Original subtitles

What do y'all think we're doing?

Honestly, I have no idea.

I'm just, like, bracing for impact.

Ten contestants

signed up for the adventure of a lifetime.

- We're here to win it. - That's right.

It looks like we're camping in the woods.

It's getting a little creepy.

Little did they know,

we had something very different in mind for them.

We just gotta get out of here.

There's stuff blocking it.

I'm 100% freaking out right now.

Nightmare fuel.

Oh my God. Got dead bodies in here?

Well, hello there.

You're gonna have to overcome some pretty scary obstacles.

Or die trying.

Jesus Christ!

With each challenge, they faced a new nightmare.

I'm just trying to decipher what's real and what's not.

Is there burning bodies up here?

Twist after turn after grave after death.

What is going on out here?

I'm kind of freaking out at this point.

Competing in gruesome challenges...

Holy crap.

Some came out on top. - Yes!

- Woo! - And some were sent home.

Bye, guys. Good luck.

And some didn't survive the night.

Josh, help me.

What kind of psycho does that?

Right now, it doesn't seem like anybody's gonna survive.

With our winner crowned, let's pull back the curtain

and step into the shadows, where nightmares are crafted,

and true darkness lurks behind the scenes.

These poor people, these poor people, I feel so bad for them.

Oh!

Oh my god!

Oh, shit!

Disgusting.

If I had to describe my role on this show in one word,

it would be Puppet Master.

This is a reality show, and a lot of us

haven't done reality meets horror.

She's gonna go, "Ah!"

So you'll tilt up with her as she goes, and let her go out.

For me, being somebody

who does watch a lot of reality television,

how can we create something

that gives you that competition show experience,

but in a horror movie setting?

We're all learning.

Every day, we're all going to learn a little bit more

about how this cockamamie show is going to work.

So, let's go.

Putting this whole show together

and just trying to figure out how it was all going to work

was a bloody Rubik's Cube of complexity.

Every episode, we can lean into a different type of scare,

or a different experience.

You're standing in the front room of a haunted house,

and there's a whole bunch of doorways,

and you have no idea which doorway you want to go through

and what's going to come out of those doorways.

So, my job on this show was to create a new thrill

and a new experience in every single doorway.

How do you use this thing? Testing.

♪ My bags are packed I'm ready to go ♪

Today's the day. About to go to Atlanta.

Yeah, let's get it, man. Come on, son.

Here we go!

So, I invite you to sit back, relax,

and enjoy the flight.

It's a lot going through my mind.

Who are the other competitors? What are they capable of?

The contestants were great.

We wanted a wide variety of people.

You know, we wanted the person that

everyone's going to respond to,

and we wanted the person that's going to be competitive,

and then we wanted the person

that's going to be maybe a little bit quiet,

but has a lot of charisma. So, each one of them representd

a different sort of walk of life.

Just made it through security.

I have brought my Keurig with me.

See if your girl's going to win some money.

Maybe find my man.

Oh, my gosh. Today, we're actually starting

whatever they have planned for us.

Let's hit it.

They had really no idea what they were in for.

- We're on the bus. - We are on the bus.

Let's get it, baby!

The entire show is set up as a giant misdirect.

We had to write up the rules

about what the show was without really telling them

what the show was. We wanted them to just say

they've signed up for a competition show,

there's a cash prize at the en,

and it's going to have these certain elements.

All right, welcome to our crib. Let's get it.

Oh, snap.

They loved the woods when I first saw the.

I could see it in their eyes,

and they did think they were out in the wilderness.

They didn't know that, you know, up the road's a studio.

Go!

The first episode was the Urban Legend Challenge.

- Oh, that was good. - That's great.

Everybody knows, like, the Jersey Devil or Mothman.

And I just started thinking to myself,

"OK, so maybe we should come up with some cool urban legends."

The one that we make up

is our urban legend that is our story.

I got one!

All right. That was better than the first one.

- That was pretty damn good. - We did it!

And after the challenge,

kind of the drama started around the campfire.

I feel like we should do scary stories now.

The Alabama folklore thing kind of freaked me out a little bit.

Stop for one second, guys.

Uh, Juliene, do you have a phone?

Everyone to your tents, please! Everyone to your tents.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

There were lots of conversations what happened.

I think they bought the fact that one of our contestants

snuck a phone in.

Hey, so what we're doing today, we've got one of our contestants

that has wandered away from the campsite,

she's on her own,

and this is where we start setting up the horror movie.

She's gonna act like she's hearing some noises,

she'll stop, she'll look aroun,

and she is going to go flying up and out of frame,

with this little rig that we've put together.

You want to see what it looks like with just me jumping?

Well, I'll pop, I'll pop.

I have my Walking Dead team with me,

you know, Jeff January and DC Manwiller.

DC informs me this is his last day.

He doesn't realize it.

I did not accept his letter of resignation

because it was in crayon.

When you work on a show for 12 years,

they're not just people that you go to work with,

but they're people that you laugh with and you cry with

and you experience everything with.

And then I think the idea would be,

you would just kind of go, "Uh!"

And then, pshew! Do that and scream.

- OK. - Head back and then scream.

Like something almost stabbed me in the back?

Like something's grabbing you by the head and lifting you up.

OK.

Walking Dead was such a big part of our lives for so long.

It's nice to see 75% of our crew here

is old Walking Dead crew members.

It's a lot of fun being back here.

- Monty, you ready? - Yes, sir.

Camera, camera, set, set. All right, we are set.

Here we go. And action, Juliene.

Cut.

- All right, cut it. - OK, coming down.

Thank God I had my Walking Dead crew.

Thank God I had DC, and JJ, and Monty,

and the team that I had,

because I could have never done this without them.

We just gotta get out of here.

We gotta get all, just get all, pack all your shit. We're...

Everything, guys! We're done here, OK?

All right, guys, let's get moving!

Follow me.

We're here at the hospital. What is going on?

All we could do from challenge to challenge

was subvert their expectations

by misdirecting them in a fun way,

in a fun way that had actually a story.

This one was written

specifically for this Noonan Hospital,

at the hospital where we filmed The Walking Dead,

because I knew how creepy and how scary it was.

A lot of these ceiling tiles will be removed.

Art department's gonna dress a bunch of wires

that are dangling down as if, you know, chaos.

There's only, like, three rooms

that are actually functioning. So we dressed those three room.

We had nurses and doctors and wheelchairs and everything.

When we closed those doors, the art department went,

flipped all the furniture, threw blood everywhere,

laid on the floor, scattered set decoration.

So, lights go out, Frank comes in out of breath.

"We gotta go now. Hurry up. I can't explain."

Back to the bus! We gotta get out of here!

Oh my God.

The art department did a fantastic job

of making that place look like there was a massacre.

All right, so now they start coming here. "Holy shit".

Yep.

"Oh, my God. This is terrifying."

Why is there blood everywhere?

I'm pretty sure we had most of them

up until we got to the morgue,

you know, and that was always the kind of, uh, the thinking.

Why are we at the morgue?

What the fuck?

When they walk into this room, it's gotta smell bad.

We found a company that specializes

in creating specific smells for haunted attractions,

and they actually sold a decomposing body smell.

Oh, that is gross as fuck.

Oh, come on.

Oh God.

That's nasty.

Oh God.

The body had to be as disgusting and as revolting as it could be.

So, two months before we started shooting,

we started designing this body,

and it took about two and a half weeks to sculpt.

I'm a little worried right now that it's looking--

it's still looking a little too fantasy body,

and not real body.

I thought, "OK, I want to do a visceral challenge,

but we gotta take it much further."

This was inspired by the morgue scene in Se7en ,

um, that I had an idea that this,

in terms of our backstory, this is a person

that potentially was killed by our demon,

and the body was thrown into the lake and bloated.

Put the camera here and do an insert of them

tearing through the membrane and taking the guts out.

All the gross-out. All the gross-out.

You know, from the very beginning.

Greg talked about how it had to anatomically look correct.

The smell had to be there, the textures had to be there.

So, so really when the body was made,

it was really about making sure that everything within the body

is anatomically correct.

- That's gross. - Oh, my God. This is disgusting.

Even for me watching it to be like,

"That looks real."

Like, I thought that it looked real.

Watching them looking at that body,

dry heaving, which is real,

and going in there and, "Oh, I feel a spine.

Oh, wait, that's not a thing. Oh, OK."

So they were talking it out. I could see it in their faces.

Lean over, like you're grabbing the dead...

That's gotta go that...

"Hi, how ya doing?"

One of the great things about this

that we did was we had a rod, a post in the hand,

so the hand could move. So while they were,

while they were there doing it, the hand would move.

I was like, "Yeah, let's do that. That would be great."

I didn't want the person to be directly underneath.

I wanted you to be able to look under the table

and see it empty.

So they would be like, "How's that arm moving?"

So Molly came with this idea,

"Oh, we'll build a little cart and we'll put it off center,

"as if it's a cart

that they're putting their medical instruments on."

And that's where our puppeteer was.

We did get the response that we want.

One of the contestants

was literally gagging the whole time.

And I think the funniest thing about that was

the other contestants heard the gagging and almost got sick.

- No, don't, don't. - I can't do gagging.

I was kind of hoping one of them did throw up.

But then I was like,

"That's really sadistic. I hope they don't,

but I hope they do, because it would be good TV."

Grab some intestines. Yeah.

- All right, teamwork. - Oh, my God. This is disgusting.

In our planning of the show and the prep,

Greg really emphasized the show

is about the reactions of what they're seeing.

It's about the characters, just like in Walking Dead , you kno.

Yes, it's zombies, but it's about the characters.

So, the characters is what we concentrated on.

I think we lost the liver.

Oh my God.

You're talking directly to that camera.

To be like, "Hey, I hope everybody's good.

"We're about to get, you know,

we're probably 25 minutes from the location."

It's just sort of checking in.

Does anybody know how to fix a vehicle?

If we have one camera that's planted,

like, high up someplace that just shows

them walking towards the junkyard,

and the idea is, "OK, you guys have to

"find four tires to fix the slashed tires on your car,

but there's this creature roaming about."

- Oh my God. I just saw a shadow. - No, you didn't. No, you didn't.

I wanted to build and design this creature

that was very unique.

We built this very, very elaborate suit.

The performer had front leg extensions, back leg stilts.

Open the jaw all the way like, "Ah!" Yeah.

So one of the things that Greg did on Walking Dead

was we did these screen-printed masks.

So the skin is three-dimensionally printed

on fabric design that allowed air to kind of breathe,

it kept weight down, movement was better.

And on camera, it looked really good.

It's showtime.

Yeah, one hand like this and one hand like this.

There's no way I'd be able to get my hand in there.

I like when your back legs--

slide your back legs a little bit.

So, Frank, when you're back, when you're up,

it's better if you stay more toe, toe forward,

if that makes sense.

Like, yeah, like that. There you go.

Like that way, you're flat.

When you walk forward

and you start doing your sideways gallop,

you gotta try to keep your upper body as low as you can.

OK.

Here we go. And action!

Greg picked these set pieces

and wants to draw the contestants in.

You're caught up in the emotion of it, so you go along with it.

You're drawn into it with the characters and emotion.

OK. I'm gonna have you walk.

I'm just gonna, just listen to me.

Get ready and step forward. Three steps.

One, two, three. Now turn to your left.

No, thank you!

Oh!

Finally, we get an obstacle course.

So, we get them into the junkyard.

They see the monster.

And then we show them the challenge.

We wanted it to be, you know,

not only a challenge that dealt with heights.

Oh my fucking God.

But I wanted to play out

the idea that the creature's stalking them.

Holy crap.

That creature needs to be able to come out and then go here.

I mean, he would be invisible back there,

so he could come around to here.

Oh my God.

You had an RC-controlled head,

which I was operating.

I had to hide from all of the contestants,

trying to control the head and make sure

it's going the right direction and looking at them

whenever it comes around a corner.

Oh my gosh. Don't drop it.

Time.

Brian and Alexis, I'm sorry, but your nightmare ends tonight.

Thank you for the opportunity.

Never in a million years did I ever think I'd get

to participate in an experience like this.

You better go win it, girl.

This has been an incredible experience.

But for Lucien, his worst nightmare became a reality.

Oh shit!

He's gonna accidentally roll his tire right around here.

So, we have no idea what the contestants are gonna do.

The biggest challenge on this show

was killing the contestants in front of the other contestants,

and doing it live where they couldn't see it coming,

and it had to have the visceral impact that we wanted.

Is that a good position for his foot?

- I think it is. - All right.

Does that give you enough?

- That's great. - All right, cool.

And we are set. Here we go. Ready, and action!

Oh shit!

What is going on?

Day four. DC wants it extra crunchy.

Extra crunchy, yeah.

So we're in the woods. That doesn't look so good,

because we can see the metal in the bones.

There's some-- no, this is a gravesite.

And why is there altars up there, too?

I feel like we're going to get buried inside of these coffins.

It would be good if there was some pounding.

Oh, yeah, this is weird.

I'm not as worried about how long

it's going to take to dig them up.

So they're going to come from here,

go around there, get the bones, come back around,

and then try to put it together here.

And, her path is over there with the red flags, action!

So the challenge is they have to find 17 bone pieces,

all the while their partner's locked in a coffin.

Jesus.

All right, ready? And action!

Just three.

Kolbie! Get me out of here!

Once they've collected all the pieces,

they can release their partner,

and they have to reassemble the skeleton.

All right, here you come. You guys are doing great!

Yes, you can use the table.

We got three resin skeletons.

So I thought, "OK, well, I can't expect them

"to put a whole skeleton together

because we'll be here until, you know, 2027."

So I had my team manufacture the challenge

so that we could pre-build big chunks of the skeleton.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

There you go.

Yeah, don't worry about picking it up,

because there's going to be a thing on there.

You don't need to take it back down.

That wasn't bad. How long was that?

That was six minutes.

I think the best story in the graveyard challenge

was they left pieces behind.

So it was really exciting because they were hoofing it.

They were running.

Where's the other hand, though?

Did you forget it?

I'm going to go look for the hand.

Go get it. Go get it.

- We're missing a hand. - Oh, fuck.

Oh, here it is.

There's no way. Oh!

Oh, my god. I don't know how a skeleton goes.

Here we go, baby.

We have seven cameras rolling seven pictures.

Good luck. Be safe.

Why would she leave?

Jesus Christ!

Holy Jesus. - That's so good, dude.

Great.

And they want us to go up there?

Wait, there's a dead body right here, that's burning.

Oh my god.

The barn challenge is my homage to The Exorcist.

Somebody's hanging.

All right, so this is the way that this is going to work.

On the night, everybody walks in.

The deeper that you get in, all of a sudden,

those doors will slam shut behind you.

And then I'll trigger the barrels

to appear to move on their own.

This barn looks like something that's owned by,

like, an inbred serial killer family.

Are they alive?

We had to build this barn.

But we have to be able

to raise and lower our possessed contestant.

All right, guys, take her up.

As you're coming up, you should be alive.

Bowstringing her a little bit, guys.

A little left and right, Dino.

How in the hell is this happening?

Then I want a wall rigged so that the entire wall

can blow out on cue with air mortars.

All right, three, two, one.

For the countdown for effects,

and for her, it'll be three, two, one, wall.

Not only was I cueing special effects and stunts

and the performer and makeup effects,

but I'm cueing lighting effects and I'm cueing sound effects.

Just choreographing all of that in and itself,

I don't know what the hell I was thinking.

Oh, my god. Where did Juliene go?

She disappeared.

We could literally have a double in the same makeup

and costumes and hair appear in different areas of the barn.

I said to Molly, "Can you build trap doors in the barn

"so that this person can move

"from one side of the barn to the other,

not being seen by the contestants?"

While the contestants are in the middle of the challenges,

she could be on one side of the barn,

and then she could go out a trap door

and run around to the other side of the barn

and then appear there within ten seconds.

- Like right here? - Yep.

- I might have been-- - Yep, that's all right.

- And then back like this? - Yep.

Set.

OK, ready? And three, two, one, go.

- What? What? What? - What'd you see?

The demon makeup in the mouth, I think, was very successful.

You know, one of the things that we do

as special makeup effects artists

is we're essentially creating an illusion on someone's face.

The thing I like about this one, John sculpted it,

is the illusion of the mouth.

Because the illusion of the mouth is actually wider

than it really is.

- What the fuck? - Oh my god!

Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go!

Josh...

Josh.

What the?

Great. And then spin around, spin, spin, spin, spin.

There we go. Ah!

Here we go. Let's take him up two feet, please.

And you're going to do your twitching.

- See, this is what-- - What?

If he gets twisted, he exposes everything.

I'm gonna rig something that keeps him facing towards us.

But he can go higher than that, right?

Uh, Filipe, go up another foot.

Good there.

Yeah, that's good. Maybe a little higher.

If you throw your feet forward, kicking.

- Zombies! Go, go, go! - [Kolbie[ Wait, what the fuck?

- Oh my god! - What the fuck?

I think I have zombie DNA that's been there since the early 70s,

when I was a little kid

and saw Night of the Living Ded

and Dawn of the Dead for the first time.

- See you, Greg. - See you, buddy.

Still rolling. This is take three, right, of this series?

- Yeah, we haven't cut. - Yeah, OK. Here we go...

And action.

- That was awesome. - Great. Good. And cut.

Come on, come on, come on! Come on! Oh god. OK.

What? What happened?

- There's a body. - Where?

There's a body, there's a body, there's a body.

That's Greg!

I thought it would be fun when the contestants

enter the cabin that they find my body torn apart by zombies.

So we pulled a mold of my head off the shelf

and made a very realistic replica of me to simulate damae

as if I was torn apart by zombies.

Play it, play it, play it.

Well, that didn't go very well.

So the challenge is

to time it out today when they come out to get the ammo.

You guys are out in the woods starting to come in as a herd.

Lucas Godfrey and Jason Hodges

have been working with me for the last decade

on The Walking Dead and Creepshow ,

and I trust them implicitly.

Greg is the king of coming up with really insane ideas

that always end up somehow working.

But the good thing about doing this stuff with him,

someone who I've worked with for so long,

we know what to expect from each other.

If Greg's about to ask for a gallon of blood,

one of us is usually standing behind

with two gallons in our hands.

And this show was definitely a challenge,

and it was a huge learning experience,

but I had so much fun doing it.

And action!

They're definitely getting closer, guys.

Oh, shit!

I'm going to keep moving, though.

Move, move, move!

Ah! They're everywhere! Oh, my god!

I had a great time.

I pushed myself to places that I had never done.

I challenged myself creatively in terms of a filmmaker,

in terms of a storyteller, in terms of a designer.

It was so fun and so different.

And every time I would pitch something to somebody,

they would say, "I've never seen anything like this."

And I'm like, "I've never seen anything like this."

So for me to push myself was really, really great.

I loved every second of it.

Oh, my god!

OK, so now you had a chance to peek behind the veil

and see what went into creating season one of Guts & Glory.

You know what that means?

That means that you get to take a breather for a second.

But not too long.

Because while we were developing this show,

we have a stockpile of fantastic challenges

that we're standing by to start creating.

So, you know what that means?

There's a lot more in store where that came from.

So, you just gotta wait and see.