now. I love movies. I would always look at who directed it,
who wrote it, who's in it,
what's it about, all of the above really. You know, I started out to be a dancer.
That was my first love. And film really found me, oddly enough.
It wasn't like I was in search of,
even the first time I walked on the sound stage, like, "Ah, it's like home".
You know, it felt like I was in the right place.
Before I did film in New York, I did a number of commercials.
Pants! - Wow, a car with pants!
And I was very shy, so it was at that point that I got into acting classes.
And then when I started making movies in the '70s,
and I found myself in a crowd of people like
Brian De Palma, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese,
Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas and Bob Zemeckis,
who I met as well. You're sitting there,
and you're hearing this conversation, they're deconstructing these films,
and talking about filmmakers. And now all of a sudden,
I'm looking at it from a different perspective. I really like good directors,
they know what they're going to do, they have a plan, and they will collaborate.
You know, they're interested in your perspective as well. Honestly,
I spend much more time on
enriching the characters in life and life and making it as real as possible.
I really throw caution to the wind and leave it to
the director to get the tone and the balance correct
between all the performers, and you know,
delivering a film that makes sense totally.
But I've worked with great directors. Now you have a problem,
which I've experienced,
where you work with a director who you
can't really trust. And that's very difficult.
Unfortunately, with women, a lot of the roles that I
played and a lot of the films that I was in, there wasn't
a lot of background about who this character is,
so I had to fill in those blanks.
Starting with "Carrie", I just literally I read a biography:
Where they eat in the morning, what do they dress, what do they like to do.
It just informs me it makes it fuller and richer for me,
because there's often not a lot on the page.
You'll get canned for this, you bitch!
One more word from you and I'm gonna knock you down, do you understand me?!
I did not see Chris Hargensen as a bitch, let's start with that.
I thought that Chris Hargensen was a pretty cool girl.
And this gal Carrie that I wouldn't even hang out with,
has just screwed things up for me. So there. [laughing].
Look at her. - You eat shit.
You have to find why you like a character and teenagers are so black and white.
That's what's interesting about having people in their twenties play that role,
you have a little distance on and a little perspective,
what I had to wrap myself around was the, you know, what's driving
her? Why is she doing this? Why she's so hurt? what's going on at home?
And, you know, why does she feel so entitled to behave this way?
And I would have to say that the crew really
helped me because whenever John and I, Travolta,
were on the set, everybody laughed, so I just thought we were really funny.
I thought we were comic relief, but I didn't realize everyone's gonna despise me.
I think "Dressed to Kill" is first of all,
it's visually stunning. It's an emotional dance, it's a visual dance.
The film worked on paper, it just did. It was, you could see it.
And I personally wasn't a fan of the slasher aspect of it,
and I always felt that the elevator scene, you didn't even have to see anything.
my preference would have been to just see this
character being backed into the co-- that was enough for me.
I didn't need the blood, but I guess people like that.
The psychological aspects of it rather than the thriller aspects of it
are what I prefer. This character that I play,
the Liz Blake character, is a very strong woman,
you can say whatever you want about her. She
knows what she wants. And that's what she gets.
Well, what do you think?
Shooting the last scene in "Dressed to Kill", first of all,
you're in a sound stage, tiny little corner of a space.
The water's running,
trying to get it a little warmer so that I don't freeze to death.
It's the dead of winter. I remember the cold, I remember the wet,
I remember the naked [laughing] That's what I remember.
There was a mirror, it opened up, that's when the the razor comes out.
Even though someone's lying on the floor, they're pumping the blood,
is it coming through with the razor on my throat,
there is something - even though it's all make believe - that's traumatizing,
when you see blood gushing out of you.
It does end in a nightmare for her, so you wonder how
much more she's going to be going on in her life with all of that.
The big hullabaloo when the film came out,
had nothing to do with transgender at all.
It was all about the misogyny. That's what I remember.
Let's face it, you're a whore,
eh? You're a Park Avenue whore, but you're still a whore.
Fuck you. - No, fuck you.
That bothered me because I -I felt like Liz Blake was a pretty tough cookie.
She was nobody's fool. And unlike Angie Dickinson character
who had to be punished for her sexuality, she had real sexual energy.
She was real comfortable with her sexuality. In fact, it was a business for her.
Do you want to fuck me? - Oh, yes.
I think it would be very hard to get that film made today with that script,
with that transgender character being the killer, maybe impossible.
What's important about that film is what we didn't
know and how unconscious we were at that time.
For better or for worse, we're more conscious now, or self conscious in a way,
now everybody seems very self conscious to
me about everything. We're still understanding
and still trying to understand some of the complications
of a character like the Michael Caine character.
I do not gravitate to scary films,
but I'm not afraid of them either. I like suspense,
I like jeopardy in films,
l do. So ll guess I like feeling a little bit out of control or - or whatever,
but ll don't like slasher films. Don't like just blood and guts,
I'd like to be a little bit smarter than that.
Barbara Hershey in "The Entity" is attacked by a sexual being of some sort,
and it's very realistic and very disturbing.
It was apparently based on a true story that had happened seven,
eight years previous to the making of the film,
about this woman who was terrorized,
and you know, raped sexually by this - this ghost.
Barbara Hershey gives an excellent performance in the lead role.
Ron Silver's in it. It's a small film, it's actually quite effective.
You think I'm insane.
Insane? That means different things to different people, Carla.
It was so realistic, because of all the things she was
doing and the bruises. That would have been a hard role.
- You'll wait 'till I'm alone,
won't you? Then you'll come forth to hurt me, to hurt my children!
Stan Winston was responsible for this moment
where you see Barbara Hershey's character nude in bed,
and you see the entity fondling her. It's an excellent effect,
he and his team created a fake body for Barbara
and she was underneath the bed on a slant board,
Stan was underneath her reaching up past her to manipulate the the breasts.
So he would had cups on the interior of the breast
and when he pulled his fingers in, from the outside,
it would look as if invisible fingers were pressing. And his other
crew were gently manipulating the fake arms and legs of this body.
Barbara Hershey was exhausted by doing "The Entity" because first of all,
she had to be naked. She had to act like somebody was having sex with her.
She's got all these people on set. With me,
when I'm acting like possessed or something, I feel ridiculous.
I'm sure all that was running through our head when she was doing it.
But when you see the final movie,
it's very realistic. And she did a great job. That had been so hard to do.
Welcome home.
The goriest nastiest thing that kind of stuck
with me growing up wasn't anything that Jason did,
or Freddy Krueger did or Michael Myers did.
It was Lucio Fulci's "City of the Living Dead".
The living dead part kind of throws you off.
It's a more supernatural movie.
Almost like it was tacked on to kind of ride the Romero train.
The original title was "City of the Living Dead". But when they
brought it over to America, they changed it to "The Gates of Hell".
"The Gates of Hell" ad seemed like it
was just warning you to not watch this movie.
It had like a long explanation about why it
wasn't rated but you can't come see this movie.
I remember the image of "The Gates of Hell” thing,
thinking it was going to be the most terrifying thing I've ever seen.
Just a really effective marketing campaign. To a 12 year old.
I saw a priest who by hanging himself, opened the gates of hell.
It was almost like this gothic zombie tale surrounding
this priest trying to bring about the apocalypse
in this small town,
and the protagonists basically trying to shut the portal to hell.
A dude is sitting in his pickup truck with his lady,
and she turns and looks at him after seeing this priest flash before eyes,
and she just starts puking her own guts out. And it
goes on a lot longer than you would expect [laughing].
It's super gnarly. And that always stuck with me.
And there's some kind of a kidney looking thing and then
here comes some sausage intestines and then there's
a heart like thing and it's just like, it just doesn't stop.
It has, to me,
the best kill. The father holding homeboy's head down and the drill coming in,
and just giving him the full on Black & Decker lobotomy.
It's so sick. To this day, it's one of my favorite Fulci movies.
"Pieces" is as the tagline says, "exactly what you think it is".
This is a movie they were trying to capitalize on the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre”.
A maniac killer going around a college, chopping up a bevvy of
beautiful women to basically create one perfect, beautiful woman.
And the fact that this is still such an
underground movie is criminal. The gore is insane.
There's so much blood everywhere, it's almost like you can just smell the guts.
I would have to turn in my horror card if I didn't say that the greatest scene
in almost any '80s horror film was not Linda George shouting, "Bastard!"
Bastard! Bastard!
There was a major red herring in the film. There's a guy who's the groundskeeper,
walking around with a chainsaw, played by Paul Smith,
who was Bluto in the "Popeye" movie, and also in "Dune".
You think that he is going to be the killer. It's one
of the most blatantly obvious not red herrings ever.
He's walking around, he's got the chainsaw,
he loves his chainsaw, and people are dying by chainsaw.
If anything, you have to see it for the ending. You will not see this one coming.
Lucio Fulci's "The Beyond" is a fantastic movie that I think, one,
not only captures the essence of who he was as a filmmaker,
but also think in a really great way it's really a fantastic sort of
celebration of the weirdness that is New Orleans, specifically in the early 1980s.
The movie is centered on a young woman who inherits mysteriously a hotel, and then
ultimately finds out that the hotel is centered over one of the gates of hell, darn.
This hotel is one of the seven gateways of hell.
And I think in the first 30 seconds,
we've already got flesh ripping, really ghastly gruesome effects.
Which for the work of Giannetto De Rossi,
who is one of the greatest sort of Italian special effects artists over there,
and it just never stops from there. It's just a constant barrage of horribleness.
He also taps into my fear of big spiders as well, in Fulci's world
tarantulas are going to come for you and they're going to eat your face.
You have like these little munching spiders coming
through eating the guy's flesh and tearing it away.
Basically, it sounds, you know, like, there's like a bunch of people at a buffet.
There's a great set piece at the hospital. It's
just like a constant barrage of reanimated corpses.
They're trying to fight their way out and it just like it doesn't stop. Eyes were
definitely a motif in "The Beyond" that we saw sort of utilized again and again,
we have Joe the handyman who basically finds
himself being blinded in both eyes from after being attacked.
And then you have a housekeeper who ends up getting
sort of pushed onto a large spike and her eye pops out as well.
And then you have characters in the movie who also go blind. It's a
really weird and wild movie, but you wouldn't expect anything less from Fulci.
I wanted to make a monster movie.
I wrote "The Being" when I was 23. I was fascinated by the idea of horror,
because I love eliciting a reaction. A nuclear waste dump produces a
monster that wreaks havoc on a small town while he's looking for his mom.
[laughing] okay? Alright? There's always a human element there,
my sort of weird sense of humor.
I think that is the thread you see in all my
films. I went over to Martin Landau's acting studio,
because I wanted Martin Landau on my film. And I said, “You know,
Mr. Landau, I really don't want to be in your acting class, no offense. [laughing]
I'm a director, and I want you to be in my film"...
And he was so wonderful. I pulled the script out of my bag and gave it to him,
and he goes, "I'll read it." and he read it that night and he said he'd do it.
And he was instrumental in getting Jose Ferrer who was a friend of his,
and Dorothy Malone.
I had two Academy Award winning actors in my first horror
film. I even spent soc much time trying to design the monster,
and finally everyone said, "Stop designing the monster,
start making the movie." [laughing]
I may have been heavy handed with it,
but it still works. Of this denial about environmental disasters.
I mean, Martin Landau says with dead seriousness that dumping
nuclear waste into the aquifer will not affect the drinking water.
He even does the demonstration: Pouring the water,
drinking the water, "Mmmmmm, delicious”.
This goes on today. It was chilling,
unpredictable. And a slice of Americana.
I learned a lot making that movie [laughing]. It wasn't a perfect film, but I have to say, you
know, I have certain fans that come to me and tell me it's their favorite film that I've made.
Michael Mann directs "The Keep",
which I think is one of his best movies. That's a Pandora's Box movie.
It's like "The Mummy", we don't want to let whatever's in the
keep out. The reason it's in the keep it supposed to stay in there.
Never touch the crosses. Never!
And the Nazis have to control this keep. And of course
they can't not open up the keep and find out what is in.
What we find out is inside is Scott Glenn. [chuckles]
You don't want to let Scott Glenn out on the world.
Don't touch that.
The reason why "The Keep" has a cult following is that it is both
very '80s and very unique. The sound design, the look of it, the music.
It's all very unlike what you would see in a
World War II movie where a monster kills people.
Michael Mann, just like on his previous movie "Thief", he used "Tangerine
Dream” for the soundtrack and it's these moody synthesized soundscapes,
which is again something you don't normally hear in a World War II movie.
The villain of the movie, Molasar, has a really interesting look. When he
first appears he's this giant mass of muscle and sinew with a skull for a head,
it almost looks like somebody's skinned the Incredible Hulk.
On the soldiers of black. - I will destroy them!
And then later,
he gets more complete and he takes on almost this Golem-like appearance,
which is pretty appropriate considering the Golem is a
creature from Jewish mythology and he's killing Nazis.
The movie had a very troubled production. Michael Mann's
original cut was supposed to be three and a half hours long,
but they forced him to cut it down to a little over
an hour and a half. So as a result in the final movie,
there's a lot of the elements that aren't really explained.
For example, Scott Glenn's character, you're not exactly sure what his
connection to the villain is or why he's got these - these supernatural powers.
Michael Mann was very disappointed in the movie and
has basically tried to bury it ever since it was released.
Michael, if you're watching this, I know you don't like this movie, but there are
people out there who do. So, you know, maybe consider giving it a high def release.
In the '80s,
having the kids be part of the story and an integral part of the story,
instead of just someone's offspring, became more popular.
And it became more part of the story engine than just on the side.
We progressed out of that as just a cutesy little kind of,
"I'm the kid with the freckles”, on an episode of "The Love Boat”
into being chased by guys with axes and monsters with dynamite,
and cars that come alive. Stuff that can really get you.
Anytime you put a young kid in a - in a scary story, it really brings it home.
You put them in groups, you put kids in peril, you put them in adventures,
it becomes this whole thing, and you're just wrapped up in emotion
because these are kids, you want them to succeed.
So you go all the way back to the original kid in a - in a horror story,
is when Frankenstein's
monster kills a little girl by the pond. That had to have been absolutely
astonishing to people at that time, that really punches you right in the chest,
where it's like, wow, some harm came to this kid.
There was a rule for a while that you cannot kill off a kid.
And I don't think I do except for in "the Being". laughing)
I think ll cross the line on that one. But ll love
working with kids. They love that role playing.
They know how to react to what's happening, and get totally immersed in the scene
without being self conscious.
I have always loved watching young performers anyway.
Because it's amazing to me that someone can have that kind of ability.
Sometimes they grow up to be tremendous actors because of that,
and other times they're fuck ups.
But working with kids is a whole other thing that a lot of people
don't understand if they've never been in production with younger actors,
because there's restraints on time. They can, you know, depending on
how old you are, there's different levels of how long you can actually be on set.
There's even minimums or maximums of how long you can be
in front of the camera which adds into how long you can be on set.
You have to go to school every day. There's a reason why they say they
don't want to work with kids, it really is a pain in the ass for a production.
"Halloween Ill" and on Halloween night,
all these masks are going to eat the kids faces and brains and kill them.
It gives me chills thinking about it. I want everybody to be reassured,
when I'm standing there on the phone screaming,
Please stop it, stop it, turn it off,
stop it turn off the final channel. Stop it, Stop it!
All the children were saved. You can take that to the bank.
When you're a kid, other kids getting killed on screen is much more
affecting than if you see their, you know, somebody's grandfather getting killed.
It became very trendy to have at least one or two
kids or a group of kids going against the antagonist.
They would assemble this group of - of plucky kids to try and take down,
you know, this incredibly disturbing force.
As a kid growing up in the '80s,
it was cool to kind of be able to see myself reflected in that.
It was empowering to see that, especially as a poor kid.
I think a lot of it came from the writings of Stephen
King. I mean "Cujo" has the kid, "It" has a group of Kids.
I mean, he was kind of the inventor of that sub genre,
if you want to call it that.
Stephen King certainly has exploited Children as - children as victims,
children as evil, you know,
and - and done it really quite well. I think it's an interesting tool, because I
think we become - as the audience - very conflicted, because right away, it's a child.
So you have all of these mixed mixed emotions,
about how you're supposed to feel about it.
One of Stephen's tricks is to put kids in jeopardy,
it's a little bit too effective, I think, because it gets mimicked all the time.
And it's one of those things that I resent, it becomes a trope. Now, the kid
is being victimized so our heroes are justified in doing anything they want.
They're morally excused,
ethically excused from anything because there's a child involved.
Gage in "Pet Cemetery" is interesting, because in the beginning,
he is just an innocent little kid, and he gets killed devastatingly.
After I became a father,
that scene had so much more weight than it did when I was younger.
But it's interesting because he is the
poster child for innocence in the beginning.
Hi daddy, I love you.
And then after he gets buried in the pet cemetery, he comes back as the villain.
'Gage 2.0' comes in and cuts Fred Gwynne's Achilles tendon.
It's such a simple move,
but it's so cruel and it's so effective and it's so horrifying.
I don't scare easily. The moment that is iconic for me out of the 1980s,
is the twins from "The Shining", they bothered me. And they stayed with me.
The twins at the end of the hallway, every time I'm in a hotel,
and I'm in a hallway alone, that comes back for me
and I have this moment of like,
please don't let the hallway feel longer than it is.
That is just a spooky ass thing. And the kid is wonderful in it.
There's such a sadness about that, that's a lot of responsibility, to have that awareness,
to have that knowing, to have that power. It's a lot of responsibility for a child.
That was the slow kill for me too,
was the kid 'cause he would sit there and you knew he knew.
There's nothing worse for a child to know. Adults it's okay. But when a child embraces
you know - I know something that they don't know, then it becomes really terrifying.
And as a child, of course, you tend to feel powerless. And the fantasy of
being able to telekinetically punish one's enemies, was really intoxicating.
It just appealed to my, you know,
frustrated powerlessness that I felt as a child, that I think most children feel.
Just for a moment in our lives when we felt that powerless the,
you know, the bully or the cruelty that we've experienced.
I'm wishing I had a little of the power myself right now in the world [laughing].
"The Black Cat” by Lucio Fulci,
many times the Edgar Allan Poe story was adapted in the film.
There was a 1934 film with Karloff and Lugosi; there was the 1940s film with Lugosi
also; and then there was one in the '60s which had a Vincent Price and Peter Lorre,
all of them were very loose adaptations, and so is this one.
This one is nothing subtle at all, this is about a killer cat.
It doesn't just murder people, it murders the shit out of
them. This cat could take on Michael Myers, it's a beast.
There's horror movies where people burn to death. And then there's horror movies where
people get thrown out of windows. Well, in "Black Cat" you get both at the same time.
Holy shit.
Some of the other movies kind of use the black
cat as a symbol like a metaphor for evil or something,
but this one is just going right for the jugular. That cat is
going to leap out and tear your fucking face off [chuckles].
"Suspiria” gets all the love, but "Tenebrae" is my favorite Argento.
There's something about the way Argento
paces a scene where you know something's coming,
because you're watching a horror movie and you've
seen horror movies. So you know that's- that's the deal,
but he waits just a little too long, so that when he finally delivers it,
it's a different kind of catharsis than your average slasher movie.
I love stories about writers. For me, that's just one of my sort
of cinematic catnips. Tony Franciosa, in this movie he's playing
an author who basically there's a killer out
there who's mimicking things from his book,
and then he's sort of dealing with the ramifications of that,
in Italy, while he's on a book tour.
And his manager in the movie is John Saxon who is a delight. It's such a complete
departure for him from being Lieutenant Thompson in the "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies.
Doesn't it drop off? - Drop off?
Yeah, I mean if you make a [clapping sound] quick movement, won't it slip off? - Look.
I really love Daria Nicolodi in it, who was a frequent collaborator with Dario Argento,
and I don't think she gets enough credit for the writing that she did with him.
Some of the camerawork in that movie is absolutely,
like just astonishingly great.
The way that that camera moves is so fluid,
and so wonderful. There is this huge switch that happens in the movie.
You think you know the game that's being played, and then ultimately,
halfway through the movie, it takes a completely different direction.
A woman is sitting in her house, and she's sitting there with a gun in her hand,
and the killer out of nowhere just kind of comes to
the window and chops her hand off with the gun in it.
And then she gets up and there's just this crimson spray of blood everywhere,
and of course, everything has white walls. So it looks amazing. It's beautiful.
Like it shouldn't be beautiful, this should be horrifying. But yet
there's something so stunning about the way that that blood would hit,
and especially Italian blood was always notoriously much more red
and much more vibrant than the blood we were using here in the States.
It's really captures everything that you love about Giallo movies,
but does it in a different way that we really hadn't seen from him before.
It's one of the standouts amongst Argento's filmography,
specifically during the 1980s.
"C.H.U.D" stars John Hurt and Daniel Stern. It's got early
appearances by Cohen Brothers main stays like Jon Polito as a newscaster,
and John Goodman, who alongside Jay Thomas are cops in a diner.
The concept of going underground and mutant homeless people
that are mutated through the nuclear waste
that was being stored underground in New York,
and it was great. So somebody had that Death Wish, dirty New York setting
with the isolation of the underground tunnels, and then the mutant monsters.
So it had a great mixture of elements. The idea of cannibalistic
humanoid underground dwellers is a brilliant one really.
And then obviously the bit at the start,
where the puppy and the woman get pulled out from the underground manhole.
"Terror in the Aisles” is a great compilation film and it really
does explore the thoughts, the feelings, the how and the why of it all.
Say, how they do that? - That's the trick, isn't it? Once the lights go down.
You're only watching clips of these movies,
but somehow all put together like that, it was absolutely terrifying.
And unfortunately, in these movies, the victim is almost always a woman.
And I watched it on a VHS and I remember
having to stop it because I was getting so rattled by it.
[screaming woman in background] Get him!
It certainly packs a very different punch. It's - it's pretty frightening.
Why make up horrible things when there is so much real terror.
We can enjoy the jeopardy, we can have a good scream, a good laugh,
and laugh at ourselves for having been tricked the way we have.
It's just fun. You know, it's just a fun thing.
And you're sitting in a theater, which is relatively safe.
There are two reasons that I wanted to do "Terror in the
Aisles". I love the idea of it, I love those movies, you know,
and I think those genres are really great and... But ll also wanted to meet Donald
Pleasence, who I was a great fan of, and I didn't get to meet him so I was devastated.
That was something, wasn't it?
"Silent Night, Deadly Night" is about Catholic guilt, I think [laughing].
I didn't really even know the controversy until years later,
when it came to pass that like this was the harsh black mark on Christmas of '84.
There was a big hue and cry about turning Santa Claus into a serial killer.
This scared people and made it want to be banned.
It is necessary, Pamela. It is -- - No!
"Silent Night, Deadly Night" tells the story of Billy, who as a child,
witnesses his family get murdered by someone dressed as Santa Claus.
Flash forward to when Billy becomes 18,
and he is now a strapping young lad.
Merry Christmas, everyone, ho ho ho! Merry Christmas.
One thing leads to another, and Billy is completely
triggered and goes on a massive killing spree dressed as Santa.
The trigger when that happens, you can totally understand it.
There's a death involving antlers on a wall which is - which is great.
Punish! - No!
He impales me on antlers, so never answer the door to strangers.
Punish!
I had a talk with the director, I said, "She wouldn't be topless, a woman would,
you know, put on her top, maybe not her bottoms to go upstairs.
That's just what a woman would do.”" And he's like, "Well,
we have to have you topless. Because the antlers are going to come out".
I think there was another reason behind it. I had to be
lifted up a billion times to get on the antlers by a stunt man.
I don't know how he did it but he's like [grunting], again and again and
having blood capsules come out my mouth and doing it the right time.
It was - it was an ordeal.
It's crazy how two dimensional most of these movies are,
and that yet you have a movie like "Silent Night, Deadly Night",
that gives character development and depth and
reasons why this guy is wreaking havoc on people.
And yet people wanted to shut this down. I was like, are you kidding?
I'm so glad that the mothers wanted it banned,
because it made a lot of money and it got a lot of attention because of that.
"Razorback” is a beautiful film, and I don't throw that
term around lightly. I mean,
it is an absolutely gorgeous film.
It's directed by Russell Mulcahy, who is an Australian
director who shortly after this would go off to direct "Highlander".
It's one of the best of the nature run amok sub genre horror, it's a movie about a giant
boar, a boar that is three times larger than any of the boar that anyone there has ever seen.
As you know,
everything in Australia wants to kill you. So this is a perfect setting for that.
It starts off with this giant boar that rips through a house and kills a child,
while his grandfather's watching it.
Oh, God, Scotty! [screaming]
Everyone in the town thinks that the grandfather has killed this
kid. So he's spending the rest of his life hunting this razorback.
The movie shifts because you initially
think it's going to be about the grandfather,
then you think it's going to be about the woman who is
the reporter who's going to Australia to investigate this.
But then she ends up getting killed by the razorback. And then her
husband flies out to Australia to find out what happened to his wife.
So the movie then shifts again,
to be about the husband. The giant razorback is incredible.
You don't see it very much, but you see it enough and it's terrifying.
It is still legitimately scary.
The color palette that they use is just gorgeous. It is not
something you would expect to see in a movie called "Razorback".
You're expecting blood and guts and violence,
you wouldn't really expect to see this stunningly beautiful film.
It's okay, it's okay.
Well, the big rock star in terms of makeup
effects in the '80s was undeniably Tom Savini.
He kind of cornered the market in in gore for the early '80s,
and did it better than anybody else.
The '80s was the splatter decade. That was my decade,
you know, I was called the Sultan of Splatter, The Wizard of Gore.
And it was the one-two punch of "Dawn of the Dead" and then "Friday the 13th",
it catapulted my career.
In fact, "Friday the 13th" wouldn't exist if George
hadn't done and hired me for "Dawn of the Dead".
One movie after another got me work with other directors who saw those
movies. So Sean Cunningham saw Dawn and said, "We got to get this guy".
Tom Savini came to us and said, "You know what I want to do?", I said,
"what do you want to do?", he said, "I want to cut somebody's head off. On screen.
It's never been done.” I said. "Really?", he said,
"no, it's never been done, and it could be great.”
"So how are we going to do it?" He says, "Well, we have to figure it out.”
I always feel that Tom Savini is the godfather of all of this,
and in a lot of ways of sheer invention. You know, the script says this happens,
how the fuck does that happen?
When I was growing up trying to learn makeup,
there was no place to learn. Nobody wanted to share their secrets.
The limitations make you more creative. Limitations: Not enough time,
not enough people, not enough materials, not enough money.
Now, Robo Chimp could, you know,
he could open his mouth and make his head move left and right.
And then "Martin”, and there was a stake that goes through a guy's neck, you know? So George said,
"We're gonna go to a slaughterhouse and maybe get a lamb neck and stick a stick in a lamb neck."”
I said, "No, no, you need to see the guy's face when that happens.” "Well,
how are you going to do that?" "I don't know. I'll figure it out, okay?"
And it wound up being exactly how I killed Kevin Bacon in "Friday the 13th". In "Martin"
the stake went in the front, and in "Friday the 13th" I brought the arrow from behind
the fake neck appliance. But it's the same kind of an appliance
that Kevin Bacon stuck his head into, that the guy in “Martin”
stuck his head into that Ned Eisenberg in "The Burning”,
stuck his head into. I did that effect over and over again.
Usually if there's a rubber weapon involved, we try to establish the real weapon, taking a chunk out of the wall
or in "Friday the 13th" the hatchet taken out the light bulb before the rubber axe goes into the girl's head.
So in your mind, there's no separation. My books are called "Grand lllusions", my books
about special makeup effects, because that's how I think of them, as magic tricks.
Because it may surprise you to hear from me that I believe the less you show,
the more effective stuff is, you know, I'm the guy that showed everything.
But on "Creepshow" I had never done anything like Fluffy before,
an animatronic creature monster.
So I called Rob Bottin and he taught me how
to do it over the phone. "Creepshow" was five
movies, you know,
with monsters and Nate's corpse which to me was - was an exciting thing to do.
[screaming]
The first thing you see is Raul, the thing in the window, you know,
so it was a real skeleton that I animated with all these, you know,
he could smile, his fingers could do this. He did a
bunch of stuff. I did not turn Stephen King into the plant.
But I did blow the top of his head off. I was up in the ceiling pulling stuff
out of him while hitting blood explosions. It was pretty complicated stuff.
And the cockroaches oh my god the cockroaches,
I was never in the same room with those cockroaches.
I would be outside a sealed room, looking through glass. "Okay,
cue the blood. No. All right, pump the roaches”
because they were two entomologists with huge syringes filled with roaches. We pump blood on them so they would
leave little bloody footprints. "Creepshow" was my opportunity to create monsters and characters, you know,
not just cutting throats and blowing heads off. "Texas Chainsaw
Massacre" too was another - an opportunity like that, you know,
creating the old age makeup.
"Xiao ShengPaPa" is a horror movie I did in Hong Kong,
a horror comedy movie, I did in Hong Kong.
And all I did was use stuff from, well, some stuff from "Creepshow". Raul,
he's in the movie. He's just a ghost apparition at the window.
But I had to build lots of monsters and things. And the two leads,
they were like the Abbott and Costello of Hong Kong.
I didn't understand a word of what was going on. But you know, but I built some
elaborate effects for that movie. Listen, don't talk to me about interpreters,
we sent him out for superglue and he came back with a case of condoms,
you know. And he's the interpreter, okay? [chuckles]
I met Tom, he opened up the dictionary of forensic pathology. And I saw
genuine photos of murder victims, drowning victims, accident victims, you name it,
every variety of death that the human body can endure, was in those pages. And then I went
through his lab and I looked at what people were creating. The reality of it was extraordinary.
I'm the only makeup artist that has seen the real stuff. I was
a combat photographer in Vietnam, I saw horrible stuff, okay?
You know, if you see a movie, a guy's wearing a white shirt,
and there's blood on it, and the blood looks like strawberry Kool-Aid,
the makeup artist didn't add green to the blood
because it's going on something white, you have to do that.
In fact, here's the formula, a gallon of blood, 32 drops of green, and that blood can go
on something light and still look deep red like blood, a little helpful hint for you here.
Everything that we do today, as special makeup effect artists, was invented by Dick Smith. We enhance
it, elaborate, make it better, you know, but he invented all the stuff that we that we do today.
If you've seen "Dawn of the Dead”, the blood is atrocious. The blood looks like melted crayons.
So on the way to "Friday the 13th", driving to Connecticut, we went to Dick Smith's house.
And he gave us the blood formula, his blood formula, which is THE blood formula.
The blood in "Friday the 13th" is the first time the blood looked real to me.
I wish I had my school growing up, where you could go and learn all this stuff,
you know. It's important for film students, let's say, to study films
from the past. If you're surrounded by people, like I am with students
coming into my school, and they don't know who Boris Karloff is, you're deprived.
I mean, if you're going to be a makeup artist, you know, do some research on some
of the greatest monsters or creatures or makeups that were ever created, you know.
The first sentence in my book on makeup effects is,
"The more you do, the more you get to do".
That's the thrill of creativity, that idea of taking a blob of clay or taking a blank
page, you're giving life to something that never existed and that - that's thrilling.
"Ghoulies". Well, first there was "Gremlins", then there was "Ghoulies".
And then there was "Munchies"”, and then there was "Hobgoblins".
When you have a picture that's successful,
people will immediately rush out an imitation.
The fact that the ad has the ghoulie coming out of a toilet,
I think probably expresses my feelings about the whole series.
I did enjoy the "Ghoulies" movies. In fact,
I did one of them, "Ghoulies Go to College".
I was stunt coordinator on it and played the character falling in a mop bucket,
ass first.
The greatest thing about "Ghoulies" is something that
almost didn't make it into the movie that they watched it and said,
"Where's the scene with the Ghoulie coming out of the toilet?" And said,
"Well, we just did that for the poster”.
"No, you need to put this scene in the movie." So they went back and reshot the scene, the
Ghoulie coming out of the toilet. And whenever somebody says Ghoulies they always love that.
And of course that ties in with the tagline.
"Ghoulies". They'll get you in the end! Literally.
So if I had to give my blessing to any of the ripoffs,
I would definitely choose the "Critters” series.
However, I feel remiss in criticizing anybody's rip offs
when my first picture was "Piranha”, which is a ripoff of “Jaws".
You know, [laughing] so I'm not - just, you know,
walk around and tinkle a bell and yell "unclean” and all of that.
During the heyday of the video boom, early '80s,
there were so many videos on the shelves that
you had to do something to grab people's attention.
I used to love all those painted covers, you know,
like "Cannibal Holocaust", "Cannibal Ferox". As the years went on,
they became more and more lurid
because they had to compete and threw was so much in there.
"Cannibal Holocaust" is interesting because it is the first in a whole kind
of wave of found footage movies where you didn't know if it was real or not.
Of course, by the time I saw it, you knew that it wasn't real. Much
like "The Blair Witch Project” when it first came out people weren't sure.
Deodato even was brought up in criminal charges or filming actual murders.
And there's phases that take place in - in horror movies, the found footage,
footage, Amazon jungle, torture porn, "Cannibal Holocaust" and "Cannibal
Ferox" for a time I thought they were the same movie with different titles.
One would kind of look like the other which would look like the other. "Cannibal Holocaust"
has a couple scenes in it, that you just can't forget, the guy getting his cock chopped off.
Don't ever go to the Amazon jungle and that way you won't get
your cock chopped off by a bunch of Cannibal Holocaust feroxes.
The real issue that everybody talks about though with "Cannibal Holocaust” is
not the apparent deaths of the people. It's the deaths of the animals on screen,
and that's hard to watch because that's real. Big
sea turtle getting cut up for dinner. Fuck, really?!
So that I think is why some people thought that it could be real
because the animal deaths are you're watching literal, animal snuff films.
The most popular nasty of them all is a piece of trash called "Faces of Death", which purports to be a professor's investigation
of death worldwide. And his effort, he says, is to gain knowledge about the fragility of man. Sure, and I'm the Easter Bunny.
"Faces of Death” somebody's brother's sisters brother had it on some kind of fifth sixth edition
VHS, and what it was was apparent real life snuff films put together on this documentary,
And there was like "Faces of Death" one through you know, 27 or something along those lines,
and you could never really find it, which made the legend of it so much more mysterious.
I find this to be a particularly unusual face of death.
And that's why you thought 'maybe this is real', until you actually
saw one and then you realize this might not be as real as you think.
The Satanic cult, you know, sacrificing somebody. Who's taping this? Where's this from? What's - What is this?
Why is no one getting arrested from this? But What a strange phase to go through, a fake snuff film phase.
His mutilated body represented a violent retaliation from a
creature which has suffered continual abuse from mankind.
We were fucking weird as teenagers, man. Who would ever want to watch that?
It was a love story about two people that were literally made for each other,
but that were separated.
You fool! Imbecile!
It was a lyrical, beautiful script.
You're safe now. - Safe?
Frankenstein says that he wants to create a woman who is his equal, and of course doing
exactly the opposite. He's trying to make her into the image of a woman that he wants.
And Jennifer Beals she was the big get because she had just come off a "Flashdance”. Jennifer, I think is
sublimely good. I don't think anybody gives her enough credit for the work that she did in that movie [chuckles).
She's looks magnificent in the costumes and on the sets. I thought she was terrific. I thought
Sting was terrific too. There was me and Rappaport, David, we got to be quite good friends.
Friend? - Yes, good health. - Good health.
Boy, playing the creature. It's so rich. Of course, the creature in Shelley's book is
articulate and sophisticated, and is the truth seeker and the truth teller in the movie.
The popular iteration of it of Karloff and the subsequent
Karloff-esque versions of that Universal creature just
make him a brute. This was clearly a romantic version
of it. He gets more and more handsome as the [chuckles]
Movie goes on. Which just meant that the prosthetics got more and more handsome,
they did - you know.
If the script had a flaw, it's that the two main stars had to
carry the portion of the film that was the darkest and the coldest.
Where have you been all day? - Riding.
The job that Sting and Jennifer had to do was to show how
things fall apart. They weren't supposed to have any chemistry.
Off screen they actually did have chemistry. I mean,
we're all kind of liked each other. On screen they had to miss.
I made you out of ashes. I can always reduce you to ashes again.
You can do what you like!
I think people miss the point of that, yeah. It's a hopeful message of how we can,
you know, we can all get better from our - from even the most miserable beginnings.
And we can all find true love. That's not really the
story. It's not Mary Shelley's story, but that's okay.
"Nightmare 1" was a huge, huge off the charts hit, they couldn't believe
it. "Nightmare 2" it has some of the most classic moments of the franchise.
"Nightmare on Elm Street 2" is about relationships, perspectives, and stereotypes
that all get smashed once Freddy Krueger gets his claws in them [laughing].
What we did is utilize the truth between Mark Patton,
Jesse Walsh, and I, Robert Rusler, Ron Grady,
and we utilized our own truths. And we put it in the
circumstances of the film. I didn't have a judgment about sexuality.
And that's what I loved about Grady and Jesse,
there was no ulterior motive there. There was a sexual tension between them.
I don't know why you're wasting your time with this guy, he's a basket case.
Shut up, Grady.
But it depends who's looking.
See you around, buddy.
We were playing with this idea that Freddy was exploiting the
subconscious of Mark's character Jessie and was maybe opening the closet door.
And we had beaucoup hints of Freddy,
manipulating the boy's sexuality, prompted both
by the original screenplay, the staging,
the casting, and by sets, whole sequences.
No one said we're making a gay horror film, but we were
toying with that. Not nailing it down rigidly, but certainly exploring it.
And I loved what was going on with Freddie being in the middle of it. Divisive,
calculating, darker than any of the other "Nightmare on Elm Street” movies.
That scene comes up, Krueger comes out of Jesse's body,
and I'm yelling for my dad.
[screaming].
When I saw the movie with my dad at the screening, my dad was crying,
you know. And I looked back in the audience, and people were affected.
They did break a one rule, they took Freddy out of the dream.
His dad is burned alive. He doesn't even show up at the pool party. Yet,
there's some great stuff at the pool party, "You're all my children now."
You're all my children now.
You know, "Help yourself fucker".
Help yourself, fucker!
And ll love the idea that it's the rich girls
party and Freddy ruins it for all the rich kids.
All they have to do is just get a pickup shot of Jesse or Jesse and Kim asleep
in the pool house taking a nap, and then that whole party crash by Freddy works.
Daddy can't help you now!
I mean, I remember asking Mark in a sequence with Freddie and Jesse,
if I could touch him like I was gonna kiss him,
"Can I put a blade in your mouth? Or Could I just circle your
mouth? Can I caress your eyes?" That's a real scary, strange moment.
I said, "Maybe do you think it should be sexual or maybe the kiss of death?”
So I thought there might be a great male on male kiss
there. That could be erotic and then - and then death kiss.
There is a lot of people that watch that movie, and it made them uncomfortable.
There were a lot of people that watched that movie and an empowered them.
There were a lot of people that watched that movie,
and they made fun of or judged or poked. most of the people that judge and poke,
What are you hiding, you know what I mean?
People were talking about this from the get go and there was an increased and
an enhanced fan base within the gay community, because of this, immediately.
A lot of young gay men were heavily heavily influenced by that movie, to be truthful and
honest with themselves and - and really flourish into who they wanted to be from the inside.
I think that's fantastic. As far as Freddie goes, and as far as the depth of truth
between characters, nobody else touches "Nightmare 2". I'm very proud of that movie.
And when people go, "Hey, what's it like to be in the gayest
horror movie ever made?" I go, "It was fucking awesome".
It's okay, it's all over [screaming].
While I was a big West Craven fan,
I was also a huge fan of "The Hills Have Eyes". That movie was freaky, man.
[girl screaming] I'll come here for you later, girlie.
Another example of a situation that you could relate to as this can really happen
to me, was sort of like I take the wrong turn, and I wind up in you know, hell.
"Hills Have Eyes II" is a weird one because it comes on the heels of
Craven having maybe the biggest hit of his career with "Nightmare on Elm Street".
And suddenly he's kind of going back to the bottom of the
barrel and delivering a sequel to a movie some eight years earlier.
There's a lot of flashbacks. If you ever want to see a dog have a flashback in a movie,
I can name one and it's in "Hills Have Eyes II”. Then the first film,
this civilized soft
suburban family finds itself in the wilderness,
facing off against the sort of feral mutants I guess you would say.
And in the second one, it's kind of the the mutants bringing the fight to
civilization a little bit because one of their own has dared to try to cross over.
I love Michael Berryman, you know, working with him in "Weird Science”,
he was such the antithesis of what he
comes off as on screen, you know,
because he's always playing these really freaky creepy like super sadistic,
like scary roles. And in person he's a super pleasant, super educated sweet man.
Can we keep this between us? I'd hate to lose my teaching job.
What resonates with me about "Hills Have Eyes II" compared
to "Hills Have Eyes I" was more the clarity on what the fear was.
I want you to stay together and stay alert. This place might look deserted,
but it's been used for something right up to the time we got here.
They got to expound upon the characters, the situation. What's at stake, you know,
my life. And what are the odds of me making out of here, you know, slim and none.
I think Wes Craven was very good about capturing a
perspective really taking you to that world in the desert.
That's one of those movies like "Dawn of the Dead”,
where you come out hitting each other being super mischievous.
For some reason, that's how some of those horror movies affect me.
I want to get into trouble after I see him [laughing).
Miss me, miss me, na
na na na. [grunting]
Horror movies are essentially absurd,
and the comedy just it's already in there. And if you don't find it, someone
else is going to find it because some of - the sometimes
some of the things that are happening are just preposterous.
Many of the pictures in the '80s like "Return of the Living Dead" and "The Stuff" are not afraid to embrace the fact
that they're silly. I mean in fact, I would almost think that silly is kind of the - the byword for horror comedies.
Beginning with "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein”, which is everybody's favorite because of the fact that
the horror movie stuff is played straight. It just all meshes together so perfectly, and it looks terrific.
And it's, you know, practically the best movie that Abbott and Costello
ever made. And it's also the best of the later, universal horror pictures.
In black and white, the comedy was funnier. in black and white,
the horror was scarier.
It's almost like horror of the absurd. Like this is not even in the realm of probable.
And so there's a great sort of communal delight, there's something endearing about that.
"Re-Animator" is - is a very funny movie. It's also pretty gruesome. It's in the mind
of the filmmaker, you can't all be Takashi Miike, and have it be unrelentingly grim.
There's got to be some moments where the graph goes up and down instead of just all the way
across. In my movies, I've always approached the horror aspects along with a sense of the absurd.
My mechanism of dealing with fear is - is - is laughter, especially in the movies,
you know, because then you realize that you're not in the movie.
They call it comic relief, a little space to stand still for a second and
catch your breath before you kick - before you get chased around again,
or whatever it is, you have to have that otherwise, it's just relentless,
and it becomes unintentionally funny, which you really don't want [laughing].
I couldn't think of a more horrible job if I wanted to.
"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" has many comic elements in it, but people don't think of it as a comedy until much later. And
then they have to invent fancy terms like Grand Guignol [chuckles] to describe what's going on in Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
"The Howling" is a really powerful horror movie, but it's funny as hell,
and "An American Werewolf in London", Both of them take their horror seriously.
And they take the comedy seriously. And both of them are made by filmmakers
who've embraced both and have made comedies and have made horror movies.
They have such glee and relish a good horror movie makes you feel
really excited and like you're having a good time, and certainly a good comedy.
You ride that wave of laughter and when you can melt
them together like John Landis and Joe Dante can do.
Excuse me.
When it works it's really great, and that's what I was hoping for doing
"Critters 2" was that the comedy would be funny and the horror would be scary.
I love that, when you have a humorous movie that also has scares,
because what it does for me is takes the edge of,
it's even more of a roller coaster ride than just scary,
scary, scary, scary, ah, scary, scary, ah, scary [chuckles].
It's more like, I'm totally relaxed because I was
laughing. Oh my god! Now this big thing happens. You know?
[woman screaming in background] Holy shit!
Some of the things I kind of gravitate towards in horror are the comedy horror.
Garbage day! - No! [screaming]
I do love the wink of the eye. Maybe because I hate to be scared,
[laughing] actually I like to get a little bit of a step backwards.
Can I have a piece of toast?
There are a lot of really successful horror films with comedic
elements in the '80s. But there are a lot of movies that didn't get it right.
There is a short trend of movies that were overall comedies but dealt with
horror subjects. You had "Teen Wolf" and "Transylvania 6-5000" and "Once Bitten",
It's a tough balance to pull off, but you really have to get the tone just
right so that the comedy doesn't really infringe on the horror and vice versa.
Horror and comedy can go hand in hand or they can be each other's worst enemy. Most horror
comedies are neither scary nor funny. But when it works together, they both aim for the same thing.
Horror and comedy both go for a physical reaction, a scream, a jump,
tension gripping the arms of your seat for horror, and comedy
the laughter. If you go into a horror movie,
or a comedy and it's quiet all the way through, it ain't working.
A laugh is very difficult to get, how do you get the laugh? You get the
laugh by surprising people. If they can see the punch line coming, you're sunk.
The key to making a great horror comedy is it's got to be 80%
horror and 20% comedy. If you try to do 80% comedy and 20% horror,
then what you're doing is you're attempting to make a cult
film in advance and that never works. It always falls on its face.
Horror obviously crosses genres anyway. But I
would argue that '80s horror does that more than most.
It's like, you've got "Reese's Peanut Butter Cups” is gonna work great.
Hey, you've got your chocolate in my peanut butter.
You've got peanut butter on my chocolate. [together: what?]
So the '80s, I would argue, actually defined the - the
and created this idea of kind of multi genre horror, that
absolutely gets away with high art and low art. Make you
laugh and- and have visceral drama, and gross you out.
I said shut up, butthole!
That's the definition of '80s Horror in a way, is - is the people who
grew out of those errors and are slamming all of these genres together.
I never thought in a million years when I was growing up in Davenport, lowa that I
would be acting, because I was probably the shyest person on the face of the earth.
I remember my first role that I got that was a speaking role, even though it wasn't a lot of speaking, was
"Fairy Tales". And that was with Charlie Band. I was so proud, I remember writing in my diary, 'I'm a big star'.
I think I found my niche in doing the ones that were more independent,
I hate to say low budget.
What is this, midnight went bowling league? - What are you, the bride of Dracula?
I think there was a lot more freedom in doing things then, and I just liked it. It was
a lot more fun. The first time I had to take off my clothes which was in "Fairy Tales",
I was terrified. I was so scared I actually
did push ups to get my adrenaline going
so I wouldn't think about it,
it was a formula. Shower scene, getting killed topless.
It became redundant. I knew the formula, I know they needed it to sell the film.
I think if you feel comfortable doing nudity, it's no big deal. I made
up in my mind, if I have to show my breast, I'm gonna get more money.
So I was the go to girl. The more you draw attention to being naked,
the worse it is, if you just take it very casually, people don't notice.
It's like when it's the person that's like going, "Oh, don't look, oh,
you can't see me. Oh I'm so embarrassed” that you want to look at.
So I would just be like very casual about it and people
didn't make a big deal. You know, so it's like, it's not a big thing.
"Savage Streets” is about this badass Linda Blair going and getting these guys who raped me, which
was a hard scene to do. The director wanted mucus
coming out my nose and blood running down my leg.
I said, "I don't think that's necessary. I think it's pretty creepy the way it is going to be
depicted.” I was so happy at that point to be playing opposite Linda Blair and playing her sister.
And it was a different role for me because I was just so innocent.
You're real pretty, you know that?
From "Savage Streets”, I got both negative and positive comments, like the negative ones
were, "Oh, you didn't have to remember any lines. You didn't have any lines in the movie."
But then I got the others that are more into film that would say, "Wow, that must
have been hard not to say things and do things and pretend that you can't understand”.
I remember on "Return of the Living Dead", I don't usually say no, but there were things like
shave my eyebrows off. Well, everybody was like, "Don't do it because they might not grow back ".
And I thought, I don't want to go without eyebrows. And then they wanted me to cut my hair. I didn't do that so
they had to get a wig. But I did agree to dance nude on a tombstone. And talk about nude - it was really nude.
Getting away from zombies, I was terrified because the
zombies were extras. And extras get very zealous and they want
to be seen in the camera and I'm like, oh my god,
they're gonna really attack me. I was - I was actually very, like,
Oh, no, what's gonna happen when they yell action.
And I'm like, surrounded by the zombies and that's the end of
me. Being buried in mud, there is an art to holding your breath.
They dug a hole, then they're covering me up and I'm like, Oh my god, I can't tell.
I can't hear when they call action. I can't tell when the rain machine's going.
So I had to Kind of like time it and it was like kind of creepy to be
under there. So I did it on the first take, thank goodness, I was so happy.
That's kind of dangerous because you can inhale the mud. So I didn't know if
anybody really knew what they were doing or if I was just like a guinea pig on it.
When I turned into a zombie, I'm nude,
cold and nude. It was horrible to have the special
effects makeup done. I didn't know I was getting into but it was like,
all glued on me,
and they had the mouth at one point down here. And I couldn't
drink anything or really eat anything because it was like so low.
It was pretty miserable.
I decided to do this workout, "The Linnea Quigley Horror
Workout". Everybody was doing it. So we decided to do a campy
version with zombies and with girls at a slumber party and you know,
just throwing everything, throw it into the mix.
I know what you're doing when you're watching my
movies. Just how many calories Do you think that's burns?
We had a really fun time doing it because it was so tongue in cheek. Supposed
to be taking place on the mountain with gravestones and this whole dramatic thing.
Well, the fire marshals decided to do like a fire test up there. So we got kicked out of there and
went to my parents house, and decided to film by the pool, and then have the zombies jump in the pool.
Okay! Everybody into the pool!
Cynthia Garris, Mick Garris's wife, choreographed the whole thing so she was across
the pool, because I'm not a great, you know, dancer. I wasn't aerobically trained.
So she was helping me out with that. And she was actually one of the slumber party girls too.
I think when they label you scream queen, to me, it's an honor, it's taken like a flip flop.
So I don't think it's limiting now, but it was limiting then. I would
say advice for screaming on camera would be just go all out and do it.
Also, know that you're going to get a headache
after doing it a lot. So bring some aspirin.
I think horror changed a lot when we were in people's
living rooms. I think that people got to know you better,
they could go seek you out in a video store and say, "Oh, you know, I really liked that person.
Do you have another movie by her or him?" Or, you know, "is there another part two or part three?"
It's a way to really get into someone's heart.
After "Friday the 13th" and then a couple of more sequels,
and then "Nightmare on Elm Street” we knew the genre was changing.
And one of the pitfalls in horror films in general,
is that you think it's a compounding of grim scenes and suspense and desperation.
But it isn't that way. It has to have hills and valleys,
and lots of times some kind of comic relief really, really helps.
Sandy.
You have a man who's writing and who's isolated from his family, dealing with sort of
these Vietnam flashbacks. You're dealing with like the death of a kid at certain points.
And there's definitely some trauma issues
that you're -- they're exploring in that movie.
Bill Katt was just terrific casting. And then Steve Miner is the one who really
believed in that and really thought that he could bring it off and he did a great job.
You've been in Vietnam, lost your only child, your wife divorced you. I mean,
you've got a few marbles running around, but right now you seem fine.
You have crazy characters popping in, you have Richard Moll as Big Ben.
Big Ben? - No, it's your fairy godmother [laughing].
Our hope initially was that Big Ben was going to become iconic, but he didn't.
You're pissing me off, Roger.
This notion of of a zombie Gl rotting off the bone,
that he would come back and really raise hell.
Roger, you hit like a little girl!
For some magical reason, people didn't buy into him as being a
super villain the way they bought into other characters at the time.
You can't get rid of me, Roger. You can't and you never will!
A good poster will tell the audience what it's going to see, "House" had a
great line and an image of like a zombie finger it goes, "Ding Dong, you're dead."
[laughing] Like I just thought that was delightful because it suggested that we weren't taking it completely
seriously. But that it was a haunted house and that people were at risk, that was kind of inspired.
Our original twist love affair started with the unmasking of who a killer
was or who the bad guy was. And that goes all the way back to Scooby Doo.
Scooby Doo is just a horror movie in animated segments of a killer or a bad guy, and that sort of that
gateway into watching the real movies where you want the unmasking of who the killer is or who the bad guy is.
Everybody always references ooh Freddy or Jason. And they go, "What's
your favorite movie?" and I go, "April Fool's Day" and it blows their mind.
They're like, "why?" And I was like, "Well, if you actually watch "April
Fool's Day", it's a great slasher movie with a fantastic performance"”,
because if you actually watch her there, Foreman, she's creepy.
Criminally under-looked. It tells the story of a bunch of friends who were invited
to their friend's house for a weekend and they all just start dropping like flies.
My favorite kill is probably the first one where the
guy has his face chopped up with the boat motor.
You talk about roast beef, it is just a shredder. The kills
are great. The comedy is off the charts. It's smart,
it's funny.
I think it's probably my all time favorite horror movie just because of the twist,
blew my mind at the end of the movie.
It's not just about, I thought the killer was somebody else',
because you always try to figure out the mystery.
Yeah, having twists in - especially in "80s horror movies, whether
they're the big movies or the obscure ones, those always get you a little bit.
April fools.
The construct of the story for "Demons” is a group of people are watching a movie,
we're watching the people watch the movie, as they're watching a movie.
So I am a working girl on a day off with my best friend and the fellow who,
let's say collects the money for us. And we get a free ticket.
I pick up the mask and something inside the mask scratches my face. There's three levels
of demons, and by the way it's "demone”, that's how we say it in Italy, it's demone.
So there's three different levels and the first level is infection. That's
when hell will open because the demons are going to come onto Earth,
and try to take over the dominion of Earth. Dario Argento and
Sacchetti and Ferrini and Lamberto Bava, the four authors of the script,
they knew the story, "Yeah, we're gonna do this. It's gonna be a film and
a film of some kids in a film". But it took them two years to make the rules.
What were the rules of hell? What were the rules of
demons? And what is a demon? It can come through the screen,
it can come around you and it can get into your blood
system. My face exploding was my first day on the set.
In the ladies room, I look in the mirror and the audience
sees the pulse get bigger and bigger and bigger and explode.
And from that moment on [claps], we're running,
the movie never slows down again. Then you can't get out. Isn't that
everyone's fear? You're in a box or in a group you're with
a gang you don't know anybody. And now you can't get out.
There's not any "You're bad, you had sex so you must die". It really is the larger concept of
how much can you stay human, your humanity within a bad situation that you can't get out of.
That's the real message. And it's a movie with this amazing soundtrack. I mean,
Billy Idol, Go West and then you have Claudio Simonetti, and you have The Goblin.
There's something about metal,
that to them it's the standout loner against society,
and there's so many great effects and demone - demons - the eyeball gauche,
it's a real man. And they put padding on there.
So they had a system that when I put my hands in the pad, there was gel,
and I knew don't go past the gel because his real eyes are in there.
And the birth of the demon that comes out of Paulo's back,
that was a mechanical thing that Sergio Stivaletti created.
Just look at that doll. Look at that creature that comes out,
excellently done. They love that! They love the the guts of it.
The helicopter. It was a technical way of
how the helicopter got through the roof. It's not
magic. It's the mechanics of movie making. So as
everyone's running toward the camera, I'm hiding.
I'm hiding - I'm hiding behind pillars, I'm hiding behind things because I want to be sure I don't
get Killed on scene. I want to be sure my head doesn't go flying with that helicopter plane.
The humanity of it is the secret of the movie. Watch all these people doing
the best they can in the worst circumstances. And not everyone's going to win.
"Vamp" is the story of three kids who go downtown to
a strip club to procure some unappareled refreshment,
I guess is what you want to call it, and end up running into a nest of vampires.
Richard Wenk, the writer director had a terrific vision of what
he wanted. He wanted to make a horror movie that utilized humor.
"Vamp" for me was trying to fit in.
Take me with you and just pretend to be my friends for a week.
Hey guys, I'm psyched. Let's party.
At what cost? [chuckles[
I was so stoked to meet Grace Jones. She was perfectly cast to play Katrina.
We were all worried if Grace Jones was going to show up on
the set or not [laughing]. She surprised us in a lot a lot of ways,
I have to say. I think all of us were kind of like vamping [laughing] so you know,
in some way. When Grace Jones came on the set, the air would change.
I do remember one incident where I had opened the door, and there was Grace Jones and she
was stark naked. And underneath her this man was painting her, turned out to be Keith Haring.
Keith was just slowly drawing white lines on her
beautiful ebony body. It was just unbelievable to watch.
I give you Katrina.
The dance, that was pretty cool. None of us knew what to expect. The red
wig that she had on, at first I kept thinking it looked like Ronald McDonald.
I said, "How in the hell is this gonna work?" But it worked! I sat there and went,
"Oh my god, she looks great”.
Grace Jones is so charismatic and her character was
so strong that she didn't need to talk. She was all action.
You like to play rough, huh?
When we were filming the death scene, Grace was just so wild. You know,
she came onto set nine hours late one night, howling saying, "Where's my man?"
and the whole crew just went [laughing].
She had attacked my neck like a pitbull, like a shark on a fish and didn't
realize that the teeth actually penetrated the latex and went into my jugular.
And I was writhing in pain, screaming in agony and she didn't realize how
badly I was hurt, and it could have been a lot worse than how it turned out.
How you're doing back there, Duncan? - I'm hungry. - He's okay.
It was the first time I've ever was transformed into a vampire,
so it was pretty exciting for me.
They started to proceed to put on the prosthetics on my face. I watched myself turn into my
grandfather, and it was a little scary. There's a certain kind of empowerment that you feel [chuckles]
When you're put into a costume, and this one was kind of like okay, I got
the teeth, I got power which really surprised me, because I think my character
was - was empowered now all of a sudden he had this power even though he eventually was going
to die, but still, you know, why not go out in a flame if you have to. Literally [laughing].
"The Seventh Curse" came out in 1986, it's a hidden gem I would say.
Hong Kong cinema was very much like two fold - you had action and comedy.
Then the other side we were incorporating a lot of fantasy and horror as well.
Directed by Simon Nam. He went on to direct "The Story of Ricky"
which is kind of a very over the top action movie with lots of blood and gore.
The plot revolves around Dr. Yuen played by Chin Siu-ho, who's a fantastic martial
artist. Dr. Yuen is warned of a curse after being attacked in his apartment.
The film flashes back, where we see him saving a girl
called Betsy from an evil tribe called The Worm Tribe.
After saving her from being sacrificed, he is cursed.
He decides to head back to Thailand to get rid of this tribe, so he can live forever
without having to look over his shoulder thinking he's going to die in a year's time.
He gets the advice by Wisely played by Chow Yun-fat, who is barely in the movie,
he's - he pops up in the beginning, he's a little bit near the sort of middle act.
And he pops up at the end with a rocket launcher,
which is a great sequence [chuckles].
When it comes to the action, the film completely delivers.
They try and push the gore as much as possible. They actually quite- it's quite sprinkled
throughout. You see someone's stomach get ripped apart, all these worms fall out of it.
A guy's head gets ripped off, blood gets drained from him. They give it a go and
it does work to a certain degree, but it does provide some unintentional laughs.
Watching this movie, I had a huge smile on my face. If you love your Hong Kong action, if
you love your fantasy and you love horror thrown into that with elements of Indiana Jones,
it's a movie you've got to watch because it's so bonkers and silly.
The original "Little Shop of Horrors" by Roger Corman is about a florist,
Seymour, whose shop is struggling,
until he grows this amazing Venus fly trap but
the problem is it only eats human flesh. The 1982
musical stage production was adapted into the 1986
film directed by Frank Oz and starring Rick Moranis.
It seems like the whole world is going crazy. At least we got each other ,right?
Audrey too is incredible. These practical
effects were outstanding. They look so good.
Does it have to be human?- Feed me! Does it have to be mine? - Feed me!
In order to get the lip sync perfect,
they had to slow down the frame rate of the plant. But it works fantastic.
You sure do drive a hard market.
Ellen Greene is great. I mean, she has this funny squeaky voice.
I call it an Audrey II. - After me? - I hope you don't mind [squeaky shriek].
But then when she sings, it's - it's gorgeous.
The songs are wonderful. Also, you have this great cameo by Steve
Martin who plays this deranged dentist who likes to inflict pain on people.
But then he meets his match with Bill Murray,
who's this patient who doesn't want any Novocaine or anything.
Say "Ah". - "Ahhhhh!"
And Bill Murray is actually filling in the
role that Jack Nicholson played in the original.
I know Novocaine, it dulls the senses [laughing].
The original ending was not a happy one. In fact, it's relentlessly dark and morbid, Seymour's
girlfriend Audrey is fatally wounded by the plan and then he sacrifices her corpse to the plant.
He slowly carries her up, like it's some kind of ceremony. It's tragic,
yet somehow beautiful at the same time.
He confronts the original plant, only to be eaten himself.
The plants attack the city. And it's a full on destruction sequence, where the plants
destroy everything. And it's some of the best miniature model work I've ever seen.
Everybody in the whole world dies. It's so insanely depressing,
that it's no wonder they cut it.
I mean, that was pretty crazy.
The allure of horror isn't just watching other people in terror,
it's identifying with the people who are in terror.
People in life naturally walk away from fear. But in watching a horror movie, it allows
you to confront that while someone else is going through it, doesn't have to be you.
And usually there's somebody in the film that is victorious,
and by osmosis it makes you feel more confident.
The whole idea behind living our lives is having enough ordinary care to see
whatever threats may materialize over the horizon. That's what's basic to horror.
If I am that person, how do I get out of that situation? How do I live through this
moment? We can experience that horror and that terror through somebody else's eyes.
And there's also a giant sense of catharsis and kind of a projection of,
what if that was me? Are they making the right decisions that I would make?
Sometimes you end up rooting more for the monster than for the kids.
Now, in the traditional horror movie, we often saw things from the victim's point of view, but that's no longer. Now we look through
the killer's eyes. It's almost as if the audience is being asked to identify the attackers in these movies. And that really bothers me.
Jason was meant to be kind of a shark. And he made this
transition from being a shark to being somehow or other, a hero.
There's this tiny little backstory about Jason being picked on as a kid,
tormented and then finally drown.
And ever since he came back,
he's been kicking ass. And it's sort of like Revenge of the Nerds on steroids.
There's a certain kind of identification with
Jason being the super ego of the depressed kid.
You get to have your fantasy that you're the killer. You're ripping out hearts,
you're ripping out throats, "You know what boss? I'll tell you what I like to do".
You could be the little person that finally got to beat up the meanies. You
could be the girl that nobody liked, and you're going to get them in the end.
I think it's more like vicariousness. I don't think it's catharsis. I think people maybe are curious about how
it would feel to be in a power position, or curious about the rush that you would get out of executing somebody.
Watch people how much they love video games too. Like,
it's not catharsis. I think it's - it's more than that.
It depends on what world you want to escape into. And I think if you watch the, hey, I'm watching the
kids run through the woods to get their heads cut off, you feel good, because you're not in the woods.
You - you live in a world that you know doesn't - that doesn't
actually hopefully happen to you. And then in that fantasy world,
or that spy adventure movie world, you want to be one of
those characters. So there are two completely different things.
The categorical difference between a horror movie and a - a - a violent
action movie, has to do with the experience. On "Death Wish" you are Paul,
you get the gun, you go out and you shoot these sort of faceless victims. In
a horror movie, you're the victim, the whole experience is completely flipped.
That is a significant difference on a cinematic level,
on a political level, on what it has to say about society,
but it's also a difference critically in terms of how it's getting at your subconscious. An action movie
of that type, it has a kind of wish fulfillment aspect to it every time he goes out and shoots one of
these like hoodlums, you get a dopamine hit. It's like a video game like, Oh,
I got another one. In a horror movie, you know, it's - it's more like a nightmare.
You're put in this position of kind of existential dread or threat
that is pursuing you in some way, which gets into much, much
deeper aspects of human nature. Horror movies have a much
more complicated and I would say deeper level that they're getting at.
I was never really a video game guy. I was more of a
pinball guy. Nowadays there's an Elvira pinball machine.
There's a Rob Zombie pinball machine. I'm pinball, man.
Today you have a lot of great horror games,
especially with the - the VR. I mean, there's all kinds of things they can do now.
Even now, you have some that are based on '80s horror films like The the recent "Friday the 13th video"
game, which is connected with Tom Savini and Kane Hodder, but we didn't always have that. Back then,
video game technology wasn't as advanced. Wizard Video was releasing these games like
"Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "Halloween". In "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" you're the bad guy.
You are Leatherface and you're killing people. Like there's no morals in this game, it's sort of like one of the
first real sadistic games where you control the killer, you basically get points for chopping people up [chuckles].
One thing that's funny about the chainsaw is that it's the same color as the body,
it's sort of like an extension of his body, and you get stuck on everything.
And then there was "Halloween", also on Atari. You're running from Michael Myers,
you have to get the kids and move them to a corner of the house.
And every time you do that, you get 675 points. Very specific. It
also has what might be the first head decapitation in a video game.
I mean, I can't think of any games before that where a head gets cut off,
and you see blood spurting out. And it also has the "Halloween" theme song in it.
They were super, super cheesy, just little pixels, so bad [laughing].
So the Atari version of "Alien", basically took Pac-Man and
then just turned it into "Alien". Frankenstein's monster on Atari,
it had this great moment where the Frankenstein monster would approach the
screen. If you played in the dark at night, the whole room would just flash green.
I did a few games, one was "Elvira: Mistress of the Dark".
One was "The Jaws of Cerberus"”. I don't know what I have to do with that.
And one was "Elvira The Arcade Game". That kind of got better as time went on.
Everybody was grabbing their joystick and having a really good time.
There was this one game called "Monster Party" for the NES. And I can remember
renting it as a kid and being really excited because the box art was great on it,
it had all these different monsters on it, and I popped the game in
and was kind of disappointed because it wasn't as good as the box art.
It was an important lesson I learned about 'never judge a game by its cover'. The interesting thing about horror
video games is that I've watched the graphics progress to a point where they are able to get more graphic,
and as a result, the games became more controversial. I remember hearing controversies about
"Doom", about "Resident Evil", even something like "Mortal Kombat" was a big deal when I was a kid.
And it was all because the graphics had progressed to a point where you could show all these sort of graphic
things that you previously would have only been able to see in movies, that you could now see in these games.
And a lot of parents groups and politicians did not like that.
You're engaged now as the aggressor, you're engaged as the person
who commits the violence, and not just someone who watches the violence.
"The Ghostbusters" game for the Commodore 64, you are the Ghostbusters and you
start off a lot like the movie, you have to go and buy all your different equipment,
you put it together and then you go out and you hunt ghosts in
order to get enough money to be able to get to the finale of the game.
You would get in the Ecto-1, you would drive to the location and
there would be a ghost that looked like Slimer that's flying around.
And you have to position your two Ghostbusters together to trap the ghosts in between
the streams. And then you can suck them up in the trap. Not really challenging, but fun.
"Nightmare on Elm Street" was one of the few NES games where you could
play four players using the NES Four score. You're running around Elm Street,
which happens to be the longest street in the world in this game, but the idea is to collect all of Freddie's bones.
You have all these stock villains like lollipop ghosts with stick arms, bats, skeletons, Frankenstein monsters,
it's so generic. Every once in a while Freddy would appear, and it would
say 'Freddy's coming', but it would be a 'Freddy's *- trademark - 'coming'.
"Friday the 13th" on NES might have been one of the first horror games I've ever
played. And there's a bunch of items you have to collect but you'll never have time
because this Jason alarm keeps going off and you have
to keep on top of he's out there killing the camp counselors.
Then you go inside the house and it switches to 3D which was kind of cool at that
time. It was one of the first horror games that really made an impression on me.
"You and your friends are dead. Game over."” That's kind of rough, you know? A
lot of these games don't really hold up, but back then you used your imagination.
And you made the best of it, because that's all we had. But we
would have never imagined that, you know, all these decades later,
you get a real "Friday the 13th" game that definitely feels more official than,
you know, the type of games they would usually put out in the '80s.
The "Friday the 13th" game. As a player, you can play as Jason, which is fun,
or as any of the victims, trying to get away from Jason or defeat Jason.
So I thought that was an ingenious way of building a video game. In
this video game, you can play as several different versions of Jason,
I was honored that they wanted me to be a part of it, because this is animation, basically, so they could have
used anyone. But it was in their minds I was the person to do it, because they liked how I moved as the character.
"Friday the 13th" video game, I essentially did what I did on the movie,
except not physically, right. My job was to sit down and create Kills.
On paper, they didn't seem so horrible and grisly,
but then seeing him in a game I was like "Oh, God, you know, I wrote that”.
I created them on paper,
and then Kane Hodder donned the suit and did the motion capture for all the kills.
You're wearing spandex, which is scary to think of me in spandex anyway,
with sensors everywhere.
So ll look at the monitor, I see Jason. Whenever I would move I
would see exactly what the character is going to look like in the game.
By the way, Kane Hodder plays the game,
but he plays it as a camp counselor, trying to outwit himself.
Is it's not as easy as you would think. And I played as a counselor, trying to
defeat Jason, and I just got my ass whooped. Eh, it's more fun to be the bad guy.
"Angel Heart" was another one of those Exorcist,
Rosemary's Baby kind of movies. I think it's completely underrated.
I think it's one of Alan Parker's, who directed, I think it's one of his best
ever. A guy making a deal with the devil not really knowing it's the devil.
It's funny I have a feeling I've met you before.
- I don't know, I don't think so.
Mickey Rourke is terrific in it,
De Niro is terrific in it. And it's great to see them operating together.
How terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the wise, Johnny.
That was one of the attractions of it ,was we get to see Lisa Bonet,
the Cosby kid as a little sexpot.
So the gods got you pregnant? - Yeah. - I understand that. [woman laughing] Sorry.
I'm not, it was the best fuck I ever had.
Very much about the '80s, very much about behaving yourself and
not being as decadent and horrible and cruel and awful to people as-
as the '80s allowed you to be, seemed to be in fashion then. De Niro has this
spectacular moment he's talking about the an egg as sort of a metaphor for the soul.
You know, some religions think that the egg is the symbol of the soul,
did you know that?
And at the end of this beautiful speech takes a big honkin' bite at the egg,
just big teeth and everything right into it.
It's De Niro as you've never seen him, or seen him before since. He's going down
the elevator at the end and descending into hell and not having any choice about it.
It's a great horrible cautionary tale as well. But boy, oh boy.
The soul is immortal. Yours belongs to me.
"Creepshow 1" was such a success that they of course had to put out a sequel, "Creepshow
2" was not as memorable as the first but it did have some very memorable segments.
So here we were, you know, in Arizona, you know,
doing another "Creepshow". Mike Gornick directed it.
I love being with Mike Gornick. I might have been a little miffed that I wasn't asked
to do the effects on it, and I think their intention was to save money or something,
then they offered me the role of the creep. Okay, great, you know, so. And I,
you know, I just mimed that whole thing, the dialogue was recorded.
I never seen anyone so impatient, Billy.
In fact, when I played the creep, l insisted that when my scene was over, I must immediately
have the makeup removed and walk into a shower. My nightmares involve being sticky.
I can't be sticky. So wearing that makeup is the stickiest feel, I hate wearing it, but it's
good that I have worn it because I know what I'm doing to people when I put it on them, okay.
I never seen anyone so impatient, Billy.
Anthologies are hard. They're a hard sell. Because if you had a story
that was good enough for a movie, you'd make a whole movie about it.
Starts off with of course, the wooden Indian, the old trope of the kind store owners that
are elderly get, you know, beat up and killed by these creeps that are robbing the store.
And then of course,
the wooden Indian outside turns real and murders these three kids.
Then we get to “The Raft,” which is great. They did a great job of it. It's a creepy story about four friends who swim
out to a raft and then this giant oil slick that's living and has magical powers that can mesmerize you, kills them all.
It's one of my wife's favorite movies but when I say to her, "you know that was just
a big garbage" but no, no, no, no, she doesn't want to hear about the effects, okay.
The creature in the lake, using ultra slime and tinted metacil and all this
kind of stuff. This sequence where Page Hannah is - is attacked by the creature.
We had a bunch of different gags we had an arm prosthetic that I sculpted with bladders underneath it,
and then we built these different versions of her sort of melted as the blob is kind of enveloping her.
One of the funniest moments of that was we were prepping for Chief Wooden Head, and Howard Berger
had called and said, "We need slime. We were shooting another shot and we're out of slime."
I was like driving like 50 miles an hour, 60 miles an hour on these side streets.
And I turned a corner and one of the buckets in the back seat spilled [claps).
And I looked at down at my feet and this black sludge went up underneath the seat, my foot's now stuck
to the gas pedal and the brake. So we were literally scooping it out and running to dress the set.
I beat you!
It's always tough to do a sequel I think, and particularly an anthological
sequel because the expectations are already high, because of how well
the first "Creepshow" did, and how much it connected with fans. It was missing that
spark. Wt tries, but I don't think it nearly reaches the heights that "Creepshow 1" did.
And what's great about horror is you can make social
commentary while entertaining people on this roller coaster ride.
You're not going to sit there passively in a Jackie Kong movie, for sure. What's the story of "Blood Diner"? Blood
Diner is family loyalty gone wrong, they love their uncle. The problem is the uncle is a psychopath serial killer.
The script was serious as a heart attack. From what I understood, it was a scene by scene ripoff of
"Blood Feast". Herschel Gordon Lewis's execution is a completely different execution of what I did.
"Blood Diner"” transcends the genre.
I had the killers being extremely likable guys. It was not scripted that way, it was scripted they
were supposed to be these ghoulish brothers that go around, you could see them a mile away coming,
and they kill people and stitch together this female Frankenstein in the back of their popular
restaurant [laughing]. The idea of reanimating family members brain and having that brain tell you
to commit mass homicide, was so out there.
You, my nephews,
must construct Sheetar from the body parts of many immoral girls.
It's really misguided fast loyalty at its extreme, I wanted to shock people.
Saw sound] Am I doing this right, Uncle Anwar?
I was just having fun. It doesn't bother me to have a naked woman doing nude aerobics because I'm a woman
[laughing]. A nude kung fu scene? No one had ever done that. I had to do that. And why did I do that?
She's completely nude, full bush [laughing]. I wanted
her to be naked because I wanted her to look vulnerable.
You think it's an easy kill for sure,
and that's when the - that's where the surprise comes in.
And my job as the director is to throw them off in the head another direction.
The people that I work with my actors and my crew don't have a problem at all working with
a woman. Where you run into the problems are with the executives, there was a disconnect.
How could this little Asian young woman direct this outrageous off the hook,
violent movie,
right? [chuckles] Funny,
ridiculous absurdest piece. Things haven't changed that much.
It's not a contest. It's really isn't, it just is who's qualified to do it,
and I bring attention to that. My sets look like the United Nations [laughing].
You've got every possible nationality working,
and you've got half of the crew if not more - women.
And that's why you see a big representation of different ethnicities,
because that's the way I saw the world.
Jesus fucking Christ, what am I paying you two for?
The way I saw that finale was like a war scene. It was an insane undertaking,
but she bites that head off of a virgin with her giant vagina [laughing].
With teeth in a ritual that brings her to life, how absurd. Censors were
shutting it down. They said it had no socially redeeming values whatsoever.
It just was misunderstood, the film,
and it was way ahead of its time. Yet I found my followers [laughing).
Right before I stick my big sausage in you, what do they call 'ya?
They call me Sheetar [growling].
"Hello Mary Lou: Prom
Night II" is about this really
awesome chick living in the
'50s who is ahead of her time.
She loves to party and have sex with many, many boys and finds herself murdered
as she's supposed to be coordinated by one of those boys that she had scorned.
And she comes back to wreak havoc and take her revenge and get her crown back.
She's presented as this sort of slutty character. In the '80s, we would
say slutty, but really what that means is that she sort of owns her sexuality.
It's not who you come with, it's who takes you home. Scram.
Mary Lou Maloney is my favorite, I literally have the poster hanging over
my bed. She just was definitely somebody I looked up to when I was little,
like she's just sexually open and not apologizing for it. And I don't know,
and then her kills were really cool.
It was a Canadian film that has nothing to do with the original “Prom Night.”
The queer audience has gotten really, really excited about "Hello Mary Lou".
It resonates for them in a way that a lot of other '80s Films don't.
It's got a sort of a coding that they have embraced and mapped to.
We've come a very long way in how we think about that
kind of agency and about how we judge that kind of behavior.
I think her whole situation is absorbed by a contemporary
audience in a way that '80s audiences weren't ready to do, or willing.
See you later alligator.
"Prince of Darkness" is a movie that shows what happens
when John Carpenter gets experimental. It goes straight for
the cerebral but then it goes for a lot of the traditional
blood and guts that you would expect in a Carpenter film.
I decided I wanted to make some low budget movies again after
"Big Trouble Little China". "Prince of Darkness" was the first one.
It was inspired by Dario Argento's "Inferno”, because he just did
things crazy - these crazy batshit things and I thought, let's go. Let's try it.
The cast in this is one of the most diverse casts of the '80s. But Carpenter has said he
didn't cast them to be diverse. He cast them because they were the best choices for the roles.
I wanted to work with Victor Wong and Dennis Dun again,
and I cast Donald Pleasance, I thought what a really interesting cast.
What is it? - A secret that can no longer be kept.
"Prince of Darkness" features Alice Cooper as one of the controlled homeless people, and Alice
was a nice guy, he brought along the gag where he stabs the guy, it was from his stage show.
He just kind of wanders up on him, very unassuming. And then all of a sudden [screams].
He is a member of the homeless community. He has been possessed by the devil's particle,
whatever you want to call it, the evil. And he is now the goalie.
He's keeping people in [chuckles] or killing them as they come out.
Carpenter, as he does, masterfully balanced two things in this, it was the war of science
and religion. You have science where they're talking about black holes and particles,
and you have religion where the son of the
anti God is being held in a chamber in a church.
Every particle has an anti particle, its mirror image. Maybe he's anti God.
The fact that they never really come out and say it's the devil, is genius.
They found the God Particle. Where's the devil's particle? And that I think is
where Prince of Darkness comes in. That tells you how relevant that movie is today.
No person can hold him now.
I am eternal.
Freddie's personality was being quoted by Johnny Carson. It was in Mad Magazine, it was in the funny
papers, it was being merchandised. When you become that part of the culture, you follow it a little bit.
So the franchise exploited Freddie's sense of humor,
[woman screaming] This isn't helping.
And a kind of almost surreal, subconscious, dreamlike sense of fun and
revenge that Freddy was going through with the culture at the same time,
the Freddy merchandising now it - there's something new every week. Literally. It's just amazing,
the amount of stuff,
from pencil sharpeners to squirt guns. There's silly stuff, there's corny stuff.
I love finding old, like board games from Europe, you know, and things like that are
fun for me to see them. I love the foreign posters, like the one over my shoulder here,
that's from Thailand. Because they're more lurid. I didn't suffer the curse of typecasting or and - and -
and when I did, I was prepared for it. I wasn't going 10 be surprised by it. And I'd already proved myself.
Let me go! [woman screaming]. - Hey, hands on the counter, asshole!
It was a big deal to decide to be an actor or a musician back when I was a kid. It was like a big
deal. In my generation, God, you know, you can be an engineer, or you can be a doctor or a lawyer.
But that was it. That's what you're supposed to be. I did Shakespeare, was paid for
it professionally, union. Moliere. I did George Bernard Shaw. I did Arthur Miller.
I just love doing it. I was trained to do that. And I was getting good parts and I was
predominantly doing comedy. So most of my memory of theaters about getting that laugh.
1973 till 1983 I was not only an established Hollywood character actor,
sidekick,
co star,
I side kicked all of the big stars and then I moved into television.
And I played bad guys, and I played - 've been playing a lot of southerners I don't know
why. I guess I'd learned something doing "Tennessee Williams" but that's how Hollywood saw me.
Hey, quit stalling,
will 'ya! Just because you know you've got a great hand. [punching sound].
Was on "Manimal". I do know that for the fan boys it did become,
like a kind of suspension bridge of obsession.
You know, with werewolf effects. A show like "Manimal” is a link in that genre.
And it deserves its asterisk you know, and I deserve my residual check [chuckles).
And then "V".
I am just. - Just what? - Yes. - Oh, get out of the way, damn stupid alien!
I do "V and I've tapped into the great science fiction Zeitgeist of the world,
not just America, then our movie became a big hit. And I was off.
This is God.
Our budgets are getting a little bit bigger for each movie,
but time got precious. Not shooting. We never
were rush shooting. But post. We would be shooting a movie,
and they would rely too much on the Freddy jokes.
I could -I would have an option sometimes, a scene would end with
me doing a joke or a wisecrack or a kind of Dirty Harry make my day line.
Sorry, kid. I don't believe in fairy tales. [child crying)
And sometimes I would just do it without the line.
And sometimes I do it and just do it a little darker. But when you're editing, that line
becomes your punctuation point, it becomes your button that can, you know, button up the scene.
And give it a little percussive rimshot so they erred in that direction a bit.
Krueger! - Well it ain't Dr. Seuss.
"Wes Craven's New Nightmare" is a great film. And the most
popular of all the nightmare films in the franchise is "Nightmare 3".
[screaming]
Gaston Leroux, "Phantom of the Opera"” was the Stephen King cheap thrill story of its
time. A Penny Dreadful. "Give me a penny mate. I'll give you something dreadful.”
Still hungry for an introduction?
We delivered the goods on our "Phantom of the Opera". The director Dwight Little
and I were kind of simultaneously inspiring each other to be on the same page,
with this sort of homage, to the Hammer film, which is why we transported our "Phantom of
the Opera"” from the Paris Opera of the 1890s
to the 1890s of London of "Jack the Ripper”,
and the sets are scrumptious and romantic and Stephanie Lawrence,
from Evita on the West End playing our diva.
Bill Nighy, "A bit of blood and guts here". But we're
also doing the romantics sumptuous on location richness.
So it was great fun. But the other real
selling point for me on "Phantom of the Opera”
was there was two scripts. There was this
second script called "The Phantom of Manhattan".
And it's ultra romantic. And of course that attracted me
to play the romance of it. The fans of not only "Phantom
of Opera”, but my fans from Freddy,
there's a huge kind of strange goth, romantic contingent. There are girls
that have a kind of "Beauty and the Beast" attraction with Freddy. I mean, to this day, I'm
so disappointed that we never got to do that second film, you know, "Phantom of Manhattan".
Well, here's the thing with "976-Evil ",nobody
held a gun to my head. They made me a nice
offer. I was allowed to direct,
but I love the idea of "976-Evil". It seems gimmicky now,
in hindsight, but the body of it ll liked,
and I had this great cast assembled. I got Stephen Geoffreys fresh
off "Fright Night". Steven,
his look and his haircut and his sense - fashion sense, he embodied the '80s.
Kevin Yagher, you know, did me a big favor and designed this strange, wonderful makeup.
It's a great makeup. As he transforms into evil as the devil gets his hooks into him.
Bye Bye.
I had great scenes with Robert Picardo is the devil. The devil who runs the
976-Evil phone call site because that's how he recruits people to the dark side.
I used to live in Radio Shack when I was in
high school [sniffing]. But it didn't work out.
And he had some great comedy and I had to cut that stuff out.
A guy can't make a buck anymore.
And one over my - my female producer Lisa Hansen,
she was seeing the movie through my eyes. She saw where I was going.
She got ill in post production, and the other producer came in and he
was just - he had read some how to make a horror movie book, you know,
sold at Larry Edmunds for $1.99 remaindered in a paperback with a cigarette burn
on it. And he thought all horror movies have to be 90 minutes and I was going,
"No, no, no action movies have to be 90 minutes. Not horror
movies." There's still sequences that are all mine in the boys bathroom.
You know, with the skateboards, all the stuff with the mirror and him getting sliced by hoax.
That's pure, unadulterated Robert Englund, you know, it would have been a third again, better movie,
had they left and trusted me with what it was. I mean, I should get over it but it's your baby.
The reason I don't direct film as much is not because I'm intimidated by film, but I am desired.
Because of my name and because of the seats I fill. And because of my baggage that I bring. I am desired to always do effects
labeled movies. And it's rough enough directing film because
once you say "action", [ticking sound] you're against the clock.
That's all you hear. Pre production is fun, post production is ecstatic. But
the actual shooting of a movie is not pleasant. You're not sleeping at night,
you're worried about getting your day, it's not fun,
even when your actors and your cameraman are bringing you great stuff.
The reason Robert Englund doesn't direct more film is because people aren't asking me to direct the
films that I'm right for. Left to my own devices I'm the guy that should be directing “Tender Mercies.”
That's the kind of film I would do the best.
Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.
It's show time [thunder sound].
Beetlejuice is for me one of the movies where it shows Tim Burton firing on all cylinders.
He was just absolutely in his element. It made him one of the premiere directors of the '80s.
It's hilarious, it's weird,
it's funny. The cast is terrific. The practical effects are great. Geena
Davis and Alec Baldwin die. They go to the
afterlife and they find out that they don't want to die.
The couple go back to their house. But unfortunately, the worst family
ever moves in and wants to change everything that they love about the house.
So they enlist the help of Beetlejuice, who is the human Exorcist. He's there
to scare them out of the house. Problem is Beetlejuice is a little eccentric.
What do we got here tonight, kids?
Michael Keaton surprises you all the time. To see him play Beetlejuice. It
was such a great character and really outrageous and wild and all over the place.
Scram!
That was neat to see that.
The “Day-0” scene was glorious to me.
I reenact that almost, you know, once a month [laughing].
I think Beetlejuice is the film that really put Winona Ryder on the map. I mean,
she had such a great character.
It's kind of the updated Wednesday Addams just this creepy little girl who
had to live in this creepy house with her sort of creepy parents [laughing].
I am utterly alone [opera music playing in the background] [sniffs].
I think that's really one of the first times that you saw what - what goth was all about, in comedy like
that. So that was exciting to see her and to realize that she was such an outcast and you really felt for her,
which made me really happy- I liked that.
The waiting room is a prime example of Tim Burton's creativity in the "80s, because you had all
these people who were waiting to go to the afterlife and each one of them died in a different way.
So you had the circus performer who had been sawed in half for real. You had the witch doctor
with the shrunken head. It's just brimming with that wonderful Tim Burton stuff that we all miss.
You want a cigarette? - No, thank you. - Trying to cut down myself.
Well, Tim Burton, he's gonna surprise you and do some beautiful, wonderful artwork and set designs,
he brings you into another world, which I really adore. And his stories are fun. They just engage you.
You look great.
I wish I could have done one of his movies [laughing).
Can you be scary?
- Oh! Don't ask me if ll can be scary. What do you think of this?
You may not have heard of the term video nasties or gross out films. These terms refer
to a whole group of pictures from a blood and guts, sometimes real, sometimes fake.
In the UK, we had the video nasties which was [chuckles] a reaction by the Conservative government to sort
of clamp down on horror movies, because a lot of them were getting through without being rated by the BBFC.
So kids could rent these movies and watch them at home. So they wrote up a list
of movies that had - that were essentially had to be banned. The funny thing was,
was that there's a lot of people criticizing these movies without actually seeing them. It's often the case with with
government. They also had these local MPs as well who like to comment and get sort of political points with their-
with their constituency by saying, "Oh, this movie is really bad, it should be banned."” and someone goes "Oh, have you
seen this movie?” "Oh, no, no, I don't need to see it", you think, well, you need to see something before you criticize it.
If anyone can stand up and defend the sort of horrific scenes that I have had to see, and other members
of parliament have had to see, I believe they're living in a different world to that world that I live in.
The video nasties didn't stick around for that long, but there were a number of movies
that were on the BBFC kind of hit list for a number of years that remained banned.
And it was kind of years later that these movies did eventually come out. And people got to see them properly
for the first time and not some kind of wonky VHS bootleg from 1982 or something like that [chuckles].
Video nasties they don't like violence or blood and all that stuff. You can have all
the sex you want. But if you use the word 'chainsaw' in your title, that's too violent.
And "Hollywood Hooker" sounds worse than "Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers".
That was a great line. They charge an arm and a leg because the movies about this prostitution ring
that my sister has fallen into and having to
investigate it and go under cover with this chainsaw cult.
I'm gonna burn that temple over those fuckers heads.
You know, you've got a lot of guts for a little girl.
It's a very silly romp. A film noir, but it's in color.
I'll check the photo to make sure. It was her alright.
I got involved with "Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers"” when Fred Olen Ray gave me a call.
It was Memorial Day weekend. And he said, "I'm gonna do a movie in three days now".
And it was just so tongue in cheek and so fun. And I got to meet leather face from
"Texas Chainsaw Massacre". That was
like a big deal to me. Because ll love that film.
[man screaming] Please, Mr. Chandler,
for the sake of the neighbors, they're trying to sleep.
Gunnar Hansen was like the nicest guy who
had no clue that he was admired by thousands.
I think it's time somebody cut you down to size, Jack.
Fred Olen Ray is very - like he's got that dry sense of humor. He said, "Okay, dance sexy with these
chainsaws". And I'm like, "they're heavy. And like,
I'm trying my best to dance sexy with the chainsaws”.
And I'm like struggling and I am being en-fixated when I'm in the sarcophagus with the chainsaws running and all the
smokes going. If you watch I like kind of like stumble
when I get out because I'm like high from the smoke in there.
Then I was like dancing with them and I felt something on my leg and I thought, 'oh my god, hot oil
is burning my skin', but I didn't stop. I kept going. It was like,
"Action. Here's your chainsaw. Go."
They just said, "Well this a great idea,
let's use real chainsaws. They're cheaper.”
I think they probably got them at Kmart, and then returned them the next day.
"Dead Heat" is a buddy cop film with zombies. You got Joe Piscopo and Treat Williams, who
discovered that there's this company that has found a way to bring people back from the dead.
The only problem is, you don't come back for very long, you start to fall apart. And
they've been using it bringing people back from the dead to go do things like heists.
You wanna be dead?
Part of the humor of it is that they called it "Dead Heat". It's such a generic title,
but I think they were kind of aping off of the fact that it was a goof on action films.
I loved working on "Dead Heat". Mark Goldblatt was really cool. I mean,
I had Carte Blanche and I got to work with Vincent Price.
Death doesn't discriminate. At least not till now.
We really did a lot of close up quality zombie makeups on that.
They cut out a lot of our effects because they were just too over the top.
I was cut out of "Dead Heat" because they didn't use that footage. But I practiced at Steve's
shop with this heavy skeleton doing puppeteering, you know, dancing and dancing and dancing.
I danced to "Burning Up" with this heavy skeleton for so long,
so I would get it right.
She was the sexy dancer puppeteer for the sexy skeleton, but they cut that
scene. Again why they cut all that workout? It would only make that movie better.
The shitty movie could have only been better with a bunch of over the top effects,
right?
Joe Piscopo when he was on Saturday Night Live was kind of this skinny kind of Wiener-ish comedian. He had started
lifting weights and this was one of the first times where it really came out, "Oh, look at this dude, he's jacked.”
And I think that going forward,
more people will remember him as the big muscle dude.
I think my favorite part of the work that we did in "Dead Heat" is the butcher shop
that comes alive, because I have always thought in zombie movies, why is it just people?
And so this whole butcher shop when it comes to life, I mean, there's even a liver, that was a really cool effect, we
built an inverted table and inverted the background and inverted the camera the same way and just let the liver roll.
But then it looks like it's moving until it leaps on Treat's face.
Ducks, chickens, fish, you name it, they all came to life.
Part of the way through the film Treat Williams dies, they bring him
back from the dead so that he can solve the crime of who murdered him.
Hi guys.
The longer he's been dead, the more alive he comes and that's reflected in the
makeup. When he's handcuffed to the back of the van, car rolls down explodes,
he comes out and he's suddenly cool because his hair is all punked out and it's black. He's got a piece of shrapnel
for a long earring. And his blue ridiculous Hawaiian shirt is all black and he looks hip and he looks cool.
Detective Mortis, homicide.
At the end of the film, Treat Williams and Joe Piscopo
are both back from the dead, sinew is flying everywhere.
It's a spectacle that you need to see.
Next to maniac, "Maniac Cop" is Bill Lustig's magnum opus. How can you not love
a movie about a killer cop written by Larry Cohen and directed by Bill Lustig?
Bill Lustig went out and found the money for "Maniac Cop", and was the understanding that
he would direct the picture. I didn't want to direct it anyway, so it all worked out okay.
There's a killer on the streets and he's killing indiscriminately. And a lot of people believe that
it is Matt Cordell, a good police officer that was killed in prison but is now back for revenge.
Tom Atkins plays the cop, who's on the trail of Matt Cordell,
trying to undo If it's really this killer cop back from the dead.
It's called "Maniac Cop" because it's got a
maniac cop in it. And it was my job to find
him and to kill him. But I didn't, he killed me,
threw me out of window on top of a cab.
Died, ignominiously.
The maniac cop Matt Cordell is played by Robert Z'Dar, who is quite possibly the only actor
in history, who has a more impressive chin than Bruce Campbell, who is also in the movie.
He has a rare medical condition called cherubism. And they use that to great
effect in this movie, and it actually ended up benefiting him in his movie career.
The climax of the film starts with a car chase and
culminates in one of the best villain deaths in the '80s. It
ends with a cliffhanger that leads into "Maniac Cop 2",
which is in my humble opinion, the best of the series.
My one question is, what the hell is the matter with William Lustig? Bruce Campbell and I, we run into each
other every once in a while and he said the same thing [chuckles], "What the hell is up with Bill Lustig"?
"You're the star the first one" he says to me, and 25 minutes into the movie, you're dead
and out the window on top of a cab at the hands of the maniac cop. In the second one,
I'm the star [chuckles] and I go to a news stand to buy a magazine, somebody
stabs me to death. It has nothing to do with anything and I'm dead [laughing].
There you are. William Lustig, nuts.
I had thought, well, it's "Poltergeist”, you know, it's this, it is a sequel.
It's a popular franchise, I thought this could be a lot of fun to do this.
Gary Sherman had this thick book and he had everything - he was like a scientist,
he had everything laid out and how this was going to be done.
And the special effects were going to be real and challenging. And I thought, well, that's
sort of right up my alley. With my dance background. I can -I can do this, you know?
But it was brutal to shoot, it really was difficult.
We're back.
The use of the double and the mirrors and all of that. And when you had the long hallway of mirrors, and you
had different characters, I think at one point, there were maybe five different characters that were involved.
It was extremely difficult and frustrating, and it all had to be timed and perfect.
And even with the queues, one thing could go off and you had to start all over again.
Because everything took two three times as long as it would have the way we shot it. The payoff, of course is it's
like oh, that was worth it. You see it. And I think the hallway scene is a great case of, oh, look, that really worked.
It was great. And there's something magical in the moment, you know.
Hello? - Hello? - Hello?
Zelda Rubinstein [chuckles]. Oh, my God, she was so much fun. We
really had a blast. And she had a lot of boyfriends, I know that [laughing].
Zelda attracted very handsome young boys.
I can lead you into the light! I have the knowledge and the power!
What I honestly remember most about that film, other than being wet for a very long time [chuckles],
when we were running around, was Heather O'Rourke. She was just a real little girl, she liked Barbies,
and she loved her mother. She wasn't a child actress. I mean, she had none of that
going on. And there was so much chaos on that set, because it was so challenging.
But whenever Heather was on the set, it was like, she was like a grounding force.
A woman's entitled to change her mind.
And I always feel like I can relax. Heather is here. It's kind of funny when you think about it.
And I always think about, you know, the tragedy of her loss and all and how unnecessary it was.
But the fact that she had this old soul, you know, and that's the
only way that l can look at it that I don't feel so desperately sad.
"Waxwork" is somewhat inspired by other wax movies,
like the 1924 silent film "Waxworks", and the
1933 and 1953 versions of "House of Wax". This
one is more about the wax figures coming to life.
You have a familiar face, Zach Galligan from "Gremlins".
Welcome to the Waxwork!
He and his fellow students go to a wax museum that's full of classic car
scenes. And when they wander into the display, they become part of it.
One of the girls goes into this area, and it's a vampire.
Or you have one person goes into a an area, and it's a werewolf. A lot of them are based on the old horror tropes.
It's very clever because the way that they do it is after the person dies, then they become part of the exhibit.
They become wax models like in "House of Wax".
They had the marquee de sade, they had zombies, they had a wide variety of different exhibits. The
effects are better than you probably would be expecting with a movie like this. Sadly, the original cut
of the film got rated X and they had to cut out
some of the gore in order to get it down to an R rating.
The ending is crazy, because everything in the museum attacks. I mean,
this is '80s excess and it reminds you what you love about the decade.
Take me! - Take this.
"Cellar Dweller" [laughing], really? Well, this is what I remember
about "Cellar Dweller". Stuart was shooting "Robot Jox" in Italy,
And he said, "You know, I want you to do a cameo in this."
Damn right he's got a chance, he's got to kill that convict!
And then Charlie, I believe, called me and said, "Listen, while you're over there, do you think that
you could also do a day on this other movie kind of a half day of reacting and carrying a hatchet?"
We had Jeffrey Combs appears as the comic book artist from the past in this
sort of pre title sequence to "Cellar Dweller”, just to set up the whole story.
And he's drawing on the inspiration of the dark arts as embodied in this book,
clearly ripped off from "The Evil Dead" [laughing] and he pays the price and he dies.
I certainly felt like I'm going to write the best
version of a movie called "Cellar Dweller" starring
this John Buechler designed monster that all takes place in one building,
that is humanly possible.
Are you trying to say to me that a monster you drew just
stepped of the page and devoured Amanda and Norman?
That's how I got into the "Cellar Dweller. It's like, "Here's the monster, write a
movie called "Cellar Dweller' with this monster” that was Charles Band's way.
But there's a lot to be said for having set parameters. And you know, I mean, my god
Michelangelo just, he only had that ceiling. I still think the monster is really cool.
More and more as time goes on, I do meet "Cellar Dweller” fans, which at first kind of
surprised me, but now we kind of. you know, is heartwarming [chuckles]. You know, it's -
it's nice that like you write something and then you might just sort of shrug it off and not
think about it for a few decades and you find out that actually had a positive effect on somebody.
People love that movie! And I find it to be so campy.
Hey grandpa, look at the mirror! [people laughing] - You stupid bastards!
I really wanted to prove myself on that,
even though it was a very low budget movie, we did the best we could.
"Night of the Demons" is about these girls that have a party, and everybody's excited
to go and they're all dressed up in different costumes, and they call out a demon.
I get possessed and I just go crazy.
I am writing on my face with lipstick,
I'm making lipstick disappear in my breasts, which nobody expects.
It's like it's supposed to be kind of titillating. Hahaha. But
it becomes weird. When they do the effect on camera, they
show my breasts, then they cut away and then there's a
mold of me. From here to there, they had cut out a little slit.
So when I'm doing my lipstick trick, that lipstick just goes right through there.
When I first met Steve Johnson, who did the effects, I went to his shop
and they had to do alive cast of my breast. I had a crush on him right away.
And then I guess he kind of had a crush on me too. So it was very awkward because
he's putting alginate which is like a plaster type thing that hardens on me.
And then they're wrapping me like a mummy with bandages and having to
touch my breasts, and it was just very awkward. So it was interesting how we met.
I enjoyed that effect, because it wasn't on my face and I
didn't feel like I was like covered in all this horrible stuff.
But I'm like a very vain girl in this movie.
And I have to ask if my makeup's okay.
Is my makeup okay?
I put my head back, you know, they cut away and then I'm possessed.
Stop looking at me! - Ah!
I had contacts and teeth and all this makeup that was glued to me, and then I surprised him by
poking his eyes out and in fact it's not my hands that are doing it because I didn't do it right.
They had to like put my bracelet on this guy's
hands and have him poke my eyes out professionally.
I could look at it and see how it would scare the shit at certain scenes. You see Angela gliding
down the hall and going through the shadows and light with that face. It's pretty - pretty creepy.
Most of the cast thought the house was haunted. They
thought there was really hauntings. I think it scared them.
As a horror fan, you were kind of learning that the business - the movie business was very fickle.
So any number of your horror icon directors can be jumping to any project at any given minute.
Every month in Fangoria, there's a section called Monster Invasion, and that's news of upcoming
releases. And there would always be a paragraph at the bottom called The Terror Teletype.
"Director X is making film Y with actor Z" and you'd be like,
"Wow, I want to see that."
And then that movie would never happen. And that happened a lot.
"The Fly" is one of my favorite films of all time. And
given the opportunity to write the sequel was incredibly
exciting to me. And what I came up with bears very little
resemblance [chuckles] to the movie that was eventually made.
The original "Fly 2" that I came up with had a lot to do with something that
was going on at the time, there was a couple named Tony and Susan Alamo,
and they would try to find mothers talk them out of the abortions and talk them into
raising good Christian, God fearing children. So I took it a step further and said,
well, let's find an organization that not only wants them not to abort, they are
also training them, as the Soviet Union did decades ago, creating super children.
If Veronica Quaife and Seth Brundle had had that baby, and Veronica wanted to abort because of the
monster she knew it would become,
but was talked into giving up her baby for adoption by this group.
They suddenly are in possession of this super powerful creature that looked human,
but was much more than that. It
would become the first line of defense in a new Christian
army. Then along came a new studio head, Leonard Goldberg.
He had a very short life as a feature studio at 20th Century Fox. He
wanted a teenage monster movie, that's what was popular in the '80s.
So suddenly,
what I thought could be a good companion piece to the Cronenberg
movie became something much more
mundane. I did write a version of that.
But left to direct my first movie "Critters 2" at that time, and Frank Darabont
came on board as the second writer on "Fly 2" and then Jim and Ken Wheat.
So in the resulting movie, I was sitting in my seat,
and I was watching it unspool,
and I'm sinking lower and lower [chuckles]. It's so far removed from what the intent was.
And I thought Chris Wallace did a great job as a director, good cast and everything but - but
it was so far afield from what I had intended. That it I haven't watched it since [chuckles).
"Pumpkinhead”, it's a morality tale,
which always make for the best movies. I have been trying
to get back into the world of "Pumpkinhead” and get the rights back to do a prequel that -
that sort of sets up the story and tells it in a linear fashion,
so that it leads and ends up with the Stan Winston movie
from the '80s. But - but while that could be a long, long, long process with - with yielding very little [chuckles].
After "Chainsaw 2",
I wrote a treatment for "Chainsaw 3" and Sawyers have now moved to New York City,
Leatherface and Stretch are married. They have a little baby in a bone
crib with like a little leather mask on. Chop Top is a DJ in a disco club.
Leather Face by day works for Parks and Recreation, sewing off limbs in Central
Park. And Jim Siedow, the cook, has a famous chili restaurant down in Soho,
and at night Leather Face goes into the steam tunnels under Grand Central and chops
up some of the homeless, and that's the meat for Jim Siedow's award-winning chili.
Tobe didn't really want to go to that place. So
that was you know that - that was kind of stillborn.
We thought that the follow up to "Re-animator” wouldn't be "Re-animator 2".
The idea of doing a series of movies based on
Lovecraft was something that really appealed to us.
And so the next project was going to be "Shadow over Innsmouth”, which is a story about
people turning into fish. Lovecraft is taking evolution and turning it upside down.
Instead of, you know - you know the idea of us coming out of the sea,
we're going back into the sea. People are changing into underwater creatures.
And Dennis actually wrote the script of that while we were in post production for "Re-animator”. That to
me seemed like the sequel, just like the sequel to the "House of Usher" was "The Pit and the Pendulum".
We'd get Jeffrey and Barbara do it more like a
William Castle series of movies or a Corman Poe series.
Everybody, including Charlie Band, who owned the studio
that were making the films thought this concept was ridiculous.
And no one's gonna want to see a movie like this. Brian Yuzna and
I took that concept and pitched it to just about every studio in town.
The closest we ever got to getting it made was one guy who said, "Well,
if you make them werewolves, we'll do it. Turning into fish is not scary.”
And I wanted to say to that guy, you know, how about if I just bring a big fish in and put it on your
desk right now, you know, or shark or something? I think you might find that a little disturbing.
Shadow had a ton of really cool production concepts that
were developed by the masterful illustrator Bernie Wrightson.
Stuart Gordon never got to make "Shadow over Innsmouth”.
But he did get to use some of those elements in "Dagon"”.
The thing about "Shadow over Innsmouth” is it's one of the
most action packed Lovecraft stories ever that he ever wrote.
And "Shadow Over Innsmouth,”
it really is like the closest he ever got to a novel.
You know, I read somewhere that Fritz Lang wanted to make it way back in the day,
which would have been wonderful.
"Bad Taste" was my personal introduction to Peter Jackson. And I've been in love with his work ever since.
He was a New Zealand filmmaker who wanted to move on to bigger and better things and he certainly did.
He was getting a lot of attention for "Meet the Feebles" but that one still didn't go
over quite as well. This was the movie that kind of broke him to American audiences.
And then of course, this led into "Dead Alive”, which made people stand up and take notice. "Bad
Taste", it's about aliens that come down and find the new taste sensation on earth is human flesh.
Tomorrow we're having you for lunch [screaming]
It is a film that only could have come from the mind of
Peter Jackson. The aliens are these big, dumb monsters that
have asses that stick out really far [chuckles]. They're not scary at all,
they're completely meant to be dumb.
Peter Jackson is starring in the film as well. He plays
a guy named Derek. And as we know, Dereks don't run.
I'm a Derek, Dereks don't run.
He falls off a cliff and his skull breaks open so part of his brain falls out. Throughout
the film, his back of his head keeps falling open, and his brain keeps getting exposed.
He starts picking up brains along the way and shoving them back into his head. And he takes his belt off and
puts it around his head to keep his skull closed to stop his brain from falling out all the time [chuckles].
The effects in the movie are outstanding. You can actually look at
this and if you look at Peter Jackson's work with "Lord of the Rings",
You had the foundations of Weta who goes
on to be this in-demand Oscar award winning
effects company,
that was making this really goofy weird stuff back in the '80s.
"Halloween 5" is the revenge of Michael Myers. And it's
when the series starts to introduce some of the weirder aspects.
There's apparently now a psychic connection between Michael and Jamie Lloyd and
he's sporting a tattoo that would come to be part of the curse of the Thorne cult,
but you don't get that weird green blood that Michael Myers has in the next one.
I rewatched 5, and it's actually really, really good, maybe even better
than 2. And it really is the return of this horrific mad man to his hometown.
Fundamentally, what is scary about Michael Myers is that mask, that rubber mask,
that white face, that unknowable entity that is consistent throughout the franchise,
even though the mask changed, I think not usually for the better over the sequels,
people saw that original mask, and went, "That is scary."”
Every horror movie works if it's got a well written script, it's not about budget, it's
about the story. There has to be some different elements where you care about the characters.
Can you kill him? - I think so.
Wait a minute - - There isn't a minute to wait.
And that's kind of the whole crux of that movie, and why we care,
because we know the showdown is coming between characters that we care about,
And that's why the movie resonates because you
care about what happens at the finish of this movie.
Horace Pinker is a serial killer, he goes on death row, death by electric chair.
He gets shocked, but then, like feels the power.
And survives it, and comes back from the dead as an electric murderer.
The reason why "Shocker" really works is because the character of Horace Pinker, the murderer, is
played by Mitch Pileggi who was Skinner in "The X Files". He plays it really evil and mean and straight.
[screaming]. - Finger looking good [laughing].
He's got that look and so it works.
Horace Pinker's makeup was really interesting in that everything in that movie is practical, everything.
I went to visit my boyfriend, David Anderson, on the set. They were rolling gurneys out of the house,
And I'm like, "Wes, I'm gonna get on one of the gurneys and play a dead body."” He was like,
"great”. And then I just got on it one of the gurneys and they rolled me out under a blanket.
That's me. It was pretty ridiculous. Somebody put me in the credits, that was probably Wes, he has
a sense of humor. Watching horror movies being filmed by Wes Craven, there's never a dull moment.
I've heard of audience participation shows, but this is ridiculous.
When you talk about the connection between heavy metal and horror movies, "Shocker"
is probably the epitome of it because they had some heavy hitters on that soundtrack.
The theme song is called Shocker. And it's by a band called The Dudes of Wrath.
Who are The Dudes of Wrath? Paul Stanley on vocals, Desmond Child on vocals, Rudy
Sarzo on bass from the Ozzy's band, Tommy Lee on drums and Guy Mann Dude on guitar.
There's no way that can be a real name.
I'm playing Ricky the Santa Claus killer.
I've escaped from the prison hospital,
I've come to after being in some kind of a coma. I'm wearing my brain cap,
which is basically a clear salad bowl with a bunch of blinking lights
with a rubber brain with a bunch of orange liquid swirling around in it.
I liked gutting Tony from "West Side Story" Richard Beymer,
the therapist going "Ricky Ricky".
Come on, Ricky.
I don't like to hurt anybody on the set. I did a couple takes and he complained that I wasn't doing it hard enough.
He challenged my manhood. I remember basically it so it felt and so I did [laughing) really [crying out in pain].
Yeah. That got the Richard Beymer's seal of approval.
Carlos Palomino picks me up for a middleweight boxing champion of the world.
Merry Christmas, buddy. Hop in! [sound of car door closing]
Working his way up the ladder [chuckles] in the acting business.
Listo [spanish for: ready]. What happened to you, man? You get a head transplant?
That's the last we see of Carlos. The next thing we see of me is I'm
wearing Carlos's clothes and I'm knocking on the door of a - of a house.
Yes?
An old, kindly old woman opens up and she goes, "Oh, you look like
you're a homeless man. Why don't you come in, I'll give you something to eat".
I had a fear, a secret actors fear and that was that I would never be able to cry. Some actors really just were in touch with
their emotions. They could turn the you know, the water on and off and I just thought, geese'll never be able to do that.
And I remember looking up at this kind - this lady,
they beautifully cast. She's beaming down at me and I started
to cry. This moment was so loving, the tears started falling out of my eyes,
and then all of a sudden Monte goes,
"And cut." [whispering]
“Sotto voce". And all of a sudden the crew starts spontaneously clapping.
As these tears are coming down Ricky the Santa Claus killer's
cheeks. And I just remember thinking, this is fucking weird {laughing).
The power of that movie is the truth of that movie. "Henry: Portrait of a Serial
Killer" was based on a true story. And it's something that goes for the gut.
I personally love to hate serial killer movies.
They scare me a lot because they're representative of
something that really happens. "Henry: Portrait
of a Serial Killer” that one feels very raw and gritty.
Don't do that, Otis, she's your sister. - Okay, I was only kidding around, Henry.
- Tell her you're sorry. - Okay.
They did that on a very, very low budget. That was one of the first
movies that Michael Rooker did. His performance in that film is so scary.
You strangle one and stab another an then when you cut up when you're done,
the police don't know what to do.
Seemingly having a normal life with kind of an almost girlfriend and a friend, and he
was living with somebody but all the while committing these crazy murders is chilling.
I'm really fascinated by this sort of psychological reasons why we become who we are. And that
is an obvious clear case of some sort of deep childhood trauma that hasn't been addressed,
and some sort of unhealthy relationship with his mom. Mentally unstable people with
childhood traumas who then manifest those traumas into real life horror shows, it happens.
And that is scary.
Sometimes you beat me, make me wear a dress, watch you doing it.
This is less of a, you know, exploitation movie and more
of a character study. And that's the kind of stuff I dial into.
Maybe there is a line that you can cross "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" came close to that,
but that just makes a great horror movie that gets under your skin and becomes super memorable.
There's so many things that a horror film can do for you. And I
think a lot of the fans find it very healing, that have gone through things,
or going through things.
They find hope in that, and they think - they live through you vicariously going,
"I'm going to kick ass, I'm going to get rid of all these bad things in my life".
And I've had fans come and say that to me, "I didn't have friends" or "I was teased"” or gender
issues. And this was one world where the monster gets payback when you're a kid [laughing].
I've been bullied, I've been an outcast. And I think that is kind of what resonates with fans,
because a lot of my fans will tell me they've had similar issues when they were a kid or a teenager.
People are watching horror because it's, "Oh I see myself in it. Oh, this got me through
a tough time. Oh, this final girl reminded me of this trauma that I experienced”.
And they're turning it into a kind of therapy.
People are even kind of dissecting what the movies meant to them, it's
refreshing because all I've been hearing about, "Oh, it's such a great movie."
But now "it's a great movie,
because this is what it meant to me and this is why".
Horror is personal. I think it represents not only our personal styles and our personal
feelings, you know, about the genre and what we love about it. But I think for a lot of us,
it becomes part of our journey for as scary as it can be and as fun as it can be,
regardless of the quote unquote quality of it. It still means something to us.
We're talking about this like incredibly respected, well done horror film, or this sort of
campy horror film that's actually terrible but everyone loves it, and everything in between.
It's kind of inspiring to see people so deeply excited
and invested in entertainment, you know, it feeds them.
They stand the test of time, because there's - they're super fun.
When you look at a lot of films, specifically horror movies during the '80s,
they were taking a beating left and right from critics.
But I think that kind of goes to show that you really shouldn't judge movies based on sort of that time that they
released, because ultimately, I think they're going to live on and in very different ways and come to mean a lot to fans.
I think we're all missing our youth,
basically. The '80s to me was a great time, I was vibrant, more [laughing].
So the nostalgia is breaking down meaning.
The good, the bad, the in between. It all means something to all of us, in one way or another. Emotions
and memories and nostalgia that it's tied to these films. For a lot of us who grew up during that time.
Film is an art unto itself, you need to look back at its history
because it's not only the technology, it's the storytelling, the narrative.
There's only so many stories to tell around the campfire, never neglect that stuff, even if your
appreciation for it is as something primitive, and - and - and old and naive. You still need to see it.
I think there's so much access to just
everything now that a lot of stuff gets lost.
So if you curate the ones that you feel are important to be seen,
then you bring attention that they might not have gotten otherwise.
Curation is key.
I think it's important to keep digging up films and putting them in front of new eyeballs, because the pool is just
getting more and more narrow. I don't know, I just want people to be excited about the discovery of these older films.
Word of mouth keeps '80s horror alive.
I have a list at home, 'things I have not seen that I need to watch'. Because of the
horror community, every time something comes up that I haven't seen, I write it down.
Because how could you - how could I have missed that? You know,
the horror family is a family, the knowledge base there is incredible.
I think revisiting the films is really interesting if you revisit them at later points in
your life, so you can revisit a film, a well made film, and it will yield new things for you.
That's incredibly influential to me.
People can talk about "80s horror till the sun comes up. I sure do.