Original subtitles

In the 90s, there is an active rebellion

against all of the conventions that have

been established in the 80s.

It's an explosion of independent cinema.

Movies that are gritty, that are real,

that lack all of that corporate polish in

favor of something that feels authentic.

It was edgier, it was grungier, it was

a little more self-aware.

An allegorical medium, so it pushes a lot

of buttons.

The 90s was very self-reflexive.

Who is starred in The Exorcist 2: The Heretic?

This is crazy!

Movies tried new things with horror that

had never been done before.

Audiences were really interested in

seeing what could be done.

Possibilities, it opened up a whole new

world.

A Stygian world, yawning blackly beyond.

This is a time for total escape.

Once you're engaged in the actual genre,

you can then appreciate the craft of it

and the ride.

It's a big ride.

It's what we pay the money and buy

the popcorn for.

Finding your way into the horror section.

Obscure horror movies that I've never

heard of.

They encouraged the expansion of your

taste.

Surprise!

It's not about so bad it's good, it's

about understanding it's low budget and

it's DIY.

That's the aesthetic it's going for.

What's the next appalling, disgusting,

hilarious, thrilling, highly inventive

way you can find to kill somebody?

I like the crappy ones.

Is it any good?

No.

Is it fun?

Absolutely.

Oh my God!

It gives me the heebie-jeebies.

It's dark now! I can see!

It's that kind of a movie,

it's a horror film.

It was a good time to be a

teenager and a young adult in the 90s

for horror.

The industry is changing both on the big

screen and on the small screen in

profound and sweeping ways in the 90s.

That were going to change the industry

forever.

That social element of what it meant to

go to the theater and to go to

a video store, in the 90s that was

it.

It was a glorious time to be a

fan of films.

Be my victim.

I think the first couple of years in

the 90s was a sort of a feeling

out of what's next.

We knew we were ready for something else,

but figuring out what that new thing was

going to be took a few years to

figure out.

We will create new life.

Everything feels like this kind of

strange recovery period where the

excesses and some of the real punk fun

of the 80s are starting to melt away.

And the decade's trying to kind of find

its own identity as well.

Who the hell are you?

I can't believe you still don't know.

The 90s proved to be one of the

most formative periods of time in my

life.

You know, what I think about music, what

I think about movies, kind of what I

still think today about fashion, is for

better or worse informed by the 90s

experience completely.

Hey, you want to borrow some pants,

Chief?

First impressions and all.

All of the trends don't change on that

January 1st, 1990, obviously.

But I really was happy to see shoulder

pads go away.

Wow!

Now this is what I call romantic!

That fashion that kind of comes out of

Seattle and comes out of the grunge scene

in the 90s, the flannels, you know, that

oversized kind of I don't give a shit

look, that beautifully was expressed as

the music kind of got out of that

shiny, glittery pop vibe that you're

getting at the end of the 80s.

We have MTV, but we're getting this mix

of like 90s rock, 90s grunge mixed in

with that kind of 90s bubblegum pop.

We also get YO! MTV Raps, and it

kind of just explodes.

In the real world, we're dealing with

things like the LA riots.

Rodney King, we're dealing with the Gulf

War.

So our world around us is getting very

serious.

Trickle down economics is not trickling

down, and people are feeling this, and

our art is beginning to reflect this.

It's rather brutal here.

We're advising our clients to put

everything they've got into canned food

and shotguns.

If 80s was coke, then 90s was heroin.

When I think of the early 90s, I

think of a shift in tone, too.

Things are kind of grim, and I'm angry

because I've been ignored, or I'm angry

because the system doesn't care for me or

oppresses me.

And, you know, we've got to do something

about it.

It's time to fight.

Young people getting more active in

politics or, you know, Rock the Vote

comes to mind.

Fight!

Fight!

Fight!

I think there was a kind of a

rebellion that ushered in a lot of what

happened in the 90s.

That, in a way, was a rebuttal to

some of the more mainstream things that

were going on in the 80s.

For God's sake, Chucky, drag yourself

into the 90s.

Stabbings went out with Bundy and Dahmer.

You look like Martha Stewart with that

thing.

There was a lot of change either

happening in the 90s or on deck about

to happen in the 90s in terms of

race, in terms of queer representation.

Like, we were coming off of the AIDS

crisis in the end of the 80s.

The Gulf War had created a new global

awareness for people that had the luxury

to not think about that for a number

of years.

And it kind of manifests throughout the

decade in different horror films.

You saw an almost dystopian kind of thing

of, like, different working class

communities going against each other.

And there's still a ruling class that's

above the fray.

And that's ripe material for

storytelling in general, let alone genre.

What a great opportunity to take some of

these characters and have them then turn

the mirror or the lens back on the

audience with a lot of self-referential

stuff in there.

It's just murder, man.

All God's creatures do it in some form

or another.

I mean, we just call it industry, not

murder.

I think we really got into, at that

time, questioning who we are.

Because there's a way of the horror out

there, the other, and the horror inside

us.

Who are we?

We are not living in a Sutter Cane story!

This is not reality! Not reality!

As I think there was a sense of

reckoning in society, there was a sense

of reckoning to some extent in horror

movies.

The beginning of the 90s was a bit

of a hangover period for the golden age

slashers.

There were certain folks that didn't know

the party had ended.

Come on!

The bad guys from the 80s still alive

and kicking into the 90s.

It was very hard to knock them off

their pedestals and create new franchise

stars.

Every town has an Elm Street.

You had Freddy, you had Jason, you had

Michael, you had Chucky, Pinhead.

Crept into the 90s before handing the

baton off to the new horror icons, which

would be Leprechaun, Candyman, Ghostface.

But really, the 80s horror icons never

truly went away.

They kept their claws and their machetes

and their kitchen knives in as deep as

they could.

The guys who run those franchises know

that to not put out a new offering

is to leave money on the table.

You know that it costs this much and

it's going to make this much, and it's

just math.

You're going to keep making them, and

your fans are expecting them.

There's an ecosystem there that has to be

served.

What's wonderful in the 90s is you still

have people swinging for the fences for

original ideas, for new ideas.

Candyman is a great example of that.

Tonight our congregation shall witness a

new miracle.

We were allowed to say something

political that was dangerous, that

resonated with an audience who

desperately needed to hear what we were

talking about.

The more money they got, the greedier

they got.

The greedier they got, the crazier they

got.

The horror genre, as it was built in

the 80s, that era has come to a

definitive end, and the only way forward

is to deconstruct it and make something

new.

He's sort of gotten used to being Freddy

now, so he's decided to cross over out

of films into our reality.

Horror gets very clever.

They're all the same, some stupid killer

stalking some big-breasted girl who can't

act, who's always running up the stairs

when she should be going out the front

door.

Audiences got more sophisticated about

what they were watching, so filmmakers

had to sort of speak that language back

to them.

Why does that look so familiar?

There's almost like this meta riff that

starts to happen.

What's fun about a movie full of ugly,

slimy, mean-spirited, gloppy little

monsters who run amok and attack

innocents?

That was very much the tone of the

90s, this idea of what's in front of

the camera and what's behind the camera.

What does the audience know about the

industry and what's going on on the

screen?

No, please don't kill me, Mr. Ghostface.

I want to be in the sequel.

Come with me if you want to live.

Digital visual effects, for better or

worse, comes into play in the 90s in

a seismic way.

Everyone thought they could do anything

inside of a computer.

We were worried, you know, morphing, you

know, all that.

What's that going to mean for our jobs

as an actor?

Suddenly the effect itself is calling

direct attention to itself.

You have to see what they did.

And this is why you had people lined

up outside of Jurassic Park.

And it's impossible to talk about the 90s

without acknowledging the incredible

impact of the home video market.

Be the first to get your copy of

Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park, now on

videocassette.

And in particular, the video store.

Make it a blockbuster night.

Curating not only this collection of the

movies that had come before and making

them make sense, putting them out there

in such a way that it inspired this

kind of community of fandom to start

interacting with itself.

Horror keeps the industry afloat.

It's a profitable business.

The cost is low.

The potential for profits is high.

And whether or not it's the golden age

of horror or horror's having a lull, the

producers don't give a shit about any of

that.

They're going to keep making those

movies.

All these horror movies you watch.

Does death, death, death make sense?

There's so much great filmmaking and

storytelling happening in the 90s, and

it's taken 30 years or so for fans

to really dig into what that decade has

to offer.

Wanna date?

Going out?

Looking for some action?

Leatherface.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre directed by

Tobe Hooper is one of the greatest

horror movies ever made.

And the thing is, you don't see anything

you think you do.

It's all offscreen.

Brilliant.

Tobe never matched that.

Because I don't think his personality is

like what you need to get through

Hollywood.

That's my feeling.

He's too nice.

Unfortunately, Tobe Hooper did not have

any really creative input into any of the

Chainsaw films after Chainsaw 2.

Leatherface.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3.

Directed by the late Jeff Burr.

A couple ends up happening across the

Chainsaw house in the woods.

However, it's a completely different

family except for Leatherface and except

for Grandpa.

And it's never really explained why.

It is a really brutal, downbeat, nasty

film like the original Chainsaw.

And that's what Jeff Burr was trying to

do.

Junior likes them private parts. He knows what to do with them parts.

The movie was shot in California.

It was not shot in Texas.

California daddy's girl, eh?

Bitch says fill her up, I'll fill her

up for you, mascara.

The good thing about the Texas Chainsaw

Massacre 3 is that it has terrific actors

in it.

Viggo Mortensen's in it in an early role.

Difference is, it ain't a good idea to

be messing around these back roads at

night when you don't know where you're going.

Ken Foree is in it.

How many bit thick fucks like you are

there out here?

Hey baby, I only got one thing to

say to you.

You know what that is?

I don't like the tone of your voice.

Kate Hodge plays the lead, taking over

from Marilyn Burns and Caroline Williams

as the final girl.

She's really good in it.

And then R. A. Mihailoff takes the role

of Leatherface, being the third person to

actually play the role.

Jeff tried to get Gunnar Hansen back

because he wanted to try and connect it

to the original film.

But the studio was not willing to pay

more than SAG scale for him to reprise

the role.

So on principle, he wouldn't do it.

It was fun working on these films early

in our career because it was a sequel

to some classic films we loved,

and I loved the first two.

People running around getting chainsawed

up and murdered in horrible ways.

For us, it was a chance to showcase

a couple of cool effects.

And then in the long run, they all

got cut out anyway.

So it was like, you know, why even

bother?

New Line Cinema had the rights to Texas

Chainsaw Massacre to make sequels around

this time.

The problem with it is the version that's

available, and it's a censored version.

Because when Jeff Burr had to meet his

Halloween delivery date, and the head of

overseas sales at New Line saw the

preview screening, he lost his shit

because he was like, I cannot sell this

movie foreign.

It is way too violent.

It is way too bleak.

So Bob Shaye of New Line Cinema came

into the edit room and just started

cutting away at the negative of the film.

You'd hate to work on something and then

it's on the cutting room floor and nobody

ever sees it.

I know that Jeff Burr wanted his name

off the movie because it was so

confusing.

Leatherface, I think, is a worthy entry

into the series.

It's not as good as the two Tobe

Hooper movies that went before it, and

Jeff would have been the first to admit

that because he was up against enormous

odds so that they could meet their

delivery date, which they missed, by the

way, and get an R rating.

I like Texas.

Tremors. Tremors was the strangest amalgam

of genres.

Part Western, part tongue-in-cheek

comedy, part horror.

It was a monster movie, and good old

-fashioned monster movie of the type I

used to see when I was a kid.

Must be a million of them!

Nope, just one.

Within a couple of days of the Family

Ties end-of-the-series wrap party, I

was on the set of Tremors in Lone

Pine, California, with Kevin Bacon and

Fred Ward and Reba and the wonderful Ron

Underwood, who's the director, S.S.

Wilson, and Brent Maddock, the writers,

who had enough faith and trust in me,

despite watching me be a very sweet,

understanding father for seven years on

Family Ties.

Just say the magic words...

Ah, homina, homina.

...and presto.

Oops.

I think the tone is always set at

the top, okay?

So you've got a director who's not a

screamer, who's not a nutcase, two

writers who are amenable to listening to

an actor say, hey, what if we try

this?

There were no crazy people there.

They were all amenable to the ensemble

experience.

Mark, be careful.

Ew, it's not real.

Where'd you get it?

I didn't know we had it.

All the different people who inhabited

Perfection, that sense of community, that

sense of cooperation, I always loved

about the piece.

I give you boys $5 for this.

$20.

Okay, $10.

$15.

Okay, $15.

The beautiful thing about Tremors is that

it does take the time to let you

get to know these characters in their own

world.

It's like Jaws on land.

They come up from underneath the ground

and they grab it.

They sense the slightest vibration

through the ground, even footsteps.

That's how they hunt.

How the fuck do you avoid one of

those Tremor sandworms when you're

walking around on the Earth and they can

pop up literally anywhere at any time?

So that surprise element is a little bit

of a horrifying concept.

Damn!

When Chang dies, it's such a

heartbreaking scene because you want him

to get pulled back and not eaten, and

it just ups the stakes so much that

anyone in this cast can die, and it's

done so brilliantly.

I could talk forever about the character

of Burt Gummer because I love him so

much.

What kind of fuse is that?

Can infuse.

What the hell do you use it for?

My cannon.

Who knew I'd have to protect myself

against something that burrows

underground and into my prepper's

paradise?

I've prepared for everything but what I'm

facing today.

Once that thing came through the wall, it

would take them a day to put it

back together and reshoot it, and all I

kept thinking to myself was, oh, don't

let me F up here.

You don't want to be the one to

screw it up.

It's practical effects.

It's great for those actors to be

interacting with something that's real,

that they can see, and that they can

honestly be terrified by.

Just a marvelous, marvelous, beautifully

photographed piece of work.

It was only out for about a week.

I think people never knew quite what to

do with Tremors, including the studio.

It was advertised and promoted as a

straight horror film, where it was so

much more than that.

It really didn't find its life until the

VHS market.

That's where it caught on.

It took a couple years for people to

find it, reward it, and then it had

its afterlife, of course, in the home

video market.

Broke into the wrong goddamn rec room,

didn't you, you bastard?

Nightbreed.

Clive Barker, there's an incredible,

psychedelically sexual, super twisted

psychology in his writing and stories.

With Nightbreed, we get introduced to all

these archetypes of different

representations of things that scare and

also possess the human spirit.

Are you prepared to be judged by the

gods?

Nightbreed is fundamentally a love story,

a love story between a girl and a

dead guy.

Throw in a psychopathic psychiatrist and

a bunch of freaks living under a

cemetery.

You're below now with the Nightbreed, the

last survivors of the great tribes.

Clive had developed the screenplay from

his novel Cabal.

God's an astronaut.

Oz is over the rainbow.

The Midian's where the monsters live.

The breed, the freaks, the weirdos,

they're a bit human, not quite human, all

comes from Clive, without question.

I was playing Lylesburg, who, in my head,

I called Moses.

He was the keeper of the law and

he wanted to maintain the social fabric

of the breed.

Tonight, you leave the natural world

behind.

The life you lived will be a dream.

It was also very exciting, certainly for

me, to have David Cronenberg coming into

the movie.

What's not to love about a serial-killing

psychiatrist?

He gives a wonderful, ice-cold,

dispassionate performance.

Murder is very, very real.

It might start in the mind, but then

it changes to flesh and blood.

There were days backstage on Nightbreed

that were absolute mayhem because there

were so many prosthetic make-up

applications going on.

Get out!

Boone, I'm not going to leave you.

Craig Sheffer's make-up of Boone on the

days that he was in his prosthetic make

-up was even longer.

Clive had formed a very close

relationship with Chris Figg, who had

produced Hellraiser and Hellbound, and

was producing Nightbreed.

There was this strange day when we

arrived for work and people were saying,

Have you heard?

Have you heard?

And Chris Figg had been fired.

It also meant that we finished the movie

with my first experience of working with

finance on set, and the director is now

being outvoted by the voice of finance on

set.

It's a miserable way to work.

Then, in post-production, Fox and Morgan

Creek were determined to get a horror

movie come hell or high water.

The basic point about Nightbreed is that

the monsters are the good guys and the

humans are the monsters.

They weren't having that.

So there was a lot of new stuff

filmed to kind of beef up the breed,

make them more aggressive, make them more

violent, to try to move David

Cronenberg's character to the heart of

the story, because they wanted to market

it as a slasher.

And the way that the movie had been

edited made a lot of stuff around the

breed just simply didn't make sense.

Thank God, somewhere down the line,

somebody found that work print from

Pinewood, which meant that we finally got

the Cabal Cut, which is as close as

you're going to get to a director's cut

of Nightbreed.

It is an amazing film.

Visually, it's astonishing.

So much about it that's outstanding.

There's big ideas at play, big ideas

about mental illness and relationships

and who we are as people, identity.

Welcome to the club.

I'm not so sure I want to be

in the club.

You find your way back here for the

same reason I did.

We belong here.

Because Clive himself is gay, there's

been a lot of analysis of Nightbreed in

relation to a homosexual subplot.

I think that makes absolutely perfect

sense.

It's fundamentally the other, and I think

that's the thing that makes Nightbreed

work, that you can make that whatever you

want.

I was born to destroy the womb and

the breed together.

You're crazy!

I'm not ever going to discourage the

notion that there are tribes of monsters

that exist out in the frays of our

society as we speak, and who knows, maybe

someday they'll take back over this place

and fix things.

Aaron Boone, the tribes of the moon have

embraced you.

He's all excited.

This time, he's not alone.

Most Part IIs are usually just remakes of

Part I, and I didn't want to go

that route.

What am I going to do, have them

go to another fleabag hotel?

But then I thought, wait a minute, what

if I get them involved with a bunch

of real freaks?

Then it was a great idea, then I

loved it.

They fell out a window, they should be

dead, they're in the hospital, and I

wanted them to escape, but watching a

story about them on television is this

woman, Granny Ruth.

Why would she have an interest in freaks?

Ooh.

Children, we have a new member of our community.

I can spend two hours on Annie Ross

stories and how great she is.

I understand your pain, but ripping the

faces off people may not be in your

best interest.

Kevin Van Hentenryck has been a pleasure

to work with, and what I didn't realize

with him was how funny he is.

Do you think she recognized me?

I don't think she recognized me.

She didn't say anything, she didn't act

like she'd recognize me.

And I got him into Brain Damage too

for no reason whatsoever, other than I

wanted to do it.

I had good actors.

I'm not afraid of you, or him, or

any of you.

Occasionally they would say to me, is

this supposed to be funny?

I said, no, not for you or anybody

filming this, but for the audience, yes.

And they got it right away.

Okay, I'll be expecting it.

Damn!

A hundred smackeroos!

Whoo!

I told Gabe Bartalos, he had a book

of real-life freaks, and I said, I

don't want them.

I want every freak to be cartoon, a

head that sings opera.

This, that, does this.

A half moon.

Bang, bang!

Anything that's gonna border on real, you

know, I didn't want it.

I just didn't want it.

Sit back and say cheese!

I thought we'd have a lot of fun

showing two mutants getting it on.

I remember we had one foot kept wiggling.

We were concerned about, this is my big

joke, I don't want the MPAA cutting it.

Ah!

Ah!

Ah!

I think it's an artistically criminal

organization.

When we did Basket Case 2, they came

so fast back with an R rating that

Jim Glickenhaus doesn't think they

watched the film.

So we didn't have to worry about

anything.

The freedom of doing, not just a horror

film, but a crackpot movie, that on every

level is just completely nonsensical.

Do we flee?

Or do we fight?

It was just a great joke, and we

got away with it.

You should see yourself.

You're a freak now, too.

Blood Moon.

Blood Moon is an Australian slasher

picture with a killer with a barbed wire

thing

that he's using to kill the students at

a girls' school.

Ah!

Ah!

Ah!

The main slasher era was pretty much over

by this point, and certainly Australia

was not known for producing many slasher

movies.

What did you run into?

Some rich boy's fist.

Winchester again?

He should have been there.

We were kicking the crap out of him.

It was directed by Alec Mills, who was

a very prestigious camera operator who

worked on tons of James Bond movies and

major films.

I don't know why he ended up in

Australia directing a late Australian

slasher, but he did.

They did actually go for it with some

of the kills in this film.

The music by Brian May, who was one

of the most prolific film composers in

the history of Ozploitation, but he's not

to be confused with Brian May from Queen.

Cooper's Bay is basically a quiet,

peaceful, trouble-free little town.

But then suddenly, not one, not two, but

three girls mysteriously disappear.

The cool thing about this one is that

they marketed it as a whodunit.

Why have all the cars in Sheffield's last

graduation photograph got California

license plates?

But it's pretty obvious who the killer is

from early on in the film.

But in order to double down on that,

they had a fright break, which is

something that goes back to William

Castle, but they also did it for The

Beast Must Die, the Amicus who was the

werewolf movie.

And they actually stopped the movie for a

minute and you had to guess who the

killer was during that minute and then it

came back on.

So that was kind of the really unique

thing with this film.

The one real giveaway is that there's a

guy who collects eyeballs in a jar.

He might, may or may not, be the

killer as opposed to the normal people

walking around.

You decide.

It's just a dream.

It's just a dream.

A young art restorer who goes to see

a traveling troupe of magicians and kind

of carnival performers becomes the object

of affection of one of the owners of

this carnival.

Meridian is probably in my top ten

favorite movies as I look back.

Less because I had purchased a castle

outside of Rome.

It sounds crazy.

I don't have that anymore.

And I wanted to make a movie there.

I don't know.

It's kind of creepy.

I've always been drawn here ever since I

was a little girl.

I love paranormal romance themed movies.

We had a wonderful script.

It was a Beauty and the Beast type

story and I was lucky enough to get

Sherilyn Fenn as the lead who I was

a big fan of because of Twin Peaks.

It was kind of amazing that Charlie

Band's kind of low budget world of

filmmaking that this movie had so much

richness and so much eroticism.

I need you to love me.

That was a magical experience for me

because we stayed in the castle which was

huge.

It was 100,000 square feet.

The cast stayed in the castle.

Some of the crew.

And depending on what we were shooting

we'd go upstairs or downstairs to the set

which was also at the castle.

So it was about as luxurious and as

cool as can be.

This character turns into the beast and

he has this lovemaking scene or two with

Sherilyn Fenn's character.

So we needed a really credible head to

toe costume.

But the price was it was very, very

expensive because the hair had to be

real.

This is not a cheap affair.

Greg Cannom, Academy Award winner,

fantastic guy, did some movies for us.

And for Meridian he said I just finished

Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula and

there's a creature exactly as you

describe it and I would sculpt a

different face for your actor but we

could use that suit.

That suit was $40,000 to make for

Coppola's film.

He said well as long as you don't tell.

Well luckily I think the statute has

run three decades ago.

So that's what we did.

The Guardian is about a young couple who

entrust the care of their child to a

mysterious woman who turns out to be not

all they think she is and in fact

is in allegiance with supernatural forces

that they couldn't have dreamt was

possible.

Look out!

I was first approached to adapt it by

Joe Wizan, the producer that I didn't

know at that time had been William

Friedkin's agent and he had a book called

The Nanny written by Dan Greenburg and I

first developed it as a kind of comedy

horror with Sam Raimi.

It was very much we want to make

this kind of Omen-esque, I remember that

being a word that everyone would bandy

around.

Sam ended up going off to make Darkman

and I went to Los Angeles and met

with William Friedkin. You know, Hurricane

Billy, all the legends are true.

Dan Greenburg's mythology in the book

didn't quite work because it was kind of

a ghost who wasn't a ghost and none

of us could work out what exactly was

going on.

It was basically a bizarre fairy tale to

do with she was sacrificing them to the

trees.

It was kind of like the dark side

of paganism.

Death gives you life.

The nanny played by Jenny Seagrove is

called Camilla.

She had that almost kind of Mary Poppins

kind of straightness, kind of remote and

unfathomable and enigmatic and I think

she was great casting for that.

They're your bestest friends.

And the couple Dwier Brown and Carey

Lowell I think they were a perfect couple

at the time because they came across as

like a golden couple to whom nothing can

go wrong.

I mean we now know that in these

kind of movies it is all going to

go wrong.

Sam Raimi always said that the job of

horror is to create people that you like

and then put them through hell.

So that's what I was trying to keep

to Sam's dictum in a way.

I think it's a very fundamental fear to

fear for your child.

I remembered a TV movie based on The

Ash Tree by M.R. James where there

was a very famous shot that scared the

shit out of me when I saw it

on TV and there's kind of babies in

the trees and I told this to Friedkin.

Not only did he say that's great let's

do that, he said that's it! That's the

Key to this whole movie.

It's all about trees.

She's sacrificing it to the trees.

Once Billy gets an idea he can't be

shaken from it and he said look at

those trees down in Ventura Boulevard you

look at them and they've got holes in

them you know they're like vaginas.

So it's my fault and I have to

live with it.

Roger Ebert said that The Guardian was

the only horror film he'd seen where a

chainsaw was actually used for its proper

purpose which I think was really

delightful and funny.

This is the first horror movie in which

a chainsaw is used against a tree.

William Friedkin sometimes I didn't know

what he wanted from one day to the

next but I had to kind of pinch

myself and think here I am a guy

from the valleys in South Wales never

thought it was possible to get my name

on a film working with an Oscar winning

director in Hollywood you know.

It was an amazing experience that I'll

never forget.

Mirror Mirror from 1990 directed by

Marina Sargenti.

This is a movie about a girl who

moves to a new town with her mom

who's played by Karen Black.

I think it's important to make new friends.

and gets a haunted mirror which is a

portal into hell and she thinks this is

her passed away dad coming back to

communicate with her but it is not.

The lead, Rainbow Harvest is her name, kind

of a knock off of Winona Ryder.

She's this goth like punk kind of

archetype that goes into the school of

actual normie, you know normal lame kids

and sticks out like a sore thumb.

I think she's already dressed for a

funeral.

Also in the movie is Yvonne De Carlo known

for Lily Munster in the Munsters TV show.

She plays an antique dealer who is trying

to get that mirror back and save this

poor girl.

And then there's William Sanderson who

shows up and always he's a reliable

character actor.

I must be having flashbacks again.

The iconic moment in Mirror Mirror is

when the monster comes through that

mirror.

And it's just this amazing practical

effect.

It's done on the cheap and the mirror

just bleeds and the main character is

having a moment of like is this real? Is it fake?

what's happening to me?

Get rid of this mess.

The fact that Mirror Mirror was directed

and written by women and the entire

production over half of it was women.

Because of that I think Mirror Mirror has

this angle around storytelling and

character development that you don't

normally get in a lot of horror movies

around this time.

And it's super fun and it's gory too.

Def by Temptation She'll love you to def.

Def by Temptation is about this very

religious young man from the country who

visits his cousin in the big city and

has to deal with Incubus, a sex demon.

Her name is Temptation and she's been

stalking his family for generations.

I have a feeling that our destinies are entangled.

Directed by James Bond the third.

It was a horror movie about faith.

It was kind of like a black Exorcist

in that way using faith to stop a

demon.

Def by Temptation I was the cinematographer

Spike Lee did a movie called School Daze

which was the film he did after She's

Gotta Have It and it's set at an

African American college in the south and

one of the actors in that was James

Bond the third.

He was able to get some money behind

him and do a horror film.

Being a big fan of Mario Bava's, I've

always tried to use image and color

expressionistically.

Even the films that I did with Spike

we tried a lot of techniques to just

get the feeling across.

Sam Jackson who I first met on the

set of School Daze.

Bill Nunn who I first met on the

set of School Daze.

Kadeem Hardison who I first met on the

set of Enemy Territory before he did

School Daze.

There was no relation between Cynthia and

James.

It was just coincidental that they had

the same last name.

If you checking out homegirl over there

in that red dress with the young boy

let me tell you man she's bad news.

It was just great getting to see them

work and shine in leads when that was

pretty much a time when they wouldn't

have had those opportunities.

You have lips like wine and I wants

to get drunk tonight.

Shot on a very low budget in

neighborhoods in Brooklyn.

This is the film that I shot right

before I did Do the Right Thing and

it was a neighborhood horror film.

All the locations were within walking

distance of each other.

The main house that we shot in was

actually owned by Laurence Fishburne.

He was kind of like an unnamed producer

on the film.

It was a brownstone that he was in

the process of renovating.

Let's get you.

James was an actor and had no idea

how to set up horror sequences so it

was kind of like up to me.

One of the main films that I was

referencing at that point was The Hunger.

It was Tony Scott's first film.

I was also looking at Evil Dead 2

so that was a big influence on me.

I borrowed a little bit from an old

Val Lewton horror film called The Leopard

Man.

My favorite kill is when Kadeem

Hardison's character is back in his

apartment and his TV just spontaneously

comes on and it's him in the TV

and he's beckoning himself and he goes to

the TV which in hindsight is like not

great don't do that, and the TV eats

him and it was awesome.

I love TVs getting their revenge on

people.

It's the media consumes you, you're not

consuming the media.

We didn't really think it was going to

go anywhere.

It did not have a distributor at first.

Lloyd Kaufman's Troma picked it up later

and actually got a good write up in

The New York Times.

I was kind of surprised so that was

quite amazing.

Frankenhooker is one of my favorite

movies that came out in the 90s.

I think Frank Henenlotter is a genius.

It kind of has this throwback to these

campy sci-fi movies from the 50s

Universal Horror Monsters.

It's this prostitute who is put together

by a mad scientist and she goes around

New York City asking people Want a date?

Going out?

Looking for some action?

A little bit of camp.

It's a lot of horror.

It has a lot of twists on the

genre itself.

I love this movie.

Got any money?

Money?

No.

I don't have any money.

I always wanted to do a Frankenstein film

and I wanted to do one that I

could have a laboratory scene.

Fortunately I got enough of a budget from

James Glickenhaus and his company.

He said I'll give you three million

dollars shoot two films because I had

said to him I had two ideas and

one was Frankenhooker and I knew he

wanted Basket Case too because everybody

did.

He said which one do you want to

do?

And I said let's shoot them both.

I can make you the centerfold goddess of

the century.

Just need the right parts.

When I was doing Brain Damage the crack

epidemic had just hit New York and we

were filming on 30-something street.

At night it was Hooker Central.

So when I'd go there in the morning

I would hear this awful sound.

One was squishing and one was crunching

and that means I was either stepped on

a used condom or a crack vial.

It's a sick joke to do a film

about making a female monster as a basis

from crack.

This super crack will get the job done

a lot quicker.

How can I get him to kill a

bunch of hookers without the audience

hating his guts and it wouldn't be funny?

And then I thought what if he invents

super crack that makes the girls explode?

She's gonna blow!

Duck and cover!

It's getting awfully hot in here.

And that sequence where they explode is

my favorite piece I've ever done.

I want that on my gravestone.

I want He killed six hookers in a

hotel room.

You know it's one of the funniest things

I've ever done.

I think it's the best and it worked.

I do very little directing of actors.

If I pick the right ones they would

know it.

And all I said to Patty was two

things I want to do.

I want to show you the Karloff Shuffle.

And she got it and I said and

then I want you to make some kind

of face and she just turned to me

and went you got it you're set.

I don't need any more discussion.

She got the joke.

Oh honey look at Miss Thang.

Lorinz, we were butting heads a lot in

the beginning of that film because he

was really going off script.

So what I said to him is James

let's make a deal.

Ad-lib all you want while we're setting

up the shots and lights.

And if I like it I'll laugh.

And if I don't don't use it.

And then he even turned the scripted

dialogue into what sounds like an ad-lib.

So he's terrific.

I want to apologize to everybody here.

Please.

I'm going to put everybody back together.

I promise you.

Zacherley's cameo came because he did the

voice of Aylmer on Brain Damage.

Ready to beg for it Brian?

Ready to crawl across the floor and plead

for my juice?

Right before the camera rolled he said

how do you want me to do it?

I said just tell the weather like Zacherley

would.

He just got it right away.

All right.

All right.

Let's go.

Let's go.

And it was just perfect and I was

so glad that I got him being him.

And just right for you mad doctors out

there.

This is an actual Frankenhooker talking

box from back then.

And it also says press here.

That was entirely James Glickenhaus'

idea.

I'm surprised William Castle didn't sit

up in his coffin and say oh I

should have done that.

That's brilliant.

I'm in Video Shack one day and as

I'm going up the stairs I'm hearing it.

Want a date? Want a date? Want a date?

And everybody's there just pressing these

things.

A perfect example of perfect marketing.

Oh that was wonderful.

The real terror is back.

George C. Scott

in William Peter Blatty's

The Exorcist 3.

They approached me to direct.

I could have done something with it if

you'd done a little bit more like the

original version.

But there was William Peter Blatty.

He's the original author of The Exorcist.

He did not want me to direct.

He wanted to direct it.

So he did everything he could to make

sure I didn't direct it.

And he wouldn't change his mind about the

ending.

He wouldn't change his mind about the

movie.

This was what he had in his head

so I thought God bless you guys.

The Exorcist considered by many to be

among the scariest films ever made.

It is a classic in every sense of

the word.

You left her alone to die!

Shut up!

Expectations for The Exorcist 3 are low

based on the movie that came before.

Once the wings have brushed you you're

mine forever.

The Exorcist 3 is great.

You are getting an ambitious, distinct,

fascinating serial killer procedural that

is also a riveting look at demonic

possession.

It tells the story 15 years after the

events of the first Exorcist with what I

think is one of George C.

Scott's best performances.

It's funny, it's nuanced, it's dark, it's

sad, it's scary.

There you go, blaming God.

Who should I blame?

Phil Rizzuto?

You wouldn't want to live forever.

Yes I would.

No you wouldn't, you'd get bored.

I have hobbies.

He is investigating a series of killings

in Georgetown that bear an eerie

resemblance to those of a serial killer

who was executed named the Gemini Killer.

Are you Karras?

I am the Gemini Killer, James Veneman.

The Gemini's dead.

In a film full of great performances, you

have to specifically mention Brad Dourif

as the Gemini Killer.

I am not!

I'm alive!

I go on!

I breathe!

Look at me!

George C.

Scott is a titanic actor.

He is a powerhouse actor.

And he's sitting there still listening to

Brad Dourif.

I sometimes do special things to my

victims.

Things that are creative.

Whose face comes into this broken light

with what feels like a perpetual tear

that's just pouring from his eyes whether

he's laughing, smiling.

It's such a tortured, haunting, and

hypnotic performance.

As he watches while I rip and cut

and mutilate the innocent!

The set pieces, the scares, are

phenomenally executed.

There's a famous sequence in that

hospital that remains to this day to be

one of the best examples of how to

build, sustain, and pay off tension that

I have ever seen in a motion picture

ever.

Hands down.

Blatty encounters, we're going to call it

studio interference, in the third act of

The Exorcist 3.

And he is forced to make some creative

changes to the picture including the

addition of an exorcism that was not part

of the plan.

Sworn enemy of all the human race.

Even the decisions where I can see the

studio interference and I can see the

problems, the movie just works.

And while I can only imagine what his

preferred pure version of it would have

looked like, the theatrical release of

The Exorcist 3 is still great and

remains, I think, one of the most

underrated sequels ever made.

Now I call that showmanship, Lieutenant.

The Suckling.

The Suckling was directed by Francis

Teri.

Independent, outside the studio system,

everything is DIY, it's a passion

project.

The Suckling is about a couple that goes

to a brothel/abortion clinic, I put

the word lightly

Are you pregnant? Only she comes in.

to get an abortion,

and the girl does not want one and

the boyfriend does, which is insane

because he says it's going to be easier.

Of course, it's not easy.

Now get rid of it like I showed you.

The baby gets tossed in a sewer of

toxic sludge and then it comes to life

into this incredible articulated, clawed,

razor-sharp teeth baby.

What I love about The Suckling is that

it has an incredible number of practical

effects.

There's a fully articulated sewer toxic

sludge baby.

Like, what more do you need?

I need to get out of here alive!

The creature is just a work of art.

It's got teeth, it's got claws, it has

these big eyes, very expressive face.

It crawls, it moves, it's super goopy.

You can't believe this was done on a dime

You know, it looks so pro.

What I think is awesome about it is

that it really pits both sides of the

abortion argument against each other, for

better or for worse.

I won't kill it!

There's no eyes, no ears, no fingers.

It ain't human.

Not yet.

On one hand, if a woman's not in

charge of her own body, then horrors

happen.

On the other hand, if you have to

get an abortion, horrors happen.

So, no side wins, but you know who

wins?

Audience.

George Romero's Night of the Living Dead

Night of the Living Dead is one of

the few films to actually give me

nightmares.

And I was in college.

Night of the Living Dead was probably the

beginning of the modern age of horror.

That's the movie that really started a

whole different era.

People were like, what?

That's a classic.

How dare you remake a classic, okay?

Coming to get you, Barbara.

How do I make zombies scary again?

You had Joe Piscopo's beer commercial,

Michael Jackson's Thriller.

Zombies were like, funny almost.

Back then, George was saying, this is

going to be a frame-by-frame remake

of Night of the Living Dead.

I didn't want to do that.

And I said, you know what?

Why don't we bring Barbara back?

What if she survives and comes back and

kicks ass with some of these people?

Because I had seen Alien and Sigourney

Weaver.

A woman hero to me was what I

needed Barbara to be, not the brain-dead

twit that Judith O'Dea did.

That's why all the actors in my Night

of the Living Dead look like the actors

from the original, except Barbara,

because I knew I was going to do

something different with Barbara.

Here's who auditioned for me for that

part of Ben.

Larry Fishburne, Eric LaSalle from ER.

So on the last day of the last

casting session, I was in a tizzy.

Who's going to be Ben?

Tony Todd comes in.

He did jack me up by the lapels.

You've got to read me.

Well, we're done.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

You've got to read me.

I gave him the script.

He goes out in the hallway.

Five minutes later, he comes back without

the script, knows every line, and

produced tears.

I shut the book.

That's it.

I'm not looking any further.

This is Ben.

This is something that nobody has ever

heard about and nobody's ever seen

before.

Before I did the movie, I did 600

storyboards, the whole movie.

George came in, and he says, well, these

are wonderful, but you have a six-week

movie up there, and you've only got four

weeks to shoot it.

So they started cutting stuff.

And I was like, but wait a minute.

You don't know what our pace is going

to be, how many setups we're going to

do.

My thought was, unless you're watching

My Dinner with Andre, with two people

talking, you know, the dialogue wasn't

important to me as being visually

stunning.

My goal was to impress the hell out

of George with what I was doing.

He was there for the first day in

the cemetery.

Then he had to go.

He had to go and write Dark Half.

He had a deadline.

My memory is two-and-a-half weeks of working with them and

enjoying it.

I was kicking ass.

I was going crazy.

Then all of a sudden, I'm in the

middle of a divorce, and all I could

think of was I'm losing my daughter.

I'm losing my bank account.

How do I deal with this divorce when

I'm directing a movie?

When you direct a movie, you've got to

be there 24-7, even when you're asleep

in your bed.

You're thinking of scenes, you know.

So the last week and a half or

so of that shoot, I was really wanting

to get out of there.

A really slimy producer that worked on

that thing, if he walked in this room,

he'd have to keep me from strangling the

life out of him.

He would be calling George and saying,

hey, Tom's got this shot lined up.

It's going to take 4 hours.

It would take 20 minutes.

George would say, don't let him do it,

and that was it.

I couldn't do it.

We can still make it.

No, I can't.

I'm hurt bad.

Go on, get out of here.

But I do hear from everybody that this

is one of the best sequels or remakes

that they've seen.

Sometimes they say better than the

original.

The original is a classic, of course.

I aimed really high, and what you got

was a chunk of us aiming high.

So maybe that's why it works.

This is pure hell on earth.

Jacob's Ladder was a real daring movie to

make, and I liked the feel of it.

It was a crazy film.

Anybody in there?

Anybody home?

There's 2 branches of horror movies.

You have the branch that's entertaining

to a younger crowd that wants to actually

have a lot of kind of thrilling jump

scares.

But then there's this other branch of

horror that does start to go into really

dark psychological places, and the

anti-hero are often mentally ill, or they have

problems that have been exacerbated by

some really rotten experiences in their

own lives that were actually real.

Jacob's Ladder is about a Vietnam vet

struggling with extreme PTSD and the

battle over where his soul is going to

go.

So there's a spiritual aspect about that

as well.

It's visually brilliant.

Tim Robbins is incredible.

It was a movie that was telling something

that was very cerebral, so it wasn't a

kind of straight-line horror movie.

You know you look like an angel, Louie? Like an overgrown cherub.

It was very haunting and very disturbing,

and of course this is one of those

films that would have called itself a

psychological thriller as opposed to a

horror movie, but if you look at all

the faces of the creatures and all the

people walking around and all the

nightmarish imagery, I mean, it's

straight out of the horror playbook.

Directed by Adrian Lyne, who directed

Fatal Attraction, he knew what he was

doing.

He knew how to build the tension.

He knew how to create this sense of

impending doom.

You've seen them?

I've seen them too. Everywhere like a plague.

Some really fascinating stuff.

Nightmarish.

Demon!

In the party, the dance sequence, and he

sees the demon tail, those fast images

like that, it's brilliant editing.

It's happening in such a way you don't

really know what's going on, but it does

stay with you.

All of the shit that was happening to

Tim Robbins, being thrust into the ice

bath for fuck's sake, you are on the

edge of your seat going, I have no

idea what's happening.

Stop it! Stop it you're killing me!

There's a whole bunch of stuff that they

cut out of it.

I think by really cutting it down the

way they did the final film, I think

they ruined it.

The battle that was in the original film

was really powerful.

They should have kept it.

The thing that's brilliant about this

film is that here's Adrian Lyne telling a

horror story, but what he's really

talking about is what was done to people

during Vietnam.

He's really exploding this idea that is

presented in movies like Coming Home or

The Deer Hunter: Were our guys

experimented on during Vietnam?

Now we all know about it, but here's

a horror movie exposing that.

Get me out of here.

The 90s starts to say you can say

something really special, you can say

something important as long as you

remember to entertain the audience.

Child's Play 2 I've always had a fear

of inanimate objects becoming animate,

and something about dolls, so many of us

share that fear.

The violence perpetrated by this

possessed doll, so terrifying.

How could a doll do that?

It's a little thing, and they always came

up with a creative way that he was

able to get the upper hand.

Hug this.

Child's Play 2 was like a 55,

60-day shoot, which seems like insanely

luxurious to me now.

It was my first on-set experience with

John LaFia directing.

He was very generous to me, letting me

be around and sort of soak up the

experience.

Child's Play 2 followed Andy's further

adventures now in a foster family, and

Chucky comes back to bedevil Andy once

again.

I got a new game sport.

It's called Hide the Soul.

The foster parents were played by Gerrit

Graham and Jenny Agutter, well-known to

genre fans through De Palma's Phantom of

the Paradise and American Werewolf in

London.

For crying out loud, Joanne, the child

needs professional help!

Oh, stop pretending you're right about

Andy.

They were both, for whatever reason,

palpably unhappy making that movie,

largely due to the script being rewritten

while we were shooting.

You start shooting a movie, you get

behind schedule, and when that happens to

a movie with Chucky in the title, it's

not Chucky's material that's gonna get

cut.

I'm turning human again?

If I don't get out of this body

soon, I'm screwed.

Christine Elise also remains a fan

favorite from Child's Play 2.

She played Andy's foster sister Kyle.

I wanted to taste it.

Get real, it tastes like shit, okay?

These things are very bad for you.

She and Alex remain friendly to this day,

which is very sweet.

There was a certain honesty in their

relationship, a kind of take-no-bullshit

mutual thing that they had going on.

It just makes me stronger.

Because it reminds me that the only one

I can count on is myself.

Kids do wrestle with insecurity, fear,

loneliness, isolation, depression,

anxiety, all of these things with Chucky

plays on when he gets inside your head

and starts to mess with you.

Oh, that stuff is really, really rich.

It was this bad man who got inside

my good guy doll.

It's a scary dream.

It was.

The primal appeal of the Child's Play

scenario is the archetypal boy-who-cried-wolf.

Kids feeling they don't have a voice.

You know, that's powerful stuff.

But I didn't do what I swear.

No?

Then who did?

Don't even think about it.

I think one of the best kills of

the entire franchise is the Miss

Kettlewell kill.

Ah!

Ah!

Ah!

Ah!

So anytime Chucky's walking through

space, that's a big deal.

John had designed this very groovy camera

movement where the camera dollies in on

his face as he says his line.

You've been very naughty, Miss

Kettlewell.

John LaFia really knew how to shoot

Chucky, setting a lot of the visual

grammar for the Chucky franchise.

Ah!

Ah!

Ah!

Also huge props to Kevin Yagher because

the puppet was fantastic.

There was more expression in his face.

He also had a lot more dialogue.

I mean, once we had a hit on

our hands, it gave us dispensation to go

to town and just write pages and pages

of dialogue.

Playtime's over.

Brad Dourif.

The success of this franchise, I think,

is hugely due to him and his performance

of the character in the very specific

kind of funny rage.

Just shut up and drive before I kick

your fucking teeth in.

There's something both frightening and

funny about seeing this little doll who's

just, like, frustrated that he needs a

chauffeur to drive him across town so he

can kill someone or whatever.

I think that that gives this particular

slasher a unique appeal.

I thought that their promotion of the

film was brilliant.

I loved Sorry Jack, Chucky's Back.

Sorry Jack, Chucky's Back.

And the movie was a hit.

The reviews were mixed in the day, which

was to be expected.

It's good filmmaking, but it made me feel

unclean and disturbed as I was watching

it, and I could only imagine what effect

it might have on small children.

It's just interesting that now it's

looked upon as one of the best movies

in the franchise, if not the best.

Snap out of it.

You act like you've never seen a dead

body before.

Growing up, I did not especially like

clowns.

I think it's universally true that a lot

of kids, myself included, found something

kind of creepy about them.

Aren't you gonna say hello?

Don't you want a balloon?

It is kind of a generational horror story

that is about a group of kids in

a small town in Maine who begin to

be terrorized by this thing that is able

to take on their individual fears.

Come here, son.

You'll like it down there.

You'll never have to grow up.

But it also tells the story of them

as adults having to look back on and

confront the same thing that terrorized

them in their childhoods.

The story itself is about nostalgia, a

terrifying version of nostalgia.

My boat.

Georgie.

It's all your fault.

The miniseries is sublime.

It's hung on one of Stephen King's

biggest strengths as a writer, which is

how to create characters that move into

your heart.

And these kids in The Losers Club, we

were all these kids.

We all have had the feeling of being

outcast or being different.

We're sort of a club.

Yeah, The Losers Club.

By the time it came my way, it

was set up as a two-night miniseries,

which is really saying something for a

1,000-page novel.

It was originally set up and budgeted for

three or maybe even a four-night

miniseries.

So I knew we had our work cut

out for us.

And we're out, right, Tom?

We got a break.

And I hope we still have a standing

bow.

The easy, sort of lazy journalist

approach to Stephen King is, oh, he's the

master of horror.

Actually, I feel Stephen King is one of

our great novelists, and he is the master

of childhood.

He is the master of rites of passage,

of early friendships, of bonding, when

every little thing means so much.

You guys don't have to do this.

My dad says you have to know when

to take a stand.

That was my take on the thing, to

make a human story.

The horror would take care of itself.

Tim Curry, man, that was a coup, a

casting coup.

I knew that we were in for something

good, and he did not disappoint.

Here I am, Wheezy.

Hey, you're gonna like it down here.

Casting is fun when you're in the fantasy

stage.

After we generated such a list, with all

sorts of names, Malcolm McDowell and

Alice Cooper and all the rest, as soon

as I found out that we could get

Tim Curry, it was like, God, yes, let's

go with Tim.

Get out, before it gets dark tonight.

You're too old to stop me.

Tim has a unique ability to swing in

a heartbeat from genuinely likable to

sinister and scary.

I'm every nightmare you ever had.

I'm everything you ever were afraid of.

We cast very carefully.

I believed those kids grew up to be

those adults, and that's really no small

feat.

I think it was our secret weapon.

Hey, to the Losers Club.

All right.

To the Losers Club.

I'm not a gore meister, so they weren't in

any real danger of having to edit

heavily.

I did exactly what I wanted to do.

Hey!

Oh!

I might have wished for some big, better

climax than a giant spider.

I know my reaction to the novel was,

really?

It all comes down to this big spider?

But that's what's in the novel.

Although nobody ever hits it on the head,

it's also a story about secrets of child

molestation and seamy subjects that

nobody wants to talk about.

I think that's what Stephen King was

getting at, is that secrets can be

deadly, and they can turn into monsters

if not dealt with in some way.

Swear to me that if it isn't dead,

we'll come back.

I think we opened the door at least

to the suits at the networks to look

at Stephen King in a slightly different

light.

I do believe that made other series that

followed possible for network television.

And when you're down here, you'll float

too!

Join the club.

Silent Night, Deadly Night 4: Initiation.

Couched in a mystery, a woman gets

involved with a cult of extreme Lilith

-based feminists.

Lilith.

She was the serpent that tempted Eve,

spirit of all the proles.

Maud Adams, a Bond girl, she was the

one that we needed for the title for

the box cover, and of course the box

cover doesn't look at all like the movie.

There is this parasitic quality to men,

and you have to get it out in

order to gain power for their own self.

Clint Howard was great in it.

We got to be friends through that.

Santa Claus killer!

I didn't want to do a Christmas thing,

so I didn't.

So I even made the main character Jewish.

It didn't make any sense whatsoever.

It took place around Christmas.

Richard Gladstein was an executive at

Live Entertainment.

He got the rights to Silent Night, Deadly

Night sequels.

He had been the one who bought Bride

of Re-Animator, and he said, hey, do you

want to do the next Silent Night, Deadly

Night?

Come on in now!

It was like no money, and we were

kind of out of control and out of

our minds.

Somebody should have stopped us.

With Screaming Mad George, we get so far

out with these visual ideas, and in this

case it was simulacra, this whole idea of

trying to see two things at once, seeing

things from another angle.

There's a lot of really, really

disgusting effects in it.

As she's being initiated, she actually

chokes up a larva.

And then she becomes a larva.

It's kind of like being reborn in a

way.

I do like these disturbing kind of body

morphing and mutations.

I'm not that big of a fan of

bugs, but I can use them.

We did do a lot of cockroaches in

that movie, and we did the big cockroach,

so I did Metamorphosis because I like

that story.

It kind of just gives me a kick.

It gives me sort of a little thrill

to see that roach and to see it

under the bed and then in the meat

locker with Clint with that nose on.

Bring down the dark room.

It's like chasing an aesthetic.

I was sort of very disappointed in myself

on that movie because I just thought,

man, you didn't know what you were doing.

You were just going a little too far.

Since then, I have gotten a little bit

of positive response to it, and that's

been very gratifying.

You have been initiated.

You go.

Now.

God, I

love you.

The Stephen King movie, Misery, starred

Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes who captures

her favorite author who crashes in the

snow in the middle of winter and then

holds him hostage in order for him to

change the book because she didn't like

the ending of the next book.

You dirty bird.

How could you?

Misery Chastain cannot be dead.

That was a very scary film for me.

One of the most interesting things about

Misery was seeing Rob Reiner direct it.

What a great change of pace.

You did it!

You did it!

You murdered my Misery!

Annie!

Very different stuff.

How do you tell a story of two

people in a room and keep it interesting

minute after minute, keep the story

moving forward?

First of all, you start with a great

William Goldman script.

Don't even think about anybody coming for

you because I never called them.

Nobody knows you're here.

James Caan and Kathy Bates were

absolutely magnificent.

The Fatal Attraction from a fan, I won't

let go of you.

It is a terribly, terribly frightening

film for an actor because there are

people out there who feel they own a

celebrity.

Misery's return?

I know you didn't mean it when you

killed her, and now you'll make it right.

The way Kathy Bates critiqued his

writing, his choice of what to do with

his characters in Misery, I've been

critiqued in the same way by fans.

Why are you playing a different

character?

Why do you have to play somebody who's

bad, particularly in the days of Family

Ties, right?

I was in their home every week playing

a very sweet man.

I would try to explain to people, what

I owe you is the best possible

interpretation of the character I'm

playing.

I can't give you the same character day

in and day out.

It's boring to me.

It's uninteresting.

Now don't be afraid.

Will this person kill me if I don't

do things their way?

It was the person next door, the person

who says, I love you, but do it

my way.

That is a very scary thing.

Can't you see it's what God wants?

We're put on this earth to help people,

Paul, like I'm trying to help you.

How much of Annie lurks within us?

Do we have the potential or ability to

become so obsessed with a thing or a

person that we would bend the rules of

what's acceptable to make it ours?

That scares the crap out of me.

The violence that you do

against James Caan is really painful to

think about.

These kinds of characters who look very

normal on the outside and then have these

really terrible, terrible psychological

problems capable of anything.

You've been out of your room.

No I haven't.

Paul, my little ceramic penguin in the

study always faces due south.

So Kathy Bates has this sledgehammer and

James Caan is tied to the bed and

she puts the block between his ankle.

Eventually she just swings away and you

see that ankle completely bend.

God's sake!

It's for the best.

Annie, please!

It's just a quick moment and it's

so effective but no blood, it was just

a sound effect, a rubber leg, and the

actors performing.

God, I love you.

That bent leg gag just turned into a

classic moment that just everybody just

freaks out every time it happens.

Originally in the story, in the original

book, she cuts his ankles off.

Rob didn't want to do that.

It was too gory.

I'm such a kidder.

Kathy Bates was a huge horror fan at

that time so it was a really instant

connection between us and her at the

studio when she came in for her head

cast and everything.

Originally we had burn tests around her

mouth because he shoves the burning

manuscript into her mouth and everything

but then the whole thing with the leg

was the main thing.

Eat it 'till you choke!

You sick twisted fuck!

What's come to be known as toxic fandom

is something that was certainly displayed

in Misery.

Now you can be toxic so easily.

You don't have to revert to capturing

somebody.

You can destroy somebody on screen if you

like.

And many people seem to enjoy that as

blood sport.

Oh, this whole house is going to be

filled with romance.

I'm going to put on my Liberace records.

There was a lot of hangover from the 80s

into the 90s, and nobody at the studios

liked anything about horror movies except

the money they made, so they didn't

respect it.

Yeah, there were great classics of the

time, but it was surrounded by a lot

of chaff.

Garbage day!

Huh?

No!

And that chaff, that gutter work, came to

represent what horror was defined by.

They didn't want to

say they were making horror, so they

would give it some other genre title,

like, oh, it's a thriller or a

psychological thriller.

That's marketing.

I mean, that's like trying to get people

interested in it.

Horror is a big umbrella that can

encompass a lot, just like science

fiction, just like drama, so it's really

weird to me that horror is oftentimes

bastardized, and people look at it with,

like, embarrassment and shame.

It makes an executive feel

better to say it's a thriller.

It also makes them really better when

they make a shit ton of money at

the movie theater.

Mike Gingold in Fangoria started a column

called It's Not a Horror Movie because he

got so sick of hearing publicists tell

him that their horror movie was not a

horror movie, so they're calling it a

psychological thriller.

It's a drama with horror elements,

anything but a horror movie.

What's that smell?

A horror movie will make this

much.

A thriller will make this much, so what

would you call it?

And we do like our categories, so we

like to put them in boxes.

In drawing those lines between

horror and thriller, that does invite us

to sort of ask what is a horror

movie and what isn't a horror movie.

There obviously is some congruence

between horror and thriller, that it's

terrifying, that it's horrific, that it's

scary.

Those are the elements that bridge

thriller and horror.

Yo, lady of the house, we're coming in.

You just gotta decide whether he's coming

with us, and fast.

To me, horror is an emotion.

Is Home Invasion horror for you?

Because it is for me.

Is Breakdown a horror movie?

For me it is.

It's the worst thing I can think of.

But it's also easy to call Breakdown a

thriller, or a drama, or an action movie.

But I watch Breakdown and I have anxiety.

I mean, it scares me more than vampires

do.

Our car broke down, and he stopped,

offered to help, took my wife to a

payphone, but she never showed up.

So I think horror has to be a

label that we each define for ourselves.

What you think is horror and what I

think is horror might not be the same

thing, but we're both right.

You won't necessarily go into a video

store and see a section for psychological

thriller.

You will see thriller and you'll see

horror.

And there'll be some crossover as to

where you put what title.

Fire Walk With Me is definitely a horror

film to me, and anyone else would call

it a psychological thriller.

They wouldn't dare call a David Lynch

film a horror film.

The greatness of a great horror movie

lies in how long it can prolong that

idea of am I watching something real or

am I watching something that lives in

another realm.

Now you're in this sunken place.

Thriller would be terror.

It would be scary.

It would make you afraid.

It's disturbing, maybe.

But if you take a thriller and the

killer starts cutting people open, well,

you've kind of gone over to the horror

side, and a lot of people don't want

to look at that.

You could go either way with some of

these movies, but I do think just the

very explicit blood splatter is what

really, in my mind, differentiates horror

from a horrible thriller.

It's a fine line.

It's all labeling.

You label it as a horror film, it's

kind of like bargain-basement type stuff.

If you say it's a thriller, okay, that

elevates it because Hitchcock did

thrillers, yeah.

It's funny, I actually gave this a lot

of thought when I made Fever was what

is the difference between a thriller and

a horror movie and why are so many

thrillers classifiable horror films?

I think Repulsion and The Tenant are two

obvious ones that come to mind.

I would argue that Psycho is really a

thriller underneath it all and that's

what Hitchcock is the master of.

He's the master of the suspense thriller

and he made one of the all-time

great horror films so I think Psycho is

your litmus test because you could look

at it as either.

In a good horror thriller, you are right

there spinning that chair around in

Psycho and finding the skeleton of the

mom.

You're there in the house.

In Fatal Attraction, that's why the

audience goes nuts.

It's a visceral response and horror is

all about a visceral response.

I think Fatal Attraction was what woke

the studios up to how much money there

could be made by letting someone go

batshit crazy in the guise of something

that seemed a little bit more suburban

friendly to the couples who just wanted

to go see a film after a hard

day's work and that ushered in a lot

of films like Fatal Attraction through

the 90s.

We got them over and over and over again

You had Hand That Rocks Cradle, you had

Sleeping with the Enemy, you had one of

my favorites Basic Instinct, which is

Verhoeven, who is a master of high and low

and sticking it to the critical film

community.

Have you ever fucked on cocaine, Nick?

The films have a kind of inherent

depravity to them while they are kind of

acceptable mainstream studio fare.

I think in a thriller, they know they

might have to have that scene that's

really shocking and maybe even very gory.

I've never felt like it was the reason

that we all went to the theater to

see it, whereas I know with horror that

is the reason that they're getting a lot

of people in the seats is that they're

like, oh my god, I can't wait to

see what happens, what they're going to

do, it's going to be sick! And Then

it is, and then they're happy.

That's why I actually will watch

thrillers with a little bit less anxiety

than I will horror movies because I know

the blood will be there, but it won't

be the kind of thing where I have

to really hide under my sweater.

I would argue that the watershed horror

thriller of the 90s that influenced most

of the movies that came after it is

Silence of the Lambs.

It's just a masterpiece, and it is

inarguably a thriller, and it is

inarguably a horror film.

I think that you had a new crop

of filmmakers that were taking from that

as well as the studios saying, let's make

more of this stuff because, you know, it

makes money and we get to go to

the Oscars.

He made me do it.

He put that thing on me.

He told me to fuck her.

Look, I think that studios run away from

the idea of a movie being a horror

movie.

They can run all they want.

We know what a horror movie is.

The audience feels what a horror movie

is.

The great thing about horror is that it

always remains undefinable.

Trying to define exactly what horror is

is nailing Jell-O to the wall.

In a lot of ways, it refuses to

get squeezed into a box, and as fast

as you've done that, it's starting to

leak out all over the place, and I

think that's something to be celebrated.

A thriller, a horror film, a monster

movie, you call it whatever you want to.

The movie business, that's all geared to

money.

They've decided that that's the best way

to sell a movie, so we're changing it

to thriller.

Maybe the next year, it's back to horror.

It doesn't mean anything.

It's meaningless.

Popcorn! Buy a bag!

Some students decide to put on an all-night

horror-thon to raise money for

their film program.

We do an all-night horror-thon.

Hey gang, I got a better idea.

Why don't we put on a play?

We'll convert the old barn into a

theater.

All starts out great, and then goes very

bad, as they are being stalked by a

killer.

He could be just lurking somewhere in

this theater just waiting to attack us.

I had done the Wes Craven Chiller, The

Stepfather, Phantom of the Opera with

Robert Englund, Cutting Class with

Donovan Leach, Brad Pitt. The Curse II,

and then Popcorn came along.

My thoughts around Popcorn are

mixed.

You know, very symbolic popcorn going

like this, like literally.

That's kind of how the set was with

the changing of directors and leading

actresses.

I only came into the movie halfway in.

They were in the middle of shooting in

Jamaica.

The actors are just sitting around,

waiting for a new director and a new

leading actress.

They would reshoot the masters, so you

could see me as part of being there.

So they never reshot the close-up of

the other actors.

That, for me, was rather jarring at

times.

I mean, I can see it in the

film.

Come...

into...

my...

hand.

Popcorn is a true horror movie, but the

thing that's so great about it, it's not

pretending not to also have fun with the

films within the film.

I thought they were terrific.

I could not believe how good they were.

God bless you.

Copying that style film from

the 50s.

They poked fun at themselves.

I'm high voltage, he says.

Always been high voltage to me, Bernie.

I think a lot of people resonate with

the leading villain because we have an

empathy for his situation, that he was a

victim, and that being a victim made him

physically grotesque, and so he has that

unresolved pain.

You don't like it, huh?

You don't have to look!

Don't look!

And I think the character that I played

in the film, Maggie, she was gonna

survive and maintain her empathy.

It's not a screenplay that I've been

writing.

My unconscious has been trying to make me

relive my past so that I would remember it.

The poster of Popcorn, I think it's a

fantastic poster.

Buy a bag, go home in a box.

I don't know why it didn't catch a

fire at the time, because it was on,

like, the sides of all the buses.

There were billboards.

I mean, it was everywhere.

I got problems of my own here!

I gotta make a movie here!

I really get choked up about the fans,

because who knew people all over the

world that love horror found this movie

to love?

So shall we kill her, or shall we

spare this maiden?

I have such love for all of the

fan base, because they are such a gift

that keeps giving to our lives.

Without memory, there can be no

retribution.

It's like it had a pilot light on,

and as the years have gone on, the

pilot light never went out.

Hats off to the video stores.

Half an hour to midnight.

I still have a little time to kill.

I was far more interested in films that

dealt with the psychology of characters,

of one character getting inside the head

and scaring the hell out of another

character.

What does that monster elicit in us?

What part of that evil do we share?

What causes a Jeffrey Dahmer?

Where does that come from?

Silence of the Lambs was touching on the

sort of serial killer fear that really

started in the 70s.

There was this kind of growing unease

that your own home wasn't safe.

Obviously Manson kicked the whole thing

off, but it took a minute for that

to reach kind of like acceptable

mainstream culture, and that was what

Silence of the Lambs did.

Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

As far as the studios were concerned, it

gave the serial killer trope credibility.

It took it out of the gutter.

It legitimized what could seem very grand

guignol, very base otherwise.

Do not approach the glass.

You pass him nothing but soft paper.

No pencils or pens.

No staples or paper clips in his paper.

Great source material.

Thomas Harris' work is wonderful.

Gene Hackman had in fact bought the

rights to the book before those plans

changed.

The doctors managed to reset her jaw more

or less, save one of her eyes.

His pulse never got above 85.

We almost got a very different movie

because originally Hackman wanted to play

Hannibal Lecter, and he also wanted to

direct the movie.

Tell me, Mom, when your little girl is

on the slab, where will it tickle you?

Thinking about Jonathan Demme and

Stop Making Sense and Something Wild, who

could think he would pull off Silence of

the Lambs?

You still wake up sometimes, don't you?

Wake up in the dark and hear the

screaming of the lambs.

Hannibal Lecter, he had a respect for

Jodie Foster's character Clarice.

Why do you think he removes their skins,

agent Starling?

Everyone in that film, these characters,

were these people that had very elevated

IQs, the high intelligence mixed with a

vulnerability, somebody that could get

through to somebody because they're more

real.

I only want most refuses to cooperate.

I want you to go after him again

today in the asylum.

Who's the subject?

The psychiatrist, Hannibal Lecter.

Hopkins owns that character so

completely.

That first moment when Jodie Foster walks

down, and there is this still, smiling

creature.

I think it is one of the great

performances in cinema history.

Dr. Lecter, my name is Clarice Starling.

May I speak with you?

You're one of Jack Crawford's, aren't you?

I am, yes.

May I see your credentials?

The voice is weird.

It would take someone of Hopkins' genius

to make that work.

When you think about who Lecter is, what

Lecter does, that high-pitched

monotone...

That expires in one week.

You're not real FBI, are you?

...seems like a very strange choice.

I'll do my bad impersonation.

I'm offering you a psychological profile

of Buffalo Bill based on the case

evidence.

I'll help you catch him, Clarice.

It completely wrong-foots you, and it's

part of the genius of Hopkins'

performance that he's able not only to

find that voice, to dare to do that

voice, but own it and make it work.

You cannot imagine Hannibal any other

way.

I ate his liver with some fava beans

and a nice Chianti.

What Hannibal does in that ballroom with

a birdcage in the middle of it is

the realm of horror movies.

Buffalo Bill.

You've got this guy who is literally

skinning women so he can become a woman.

And not only skinning them, but not

feeding them so they'll get thinner, so

their flesh will become loose off their

bodies, more the things that a dressmaker

would need.

It rubs the lotion on its skin or

else it gets the hose again.

There is such a remarkable awfulness to

The Silence of the Lambs.

It's so juicy.

When she's at Buffalo Bill's place and

then when she realizes that it's him, her

terror.

Freeze!

Put your hands over your head and turn

around.

Spread your legs.

Jodie Foster's like this with the gun.

She's totally shaking and she almost

seems out of control.

You wonder how she could have that

instinct.

It's brilliant.

It's a slasher film.

The dude is cutting skin off women to

make a suit.

It's a horror movie, but I don't think

a lot of people would call The Silence

of the Lambs a horror movie despite the

fact that it is.

And it stands out as well as a

horror film that wins multiple Oscars.

Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress,

and more.

And that is so rare.

The Silence of the Lambs.

No one thought it was going to win

any Oscars.

It won every Oscar.

Rightly so, by the way, because it is

a true masterpiece.

I do wish we could chat a little

bit longer, but I'm having an old friend

for dinner.

Are we having fun yet?

Every movie you make towards the end of

production, you talk about a sequel.

It's just a fun thing to do.

Bride of Re-Animator is the sequel to

Re-Animator.

We're giving homage to Frankenstein and

the Bride of Frankenstein.

You're alive.

Alive.

Stuart Gordon was really on a roll after

Re-Animator.

Lots of meetings at studios.

I was still thinking about Bride of Re-Animator

and Stuart at one point told me

that he said, no, my agent says I

don't do sequels.

I wanted to direct it.

Oh!

Oh!

Herbert West has now decided that he has

progressed from kick-starting dead

bodies, and now he's gonna create a new

person by putting together disparate body

parts, and he begins with Meg's heart.

We can create a new life starting with

Meg's heart.

We had an opening scene with Megan

starting right when the last movie ended,

but Barbara Crampton didn't want to do

it, and of course, it would have been

really disappointing to not have Jeffrey

Combs in it.

Luckily, he was able to come on board.

My hands, I created what no man's mind

or woman's womb could ever hope to

achieve.

It's based on the element in the original

Lovecraft stories where Herbert West has

his sort of morbid, carnal kind of

curiosities that he makes, and so I

called it doodling with body parts.

We can create new life.

Bride of Re-Animator had a lot of

different effects guys.

It had K.N.B., it had Screaming

Mad George, because I bring him to do

weird stuff.

No!

I had very much fun designing this failed

experiment.

Herbert West, I can do so many different

ideas about putting different pieces

together.

The design comes in as outrageous as

possible.

I did one design with both heads, and

then another one is the butt.

Every piece, very tiny hands here, big

hands there.

I had really fun with designing that

character.

That finger eye creature, that was

basically Tony Dublin, but the stop

motion was done by Dave Allen.

I understand that you have some radical

ideas about the reanimation of dead

tissue.

Dr. Hill with bat wings was definitely a

dangerous, dangerous thing to do.

West, you stupid biped!

It was because we were trying to figure

out how to get him to move around.

He didn't have a body, so we thought,

oh, we'll fuse a hand to his neck,

and he can crawl around the ground.

But it just seems so pitiful.

Then at the other hand, it was just

kind of like, you know, just go for

it.

It's questionable.

Like many people, I tend to try to

do more than I can.

And so you push things, you don't know

if it'll work or not, but you push

them, and I think part of making movies,

and especially directing them, is you've

got to just take chances.

For Bride of Re-Animator, we were honored

because we were given the task of

creating the bride.

I made you.

She was a challenge because we had to

apply what ended up being a nine-hour

application initially on Kathleen

Kinmont, and she had to be nude the

entire time.

You made me.

I made you.

It was a rough shoot, but we had

fun.

It was a fun movie to work on.

We could have done more, you know,

better.

It was very, very rushed.

That's what you want!

I regretted that I had so little

confidence in the bride that I only had

her show up at the end of the

movie because after the movie is over, I

thought, well, she's the best character,

and she didn't come in for an hour

or more.

Your girlfriend doesn't stand a chance.

Our girl is superior.

I think the biggest challenge was whether

it would be enough Re-Animator for the

fans.

How do you capture that special thing?

Don't you ever do that again, you mental

midget!

Bride of Re-Animator, there's a lot that's

very clunky and not very good in it,

and I know that, but there is stuff

that's good in it, too.

There's stuff that I really like about

it.

It got the Chainsaw Award from Fangoria

magazine, and so that was really great.

There is my creation!

Deep Night made by Fabio Salerno.

In the 80s and 90s, he had churned

out dozens and dozens of shorts and

features, all shot in 16, all done in

his parents' home, and he lived in his

set, so he always had a camera set

up, he always had lights set up that

basically he could shoot whenever he felt

like it and whenever the creativity

struck him.

So he was constantly shooting in his home

in Milan.

Deep Night is about a cartoonist who

finds a mysterious pyramid that possesses

him, and he starts seeing these evil

acts, and nobody believes him.

You're never sure if he is actually mad

and doing the killing and almost always

there's trauma around a jilted lover.

Fabio Salerno, I would say he's a mixture

of some experimental filmmaking, a little

bit of George Kuchar, a lot of Argento.

There's beautiful lights, everything is

creepy, everything is surreal and quiet,

and then there's moments of gore.

He did all the effects himself.

He edited, he shot, he directed, he

wrote.

This is a filmmaker who you can feel

like this was something he had to do.

He's working through some trauma, and

it's all there on screen.

It's just a fascinating window into a

filmmaker's psyche, I think, but also

it's just beautifully shot.

His cinematography is amazing.

The opportunity to play these evil demon

ghost punks from hell and work with the

likes of Stephen King was a dream come

true for me.

You wanna get through this tunnel, kid?

You're gonna have to pay.

I had worked with Michael Murphey.

He produced Nightmare on Elm Street Part II,

and that's how they brought me in to

audition for the role of Lawson.

Are you Richard Lawson?

Live and in person, Mr. Norman.

Just came up from Milford.

Real glad to be here, sir.

Working in Kansas City during the winter

was a feat in and of itself.

Out of all the movies I made, Sometimes

They Come Back as one of the prettiest,

most well-lit, most beautifully shot

film.

That was a really cool opportunity for me

to finally become the monster.

Time to rock, Chuck.

I had done special effects makeup stuff

before, but I was never the villain.

I got to kind of emulate Robert Englund

when I was going through the makeup

transformation, and I pulled this great

stunt on these kids.

There was all these kids outside the

makeup trailer one night because I had

told a couple of the kids, hey, if

you guys want to see a cool monster,

he's going to be out in a few

hours, you know?

Hello, Mrs. Norman.

Can Jimmy come out and play?

And by the time I got finished with

makeup, there was over 100 kids out there

waiting to see the monster, and it was

awesome because boom, boom, boom, boom.

I got everybody's attention.

I was knocking on the door, getting up

closer and moving up and acting like they

had the courage, and then I just came

out.

Arrrhhhhhh!!!

You know?

Hello, baby!

And I freaked out everybody, including

the parents.

I had a blast making that movie.

Shinya Tsukamoto with Tetsuo and Tetsuo 2 and

later Hiruko the Goblin really changed

how we saw what body horror could

actually be.

The camera does not move away, and

there's nowhere to hide with effects.

It is a complete art.

There is Cronenberg, but then there's

Tsukamoto.

Tsukamoto really put the art of body

horror on the map.

The Pit and the Pendulum. It's a slice of history.

For me, in all the Full Moon universe of movies,

one director really stands out above all others

and that's Stuart Gordon.

Stuart understood Poe and loved genre.

I shall christen my new device with your

blood.

We have a wonderful relationship with

Stuart Gordon, beginning with

Re-Animator, and From Beyond and Dolls.

You want a witch?

I am a witch!

The cast from Oliver Reed to Lance

Henriksen to Jeffrey Combs was so

committed to the movie.

His holiness is old and lost his zeal.

He is the Pope, and I am the

Inquisition.

This was a much more expensive film than

Meridian, which was a smaller story.

Back to the castle that I owned for

a while, we thought, well, we can shoot

it at the castle.

Much like Meridian, the cast, like Lance

Henriksen, we would all stay there.

Living at the castle and kind of enjoying

their own company, you know, day after

day, and that was the great thing about

shooting in Italy or any place on

location, is that you're kind of there

with your cast, and if they click, it's

an amazing experience.

Why did you tear out her tongue?

We didn't.

We don't do tongues.

Of course not.

How can they confess if they don't have

tongues?

You know, it was a period piece, and

we had all sorts of torture devices

laying around everywhere.

Does she bear Satan's mark?

It was a madhouse.

Oliver Reed, an incredible actor, was

also staying at the castle.

How can you conceive of posing with such

agony?

Between the actor, the lead actors, a few

of the crew members, there were probably

20 people staying at the castle, and we

would serve dinner every night at a

table, you know, in this amazing ballroom

that had to be 30 feet long.

And of course, actors just seemed to

overindulge generally and drink a lot of

fucking wine.

We went through cases of wine every

single night.

It was uncanny.

If you looked carefully, you would notice

that every so often someone would stand

up and go take a leak.

Oliver never left his chair.

So here is the guy who drank more

than anyone.

He had some kind of a bottle underneath

the table, and when he had to pee,

he peed in the bottle.

No one knew he did it.

Sometimes he left the bottle, so these

poor cleaning people have a bottle of

urine underneath the fucking table.

Terrible story.

Sorry, Oliver.

We must scourge the Church of Vanity.

No!

No!

Nekromantik 2 has a nice subtitle, which

is called The Return of the Loving Dead.

It's a love story with three people, and

one is dead.

A very poetic movie about necrophilia.

We were kind of amazed by the success

Nekromantik had.

Not all the money went to our pockets.

A lot of bootleggers got rich as well,

because the film was and is still banned

in many countries.

So people were asking for a sequel, which

in my point of view was insane, because

there is no such thing as a commercial

appeal to an underground movie.

The first movie I did after Nekromantik

was The King of Death, Der Todesking,

which is a totally different episodic

movie about suicide.

When we finally decided to make

Nekromantik 2, it was more of a joke.

So if you watch the film, you can

see that I'm making fun of people's

expectations.

They have to sit through minutes of lovemaking

and honeymoon scenes until there

is a drop of blood.

It was very provoking for horror

audiences when they watched the film in

the first place.

That might be the shocking thing about

these films, that they deal so much with

normal relationships.

This was one of the intentions, to do

a film that plays with the role of

the victim in horror movies.

The strong female characters in

Nekromantik 1 and 2 were kind of my

answer to the violence against women in

all these terrible horror movies I

enjoyed so much.

That's the real subversion, that the

first Nekromantik and the second

Nekromantik, these films present the main

actors, the so-called bad guys, in a

very normal way, and you can connect to

them, and that's the frightening thing, I

think.

We never worked in a film studio, so

it's always someone's living room we did

this mess, you know?

We never had any shooting permits or

stuff, so we always had to hide in

private flats to do our films.

On Nekromantik 2, they raided a cinema,

confiscated the film print, and that was

in Munich.

The case was that they really wanted to

destroy the movie, and they were trying

to charge me with so-called glorifying

violence.

And glorifying violence is a criminal

act in Germany. That law was invented to

get hold of Nazi propaganda and stuff,

glorifying violence.

But it was a very good tool to

get rid of horror movies as well.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1 and 2, all

these films, they were having the same

troubles.

But of course, Tobe Hooper was laughing

his head off in the US when his

film was banned in Germany.

He couldn't care less, I suppose.

But to me, it was dangerous, because they

were raiding our homes, they were trying

to destroy the negatives.

It was, of course, the end of my

career that I was charged as a criminal

for doing these movies, so it was

depressing.

This case was so unusual, because they

did so many things wrong, that a lot

of people thought, well, this is like

back in the Third Reich, you know?

People burning films and books.

We can't do this in Germany.

The outcome was quite positive after two

years of a court case.

The judge, he ordered a testimony from a

film historian, and he testified in court

that Nekromantik 2 is art.

And now, I was an artist, and the

film was free again, because a judge

sentenced me to be an artist so I

could get away with my films.

Subspecies.

The Night Has Fangs.

Besides the Bela Lugosi version of

Dracula and the Hammer film Draculas,,

the film that impressed me really the

most was Dreyer's film Vampyr, and also

Nosferatu.

For me, those were the vampires that were

the monstrous creatures of my

imagination.

Subspecies is basically the story of

three young students who come to

Transylvania to study the folklore of

vampires.

We studied medieval history together in

school.

We're smarter than we look.

Little do they know that there is a

real vampire dwelling in a castle close

by, who becomes fixated on them.

Back then, you have to understand that

Romania was a troubled, communist

country.

It was a place that you were warned

never to travel to as an American citizen

in the early 90s.

So one day at an AFM, a guy

appears from Romania, and he said, Look,

right now, because of the revolution and

all the craziness, there's a great

opportunity.

People need work, where you could shoot,

let's say, a vampire movie in Romania.

We did a deal, and the movie that

I conjured up, because I had the title

for a while, was Subspecies.

When Charlie Band first showed me the

poster of a vampire standing over a bunch

of little demonic minions who were

carting a girl off to some villa

We were getting close, and he said, I'm

really excited about this material, but

can't we just make it a classic vampire

movie?

Do you really need these subspecies?

I said, we fucking need the subspecies.

That's the poster.

Got to make the poster.

Charlie just looked at me like, what are

you, insane?

That's how I sold the movie.

In the beginning, we imagined that we

would do like The Gate and have oversized

sets and humans in the subspecies

costumes.

In reality, when we got to Romania, we

had all of these Romanian dancers and

stunt people who were going to play the

characters.

I called action, and they came scrambling

out like a bunch of drunken sailors, just

ridiculously overacting their parts, and

I was like, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.

By the third take, their flesh-colored

latex bodysuits were black with the grime

of the Romanian soundstage.

Sent the footage back to the States,

Charlie saw it, and it was the second

time on Subspecies that Charlie was like,

what the hell?

So Charlie enlisted the aid of his friend

David Allen, who was a stop-motion

animation genius.

Everything is really achieved with

practical effects.

Makeup effects, blood effects, shadow

motion, and things like that.

With Subspecies, I was able to kind of

explore not only kind of the look of

a vampire, but the internal lifestyle and

the weight of immortality on a creature.

Anders Hove took those inspirations and

created this indelible vampire.

Your time has passed.

We cast Angus Scrimm to play King

Vladislav, the father of Radu.

I was expecting the Tall Man from

Phantasm, and before me was like this

gentle, sweet actor.

You aren't content to live in peace,

Radu.

You crave evil.

The benefit of shooting in Romania was

the incredible array of locations that we

were able to shoot at.

Anything was possible in those days if

you greased the right palms.

All of that lent such a great look

and atmosphere to the movie.

The downside of working in Romania in

1990 was the equipment was all

antiquated.

You couldn't get good food.

The crew was not used to working in

the Western style.

So working in Romania was such a trial

for me and for the whole cast.

The hotels were horrible.

When I left, I was like, thank God

I'm out of this place.

We finished the movie and it was

successful, but it seemed in very short

order.

It was like, we got to go back

and make more movies in Romania.

We went back and we decided, why not

make two?

Why not make Subspecies 2 and 3?

And that was another big adventure that

Ted will tell, 20 times better than me.

And somewhere in all of that, I wound

up buying land there and building a

studio.

And I think we made 140 movies in

Romania from 1990-91 to when I sold

the studio in 2000.

Regulate this!

Out of all of our iconic slasher

characters, Chucky is the one that has

never just been spinning his wheels or

resting on his laurels.

Don Mancini is always taking Chucky into

a new space and doing interesting new

things with him.

Don't fuck with the Chuck!

Don's done a really interesting job of

serializing Chucky's journey and mapping

all these different concerns and themes

onto this, what you might think is a

very limited character, and created

something really special.

You got potential.

I always say, killing's good, clean fun

for the whole family.

So Child's Play 3 takes place with soap

opera-like speed.

Suddenly, we advance a bit into the

future, so that we pick up the Andy

Barclay character as a 16-year-old.

Do you know who I am?

Shelton?

That's Lieutenant Colonel Shelton to you,

asshole!

A young actor named Justin Whalin took

over the role of Andy.

Making him a teenager was an attempt to

mix things up and do something different.

Andy, how you've grown.

I also thought that a military academy

seemed like a fun playground for Chucky

to be in, rather than just a high

school.

So I think I was more explicitly

influenced by Damien: Omen II, because that

was a horror sequel that took place

partly in a military academy.

You're dead, new boy.

Fucking geek.

The military academy just provided a lot

of authority figures to mow down.

Oh my God!

Andy Robinson played Sergeant Botnick,

the kind of insane guy who gives everyone

haircuts, and he gives one to Chucky.

When's the last time you had a trim,

huh?

We got to do a really fun Sweeney

Todd riff.

Presto.

You're dead.

We all got crew cuts.

I buzzed my hair along with the rest

of the actors.

I'm actually in the movie, in the war

game scene in the woods, which was

actually shot back at Universal on stage,

all the wood stuff.

So that was fun.

Barclay was right.

You're not a good guy.

Sorry, kid.

You got me.

I'm bad.

Chucky's act of switching the paint

pellets with real ammo is just the sort

of naughty business that we want him to

get up to.

This ought to slow the pricks down.

I'm still amazed at the production value

that they do have.

They just rented a fair and set it

up.

The interiors of the Devil's Lair was

built on stage at Universal, and it was

really impressive.

Child's Play 3's problems were script

problems.

I think it was still a bit of

the same old, same old.

It's still Chucky wants to transfer his

soul into a human body, and it's still

kind of that same structure and tone.

Tyler, come out, come out, wherever you

are.

In my own defense, we did it really

fast.

I mean, there just wasn't enough time

because they wanted Child's Play 3 to

come out.

It came out nine months later.

Jack Bender directed that movie, and Jack

Bender has since become one of the

biggest directors in television, so

obviously he was not the problem.

There was a studio regime change while we

were shooting.

It was clear that they did not believe

in the movie.

Child's Play 3 was my first experience

with those kind of studio politics.

Pampering with the mail is a federal

offense.

Sorry.

The movie just barely made back its

budget, and so it was definitely a

financial failure.

It was just a disappointing experience,

and for me, it was like everything came

crashing down where I had two movies of,

like, oh, this is how it's always going

to be, and it's not always going to

be that way.

Now just sit back and watch the sparks

fly.

But we came back strong six years later

because then Bride of Chucky in 98

remains to this day the highest-grossing

Chucky movie.

Ain't the size that counts, asshole.

It's what you do with it.

Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare.

Freddy's Dead would be the first time I

was sitting in a movie theater to watch

an Elm Street movie.

I'll get you, my pretty, and your little

soul, too!

I remember getting those 3-D glasses and

being told by this teenage theater

employee that I would know when to put

them on because the character in the

movie would put on their 3-D glasses,

and when I see those 3-D glasses

disappear, that means I should have mine

on.

Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare,

is the final Nightmare on Elm Street

installment directed by Rachel Talalay,

and in this movie, Freddy is dead.

He dies.

The entire Nightmare on Elm Street

franchise was produced by Bob Shaye and

Sara Risher of New Line Cinema, and they

were really in charge of bringing in the

writers for the scripts and then also

hiring the directors, and they always

looked for young, hungry, really talented

people who had not been given that many

opportunities in Hollywood to date, and

in that way, they probably got a really

good deal, but they also were able to

kind of harvest a lot of really creative

people that were willing to work on a

horror movie and bring everything they

had to it.

Now be a good little doggy, and go

fetch!

I worked with Rachel Talalay on the

original Nightmare on Elm Street.

She was an assistant to the accountant,

and there were many moments when she

would beg me to, like, can we just

forget about your eight-hour turnaround?

And I'm like, okay, Rachel.

Like, you know, she had to be a

little bit of the enforcer, and then she

moved into the production department,

associate producer, line producer, and

then producer Bob Shaye and Sara Risher

had a lot of confidence in her

creativity.

She was the kind of person that probably

had a million ideas, so they were smart

and decided to give her the chance to

direct Freddy's Dead, Nightmare on Elm

Street Part 6.

Now I'm playing with power!

Finally, after five episodes with male

directors, it's great that a woman did

have a chance to put her mark on

the Nightmare series.

Ah!

Nice hearing from you, Carlos.

In Freddy's Dead, you find out that

Freddy has an heir.

He had a child.

This is where they took away his child.

What child?

Taken away, put in a town orphanage.

The plot wasn't the point, as was the

hook that they were going to kill Freddy

Krueger. This was it.

This was the end of the franchise.

Freddy's gonna die.

It's the final nightmare.

It's right there on the poster.

I remember Lisa Zane and the big battle

that they have toward the end of it.

At Freddy's demise, right when the

crescendo, Freddy's going to die,

they have a very put-on-your-glasses

moment that thrilled the audience

with a moment of film history that

shall never be forgotten.

Freddy's dead.

After Freddy's dead, Rachel went on to

direct Ghost in the Machine, and then

everyone was really impressed by what she

did with Tank Girl.

There just were not that many women

directors, especially in horror movies.

Her story is a perfect example of how

a really hardworking, very smart,

brilliant person can, you know, hang in

there and have really wonderful

opportunities.

And I think her story is so inspiring.

Beat my high score.

Ha, ha, ha!

Puppet Master 3.

Toulon's

Revenge.

There's a certain type of charm that

comes along with a Charlie Band movie.

You kind of know the vibe that you're

getting, right?

It's this unspoken exchange.

The best thing about the Puppet Master

series is the puppets, obviously.

Like, they're all such a unique

character, so you have this essential

army of puppets.

But with every new Puppet Master movie,

you get one or two new characters.

Mmm, mmm, mmm.

I love Blade.

He's kind of the ringleader of the puppet

gang.

Aah!

Aah!

Aah!

I don't regret any of the many Puppet

Master movies, but had we known, okay,

this is going to be a 30-plus

-year sort of franchise, we would have had

some sort of a story arc that would

have carried and been consistent.

It's all over the map because we were

improvising as we were going.

I made Puppet Master.

I funded it.

I brought it to Paramount.

It was a big success, and they wanted

more.

Paramount had an amazing distribution

mechanism.

They were really good at it.

There was a lot of money in direct

-to-video, like today where digital kind

of sucks for filmmakers.

Imagine the tens of thousands of video

stores that were around in the early 90s.

Back then, you shipped 100,000 units of

Puppet Master 2 or 3 at $30 each,

and that was a lot of money that

got to be split up.

No mercy, my friends.

No mercy.

Something works, you go, okay, people and

the fans really like it.

So Puppet Master 2, I knew we were

going to get an amazing amount of

innovative stop-motion and all that, it

was no question.

But what story are we going to tell?

How are we going to tie it to

the first?

The secrets of Osiris will once again

animate the lifeless.

Dave Allen did a good job, very different,

introducing Torch as a character.

It has some of the best shots, some

of the best stop-motion, I think, in

the series.

Puppet Master 3, considered by many as

the better Puppet Master, directed by

Dave DeCoteau, who's a close friend, and

that is when Full Moon had the one

brief year where we felt like, okay,

we've got money in the bank and

everything is awesome, so sort of spare

no expense, let's make a great Puppet

Master in Puppet Master 3.

Fire!

We rented the backlot of Universal

Studios because they had buildings and

things that were vintage World War II.

Just being in that backlot with things

dressed up as they should be, with Nazi

flags, it was an amazing feeling sitting

there going, yeah, well, we're here at

Universal briefly for shooting this big

-ass Puppet Master movie.

What is this joke?

That worked out really well, and it did

very well, but I could go on decade

by decade and talk about, we shot a

Puppet Master movie in China, we were all

over the planet with these Puppet Master

movies.

Michele Soavi was the great hope of

Italian horror at this time in the 90s.

Mary!

You did it!

They were looking for some young blood,

and Michele Soavi was the hope, after

having made his debut StageFright for

Joe D'Amato, and then The Church for Dario

Argento.

Scream your fucking head off!

The Sect was the second film that he

made under the Dario Argento Presents

banner.

A film that was based on nightmares that

Michele Soavi used to have from this

house that he grew up in.

It's the family home in the Catacombs

area of Rome.

It was based on this well that he

had underneath his kitchen, an ancient

well, where his grandma used to tell him

at dinner that if he didn't finish his

greens, that a demon would come out from

the well underneath their house and get

him.

It's also kind of a Rosemary's Baby

story, where a woman is going to be

giving birth to the devil's child.

It's born!

The film stars Kelly Curtis, Jamie Lee

Curtis's sister, Janet Leigh's daughter,

continuing that idea that worked so well

in Halloween by having Janet Leigh from

Psycho's daughter be the star.

They're going to get the other daughter

to star in The Sect.

What's happening to me?

Why did the old man call me?

She's not quite Jamie Leigh, but I think

she acquits herself pretty well in the

movie.

It also stars Herbert Lom in a late

-career role as kind of the strange old

man, and he absolutely knocks it out of

the water.

Your whole life has been planned for this

moment.

Herbert Lom has a lot of genre pedigree

from The Phantom of the Opera, the Hammer

film that he was in, And Now The

Screaming Starts, but also he's probably

most famous for being in the Pink Panther

films with Peter Sellers.

Probably the most famous moment in The

Sect is where they've got this kind of

contraption where they put hooks all

around the face of this person on the

slab, and you can just twist it and

pull it off, and it pulls the whole

face off.

There's a very impressive scene where she

is attacked by kind of a stork creature,

which is kind of what Michelle was

bringing to the genre.

He was bringing these very unique set

pieces, even if the whole didn't

necessarily hold together.

We never needed it to in Italian horror.

No!

A terrific, fun filmmaker.

No!

No!

Wes Craven's The People Under the Stairs.

Wes Craven was always pushing the limits

in film, and he was always an outsider

artist, and I've always had a lot of

admiration for him, and he was always

infusing big ideas into the stuff he was

working on.

The last family in the Lenox Avenue

building, then it's clear to tear down.

We build a nice, neat condominium, we get

clean people in there.

The People Under the Stairs is a broad

and yet hyper-focused, horrific look at

the disparity between the way people in

the United States were living in the

1990s, at a time when racial inequality

created horrific situations, especially

when it came to housing crisis.

You've got a fairly contained story with

a fairly robust ensemble of really great

actors in a world that is completely

metaphorically representing what was

going on at that time.

She's been feeding that thing between the

walls again.

Remember not to bruise her face.

The most exciting types of horror are

those that deal with the human condition,

and what this horror provokes and what it

reminds us of in our own lives.

Don't put me in there!

No!

And then you add this element of just

weirdness that is so tilting to you as

an audience member.

As a young black horror-loving kid

growing up, I hadn't seen anything like

that where someone my age who looked like

me could be the protagonist of a horror

movie and live.

Oh!

You had Brandon Adams, who was the

protagonist.

Must be another way out.

Further into the house.

It's the only way here.

Papa's too big to follow, and he's afraid

of what's in there.

People Under the Stairs also gave us Ving

Rhames pre-Pulp Fiction, so if you saw

People Under the Stairs, you knew how

talented he was even before he was

Marcellus Wallace.

Nice to see the rich folks get rich

too.

Brandon Adams was old enough at the time

where he knew what's real and what's not

real.

Wes didn't have to talk to him, having

to explain to him what a dog attacking

or whatever, like you got a puppet,

they're going to react differently

because they're so young.

Wendy Robie and Everett McGill as the mom

and dad, it was really cool to see

both of them together because they also

play a couple on Twin Peaks.

I'm sorry, honey, I didn't see it there.

You stepped on my drape runner!

People Under the Stairs, oddly, given its

premise and its setting, is a really fun

movie, especially once you get to Everett

McGill's just 100% full-throttle

performance.

I got him, I got him, I got

him, I got him!

It gradually amps up and goes crazy as

the characters go crazy.

At the time that People Under the Stairs

was made, mainstream commercial cinema

was not having very nuanced,

sophisticated, or complicated

conversations about socioeconomic

disparity in the United States, racial

inequality in the United States.

You and your brother are landlords of

over 50 buildings in this city, all of

which you've allowed to deteriorate into

rat-infested hellholes while you guys get

rich charging ridiculous rent.

It was looking at the present.

What's going on in the present?

Why is the situation still so messed up?

There's no community here.

All I see are a couple of n...

Wes Craven, he's making movies about

something he's passionate about, which is

he's seeing our society breaking down to

some degree and also worshipping the

villain, worshipping the enemy.

I love that People Under the Stairs, he

never tried to make a sequel, that like

it's one and done, I've made my point.

Shut the fuck up!

I'm always thrilled to be exposed to new

ways to make movies, to new ways to

tell a story, new technology that allows

you to make something more realistic

happen.

The 90s were a great time of

technological experimentation and the

discovery of morphing and doing CGI, that

sort of thing.

That is to the 90s what Ray Harryhausen

was to the 50s, creating stop-motion

creatures, the Cyclops, those are amazing

things to see in their context.

Sinbad help me! Help!

Digital visual effects are barely coming

into the mainstream at the end of the

80s, but in the 90s, all of a

sudden, it becomes real, and it becomes

real in a way that's going to change

the industry forever.

This happens between kind of the one-two

punch of Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park.

In 1992, there was this tool where you

could actually make a metamorphosis take

place on camera and not have to cut

away from it like in the old Wolfman

movies.

And to be able to do this in

a monster movie was a revelation.

The cop, Deputy Andy, sees Charles Brady

driving, and he morphs into a bunch of

different faces, including a sleepwalker

face and a baby's face.

The baby was the son of the visual

effects supervisor, by the way.

Andy goes, what the fuck?

And the whole audience was already saying

that to each other, and they just

exploded.

They'd never seen anything like that

before, and it was thrilling.

It's akin to magic.

You can't believe your eyes the first

time you see it.

The transitions between the practical

effects, which had reached an incredible

sophistication in the 80s, and this new

digital computer-generated technology for

visual effects, the seams are so hard to

detect, and when it's deployed just right

as this kind of balance between

incredible practical effects and

invisible digital effects, what you get

is industry-changing.

There was a bootleg tape that circulated

around town, the T-Rex test for Jurassic

Park.

At that point, we were like, oh, this

is the beginning of the end, and every

movie had to have everything CGI, and

then you saw our business dwindle a

little bit.

They took all of the great claymators and

stop-motion people, and they brought them

up to ILM, and they trained them on

Silicon Graphic machines and said, this

is what you're doing from here on out.

The creatures are realistic, they have

weight, they have heft, because they had

the money to do it right, they had

the talent to do it right, they had

the passion to do it right.

That, like with everything else, is a

double-edged sword, because instantly,

audiences are saying, more, more, more,

more of that amazing computer-generated

visual effects.

Producers and filmmakers are saying, I

want to do that, I want to play

in that sandbox, I want to do something

that otherwise would be completely

impossible for me to do, and then you

see this explosion of 90s VFX-driven

films.

A lot of studio execs, as they are

want to do sometimes, misread the

situation, it's like, oh, CGI, like, we

can do CGI, it'll be cheaper, it'll be

faster.

To think that you're going to go cheap

and get the same effect, you're being

silly.

Hasta la vista, baby.

Once CG came in, and digital technology

came in, you'll notice a shift from

having three or four or five months of

prep on a movie, even a low-budget

movie, to suddenly, it's a matter of

weeks, that's all the prep you get.

Shut up.

The quality of those effects varies

greatly, and when it doesn't work, oh

boy, does that hurt.

And then you get kind of like Windows

screensaver movies, like The Lawmower Man.

You did this!

A lot of those movies of the 90s

need to be forgiven for they knew not

what they do, but they also need to

be put into a context of, look, we're

learning how to do this.

I found CG to be a kind of

a cool tool as a director.

On Wishmaster, I used it for the first

time.

There was definitely things that we could

do that I couldn't do traditionally.

With Wes Craven's New Nightmare, there

were a couple of moments of CGI that

today probably don't hold up that well,

but I'm always surprised at how well

people still like them.

They still hold them in their heart as

a really cool moment of the film.

Death Becomes Her is a great example of

Bob Zemeckis using CG in a way that

had never been used before.

You can shoot a hole through somebody's

body and see through it.

That was totally uncalled for.

Meryl Streep's face twisted around

looking behind her.

Ernest!

You pushed me down the stairs.

Just all these tricks that never could

have been done before in the hands of

magicians.

I think we also saw in the late

90s it going to its extreme when The

Haunting came out.

The doors, Eleanor.

Only the doors can hold him.

People were 100% sadly nonplussed with

all of those effects.

I think the audiences were just being at

a buffet where you just want to stop

eating and they won't stop feeding you

and the food is crazy rich and over

the top.

We're going to see you out this door.

People get exhausted quickly from

digital.

It's not spectacular anymore if there's

no spectacle anymore.

Once it was not the new tool and

new toy that all the filmmakers used as

a crutch, the practical effects started

to come back in especially with the

filmmakers that were really big fans of

classic practical effects like Guillermo

del Toro or J.J. Abrams.

They like to mix it up and have

a little of both in there.

So I think it gradually came back and

now it's like a kind of good blend.

I think that the rebuttal to CG is

largely misguided and will be viewed that

way down the road because I think

audiences will just like the movies they

like and there'll be good art house

movies and movies that didn't work very

well and I think people will look back

at the films that worked in the 90s

with a great deal of love for the

films that worked.

I'm sure in 20 years or 30 years

we're going to look back at this era

and be like, Look at Avatar!

Like what a waste of resources!

It looks so bad!

So that's just the nature of filmmaking

and technology and how they've always

been entwined together.

That's the great thing about movie magic

is you accept the unacceptable.

You make the unreal real.

Right now we're at that point where we

haven't quite crossed the uncanny valley

of creating a human character but it's

going to happen and it's going to be

wonderful and terrible at the same time.

It's getting real creepy.

So if you think of A.I. You think

of the thing that imitates humans and

human endeavors and human art.

Now, is it great?

I don't know.

I want to be human.

I don't want an imitation.

No!

Tales from the Crypt, we did an episode

called You Murderer that Alan Katz and I

wrote and Bob Zemeckis directed and it

starred Humphrey Bogart

Seems that destiny has taken a hand.

who had long since passed away.

We bought clips of Humphrey Bogart.

Now, today with A.I. I suspect that whole

process would be very different.

I'm very nervous about what it means to

and what will it do to actors' rights.

I don't want to infringe or set up

an infringement on actors or anyone else

for that matter in terms of what we're

creating.

It's really about respect for the actor

and respect for the family.

I thought you might turn up.

If my image is used after I'm dead

being controlled by some A.I. for sales

purposes well, they remembered me enough

to want to use me and that's something.

That, I suppose, beats everything else

out because even the greatest actors of

all time are not remembered more than a

hundred years.

However, the product I may be selling,

the movie I may be in may not

have been my wishes in this world and

for that I think it's terrible.

The biggest fear is that eventually once

your image is captured and digitized that

it can be used in any possible way

you can think of and you will not

have any power over how it's used.

I do have that fear.

I'm just going to bash your brains.

I'm going to bash them right the fuck

in.

I really believe that no matter how hard

people try to make avatars of us to

perform in television shows or movies or

games or whatever virtual realities that

we're going to be in it will be

missing that spark of life in some way

that I think people will be able to

detect.

I just feel that people really like to

see real people.

You could make a young 18-year-old

Nancy star in a new movie but I

don't have any problem with that.

I created a fictional character for a

company and they paid me to do it

and they own it.

That's the one thing that I think a

lot of actors forget is that you

volunteer to be part of an industry where

it is your image that they are using

and purchasing when they pay you.

Knowing that it will be interesting to

see if there's contract law that comes

into play to reuse your image as an

18-year-old.

I would hope that it would exist and

I hope that people would be compensated

for that.

I think it's only fair.

However, I'm not going to bank on it.

I think it's always a mistake to bank

on Hollywood.

Filmmaking changes like every two years.

Change is eternal.

It's changed since the very first

cameras.

People that fight change are idiots.

People that only think that this is an

easy way out are also idiots.

We're always wondering like what the next

technology is going to do to our jobs

and our industry but I don't think we

should ever stop people from trying to

create incredible visuals.

Every painter, every sculptor has always

wanted to present something that the

audience has never seen before and be

unique.

I think that's going to be a trend

that we'll see going on forever.

Basket Case 3 It's time to build a

bigger basket.

Basket Case 2 it was like a well

-oiled machine.

We all kept saying I wish we had

a third one to do.

We all wanted to roll right into another

movie.

I thought we were going to see Belial.

I've got to explain things to him.

All the masks were made already and we

were filming in the summer.

Now we did freak wranglers for all the

people and they would have fans.

Each mask had an opening they could get

cool air in.

You have to worry about that.

Your brother's girlfriend is pregnant.

You mean I'm going to be an uncle?

Eve was pregnant so they got on the

school bus to pay a visit to Uncle

Hal in Georgia.

He's the only doctor I'd trust with a

delicate case like this.

I thought, why don't I do a musical

number?

I've always wanted to.

If I don't do it now I'll never

do it.

I said to Annie, what about you sing

Personality?

She goes, oh I love it.

Lloyd Price who wrote the song, he owned

it.

He said, who's singing it?

They said, Annie Ross, he went, holy shit,

really?

Oh my god, oh my god, you guys

can have it for one dollar.

Basket Case 2 was such a colossal problem.

They didn't like the birth scene I wrote

which went on and on and on and

they said, we want to cut it.

I said, why?

And they said, you'll offend women.

I said, no, women will understand the

scene.

Oh, she's beautiful.

Originally, I had wanted a plastic tarp

over the whole room and every time we're

in there things are squirting out.

Different colors, different this,

different that.

I lost 11 pages, I gotta come up

with something else.

The guy who played Granny Ruth's son with

the 11 arms was played by Jim O'Doherty.

You gotta pull out all the babies on

one thread, on one string.

What if you're doing it in rhyme?

She's had five and she's still alive.

I need a smoke.

It's the funniest stuff in the film.

Sextuplets

she's popping them out like Pez candy.

Seven.

Number seven, all from heaven.

I just try not to laugh.

I'm always fucking up my own film

laughing.

Number eight, lay 'em straight.

Number nine, my valentine.

Yeah, they were shooting RoboCop 3 down

in Atlanta, right next to where we were,

and I thought, let's do a Robo-Belial,

which is hilarious.

Originally, I wanted to go back to part

one and give them a real X-rated

bloody movie.

Then I was told they really want a

PG now for this one.

What do you do?

So we had effects that were kind of

unfinished in the film.

There's a scene where Belial squeezes this

guy's head and it just looks like a

bad fake head.

Originally, it was supposed to be a

waterfall of blood.

We had basically had to do a bloodless

film, which, you know, I wasn't thrilled with.

I may put serious stuff on there, but

I'm not trying to make intellectual

arthouse movies.

I'm making crazy-ass Mad Magazine-style

movies.

When I was in Japan, they were showing

all three of them.

There was a severely disfigured kid, and

they asked me, well, what is the meaning

of the film?

And I said, well, you heard what Granny

Ruth said.

It's their world, too, and if we don't

like it, we cross the street.

If you see us walk down the street

and you don't like it, get out of

our way.

We're here to stay.

Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro's

remarkable film Delicatessen is one of

those movies that won me over in the

opening four minutes.

It begins with a man hiding inside of

a garbage can where he is found by

the owner of the building that he's

living in who greets him with a hatchet

to the face.

It is about a post-apocalyptic world

where meat is the most sought-after and

sacred thing.

And there is a butcher who also owns

a building who constantly needs a new

person to be the superintendent of that

building because he keeps fattening them

up and then chopping them up to feed

to everybody in the building.

This movie goes to places that you will

never see coming in a million years

especially when you get to the entrance

of Dominique Pinon, an out-of-work clown

and by the way where a clown would

get work in a post-apocalyptic world who

knows but he's also a pretty good fix

-it man and he's also got a little

meat on his bones so this might work

for everybody.

There is a scene in the film it

is a musical sequence where an entire

building's normal day-to-day activities

all of these things become this beautiful

symphony of percussive ideas and the

entire building is sort of singing unto

itself.

One of the greatest moments of terror

you've got our hero and the young woman

he's fallen in love with they are trapped

in a bathroom that is slowly filling up

with water.

They're going to drown inside a bathroom

that's on the top floor of the building

as the monster is approaching and coming

for them.

Ahhhh!

It is the horror movie version of Amelie.

You will not be able to turn away

from this movie you will watch all the

way through.

Stephen King's Sleepwalkers Stephen King

is allowed to have the range of doing

something that's just pulpy good fun.

Cob kabob!

Or something personal to him and

something deeply emotionally rooted like

The Shining.

Here's Johnny!

Sleepwalkers is about human-cat hybrids

who are on the run.

They feed on the life force of virgin

human females and they are deathly afraid

of and destroyed by the scratch of a

cat.

Ahhhh!

This was right after Twin Peaks for

Mädchen Amick but she was so charming and so

winning and just so perfect in the room.

She was sexy as hell but could play

the virginal girl who was innocent and

the like.

Brian Krause had just done Return to the

Blue Lagoon for Columbia so he was under

contract to them.

We put him together with Mädchen, and the

chemistry was really sweet and of course

Alice Krige completing that trifecta

just brought so many levels and layers.

It just elevated it tremendously.

You have a very beautiful home Mrs.

Brady.

Tanya's parents were played by Cindy

Pickett and Lyman Ward who were married

in real life at the time.

They had played Ferris Bueller's parents.

Nobody loves a smart-ass Tanya.

She is smart dear and I'm smart enough

to know this is her first date with

a new boy in town.

My relationship with Stephen King during

the creation of Sleepwalkers was a long

distance one.

He was in Maine.

I was in Los Angeles.

There was phones and fax machines and

that's how we communicated.

He had seen Psycho IV and that was

the reason he thought I was capable of

directing Sleepwalkers.

I don't know.

I guess it was part of a motherfucker

trilogy that remains unfinished.

It's already started again Mom.

Don't worry.

Don't worry.

I have to feed you.

The only time we really saw each other

was when he came out for two hours

to do the cameo scene.

Buddy, I ain't taking the rap on this.

I lock this place up every night.

It's not my fault if every pervert,

weirdo, don't talk to me.

Go talk to someone in charge.

Those in the know were going, wait,

that's Stephen King.

Wait, that's Tobe Hooper.

Wait, that's Clive Barker.

Horror fans want to be a part of

their movies and if you're in on the

joke that there's Joe Dante and John

Landis in a scene, it made for such

a tremendous buzz.

So was the camera moving?

No.

See, the background and the clothes are

in focus.

Every one of those kills was written that

way by King.

You could read on the page how much

fun he had writing.

It's certainly the only movie that I know

of with death by corncob.

There's blood everywhere.

Even something as audacious as

Sleepwalkers about cat monsters where

mother and son have sex to be able

to feed the life essence of the virgin

to continue the line, the characters

played it straight.

Please don't kill me.

The movie is wackier than I realized it

was when we were making it, but the

performances and the approach to the

performances were taking it as if it were

Shakespeare.

What do you think happened?

I don't know, but somebody sure doesn't

like cats.

That poster art for Sleepwalkers was

really interesting.

This was a dying era of actual art

rather than Photoshop where you just get

a bunch of the faces, put them together

in an order, and there's your poster.

But this was evocative.

Stephen King's first story written

expressly for The Scream.

It was definitely the end of an era

for horror poster art.

Pet Sematary 2 The thing about King's

writing, it's so good because it's so

internal.

It's all about the thought processes of

his characters and why they think the way

they do and why they do the things

they do and the madness that is

descending upon them.

And that's very hard to write a

screenplay for and very hard to realize

on screen.

Come on, Doc.

We've got places to go.

Mary Lambert did it magnificently, I

thought, with Pet Sematary, the first Pet Sematary.

She really captured the abject sadness of

losing a child, that grief that causes

them to bury the kid in the Pet

Sematary and then it comes back and, of

course, it's not their child.

It's just an animated demon or whatever

it is.

And it does terrible things to Herman

Munster, which was very upsetting.

So the sequel comes around and I'm

reading it and I'm thinking, ah, geez, I

don't think I want to do a horror

sequel.

They said, well, who's directing? Mary

Lambert.

I said, Mary, why are you doing this?

You're such a good director.

And she said, this is the only thing

that I was offered.

She had no illusions as to what kind

of movie she was directing.

She knew she wasn't directing Pet

Sematary 2 like Godfather 2 or Empire

Strikes Back.

Hey, Junior.

Shit.

Wanna play?

It starts out in a slasher movie and

our lead lady in the slasher movie

suffers an on-set accident and she's

killed.

So it starts out saying that this is

not going to be Pet Sematary.

This is going to be a comment about

horror films.

No brain, no pain.

Think about it.

Her widowed husband and her son move back

to her hometown and he's a vet.

In Pet Sematary 2 I play Gus Gilbert,

the sheriff.

Maybe he had a thing for Anthony Edwards

and Edward Furlong's dead movie star

wife.

Your mother and I used to be sweethearts.

Really?

Prom, homecoming.

Whole nine yards.

He's the stepfather to Edward Furlong's

best friend.

He tolerates his stepson and, you know,

tries to make him a man.

I thought we were going to tone down

on your flabby ass.

Hey, I'm so sorry I'm not the stud

you are.

And doesn't like the dog because they

threaten his little bunnies.

Damn dog stuck his nose in on my

rabbits.

They ganged up on him.

I swear that dog is dumber than lobster

bait.

So then he kills the dog and they

go bury the dog in the pet cemetery.

The dog comes back, kills Sheriff Gus

Gilbert.

The boys are like, oh no, we've killed

your stepdad.

So then they take Gus Gilbert and they

bury him in the pet cemetery.

He comes back and he kills everybody.

It's just one absurdity after another,

after another, after another and you have

to enjoy it.

It's just supposed to be fun.

This is the bad shit that can happen

when bunnies get killed and fat kids get

buried by potatoes.

And Stephen hated it.

But if he hates that movie, it's his

fault.

He created the world.

He created the rules.

I'm melting.

Steve Johnson, the effects makeup artist,

he had gone to work on Innocent Blood.

And so we had a bet going that

Pet Sematary 2 would make more money than

Innocent Blood and I won.

I can't remember what we bet, though.

Twin Peaks was quite the phenomenon on

television in the early 90s.

Quirky in a kind of fun way.

As much as a series about a child

molesting father murdering his daughter

can be.

And the last episode of Twin Peaks is

probably the scariest thing I've ever

seen on television.

Twin Peaks is much more than the murder

of a young woman.

It's much more than the secrets of a

small town.

It's much more than strange people

dancing in a roadside cafe.

This is a story that is about the

human experience in a level that we can't

properly evoke with just dialogue.

There's something about David Lynch that

always enticed and attracted me that

brought me into his world so effortlessly

and I think it's because he speaks the

language of dream.

In a way that no one has done

before.

So here comes Fire Walk with Me and

this is a film that takes all these

characters and all this story that we

know and we think we know and we

think we're starting to understand and it

sets it on fire.

It tells the last seven days of the

life of Laura Palmer.

I think David Lynch told the story that

he wanted to tell.

He wasn't going to pander to what the

network ratings would have wanted if it

was a new season of Twin Peaks.

He wanted to go and unravel what happened

to Laura Palmer but also starts before

that as well with the previous victim

Teresa Banks.

And it's a nightmare.

That's what's really spooky and beautiful

about Fire Walk with Me.

When you watch it it's a horror film

and it will scare you.

You do get a whole other FBI duo

played by Kiefer Sutherland and Chris

Isaak and this incredible scene with

David Bowie where he just comes from a

vision of the past which then transitions

into a room above a grocery store where

all the people that ultimately end up in

the Black Lodge are.

And then it goes to Twin Peaks and

Laura Palmer and the life of the

homecoming queen which is not quite as

ideal as it might seem from that photo

of her that's in Pride of Place in

the school trophy cabinet.

These hands are filthy.

There's dirt way under this

fingernail.

The murder sequence itself is also just

really mind-blowingly disturbing.

You know, that's kind of the premise of

the whole show starts with the murder of

Laura Palmer so to actually see it in

this kind of nightmarish vision with all

these kind of demons from another world

if you will was really something else.

It's the stuff of nightmares. Give me a

break.

Terrifying and intense and poetic and

beautiful like something by Jean Cocteau

or something and it made absolutely no

sense but you know I think that's what

Lynch says. If life doesn't make sense, why

Do films have to?

I think they called the film Fire Walk

With Me because after an hour of the

film you'd rather be firewalking.

The interesting thing was both critics

and Twin Peaks fans hated it.

So basically there was no audience left

for this film except for like the real

niche hardcore David Lynch fans.

But he is a true artist I mean

as was proved by Twin Peaks: The Return

when he only agreed to do it when

he got full creative control and that's a

show that really really goes out there.

Interestingly I was at the Cannes screening

of the first episode of The Return as

well and everybody was giving it a 10

minute ovation.

That kind of showed that everybody had

finally sort of caught up 25 years later

to what Twin Peaks was really about and

what the style of David Lynch was really

about.

Who knows where or when.

The Other Dimension is Fabio Salerno's

anthology that follows three stories, a

lot of them about obsession and madness.

My favorite one being the opener which is

about a guy who finds his ex-lover

who has left him and he you know

kills her.

Then continues to spoon her in bed.

You're not really sure if she's dead or

if she's alive but you do know there's

something very wrong with him and you

definitely see some evil spirits while

he's grappling with the guilt of what

he's done.

With this anthology there's an incredible

scene where the main character goes down

opens a door and there's a flesh eating

beast.

With Fabio Salerno's movies you

definitely see a filmmaker working

through trauma.

There's movies, always something

around depression or madness or

obsession.

He did end up taking his own life

in 1993 so when you know that information

and you look back at his work it

definitely colors how you see it.

His writing and his filmmaking style and

what he was going through.

Fabio Salerno is absolutely about the

slow burn that builds tension builds

suspense and then you get this gore

centerpiece

that you didn't see that was coming which

to me is like a sign of a

great filmmaker.

Clive Barker presents Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth

Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth, we pick up

the idea of the division between Pinhead

and Elliot Spencer.

Pinhead is trapped in the Pillar of Souls

and through the good graces of J.P.

Monroe played by Kevin Bernhardt, Pinhead is

released.

Shall we begin?

Now he's free of the box he's free

of the rules and he can do whatever

he likes.

New World Pictures who had produced

Hellraiser and Hellbound went bankrupt.

So who owns the rights to Hellraiser?

Clive Barker was thinking correctly no

doubt that as principal creator the

rights would revert to him.

And then Larry Kuppin emerged from the

wreckage of New World waving a piece of

paper that according to Larry meant that

he had the rights to Hellraiser.

So it meant that Hellraiser III went ahead

without any direct involvement from

Clive.

That was difficult for me.

Tony Randel had directed Hellbound he

was now going to direct Hellraiser III.

That didn't work out and so quite late

on in the piece Tony Hickox is parachuted

in.

Sadly the late Tony Hickox. I loved Tony

Got on very well with him really enjoyed

working with him.

Oh I enjoy making you bleed.

And I'll enjoy making you enjoy.

It was very exciting for me to come

and work in America for the first time.

Now suddenly I'm all on my own surrounded

by Americans.

Terry Farrell who plays Joey Summerskill

at the heart of the movie.

I loved working with Terry.

We obviously had a lot of scenes together

both Pinhead and as Elliot.

There is a gateway to Hell through which

he can be taken back he wants to

close that door forever.

The days I spent in the Pillar of

Souls it was interesting challenging

exciting slightly comedic and very

uncomfortable.

If stuff's going on over here I can't

really see it.

And if I have to talk to someone

who's over here I can't you know.

Imagine a world of the body as canvas

the body as clay your will and mine

as the brush and the knife.

This is the joy of making horror films.

When else am I going to get the

opportunity to be part of the Pillar of

Tormented Souls and to suck the skin off

unwitting young lady to digest.

Welcome to Hell, that's the fun of it.

Because we're exploring the idea that

Pinhead is operating more as a maverick

and he's not constrained by the box and

the rules anymore now he makes his own

Cenobites.

He describes them as a shadow of the

old Cenobites he apologises.

They're handmade Joey, a shadow of my

former troops.

So Pinhead gets to create his new model

army.

Kane Hodder he keeps a careful count of

his kills and he liked to slightly taunt

me because he thought Pinhead was a bit

of a lame-o because he didn't really

kill a lot of people and we were

having this conversation and I suddenly

thought, Ah, Hellraiser III, how many people

do you fit into a nightclub on an

average Friday night Kane?

3, 4, 500 people maybe because I wiped

them all out.

Miramax came along they were shopping for

horror franchises and they were forming

Dimension Films and they wanted to market

Hellraiser III as Clive Barker's Hellraiser

III and Clive said, OK but I want

to see what I'm putting my name to

so it meant Clive is back on board

as executive producer and he's on set.

Hellraiser III also gave me my first

Hollywood premiere which was kind of fun

it feels like an American horror movie I

think in a way that Hellraiser and

Hellbound don't.

I really liked the movie, it had all

the energy that Tony Hickox had brought

to it there was a lot of laughter

and a lot of playing on Hellraiser III

as well but a lot of hard work

too.

Demons aren't real. Then what the fuck is that?

Horror movies have a very bad reputation

in Germany in the 80s. When the revolution

On video came video shops they only had

sleazy horror movies and porn movies. When

the parents of German school children

found out that they got tapes at home

that they shouldn't see, the politicians

reacted quite strongly and banned a lot

of movies.

I always shot on Super 8

or 16mm. Other German filmmakers they did

The stuff mostly on video and because

they came a little later. From an American

point of view it looks maybe like a

movement.

On a camcorder for example, you

can really run wild and that's what

you're seeing in the 90s in Germany with

splatter films and things that are

incredibly offensive and exploitation and

people really running free with the

medium.

Olaf Ittenbach, a very angry

German from what I can tell because his

films are full of brutality and just

general anger.

He was probably on the tape trading market

and trying to find the most extreme stuff

and decided when he was gonna go out

there and make his own movie he was

gonna make it the most extreme movie that

had ever been made.

The Burning Moon this

is kind of the ultimate splatter movie

shot on video.

This is an anthology horror

movie and the framing device is a junkie

who's babysitting his young sister and

telling her stories at bedtime. Ittenbach

himself plays the junkie.

One's about

an escaped serial killer doing terrible

things to a family

and the other one

is a country priest on a rape and

murder spree who goes to hell.

The Tom Savini books things like that I imagine

that Olaf Ittenbach probably had Grand

Illusions and learnt a bunch of these

tricks because they're all in there and

the effects I have to say are pretty

damn good as well. This isn't just like

Ripping dummies heads off and things like

that he's actually doing proper effects

It's got lots of nastiness in it but

that last 25 minute hell sequence is

unlike anything else.

This is what

the hell of Hellraiser should be. It is

nasty nasty stuff.

That is what really

puts The Burning Moon in the upper

echelons of shot on video horror.

For me as a young filmmaker there was no

movie more important than La Femme Nikita

When I saw that Anne

Parillaud was going to be following that

up in America with a John Landis film

and a John Landis vampire film at that

you could not have whet my appetite more

Hey what are you some kind of a

freak?

Anne Parillaud's performance in that movie

is second to none. One of the greatest

female vampires ever put on screen.

You dress like a pimp and talk like a

goon. What makes you news?

Excuse me? She's from out of town, Sal

And Robert Loggia never met a piece of

scenery he couldn't chew

Please God Sally

No please!

Don't fuck with me!

John Landis really let him go

on that one and he really delivers

Don't play Mary Virgin with me

It's basically a

mob movie with vampires

Somebody tried to

whack me. I don't know who's behind it

The Gambinos, The Feds, they laid me out

in the morgue!

John Landis movie. Big John

Landis fan. My goal was I want to

impress him as much as Rick impressed him

with American Werewolf which is virtually

impossible.

Turn off the fucking lights

I went to his office at Universal and I'm

like what do their teeth look like?

They don't have any teeth, they don't have

fangs. I'm like what are you talking about?

They're vampires. How are they going to

eat and drink the blood? And he goes

You'll love this, they just tear into it

It's even more violent. So I'm like great

Now we've got to do all these neck

ripping effects? Okay. No, it's cool, I get it.

Don't you fucking move!

I go okay, what do

their eyes look like?

I don't know. Make them yellow or red

or something I don't care.

I'm like John

If they don't have teeth, we've got to

do something to make these really really

stand out. Give me six weeks, I think

I can make a contact lens, so that

we can project out of their eyes and

we get it to work. Fucking amazing.

I'm going to eat your face like a chicken

Whatever color gel we put in the light

the eyes would be that color so when

we shoot the sex scene with Anne Parillaud

her eyes are gently throbbing and

changing color as she's orgasming It's

really cool. No digital back then so

people would be blown the fuck away to

say how the fuck did they do that?

Which is what I always want to shoot

for, show the audience something they

couldn't possibly imagine themselves

That's the job

Ah!

Ah!

We shot in Pittsburgh in the winter, night

shoot. Not a single day, not a single

day, so we all turned into vampires

ourselves because we'd wake up at sunset

and go to sleep when the sun came

up basically.

You girls look good enough

to eat.

Ow!

The hilarious scene after Don Rickles'

character is killed and his widow says

Manny, Manny they murdered my Manny!

What?

He killed him! He ate my Manny!

The Don Rickles transformation He's so funny

He's such a blast to work with and

we had to torture this poor old man

Ah!

Ah!

Remember he's eighty years old and he's

got all these appliances on and he was

a really good sport about it.

Ah!

Ah!

Ah!

Aaaaaah!

It was just a great, really fun movie

Leave me alone.

Shut the door

Yeah, but

you're in the freezer.

Ah!

Okay. Hit the fucking lights!

Candyman You don't have to believe.

Candyman Candyman Candyman Candyman

Candyman Candyman

Hell no I'm not going

to look in the mirror and say Candyman

five times I'm not stupid.

Candyman Candyman

Why should I tempt fate?

That's ridiculous.

Candyman Oh, you

chicken! You have to do it five times

Candyman directed by Bernard Rose from

Clive Barker's original short story.

Clive had set his original short story in

Liverpool that now became transposed to

the south side of Chicago to Cabrini

Green with all the urban elements and

racial elements that that brings with it

I hear you're looking for Candyman, bitch

Well, you found him

Candyman is about an

urban legend, a man who appears in a

mirror if you say his name five times

who has a hook for a hand and

breathes down your neck and will split

you from your knob to your gullet.

He's

kind of a romantic figure in the classic

Edgar Allen Poe sense. His motivation is

love in a weird way and vengeance.

Your death will be a tale to frightened

children, to make lovers cling closer in

their rapture.

And he's probably not real.

Help me!

Help me!

That's not possible.

People were actively

living in a fear of something that was

really outside of their control and so in

order to deal with the situation of where

they were living they kind of created

something more frightening than was

supernatural.

Candyman isn't real. He's

just a story, you know, like Dracula or

Frankenstein.

You have to call Candyman. He

doesn't just come, he's not just turning

up to kill you, and he doesn't kill

you for moralistic reasons like having

sex or something. He doesn't care about that.

But he's interested in Helen because

he's in love with her, and that to

me was what made him interesting as a

character.

Allow me at least a kiss.

Just one

exquisite kiss.

Here's this white lady

going into this predominantly African

American environment, right?

And she's doing her study. It's this very

theoretical thing, and suddenly it's

dumped in the middle of really a race

problem that tracks back to the inception

of our nation.

You know, whites don't

never come here except to cause us a

problem.

Believe me that's not what we

want to do.

Candyman saw us so clearly

in that movie.

What you gonna say?

That we bad?

We steal?

We all on drugs, eh?

Producers they were daring in allowing me

to do that, and so was Clive in

bringing those elements into it. I think

that's why the film still has a richness

in terms of its themes.

Two people get

brutally murdered and the cops do nothing

Whereas a white woman goes in there and

gets attacked and they lock the place down.

Bernard, he's a director who does

not seem to mind breaking limits and

boundaries in traditional filmmaking

practices. Incredibly observant about

human nature.

If you get Philip

Glass to score a film, that is something

that is incredibly rare and amazing but

that he scored a horror film is

absolutely unprecedented, but this is a

testament to Bernard and what he's

capable of doing.

He's here.

You can't talk about Candyman without talking

about the bees in the mouth.

Tony Todd

had real bees in his mouth. Bless him

I don't know how he got through that

but he was a fucking trooper. I'm getting

chills just talking about it.

It was an

intense thing to do. There was this very

brilliant man called Norman Gary who is a

professor of entomology. He had

synthesized queen bean pheromone and the

bees would treat you as if you were

the queen and they would cluster on you

and not attack you. The myth that Tony

was paid $1,000 a sting is an

example of a myth. It has absolutely no

basis in fact. Tony had a dental dam

so he couldn't inhale them and they

couldn't get down his throat, but

obviously certainly being stung inside

your mouth would be a pretty intense and

unpleasant experience.

Virginia was

actually allergic to it so she was

probably more at risk but she never put

any bees in her mouth, they were just

on top of her face. She was pretty

courageous doing that.

When I saw the film,

it blew me away. It's still I think

one of the best horror films I've ever

been in. I was always very proud of

the film, I know Clive always really loved

it too. It overperformed above their

expectations I think but not universally

well liked I would say the reviews were

mediocre rather than great but it's a

horror film. That was a debased genre

particularly in the 90s.

Come with me and

be immortal.

You alright?

Ghostwatch is a BBC television special in

which a team of outside broadcasters and

well-known personalities descend on the

most haunted house in England to transmit

a special program on Halloween night 1992

The program you're about to watch is a

unique live investigation of the

supernatural It's a program that pretends

to be a live broadcast from a haunted

house but in fact is a scripted drama

that is just actually pulling the wool

over the eyes of the audience.

It had sort of a similar effect to what

happened with Orson Welles and War of the

Worlds in 1938 where people actually

thought that aliens were invading because

of the way it was presented on the

radio. It was that sort of thing with

the BBC where people actually thought

they were watching the real thing and

then were complaining afterwards that

they'd been tricked.

There was no disclaimer at the beginning and

even if there was a disclaimer at the

beginning as someone said to me not

everyone watches the beginning of a

program.

Please, we don't want to give anybody sleepless nights

We don't want to start a panic

Don't let your imaginations run wild

Ghostwatch was originally pitched to the BBC as a

six part drama about a TV crew of

documentary makers investigating a

haunted house but the BBC weren't keen on

investing on six hours of drama that were

supernatural.

It's the usual prejudice and snobbery they

have against the genre but I said what

if we did episode six and episode six

that I had planned was a live broadcast

from a haunted house.

Who's there? Who's staring at me?

My job as a

screenwriter was to kind of forget all

the rules all those exposition scenes

that you'd normally cut out of a

screenplay that's exactly how you had to

tell this particular story. That was the

fun of it was telling a ghost story

in a different way.

Partly, Ghostwatch is

about what do you trust. Do you trust

what you're told? Do you trust what you

see? You know do you trust that caption

that says this person is an expert? We

live in an age of fake news right?

But even then do we trust what someone

says just because they're on a news

program being interviewed you know?

It makes me so angry when you still get

people out there denying that these

things even happen.

Lin Pascoe will be

giving her expert commentary right

throughout the program.

The main presenter

from the studio it went in the end

to Michael Parkinson who's a very well

-known chat show host. He got it

immediately. He knew exactly what we were

doing and how it would work and being

a Yorkshireman, he's very dark, very down

to earth, very skeptical which was perfect

for the part really.

Yeah well something's

gone very wrong with that ghost story

probably our poltergeist. What do you

think Dr. Pascoe?

The extended family of the TV crew is

really made even more vivid by the fact

that we use a real life couple that

are well-known to TV viewers in England

Mike Smith and Sarah Greene.

I mean I

think this is the right environment to

study these things. Yeah that's why I get

sent out here to the front line and

you stay all cosy and safe and sound

in the studio isn't it?

I was really adamant that nothing scary

is going to happen for 45 minutes out

of the 90 minutes. You can imagine how

that went down.

My logic was we'll set

up all the little things that are going

to pay off in the second half where

the cameras are where they're getting the

sound, the temperature gauges, the

technology, the back story.

He had several

convictions for molestation, aggravated

abuse, abduction of minors.

He should never

have been let anywhere near any community.

All those things are surreptitiously

setting you up to be kind of twisted

in the second half

It's hurting me!

Get off me!

Mum help me! Don't leave me mummy!

The children are

vulnerable. The presenters they become

dependent on each other you know and

there becomes a symbiotic relationship

and then we become the other outer circle

because we're watching and we're getting

a kind of voyeuristic pleasure about

watching what's going wrong you know

We're instrumental in the terror that's

happening in the house and do we take

responsibility for that?

In a way that is a question that

hangs over a lot of reality TV, I think.

Mike!

Oh my god what's happened?

The phone lines were jammed with people

complaining about it, all the Sunday

papers were full of it, heads must roll

at the BBC. It's kind of like the

BBC battened down the hatches and said you

know what we'd never want to mention this

programme again, too many people have been

upset by it and we'll pretend it hasn't

happened.

I'm really proud of the legacy

of Ghostwatch.

It is literally incredible

to think that people still talk about it

and still tell me they've discovered it

thirty years after it was made just

something that went out once you know and

people are still talking about it.

Because

of the way it looked even though people

know it's not real, it kind of bypasses

their critical faculties and however much

they tell themselves this isn't really

happening, the visual nature of what's

before their eyes goes to a different

part of the cerebellum.

Do you think Mr

Pipes has come to hurt you?

I think he's come to hurt everybody I

think he wants to do nasty things.

Dracula

Coppola is by a mile my favorite American

filmmaker.

With Dracula, Coppola just dove

in. It's almost more like a filmed opera

Like you could easily see him taking that

production and doing it live at the Met.

It's epic and it's on a grand scale

and it's like you're in the Grand Guignol

Theater in Paris and you're watching

something that's spectacular.

Hook and Dracula my big two

both had been projects

that I had wanted to do that were

turned down years and years and years and

years.

Nobody wanted to do grown up Peter

Pan. Nobody wanted to do Dracula.

I was

actually let go by my agency because I

was too old and had not had anything

produced. Winona Ryder she wanted to

change her image. She gave the script to

Coppola as a make-up call for Godfather

III. Francis, turns out had been a big

fan of the Dracula book.

Godfather III had

been difficult. I think Dracula, he felt

it was an opportunity to do something

different that was commercial.

I am Dracula

Mike Medavoy came in and took

over the studio and read the script and

went wait a minute this is big so

suddenly overnight I owned Sony Studios

every soundstage was either Hook or

Dracula

My golf cart had Hook and Dracula

on it and one day there was a

wreck on the studio between a Hook and

Dracula golf cart.

Stoker wrote an

incredibly sweeping erotic romantic

gothic romance novel everything we did in

Dracula was in the book the old man

the green smoke the big bat the wolf

that's all in the book.

Gary Oldman really

announced himself as an actor and it's

one of those iconic performances where

once you see it you can't picture anybody

else in that role ever again.

The luckiest

man who walks on this earth is the

one who finds true love.

He's playing the

decrepit shell, he's playing the virile

count, he's playing the battle damaged

warrior who hates God, the time crushed

lover. The line I have crossed oceans of

time to find you is the most romantic

line ever.

I have crossed oceans of time

to find you.

The Prince, Gary on the

streets of London wearing sunglasses in

broad daylight to hit on chicks and pick

up Winona. Francis fought for that

scene, the studio did not want Dracula to

walk around in the daylight and to his

credit he defended the script because

it's in the book.

A woman so lovely

and intelligent should not be walking the

streets of London without her gentleman.

Eiko Ishioka won an Academy Award for

Best Costumes, she was very reverent with

the script she would come to me and

show me all the colors she had assigned

to the actors. That was how she approached

costumes.

Gary's favorite

look in Dracula was the old man, a

lot of people didn't understand Gary's

hairdo but that was Eiko going back to

his Asian-Mongolian roots.

When you see Dracula and the shadows are doing

odd things, that's Francis with an homage

to Nosferatu which he was very influenced by.

Dracula spawned a bunch of parodies

though my favorite was The Simpsons

and the shadows are doing all kinds of crazy things

His hairdo looks so queer.

I heard that!

It was the boy!

When Francis hired

Sir Anthony Hopkins, Francis wanted him to

play Van Helsing a certain way which was

basically kind of a loose canon there's

an edge and a truth to what he's

saying.

Yeah she was in great pain, then they cut off her head

and drove a stake through her heart and burned it then she found peace.

He was so into the part and it was

great to have him on the set because

he brought such an A-game to everybody.

Do it now.

Aah!

Greg Cannom won an Academy Award for his

work on Dracula. Francis did not want any

CG, he wanted it to be an old

-fashioned film so everything you saw was

an illusion.

He wanted the special effects

to have a history to them, he wanted

it to be the old-fashioned cinema that

we did things in camera, we used

miniatures, forced perspective sets,

there's even a scene where they reverse

crank the film and double expose it.

We're shooting that scene where he opens up his

chest and turns to Winona and then turns

to the bat.

All the same lines except

the one that Gary created himself, he's in

the bat suit saying Jim, wait till you

see what I'm going to do for you

and in the middle of the scene in

the bat costume with the actors in the

moment he says, Look what your god has done to me.

That's it.

The actor found the one line that was

the true soul of the character and it

had to do with Greg's makeup.

Dracula

almost got an X rating because of Dracula

bringing an infant home to feed the

brides. We had close-ups, we had to

take them out. It seems mild today. Back

then it was like oh, we can't have

you eating babies on screen.

I was

extremely fortunate as a screenwriter to

have had the experience I did with

Francis. He made sure the writer was part

of the process. That's not always the

experience that we have as writers in

this business and I think that's what I

learned from him be fearless when the

studio wanted to replace him or shut him

down, he was fearless.

The film opened that

weekend and broke records. For me it was

a great vindication and validation. I've

been trying to do that film since 1977.

It was a big lesson for me not

to give up if the stars align you're

going to get your opportunity and it was

a great opportunity for me.

There's no pejorative in the term Trash film

movement. I think that it's a film

delineation of honor and I'm sure John

Waters amongst many others would agree.

You are no longer alive.

I think back

to films like Children Shouldn't Play

with Dead Things and movies that felt

like somebody had gotten their hands on a

camcorder or an old piece of equipment

and just had a passion and desire to

go make something spooky.

What trash

horror actually means is independent

outside the studio system, everything is

DIY, it's a passion project. You had no

help, you may have never done this before.

You can have something that's really

slick and really mid-fi in being trash

horror done independently outside any

kind of studio funding. You could have

Something that's like done in your

backyard with your friends on Super 8.

Everything that it has in common I think

is passion and ambition and no sort of

acknowledgement of limitations.

I really admired the perspicacity and drive

and exuberance of kids that would just

get a hold of a camera and just

do something.

We plan to be together forever.

I want her to look her very best!

With these low

budget trash horror films, whatever you

want to call it, no budget, micro budget,

DIY, backyard regional horror, I think one

thing to remember is that they had no

resources. They probably might have read

something in a library book they checked

out about how to do a practical effect

on screen or they just winged it and

put a firecracker in a mannequin head

that they found on the side of the

road and was like cool, right and we're

going to film it.

I have one weekend

and I'm going to make this movie.

What do you call Goregasm?

A level of love you'll never know.

A lot of these shot-on-video filmmakers

specifically distributed themselves, they

either had mail order businesses and they

would take an ad out in Fangoria or

Psychotronic or they would go door to

door to a mom and pop video store

and just distribute them and they would

only make like a hundred copies.

I love

that there's a subculture of weirdos who

are collecting these tapes and hopefully

saving them and digitizing them so other

people can see them.

It's all fun and

games isn't it until someone loses an eye.

Having no money drove a lot of people

to do films on video because video was

accessible and you could record hours of

footage but that was the main problem I

think. When I made my films I had

to pay for the film stock, if I

started the camera I could count you know

one dollar two dollar three dollar four

dollar, I could hear the money running so

I had to prepare before we shot something.

It's not about so bad it's good, it's

about understanding the filmmakers and

what it entailed to do this. The sort

of limitations that they had and still

flourishing and making honestly an

entertaining piece of art.

It's very punk

to me and that's the aesthetic it's going

for.

There is this American spirit

kind of grit to, by your bootstraps, gonna

make a thing, we got no budget, we're

gonna put it on tape, we're gonna make

this many units and we're gonna...If we

can sell this many it's gonna do this

Now if anybody gets the impression I'm

doing here of Mark Borchardt from the

incredible seminal film American Movie by

Chris Smith, they will understand how much

love I have and anyone who has seen

that film has for the spirit of

independent filmmaking that's brought to

life in American Movie.

You guys gotta

look menacing. Can you be more menacing?

A couple of guys spearheaded by this one

guy in particular who is so passionate

about filmmaking that nothing will stop

them from making their horror masterpiece

Coven, not to be mistaken with "coven"

because "coven" sounds like "oven," about a

guy in addiction recovery who gets caught

up in this cult of satanic killers and

takes this guy years to make his I

think 35 40 minute film which is shot

on Super 8 and is in its own

way one of the more important

contributions to the consciousness of

filmmaking at that time.

I think American Movie is the stunning

example of the filmmakers that do this

work, that do something low budget, they go

into debt because for them it's a passion,

for them this is a need that they

have to do and American Movie really

encapsulates the process of making a

movie and the kind of sacrifices and

maybe a little bit of delusion that goes

into it.

Here we've got mad men putting

scarecrows up front God knows why they

have no pragmatic purpose to the show but

I like to keep the troops motivated.

Before I ever go make something I watch

that movie. It inspires me, it says

whatever you're willing to do to get your

project made you've got to do it.

Coven

man we've got to get this sucker done, no?

Seriously. Last night man I was so

drunk I was calling Morocco man.

I think

it's a perfect example of where passion

and art meet. You kind of have to

be blind to everyone who's saying you

can't do it, you just have to go

for it and it's a huge risk.

Would you buy this movie for $14.95?

Yeah

hell yeah

if I can find 3,000

people like you across this country man

I'm in business.

Movies are a pain in

the ass to make, they're exhausting, they

exhaust you mentally, physically,

relationship-wise, they drain your bank

account, your spirit, they're very

difficult things. You've got to want it bad.

You're not going to leave me here, are you?

I think of Sam Raimi doing

Evil Dead having the camera stuck on a

plank because he couldn't afford a

steadicam and running through the woods

with the camera on a plank, that kind

of necessity being the mother of

invention always creates good results, I think.

Sam Raimi was a huge

influence. Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, Army of

Darkness all those movies had these

swooping camera angles and that came into

a lot of shot on video movies.

I have no problems with wearing influences

on your sleeves like go do it as

long as it's entertaining, as long as

you're having a good time and we can

feel it, as long as you care about

it, and you're not being ironic then I

will watch the shit out of it.

I think you've got to come into these kinds

of movies with the acceptance of what

you're going to see. You're not going to

see state of the art filmmaking you

should know what you're getting into when

you're going into a shot on video film

that's essentially an amateur production

and if you can actually make something

that is watchable let alone entertaining

well that's definitely a major

achievement in my eyes.

Who are you? Shut up, you know who I am.

Anybody that starts from

the title and gets to the end is

a hero, it's not for me to judge

their work. If the story's good, it can

survive a lot.

You are the beginning of

the new one order.

Through you, I will change the face of the world.

Any completed film is an absolute miracle.

It's an absolute miracle that if you can

do a short or if you do a

90 minute feature, like Hail Satan, you do you.

Hell sent me, I'm Frank the Tank.

To belittle something that had no budget I

think is a very close minded way of

thinking. You're going to miss a lot of

titles by not giving micro budget or no

budget films a chance.

You act like trash,

you get treated like trash.

Leprechaun

Often times, we think of leprechauns as cute and

as a serial mascot and here you have

him murdering people for fun

I think a leprechaun is legitimately

distinct from a living doll but the

notion of a sort of absurdly diminutive

villain who you know says funny things

while he's killing you.

Yeah I

think they were riding on our coattails a

little bit but not in any like way

that didn't feel fair.

Written and directed by Mark Jones, Leprechaun was

really inspired by Critters which comes

across in how this film is set, there's

a reason why there's terror here because

there's no one to help you. You're in

a very isolated location which also helps

with budget.

Oh it looks like you're hurt.

Let's play surgeon!

No!

Ha! Ha! Ha!

Warwick Davis just eats the scenery

it's not nice

to make fun of a leprechaun

and people's legs

Jennifer Aniston pre-Friends makes

her feature film debut in this

Okay hi

I'd like to make a reservation

Yes I'd

like it to be a really tall room

and I want it to be very beautiful

Great!

Mark Holton who you may recognize

as Francis, the evil one from Pee-Wee's

Big Adventure actually plays a good guy

in this.

There's a leprechaun in the

basement Oh there's a leprechaun in the basement!

And you can thank Warwick Davis

for this movie being as humorous as it

is even though he's a murderous

psychopath who wants all the money.

I want to go!

It's so fucking weird. The scene

of him wrecking the kitchen is probably

my favorite thing of all time. He finds

the cereal and he freaks out on it

Mark Jones would go on to also create

a movie called Rumpelstiltskin.

Little killer running around making quips and

finding various and sundry ways to murder

you.

Magic!

You can tell that Warwick's

having a lot of fun with it and

he's just like meh I'm never gonna do

another one of these, much to his chagrin.

For a slasher born in the 90s I think

Leprechaun is a kind of delightfully

retro deal and it establishes tone early

on and it delivers on its promise pretty

consistently across a very crazy

chronology of sequels.

Had to be gold ya

thieving hoods! You got more loot than

Tiger Woods. Shoot that motherfucker!

For those of you keeping score, Leprechaun

went to space before Jason, before

Amityville, he did it first.

It's

this weird little movie that has had such

a life afterwards It's adorable.

Now that was fun!

The Vanishing

The original Vanishing, a really

interesting psychological horror film by

George Sluizer, he's Dutch, he remade it

which is so interesting that a director

gets to remake their film.

Look maybe

someone can help me my girlfriend's

disappeared. Has anybody seen her? Please ma'am, please

In The Vanishing, Jeff

Bridges is a serial killer in the works

trying to work out how to perfect his

lure, how to come off as non-dangerous

unassuming as possible to be able to get

his prey to get a little closer. It's

really an amazing look at how he puts

this all together.

Henley, that's what I couldn't remember. Thank you. Are you going

that way? Here's my car, I can give

you a lift. Oh no, it's okay.

This ordinary-looking guy who is this vicious

killer who kidnaps people and buries them

alive.

No!

The scary thing about it is that this

guy is somebody you wouldn't look at

twice. He could be the boy next door.

This is your lucky day I can feel it.

Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock. This

was one of the tactics Ted Bundy used

to do feeling weak with an arm cast

and trying someone to help him and then

pushing him into a car and drive away

Can you get in and give me a hand. Get in?

Yes.

Kiefer Sutherland you feel his pain

man, you feel how broken and desperate he

is to find out the truth.

I swear to God I wish she were dead

You don't know what it is like to not know

You know you just gotta be careful

who you run into in gas stations.

No!

No!

No!

It really pushed forward that idea that

you can't just look at someone and tell

that they're a killer. I'm the man you're

Looking for. I'm Barney.

Until they reveal

themselves.

No!

Bastard!

Easy!

No!

No!

Bundy was a master of you will never

see the true me until I'm squeezing the

last drop of life out of your fucking

body. That's the shit that is terrifying

I've crossed that line and there's no

turning back.

Your mother ate my dog!

Dead Alive

Before the Peter Jackson of

today

You shall not pass!

There's Peter Jackson of yesterday

Oh shit!

I was just about to pop my cookies!

Which is a man who was incredibly

ambitious with practical effects

Dead Alive

is a shining example of gore and latex

Up to this point Peter Jackson had done

Bad Taste and Meet the Feebles which are

both heavy, heavy practical effects movies

So this to me is a culmination of

those two movies put together.

Dead Alive

aka Braindead is the story of Henpecked

Lionel who was supremely cockblocked by

his mom

I thought I told you to

spray this house, the place is infested

with vermin. I'll get on to it straight away, Mum

He falls in love with a

very attractive Spanish girl from the

local shop

You want to go to the

zoo?

Yes, please

It's a coming-of-age story

for him. He wants to express himself with

this girlfriend but of course his mother

won't allow that.

His mother's bitten by a

rat monkey

and becomes a zombie

which

complicates matters and he has to hide

that fact from the world and try to

contain it.

So you found your dad's old

stag movies, eh?

It is a romantic comedy with gore and

at the end of the day they're just

going to cover me in a whole lot

of stuff and they sure did that

It has a certain twinkle to it with a

definite filter of a kind of New Zealand

comedic tone

They're not dead exactly

they're just sort of rotting

Peter was

very good at capturing that he was very

good at saying this is what makes us

laugh let's see what the rest of the

world thinks

That ear falling in the

custard and rich and creamy

Just the way

I like it

That's...

you just don't see that anywhere else

It's my mother

In 1991 with a 16mm

camera we were just doing an enormous

amount with very little

Everything in

that film is in camera

By

saving money by doing it on 16mm he

had more money to throw towards Richard

Taylor's team This is where Weta Workshop

took flight I suppose you could say

They got to do and try everything. Puppetry

pulling strings and forced perspectives

and miniatures all the tricks of the

trade Peter was applying to that film so

as a young actor I was privileged to

basically learn all those things

It's so

much fun it's so much gore and this

movie is super quotable

I kick ass for the Lord

The real star of the show

is the zombie baby

Over the top doesn't

even begin to describe how over the top

this element is

The film had kind of

run out of money and the guarantors had

said to Peter you don't need that scene

to tell the story but Peter's not someone

that goes oh yeah you're right he goes

nah this is a great scene it has

to be shot so after we wrapped he

gathered together a few of us and said

let's go shoot this scene anyway

People

are literally sliding on the floor from

fake blood I think it's something like 80

gallons of fake blood used in this movie

Often when we were filming and we were

doing one more take for more blood or

more splatter or whatever it was we were

all standing around really you need

another one he's going this one's for the

fans!

In that carnage sequence we had two

units running at one time often they were

filming in the top level while we were

filming something below and I'd be

running between two units I would take my

costume off at night all that blood and

splatter I'd get to work and my pants

would be like cardboard and then costume

would come in and spray me down so

that the pants would loosen up a bit

I could walk again and walk back onto

set and carry on and do more

But

I have to say that after six weeks

of that blood and gore sitting in that

studio and on your clothes under studio

lights it got pretty whiffy There was

definitely a fermentation process going

on and yeah I couldn't go near maple

syrup for a long time after that

When

I made this film back in 1991 I

would have had no idea that this film

would have the shelf life that it's had

The American version was slightly reduced

for censorship reasons so it's not the

entire full length version

The movie was

originally titled Braindead but there is

a 1990 movie starring Bill Pullman titled

Braindead very different film very

different vibe so we retitled it Dead Alive

The marketing on this is very

clever because you cannot help but stop

and stare at the key art for this

The imagery that they chose which is

pretty confronting it's saying serious

freaky horror

In the end the fan base

is so connected and communicative that

it's all about word of mouth so whether

it's called Dead Alive or Braindead

didn't really matter it was what is this

film?

oh it's great I'll tell two friends

they'll tell two friends and these things

become cult classics that way In the end

Party's over

Army of Darkness

Army of Darkness

is about Ashley J.

Williams getting sucked into the past and

having to battle medieval deadites with

his boomstick

This is my boomstick!

It's horror but it's also

adventure and comedy and slapstick

which

is what Sam Raimi is known for and

Bruce Campbell is amazing and just brings

it every time no matter what Sam Raimi

does to him.

How about some hot chocolate, huh? Ha! Ha! Ha!

Army of Darkness is a movie that is essentially

Evil Dead Part 3 but is so far

removed stylistically I think from the

first two Evil Deads that it really

stands all on its own as its own

singular film

When they finally

decided to make it we were just so

excited because we had so much fun

working on Evil Dead 2 and those two

movies Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness

were kind of the best times I've ever

had on a movie

Tony Gardner was also

involved he was doing the Evil Ash

effects and we were doing the army all

the rest of that stuff

Every night we

were blowing shit up there was guys on

horseback there was sword fights us

puppeteering skeleton puppets kids in a

candy store in a toy store just having

so much fun

Say hello to the 21st century

Yeah! Yeah!

I think Army of Darkness is a lot like

a grand adventure film of the 1960's

Army of Darkness is rather shocking and

outrageous for a studio film It's

important to remember that filmmakers

made more original and more strange

things than they do today

I think my favorite scene in the film is Ash

ends up breaking a mirror looking inside

of it and that's the mistake because all

of these little Ashes come running out

and attacking him

It's like the old school way of doing effects

that's just practical and fun and

wonderful and you believe it

When

the glass breaks and the little versions

of him jump out of the mirror that

was done by Tony Gardner and it was

a bunch of stunt people in doubles make

-ups to look like Bruce

The whole sequence

where he grows the eyeball which is right

out of The Manster

Then he grows the

head and then it became The Thing with

Two Heads

Sam obviously is pulling from

all these movies that he enjoyed when he

was a kid

Sam punishes Bruce and almost

gleefully gets a kick out of it

Bruce

is always great to work with he's just

so much funny he's always having a good time

Klaatu barada Ahem!

The thing about Bruce

is he's also a producer on these movies

so anything that moves the movie forward

and helps get the day done he'll do it

Being on the set of Army of

Darkness was an unbelievable kick in the

pants and got to see Sam at work

and Bruce at work and watch the way

those two work together and how

sophisticated the relationship between he

and Bruce Campbell was in terms of

getting the results that they needed to

get that were hyper-physical and hyper

-technical at the same time

Are you me?

I'm Bad Ash and you're Good Ash

I think I play one, two, three, four

characters in that movie

You can count on my steel

Most people can spot me in

two but they don't know I'm in another

two as well

I'm afraid There's one of us only

I don't want to die

I'm very proud to have a single line in it

I come up on the battlement to

Bruce and say Sire!

There's a second division approaching

from the south

What's beautiful about it

apart from the humor and the crazy

combination of puppetry and stop motion

and VFX is this was a really low

budget film for what you see on screen

It's this tiny little movie that looks

like an epic because Sam shot it so

cleverly

That was intentional

The idea was to give it

a vibe that made it look a lot

like a 1960s Ray Harryhausen picture

I think my favorite time was just being in

the post-production studio

So I came into

the studio many days just to sit there

adding voices

So most of the voices for

example of all of the monsters within

that movie are done by me and Bruce

Campbell going

You know all that stuff

I don't want to die

All that kind of stuff

Let's get out of here and all

that kind of crazy stuff

We had a

loop group come in of guys who were

authentically British who did a lot of

those background voices that we would

probably suck at doing

But other than

that that was mostly us

That's a nice memory

Here we were sort of behaving like

it was still 1980 and we were in

somebody's basement trying to add voices

to a movie so it was fun

Groovy

Army of Darkness has two endings

one where Ash

Williams oversleeps misses the mark of

the 20th century and winds up in the

21st into this dystopian hell hole

So they test the movie

They like it but

they say it's a downer

You've been

building them up to the moment where he

goes back and then at the very end

he doesn't get back

No!

No!

I slept too long!

The new ending shows that he's back

He's still fighting monsters

He learned something

It all meant something in the

end because he got a girl etc.

etc.

The first one he gets nothing which I

think is infinitely more interesting but

that's just me

Who the hell are you?

Name's Ash

Housewares

But it is important

to remember that that film did not do

well at the box office at all I

think it made its money back but just

barely I don't think people knew what to

make of it

And I'm not sure that

it was promoted very well

I seem to

recall it was promoted as this wacky

comedy but nobody understood why there

was a medieval comedy with people they

had never heard of before

Very strange

Yo, she-bitch Let's go!

Schramm is about a serial killer that is living

next to a beautiful girl and he's a

cab driver and he has lots of problems

I would say

The idea behind Schramm

is showing a real serial killer with all

the problems he has, you know

What I

was always wondering about was how can

somebody live on when he killed somebody

And you can see that people like Ted

Bundy were living a perfectly normal life

but they were always killing people

And to me that was totally unthinkable

So I was trying to capture the guilt of a

serial killer in my movie Schramm

It's more like Henry: Portrait of a Serial

Killer or there's even a very good movie

from the early 80s called Angst from

Austria

The self-mutilation scene is

there to picture the guilt he's living

with because he's a rapist and he's

making his dick unusable by putting a

nail into the foreskin

When you do gory

scenes it's always funny if you shoot

them It has nothing to do with the

final product

We made a dick cast from

the main actor and then he nailed the

rubber dick

It's not a big deal

most difficult thing was that the blood

was coming out at the right moment

It's not easy to find people to do the

things you see in my movies

So it's

mainly friends of mine

The main actor of

Schramm

Florian Koerner von Gustorf

that's his name

He did that job just to

do me a favor

In real life he

is a drummer of an underground band

called Mutter

Mother

But in his real job

he's a film producer

He didn't ask for any money

He just did it and to

some extent he was risking his reputation

I have to say

When Schramm came out

I was in the middle

of going to trial for my movie

Nekromantik 2

By then the film community

and some festival directors were being

very solidary to me

So they invited

Schramm to important festivals because

they wanted to point out that it's not

right to ban my films

So Schramm got

a very good feedback because everybody

was feeling bad for me

Bloodstone: Subspecies 2

When we finished editing

Subspecies it was amazing to me how well

the Paramount executives responded to the film

Paramount then came to Charlie and

said let's do a sequel and Charlie said

yeah, let's do two sequels at once

By that time my memories of Romania were all sweet

Mommy, have you no love in your

heart for your most faithful son?

Subspecies 2 and 3 was another adventure

in post-communist filmmaking

We decided

to make it like one continuous story. So

Part 2 picks up right where Part 1

left off and Part 3 where Part 2

left off

I curse you for your beauty

It becomes now the battle between Radu

and his fledgling and the gradual descent

of Michelle into vampirism and Radu's

trying to pull her into becoming his

willing fledgling

You are my fledgling

Embrace me as your master and all that

is mine will be yours

In a way

it's about the light infecting the

darkness because Michelle is hanging on

to her humanity

Becky, help me

Michelle, what's wrong?

Laura Tate kind of dropped away after the

first one because she was raising two

young children

So we found Denice Duff

who ended up being a wonderful addition

to the series

Teach me to fly as

you do

Patience, pretty one

Melanie Shatner, William Shatner's daughter was

another great addition to the series to

give us like a little point of view

of humanity kind of looking in at the

vampire world

The Bloodstone

Bloodstone

A mythical relic said to drip blood of the saints

One of the things about having

a vampire like Radu is that a film

doesn't feel complete until you've

destroyed the vampire

But then one of the

problems is you've got the sequel and you

don't want to cast some new guy because

Anders Hove is the villain of Subspecies

So you have to find a way to get

that head back together

My beef with the

Subspecies is not that I hate the

Subspecies

It's that the vampire is a

good enough monster in the movie

You don't need these little creatures

A.

They don't fit into the story that I

was hoping to tell

They're a big pain in the butt

They were kind of like a side note, you

know

And eventually the side note goes

away and you just want to focus on

the spine of the story

Nudity

is definitely a part of a vampire story

And it's not just nudity

There's something about the kind of lurid

perversion of a vampire that calls for it

Now myself, I'm not a prude but I

don't want to ask people to take off

their clothes for stupid reasons

You close the set you be as sensitive as

possible

Europeans are just much more

free about their bodies

And it's

refreshing to be able to do what you

have to do for the movie without feeling

like you're some kind of evil perv

There's a vessel here which feeds the lake

Subspecies No.

1 was basically my second feature

TerrorVision being my first

Did you see that?

This dude's into metal!

By Subspecies 2, I understood that we

needed to amp up the pace a little

bit and like, have more locations and try

to make a movie that feels a little

bit more exciting and I hope we

accomplished that

And I learned a lot

about how to fix your mistakes

I found

that no matter what mistake you make

there's always an editorial solution to

it And so that was, to me, was

like the greatest benefit of all

Love is for mortals

Keep quiet

No screaming

Hocus Pocus, this one,

like, spoke to my soul

Another glorious

morning

Makes me sick!

Every year, I'll watch it, like, maybe

five times on the low end

All Hallow's

Eve has become a night of frolic

Where children wear costumes and run amok

I would say that I am, in fact, a

certified Hocus Pocus nut

Amok!

Amok, amok, amok, amok, amok

People tend

to dismiss Hocus Pocus as like, it's for

the children, it's a kid's movie

But there are a lot of horror elements in

this

So I feel like if you claim

that you are a hardcore horror fan, then

you should be giving Hocus Pocus a chance

It's just a bunch of Hocus Pocus!

When I originally was hired to write

Hocus Pocus, David Kirshner, the

producer, had done An American Tail,

which was an animated film for Amblin. I'd

been working on Amazing Stories for

Amblin And so, we got thrown together

Into the night sky!

David Kirschner had also produced the

original Child's Play and all of the

sequels that followed

He had originally

written a story for the Muppet magazine

called Halloween House

We pitched it to

Spielberg and David had the table set

with all these items of autumn and

Halloween and pumpkins and then Spielberg

realized that Disney was involved and

said, nah, I don't want to work with

them

Billy!

Listen to me!

Follow those children you maggot museum

and get my book!

Basically, Hocus Pocus and Halloween

House are the same story

It's about these

three witches who have been vanquished

and they return when the black flame

candle is lit by modern day teenage kids

in Salem, Massachusetts

We're home!

And they return to collect the souls of children

Come out, my dear

You will not

harm me

We love children!

Originally, it was a little bit darker

Billy Butcherson was a little more

malevolent than the benevolent buffoon he

has become

Hello, Billy

Catch those children!

Get up!

It's a great entry drug to horror movies

I mean, there's a headless zombie for

God's sake

Yes!

But it's family-friendly horror

Danny, wake up!

Take your shoes!

Setting, originally, Halloween House and

then Hocus Pocus in Salem was a

masterstroke idea that was David's idea

that I tried to make the most out of

And Kenny Ortega directed it, not me,

but did a beautiful job of it

It's an early example of 90s girl power

It's really the strength of the female

characters that has kind of become a

rallying cry

It's become a Halloween staple

It's amazing to have created

something that was a modest success, to

put it lightly

It's the weirdest feeling you can imagine

because it disappeared for years and when

it started playing on the Disney Channel

it started this momentum that has built

and built ever since and now there are

shows at Disneyland

there's merchandise

everywhere, there are costumes everywhere

The more serious horror fans in 1993

maybe didn't appreciate it as much

because it's so whimsical and playful

And a lot of people like their horror dark,

but it really is a crossover movie that

plays like gangbusters.

John Carpenter Presents Body Bags

Body Bags is three stories of corpses whose

stories come to life at the hands of

a very strange coroner played by John

Carpenter

It was a fun project to do

The whole cast of Body Bags

was sensational

We got people who wanted to do it

Because

of Creepy and Eerie and those kinds of

things in comics it lent itself to the

humor being there

Anything that starts

one of its stories with a woman whose

tits are stuck in the drawer because of

silicone you know, how serious are you

going to be on your wraparounds

Obviously these drawers were built before breast

implants became so popular

These ought to be recycled

I was insecure about

memorizing my lines so I had them on

teleprompter but I ended up not using

them

Oh sorry I couldn't use this

Rick Baker did my makeup

I had to undergo

all that crap every day

Man are you ugly

We all know it isn't what a

person looks like

It's what's inside that counts

The hours that it took to do

his makeup

I think he's sworn off ever

doing that again

I think now he figures

he's aged into the role

You're hopeless

You should have had a lobotomy

Let's go see what other fun things we can find to do

When we made Body Bags we

wanted to come up with some logo for

the company

187 Corp and 187 means corpse

so they suggested me doing it and I did

overacted

It was fun to direct the ones I directed

The Hair, Stacy Keach

Just let me

We had a great time

Great time

I can't let you touch it

If I let you

touch it I'll have to let everybody else touch it

In the Hair episode all of

the little killer alien hairs was stop

motion animation by Jim Danforth who had

come up under Harryhausen

You earthlings and your vanity

The gas station had a lot of guest stars appear

Sam Raimi fell out of a locker onto a girl

Wes was there

Wes Craven

Pack of Coronados

But the cast itself you

know was great

just sensational

There was one episode called Eye

directed by my close

friend Tobe Hooper starring Mark Hamill

and Twiggy

It was terrific

John wouldn't like you

I have his eye you know

I see what John Randall saw

It didn't work out as a series

Body Bags, because

they wanted to move it to Canada to

save money

Showtime was a network they

wanted to make a series out of it

but if you lowered the budget which they

wanted to do and then shot it out

of the country in Canada you couldn't

turn around and get people like Tom

Arnold and Tobe Hooper and have somebody

work for a day

It just didn't seem

feasible to us to do it and get

the money on the screen

Ooh, severe trauma to the abdomen I'd say

Really?

What's your first clue?

Here, give me that saw

I said guys

no, no, no we're going to shoot it here

if we shoot it

they didn't want

to do that so fine

What a bunch of stiffs

I want you guys to think

about this while I go have a drink

Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday

We got the hockey mask, here's Jason, but

we're doing something different

How many stalk and kill movies we're going to

watch with a hockey mask in the woods?

How many times are we going to see that?

And by the way for the audience that

wants just that

listen, I respect you

you guys have a ton of movies to watch

that is just that

I was a

fan who was going look, I've had enough

of the same flavor

if I could have

kept the mask longer I would have but

I couldn't for Sean Cunningham

I brought

him a movie called Johnny Zombie and that

movie ended up getting sold to Disney

Sean made a ton of money making an

eight and a half million dollar Disney

movie called My Boyfriend's Back that's

when Sean owed me my directing gig and

Friday the 13th was the next thing he

was going to do and Sean did not

want to direct the movie so he handed

it to me and told me if you

can get the fucking hockey mask out of

the movie I'll let you write and direct it

In my professional opinion this guy's

deader'n shit

Is it Pamela Voorhees'

little boy?

Yes it is in part it is but

the other part of it is some other force

some other demon and if suddenly

Jason Voorhees is straight from hell he

can be anything because he's not of this

earth

The whole storyline was Jason was

going from the traditional look into

other bodies and doing things which you

know when I first read the script I

was like yeah man that's less time for

me on screen

The little parasite that

comes out of their mouths and goes from

one to the other

we literally did this

radio controlled creature coming out of

his mouth so a lot of phallic stuff

in the movie

The look of Jason was interesting

very very hard to work in

that whole suit but you know it was

a good look

Yeah and he does keep

appearing in all the reflective objects

which was my idea to keep the mask

in the movie somewhere

When it came to

The Book of the Dead these were items

that I thought Pamela Voorhees would

somehow want to get her hands on if

it could mean resurrecting her son

I thought I would talk to some of the

other actors that were going to have the

Jason essence in them and give them an

idea of something to do a little quirk

or a little trademark move that oh yeah

that's still Jason even though it looks

like somebody else

none of them none of

the actors embraced that idea they all

said nah my Jason wouldn't do that

well okay

I get it I do get that

that usually comes from an actor

who isn't a giant horror fan

So I played one of the SWAT guys

kind of security guard that called Jason

pussy and paid the price for it

He wasn't nothing but a big old pussy anyway

Tonight Jason Voorhees

Dead or Deadly

The amount of effects gags he had in this

movie were crazy

It made it really fun

for us and challenging for us

The campers are having sex near Crystal Lake and

Jason takes a fence post and rams it

through the girl and then splits her in two

That was an add-on

The movie didn't have anything connecting Crystal

Lake to it so they added this in

in post

Oh yeah? Planning on smoking a little dope?

Having a little pre-marital sex?

And getting slaughtered?

No one I mean no one on planet earth

knew that Freddy's glove was going to

come up at the end of that movie

Nobody

They jumped to their feet

People were applauding in

theater

By the way, New Line didn't ask

me to do it

I truly came up

with that idea because I went wait a minute

they just killed Freddy and New

Line owns Freddy

How cool is it if

Freddy and Jason are fighting in hell

The poster of Jason Goes to Hell is awful

It is a giant angry penis in the

middle of a hockey mask

It just is

But here's the thing

That poster got

banned in 13 states

That got every

teenager going ooooh what's the thing I'm

not allowed to see

We had a huge

opening weekend

We came in number two we

didn't come out number one at the box

office because The Fugitive had opened

the weekend before us

The greatness of

that is that Monday's Variety

The headline was Number one spot goes to The

Fugitive rest of box office goes to Hell

Sorry I'll take it

How many people

actually get a chance to say whatever

they want to Jason fucking Voorhees

How you doing you badass maggoty blown up fuck

I killed my wife

Is that wrong?

Hey these things happen

Fraser Heston, Charlton

Heston's son directs Needful Things based

on Stephen King's novel

It's all about a

store that opens up in Castle Rock and

the proprietor of the store may or may

not be the devil

You must realize what

a deep pleasure it is doing business with you

They've got Max von Sydow as

Leland Gaunt the owner of the store

Ed Harris plays Alan Pangborn who's the

sheriff of Castle Rock

also a character

who's appeared in other King stories like

The Dark Half and Sundog

Leland Gaunt is

looking for a way in to every single

member of this community by putting

something on the shelves that they think

they need

This jacket you

you could recover

retrace your steps

take charge of your life again

and that's his way to

get in there and to get them to

start systematically compromising their

values and their morality

And here's the pitch

It utilizes In the Hall of the

Mountain King over this montage of this

escalating kind of series of pranks that

are really attacks within the town and

that sequence I think has been a standout

from the movie always

You killed my doggy

you bitch

you broke my microwave you

crazy fuck

Other wonderful moments I think

come specifically from Max von

Sydow's performance as Leland Gaunt a

character just says Jesus when they

realize how insidious he is and he kind

of turns and says, Oh the carpenter from

Nazareth I knew him well promising young man

he died badly

For the King nerds

like me there's a really satisfying very

small moment in it where Ed Harris as

Alan Pangborn enters the store and Leland

Gaunt says to him what can I help

you find and Harris says hey oh nothing

I got everything I need. It's a single

sentence that defines this whole

character and sets up that these two

characters are going to be on a collision course

you look out of place here, actually

well you don't mind my saying so

so do you, Leland

Needful Things is a

really cool example of a story that was

kind of too big to fit in a

theatrical feature film

it shows up on

cable and the movie's different the

movie's much longer you get this mini

series experience of a theatrical film

that we'd all already seen

friends are

taping it on VHS and sitting there to

dutifully cut out the commercials to try

to create this extended Needful Things VHS copy

this was part of the joy

of that era was being able to chase

things like that down

yessirree, we're

having fun now

you just kill a man

you just kill a man

Set in the stage of the 90s it's Riot Grrrl time

Women are angry they're they've been ignored

they've been assaulted they've been

oppressed we're sick and tired of it then

comes the Riot Grrrl movement around

music there's Bratmobile and Bikini Kill

and in this is also filmmaking

Sarah Jacobson to me is the voice of Riot Grrrl

budget cuts to single family

welfare recipients and funding for public

schools has women's groups upset

I was a Teenage Serial Killer

is literally what

it sounds like it's a teenage girl who's

just sick and tired of being pushed

around

tired of sexist guys tired of the

patriarchy and she fucking lets loose

you impress me all right now impress

every guy in there gets his comeuppance

Kristin Calabrese plays Mary the serial killer

and she is ferocious

Sarah Jacobson did

not pull punches you know

the content that's in this movie really feels like

things that had happened to her you know

a guy not wanting to use a condom

and not telling her about it

well I don't really like them

who the fuck do you think you are

what is this bullshit

and these are things that happen to women still

how dare you take off the condom

while we're having sex

this is a short

it was shot on super 8

Sarah Jacobson

was a student of George Kuchar actually

so her filmmaking style is very much like

punk experimental

Really? Yeah

Sarah Jacobson

unfortunately was taken from us way too

soon from cancer but she had this amazing

voice of anger putting on the screen what

we as women could not say in the 90s

no one wants to listen to my

story and then I get this anger that

I'm not allowed to express because it's

not right for a woman to have any

rage. I Was a Teenage Serial Killer

I think is a great example of if you

ignore everything that's low budget or

experimental or black and white on super

8 which this movie is

you will completely

miss some amazing pieces of work that I

think have an important message

Thanks for the compliment asshole

Freaked

coming soon to a theater

Freaked. Butt ugly

but funny

Freaked is about a bratty child

star who goes to South America to make

lots of money hawking a toxic chemical

and is captured by a carnival barker who

runs and creates his own freak show

I not only exhibit freaks

I make them

and then this poor actor and his buddies who

were turned into mutants have to hatch an escape

My directing partner at the

time Tom Stern and I had been making

short films and music videos and all

kinds of crazy stuff out of NYU for

years and we'd hooked up with Sam Raimi

off of a film we'd made at NYU

called Squeal of Death

We wanted to make

at that time a very low budget cross

between a Texas Chainsaw and a punk rock

music movie because The Butthole Surfers

were gonna play all the characters

I was gonna be the guy who goes and gets mutated

no one was interested

meantime

we're making Bill and Ted 2

I'm gaining

some cachet

we walk it into 20th Century

Fox and we sell it as a 12

million dollar PG-13 movie and now they

say yes and now we have to actually

go write it that way. Could you give

me like a really big Rodney? I'm a

mad scientist pal not a miracle worker

So suddenly two 25 year old kids who were

basically punk rock filmmakers had all

the keys to the kingdom

we were making

at that time by far the largest practical

effects movie that was being made at all

in town

I rip freaks to pieces

kill those you always hated

It was a massive

movie but always at heart a renegade

movie and we managed to spite the PG-13 rating

to get a lot of gore

in and a lot of creepy stuff in

and to keep the spirit of the original

film that we had written in this sort

of mainstream comedy

I love prosthetics I love playing radical

characters I had seven and a half hours

just in makeup on and off and then

I had to act and then I had

to co-direct and then I had to

sleep somewhere in there so at a certain

point I stopped taking the makeup off

because that would save me three hours at

the end of the day which during the

course of the week would add up so

I would drive to and from work with

this giant Ricky head on and I would

sleep in it until it rotted and fell off

I had a massive mouthpiece in for the teeth

and I had my, like a hook pulling my mouth back.

Day one of the shoot, when I have to talk, I'm shooting with Megan Ward.

I open my mouth to say my dialogue.

The hook rips literally my entire mouth open

like from here all the way up to here.

Blood and gooze comes out.

I try to say my line through

these giant teeth

and it, er, er, er, ker, ker. That's what it sounds like.

And Megan is looking at me, and she's starting to laugh

and then just starts crying, because it's such a horrific

I'm obviously in so much pain.

It's just a horrific, and like the camera's right on her.

But everything's dubbed, obviously.

You wanted to see the freak show.

I thought I told you to shut up!

And there I was, like basically incapacitated.

I was like, let's go.

Makeup looks incredible.

We're so fucking lucky we got all this money to make this movie.

Let's just do it and I'll figure it out on the other end

On the other end, I just was in bed for a year

I am Ortiz, the dog boy

Leader of the freaks

kinda like the top dog

Poor Keanu covered in dog hair

120 degrees 100% humidity

having just spent

three hours having each hair glued to his

face and I was like I feel so

sorry for that guy this is like his

idea of hell

12 milkmen is theoretically

possible

13 is silly

Keanu was always

supposed to be fairly unrecognizable that

was part of the gag so he doesn't

have a credit in it

Nobody move, nobody get hurt

We were making a very weird weird

weird movie in the studio system and we

were not dummies we knew that we knew

that the shit was gonna hit the fan

there was a kind of disconnect between

what studios do and what we were doing

Tom and I went through hell with the

release because it got caught up in sort

of the politics at the studio and the

new chairman didn't like it and we got

our release killed that being said the

film immediately started to get some good

reviews and some notice and Fox became

very supportive of the film honestly

almost immediately they didn't decide to

release it on 3,000 screens as they

initially had promised but they did

support us in getting it out on HBO

and to festivals and the theaters and

eventually it gained the cult following

that it has today

Thank you worm

I don't know how to repay you for this

You could wipe my ass

What a comedian

the 90's were a period of immense

productivity for full moon and just to

work at that studio was exciting every

day to work on your movie to see

other people working on their movies to

have that kind of creative compound all

in one place was a really wonderful time

The exterminator's here

I don't know how

Charlie ended up latching on to so many

franchises but there was Puppet Master

there was Subspecies there was Demonic

Toys

I can walk I can talk I

can even shit my pants

huh

Once you

have an audience kind of like hooked on

one storyline they're hungry for more

especially if it really sparked their

imagination

Hey buddy

you seen a girl

around here about my size?

Huh

I thought

the early days of Full Moon features were

like the Marvel Comics of the 90s

I wanted to create characters I wanted to

cross them over the only one I was

able to do was Dollman vs the Demonic

Toys which was a lot of fun making

Jesus Christ!

Not quite slut!

Tim Thomerson

and I we met way long ago in

a movie called Metalstorm that Universal

released and then Tim is Jack Deth

the lead of the five Trancer movies we made

then we made Dollman and he always

dreamed of having a movie where Dollman

would kick Jack Deth's ass and of course

he would play both characters that was

one of our jokes

This is a movie, if you look at

it, you know, no CGI, no trickery,

everything was built.

If you needed a huge clock, you had

to build the clock.

If there was an oversized set and a

little girl, you had to build the big

set.

And it was interesting because Dollman, as

Dollman, 12 inches tall, had to fight the

puppets from Demonic Toys.

We had an eight foot tall Baby Oopsie

that looked pretty damn good, and it was

absolutely fantastic.

We made a show, I didn't make it,

called Puppet Master versus the Demonic

Toys.

And I was doing some really lean times

where an outside company came to me and

said, Charlie, we want to make this

movie.

Can we just buy the rights to make

this standalone Puppet Master movie?

And I needed the money and I said,

by all means.

So they went out and made that movie,

which honestly I haven't even seen.

As a small independent, always cash poor,

no matter how clever you are, if you're

making six or eight movies in a year,

you know, there's the cash flow issue of,

yes, you can make one and deliver it

and get your money and that, but that

takes a long time.

So once you cross over three, four movies

in pre-production, two in production, two

in post, suddenly you're out, even back

then, some millions of dollars.

As an independent filmmaker, you're in

constant need of funding.

But I had a lot of projects that

were the crossover projects that would be

impossible to do after the Paramount days

because they require just a little more

money.

It was a fun era and a fun

time to make that crossover movie.

This is the best bachelor party a guy

could ever ask for.

Love never dies.

I love Return of the Living Dead.

I think Dan O'Bannon showed us how

to put EC Comics in the movies.

He cracked the code and made an

incredibly fun movie and an unabashed

horror movie.

When the second one underperformed, the

value of the title really went down and

it went down low enough that I was

considered for it.

I figured I was making the second sequel

to the alternate sequel to the iconic

movie of our Horror Times.

I wanted to do service to both George

Romero's classic and Dan O'Bannon's.

I was gung-ho for it.

God, I don't know what I'm going to

become.

And I'd asked the Trimark people, what's

the requirement?

And they said, well, you've got to have

the trioxin and you've got to have brain

eating.

Brains, brains.

I took pitches from about, god, 20

writers.

And John Penny came in and he had

this idea of a Romeo and Juliet story

where Juliet's turning against the

backdrop of the kid's father being part

of a project to make these living dead

characters go out on the battlefield.

I didn't make it funny.

I mean, I think it's satirical, but in

this case, I think I was trying to

do more like Romero, but with all the

Dan O'Bannon fun.

Of course, I tried to do the kind

of cool zombies that Dan O'Bannon had,

like the Tar Man is probably the best

one.

That character is so cool.

I want to have it like an iconic

monster.

With Julie, she's in pain and only two

things can relieve the pain.

One is love and one is pain.

To maintain her identity, she would hurt

herself, she'd cut herself, or she could

be in love, but she's becoming, you know,

inhuman.

And then with the glass and the scars

all over, I knew that would be the

poster because I thought, this is a

monster and a very sympathetic one.

Don't leave me.

Get out of the way, son.

I worked with Steve Johnson to do her

makeup.

The process of makeup effects for Julie

was probably six hours.

John and I actually went to some of

these fetish clubs, you know, for

research.

From that, I realized a lot of the

scarification and body modification and

stuff.

It's kind of a personal identity thing.

I thought it could work theatrically

because I think the movie works.

But then, of course, Trimark had their

underperformance by Warlock 2, and so

they just pulled way back and they turned

it over to the video stores.

But I think it's a really good movie

on its own.

The other avenue that has to be discussed

when you talk about the 90s, outside of

what's happening in the movie theaters

and at the video stores, is what's

happening at home.

Because home entertainment has evolved

incredibly as we go into the 90s.

Look at cable, because cable's now.

Cable's cool.

Cable television has changed everything.

You've got this giant pipeline that has

increased the number of available

channels a hundredfold.

Well, it's interesting in the 90s how

many platforms there were and how

television was changing.

And syndication, which became very

important in making money for the studio,

not just showing reruns and selling

packages of movies and series, but to

create original programming.

Freddy's Nightmares.

Freddy Krueger had his own TV show.

Robert Englund, he played our

Freddy Krueger.

He took great interest in working with us

on that.

How's that for a facelift?

It was less violent, but violent.

And it was less bloody, but bloody.

Very narrow pathway to make sure that we

accommodated the Freddy Krueger fans, but

we didn't offend the television people

that might be watching it.

Stick that in your VCR.

Horror hosts were still happening.

And one of my favorites was Rhonda

Shearer, who hosted USA Up All Night.

And you have to say it that way.

Hi, and welcome to USA Up All Night.

She, sort of in that sexy vein of

Elvira, would be a really funny,

beautiful hostess for some of the most

bizarre movies that you would ever see.

Joe Bob Briggs, at this time, was making

a massive name for himself and

influencing lots of kids my age with

Monster Vision on TNT, as well as Joe

Bob's Summer School.

Sign up now for Monster Vision Summer

School.

Ten weeks of the best monster movies

around, analyzed by Professor Joe Bob

Briggs and guest lecturers.

When I started shopping my shows around,

trying to find support in television, one

of the things that I heard was that

horror has never done well on TV.

And for a child of the 90s, that

was one of the most insane things for

an executive to say.

It's like, you weren't there, were you?

The horror on television in the 90s was

excellent and ran the gamut.

The X-Files makes genre sophisticated,

and it is covering everything.

It's doing sci-fi.

It's doing monsters.

It's doing comedy.

It's doing werewolves and vampires and

ghosts, killers, mutants.

It's just everything.

The X-Files is just a playground for

the genre, and it is done as prestige

television.

It was one of those early shows where

you had an overarching serialized arc,

but you still had the monster of the

week, which was like Kolchak: The Night

Stalker, which is where Chris Carter got

the original inspiration.

Oh, are we going to touch on Mulder's

backstory?

Are we going to touch on the alien

conspiracy this week?

You had to make a point to watch

the shows for that.

But even if you didn't, you still got

a great monster of the week episode, kind

of like Home, the episode that aired once

and never aired again.

It broke so many rules of network

television.

Backwoods, inbred cannibals.

It starts weird, and then you get to

that moment.

For me as a teen, I was like,

I am upset, and I like it.

This is the kind of reaction that I

want to invoke in people.

The pride, when you know your boy will do

anything for his mother.

In the very early 90s, NBC and Dan

Curtis came together to bring back the

classic Dark Shadows.

The late, great Ben Cross was Barnabas

Collins in this.

Lisette Anthony was Angelique.

It only lasted one season, but this show

went hard when it came to the blood,

it came to the sensuality.

One of the biggest phenomenons of the 90s

was Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I'm Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and you

are?

Joss Whedon took the Kristy Swanson film

that had Luke Perry and Rutger Hauer and

redid the core story to one of the

best ensemble horror series ever.

He went places with Buffy that I would

never have thought they could go, which

included an all-musical episode.

An entirely silent episode.

You had a character discover they were

gay, and they were a major character in

the show.

I'm good.

On HBO, you also had the grown-up

horror of Tales from the Crypt.

Horror TV that was gory, and it was

titillating, and it was naughty, and it

was weird, and it was extreme.

We made 93 episodes, and I have 93

favorites.

Based on a comic book written in the

50s, we take the stories, and we twist

them, and we make them much more

complicated and more involved.

And we're going to create it so that

it's scary, it's funny, it's twisted, and

it's sexy.

And that was the mantra that we had

in going into this.

They're morality tales.

We also want to give you a sense

of humor about it so that you can

sort of smile about it.

The tone of it was really crucial to

Alan Katz and myself.

Alan was my writing partner.

We've got to keep you in there.

The ratings are too high.

If we didn't pull you in in the

first five minutes, my attitude was,

we're going to lose you.

Sticks and stones and woodman come.

We were able to attract actors who wanted

to direct, whether it be Michael J.

Fox or Tom Hanks or Arnold.

A twisted tale that we call The Switch.

I thought if I gave actors an opportunity

to do something that they normally are

not given an opportunity to do, they

would be attracted to be in the show.

Show me you love me.

I love The Crypt Keeper, and I love

John Kassir, the voice of The Crypt

Keeper, and I love the people who manage

the puppets.

I directed pretty much all the

wraparounds of The Crypt Keeper, the head

and the tail of it, and I love

that process.

Just goes to show you, if you want

to sell yourself, take a look in the

mirror first.

On the complete other end of the

spectrum, and just as influential, was

Nickelodeon, who's running Are You Afraid

of the Dark, which is one of the

most exciting shows for gateway horror

that has ever existed.

It's an anthology horror series.

You get this group of kids, they're

called the Midnight Society.

They meet around a campfire once a week,

and they just tell each other scary

stories.

We tell all kinds of horror stories about

demons and ghosts and stuff.

Submitted for the approval of In

Search of Darkness 90s.

I call this tale, Thank God for Gateway

Horror.

It's a collective scarring of our

generation in the best possible way.

One of my favorite episodes takes place

in a movie theater.

It's a Nosferatu character on the screen,

and he comes out of the screen.

Scared the absolute shit out of me, and

I was obsessed.

To imagine a time in my life where

I was enjoying Are You Afraid of the

Dark with the same enthusiasm that I was

enjoying Tales from the Crypt is a really

beautiful time, you know?

It's a wonderful time in a boy's life.

One of the coolest things about Tales

from the Crypt was that they had Tales

from the Cryptkeeper.

Which was its animated cousin that would

show you, you know, kind of a more

family-friendly version of these scary

stories.

Hello, boys and girls.

I'm glad you could make it to my

Crypt Day party.

I was sort of planting the seed in

young kids that, gee, when they got a

little older, I mean, the show on HBO

has bad language and nudity and violence.

Oh, I can grow up and see that.

My obsession with the Goosebumps book

series, I still to this day have them.

I wore those books out.

If you were a 90s kid and you

even halfway remotely liked horror, you

probably had at least 50 of these books

sitting at home.

Fox comes out with the Goosebumps

television series.

They were somehow scrunching an entire

book into 20 minutes, which means there's

a lot cut out.

Oh, a mind monster!

It kind of whets your appetite.

You can go read the book and get

all the details.

Thank you, R.L. Stine.

It's another great example of the gateway

horror that existed on television in the

90s, and I'm trying to pull you in.

People make a big deal about how

influential some of the later genre shows

were with Walking Dead or American Horror

Story.

There was some level of invention

happening in the 90s, though, that was

absolutely unique to that era, and it was

a really exciting time to be watching TV.

See you next time, boys and ghouls.

I'm a child of the tradition that springs

from the pages of things like Famous

Monsters of Filmland, eerie, creepy, the

old Universal Monster films.

Cronos, it reminded me of something that

evoked and paid homage to traditional

horror storytelling in film, but it was

unlike something I'd seen before, and it

had characters unlike I had been seeing

in what was happening at that time in

horror.

There's no point, in my opinion, in

telling a vampire story if you're not

going to bring something new and

thoughtful to it, so much in the same

way that a film like, say, The Hunger

looks at vampirism.

Guillermo del Toro, of course, isn't

going to just do it the same old

boring way.

This mystical object which attaches the

character and then infuses this evil

power, which is vampiric, leads us on

this really horrifying and incredible

journey.

And it was a time when I was

really discovering an actor like Ron

Perlman, who I had known from Beauty and

the Beast but never had really gotten as

familiar with, and then he was exploding

with films around that time, like City of

Lost Children, and went on to become a

staple in del Toro's ensemble.

There's obviously so many things about

Guillermo del Toro that make him such an

incredible filmmaker, but his ability to

tie in all of the machinations and the

mechanical things that surround us on a

day-to-day basis into something that

feels magical and mystical, which

transcend and carry on through all of his

stories, from the Hellboy mythologies to

the Pan's Labyrinth mythologies, and you

see the way that young characters can be

confronted with utterly terrifying

scenarios and situations, and do so with

a great deal of courage and depth and

complexity, which those of us who are now

grown-ups, sadly, remember as kids.

We had big ideas, and we saw things

that really scared us, and it wasn't

simplified or dumbed down, and it wasn't

cartoonified.

Cronos is also a film that I think

went grossly under the radar.

I think that audiences are looking for

something that doesn't follow the same

formulas and criteria.

Filmmakers like del Toro, they were

willing to break the mold on the way

we saw a story normally unfold.

Night of the Demons 2.

Demons 2 was a total shock.

It was a shock to the system.

Demons 1 is probably so much fun to

watch because we as actors thought no one

was ever gonna see it.

And from the looks of it all, it's

so much better than what we thought we

were making, and it got surprisingly good

reviews.

But nonetheless, I never dreamed that

would be a Demons 2.

And when they said, we're gonna make a

sequel, and you're the only cast member

that we're bringing back, I was

gobsmacked.

Night of the Demons 2 was directed by

the brilliant and wonderful Brian

Trenchard-Smith, who had just done

Leprechaun Part 3.

We've got a whole new cast of characters.

I had a little sister who was having

nightmares about her evil older sister

who disappeared after many dark rumors.

They say it's because she descended into

hell, body and soul.

And now she's Satan's favorite.

And the story picked up in a Catholic

school.

The more repressed the children are in a

situation, the more fun it's gonna be

when they go freaking wild.

I spent two years in a Catholic school.

I got a pretty good taste of what

goes on in Catholic schools.

So Part 2 was just a delight.

Name's Kurt.

Ladies call me King Snake.

Oh, really?

I heard they call you Inchworm.

The meaner and more obnoxious they were,

the more it reminded me of high school.

And the easier it was to want to

do disgusting things to them.

Anyone who was in high school, they can

identify.

I'm not just killing randomly.

They deserve it.

No, take me home.

I can't go here.

Would somebody shut her up?

Except for my little sister, Mouse, who

was a brilliant actress.

Merle Kennedy is her name.

I'm so sorry for all of my readers

and people who follow my animal work and

my spiritual work and my charity work,

but I ripped off her face and ate

it.

I think there must be a lot of

catharsis in these things.

Trying to top what I did in Part

1 was not easy.

When I got to do the crazy dance

on the table, I was channeling my inner

Treat Williams from Hair.

Out of my door!

They didn't really let me kick food off,

but they did let me pick up the

punchbowl and pour it down my dress.

And that was complete and total improv

comedy.

Oh, where's the ref when you need one?

Technical foul!

A lot of the scares are just wild

creativity.

They have to be.

You're doing something low budget, and

you're trying to do something that's

going to take the audience by surprise.

It's never been done before.

Things like head the toilet.

Or there's a scene where my hand comes

up through the couch to grab the guy's

crotch.

To say nothing of getting to shag a

gorgeous actor to death.

In Demons 1, Linnea's lipstick scene is

one of the most iconic pieces of film

in horror movie history, and it always

will be.

So in Demons 2, we actually have Zoey

Trilling's boobs turn into hands.

The hands come out of her, out of

a fake chest.

I do believe it was a guy standing

behind her who stuck the hands through,

and it's terrifying.

The kind of group effort that goes into

these movies is something that you cannot

underestimate.

I'm in snake makeup for 27 1⁄2 hours,

glued to a teeter-totter, strapped in a

trench, and I'm completely unrecognizable

as a human being.

Where are you going?

The party's just begun.

And if anything I've ever filmed in my

life, it's that snake scene.

That is my most wonderful, proud moment.

And it's terrifying.

I'm not allowed to play favorites.

I enjoyed making all three movies for

Demons.

I enjoyed them for different reasons.

But when people ask, was there one

favorite?

It would be two.

It would be part two.

How's about a little head, tiger?

Dario Argento's maddening thriller,

Trauma.

Dario Argento's Trauma.

He's a visual stylist, okay?

I did an effect for him, and I

use it as an example in my school

on how it's always true that limitations

make you more creative.

Not enough time, not enough people, not

enough materials, not enough money.

Those limitations make you more creative.

Piper Laurie, she played Carrie's mother

in the movie Carrie.

Her head has to come off her body,

roll on the floor, and come to rest

against a wall.

And while it's rolling on the floor,

every time her face would come up, Dario

wanted her to say the word Nicholas,

Nicholas, Nicholas.

Well, I'm thinking, how the hell am I

going to do this?

And then Piper Laurie shows up, and she's

claustrophobic.

We cannot cast her head.

I cannot make a fake head of Piper

Laurie.

Here's the mindset you have to have to

be a special makeup effects artist.

What do I need to see to make

me believe that what I'm seeing is really

happening?

That translates into, what do I have to

show people to make them believe that

what they're seeing is really happening?

And that's, again, what a magician does.

So what do I need to see?

Well, I need to see her head come

off.

Well, okay, I can put a wig on

any head and make it roll away from

the body, although that took 17 takes.

So I took Piper Laurie, and I put

an appliance on her neck to make her

own head look like a severed head.

And we painted her skin black.

She was in a black costume.

I put her on a stool that would

spin.

And I had the effects, the mechanical

effects guy take the floor and build it

upright and put it on wheels.

So I could wheel the floor behind her

while spinning her on the chair.

And she would say, Nicholas, Nicholas,

every time her head came.

So that helped the illusion.

So Dario came in, what are you doing?

He had no idea, the chair, the stool,

the floor.

And we showed him the video test.

We did it in fast motion.

Ah, he understood the magic of the

effect.

And from that day on, he called me,

in Italian, the volcano of the mind.

But I think he is a volcano of

the mind!

Creatures of the Abyss by Al Passari.

It's a group of teenagers that get

stranded on a raft and then are saved

when they see a boat, which is actually

a lab that has been doing experiments on

fish, turning them into ferocious

monsters.

The production value is quite high.

It's an Italian production that was

filmed in Miami, completely dubbed.

Secret of the Abyss, unknown animals,

ichthyology.

Now, don't tell me you're going to read

that crap.

It has a very 80s vibe to it.

There's a lot of nudity.

The girls are in bikinis the entire time,

where the guys are fully clothed.

How does that happen?

And it's kind of a throwback to those

80s bonehead teen comedies, except now

they're on a boat.

Know the differences between a blowjob

and a ham sandwich?

What?

Let's have dinner tonight, I'll show you.

Oh.

My favorite scene in this is when a

couple is boning.

The guy gets possessed by the fish

monster and you get a fish dick out

of the mouth.

And you get spines out of the back

and, you know, the guy turns into this

creature and the girl is just like

mortified and horrified and assaulted by

a fish monster.

It's definitely inspired by Rick Baker,

American Werewolf, of course.

And it looks incredible.

Sam Raimi definitely influenced this

movie.

Every time you had the POV of the

creature of the fish, where there's like

this fish lens literally on the camera,

and it just zooms through, you know,

going right towards the next victim.

There's this incredible soundtrack.

It's all synth.

Gives it a lot of energy.

Die, you motherfucking sons of bitches!

Die!

Everything around it is so dynamic.

There's a lot of edits.

The creature is fantastic.

It's super fun.

Sometimes you just want a boneheaded

party movie.

Creatures from the Abyss is absolutely

that movie.

Phantasm 3.

Coming soon.

So the first Phantasm film I saw was

Phantasm 2.

I was way too young to be able

to get into that theater at that time.

But I did anyway.

It was such a cool mashup for me

of horror, gothic kind of storytelling,

and science fiction.

And the first time I saw the great

Angus Scrimm enter the frame, I knew I

was witnessing greatness.

Universal wanted someone with more

experience or a bigger name.

So they went with James LeGros for Mike

in the second film.

Phantasm 3 was the return of a Michael

Baldwin as Mike, who originated the role.

It was great to see him back with

Reggie Bannister.

And that chemistry that these two had

from that original film, trying to

survive and figure out the mystery of the

tall man.

Picking up with Phantasm 3, having not

participated in Phantasm 2, was

bittersweet.

There's no question about it.

I'm not the first actor that didn't get

the part he should have got or thought

he should have got.

I'm the billionth guy like that.

So, you know, it's a choice of just

being pro enough to be able to step

in and go.

It's time now, boy.

Don Coscarelli and I, of course, have

been making movies together since 1975,

roughly.

Don and I have known each other for

so long.

And Reggie Bannister and Bill Thornberry,

it does make for a amusing workday

because we all have a lot of history

together.

So that's an element that you don't

necessarily get every day in filmmaking.

Angus Scrimm, the stage name of Rory Guy,

while he played a menacing, frightening

alien, was a total sweetheart in real

life and a gentleman and a very erudite

and educated and a lovely, lovely guy and

a good friend.

The two women of color entering the

Phantasm world are fantastic and a

wonderful addition.

Some folks never know when they give it

up.

Now, look who's talking.

Unfortunately, Sarah Scott Davis, she

dies rather quickly.

Dispatched.

But fortunately, the beautiful and

charming Gloria Lynn Henry lives.

She goes all the way to the end

with her nunchucks.

There's definitely comedy relief, no

question about it.

Fortunately for me, Mike's character does

not have to participate in any of the

comedy relief.

He's able to stay sincere and direct in

his serious approach.

I think Reggie even uses a plunger,

doesn't he, to defend himself against a

sphere?

Comedy relief.

There you go, that's clever.

Shout out to Carey Pryor, filmmaker,

special effects guy, talented.

He made all those spheres in Phantasm III

and they're pretty elaborate.

A lot of people would be surprised to

find that a lot of those spheres are

just on monofilament.

They're just like on a fishing pole and

he's back there swinging them around,

making them look good.

I probably should have snagged one of

those things when we were making that

movie, but I don't know, I wasn't

thinking about it.

Phantasm III has what I'm pretty sure is

a Guinness Book of World Records flip in

it.

The hearse does a pipe ramp jump and

that night I thought that stunt driver

was dead, Bob Ivy.

There was no way that he could survive

that and he did survive it and he

came hobbling out of that car with

assistance, you know, like blood coming

out of his eyeballs.

I'm not kidding, it was horrific.

I'm gonna say that is the longest pipe

ramp jump distance that a hearse has ever

taken.

So it's coming like this and it's going

like this and it's pretty great.

That was just one of the most amazing

stunts I ever have seen.

So Bob Ivy, you're the man.

It's never over.

Stephen King's The Stand Well, The Stand

was originally a novel by Stephen King

that was 800 pages long.

People tried to make it for years.

For a long time, George Romero was going

to do it and they decided to try

and make it into two movies.

Nobody could figure out how to tell it.

Seal the base, Capian.

Is the main gate still open?

Shut it!

Yes, sir.

We're dying like flies down here.

Stephen King fell in love with the idea

of miniseries because they were being

sold as a novel for television.

When it became a miniseries, suddenly it

became doable.

Just take it easy now.

Deep malfunction, otherwise we'd have

died in the compound.

Project Blue.

ABC, after the success of It, decided to

be pretty ambitious.

Once King had the script in shape and

we got our green light, we had very

little interference from the network or

anybody else.

It became a huge production.

We shot it on 16mm to save money.

It was a $28 million miniseries, which in

1993 was a lot.

It was shot in six states, 126 speaking

parts, 95 scripted locations.

I mean, it was a mother.

We were shutting down a world that was

not shut down to create a world that

had been killed by the superflu.

They're all dead and you're here to take

care of me.

Is that it?

Hole in one.

In 1993, we were telling the story of

COVID in its most extreme possible sense,

that it did kill off everybody, which

fortunately did not happen.

Tell you what, Portland, it looks like

the Marines have landed.

They don't look too happy.

This is a joke, right?

I mean, this has got to be a

joke.

I don't think so, Frannie.

There's a handful of people left, the

good and the evil.

The good represented by Mother Abigail,

who's 108 years old, and the other side

is attracted to a character named Randall

Flagg, who very well may be, if not

the devil, one of his minions.

Turn them away if they come, Mother.

Take my advice.

Turn them away.

And there is ultimately going to be a

battle for the end of the earth between

good and evil.

It's time to make your stand.

The casting was so important.

A huge ensemble of actors, all of whom

work in very different styles, but were

brought together by the gargantuan size

of this miniseries, and they interacted

beautifully with one another, and it

became a genuinely emotional story being

told.

If he wants me to drink, he'll send

rain.

Do you know how crazy that sounds?

I'd never shot anything on a large scale

before, and I'm thrown into shooting

scenes with 600 extras on the streets of

Las Vegas.

It was a wonderful trial by fire.

King was there for a good half of

the shoot, off and on, and he was

there as a cheerleader.

Well, you were having a bad dream.

Must have been a real wowser by the

sound.

Is it about him?

The horror elements were amplified by the

makeup effects that were done by Steve

Johnson and Billy Corso and their crew.

Before I'm through with you, you're bad

to tell me.

There were just so many places in the

world where you could see that the horror

could come from, and yet all of them,

even the most supernatural of them, came

from a very human place, a very

identifiable place.

Dave Roberts!

Oh, God!

You bastard!

I mean, there are bodies stacked up like

cordwood, as Stephen King's character

says to me in The Stand, and the

loss of those close to you, and the

way it is portrayed in a very human

manner makes it painful.

I love inflicting pain on an audience.

No!

Oh, it's too late to say no, dear.

Much too late.

To be able to communicate a story where

you feel it as much as you watch

it, that's what The Stand always was,

even as a book.

To do something that momentous that early

in my career and have it come out

successfully as it did, it was like such

an education.

Hopefully, utilizing that knowledge and

sharing that knowledge in such a way that

we made something that lives on.

We are dead, and this is hell.

Dark Waters is definitely a singular

vision.

It falls into the Lovecraftian world.

It falls into nun-sploitation.

A girl's father's died.

She goes to this island to figure out

what happened, and it's inhabited by a

bunch of nuns in an old monastery and

a lot of evil doings that they're getting

up to.

Louise Salter plays the English lead who

comes to the island.

You know, when I was a child, I

was scared of nuns.

They gave me the creeps.

We've also seen her in Interview with a

Vampire.

Dark Waters is filmed by Mariano Baino.

Makes incredible use of the locations in

Ukraine and the shoreline.

Mariano Baino managed to put the

financing together to do this film his

way.

It's very much the work of an auteur.

It's an Italian movie through and

through.

He's a guy who doesn't want outside

influence when he's making a film, which

is probably why he hasn't made many

films, because films are expensive, and

it's hard to do that when you're not

a known quantity.

It is one of the films that Lovecraft

fans actually hold in very high regard

amongst films that are inspired by

Lovecraft.

All

of

the classic monsters were being remade in

the 90s, and I think because of the

influence of the masterpiece that was

Bram Stoker's Dracula.

It was an exciting time.

The fact that Mike Nichols would take on

a werewolf film to me was already going,

I'm there.

Wolf was fantastic.

Wolf is about a man going through a

midlife crisis, played by the

incomparable Jack Nicholson.

You are such a polished ass kisser, it

takes my breath away.

And I kiss him like I see him.

Nicholson plays Will Randall, who is the

editor-in-chief of a New York publishing

house owned by the always iconic

Christopher Plummer.

You're a nice person, Will.

Thank God I replaced you.

He's bitten by a wolf, and suddenly is

now becoming a werewolf.

And then there's the added intrigue of

his meeting Michelle Pfeiffer.

Not while you're your own problem.

I am not taken aback by your keen

insight and suddenly challenged by you.

It's almost like this romantic horror,

where the relationship is taking center

stage, then here comes James Spader,

who's bitten and becomes the antagonist.

Nicholson, I mean, he was having a ball.

He captured the emotions of what the

transformation and the feelings are like.

I can't take it anymore.

I just can't take it.

We'll take care of it.

See you later.

He does this really very physical way of

showing a older, kind of slower man.

And as the film proceeds, his hair gets

darker.

He gets more aggressive.

Here, the wolf bite reinvigorates this

man.

The worm has turned and is now packing

an Uzi, Mary.

It's about fucking time, sir.

I think the turning point for this is

when Jack, who's taking on the more

canine traits, suddenly turns and marks

his territory by pissing on James

Spader's shoes with absolutely the most

straight face, just, fuck you, that has

ever been committed to film.

What are you, crazy?

No, I'm just marking my territory.

All of these things are intensifying as

he's slowly but surely turning into a

werewolf.

Rick Baker, that transformation scene in

American Werewolf in London is still

stunning.

We had no CG, we had nothing.

It was all physical.

And the work he did with Nicholson on

Wolf I thought was spectacular.

You're wanting to see the faces of these

characters.

James Spader just comes across as really

creepy in this, and it's a really cool

effect.

If you find me so attractive, how about

I fucking you to death?

Working on this movie certainly showed

not only how he had really refined the

craft and was able to utilize effects

subtly, but then by the time you get

to the end, you see this grand reveal

of the final wolf piece.

You're rewarded so well.

That's when it really kind of comes into

its own and becomes like a full-blown

monster movie.

It just turned the wolfman story on its

head, and had it been anyone else but

Jack Nicholson, I don't know if it had

played, you know?

You ain't seen nothing yet

Natural Born Killers

Natural Born Killers by Oliver Stone was

his commentary on trash TV.

Hey Jack, Nicky's Back.

Well, just the prick I wanna see.

The obsession with trash TV seems to be

something that is just primal.

We, as an audience, just wanted to see

people be terrible on TV.

Listen, you bitch, I don't want you.

If I had a choice between you and

a pit bull with three legs and one

eye, I would take the pit bull.

It was the bottom of the barrel tabloid

headline shit.

It was just awful.

It's just to watch people scream at one

another, I guess.

He's gonna run down to California with

you, bitch!

Instead of taking responsibility for

their actions or their words, they just

start throwing chairs.

Networks and studios figured out the

worse the behavior on TV was, the higher

the ratings.

This will be the most talked about event

in television history.

Natural Born Killers was almost prescient

in its look at multimedia and how they

will chase the most brazen, violent

story, and they will celebrate the

villain and deify them.

Mickey and Mallory. The best thing to happen to mass

murderers since Manson.

Yeah, but they're way cooler.

And then give absolutely no thought or

solace to the victims.

Mike f***ing Griffin is who these misguided

a**holes should be revering.

Killed in the line of duty by these

c***sucking degenerate d*****bags.

Oliver Stone goes, hmm, I'm gonna tell a

story about hip killers.

What if this was Bonnie and Clyde of

this era, and you wanted to be in

the car with Bonnie and Clyde?

And you know what?

What I'm really gonna go after is the

media that makes them Bonnie and Clyde.

You're not even an ape, you're a media

person.

Media is like the weather only it's man

-made.

Murder is pure.

And let's be honest, that is our media.

I mean, that's what we're all doing.

We are exalting these monsters.

It was about the sort of cultural impact

and media impact that Mickey and Mallory

had.

It's such an amazing reflection of where

the culture was going.

Really shining a spotlight on the serial

killer culture.

Put Charles Manson on a t-shirt.

Made it okay for Gacy to be this

art icon.

The real consequences, the real

catastrophes that are destroying lives.

It's fodder for the grist machine.

That movie encapsulates it.

Natural Born Killers is a very stylized

movie.

This absolute dissertation on how to use

different types of film, how to splice

them, how to shoot them, how to look

at them.

It became the ultimate grindhouse film.

Natural Born Killers is Oliver Stone's

attempt to make Clockwork Orange, in my

opinion.

Something that is literally getting in

your head and in your home.

That's pure horror.

You do not get the benefit of distancing

yourself from it.

You distance yourself from what's

happening on the screen.

This was such a hilarious anarchistic

movie and it told me so much about

America.

It's such an insane image that people

like Mickey and Mallory can just go

somewhere, get a gun and start shooting, you know.

For Germans, it's not understandable.

In real life, these things happen now.

So the world turned a little bit into

Natural Born Killers, into the movie.

You are it!

The whole reason that we're terrible

towards each other is because we're

constantly judging each other.

It's reflected in our politics.

It's reflected in social media.

It all started from that nucleus of fake

outrage.

And then it just had to be bigger,

worse.

It was insane, you know.

And we thought, where does it stop?

And we're still asking that question.

Shit, man.

I'm a Natural Born Killer.

What happened with Nightmare was what was

happening culturally in the shift from

the 80s to the 90s.

The 90s was very self-reflexive, and I

find that what Craven did, similar to

what Tarantino did, not in the horror

area, was he very artistically and

imaginatively played with this idea of,

what does the audience know about the

industry and what's going on on the

screen?

Heather Langenkamp as Heather Langenkamp.

Robert Englund as Robert Englund.

Wes Craven as himself.

In a world where the Elm Street franchise

exists, it starts out as a movie about

Heather's interaction with fandom, and

the encroachment of that fandom on her

personal life as an actor.

Her discomfort with the horror genre of

the Elm Street franchise infiltrating her

home as a mother, and specifically her

young son being exposed to the kind of

movies that created her career.

These were real and important ideas about

our relationship to horror, and horror's

relationship to the audience, and to its

creators, and to its architects, and to

its actors.

When Wes Craven showed me the script, it

was very hard to get behind the idea.

It brought up all sorts of strange

questions in my own brain about what I

was doing to myself, and my life, and

my family.

But I put that aside, and I really

wanted to work on it.

A few weeks ago, I got a call

from Wes, and he pitched me this really

exciting idea.

And I started thinking, who better to

resurrect Freddy than his creator?

The main appeal was that I realized how

rare it was to play a character through

her life, like watching all of her stages

of life evolve in front of the audience.

Her teenager years, her young

professional year, and now her life as a

mother.

But I have a kid now, and...

So?

So I'm not sure about doing horror.

Of course, I wasn't going to let it

slip by or let someone else play the

role.

I would never have let that happen.

Miss me?

Robert's a very theatrical person.

He loves art.

He appreciates the finest things in life,

and in the world, and restaurants.

And I think that Robert that you see

is a perfect extension of the persona

that Robert presents to us in his real

life.

Today's no good.

There's something I have to finish.

New Line Cinema had moved into a very

fancy office building on Robertson

Boulevard in Los Angeles.

And so on the day that we shot

there, it was like a beehive of frantic

nervousness.

I come into the office to see Bob

Shaye.

He has a proposition for me.

And I'm treated like a superstar.

You know, I go right into his office.

But it never really was like that.

Look, Heather, let me cut to the chase.

How would you like to join us in

the definitive nightmare?

Wes Craven had the luxury of having a

team standing beside him when he was

acting.

They had no qualms about telling him that

he needed another take.

And they knew that he would be mortified

if it wasn't just right.

He's been held captive pretty much as

Freddie in the Nightmare on Elm Street

series.

But now that the films have ended, the

genie's out of the bottle.

My son is played by Miko Hughes.

And I had met Miko when he was

just four years old working on the set

of Pet Sematary.

My husband, David Anderson, was doing all

the makeup effects for Pet Cemetery at

the time.

So when I saw him again, he was

just as open and bright-eyed, still

really looking forward to his McDonald's

Happy Meal.

And he was as good, if not better,

than all of us on the set in

terms of his job.

Rex keeps him down there.

The mean old man with the claws.

I do hear that he was frightened by

the Freddie makeup.

Ever played Skin the Cat?

I mean, Robert quickly dispels that

because he usually has some really

hilarious story or a joke or some way

to dissolve that.

But any kid would have been scared to

see that.

I'm sitting by the bedside of Dylan.

And it's the first time you've seen me

sleep.

And as you know, in any nightmare movie,

when sleep comes, something bad is going

to happen.

And then he just proceeds to just fire

hydrant vomit all over me.

It was just disgusting.

And it was such a callback to The

Exorcist.

That was just a little nod to all

the mothers and fathers out there who

have to clean up projectile vomit from

their child from time to time.

I think a lot of people are seeing

Wes Craven's New Nightmare as an adult, a

real adult, like after experiencing a lot

of adult things and appreciating it a lot

more from all the different, more subtle

horror that's in there psychologically.

It's smart, it's scary, and it's

curiously thought-provoking.

It didn't provoke a single thought in my

head.

Oh, come, come, come.

No, no, no.

I think we all thought it was going

to make our careers and we're going to,

you know, be rolling in the dough, right?

And it didn't happen, really.

Pulp Fiction came out on the same

weekend.

So I always, you know, think Quentin

Tarantino robbed us of our huge opening

that we might have had otherwise.

But I have no regrets.

I think the movie has grown on people.

And it's not uncommon to hear someone say

that Wes Craven's New Nightmare is their

favorite.

I touched him.

I wrote a film in the mid-80s

directed by Ken Russell, which was called

Gothic, which was about the formative

ghost story session that Mary Shelley and

Byron went through on the shores of Lake

Geneva, where the idea of Frankenstein

occurred to her.

So when I heard that Kenneth Branagh was

directing Frankenstein, it did excite me

to see what he would do with my

favorite book of all time.

The book by Mary Shelley is an incredible

moment in literature in that she kind of

single-handedly creates science fiction

and horror in one book, and she's 19.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was a result

of the success of Dracula.

Francis had always actually wanted to do

Frankenstein.

It's alive.

I had wanted to do Frankenstein forever,

but the way it's never been done, the

whole novel, very much like what we went

through with Dracula.

The Karloff version is not the book.

Where is it?

Quiet, you fool!

Steph Lady's script had a unique

approach to it.

I did some work on it, and then

we brought in Frank Darabont.

It had always been his favorite book.

So Frank came in and did a killer

draft.

It was the last script he wrote that

he didn't direct.

He was on his way to do Shawshank.

The studio brought in Ken Branagh to

direct.

He wanted to do a bigger Hollywood film.

I think the studio was ready to take

the chance.

He learned a lot on that.

Francis didn't try to interfere, but

maybe once and let him have his way.

We can create a being that will not

grow old or sickened, one that will be

stronger than us, better than us.

Frank's script did not get made.

Not his vision, which is a shame.

Darabont had really done the story from

the creature's point of view.

It's about a homeless man who was cast

into society, and society made him a

monster.

In the book, Victor Frankenstein in his

diary says, at that point, I knew that

I was the monster.

What have I done?

Dr. Frankenstein, his hubris of creating

life, he realizes his mistake when he

realizes he's put this juggernaut on the

earth.

No!

A brute that you feel sympathy for

sometimes, but a brute nonetheless, and

so, you know, somewhat subhuman.

Kenneth Branagh, as a director, finds the

pathos, finds what was there in the

original book, the difference in horror

between the other and the monster in us.

It's still a very stylish movie.

I love watching it.

I love watching De Niro with his mole

as part of the creature.

Which part of me did this knowledge

reside?

In these hands?

In this mind?

Brave, bold portrayal of the monster.

Really incredible that he had some

humanity in him, and was confused by the

world.

God, he just really, I felt for him.

Amazing, amazing performance.

The sea of ice, I will meet you

there.

When he makes the pitch to Victor to

build him a bride.

There is something I want.

A female.

Someone like me.

He just wants someone he can go away

with, far away, leave everybody alone,

and have love.

I have love in me the likes of

which you can scarcely imagine.

Darabont came up with the wonderful

innovation of the bride also being

Victor's wife.

He wanted to bring her back to life.

She's beautiful.

She's not for you.

The diary that the sea captain wrote

about meeting the creature in the North

Pole when the ship is trapped in the

ice, that's Shelley.

I know what's not in Frankenstein.

That doesn't mean the audience doesn't

find it enjoyable, and satisfying, and

revelatory experience.

Then there's part of it that I wish

we had been able to maintain.

Kenneth Branagh's version of Frankenstein

was a really exciting return to what the

book was about, the kind of operatic

scope of the story.

I think, unfortunately, what happened was

there was something out of balance about

the scale, and the spectacle, and the

explosiveness of the visuals, the

sumptuousness of the visuals.

It came across as kind of indulgent in

a way, or self-indulgent, which I think

was a shame because everything about this

should have worked, and should have been

brilliant, and yet somehow it fell short.

Frankenstein!

Interview.

I read Interview the Vampire and freaked

out.

It was not the vampires that we knew

and grew up with in the Drive-In

movies.

Don't be frightened.

Anne Rice really tapped into a market

that everybody thought was cheesy and

cheap.

She typed into an elegant, physical,

terrifying, sexy, visceral way of being a

vampire.

It was influential in the idea of a

vampire story told, not from the point of

view of the victims, but from the

monsters themselves.

Flesh and blood, but not human.

I haven't been human for 200 years.

At that time in the 90s, Anne Rice

was a huge, huge phenomenon.

Everyone was reading her books.

Romantic, gothic, all of the things that

make great novels made everybody really

primed to see the movies.

I mean, that was definitely what we all

were thinking of.

When is the movie coming out?

Who's going to play the parts?

And, of course, they cast those to a

T.

Suddenly, it was cachet and cool to

attach yourself to some elegant, lofty

type horror.

Pretend to drink, at least.

The thing I love about the casting of

Tom Cruise in Interview with a Vampire

is, you know, everyone imagines

themselves playing a vampire.

I mean, everyone's wanted to be a vampire

for Halloween at some point, and this is

the chance for an actor who really, you

know, could do anything that he wanted.

He was just the one thing that could

bring you peace.

You call that peace?

We're predators.

It was our seeing eye for me to

give them detachment.

I remember when I first heard that he

was cast as Lestat, my reaction was,

what?

What are they doing?

No, no, no, no, you can't do that.

And I thought he was superb in it.

Changed my opinion of him as an actor,

certainly.

It's a coffin!

A coffin!

It's your coffin, my love.

Enjoy it.

Brad Pitt, of course, you'll see anything

that he's in, so why not a vampire

movie?

And I loved seeing all the A-list

stars taking these roles where they

played more evil characters.

They, too, want to mix it up, and

they want to get some blood on their

fangs.

That's — they want to be able to

see what it feels like to rip off

somebody's head.

Neil Jordan did an amazing job on this

film.

It looks beautiful.

It feels beautiful.

It looks like you were moving through the

decades.

It was not his first time in the

genre, having done In the Company of

Wolves.

Coming off of his success with The Crying

Game, the fact that they gave him this

told you that they were taking this

seriously.

They told you that they were going to

show this story for what it was, which

was a beautiful love story.

Yes, it's vampires.

Yes, they're immortal.

Yes, they kill.

But the love story, not just between

Claudia, who is technically hundreds of

years old, and Louise, but also between

all of the other male actors.

Souls will love each other across

decades, no matter what.

I was mortal to you.

You gave me your immortal kiss.

I think that's the most successful part

of the film, what Neil did in casting

Kirsten Dunst in that role, and she

killed it.

One of you did it!

Which one of you made me the way

I am?

Antonio Banderas was Armand, theater of

the vampires.

Perhaps this is the only real evil

left.

And Stephen Rea, he was a great villain.

He was really, really good.

For you, vitality in a box, the only

company would be your screams.

They brought all the A+, A+,

production values.

A costume drama and horror mixed together

is, for me, the perfect combination.

You get to fly sometimes.

You get to lurk around in giant capes

and all those hats.

Actually, one of my good friends made a

lot of the hats for an interview with

a vampire.

She lent me one one time for a

Halloween party at Rick Baker's, and I'll

never forget it.

I have that picture.

I have that picture in my office.

Now, you brought me up here for a

reason, didn't you?

And what reason would that be?

You want a companion?

One of the things that kind of gets lost

in this is the fact that River Phoenix

was supposed to play Daniel, the young

reporter, and then passed away right

before production could happen.

Obviously, they bring in Christian

Slater, who was a worthy replacement, but

it's just one of those things that you

think about now when you watch that

movie, is the reflection of how River

would have played it.

It's almost bittersweet.

You fiend. One happy family.

In the 90s, it's an era

of deconstruction, and it's an era where

you see sometimes the masters of the

genre that they helped define in the 80s,

like Wes Craven, who built the

supernatural slasher model.

You see him take apart, piece by piece,

these institutions that he built a career

on and completely subvert them, take them

apart and reconstruct them.

It's a radically kind of forward and

backward-looking decade that way.

Mrs. Voorhees was a terrific serial

killer, and there's always room for

Candyman's daughter.

Moving the medium forward, stripping it

back to the basics and building something

new, and it leads to some of the

most inventive filmmaking you're going to

find.

Since, I'd argue, the late 60s and 70s,

when Hollywood was so excited about risk

and about doing things that were distinct

and not just following the formula of

what they believed was required to be

successful, which I think really defines

the Reagan era and the 80s in particular.

As we move into the second half of

the 90s, of course, the internet

revolution begins.

Welcome to America Online.

And films like Scream and The Blair Witch

Project completely reinvigorate the

genre.

At the same time, concerns about Y2K

began to grow as we sped toward the

new millennium and perhaps the end of the

world.

You had new voices like Guillermo del

Toro, David Fincher,

M. Night Shyamalan, and these are folks who

not only helped shape that decade, but

they are still kind of driving the genre

conversation today, 30 years later.

One of the great things about the 90s

ultimately is that it has teed up a

generation of filmmakers to know that

smart horror, horror that knows what it

is, is a reliable industry.

Some of my first jobs, I worked at

a movie theater in the 90s.

I worked at Cineplex Odeon and Suncoast

Video at the mall.

Those jobs for me weren't just about

making a little bit of money.

Those jobs were also my education.

You want to learn about cinema, you're

doing that at the theater, you're doing

that at the video store.

As someone who was recognizing that it's

like, you know where my talents lie is

on the page and writing, that was an

era of the writer, oddly enough.

By the time you hit the mid-90s,

once Scream came out, it was Kevin

Williamson, and that was huge for me to

see a horror writer who was part of

the marketing.

And so that was really validating for me

at an early age to be like, oh,

okay, so the writer can be recognized

even if they're not a star or a

director of the film.

Like, okay, there's horror that's for me.

And so I took that ball and just

ran with it into my career.

The folks that came up in the 90s,

loving horror, watching horror, and

wanting to make horror also now have

tools in their hands that their

generation before them did not have to go

out and make that stuff, to go and

learn it.

My mother doesn't know anything.

Hail Satan.

There's takeaways from the 90s horror

that definitely collectively tee up a

very optimistic path forward for the next

generation of filmmakers.