In Search of Darkness: Part II (2020) - full transcript

Do you ever wonder about the different ways of dying?

You know, violently.

Nostalgia plays such a heavy part in, you know, what you grow up with.

The thing about horror
that I really really love,

it was just kind
of counterculture,

"Fuck you" attitude, and it was something that your parents hated.

Sex,
drugs and rock and roll in the '80s. Right? Well,

it became a lot more than that.

We were rock stars in the '80s.

We were busier than we'd ever been.

The amount of horror movies that came out in the '80s was enormous.



The output was insane worldwide.

Horror films really did open the floodgates

Horror, splatter, gore.

Great Grand Guignol. That horror stew.

Why did it affect me so strongly? I mean,
it really changed everything.

A good horror film can be scary, but it can also make you laugh.

And it just picked something in my brain.

You're taken on this wild ride emotionally.

You're being terrified,
you're laughing, they relax you,

they make you laugh,
and they scare you again.

I'm a scaredy cat.

When I see a good horror movie,

the first thing I want to do when I
get out of there is I want to fight or fuck.

I look now at the '80s,



there's never going to be another
time like it. that's for damn sure.

Hey kids, welcome to prime time!

The key to understanding what made the films at the '80s so great,

is to understand the influences that all the filmmakers had as kids.

It was clear that these filmmakers were
showing love for the movies of the past.

There's a cycle - people
who grew up on something,

relay that back for a
younger generation.

So it's always this wheel turning of like what's popular at one point,

comes back around
again. Good ones became

all-time classics while the
bad ones became cult favorites.

When I was doing "Movie Macabre",
I saw myself as kind of a librarian [laughter],

exposing a new generation
of new people to these horror

films that I grew up with and
that I loved when I was young.

I think it was important to curate these
movies from the past for a new audience.

I was eight years old in
1954 when "The Creature

from the Black Lagoon" hit the movie theaters,
okay?

But those days I believed that monsters were real - Frankenstein,
The Wolf Man, they were real.

It's not until I saw "Man of a Thousand Faces" that that showed me Oh,
somebody creates this stuff.

Yes,
Lon Chaney was all of these: The Hunchback of Notre Dame,

The Miracle Man,
the Phantom of the Opera.

If somebody says "oh,
that's an old movie.” Well,

it's not old if you
haven't seen it.

I fell in love with horror
when I was a young kid,

bride of Frankenstein
was my favorite.

She's alive! Alive!

In the early '50s,
I saw "Thing From Another World"”. Howard Hawks. Oh my god,

that ah, jeez, I loved that.

It was kind of serendipitous my life in horror movies.

The very first horror movie that
I remember seeing was actually

a science fiction film called "It
Came From Outer Space” in 3D.

And that meant a gigantic impression,
because of the 3D process. A

Meteor in the beginning came out of
the screen and blew up in my little face.

I ran screaming, as a kid that's - I just couldn't get enough of.

Horror of Dracula, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.

The iconic first reveal of Dracula with the
bloodshot contact lenses and the blood around

his mouth when he snarls at Jonathan Harker,
it's just, I'll never forget that image.

Vampires,
werewolves were always - they're staples. They're

the original movies to show the
manifestation of our monsters.

The film that gave me nightmares for several years,
and this is hard to admit,

was "Abbott and Costello
Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."

That movie scared the crap out of me. And you know,
it's funny when I look back at it, I

see elements of "Re-Animator” in that film,
to turn into Mr. Hyde by getting an injection.

So these guys with
syringes are running around,

you know, in this movie,
very much like "Re-Animator”.

"The Brain That Wouldn't Die".
I was eight. It's really sort of a

early echo of "Re-Animator".
All she would say is: "Let me die."”

But the idea was horrifying to me.

The first R-rated horror movie I ever saw was "The Omen".

It's all for you.

I was 13 years old,
my dad took me. I was raised Catholic,

so that decapitation of David Warner
it had a huge impression on me.

And I've decapitated many people in my movies over the years.

I think it's one of the finest ways of murdering someone.

I was a big horror
guy. In the '60s,

we had Chiller Theater. That was my Saturday night go-to,
I loved that stuff.

My mother let me watch "The Birds" when
it came on television. I remember saying,

"How could you let me watch that?"
[laughter] But my mom was super cool.

"Psycho". I was 10 years old,
my parents took me. I don't know if they

had a clue what we were going to see,
but it certainly impacted my life.

We all go a little mad sometimes.

We're all sitting there with
our Chico Bon Bons and our hot

buttered popcorn and our Good & Plenty,
you know, waiting for the movie.

That was like this great fan-boy memory
for me of how important that was to us.

I'm a "Silly Goose" [laughter],
I'm telling you I love that old scary stuff.

Dario Argento kicked off the 1980s with "Inferno”,
which was a continuation of his "Mother of

Tears" trilogy after "Suspiria" basically took
us into an apartment building in New York City,

and I think shows how
the sort of desire to infiltrate

into American cinema was
very much there and prevalent.

It feels like an amalgamation of a lot of Argento movies. For me,
probably the biggest and

most impressive set piece in that film is the
underwater sequence that we see early on,

where it feels impossibly long,
you're kind of holding your breath with her. And yet it's so

beautiful and so tranquil. And it's such a fun
juxtaposition against everything else in that movie.

And with "Inferno",
you don't really get a full on viewing of the way.

She gets sort of these glimpses of
her and her hands and the cauldron.

Argento,
as opposed to just sort of showing his cards,

he still plays with viewers
and kind of still holds back.

There's definitely
moments of animal cruelty in

Inferno that I think makes it
uncomfortable for a lot of folks.

Ultimately,
"Inferno" wraps up with the reveal of the

witch and then basically the
building ends up in flames,

which is very similar to how "Suspiria” ends,
but then "Inferno” kind of

takes it to another level with sort of
death incarnate making an appearance.

Inferno is Argento like really flexing his muscles,
like he's got a couple hits under his belt,

he's got some money,
and he's going for it in the early '80s. "Inferno” is one of those films.

"Humanoids From the Deep”. This is
top notch exploitation from my buddy,

Roger Corman. This one features

fishy mutants trying to accost women
so that they can be fruitful and multiply,

not very PC is it?

Corman's mantra for the film was
literally the monsters need to kill all the men

and rape all the women. It was actually directed by a woman,
Barbara Peeters,

now,
whether or not Corman hired her to deflect some of the

criticism from the movie's more
exploitative elements - I don't know.

I do know that he requested that a
bunch of more violence and nudity

be added in post production,
which she was not happy with them about.

The humanoid costumes are actually
pretty cool rather than just the typical,

you know,
"Creature from the Black Lagoon" style fishman,

"Humanoids From the Deep” was done
so quickly. And it was a very low budget

film on the producers part. I ended up playing a humanoid,
every time three hours

to get into the suit and three hours to get out of it,
because of all the,

you know,
putting the slimy seaweed to hide unfinished parts on it.

The finale of the movie just
goes completely balls to the wall.

It's fishmen killing people,
they're ripping bikinis off of women.

Corman was like,
"You know what? This movie is rated R,

we're going to
earn that rating."

Barbara really liked the
way I took bullet hits. And so

every time you see a humanoid get shot in that movie,
it's me.

"Humanoids From the Deep” is a better
creature feature than you'd expect from Roger

Corman. The end stinger is pretty
much an "Alien Chestburster" rip off,

but it's still fun.

Two depraved brothers kidnap
friends who are on a camping

trip and then torture and rape
them. This movie is very deranged.

It's very depraved. It's very much something that
you could never make in this day and age. lke and

Addley are just two filthy rednecks just psycho
monsters and of course all orchestrated by the mom.

[laughter] Darlings you have

made your mother very proud.

The house is just disgusting,
it's cluttered. They eat like pigs,

they eat like slobs and she thinks it's
funny because she's the fucked up mother.

It's just -- it's a real - it's a dirty movie. One of
the best deaths of all times when they finally do

escape,
pouring the drain down his throat -- they

just vomiting up like red
you assume it's his entrails.

There's another amazing scene where
they're trying to escape down the side

of the house with a sleeping bag and
the laces are just cutting into her palms.

It just looks real, it looks gross,
and like what would you do, you know, it's

your friend. It does have some humor
but once again it's very black dark humor.

I swear sometimes you boys are just like little savages [laughing].

It's more of a social commentary gore and comedy and -- but it's a masterpiece,
Charles Kaufman

wrote it and directed it. In the '80s, when it came out,
it had a full page ad in the New York Times.

Full page, and - and was distributed as if it was a-a-a,
you know, an MGM movie. it

was distributed by an independent,
they put a lot of money into the -- when it came out.

It was-- would
never happen today,

but "Mother's Day" had at least
100 theaters when it opened.

As horrific as it sounds,
rape in the '70s and early "80s in horror movies was used as a plot

device, specifically in "Last House On the Left",
I mean the whole movie is based around that.

You would never see that now and nor should you see that now,
but "Mother's Day" is the

same for that,
where it's just over the top horrific things happening to these poor women,

that then have to go get
the revenge by murdering

the people who did these
horrible things to them.

It's hard to watch, because yeah,
they get to comeuppance in the end,

but was it worth it?
Like these poor people.

You don't leave those movies going, "Eh,
yeah, whatever."” you go like, "Wow", that

really made you feel something and made
you leave a piece of yourself with that movie.

Once a picture like "Prom Night" came out and made a lot of money,
the genre of the slasher

film, which - which had really kind of started with Halloween,
but nobody really called it that.

But once "Prom Night" came out,
it was a big hit, and the "Terror Trains" and all

the other following pictures that were made,
it became a viable genre unto itself.

Our next movie is an exercise in gruesome stupidity. Now,
you might ask what is gruesome stupidity?

That's when everybody in the movie is stupid,
and they're also either dead or covered in blood.

This next movie is a horrible example of that.

You know, it's like "Murder on the Orient Express" with
teenagers. And the movie itself it's almost structured like

an anthology. Everybody has their own little individual
story line until they all kind of start to collide together,

and you finally get where the terror train was going.

That's when I started recognizing Jamie Lee Curtis. I just - I was just like,
she's in

everything. Those few years after "Halloween",
she was it. You know, she was the final girl.

Jamie Lee Curtis,

she's a terrific every woman.
She was an action figure.

And what I do remember is how creepy
the killer was. There was this ambiguous,

androgynous sensitive
him that as a young

kid who was being picked on a lot,
I could see myself in that,

you didn't necessarily see
yourself in the survivors.

I said, "Move off, sir."

You saw yourself in the people who were being antagonized.

The mask on the killer,
just to see through -- those are the kind of

same type of mask from "Sweet Alice” actually,
it was that kind of vibe.

If you like early '80s Jamie
Lee Curtis - and who doesn't?

- It's worth the watch.

The Nature Runs Amok movies of the '80s.

Probably my favorite sub genre of horror.

As a Kid, I remember all of my friends telling the urban legend about this,
nobody I knew wanted

to go to New York City, because to them,
the sewer system was just crawling with rogue pets.

I just love all the humor in "Alligator”,
I mean, there's some outrageous

moments like the alligator in the
swimming pool with the kid walking the plank,

the running joke about Robert Forster's thinning hair.

You need to see a hair stylist. They let
your hair grow down and whip the cross.

There are just so many little moments that
humanize the characters and also provide

a good counter point. That's another movie
that mixes horror and comedy really well.

The thing that I remember
the most about this movie

was how realistic the the gator looked. I mean,
the god

damn thing's mouth was enormous!
And then every time it would eat somebody,

it just felt like
you could feel it.

I mean,
just this slamming down and you're like [shrieking],

it always made my skin
crawl. Robert Forster is

like he's up trying to get
out of the manhole cover

and it's stuck and he's just
giving it as much as he can.

And then you see the gator coming up behind him like oh,
okay, so they can just climb ladders now?

This is horseshit. I can just remember the panic as a kid,
going, "Get out of there! Get out of there!”

Very tense moment for a 10 year old [laughing].

Ken Russell just made the weirdest greatest
movies in that time. I think he's totally underrated. I

remember, in "Altered States" the big gag,
the really cool thing was with the sensory deprivation tank.

The storyline was really, I thought, intellectually challenging,

and William Hurt,
it will always be my favorite actor from that period of time.

And then he did drugs in the
sensory deprivation tank. Well,

that sounds like
a lot of fun. Right?

That sounds like something you wanted to do.

He has these horrible contortions
that either is really happening to him,

or he's imagining happening to him.

"Altered States" was
one of the first movies

I saw that had like that
crazy makeup effect,

where the arm bubbles.

This whole bladder technology,

I think it actually began with
“Altered States” in the '80s,

Dick Smith's work. And it was still,
you know,

a groundbreaking
technique to take skin,

and have that skin
change and be able to

swell and do things that
we hadn't seen before.

And he transforms into
some kind of a primal

being that only indulges
his own elemental appetites,

There are things that happen when
you're exploring these altered states,

that are unexplainable and could be liberating, could be terrifying.

At the end, when he's slamming around the room,
changing from,

you know, one state to another,
is he imagining it?

Is he actually becoming this creature?

It's a mind blow in the best kind of way,
but also cautionary tale, right?

Which all great horror films are - cautionary tales.

I recommend it. I'm gonna go make my son sit through that,

because he's a senior
in high school and I

want to make sure that
he never does drugs.

If you, as I did,
in the '80s walked into a movie theater

and didn't know you're walking
into an Italian horror movie,

you were kind of caught wondering what the hell you just walked into.

Because it's just a little different. I mean,
they're truly foreign films, right?

It's - it's foreign to our experience.

The Italian culture: They love horror,
they respect it much more than Americans.

They respect it as a
genre like the western or

the gangster film or the
film noir or the mystery.

I think there is a reaction
to the inherent fascism

that was in or leftover in
those cultures at that time.

Italy was also sort of coming out from
under a conservative authoritarian regime.

When it comes to Italian filmmakers during the '80s,

I think the three titans of Italian cinema were

Lamberto Bava, Lucio Fulci and of course, Dario Argento.

Argento's is very operatic, it's very colorful,

it's a sensory experience with sound and color and set pieces.

"Suspiria” is one of my favorite

movies. Not only
because of the storyline,

but also because of Dario Argento's
color palette is so insane [laughing]

And the kills are amazing in it.

Opera to me is a classic Dario Argento's opera. He's a visual stylist,
okay.

The shot through
the people in the door,

when the guy gets the bullet
and it takes out the phone!

That's incredible stuff! Okay.

To me, Dario is a volcano of the mind.

Lamberto Bava was the wild card of
the Italian maestros of horse in mid '80s.

He was the guy who was going to
take you on some really crazy journeys,

that you possibly could not have ever expected you would go on.

He would just take big swings that would connect in very unique ways.

And then you have somebody like Lucio Fulci,
who was sort of the maestro of

these really over the top effects truly gory movies,

where you could almost just feel the residue on your skin.

Fulci is the weirdest to me because
he doesn't give a shit about reality.

He is creating a weird surreal hallucination for you

and Fulci clearly has some kind of eye fetish [chuckles],

where he needs to do eye trauma every time and it's horrible.

What's more horrifying than to be stabbed in the eye.

[laughing] They're into eyeballs, a lot of eyeballs.

The Italians just went there immediately [laughing]. Boom.

Argento did a little bit of that too, especially with "Opera",

where you have a character who's completely defenseless,

and is forced to watch these horrific macabre events.

They have needles taped right underneath their eyes,
so if they close their eyes,

they will shred their eyelids,
which to me,

I can't think of a more
terrifying scenario to be put in.

Italian directors were sort of challenging us as viewers,
with the eye trauma

being like, well, if you're going to watch this,
you know, this is what you get.

Reflective of our
willingness to sit there

and bear witness to a
lot of this really crazy

and over the top gore
that they were willing

to put into their movies
for our entertainment.

And "The eyes are the window to the soul".

[snaps fingers] Bingo. And you know
those smart Italians had thought about that.

My heart with the Italians is in the style,
the stylized horror,

not that I have anything against
Italian cannibal horror [laughing],

because I know how influential it is and I know how hardcore it is,

and I know what it represents in the world of - of horror,
splatter, gore.

I just was so taken with the sort of stylistics of the Italians.

I am totally in love
with Italian Giallo.

There's a different reality
in Italian Giallo films.

The reality doesn't have to be so airtight.

One of the things that fans say to me all the time is they go,

"I love those Italian movies! They're
just crazy! They don't make any sense!”

Um, sorry - yeah, they do.

But it's based on their culture,

not ours. They make perfect
sense within their culture.

Giallo really takes your
expectations and then completely

obliterates them and comes
at you in a totally different way.

There's definitely motifs
that we saw in Giallo movies,

you'd have the the mystery
killer who is stalking somebody,

most of the time they were wearing gloves.

It was never usually
a gun. It was always

something like a
switchblade or a knife,

which gave these movies sort
of a sense of intimacy. Ultimately,

like having sort of a
collection of victims as well,

Like there is always a larger
picture in terms of sort of

the body count that they
wanted to amass in Giallo movies.

It's a celebration of horror, of bodies,
of bleeding, of screaming women,

it's also the appreciation of the
kills. The special effects make up,

the supernatural.

You'll always get a
payoff even if it takes a

while to get there and it's gonna make you,
"Oh!"

and it doesn't stop,
so you can't just close your eyes,

you know,
it Just goes and it goes and it goes,

you know,
it's right down your throat,

we are going to make you
recoil in terror no matter what.

Fear is universal. It's,
you know,

it's another reason why horror does
well in distribution around the world.

You don't have to know the languages, everyone can recognize running,

everyone can recognize fear.

When you went to
see these movies you

didn't go because you
knew anything about them,

you went because of the poster, the newspaper ad, the title,

you went because of the titillation of the ad campaign.

All of the Italian horror films,
for example, came out during this period,

but nobody knew they were Italian.
All the Italian names were changed to

anglicize names and they were dubbed of course.

I'll kill you, you son of a --

Are you trying to
those girls are killed by

someone you wouldn't
define as a school friend?

Dubbing in Italian horror I think takes a while to get used to.

Because if you're not expecting it, it can be very off putting.

Best bad overdubs for sure,
the worst overdubs,

worse than then, you know,
old Kung Fu movies.

Listen to me,
young lady. We're in a situation where -- You listen,

you gang of
bloodthirsty bastard!

[male voice] "Hey, what's going on here? What's in that closet?"

[female voice] "Don't
open it." [male voice] "Oh,

it's a zombie.
Shoot it" [screaming]

That's the inherent
charm of it. Like

that's the rough edges
that ll love about it.

Because it doesn't feel super polished.

When we laugh at dubbing we go,

"Well the lips don't match" and for the rest of the world,
that doesn't matter.

Smoking is not allowed in here. - Excuse us.

I've dubbed. I've dubbed myself,
I've dubbed other

people. It is an art form and it
takes a while to get good at it.

Huh, what I think does matter anymore. Bitch.

I think Italian horror
filmmakers are fans

of American Horror
and American dollars,

that heightened Italian
flavor gets into America,

gets into theaters,
gets into video stores.

That lurid box art starts to show up on the shelves.

The Italians were churning
out splatter movies must

have - must have been
like 20 a week or something.

So every week there was something new.

They all have a very
special place in my heart,

they're not all
necessarily great films.

They were just doing
what they wanted

to do and telling these
really crazy stories.

And honestly, when you would pick up a movie at the video store,

you'd never knew what experience
you were in for. And that was the fun of it.

I think what's interesting about Italian exploitation in general,
is that

it all starts as a ripoff, you'll get one hit,
and then you'll get 30 copies.

Going back to like a
Hercules movie in the '50s,

like they've got a hit Hercules movie,
and then there's all the

sword and sandal movies,
you've got "Fistful of Dollars",

and then the whole
spaghetti western genre,

and the horror genre
is no different. They

picked up on what was
happening in America

and copied it and then
perverted it - I say that as a

compliment - and made it gaudy and loud and funky,
and naked.

There's so much American
DNA in Italian horror,

but it's all just cranked
up to this insane level.

So a lot of times what you
may have seen is people doing

the best they can with the
financial choices they were given,

people still wanting to make
their movie and like anything else,

artistry is on a scale.

So thanks to the
Italians and thanks to

"Suspiria” and
everything that came after,

suddenly '80s horror is very colorful,
in a way that '70s horror was not,

and I think you can tie
that directly to the Italians.

"The Funhouse" is a movie that kind of
gets lost in Tobe Hooper's filmography,

because it's between "Texas
Chainsaw Massacre" and then

those crazy movies he made
for Cannon Films in the mid '80s.

Which is a shame
because it's actually

like a solid little haunted
house slasher movie.

Well,
it was funny because I was actually dating Elizabeth

Berridge for a while there,
so it was great to see her work.

I think that's one of my favorite Tobe
movies. I certainly loved the monster,

I thought that was fantastic.

I loved that whole movie.

The monster in "The Fun House", a guy named Gunther,

wears this Frankenstein mask because
his actual face is also really horrendous.

And the effects on his face
are really memorable. You

got like red eyes and fangs
and this stringy white hair,

Just this kind of hair lip fanged mouth with drool coming out of it.

The sort of bastard
son of the carnival guy,

just the way he's treated
and the way he's deformed,

and you almost feel for him, but yet he's going around killing people.

This has got to be the
only movie where the

inciting incident is a guy
in a Frankenstein mask

getting some happy service by a psychic.

Nothing to be ashamed, it happens to the best of us.

What's interesting about
this movie is that it's a

lot more graphic than
"Texas Chainsaw Massacre",

where all the gore is implied and you don't really see it.

You get to see all the backstage
parts of the Fun House in a carnival,

all the - the worrying mechanics
and the trap doors and the tracks.

It's great to see that space explored.

"Fun House" to me is a movie that was completely made by Fangoria,

and talking about the influence of the magazines at that time.

There was something about,

number one -I saw that on the cover,
like, that's disgusting.

It's one of those things where when
you're in a fun house ever since then,

I always wonder what if this guy is an actual killer?

“"Omen " was 1981.

That picked up
Damien as an adult.

He's a 30-ish politician
played by Sam Neill.

I think that was the first
time I had ever seen Sam

Neill probably same for
American audiences in general.

Take him.

As the movie begins,
he has the post that his father

Gregory Peck had a mere five
years before him [laughing] in the,

you know, twisted chronology of "The Omen" series,
where they would, you know,

fast forward with
soap opera speed,

Omen II Damian was 13,
suddenly, he's 30 years old.

Anyway,
he is the ambassador of Great Britain at the beginning of the story,

as is the want of all of the devil worshipers who surround Damien.

And they're grooming him for his, you know, ultimate world power.

Do you hear me? - We hear you. We hear you.

One of the weird things
about that movie is that it

really is all structured around
a series of murders of babies,

[laughing] 'cause in the story,
the rebirth of Christ has also happened.

And now Damien
feels threatened by this,

so he dispatches all of his devil
worshiping minions to kill all the babies.

Slay the Nazarene,
and you will know the violent rapture of my father's kingdom.

Just kind of hilarious,

because it's just - just like something
you could not do in movies anymore,

Liquidate the Nazarene.

There's a woman who
she just like somehow has

this weird hallucination
of her baby as a monster.

And so she takes a hot
[laughing] iron to the baby and goes

[imitates ironing sound] -- it's -
it's really kind of unspeakable.

"Friday the 13th Part II",
I'd seen the end of that movie so many times

because it was tacked on to the
beginning of "Friday the 13th Part Ill",

which I rented a lot as a kid.

There's something really charming about the characters in that film.

The second one to me,
is the only true definition of a sequel. Bigger story,

bigger budget, bigger scares.

Massive twist because
now you're going,

this is the first appearance
of Jason as the killer.

It was the first one that Steve Miner directed.

The way he paced it was that you didn't know who was gonna die.

Jason,
he's the shark. You're gonna do something and Jason's gonna knock you off,

you know.

I loved Amy Steel as the lead heroine.

She is just awesome
and bad-ass. I love the way

Jason and her interact
with each other at the end.

The Chase at the end, to me is one of my favorite final moments,

you know the rat going
under the bed and peeing

underneath it and there's
moments in there that are

almost a little quirky that I don't
feel happened in other films like that.

She psychs out Jason,
I love that scene,

where they're in the what
we call the chez Jason,

with the head there and all the candles and stuff,
and she puts on the sweater

and Jason's like got the sack thing and freaking out.

I wish they had never
abandoned the burlap

sack and that's what a
lot of people don't realize,

is that he doesn't get the hockey mask until number three.

But it's just overall
to me so much

scarier than any
of the other ones.

I think that's probably why it's my favorite.

"Graduation Day" is a movie that has a killer who is killing people

specifically who were on the high school track team.

It stars Linnea Quigley, but originally,
it didn't have Linnea Quigley.

They had another actress in the place
who they filmed some scenes with her,

but then she wouldn't do the nudity that was required with the role.

So they fired her and brought in Linnea Quigley to play the same part.

Now there's a blonde,
but she's different. But she's playing the same character.

Your ass is mine. - [mocking sounds]

It was just like a fun film,
it was like it's got all these great kills in it.

Like my boyfriend, Billy Hufsey,
who teaches acting classes

now and I don't think wants to
talk about it was like going to,

of course, "I'll be right back",

and goes and pees in the woods
and gets his head chopped off.

I remember doing the running,
and I made a mistake,

which I'll never do again,
and I ate lunch - a lot!

I remember having
to throw up because I

was running so much.
I was just like [panting],

and I'm like, oh my God,
my stomach. Yeah,

so that was a fun fact too,
that I threw up after running.

When they were doing the effects,
they had cast the head of the original girl.

So you see Linnea Quigley
through most of the film,

and then in the end,
when she gets killed,

they're using the head of the girl from the beginning of the movie.

It's not my head, but it's supposed to be.

Which has confused a few people,

Vanna White also appears in the movie,
but she doesn't turn letters.

Fuck. It's blood.

It's another example of how
popular horror films were,

you had this movie that
cost around $250,000,

they put it out there, it made almost $24 million.

Those old trailers from the '80s,
they just had a certain magic to them,

where you'd have the voice of something as silly as "The Boogens”,

but they deliver it in
"The Boogens". And

that sets off something
in your head where

you need to see this movie to see what are The Boogens

And the people involved
with the production,

they didn't know what The
Boogens was going to look like.

They hired a special
effects guy and they said,

"Okay,
here's the ideas that we have".

And he came back with this idea of
a little monster with like crab claws.

And they were like,
"Well, that's really cool,

but that's not what a
Boogens looks like".

And they're like, "Well,
what is a Boogens look like?",

They're like, "we don't know".

And he went and eventually designed
this monster. It was like a turtle,

but the turtle shell was
supposed to look like the

brain of a sheep that he
saw in a medical catalog.

And it had tentacles,
and its head could come out and retract, and it had teeth,

and it was just the most
ridiculous hodgepodge of ideas that

could all come together and
somehow be thrown into a horror film.

Woman screaming in the background]. Strangest damn thing I ever saw.

That's my second
horror film. There's

some great sequences
and great images in it.

And we were all
up in this great little

town in northern
California called Mendocino.

And it's like,
you don't have to dress it. It's just there. It

looks like Stephen King's
gonna walk out of every door.

It looks exactly like what you think Maine should look like.

And it's James Farentino,
the late great Jack Albertson and Lisa Blount,

wonderful,

extraordinary actress. Most people
know her from "Officer and a Gentleman".

It's actually an effective little movie.

It turns out that the
mortician has been behind

killing the town's people
and reanimating them,

basically creating an army of undead puppets.

Stan Winston did the makeup on that film,
and there was a lot of us,

he had to make a lot of people,
the undead.

Stan, not yet the legend he would become, but a player.

Stan was beginning to
push more into puppetry

with some of the effects
he created for that film.

There are two that
stand out to me as being

the most "Oh that's cool'.
One is the burn victim,

he created this shoulders up puppet of this terribly burned character,

where you're seeing the muscles and the ligaments.

It was a hand puppet and it was highly effective.

And I remember seeing
that come together in his shop

and thinking that was the
grossest thing he'd ever made.

Another sequence that really works is when the evil mortician is

reconstructing this hitchhiker,

played by Lisa Marie and she starts
out horribly injured and disfigured,

it's a dummy,
a recreation of the actress.

I will make you beautiful again,
even more beautiful than before.

Using a series of, you know,
wipes and dissolves, you slowly see her being

reconstructed by the mortician
until she's finally back intact,

and pretty,
and sits up and there she is,

and she's actually undead, but she looks pretty hot.

And ll also remember
being freaked out by the burn

victim character who's
completely covered in gauze,

All you see is one eye and his
mouth. And this nurse just plunges a

needle right in his eyeball. And that was just ahhhh,
a cringe moment.

For me, Lisa was the first sort of nurse angel of death,
embodies that cold,

hard,
blonde sexuality that Hitchcock was so

intrigued by. "We're
dead but we're not buried!"

"Nightmare" is a movie told
from the point of view of a serial

killer who goes up and down the
East Coast of the United States,

And when I say told from his point of view,
we told with a point of view camera

"You are the killer"
[laughing] he wreaks mayhem

all up and down the East
Coast of the United States.

People hated the film,

people pelted the screen in Times
Square with the objects [laughing].

People walked out, people demanded their money back.

The eternal principles of a good
cinematic story still must be observed,

and there must be a sympathetic
protagonist in your story. Otherwise,

the audience will
turn against you.

There's a myth.,

and we should destroy this myth
because sensors use it to censor movies.

And the myth is that all we want to
see is blood and gore. That's not true,

if you look at the
movies made in the '80s,

made by clueless
idiots who thought that

that was the secret to
making a great horror movie,

you end up with
films like "Nightmare".

Every time I think of
"Saturday the 14th",

I think of sitting at my mom's
old apartment and watching HBO.

There was like this handful of fairly risky movies with weird content,

but they would just show
them during the day for any

eight to ten year old to kind
of catch up on [laughing].

You've got Jeffrey Tambor as Dracula-ish,
a Dracula type person.

Well,
if you don't trust me after 311 years of marriage...

You've got Richard Benjamin running around,
basically tormenting his family.

Take this coffee, I can't stand the sight of it.

But just remember how goofy that movie was.

And then the guy who played like the
Van Helsing type character was so sketch,

and he scared me more
than the monsters did.

If someone should that book,

his soul would be doomed with
eternal hell fire and damnation! Yeah!

So many weird things were okay back then,
man. The bathtub moment to me,

reminds me of the Freddy
moment when the glove

comes up. But this being
before that was like the Jaws take.

So who influenced Who?

But then you see the teenage
daughter running around being chased by,

you know, the Fishman, you know?

What's the Jesus Christ “#MeToo fish" you know?

I mean, this is a kids movie,
what the hell's going on? You're

watching it as a kid,
you don't realize the dark undertone of it.

Will I show that to my kids? No,
I will not be showing that [chuckles).

Do you see a monster in this room?
I can't believe that I'm standing here,

in the middle of the
night arguing with a 10

year old kid about the
existence of monsters.

As an actor,
I get to bring a little joy into someone's life,

every time ll get -- no
matter what the genre is,

every time I have an
opportunity to work,

it's a great charge. To be,
you know, do the best I can

because, you know, somebody is going to enjoy this.

They're killing everybody. - I got to find her.

Wait a minute man, are you crazy?! - I got to see if she's alright.

Just stand back! There's nothing you can do out there!

I didn't think I was going
to be an actress. Actually,

I wanted to be an archaeologist,
I always

thought that was that
would be an interesting thing

to be. So I went to Carnegie Mellon,
which is a really

good theater school
here in Pittsburgh.

There's different techniques
that we were trained,

but one of them was the whole
method movement of bringing,

you know,
your experiences to the moment.

And I remember using that,
especially after Sarah cuts off Miguel's arm,

she has a moment
where she just has had it.

She actually breaks down, which,
to me was like the art of the character.

She was actually very
strong in that moment,

because she was able to
be very real in that moment.

Working that with myself and my thoughts, and my technique.

Acting is the art of not acting,

right? Acting is being - acting class 101,
right?

Before I made any movies,

I was a stage actor. I was King Arthur,
I was Ben Franklin.

When I did the effects on the film,
I always tried to play a part of it,

you know,
some little part and that just led to more and more parts.

And then suddenly, with George Romero, just parts.

Don't forget, some of us are wearing tinfoil. - That's your problem.

I really wanted to be, you know,

an actor. Makeup effects was
kind of what got me in the door.

You get in the door so you can prove
yourself that people know who you are,

you know,
and who knows where that could lead.

I used to want to
be a minister. Well,

the acting as my ministry. You know,
that's how I get to,

you know,
how my soul gets to speak to your soul about our commonality,

above the oneness that we share,
as human beings.

I really thought about it in the '80s,
there was no really Asian

representation. We were all kind of stereotypical,
and it was a difficult time.

It also made me feel like, 'hmm maybe I should do something else.'

I kept at it only because of the theater,
you know,

something like Kelly Who
in "Jason Takes Manhattan".

I mean, that was pretty extraordinary,
where she didn't have an accent.

Look, I think I'll pass, okay. - what? - See you later.

My first movie movie was "16 Candles".

[clashing cymbals sound] What's happening, hot stuff?

The controversy was good. Because I
also think that it started to change things,

and make people aware. If anything,
made the Asian community come out

and try to express themselves about
why they disagree with this character.

And what they failed to do I thought
Was we weren't coalesce together to try

to figure out what to do about it. Unlike today,
it's - it's much better today.

I've never been so happy my whole life [chuckling]. - You maniac.

There was no ethnicity
mentioned in "“Vamp". So I

thought that was kind of cool.
I thought that was a good step.

What time do you get off? - Two thirty. - Can I watch? laughing)

The better your actors are,
the better shape you're in. Hire people

that bring a certain kind of credibility
and naturalness to the performance.

And then at least you're a step ahead.

Give me a script,
let me break this character down,

make some choices. And hopefully
I buoy what you're doing here.

Hopefully, I can put some wind and some sails here.

He's dead? - No anymore.

That's what I'm in control of.

If somebody offered me a job,
and I liked the script,

and the story and the character,
I'm in, I'm all in.

And that's how I just
started doing horror movies,

John invited me to be in
"The Fog" and we were off.

I don't believe in luck, good or bad.

I hated acting class. It just was
torture [chuckles] for me. But you know,

you have to get some tools.

A director told me once,
"The best thing an actor can do is

give me choices”. Trusting my
instincts when I read something,

and trusting my instincts
about a character,

generally ends up
being the right way to go.

I've studied a lot of different styles,
I've worked with different coaches.

So I've used some stuff from the method,
I've used the old "James Cagney,

plant your feet in the ground
and tell the truth” method.

The funny thing about it is
that if something is written well,

you don't have to do
a lot of work with it.

That's why I always want to know,
let me see the script. Let's

see how it is. And if you have trouble getting lines out,
it's like

it's not written well.
That's the problem

[laughing]. And I
used to think it was me.

Come on, you little bastard!

What we had back then was
people who are learning their craft,

but now we have people that are

yes, learning their craft,

but also passionate about the
genre and purposefully going into it.

I mean,
you'll talk to people in the '80s and they'll say,

you know,
"That's just what I got”.

But now,
these people are coming up very focused on doing

horror because they love horror
and that's what they intend to do.

You have to be as honest as
you can be with your character

and your story and your -
the truth of what you're saying.

It's up to them to
make it scary for the

audience. And my job
is just to tell the truth,

The shit is getting old,
real fast. You know,

I was awakened out
of a real pleasant dream

to come down here,
you're going to straighten it out, Raimi,

or am I going to play poop
patrol with your nightstick?

I received a thoroughgoing acting for
the camera education from Dennis Hopper,

that was an experience not to be missed. And as time goes on,
I cherish it more,

I appreciate it more,

and I apply it more. Dennis
encouraged me to look through the lens.

"This is what it looks
like. This is where

your light is. This is the
side that's best for you."

"When you deliver that line, do this,
make that gesture”, it's a visual medium.

You said you were
going to do this alone.

Sighing] I need your help, Missy.

That was a takeaway that continues
to provide extraordinary benefits for me.

When I hear "cut",
I'm Doug. I'm Doug in a skirt and a very

constricting leather jacket with
my face covered in latex and pins.

But I'm Doug. I don't carry
the character through the day,

and I don't take
him home with me.

Before I ever started thinking
about doing crazy stuff,

I was very interested
in map making.

I've been playing the
bad characters for so long,

but always knew that I
had other things I could do.

So Charlie's farm, huh? Somebody's feeling great.

It's important as an actor to show versatility, right?

Not only have I done
some emotional stuff,

but also recently,

in the past couple years,
done some comedy.

I never thought somebody would be interested in me trying to be funny.

As an actor,
you have your facial expressions,

and your voice to add
to your performance.

It's like way easier. When
you have to look scary

and intimidating without
either one of those two things,

with a hockey mask on - way harder.
And that's why everybody over acts.

People, they think,

"I can do that. You don't even have
to show your face or say anything".

You know what? You can't
do it. You think you can,

but you try too hard
and then it looks phony.

I've worked pretty
consistently in the "80s,

I did a lot of soap opera
work and a lot of horror movies.

And at the time that I did "Castle Freak",
which was in 1995,

I felt like for the first time I really
understood what I was doing.

I got it, I know how to act on film, I know what I'm doing.

So I was about 35.
And then all of a sudden,

people stopped calling me,
I wasn't working.

And at that time,

I feel like I had aged out a little
bit. I just wasn't getting any calls.

And I was mad at the
time. I thought well,

I'll go back to school. I'll - I'll -
I'll get a degree in gardening,

I loved gardening. And then I met my husband, Bob. And he said,

"Well,

I have to move up to San Francisco for
my job. Do you want to come with me?"

And I thought yeah, F Hollywood,
I'm just gonna go and do something else.

And then I became a
mom and I was busy with

that. I took a break because I aged out a little bit,
but

now, thank God,
I'm playing these older women and

moms and mentors and evil people,
and caretakers.

And I'm glad that the producers from
"You're Next" took a chance on me and said,

"Yeah,
we want to - we want to see Barbara Crampton again,

we want to see her",
and because I'm having a lot of fun working again.

"The Beast Within" is
another one of these low

budget '80s movies that is
super rapey at the crux of it.

You've got character actors in there
who have been in Oscar nominated films.

You've got Ronnie Cox in there, you've got Bibi Besch in there.

It's a pretty trashy movie for the caliber of actors that are in it.

R.G. Armstrong - no slouch, really qualified character actor.

Lord save us, he's been embalmed.

Bladder effects are
front and center in the

'80s horror movies in
the transformation scenes.

You see it in "The Howling" and you see
it in "An American Werewolf in London".

Anytime something's changing,
that's a bladder effect. And

Beast Within is like a script
written around a bladder effect.

"Beast Within" Philippe Mora,
whom I dearly love directed it,

all they had at the time
were bladder effects,

so all you could do was blow up.

You know, under the latex, the skin.

"The Beast Within" is a
very comical version of

it. Tom Berman did the
effects and ll love Tom,

he's got an excuse for that transformation scene.

"The Beast Within" is
the nadir of - of bladder

effects in which the -
the lead monster's head

explodes to a point where he looks like Charlie Brown.

And it just goes and goes,
and goes, and goes,

and goes, and goes, and goes,
and it's so silly looking.

Tom says in his own defense,
that they had already

gotten the scenes for the
transformation that he felt were good,

and then they said,
"Let's just have fun. Let's just pop it,

let's just film it until it
will not go any more".

And then the director used that.

And a friend of mine who said,

"Testing something's limits
usually results in finding them".

Bladder effects can be awesome,
and sometimes they can be "The Beast Within".

God. - [panting].

"Evilspeak” is a movie that's

starring the outstanding

Clint Howard,

Ron Howard's brother,

and he is a guy
who's bullied at school

and figures out the
perfect way to get revenge.

He uses his computer to summon the devil.

I conjure in command the prince of darkness!

This is one of those magical movies from the early '80s,

where they were trying to capitalize on the explosion of computers.

"Well,

what can we do to put computers into
movies and especially into horror movies?

I got it! Let's have a kid who can
summon the devil with the computer.”

Save me!

Even though there are kids being

killed, you side with the killer

because he's a guy who has been bullied
and he's really just out getting revenge

for all the stuff that people have done to him.

Makes you wish we all had a Commodore 64 for revenge, doesn't it?

The story revolves around a
slumber party and a driller killer,

coming to kill
said slumber party,

hence the massacre in the title.

The thing that people forget about this movie is how funny it is.

It was originally written as a spoof lampooning the genre,

but I don't think that
people who bought

the script really had
any sense of irony,

because they mainlined it and basically
made it this fairly ingenious movie.

I love the dynamic between the girls.

Even in the beginning when like they
don't realize anything things going on,

but people around them are just dying [chuckles],
it's just kind of this weird,

standard J11 killer, you know,
just running around with this

incredibly impressive drill. Chock
full of really benign monotony.

What do you say we order a pizza? - No anchovies.

Punctuated by
savage masculine Kills.

It's really a dissertation
on the fact that

any male serial killer is just basically using his, you know.

[gasping]. - How pretty.

The symbolism in the movie when they
basically chop that off and go after him,

I mean, it makes Death Ride look like a cakewalk. It's pretty funny.

I love "Alone in the
Dark". It's a weird little

'What if movie; like if
we didn't fall into this

slasher summer camp thing in the '80s,
then something like "Alone in the Dark"

had a chance to shine,

where you're using A-list actors
and like a weird "Home Invasion” plot,

Jack Palance is amazing in it,

Martin Landau is amazing in it,
so is Donald Pleasence.

"Alone in the Dark"'s
poster makes you

think you're going to see
another slasher movie,

and not a bananas "Home Invasion”
movie by a group of escaped mental patients,

that are all middle to
late aged white men,

played by some of the best
actors of their generation.

[laughing]. - What are you, some kind of asshole?

That opening has no reason to be in the film. It's just

a crazy Grab Me
by the Lapel dream

sequence that goes
berserk right out of the gate.

I think it's interesting that "Alone in the Dark" is made by New Line

and it's got a very "Elm Street” opening
two years before "Elm Street” happened.

And then Jack Sholder, who directed it,
ended up doing "Elm Street" too.

I really wish that there
was more of that flavor in the

'80s Horror. "Alone in the
Dark" is a weird little movie

that's kind of its own thing.

Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord [laughing].

"Night Beast" [chuckles]. Oh,
boy,

"Night Beast" is a gem right here. I mean,
it's

a low budget film, but it did an incredible job on the effects.

This alien is here for
the body count. I mean,

it just kills people in
all kinds of gory ways.

The alien has this very funny facial
expression. I don't know what it is,

but there's something
very funny about that alien's

face. You don't really understand
what the alien's motive is.

It kind of seems like a child
that just got a new toy. Like,

Oh, what's this button do?

Oh, wow! And he's just killing people for fun the whole movie.

Guess who did the music? JJ Abrams.

JJ Abrams,
who was credited as Jeffrey Abrams did the music in "Night Beast".

Like, if you want a body count, I mean, this movie has it.

They got to bring back the "Night Beast" in some way.

I do enjoy horror,

but only if it's really good.
I've tended to like darker films,

even as a child, Film Noir, you know,
for instance, I very like that genre.

It just is my favorite
form of escape. It's like,

just take me away,
I'm a willing participant.

You know, I really want you to - to change my world right now.

Today, I think of '80s movies,

I think of really big hair,
to start with [chuckles],

that's pretty scary now. I love movies.
I would always look at who directed it,

who wrote it, who's in it,

what's it about, all of the above really. You know,
I started out to be a dancer.

That was my first love. And film really found me, oddly enough.

It wasn't like I
was in search of,

even the first time I walked on the sound stage,
like, "Ah, it's like home".

You know, it felt like I was in the right place.

Before I did film in New York, I did a number of commercials.

Pants! - Wow, a car with pants!

And I was very shy,
so it was at that point that I got into acting classes.

And then when I started making movies in the '70s,

and I found myself in a crowd of people like

Brian De Palma, Steven Spielberg,
Martin Scorsese,

Francis Ford Coppola,
George Lucas and Bob Zemeckis,

who I met as well.
You're sitting there,

and you're hearing this conversation,
they're deconstructing these films,

and talking about filmmakers. And now all of a sudden,

I'm looking at it from a different
perspective. I really like good directors,

they know what they're going to do,
they have a plan, and they will collaborate.

You know,
they're interested in your perspective as well. Honestly,

I spend much more time on

enriching the characters in life and
life and making it as real as possible.

I really throw caution to
the wind and leave it to

the director to get the
tone and the balance correct

between all the performers,
and you know,

delivering a film that
makes sense totally.

But I've worked with great
directors. Now you have a problem,

which I've experienced,

where you work with
a director who you

can't really trust. And
that's very difficult.

Unfortunately, with women,
a lot of the roles that I

played and a lot of the films that I was in,
there wasn't

a lot of background
about who this character is,

so I had to fill
in those blanks.

Starting with "Carrie", I just literally I read a biography:

Where they eat in the morning,
what do they dress, what do they like to do.

It just informs me it makes
it fuller and richer for me,

because there's often
not a lot on the page.

You'll get canned for this,
you bitch!

One more word from you and I'm gonna knock you down,
do you understand me?!

I did not see Chris Hargensen as a bitch, let's start with that.

I thought that Chris
Hargensen was a pretty cool girl.

And this gal Carrie that I
wouldn't even hang out with,

has just screwed things up
for me. So there. [laughing].

Look at her.
- You eat shit.

You have to find why you like a character
and teenagers are so black and white.

That's what's interesting about having
people in their twenties play that role,

you have a little distance
on and a little perspective,

what I had to wrap myself around was the,
you know, what's driving

her? Why is she doing this? Why
she's so hurt? what's going on at home?

And, you know, why does she feel so entitled to behave this way?

And I would have to
say that the crew really

helped me because whenever John and I,
Travolta,

were on the set, everybody laughed,
so I just thought we were really funny.

I thought we were comic relief,
but I didn't realize everyone's gonna despise me.

I think "Dressed
to Kill" is first of all,

it's visually stunning. It's an emotional dance,
it's a visual dance.

The film worked on paper, it just did. It was, you could see it.

And I personally wasn't a fan of the slasher aspect of it,

and I always felt that the elevator scene,
you didn't even have to see anything.

my preference would
have been to just see this

character being backed into
the co-- that was enough for me.

I didn't need the blood, but I guess people like that.

The psychological aspects of it rather than the thriller aspects of it

are what I prefer. This
character that I play,

the Liz Blake character,
is a very strong woman,

you can say whatever
you want about her. She

knows what she wants.
And that's what she gets.

Well, what do you think?

Shooting the last scene in "Dressed to Kill",
first of all,

you're in a sound stage,
tiny little corner of a space.

The water's running,

trying to get it a little warmer
so that I don't freeze to death.

It's the dead of winter. I remember the cold,
I remember the wet,

I remember the naked
[laughing] That's what I remember.

There was a mirror, it opened up, that's when the the razor comes out.

Even though someone's lying on the floor,
they're pumping the blood,

is it coming through with
the razor on my throat,

there is something - even though it's
all make believe - that's traumatizing,

when you see blood
gushing out of you.

It does end in a nightmare for her,
so you wonder how

much more she's going to be
going on in her life with all of that.

The big hullabaloo
when the film came out,

had nothing to do
with transgender at all.

It was all about the misogyny. That's what I remember.

Let's face it, you're a whore,

eh? You're a Park Avenue whore,
but you're still a whore.

Fuck you. - No, fuck you.

That bothered me because I -I felt
like Liz Blake was a pretty tough cookie.

She was nobody's fool. And
unlike Angie Dickinson character

who had to be punished for her sexuality,
she had real sexual energy.

She was real comfortable with her sexuality. In fact,
it was a business for her.

Do you want to fuck me? - Oh, yes.

I think it would be very hard to get
that film made today with that script,

with that transgender character being the killer, maybe impossible.

What's important about
that film is what we didn't

know and how unconscious
we were at that time.

For better or for worse, we're more conscious now,
or self conscious in a way,

now everybody seems
very self conscious to

me about everything.
We're still understanding

and still trying to understand
some of the complications

of a character like the
Michael Caine character.

I do not gravitate
to scary films,

but I'm not afraid of them
either. I like suspense,

I like jeopardy in films,

l do. So ll guess I like feeling a
little bit out of control or - or whatever,

but ll don't like slasher films.
Don't like just blood and guts,

I'd like to be a little
bit smarter than that.

Barbara Hershey in "The Entity" is
attacked by a sexual being of some sort,

and it's very realistic and very disturbing.

It was apparently based on a
true story that had happened seven,

eight years previous
to the making of the film,

about this woman
who was terrorized,

and you know,
raped sexually by this - this ghost.

Barbara Hershey gives an excellent performance in the lead role.

Ron Silver's in it. It's a small film, it's actually quite effective.

You think I'm insane.

Insane? That means different things to different people,
Carla.

It was so realistic,
because of all the things she was

doing and the bruises. That
would have been a hard role.

- You'll wait 'till I'm alone,

won't you? Then you'll come forth to hurt me,
to hurt my children!

Stan Winston was
responsible for this moment

where you see Barbara
Hershey's character nude in bed,

and you see the entity fondling her. It's an excellent effect,

he and his team created
a fake body for Barbara

and she was underneath
the bed on a slant board,

Stan was underneath her reaching up
past her to manipulate the the breasts.

So he would had cups
on the interior of the breast

and when he pulled his fingers in,
from the outside,

it would look as if invisible
fingers were pressing. And his other

crew were gently manipulating
the fake arms and legs of this body.

Barbara Hershey was exhausted by
doing "The Entity" because first of all,

she had to be naked. She had to act
like somebody was having sex with her.

She's got all these
people on set. With me,

when I'm acting like possessed or something,
I feel ridiculous.

I'm sure all that was running through our head when she was doing it.

But when you
see the final movie,

it's very realistic. And she did a
great job. That had been so hard to do.

Welcome home.

The goriest nastiest
thing that kind of stuck

with me growing up wasn't
anything that Jason did,

or Freddy Krueger did
or Michael Myers did.

It was Lucio Fulci's
"City of the Living Dead".

The living dead part kind of throws you off.

It's a more supernatural movie.

Almost like it was tacked on to kind of ride the Romero train.

The original title was "City of
the Living Dead". But when they

brought it over to America,
they changed it to "The Gates of Hell".

"The Gates of Hell"
ad seemed like it

was just warning you
to not watch this movie.

It had like a long
explanation about why it

wasn't rated but you
can't come see this movie.

I remember the image of
"The Gates of Hell” thing,

thinking it was going to be the
most terrifying thing I've ever seen.

Just a really effective marketing campaign. To a 12 year old.

I saw a priest who by hanging himself, opened the gates of hell.

It was almost like this gothic
zombie tale surrounding

this priest trying to bring
about the apocalypse

in this small town,

and the protagonists basically
trying to shut the portal to hell.

A dude is sitting in his
pickup truck with his lady,

and she turns and looks at him after
seeing this priest flash before eyes,

and she just starts puking
her own guts out. And it

goes on a lot longer than
you would expect [laughing].

It's super gnarly. And that always stuck with me.

And there's some kind of a kidney looking thing and then

here comes some sausage
intestines and then there's

a heart like thing and it's just like,
it just doesn't stop.

It has, to me,

the best kill. The father holding
homeboy's head down and the drill coming in,

and just giving him the full on Black & Decker lobotomy.

It's so sick. To this day, it's one of my favorite Fulci movies.

"Pieces" is as the tagline says, "exactly what you think it is".

This is a movie they were trying to
capitalize on the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre”.

A maniac killer going around a college,
chopping up a bevvy of

beautiful women to basically create one perfect,
beautiful woman.

And the fact that
this is still such an

underground movie is
criminal. The gore is insane.

There's so much blood everywhere,
it's almost like you can just smell the guts.

I would have to turn in my horror card
if I didn't say that the greatest scene

in almost any '80s horror film was not Linda George shouting,
"Bastard!"

Bastard! Bastard!

There was a major red herring in the
film. There's a guy who's the groundskeeper,

walking around with a chainsaw,
played by Paul Smith,

who was Bluto in the "Popeye" movie,
and also in "Dune".

You think that he is going
to be the killer. It's one

of the most blatantly
obvious not red herrings ever.

He's walking around,
he's got the chainsaw,

he loves his chainsaw,
and people are dying by chainsaw.

If anything,
you have to see it for the ending. You will not see this one coming.

Lucio Fulci's "The Beyond" is a fantastic movie that I think,
one,

not only captures the essence
of who he was as a filmmaker,

but also think in a really great
way it's really a fantastic sort of

celebration of the weirdness that is New Orleans,
specifically in the early 1980s.

The movie is centered on a young woman who inherits mysteriously a hotel,
and then

ultimately finds out that the hotel is centered over one of the gates of hell,
darn.

This hotel is one of the seven gateways of hell.

And I think in the
first 30 seconds,

we've already got flesh ripping,
really ghastly gruesome effects.

Which for the work
of Giannetto De Rossi,

who is one of the greatest sort of
Italian special effects artists over there,

and it just never stops from there. It's
just a constant barrage of horribleness.

He also taps into my fear of big spiders as well,
in Fulci's world

tarantulas are going to come for
you and they're going to eat your face.

You have like these little
munching spiders coming

through eating the guy's
flesh and tearing it away.

Basically, it sounds, you know, like,
there's like a bunch of people at a buffet.

There's a great set
piece at the hospital. It's

just like a constant barrage
of reanimated corpses.

They're trying to fight their way out
and it just like it doesn't stop. Eyes were

definitely a motif in "The Beyond" that
we saw sort of utilized again and again,

we have Joe the handyman
who basically finds

himself being blinded in both
eyes from after being attacked.

And then you have a
housekeeper who ends up getting

sort of pushed onto a large
spike and her eye pops out as well.

And then you have characters in
the movie who also go blind. It's a

really weird and wild movie,
but you wouldn't expect anything less from Fulci.

I wanted to make a monster movie.

I wrote "The Being" when I was 23. I
was fascinated by the idea of horror,

because I love eliciting a reaction.
A nuclear waste dump produces a

monster that wreaks havoc on a small
town while he's looking for his mom.

[laughing] okay? Alright? There's
always a human element there,

my sort of weird sense of humor.

I think that is the
thread you see in all my

films. I went over to Martin
Landau's acting studio,

because I wanted Martin Landau on my film. And I said,
“You know,

Mr. Landau, I really don't want to be in your acting class,
no offense. [laughing]

I'm a director, and I want you to be in my film"...

And he was so wonderful. I pulled the
script out of my bag and gave it to him,

and he goes,
"I'll read it." and he read it that night and he said he'd do it.

And he was instrumental in getting
Jose Ferrer who was a friend of his,

and Dorothy Malone.

I had two Academy Award
winning actors in my first horror

film. I even spent soc much
time trying to design the monster,

and finally everyone said,
"Stop designing the monster,

start making the
movie." [laughing]

I may have been
heavy handed with it,

but it still works. Of this denial
about environmental disasters.

I mean,
Martin Landau says with dead seriousness that dumping

nuclear waste into the aquifer
will not affect the drinking water.

He even does the
demonstration: Pouring the water,

drinking the water,
"Mmmmmm, delicious”.

This goes on
today. It was chilling,

unpredictable. And
a slice of Americana.

I learned a lot making that movie [laughing]. It wasn't a perfect film,
but I have to say, you

know, I have certain fans that come to me
and tell me it's their favorite film that I've made.

Michael Mann directs "The Keep",

which I think is one of his best
movies. That's a Pandora's Box movie.

It's like "The Mummy",
we don't want to let whatever's in the

keep out. The reason it's in the
keep it supposed to stay in there.

Never touch the crosses. Never!

And the Nazis have to
control this keep. And of course

they can't not open up the
keep and find out what is in.

What we find out is inside
is Scott Glenn. [chuckles]

You don't want to let Scott
Glenn out on the world.

Don't touch that.

The reason why "The Keep"
has a cult following is that it is both

very '80s and very unique. The sound design,
the look of it, the music.

It's all very unlike
what you would see in a

World War II movie where
a monster kills people.

Michael Mann, just like on his previous movie "Thief",
he used "Tangerine

Dream” for the soundtrack and it's
these moody synthesized soundscapes,

which is again something you don't
normally hear in a World War II movie.

The villain of the movie, Molasar,
has a really interesting look. When he

first appears he's this giant mass of
muscle and sinew with a skull for a head,

it almost looks like somebody's skinned the Incredible Hulk.

On the soldiers of black. - I will destroy them!

And then later,

he gets more complete and he takes
on almost this Golem-like appearance,

which is pretty appropriate
considering the Golem is a

creature from Jewish
mythology and he's killing Nazis.

The movie had a very troubled
production. Michael Mann's

original cut was supposed to
be three and a half hours long,

but they forced him to
cut it down to a little over

an hour and a half. So as
a result in the final movie,

there's a lot of the elements that aren't really explained.

For example, Scott Glenn's character,
you're not exactly sure what his

connection to the villain is or why he's
got these - these supernatural powers.

Michael Mann was very
disappointed in the movie and

has basically tried to bury
it ever since it was released.

Michael, if you're watching this,
I know you don't like this movie, but there are

people out there who do. So, you know,
maybe consider giving it a high def release.

In the '80s,

having the kids be part of the
story and an integral part of the story,

instead of just someone's offspring, became more popular.

And it became more part of the story engine than just on the side.

We progressed out of that
as just a cutesy little kind of,

"I'm the kid with the freckles”,
on an episode of "The Love Boat”

into being chased by guys with
axes and monsters with dynamite,

and cars that come alive.
Stuff that can really get you.

Anytime you put a young kid in a - in a scary story,
it really brings it home.

You put them in groups, you put kids in peril,
you put them in adventures,

it becomes this whole thing,
and you're just wrapped up in emotion

because these are kids, you want them to succeed.

So you go all the way back to the
original kid in a - in a horror story,

is when Frankenstein's

monster kills a little girl by the pond.
That had to have been absolutely

astonishing to people at that time,
that really punches you right in the chest,

where it's like, wow, some harm came to this kid.

There was a rule for a while
that you cannot kill off a kid.

And I don't think I do except
for in "the Being". laughing)

I think ll cross the line
on that one. But ll love

working with kids. They
love that role playing.

They know how to react to what's happening,
and get totally immersed in the scene

without being self conscious.

I have always loved watching
young performers anyway.

Because it's amazing to me that
someone can have that kind of ability.

Sometimes they grow up to be
tremendous actors because of that,

and other times
they're fuck ups.

But working with kids is a whole
other thing that a lot of people

don't understand if they've never
been in production with younger actors,

because there's restraints on time. They can,
you know, depending on

how old you are,
there's different levels of how long you can actually be on set.

There's even minimums or
maximums of how long you can be

in front of the camera which adds
into how long you can be on set.

You have to go to school every day.
There's a reason why they say they

don't want to work with kids,
it really is a pain in the ass for a production.

"Halloween Ill" and
on Halloween night,

all these masks are going to eat
the kids faces and brains and kill them.

It gives me chills thinking about it.
I want everybody to be reassured,

when I'm standing there
on the phone screaming,

Please stop it,
stop it, turn it off,

stop it turn off the final channel. Stop it,
Stop it!

All the children were saved. You can take that to the bank.

When you're a kid,
other kids getting killed on screen is much more

affecting than if you see their, you know,
somebody's grandfather getting killed.

It became very trendy to
have at least one or two

kids or a group of kids
going against the antagonist.

They would assemble this group of
- of plucky kids to try and take down,

you know,
this incredibly disturbing force.

As a kid growing up in the '80s,

it was cool to kind of be able
to see myself reflected in that.

It was empowering to see that, especially as a poor kid.

I think a lot of it came
from the writings of Stephen

King. I mean "Cujo" has the kid,
"It" has a group of Kids.

I mean,
he was kind of the inventor of that sub genre,

if you want to call it that.

Stephen King certainly has exploited
Children as - children as victims,

children as evil, you know,

and - and done it really quite well. I think it's an interesting tool,
because I

think we become - as the audience - very conflicted,
because right away, it's a child.

So you have all of these
mixed mixed emotions,

about how you're
supposed to feel about it.

One of Stephen's tricks
is to put kids in jeopardy,

it's a little bit too effective, I think,
because it gets mimicked all the time.

And it's one of those things that I resent,
it becomes a trope. Now, the kid

is being victimized so our heroes are
justified in doing anything they want.

They're morally excused,

ethically excused from anything
because there's a child involved.

Gage in "Pet Cemetery" is interesting,
because in the beginning,

he is just an innocent little kid,
and he gets killed devastatingly.

After I became a father,

that scene had so much more
weight than it did when I was younger.

But it's interesting
because he is the

poster child for
innocence in the beginning.

Hi daddy, I love you.

And then after he gets buried in the pet cemetery,
he comes back as the villain.

'Gage 2.0' comes in and cuts Fred Gwynne's Achilles tendon.

It's such a simple move,

but it's so cruel and it's so
effective and it's so horrifying.

I don't scare easily. The moment
that is iconic for me out of the 1980s,

is the twins from "The Shining",
they bothered me. And they stayed with me.

The twins at the end of the hallway,
every time I'm in a hotel,

and I'm in a hallway alone,
that comes back for me

and I have this moment of like,

please don't let the
hallway feel longer than it is.

That is just a spooky ass thing. And the kid is wonderful in it.

There's such a sadness about that,
that's a lot of responsibility, to have that awareness,

to have that knowing,
to have that power. It's a lot of responsibility for a child.

That was the
slow kill for me too,

was the kid 'cause he would
sit there and you knew he knew.

There's nothing worse for a child to know.
Adults it's okay. But when a child embraces

you know - I know something that they don't know,
then it becomes really terrifying.

And as a child, of course,
you tend to feel powerless. And the fantasy of

being able to telekinetically punish one's enemies,
was really intoxicating.

It just appealed to my,
you know,

frustrated powerlessness that I felt as a child,
that I think most children feel.

Just for a moment in our lives
when we felt that powerless the,

you know,
the bully or the cruelty that we've experienced.

I'm wishing I had a little of the power
myself right now in the world [laughing].

"The Black Cat” by Lucio Fulci,

many times the Edgar Allan
Poe story was adapted in the film.

There was a 1934 film with Karloff and
Lugosi; there was the 1940s film with Lugosi

also; and then there was one in the '60s
which had a Vincent Price and Peter Lorre,

all of them were very loose adaptations, and so is this one.

This one is nothing subtle at all, this is about a killer cat.

It doesn't just murder people,
it murders the shit out of

them. This cat could take on Michael Myers,
it's a beast.

There's horror movies where people burn to
death. And then there's horror movies where

people get thrown out of windows. Well,
in "Black Cat" you get both at the same time.

Holy shit.

Some of the other movies
kind of use the black

cat as a symbol like a
metaphor for evil or something,

but this one is just going
right for the jugular. That cat is

going to leap out and tear
your fucking face off [chuckles].

"Suspiria” gets all the love, but "Tenebrae" is my favorite Argento.

There's something
about the way Argento

paces a scene where you
know something's coming,

because you're watching
a horror movie and you've

seen horror movies. So you
know that's- that's the deal,

but he waits just a little too long,
so that when he finally delivers it,

it's a different kind of catharsis
than your average slasher movie.

I love stories about writers. For me,
that's just one of my sort

of cinematic catnips. Tony Franciosa,
in this movie he's playing

an author who basically
there's a killer out

there who's mimicking
things from his book,

and then he's sort of dealing
with the ramifications of that,

in Italy,
while he's on a book tour.

And his manager in the movie is John
Saxon who is a delight. It's such a complete

departure for him from being Lieutenant
Thompson in the "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies.

Doesn't it drop off?
- Drop off?

Yeah, I mean if you make a [clapping sound] quick movement, won't it slip off?
- Look.

I really love Daria Nicolodi in it,
who was a frequent collaborator with Dario Argento,

and I don't think she gets enough
credit for the writing that she did with him.

Some of the camerawork
in that movie is absolutely,

like just astonishingly great.

The way that that
camera moves is so fluid,

and so wonderful. There is this
huge switch that happens in the movie.

You think you know the game that's being played,
and then ultimately,

halfway through the movie,
it takes a completely different direction.

A woman is sitting in her house,
and she's sitting there with a gun in her hand,

and the killer out of
nowhere just kind of comes to

the window and chops her
hand off with the gun in it.

And then she gets up and there's just
this crimson spray of blood everywhere,

and of course,
everything has white walls. So it looks amazing. It's beautiful.

Like it shouldn't be beautiful,
this should be horrifying. But yet

there's something so stunning
about the way that that blood would hit,

and especially Italian blood was
always notoriously much more red

and much more vibrant than the
blood we were using here in the States.

It's really captures everything
that you love about Giallo movies,

but does it in a different way that
we really hadn't seen from him before.

It's one of the standouts
amongst Argento's filmography,

specifically during the 1980s.

"C.H.U.D" stars John Hurt
and Daniel Stern. It's got early

appearances by Cohen Brothers main
stays like Jon Polito as a newscaster,

and John Goodman, who alongside Jay Thomas are cops in a diner.

The concept of going underground and mutant homeless people

that are mutated
through the nuclear waste

that was being stored
underground in New York,

and it was great. So somebody had that Death Wish,
dirty New York setting

with the isolation of the underground tunnels,
and then the mutant monsters.

So it had a great mixture of
elements. The idea of cannibalistic

humanoid underground
dwellers is a brilliant one really.

And then obviously
the bit at the start,

where the puppy and the woman get
pulled out from the underground manhole.

"Terror in the Aisles” is a great
compilation film and it really

does explore the thoughts, the feelings,
the how and the why of it all.

Say, how they do that?
- That's the trick, isn't it? Once the lights go down.

You're only watching
clips of these movies,

but somehow all put together like that,
it was absolutely terrifying.

And unfortunately, in these movies,
the victim is almost always a woman.

And I watched it on a
VHS and I remember

having to stop it because I
was getting so rattled by it.

[screaming woman in background] Get him!

It certainly packs a very different
punch. It's - it's pretty frightening.

Why make up horrible things when there is so much real terror.

We can enjoy the jeopardy,
we can have a good scream, a good laugh,

and laugh at ourselves for having
been tricked the way we have.

It's just fun. You know, it's just a fun thing.

And you're sitting in a theater, which is relatively safe.

There are two reasons that
I wanted to do "Terror in the

Aisles". I love the idea of it,
I love those movies, you know,

and I think those genres are really great
and... But ll also wanted to meet Donald

Pleasence, who I was a great fan of,
and I didn't get to meet him so I was devastated.

That was something, wasn't it?

"Silent Night, Deadly Night" is about Catholic guilt,
I think [laughing].

I didn't really even know the
controversy until years later,

when it came to pass that like this was
the harsh black mark on Christmas of '84.

There was a big hue and cry about
turning Santa Claus into a serial killer.

This scared people and made it want to be banned.

It is necessary, Pamela. It is -- - No!

"Silent Night, Deadly Night" tells the story of Billy,
who as a child,

witnesses his family get murdered
by someone dressed as Santa Claus.

Flash forward to
when Billy becomes 18,

and he is now a
strapping young lad.

Merry Christmas, everyone, ho ho ho! Merry Christmas.

One thing leads to another,
and Billy is completely

triggered and goes on a massive
killing spree dressed as Santa.

The trigger when that happens,
you can totally understand it.

There's a death involving antlers
on a wall which is - which is great.

Punish! - No!

He impales me on antlers, so never answer the door to strangers.

Punish!

I had a talk with the director, I said,
"She wouldn't be topless, a woman would,

you know, put on her top,
maybe not her bottoms to go upstairs.

That's just what a woman would do.”" And he's like,
"Well,

we have to have you topless. Because
the antlers are going to come out".

I think there was another
reason behind it. I had to be

lifted up a billion times to get
on the antlers by a stunt man.

I don't know how he did it but he's like [grunting],
again and again and

having blood capsules come out
my mouth and doing it the right time.

It was - it was an ordeal.

It's crazy how two dimensional
most of these movies are,

and that yet you have a movie like "Silent Night,
Deadly Night",

that gives character
development and depth and

reasons why this guy is
wreaking havoc on people.

And yet people wanted to shut this down. I was like, are you kidding?

I'm so glad that the
mothers wanted it banned,

because it made a lot of money and
it got a lot of attention because of that.

"Razorback” is a beautiful film,
and I don't throw that

term around lightly. I mean,

it is an absolutely
gorgeous film.

It's directed by Russell Mulcahy,
who is an Australian

director who shortly after this
would go off to direct "Highlander".

It's one of the best of the nature run amok sub genre horror,
it's a movie about a giant

boar, a boar that is three times larger than
any of the boar that anyone there has ever seen.

As you know,

everything in Australia wants to kill
you. So this is a perfect setting for that.

It starts off with this giant boar that
rips through a house and kills a child,

while his grandfather's
watching it.

Oh, God, Scotty! [screaming]

Everyone in the town thinks
that the grandfather has killed this

kid. So he's spending the rest
of his life hunting this razorback.

The movie shifts
because you initially

think it's going to be
about the grandfather,

then you think it's going to
be about the woman who is

the reporter who's going to
Australia to investigate this.

But then she ends up getting
killed by the razorback. And then her

husband flies out to Australia to
find out what happened to his wife.

So the movie then shifts again,

to be about the husband. The
giant razorback is incredible.

You don't see it very much, but you see it enough and it's terrifying.

It is still legitimately scary.

The color palette that they
use is just gorgeous. It is not

something you would expect to
see in a movie called "Razorback".

You're expecting blood
and guts and violence,

you wouldn't really expect to
see this stunningly beautiful film.

It's okay, it's okay.

Well,
the big rock star in terms of makeup

effects in the '80s was
undeniably Tom Savini.

He kind of cornered the market
in in gore for the early '80s,

and did it better
than anybody else.

The '80s was the splatter
decade. That was my decade,

you know, I was called the Sultan of Splatter,
The Wizard of Gore.

And it was the one-two punch of "Dawn
of the Dead" and then "Friday the 13th",

it catapulted my career.

In fact,
"Friday the 13th" wouldn't exist if George

hadn't done and hired
me for "Dawn of the Dead".

One movie after another got me
work with other directors who saw those

movies. So Sean Cunningham saw Dawn and said,
"We got to get this guy".

Tom Savini came to us and said,
"You know what I want to do?", I said,

"what do you want to do?", he said,
"I want to cut somebody's head off. On screen.

It's never been done.” I said. "Really?",
he said,

"no, it's never been done,
and it could be great.”

"So how are we going to do it?" He says,
"Well, we have to figure it out.”

I always feel that Tom Savini
is the godfather of all of this,

and in a lot of ways of sheer invention. You know,
the script says this happens,

how the fuck does that happen?

When I was growing up
trying to learn makeup,

there was no place to learn.
Nobody wanted to share their secrets.

The limitations make you more
creative. Limitations: Not enough time,

not enough people,
not enough materials, not enough money.

Now, Robo Chimp could, you know,

he could open his mouth and
make his head move left and right.

And then "Martin”, and there was a stake that goes through a guy's neck,
you know? So George said,

"We're gonna go to a slaughterhouse and maybe
get a lamb neck and stick a stick in a lamb neck."”

I said, "No, no,
you need to see the guy's face when that happens.” "Well,

how are you going to do that?" "I don't know. I'll figure it out,
okay?"

And it wound up being exactly how I killed
Kevin Bacon in "Friday the 13th". In "Martin"

the stake went in the front,
and in "Friday the 13th" I brought the arrow from behind

the fake neck appliance. But
it's the same kind of an appliance

that Kevin Bacon stuck his head into,
that the guy in “Martin”

stuck his head into that Ned
Eisenberg in "The Burning”,

stuck his head into. I did
that effect over and over again.

Usually if there's a rubber weapon involved,
we try to establish the real weapon, taking a chunk out of the wall

or in "Friday the 13th" the hatchet taken out the light
bulb before the rubber axe goes into the girl's head.

So in your mind,
there's no separation. My books are called "Grand lllusions", my books

about special makeup effects,
because that's how I think of them, as magic tricks.

Because it may surprise you to hear
from me that I believe the less you show,

the more effective stuff is, you know,
I'm the guy that showed everything.

But on "Creepshow" I had never
done anything like Fluffy before,

an animatronic creature monster.

So I called Rob Bottin
and he taught me how

to do it over the phone.
"Creepshow" was five

movies, you know,

with monsters and Nate's corpse which
to me was - was an exciting thing to do.

[screaming]

The first thing you see is Raul,
the thing in the window, you know,

so it was a real skeleton that I animated with all these,
you know,

he could smile,
his fingers could do this. He did a

bunch of stuff. I did not turn
Stephen King into the plant.

But I did blow the top of his head
off. I was up in the ceiling pulling stuff

out of him while hitting blood
explosions. It was pretty complicated stuff.

And the cockroaches oh
my god the cockroaches,

I was never in the same
room with those cockroaches.

I would be outside a sealed room,
looking through glass. "Okay,

cue the blood. No. All right,
pump the roaches”

because they were two entomologists with huge syringes
filled with roaches. We pump blood on them so they would

leave little bloody footprints. "Creepshow" was my
opportunity to create monsters and characters, you know,

not just cutting throats and
blowing heads off. "Texas Chainsaw

Massacre" too was another - an opportunity like that,
you know,

creating the old age makeup.

"Xiao ShengPaPa" is a
horror movie I did in Hong Kong,

a horror comedy movie,
I did in Hong Kong.

And all I did was use stuff from, well,
some stuff from "Creepshow". Raul,

he's in the movie. He's just a
ghost apparition at the window.

But I had to build lots of monsters
and things. And the two leads,

they were like the Abbott
and Costello of Hong Kong.

I didn't understand a word of what was going on. But you know,
but I built some

elaborate effects for that movie. Listen,
don't talk to me about interpreters,

we sent him out for superglue and
he came back with a case of condoms,

you know. And he's the interpreter,
okay? [chuckles]

I met Tom,
he opened up the dictionary of forensic pathology. And I saw

genuine photos of murder victims,
drowning victims, accident victims, you name it,

every variety of death that the human body can endure,
was in those pages. And then I went

through his lab and I looked at what people
were creating. The reality of it was extraordinary.

I'm the only makeup artist that
has seen the real stuff. I was

a combat photographer in Vietnam,
I saw horrible stuff, okay?

You know, if you see a movie,
a guy's wearing a white shirt,

and there's blood on it,
and the blood looks like strawberry Kool-Aid,

the makeup artist didn't
add green to the blood

because it's going on something white,
you have to do that.

In fact, here's the formula, a gallon of blood,
32 drops of green, and that blood can go

on something light and still look deep red like blood,
a little helpful hint for you here.

Everything that we do today, as special makeup effect artists,
was invented by Dick Smith. We enhance

it, elaborate, make it better, you know,
but he invented all the stuff that we that we do today.

If you've seen "Dawn of the Dead”,
the blood is atrocious. The blood looks like melted crayons.

So on the way to "Friday the 13th",
driving to Connecticut, we went to Dick Smith's house.

And he gave us the blood formula,
his blood formula, which is THE blood formula.

The blood in "Friday the 13th" is the
first time the blood looked real to me.

I wish I had my school growing up,
where you could go and learn all this stuff,

you know. It's important for film students,
let's say, to study films

from the past. If you're surrounded by people,
like I am with students

coming into my school,
and they don't know who Boris Karloff is, you're deprived.

I mean, if you're going to be a makeup artist,
you know, do some research on some

of the greatest monsters or creatures or makeups that were ever created,
you know.

The first sentence in my
book on makeup effects is,

"The more you do,
the more you get to do".

That's the thrill of creativity,
that idea of taking a blob of clay or taking a blank

page,
you're giving life to something that never existed and that - that's thrilling.

"Ghoulies". Well, first there was "Gremlins",
then there was "Ghoulies".

And then there was "Munchies"”,
and then there was "Hobgoblins".

When you have a
picture that's successful,

people will immediately
rush out an imitation.

The fact that the ad has the
ghoulie coming out of a toilet,

I think probably expresses my
feelings about the whole series.

I did enjoy the
"Ghoulies" movies. In fact,

I did one of them,
"Ghoulies Go to College".

I was stunt coordinator on it and played
the character falling in a mop bucket,

ass first.

The greatest thing about
"Ghoulies" is something that

almost didn't make it into the
movie that they watched it and said,

"Where's the scene with the Ghoulie
coming out of the toilet?" And said,

"Well,
we just did that for the poster”.

"No, you need to put this scene in the movie."
So they went back and reshot the scene, the

Ghoulie coming out of the toilet. And whenever
somebody says Ghoulies they always love that.

And of course that ties in with the tagline.

"Ghoulies". They'll get you in the end! Literally.

So if I had to give my
blessing to any of the ripoffs,

I would definitely choose
the "Critters” series.

However,
I feel remiss in criticizing anybody's rip offs

when my first picture was "Piranha”,
which is a ripoff of “Jaws".

You know,
[laughing] so I'm not - just, you know,

walk around and tinkle a bell
and yell "unclean” and all of that.

During the heyday of the video boom,
early '80s,

there were so many
videos on the shelves that

you had to do something
to grab people's attention.

I used to love all those painted covers,
you know,

like "Cannibal Holocaust",
"Cannibal Ferox". As the years went on,

they became more and more lurid

because they had to compete and threw was so much in there.

"Cannibal Holocaust" is interesting
because it is the first in a whole kind

of wave of found footage movies
where you didn't know if it was real or not.

Of course, by the time I saw it,
you knew that it wasn't real. Much

like "The Blair Witch Project” when
it first came out people weren't sure.

Deodato even was brought up in
criminal charges or filming actual murders.

And there's phases that take place in - in horror movies,
the found footage,

footage, Amazon jungle, torture porn,
"Cannibal Holocaust" and "Cannibal

Ferox" for a time I thought they were
the same movie with different titles.

One would kind of look like the other which
would look like the other. "Cannibal Holocaust"

has a couple scenes in it, that you just can't forget,
the guy getting his cock chopped off.

Don't ever go to the Amazon
jungle and that way you won't get

your cock chopped off by a bunch
of Cannibal Holocaust feroxes.

The real issue that everybody talks
about though with "Cannibal Holocaust” is

not the apparent deaths of the people.
It's the deaths of the animals on screen,

and that's hard to watch
because that's real. Big

sea turtle getting cut up for dinner. Fuck,
really?!

So that I think is why some
people thought that it could be real

because the animal deaths are you're watching literal,
animal snuff films.

The most popular nasty of them all is a piece of trash called "Faces of Death",
which purports to be a professor's investigation

of death worldwide. And his effort, he says,
is to gain knowledge about the fragility of man. Sure, and I'm the Easter Bunny.

"Faces of Death” somebody's brother's sisters
brother had it on some kind of fifth sixth edition

VHS, and what it was was apparent real life
snuff films put together on this documentary,

And there was like "Faces of Death" one through you know,
27 or something along those lines,

and you could never really find it,
which made the legend of it so much more mysterious.

I find this to be a particularly unusual face of death.

And that's why you thought 'maybe this is real',
until you actually

saw one and then you realize this
might not be as real as you think.

The Satanic cult, you know,
sacrificing somebody. Who's taping this? Where's this from? What's - What is this?

Why is no one getting arrested from this? But What a strange phase to go through,
a fake snuff film phase.

His mutilated body represented
a violent retaliation from a

creature which has suffered
continual abuse from mankind.

We were fucking weird as teenagers,
man. Who would ever want to watch that?

It was a love story about two people
that were literally made for each other,

but that were separated.

You fool! Imbecile!

It was a lyrical, beautiful script.

You're safe now. - Safe?

Frankenstein says that he wants to create a woman who is his equal,
and of course doing

exactly the opposite. He's trying to make
her into the image of a woman that he wants.

And Jennifer Beals she was the big get because
she had just come off a "Flashdance”. Jennifer, I think is

sublimely good. I don't think anybody gives her enough
credit for the work that she did in that movie [chuckles).

She's looks magnificent in the costumes and
on the sets. I thought she was terrific. I thought

Sting was terrific too. There was me and Rappaport,
David, we got to be quite good friends.

Friend? - Yes, good health. - Good health.

Boy, playing the creature. It's so rich. Of course,
the creature in Shelley's book is

articulate and sophisticated,
and is the truth seeker and the truth teller in the movie.

The popular iteration of it
of Karloff and the subsequent

Karloff-esque versions of
that Universal creature just

make him a brute. This
was clearly a romantic version

of it. He gets more and more
handsome as the [chuckles]

Movie goes on. Which just meant that the
prosthetics got more and more handsome,

they did - you know.

If the script had a flaw,
it's that the two main stars had to

carry the portion of the film that
was the darkest and the coldest.

Where have you been all day? - Riding.

The job that Sting and Jennifer
had to do was to show how

things fall apart. They weren't
supposed to have any chemistry.

Off screen they actually
did have chemistry. I mean,

we're all kind of liked each
other. On screen they had to miss.

I made you out of ashes. I can
always reduce you to ashes again.

You can do what you like!

I think people miss the point of that,
yeah. It's a hopeful message of how we can,

you know,
we can all get better from our - from even the most miserable beginnings.

And we can all find true
love. That's not really the

story. It's not Mary Shelley's story,
but that's okay.

"Nightmare 1" was a huge,
huge off the charts hit, they couldn't believe

it. "Nightmare 2" it has some of the
most classic moments of the franchise.

"Nightmare on Elm Street 2" is about relationships,
perspectives, and stereotypes

that all get smashed once Freddy
Krueger gets his claws in them [laughing].

What we did is utilize the
truth between Mark Patton,

Jesse Walsh, and I,
Robert Rusler, Ron Grady,

and we utilized our own
truths. And we put it in the

circumstances of the film. I didn't
have a judgment about sexuality.

And that's what I loved
about Grady and Jesse,

there was no ulterior motive there.
There was a sexual tension between them.

I don't know why you're wasting your time with this guy,
he's a basket case.

Shut up, Grady.

But it depends who's looking.

See you around, buddy.

We were playing with this idea
that Freddy was exploiting the

subconscious of Mark's character Jessie
and was maybe opening the closet door.

And we had beaucoup
hints of Freddy,

manipulating the boy's sexuality,
prompted both

by the original screenplay,
the staging,

the casting, and by sets,
whole sequences.

No one said we're making a gay horror film,
but we were

toying with that. Not nailing it down rigidly,
but certainly exploring it.

And I loved what was going on with
Freddie being in the middle of it. Divisive,

calculating,
darker than any of the other "Nightmare on Elm Street” movies.

That scene comes up,
Krueger comes out of Jesse's body,

and I'm yelling for my dad.

[screaming].

When I saw the movie with my dad at the screening,
my dad was crying,

you know. And I looked back in the audience,
and people were affected.

They did break a one rule, they took Freddy out of the dream.

His dad is burned alive. He doesn't
even show up at the pool party. Yet,

there's some great stuff at the pool party,
"You're all my children now."

You're all my children now.

You know, "Help yourself fucker".

Help yourself, fucker!

And ll love the idea
that it's the rich girls

party and Freddy ruins
it for all the rich kids.

All they have to do is just get a pickup
shot of Jesse or Jesse and Kim asleep

in the pool house taking a nap,
and then that whole party crash by Freddy works.

Daddy can't help you now!

I mean,
I remember asking Mark in a sequence with Freddie and Jesse,

if I could touch him like
I was gonna kiss him,

"Can I put a blade in your
mouth? Or Could I just circle your

mouth? Can I caress your eyes?" That's a real scary,
strange moment.

I said,
"Maybe do you think it should be sexual or maybe the kiss of death?”

So I thought there might
be a great male on male kiss

there. That could be erotic
and then - and then death kiss.

There is a lot of people that watch that movie,
and it made them uncomfortable.

There were a lot of people that watched
that movie and an empowered them.

There were a lot of people
that watched that movie,

and they made fun of or judged or poked.
most of the people that judge and poke,

What are you hiding, you know what I mean?

People were talking about this from the
get go and there was an increased and

an enhanced fan base within the gay community,
because of this, immediately.

A lot of young gay men were heavily heavily influenced by that movie,
to be truthful and

honest with themselves and - and really
flourish into who they wanted to be from the inside.

I think that's fantastic. As far as Freddie goes,
and as far as the depth of truth

between characters,
nobody else touches "Nightmare 2". I'm very proud of that movie.

And when people go, "Hey,
what's it like to be in the gayest

horror movie ever made?" I go,
"It was fucking awesome".

It's okay, it's all over [screaming].

While I was a big
West Craven fan,

I was also a huge fan of "The Hills Have Eyes". That movie was freaky,
man.

[girl screaming] I'll come here for you later, girlie.

Another example of a situation that you
could relate to as this can really happen

to me, was sort of like I take the wrong turn,
and I wind up in you know, hell.

"Hills Have Eyes II" is a weird one
because it comes on the heels of

Craven having maybe the biggest hit of
his career with "Nightmare on Elm Street".

And suddenly he's kind of
going back to the bottom of the

barrel and delivering a sequel to
a movie some eight years earlier.

There's a lot of flashbacks. If you ever
want to see a dog have a flashback in a movie,

I can name one and it's in "Hills
Have Eyes II”. Then the first film,

this civilized soft

suburban family finds
itself in the wilderness,

facing off against the sort of feral
mutants I guess you would say.

And in the second one,
it's kind of the the mutants bringing the fight to

civilization a little bit because one of
their own has dared to try to cross over.

I love Michael Berryman, you know,
working with him in "Weird Science”,

he was such the
antithesis of what he

comes off as on screen,
you know,

because he's always playing these
really freaky creepy like super sadistic,

like scary roles. And in person he's a super pleasant,
super educated sweet man.

Can we keep this between us? I'd hate to lose my teaching job.

What resonates with me about
"Hills Have Eyes II" compared

to "Hills Have Eyes I" was more
the clarity on what the fear was.

I want you to stay together and stay
alert. This place might look deserted,

but it's been used for something
right up to the time we got here.

They got to expound upon the characters,
the situation. What's at stake, you know,

my life. And what are the odds of me making out of here,
you know, slim and none.

I think Wes Craven was
very good about capturing a

perspective really taking
you to that world in the desert.

That's one of those movies
like "Dawn of the Dead”,

where you come out hitting each
other being super mischievous.

For some reason, that's how some of those horror movies affect me.

I want to get into trouble after I see him [laughing).

Miss me, miss me, na

na na na. [grunting]

Horror movies are
essentially absurd,

and the comedy just it's already in there. And if you don't find it,
someone

else is going to find it because
some of - the sometimes

some of the things that are
happening are just preposterous.

Many of the pictures in the '80s like "Return of the Living
Dead" and "The Stuff" are not afraid to embrace the fact

that they're silly. I mean in fact,
I would almost think that silly is kind of the - the byword for horror comedies.

Beginning with "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein”,
which is everybody's favorite because of the fact that

the horror movie stuff is played straight. It just all
meshes together so perfectly, and it looks terrific.

And it's, you know,
practically the best movie that Abbott and Costello

ever made. And it's also the best of the later,
universal horror pictures.

In black and white,
the comedy was funnier. in black and white,

the horror was scarier.

It's almost like horror of the absurd. Like
this is not even in the realm of probable.

And so there's a great sort of communal delight,
there's something endearing about that.

"Re-Animator" is - is a very funny movie.
It's also pretty gruesome. It's in the mind

of the filmmaker, you can't all be Takashi Miike,
and have it be unrelentingly grim.

There's got to be some moments where the
graph goes up and down instead of just all the way

across. In my movies,
I've always approached the horror aspects along with a sense of the absurd.

My mechanism of dealing with fear is - is - is laughter,
especially in the movies,

you know,
because then you realize that you're not in the movie.

They call it comic relief,
a little space to stand still for a second and

catch your breath before you kick -
before you get chased around again,

or whatever it is, you have to have that otherwise,
it's just relentless,

and it becomes unintentionally funny,
which you really don't want [laughing].

I couldn't think of a more horrible job if I wanted to.

"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" has many comic elements in it,
but people don't think of it as a comedy until much later. And

then they have to invent fancy terms like Grand Guignol
[chuckles] to describe what's going on in Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

"The Howling" is a really powerful horror movie,
but it's funny as hell,

and "An American Werewolf in London",
Both of them take their horror seriously.

And they take the comedy seriously.
And both of them are made by filmmakers

who've embraced both and have made
comedies and have made horror movies.

They have such glee and relish a
good horror movie makes you feel

really excited and like you're having a good time,
and certainly a good comedy.

You ride that wave of
laughter and when you can melt

them together like John
Landis and Joe Dante can do.

Excuse me.

When it works it's really great,
and that's what I was hoping for doing

"Critters 2" was that the comedy would
be funny and the horror would be scary.

I love that,
when you have a humorous movie that also has scares,

because what it does for
me is takes the edge of,

it's even more of a roller
coaster ride than just scary,

scary, scary, scary, ah, scary,
scary, ah, scary [chuckles].

It's more like,
I'm totally relaxed because I was

laughing. Oh my god! Now this
big thing happens. You know?

[woman screaming in background] Holy shit!

Some of the things I kind of gravitate
towards in horror are the comedy horror.

Garbage day! - No! [screaming]

I do love the wink of the eye.
Maybe because I hate to be scared,

[laughing] actually I like to get
a little bit of a step backwards.

Can I have a piece of toast?

There are a lot of really
successful horror films with comedic

elements in the '80s. But there are
a lot of movies that didn't get it right.

There is a short trend of movies that
were overall comedies but dealt with

horror subjects. You had "Teen Wolf" and
"Transylvania 6-5000" and "Once Bitten",

It's a tough balance to pull off,
but you really have to get the tone just

right so that the comedy doesn't really
infringe on the horror and vice versa.

Horror and comedy can go hand in hand or
they can be each other's worst enemy. Most horror

comedies are neither scary nor funny. But when it works together,
they both aim for the same thing.

Horror and comedy both go for a physical reaction,
a scream, a jump,

tension gripping the arms of your seat for horror,
and comedy

the laughter. If you
go into a horror movie,

or a comedy and it's quiet all the way through,
it ain't working.

A laugh is very difficult to get,
how do you get the laugh? You get the

laugh by surprising people. If they can see the punch line coming,
you're sunk.

The key to making a great
horror comedy is it's got to be 80%

horror and 20% comedy. If you try
to do 80% comedy and 20% horror,

then what you're doing is
you're attempting to make a cult

film in advance and that never
works. It always falls on its face.

Horror obviously crosses
genres anyway. But I

would argue that '80s horror
does that more than most.

It's like,
you've got "Reese's Peanut Butter Cups” is gonna work great.

Hey,
you've got your chocolate in my peanut butter.

You've got peanut butter on
my chocolate. [together: what?]

So the '80s, I would argue,
actually defined the - the

and created this idea of kind of multi genre horror,
that

absolutely gets away with
high art and low art. Make you

laugh and- and have visceral drama,
and gross you out.

I said shut up, butthole!

That's the definition of '80s Horror in a way,
is - is the people who

grew out of those errors and are
slamming all of these genres together.

I never thought in a million years when I was growing up in Davenport,
lowa that I

would be acting,
because I was probably the shyest person on the face of the earth.

I remember my first role that I got that was a speaking role,
even though it wasn't a lot of speaking, was

"Fairy Tales". And that was with Charlie Band. I was so proud,
I remember writing in my diary, 'I'm a big star'.

I think I found my niche in doing
the ones that were more independent,

I hate to say low budget.

What is this, midnight went bowling league?
- What are you, the bride of Dracula?

I think there was a lot more freedom in doing things then,
and I just liked it. It was

a lot more fun. The first time I had to take
off my clothes which was in "Fairy Tales",

I was terrified. I was
so scared I actually

did push ups to get
my adrenaline going

so I wouldn't think about it,

it was a formula. Shower scene,
getting killed topless.

It became redundant. I knew the formula,
I know they needed it to sell the film.

I think if you feel comfortable doing nudity,
it's no big deal. I made

up in my mind, if I have to show my breast,
I'm gonna get more money.

So I was the go to girl. The more
you draw attention to being naked,

the worse it is, if you just take it very casually,
people don't notice.

It's like when it's the person that's like going,
"Oh, don't look, oh,

you can't see me. Oh I'm so
embarrassed” that you want to look at.

So I would just be like very
casual about it and people

didn't make a big deal. You know,
so it's like, it's not a big thing.

"Savage Streets” is about this badass Linda Blair
going and getting these guys who raped me, which

was a hard scene to do.
The director wanted mucus

coming out my nose and
blood running down my leg.

I said, "I don't think that's necessary. I
think it's pretty creepy the way it is going to be

depicted.” I was so happy at that point to be
playing opposite Linda Blair and playing her sister.

And it was a different role for me because I was just so innocent.

You're real pretty, you know that?

From "Savage Streets”,
I got both negative and positive comments, like the negative ones

were, "Oh,
you didn't have to remember any lines. You didn't have any lines in the movie."

But then I got the others that are more into film that would say,
"Wow, that must

have been hard not to say things and do
things and pretend that you can't understand”.

I remember on "Return of the Living Dead",
I don't usually say no, but there were things like

shave my eyebrows off. Well, everybody was like,
"Don't do it because they might not grow back ".

And I thought, I don't want to go without eyebrows.
And then they wanted me to cut my hair. I didn't do that so

they had to get a wig. But I did agree to dance nude
on a tombstone. And talk about nude - it was really nude.

Getting away from zombies,
I was terrified because the

zombies were extras. And extras
get very zealous and they want

to be seen in the camera and I'm like,
oh my god,

they're gonna really attack me. I was - I was actually very,
like,

Oh, no, what's gonna happen when they yell action.

And I'm like,
surrounded by the zombies and that's the end of

me. Being buried in mud,
there is an art to holding your breath.

They dug a hole, then they're covering me up and I'm like,
Oh my god, I can't tell.

I can't hear when they call action. I
can't tell when the rain machine's going.

So I had to Kind of like time it
and it was like kind of creepy to be

under there. So I did it on the first take,
thank goodness, I was so happy.

That's kind of dangerous because you
can inhale the mud. So I didn't know if

anybody really knew what they were
doing or if I was just like a guinea pig on it.

When I turned into a zombie,
I'm nude,

cold and nude. It was
horrible to have the special

effects makeup done. I didn't
know I was getting into but it was like,

all glued on me,

and they had the mouth at one
point down here. And I couldn't

drink anything or really eat
anything because it was like so low.

It was pretty miserable.

I decided to do this workout,
"The Linnea Quigley Horror

Workout". Everybody was doing
it. So we decided to do a campy

version with zombies and with
girls at a slumber party and you know,

just throwing everything,
throw it into the mix.

I know what you're doing
when you're watching my

movies. Just how many
calories Do you think that's burns?

We had a really fun time doing it because
it was so tongue in cheek. Supposed

to be taking place on the mountain with
gravestones and this whole dramatic thing.

Well, the fire marshals decided to do like a fire
test up there. So we got kicked out of there and

went to my parents house, and decided to film by the pool,
and then have the zombies jump in the pool.

Okay! Everybody into the pool!

Cynthia Garris, Mick Garris's wife,
choreographed the whole thing so she was across

the pool, because I'm not a great, you know,
dancer. I wasn't aerobically trained.

So she was helping me out with that. And she
was actually one of the slumber party girls too.

I think when they label you scream queen,
to me, it's an honor, it's taken like a flip flop.

So I don't think it's limiting now,
but it was limiting then. I would

say advice for screaming on camera
would be just go all out and do it.

Also,
know that you're going to get a headache

after doing it a lot.
So bring some aspirin.

I think horror changed a
lot when we were in people's

living rooms. I think that
people got to know you better,

they could go seek you out in a video store and say,
"Oh, you know, I really liked that person.

Do you have another movie by her or him?" Or,
you know, "is there another part two or part three?"

It's a way to really get into someone's heart.

After "Friday the 13th" and
then a couple of more sequels,

and then "Nightmare on Elm Street”
we knew the genre was changing.

And one of the pitfalls
in horror films in general,

is that you think it's a compounding of
grim scenes and suspense and desperation.

But it isn't that way. It has
to have hills and valleys,

and lots of times some kind of comic relief really,
really helps.

Sandy.

You have a man who's writing and who's isolated from his family,
dealing with sort of

these Vietnam flashbacks. You're dealing
with like the death of a kid at certain points.

And there's definitely
some trauma issues

that you're -- they're
exploring in that movie.

Bill Katt was just terrific casting. And
then Steve Miner is the one who really

believed in that and really thought that
he could bring it off and he did a great job.

You've been in Vietnam, lost your only child,
your wife divorced you. I mean,

you've got a few marbles running around,
but right now you seem fine.

You have crazy characters popping in,
you have Richard Moll as Big Ben.

Big Ben? - No, it's your fairy godmother [laughing].

Our hope initially was that Big Ben was going to become iconic,
but he didn't.

You're pissing me off, Roger.

This notion of of a zombie
Gl rotting off the bone,

that he would come
back and really raise hell.

Roger, you hit like a little girl!

For some magical reason,
people didn't buy into him as being a

super villain the way they bought
into other characters at the time.

You can't get rid of me, Roger. You can't and you never will!

A good poster will tell the audience what it's going to see,
"House" had a

great line and an image of like a zombie finger it goes,
"Ding Dong, you're dead."

[laughing] Like I just thought that was delightful
because it suggested that we weren't taking it completely

seriously. But that it was a haunted house and that people were at risk,
that was kind of inspired.

Our original twist love affair started
with the unmasking of who a killer

was or who the bad guy was. And that
goes all the way back to Scooby Doo.

Scooby Doo is just a horror movie in animated segments of a killer or a bad guy,
and that sort of that

gateway into watching the real movies where you want
the unmasking of who the killer is or who the bad guy is.

Everybody always references ooh Freddy or Jason. And they go,
"What's

your favorite movie?" and I go,
"April Fool's Day" and it blows their mind.

They're like, "why?" And I was like,
"Well, if you actually watch "April

Fool's Day",
it's a great slasher movie with a fantastic performance"”,

because if you actually watch her there, Foreman, she's creepy.

Criminally under-looked. It tells the
story of a bunch of friends who were invited

to their friend's house for a weekend
and they all just start dropping like flies.

My favorite kill is probably
the first one where the

guy has his face chopped
up with the boat motor.

You talk about roast beef,
it is just a shredder. The kills

are great. The comedy
is off the charts. It's smart,

it's funny.

I think it's probably my all time favorite
horror movie just because of the twist,

blew my mind at
the end of the movie.

It's not just about,
I thought the killer was somebody else',

because you always try
to figure out the mystery.

Yeah, having twists in - especially in "80s horror movies,
whether

they're the big movies or the obscure ones,
those always get you a little bit.

April fools.

The construct of the story for "Demons”
is a group of people are watching a movie,

we're watching the people watch the movie,
as they're watching a movie.

So I am a working girl on a day off
with my best friend and the fellow who,

let's say collects the money
for us. And we get a free ticket.

I pick up the mask and something inside the
mask scratches my face. There's three levels

of demons, and by the way it's "demone”,
that's how we say it in Italy, it's demone.

So there's three different levels
and the first level is infection. That's

when hell will open because the
demons are going to come onto Earth,

and try to take over the dominion
of Earth. Dario Argento and

Sacchetti and Ferrini and Lamberto Bava,
the four authors of the script,

they knew the story, "Yeah,
we're gonna do this. It's gonna be a film and

a film of some kids in a film". But it
took them two years to make the rules.

What were the rules of
hell? What were the rules of

demons? And what is a demon?
It can come through the screen,

it can come around you
and it can get into your blood

system. My face exploding
was my first day on the set.

In the ladies room,
I look in the mirror and the audience

sees the pulse get bigger and
bigger and bigger and explode.

And from that moment on [claps],
we're running,

the movie never slows down again.
Then you can't get out. Isn't that

everyone's fear? You're in a
box or in a group you're with

a gang you don't know anybody.
And now you can't get out.

There's not any "You're bad,
you had sex so you must die". It really is the larger concept of

how much can you stay human,
your humanity within a bad situation that you can't get out of.

That's the real message. And it's a
movie with this amazing soundtrack. I mean,

Billy Idol, Go West and then you have Claudio Simonetti,
and you have The Goblin.

There's something about metal,

that to them it's the
standout loner against society,

and there's so many great effects and
demone - demons - the eyeball gauche,

it's a real man. And
they put padding on there.

So they had a system that when I put my hands in the pad,
there was gel,

and I knew don't go past the gel
because his real eyes are in there.

And the birth of the demon
that comes out of Paulo's back,

that was a mechanical thing
that Sergio Stivaletti created.

Just look at that doll. Look at
that creature that comes out,

excellently done. They love
that! They love the the guts of it.

The helicopter. It
was a technical way of

how the helicopter got
through the roof. It's not

magic. It's the mechanics
of movie making. So as

everyone's running toward the camera,
I'm hiding.

I'm hiding - I'm hiding behind pillars,
I'm hiding behind things because I want to be sure I don't

get Killed on scene. I want to be sure my
head doesn't go flying with that helicopter plane.

The humanity of it is the secret of
the movie. Watch all these people doing

the best they can in the worst
circumstances. And not everyone's going to win.

"Vamp" is the story of three
kids who go downtown to

a strip club to procure some
unappareled refreshment,

I guess is what you want to call it,
and end up running into a nest of vampires.

Richard Wenk,
the writer director had a terrific vision of what

he wanted. He wanted to make
a horror movie that utilized humor.

"Vamp" for me was trying to fit in.

Take me with you and just
pretend to be my friends for a week.

Hey guys,
I'm psyched. Let's party.

At what cost? [chuckles[

I was so stoked to meet Grace Jones.
She was perfectly cast to play Katrina.

We were all worried if Grace
Jones was going to show up on

the set or not [laughing]. She
surprised us in a lot a lot of ways,

I have to say. I think all of us were kind
of like vamping [laughing] so you know,

in some way. When Grace Jones came on the set,
the air would change.

I do remember one incident where I had opened the door,
and there was Grace Jones and she

was stark naked. And underneath her this man was painting her,
turned out to be Keith Haring.

Keith was just slowly
drawing white lines on her

beautiful ebony body. It was
just unbelievable to watch.

I give you Katrina.

The dance,
that was pretty cool. None of us knew what to expect. The red

wig that she had on,
at first I kept thinking it looked like Ronald McDonald.

I said,
"How in the hell is this gonna work?" But it worked! I sat there and went,

"Oh my god, she looks great”.

Grace Jones is so charismatic
and her character was

so strong that she didn't
need to talk. She was all action.

You like to play rough, huh?

When we were filming the death scene,
Grace was just so wild. You know,

she came onto set nine hours late one night,
howling saying, "Where's my man?"

and the whole crew just went [laughing].

She had attacked my neck like a pitbull,
like a shark on a fish and didn't

realize that the teeth actually penetrated
the latex and went into my jugular.

And I was writhing in pain,
screaming in agony and she didn't realize how

badly I was hurt,
and it could have been a lot worse than how it turned out.

How you're doing back there, Duncan? - I'm hungry. - He's okay.

It was the first time I've ever
was transformed into a vampire,

so it was pretty
exciting for me.

They started to proceed to put on the
prosthetics on my face. I watched myself turn into my

grandfather, and it was a little scary. There's a
certain kind of empowerment that you feel [chuckles]

When you're put into a costume,
and this one was kind of like okay, I got

the teeth, I got power which really surprised me,
because I think my character

was - was empowered now all of a sudden he
had this power even though he eventually was going

to die, but still, you know,
why not go out in a flame if you have to. Literally [laughing].

"The Seventh Curse" came out in 1986, it's a hidden gem I would say.

Hong Kong cinema was very much
like two fold - you had action and comedy.

Then the other side we were incorporating
a lot of fantasy and horror as well.

Directed by Simon Nam. He went
on to direct "The Story of Ricky"

which is kind of a very over the top
action movie with lots of blood and gore.

The plot revolves around Dr. Yuen played by Chin Siu-ho,
who's a fantastic martial

artist. Dr. Yuen is warned of a curse
after being attacked in his apartment.

The film flashes back,
where we see him saving a girl

called Betsy from an evil
tribe called The Worm Tribe.

After saving her from being sacrificed, he is cursed.

He decides to head back to Thailand to get rid of this tribe,
so he can live forever

without having to look over his shoulder
thinking he's going to die in a year's time.

He gets the advice by Wisely played by Chow Yun-fat,
who is barely in the movie,

he's - he pops up in the beginning,
he's a little bit near the sort of middle act.

And he pops up at the
end with a rocket launcher,

which is a great
sequence [chuckles].

When it comes to the action, the film completely delivers.

They try and push the gore as much as
possible. They actually quite- it's quite sprinkled

throughout. You see someone's stomach get ripped apart,
all these worms fall out of it.

A guy's head gets ripped off,
blood gets drained from him. They give it a go and

it does work to a certain degree,
but it does provide some unintentional laughs.

Watching this movie,
I had a huge smile on my face. If you love your Hong Kong action, if

you love your fantasy and you love horror
thrown into that with elements of Indiana Jones,

it's a movie you've got to watch because it's so bonkers and silly.

The original "Little Shop of Horrors"
by Roger Corman is about a florist,

Seymour,
whose shop is struggling,

until he grows this
amazing Venus fly trap but

the problem is it only
eats human flesh. The 1982

musical stage production
was adapted into the 1986

film directed by Frank Oz
and starring Rick Moranis.

It seems like the whole world is going
crazy. At least we got each other ,right?

Audrey too is incredible.
These practical

effects were outstanding.
They look so good.

Does it have to be human?- Feed me! Does it have to be mine?
- Feed me!

In order to get
the lip sync perfect,

they had to slow down the frame
rate of the plant. But it works fantastic.

You sure do drive a hard market.

Ellen Greene is great. I mean, she has this funny squeaky voice.

I call it an Audrey II. - After me?
- I hope you don't mind [squeaky shriek].

But then when she sings, it's - it's gorgeous.

The songs are wonderful. Also,
you have this great cameo by Steve

Martin who plays this deranged
dentist who likes to inflict pain on people.

But then he meets his
match with Bill Murray,

who's this patient who doesn't
want any Novocaine or anything.

Say "Ah". - "Ahhhhh!"

And Bill Murray is
actually filling in the

role that Jack Nicholson
played in the original.

I know Novocaine, it dulls the senses [laughing].

The original ending was not a happy one. In fact,
it's relentlessly dark and morbid, Seymour's

girlfriend Audrey is fatally wounded by the
plan and then he sacrifices her corpse to the plant.

He slowly carries her up,
like it's some kind of ceremony. It's tragic,

yet somehow beautiful
at the same time.

He confronts the original plant, only to be eaten himself.

The plants attack the city. And it's a full on destruction sequence,
where the plants

destroy everything. And it's some of the
best miniature model work I've ever seen.

Everybody in the whole world
dies. It's so insanely depressing,

that it's no wonder they cut it.

I mean, that was pretty crazy.

The allure of horror isn't just
watching other people in terror,

it's identifying with the
people who are in terror.

People in life naturally walk away from fear. But in watching a horror movie,
it allows

you to confront that while someone else is going through it,
doesn't have to be you.

And usually there's somebody
in the film that is victorious,

and by osmosis it makes
you feel more confident.

The whole idea behind living our lives
is having enough ordinary care to see

whatever threats may materialize over
the horizon. That's what's basic to horror.

If I am that person,
how do I get out of that situation? How do I live through this

moment? We can experience that horror
and that terror through somebody else's eyes.

And there's also a giant sense of
catharsis and kind of a projection of,

what if that was me? Are they making
the right decisions that I would make?

Sometimes you end up rooting more for the monster than for the kids.

Now, in the traditional horror movie, we often saw things from
the victim's point of view, but that's no longer. Now we look through

the killer's eyes. It's almost as if the audience is being asked to
identify the attackers in these movies. And that really bothers me.

Jason was meant to be kind
of a shark. And he made this

transition from being a shark to being somehow or other,
a hero.

There's this tiny little backstory
about Jason being picked on as a kid,

tormented and
then finally drown.

And ever since he came back,

he's been kicking ass. And it's sort of
like Revenge of the Nerds on steroids.

There's a certain kind
of identification with

Jason being the super
ego of the depressed kid.

You get to have your fantasy that
you're the killer. You're ripping out hearts,

you're ripping out throats,
"You know what boss? I'll tell you what I like to do".

You could be the little person that
finally got to beat up the meanies. You

could be the girl that nobody liked,
and you're going to get them in the end.

I think it's more like vicariousness. I don't think it's
catharsis. I think people maybe are curious about how

it would feel to be in a power position,
or curious about the rush that you would get out of executing somebody.

Watch people how much
they love video games too. Like,

it's not catharsis. I think
it's - it's more than that.

It depends on what world you want to escape into. And I think if you watch the,
hey, I'm watching the

kids run through the woods to get their heads cut off,
you feel good, because you're not in the woods.

You - you live in a world that
you know doesn't - that doesn't

actually hopefully happen to
you. And then in that fantasy world,

or that spy adventure movie world,
you want to be one of

those characters. So there are
two completely different things.

The categorical difference between
a horror movie and a - a - a violent

action movie,
has to do with the experience. On "Death Wish" you are Paul,

you get the gun,
you go out and you shoot these sort of faceless victims. In

a horror movie, you're the victim,
the whole experience is completely flipped.

That is a significant
difference on a cinematic level,

on a political level,
on what it has to say about society,

but it's also a difference critically in terms of how
it's getting at your subconscious. An action movie

of that type, it has a kind of wish fulfillment
aspect to it every time he goes out and shoots one of

these like hoodlums,
you get a dopamine hit. It's like a video game like, Oh,

I got another one. In a horror movie,
you know, it's - it's more like a nightmare.

You're put in this position of
kind of existential dread or threat

that is pursuing you in some way,
which gets into much, much

deeper aspects of human
nature. Horror movies have a much

more complicated and I would say
deeper level that they're getting at.

I was never really a video
game guy. I was more of a

pinball guy. Nowadays there's
an Elvira pinball machine.

There's a Rob Zombie pinball machine. I'm pinball, man.

Today you have a lot
of great horror games,

especially with the - the VR. I mean,
there's all kinds of things they can do now.

Even now, you have some that are based on '80s
horror films like The the recent "Friday the 13th video"

game, which is connected with Tom Savini and Kane Hodder,
but we didn't always have that. Back then,

video game technology wasn't as advanced.
Wizard Video was releasing these games like

"Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "Halloween".
In "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" you're the bad guy.

You are Leatherface and you're killing people. Like
there's no morals in this game, it's sort of like one of the

first real sadistic games where you control the killer,
you basically get points for chopping people up [chuckles].

One thing that's funny about the chainsaw
is that it's the same color as the body,

it's sort of like an extension of his body,
and you get stuck on everything.

And then there was "Halloween",
also on Atari. You're running from Michael Myers,

you have to get the kids and
move them to a corner of the house.

And every time you do that,
you get 675 points. Very specific. It

also has what might be the first
head decapitation in a video game.

I mean,
I can't think of any games before that where a head gets cut off,

and you see blood spurting out. And it
also has the "Halloween" theme song in it.

They were super, super cheesy, just little pixels, so bad [laughing].

So the Atari version of "Alien",
basically took Pac-Man and

then just turned it into "Alien".
Frankenstein's monster on Atari,

it had this great moment where the
Frankenstein monster would approach the

screen. If you played in the dark at night,
the whole room would just flash green.

I did a few games, one was "Elvira: Mistress of the Dark".

One was "The Jaws of Cerberus"”. I
don't know what I have to do with that.

And one was "Elvira The Arcade Game".
That kind of got better as time went on.

Everybody was grabbing their joystick and having a really good time.

There was this one game called "Monster
Party" for the NES. And I can remember

renting it as a kid and being really
excited because the box art was great on it,

it had all these different monsters on it,
and I popped the game in

and was kind of disappointed
because it wasn't as good as the box art.

It was an important lesson I learned about 'never judge
a game by its cover'. The interesting thing about horror

video games is that I've watched the graphics
progress to a point where they are able to get more graphic,

and as a result,
the games became more controversial. I remember hearing controversies about

"Doom", about "Resident Evil",
even something like "Mortal Kombat" was a big deal when I was a kid.

And it was all because the graphics had progressed
to a point where you could show all these sort of graphic

things that you previously would have only been able to see in movies,
that you could now see in these games.

And a lot of parents groups and politicians did not like that.

You're engaged now as the aggressor,
you're engaged as the person

who commits the violence,
and not just someone who watches the violence.

"The Ghostbusters" game for the Commodore 64,
you are the Ghostbusters and you

start off a lot like the movie,
you have to go and buy all your different equipment,

you put it together and then
you go out and you hunt ghosts in

order to get enough money to be
able to get to the finale of the game.

You would get in the Ecto-1,
you would drive to the location and

there would be a ghost that looked
like Slimer that's flying around.

And you have to position your two
Ghostbusters together to trap the ghosts in between

the streams. And then you can suck them up in the trap. Not really challenging,
but fun.

"Nightmare on Elm Street" was one
of the few NES games where you could

play four players using the NES Four
score. You're running around Elm Street,

which happens to be the longest street in the world in this game,
but the idea is to collect all of Freddie's bones.

You have all these stock villains like lollipop ghosts with stick arms,
bats, skeletons, Frankenstein monsters,

it's so generic. Every once in a while Freddy would appear,
and it would

say 'Freddy's coming',
but it would be a 'Freddy's *- trademark - 'coming'.

"Friday the 13th" on NES might have
been one of the first horror games I've ever

played. And there's a bunch of items you
have to collect but you'll never have time

because this Jason alarm
keeps going off and you have

to keep on top of he's out
there killing the camp counselors.

Then you go inside the house and it
switches to 3D which was kind of cool at that

time. It was one of the first horror games
that really made an impression on me.

"You and your friends are dead. Game over."” That's kind of rough,
you know? A

lot of these games don't really hold up,
but back then you used your imagination.

And you made the best of it,
because that's all we had. But we

would have never imagined that,
you know, all these decades later,

you get a real "Friday the 13th" game
that definitely feels more official than,

you know,
the type of games they would usually put out in the '80s.

The "Friday the 13th" game. As a player,
you can play as Jason, which is fun,

or as any of the victims,
trying to get away from Jason or defeat Jason.

So I thought that was an ingenious
way of building a video game. In

this video game,
you can play as several different versions of Jason,

I was honored that they wanted me to be a part of it,
because this is animation, basically, so they could have

used anyone. But it was in their minds I was the person to do it,
because they liked how I moved as the character.

"Friday the 13th" video game,
I essentially did what I did on the movie,

except not physically,
right. My job was to sit down and create Kills.

On paper,
they didn't seem so horrible and grisly,

but then seeing him in a game I was like "Oh,
God, you know, I wrote that”.

I created them on paper,

and then Kane Hodder donned the suit
and did the motion capture for all the kills.

You're wearing spandex,
which is scary to think of me in spandex anyway,

with sensors everywhere.

So ll look at the monitor,
I see Jason. Whenever I would move I

would see exactly what the character
is going to look like in the game.

By the way,
Kane Hodder plays the game,

but he plays it as a camp counselor,
trying to outwit himself.

Is it's not as easy as you would think. And I played as a counselor,
trying to

defeat Jason, and I just got my ass whooped. Eh,
it's more fun to be the bad guy.

"Angel Heart" was another
one of those Exorcist,

Rosemary's Baby kind of movies.
I think it's completely underrated.

I think it's one of Alan Parker's,
who directed, I think it's one of his best

ever. A guy making a deal with the
devil not really knowing it's the devil.

It's funny I have a
feeling I've met you before.

- I don't know,
I don't think so.

Mickey Rourke is terrific in it,

De Niro is terrific in it. And it's
great to see them operating together.

How terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the wise, Johnny.

That was one of the attractions
of it ,was we get to see Lisa Bonet,

the Cosby kid
as a little sexpot.

So the gods got you pregnant? - Yeah.
- I understand that. [woman laughing] Sorry.

I'm not,
it was the best fuck I ever had.

Very much about the '80s,
very much about behaving yourself and

not being as decadent and horrible
and cruel and awful to people as-

as the '80s allowed you to be,
seemed to be in fashion then. De Niro has this

spectacular moment he's talking about
the an egg as sort of a metaphor for the soul.

You know,
some religions think that the egg is the symbol of the soul,

did you know that?

And at the end of this beautiful speech
takes a big honkin' bite at the egg,

just big teeth and
everything right into it.

It's De Niro as you've never seen him,
or seen him before since. He's going down

the elevator at the end and descending
into hell and not having any choice about it.

It's a great horrible cautionary tale as well. But boy, oh boy.

The soul is immortal. Yours belongs to me.

"Creepshow 1" was such a success that they of course had to put out a sequel,
"Creepshow

2" was not as memorable as the first but it
did have some very memorable segments.

So here we were, you know,
in Arizona, you know,

doing another "Creepshow".
Mike Gornick directed it.

I love being with Mike Gornick. I might
have been a little miffed that I wasn't asked

to do the effects on it,
and I think their intention was to save money or something,

then they offered me the role of the creep. Okay,
great, you know, so. And I,

you know, I just mimed that whole thing,
the dialogue was recorded.

I never seen anyone so impatient, Billy.

In fact, when I played the creep,
l insisted that when my scene was over, I must immediately

have the makeup removed and walk into a
shower. My nightmares involve being sticky.

I can't be sticky. So wearing that makeup is the stickiest feel,
I hate wearing it, but it's

good that I have worn it because I know what
I'm doing to people when I put it on them, okay.

I never seen anyone so impatient, Billy.

Anthologies are hard. They're a
hard sell. Because if you had a story

that was good enough for a movie,
you'd make a whole movie about it.

Starts off with of course, the wooden Indian,
the old trope of the kind store owners that

are elderly get, you know,
beat up and killed by these creeps that are robbing the store.

And then of course,

the wooden Indian outside turns
real and murders these three kids.

Then we get to “The Raft,” which is great. They did a
great job of it. It's a creepy story about four friends who swim

out to a raft and then this giant oil slick that's living and
has magical powers that can mesmerize you, kills them all.

It's one of my wife's favorite movies but when I say to her,
"you know that was just

a big garbage" but no, no, no, no,
she doesn't want to hear about the effects, okay.

The creature in the lake,
using ultra slime and tinted metacil and all this

kind of stuff. This sequence where Page
Hannah is - is attacked by the creature.

We had a bunch of different gags we had an arm
prosthetic that I sculpted with bladders underneath it,

and then we built these different versions of her
sort of melted as the blob is kind of enveloping her.

One of the funniest moments of that was we were prepping for Chief Wooden Head,
and Howard Berger

had called and said,
"We need slime. We were shooting another shot and we're out of slime."

I was like driving like 50 miles an hour,
60 miles an hour on these side streets.

And I turned a corner and one of the
buckets in the back seat spilled [claps).

And I looked at down at my feet and this black
sludge went up underneath the seat, my foot's now stuck

to the gas pedal and the brake. So we were
literally scooping it out and running to dress the set.

I beat you!

It's always tough to do a sequel I think,
and particularly an anthological

sequel because the expectations are already high,
because of how well

the first "Creepshow" did,
and how much it connected with fans. It was missing that

spark. Wt tries,
but I don't think it nearly reaches the heights that "Creepshow 1" did.

And what's great about
horror is you can make social

commentary while entertaining
people on this roller coaster ride.

You're not going to sit there passively in a Jackie Kong movie,
for sure. What's the story of "Blood Diner"? Blood

Diner is family loyalty gone wrong,
they love their uncle. The problem is the uncle is a psychopath serial killer.

The script was serious as a heart attack. From what I understood,
it was a scene by scene ripoff of

"Blood Feast". Herschel Gordon Lewis's execution
is a completely different execution of what I did.

"Blood Diner"” transcends the genre.

I had the killers being extremely likable guys. It was not scripted that way,
it was scripted they

were supposed to be these ghoulish brothers that go around,
you could see them a mile away coming,

and they kill people and stitch together this
female Frankenstein in the back of their popular

restaurant [laughing]. The idea of reanimating
family members brain and having that brain tell you

to commit mass homicide, was so out there.

You, my nephews,

must construct Sheetar from the
body parts of many immoral girls.

It's really misguided fast loyalty at its extreme,
I wanted to shock people.

Saw sound] Am I doing this right, Uncle Anwar?

I was just having fun. It doesn't bother me to have a
naked woman doing nude aerobics because I'm a woman

[laughing]. A nude kung fu scene? No one had
ever done that. I had to do that. And why did I do that?

She's completely nude,
full bush [laughing]. I wanted

her to be naked because I
wanted her to look vulnerable.

You think it's an
easy kill for sure,

and that's when the - that's
where the surprise comes in.

And my job as the director is to throw
them off in the head another direction.

The people that I work with my actors and
my crew don't have a problem at all working with

a woman. Where you run into the problems are with the executives,
there was a disconnect.

How could this little Asian young
woman direct this outrageous off the hook,

violent movie,

right? [chuckles] Funny,

ridiculous absurdest piece.
Things haven't changed that much.

It's not a contest. It's really isn't,
it just is who's qualified to do it,

and I bring attention to that. My sets
look like the United Nations [laughing].

You've got every possible
nationality working,

and you've got half of the
crew if not more - women.

And that's why you see a big
representation of different ethnicities,

because that's the
way I saw the world.

Jesus fucking Christ, what am I paying you two for?

The way I saw that finale was like a
war scene. It was an insane undertaking,

but she bites that head off of a
virgin with her giant vagina [laughing].

With teeth in a ritual that brings her to life,
how absurd. Censors were

shutting it down. They said it had no
socially redeeming values whatsoever.

It just was misunderstood,
the film,

and it was way ahead of its time.
Yet I found my followers [laughing).

Right before I stick my big sausage in you,
what do they call 'ya?

They call me
Sheetar [growling].

"Hello Mary Lou: Prom

Night II" is about this really

awesome chick living in the

'50s who is ahead of her time.

She loves to party and have sex with many,
many boys and finds herself murdered

as she's supposed to be coordinated by
one of those boys that she had scorned.

And she comes back to wreak havoc and
take her revenge and get her crown back.

She's presented as this sort of slutty character. In the '80s,
we would

say slutty,
but really what that means is that she sort of owns her sexuality.

It's not who you come with, it's who takes you home. Scram.

Mary Lou Maloney is my favorite,
I literally have the poster hanging over

my bed. She just was definitely
somebody I looked up to when I was little,

like she's just sexually open and
not apologizing for it. And I don't know,

and then her kills
were really cool.

It was a Canadian film that has nothing
to do with the original “Prom Night.”

The queer audience has gotten really,
really excited about "Hello Mary Lou".

It resonates for them in a way
that a lot of other '80s Films don't.

It's got a sort of a coding that
they have embraced and mapped to.

We've come a very long
way in how we think about that

kind of agency and about how
we judge that kind of behavior.

I think her whole situation is
absorbed by a contemporary

audience in a way that '80s audiences weren't ready to do,
or willing.

See you later alligator.

"Prince of Darkness" is a
movie that shows what happens

when John Carpenter gets
experimental. It goes straight for

the cerebral but then it
goes for a lot of the traditional

blood and guts that you would
expect in a Carpenter film.

I decided I wanted to make
some low budget movies again after

"Big Trouble Little China". "Prince
of Darkness" was the first one.

It was inspired by Dario Argento's "Inferno”,
because he just did

things crazy - these crazy batshit things and I thought,
let's go. Let's try it.

The cast in this is one of the most diverse
casts of the '80s. But Carpenter has said he

didn't cast them to be diverse. He cast them
because they were the best choices for the roles.

I wanted to work with Victor
Wong and Dennis Dun again,

and I cast Donald Pleasance,
I thought what a really interesting cast.

What is it? - A secret that can no longer be kept.

"Prince of Darkness" features Alice Cooper as
one of the controlled homeless people, and Alice

was a nice guy, he brought along the gag where he stabs the guy,
it was from his stage show.

He just kind of wanders up on him,
very unassuming. And then all of a sudden [screams].

He is a member of the homeless community.
He has been possessed by the devil's particle,

whatever you want to call it,
the evil. And he is now the goalie.

He's keeping people in [chuckles]
or killing them as they come out.

Carpenter, as he does, masterfully balanced two things in this,
it was the war of science

and religion. You have science where
they're talking about black holes and particles,

and you have religion
where the son of the

anti God is being held
in a chamber in a church.

Every particle has an anti particle,
its mirror image. Maybe he's anti God.

The fact that they never really come out and say it's the devil,
is genius.

They found the God Particle. Where's
the devil's particle? And that I think is

where Prince of Darkness comes in. That
tells you how relevant that movie is today.

No person can hold him now.

I am eternal.

Freddie's personality was being quoted by Johnny Carson. It was in Mad Magazine,
it was in the funny

papers, it was being merchandised. When you become that part of the culture,
you follow it a little bit.

So the franchise exploited Freddie's sense of humor,

[woman screaming] This isn't helping.

And a kind of almost surreal,
subconscious, dreamlike sense of fun and

revenge that Freddy was going
through with the culture at the same time,

the Freddy merchandising now it - there's
something new every week. Literally. It's just amazing,

the amount of stuff,

from pencil sharpeners to squirt guns. There's silly stuff,
there's corny stuff.

I love finding old, like board games from Europe,
you know, and things like that are

fun for me to see them. I love the foreign posters,
like the one over my shoulder here,

that's from Thailand. Because they're more lurid. I
didn't suffer the curse of typecasting or and - and -

and when I did, I was prepared for it. I wasn't going
10 be surprised by it. And I'd already proved myself.

Let me go! [woman screaming]. - Hey, hands on the counter, asshole!

It was a big deal to decide to be an actor or a
musician back when I was a kid. It was like a big

deal. In my generation, God, you know,
you can be an engineer, or you can be a doctor or a lawyer.

But that was it. That's what you're supposed to be. I did Shakespeare,
was paid for

it professionally,
union. Moliere. I did George Bernard Shaw. I did Arthur Miller.

I just love doing it. I was trained to do
that. And I was getting good parts and I was

predominantly doing comedy. So most of my
memory of theaters about getting that laugh.

1973 till 1983 I was not only an
established Hollywood character actor,

sidekick,

co star,

I side kicked all of the big stars
and then I moved into television.

And I played bad guys,
and I played - 've been playing a lot of southerners I don't know

why. I guess I'd learned something doing
"Tennessee Williams" but that's how Hollywood saw me.

Hey, quit stalling,

will 'ya! Just because you know you've
got a great hand. [punching sound].

Was on "Manimal". I do know
that for the fan boys it did become,

like a kind of suspension
bridge of obsession.

You know,
with werewolf effects. A show like "Manimal” is a link in that genre.

And it deserves its asterisk you know,
and I deserve my residual check [chuckles).

And then "V".

I am just. - Just what? - Yes.
- Oh, get out of the way, damn stupid alien!

I do "V and I've tapped into the great
science fiction Zeitgeist of the world,

not just America, then our movie
became a big hit. And I was off.

This is God.

Our budgets are getting a
little bit bigger for each movie,

but time got precious.
Not shooting. We never

were rush shooting. But post.
We would be shooting a movie,

and they would rely too
much on the Freddy jokes.

I could -I would have an option sometimes,
a scene would end with

me doing a joke or a wisecrack or a
kind of Dirty Harry make my day line.

Sorry, kid. I don't believe in fairy tales. [child crying)

And sometimes I would just do it without the line.

And sometimes I do it and just do it a little darker.
But when you're editing, that line

becomes your punctuation point,
it becomes your button that can, you know, button up the scene.

And give it a little percussive rimshot
so they erred in that direction a bit.

Krueger! - Well it ain't Dr. Seuss.

"Wes Craven's New Nightmare"
is a great film. And the most

popular of all the nightmare films
in the franchise is "Nightmare 3".

[screaming]

Gaston Leroux,
"Phantom of the Opera"” was the Stephen King cheap thrill story of its

time. A Penny Dreadful. "Give me a
penny mate. I'll give you something dreadful.”

Still hungry for an introduction?

We delivered the goods on our "Phantom
of the Opera". The director Dwight Little

and I were kind of simultaneously
inspiring each other to be on the same page,

with this sort of homage, to the Hammer film,
which is why we transported our "Phantom of

the Opera"” from the
Paris Opera of the 1890s

to the 1890s of London
of "Jack the Ripper”,

and the sets are scrumptious and
romantic and Stephanie Lawrence,

from Evita on the West
End playing our diva.

Bill Nighy,
"A bit of blood and guts here". But we're

also doing the romantics
sumptuous on location richness.

So it was great fun.
But the other real

selling point for me on
"Phantom of the Opera”

was there was two
scripts. There was this

second script called "The
Phantom of Manhattan".

And it's ultra romantic. And
of course that attracted me

to play the romance of it.
The fans of not only "Phantom

of Opera”,
but my fans from Freddy,

there's a huge kind of strange goth,
romantic contingent. There are girls

that have a kind of "Beauty and the Beast" attraction with Freddy. I mean,
to this day, I'm

so disappointed that we never got to do that second film,
you know, "Phantom of Manhattan".

Well,
here's the thing with "976-Evil ",nobody

held a gun to my head.
They made me a nice

offer. I was allowed to direct,

but I love the idea of "976-Evil".
It seems gimmicky now,

in hindsight,
but the body of it ll liked,

and I had this great cast assembled.
I got Stephen Geoffreys fresh

off "Fright Night". Steven,

his look and his haircut and his sense - fashion sense,
he embodied the '80s.

Kevin Yagher, you know,
did me a big favor and designed this strange, wonderful makeup.

It's a great makeup. As he transforms
into evil as the devil gets his hooks into him.

Bye Bye.

I had great scenes with Robert Picardo
is the devil. The devil who runs the

976-Evil phone call site because that's
how he recruits people to the dark side.

I used to live in Radio
Shack when I was in

high school [sniffing].
But it didn't work out.

And he had some great comedy and I had to cut that stuff out.

A guy can't make a buck anymore.

And one over my - my
female producer Lisa Hansen,

she was seeing the movie through
my eyes. She saw where I was going.

She got ill in post production,
and the other producer came in and he

was just - he had read some how to make a horror movie book,
you know,

sold at Larry Edmunds for $1.99
remaindered in a paperback with a cigarette burn

on it. And he thought all horror movies
have to be 90 minutes and I was going,

"No, no,
no action movies have to be 90 minutes. Not horror

movies." There's still sequences
that are all mine in the boys bathroom.

You know, with the skateboards,
all the stuff with the mirror and him getting sliced by hoax.

That's pure, unadulterated Robert Englund, you know,
it would have been a third again, better movie,

had they left and trusted me with what it was. I mean,
I should get over it but it's your baby.

The reason I don't direct film as much is not because I'm intimidated by film,
but I am desired.

Because of my name and because of the seats I fill. And
because of my baggage that I bring. I am desired to always do effects

labeled movies. And it's rough
enough directing film because

once you say "action",
[ticking sound] you're against the clock.

That's all you hear. Pre production is fun,
post production is ecstatic. But

the actual shooting of a movie is not
pleasant. You're not sleeping at night,

you're worried about getting your day,
it's not fun,

even when your actors and your
cameraman are bringing you great stuff.

The reason Robert Englund doesn't direct more
film is because people aren't asking me to direct the

films that I'm right for. Left to my own devices I'm
the guy that should be directing “Tender Mercies.”

That's the kind of film I would do the best.

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.

It's show time [thunder sound].

Beetlejuice is for me one of the movies
where it shows Tim Burton firing on all cylinders.

He was just absolutely in his element. It made
him one of the premiere directors of the '80s.

It's hilarious, it's weird,

it's funny. The cast is terrific. The
practical effects are great. Geena

Davis and Alec Baldwin
die. They go to the

afterlife and they find out
that they don't want to die.

The couple go back to their house. But unfortunately,
the worst family

ever moves in and wants to change
everything that they love about the house.

So they enlist the help of Beetlejuice,
who is the human Exorcist. He's there

to scare them out of the house.
Problem is Beetlejuice is a little eccentric.

What do we got here tonight, kids?

Michael Keaton surprises you all
the time. To see him play Beetlejuice. It

was such a great character and really
outrageous and wild and all over the place.

Scram!

That was neat to see that.

The “Day-0” scene was glorious to me.

I reenact that almost, you know, once a month [laughing].

I think Beetlejuice is the film that really
put Winona Ryder on the map. I mean,

she had such a great character.

It's kind of the updated Wednesday
Addams just this creepy little girl who

had to live in this creepy house with
her sort of creepy parents [laughing].

I am utterly alone [opera music playing in the background] [sniffs].

I think that's really one of the first times that you
saw what - what goth was all about, in comedy like

that. So that was exciting to see her and to realize
that she was such an outcast and you really felt for her,

which made me really happy- I liked that.

The waiting room is a prime example of Tim Burton's creativity in the "80s,
because you had all

these people who were waiting to go to the
afterlife and each one of them died in a different way.

So you had the circus performer who had been
sawed in half for real. You had the witch doctor

with the shrunken head. It's just brimming with
that wonderful Tim Burton stuff that we all miss.

You want a cigarette? - No, thank you. - Trying to cut down myself.

Well, Tim Burton, he's gonna surprise you and do some beautiful,
wonderful artwork and set designs,

he brings you into another world,
which I really adore. And his stories are fun. They just engage you.

You look great.

I wish I could have done one of his movies [laughing).

Can you be scary?

- Oh! Don't ask me if ll can be
scary. What do you think of this?

You may not have heard of the term video
nasties or gross out films. These terms refer

to a whole group of pictures from a blood and guts,
sometimes real, sometimes fake.

In the UK, we had the video nasties which was
[chuckles] a reaction by the Conservative government to sort

of clamp down on horror movies,
because a lot of them were getting through without being rated by the BBFC.

So kids could rent these movies and
watch them at home. So they wrote up a list

of movies that had - that were essentially
had to be banned. The funny thing was,

was that there's a lot of people criticizing these movies
without actually seeing them. It's often the case with with

government. They also had these local MPs as well who
like to comment and get sort of political points with their-

with their constituency by saying, "Oh, this movie is really bad,
it should be banned."” and someone goes "Oh, have you

seen this movie?” "Oh, no, no, I don't need to see it", you think,
well, you need to see something before you criticize it.

If anyone can stand up and defend the sort of
horrific scenes that I have had to see, and other members

of parliament have had to see,
I believe they're living in a different world to that world that I live in.

The video nasties didn't stick around for that long,
but there were a number of movies

that were on the BBFC kind of hit list for
a number of years that remained banned.

And it was kind of years later that these movies did
eventually come out. And people got to see them properly

for the first time and not some kind of wonky VHS
bootleg from 1982 or something like that [chuckles].

Video nasties they don't like violence or
blood and all that stuff. You can have all

the sex you want. But if you use the word 'chainsaw' in your title,
that's too violent.

And "Hollywood Hooker" sounds worse than "Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers".

That was a great line. They charge an arm and a
leg because the movies about this prostitution ring

that my sister has
fallen into and having to

investigate it and go under
cover with this chainsaw cult.

I'm gonna burn that temple
over those fuckers heads.

You know,
you've got a lot of guts for a little girl.

It's a very silly romp. A film noir, but it's in color.

I'll check the photo to make sure. It was her alright.

I got involved with "Hollywood Chainsaw
Hookers"” when Fred Olen Ray gave me a call.

It was Memorial Day weekend. And he said,
"I'm gonna do a movie in three days now".

And it was just so tongue in cheek and
so fun. And I got to meet leather face from

"Texas Chainsaw
Massacre". That was

like a big deal to me.
Because ll love that film.

[man screaming] Please,
Mr. Chandler,

for the sake of the neighbors,
they're trying to sleep.

Gunnar Hansen was
like the nicest guy who

had no clue that he was
admired by thousands.

I think it's time somebody cut you down to size, Jack.

Fred Olen Ray is very - like he's got that dry sense of humor. He said,
"Okay, dance sexy with these

chainsaws". And I'm like,
"they're heavy. And like,

I'm trying my best to dance
sexy with the chainsaws”.

And I'm like struggling and I am being en-fixated when I'm
in the sarcophagus with the chainsaws running and all the

smokes going. If you watch
I like kind of like stumble

when I get out because I'm
like high from the smoke in there.

Then I was like dancing with them and I felt something on my leg and I thought,
'oh my god, hot oil

is burning my skin',
but I didn't stop. I kept going. It was like,

"Action. Here's
your chainsaw. Go."

They just said,
"Well this a great idea,

let's use real chainsaws.
They're cheaper.”

I think they probably got them at Kmart,
and then returned them the next day.

"Dead Heat" is a buddy cop film with zombies.
You got Joe Piscopo and Treat Williams, who

discovered that there's this company that has
found a way to bring people back from the dead.

The only problem is, you don't come back for very long,
you start to fall apart. And

they've been using it bringing people
back from the dead to go do things like heists.

You wanna be dead?

Part of the humor of it is that they called
it "Dead Heat". It's such a generic title,

but I think they were kind of aping off of
the fact that it was a goof on action films.

I loved working on "Dead Heat".
Mark Goldblatt was really cool. I mean,

I had Carte Blanche and I
got to work with Vincent Price.

Death doesn't discriminate. At least not till now.

We really did a lot of close up
quality zombie makeups on that.

They cut out a lot of our effects
because they were just too over the top.

I was cut out of "Dead Heat" because they
didn't use that footage. But I practiced at Steve's

shop with this heavy skeleton doing puppeteering,
you know, dancing and dancing and dancing.

I danced to "Burning Up" with
this heavy skeleton for so long,

so I would get it right.

She was the sexy dancer puppeteer for the sexy skeleton,
but they cut that

scene. Again why they cut all that
workout? It would only make that movie better.

The shitty movie could have only been
better with a bunch of over the top effects,

right?

Joe Piscopo when he was on Saturday Night Live was
kind of this skinny kind of Wiener-ish comedian. He had started

lifting weights and this was one of the first times where it really came out,
"Oh, look at this dude, he's jacked.”

And I think that going forward,

more people will remember
him as the big muscle dude.

I think my favorite part of the work that
we did in "Dead Heat" is the butcher shop

that comes alive, because I have always thought in zombie movies,
why is it just people?

And so this whole butcher shop when it comes to life,
I mean, there's even a liver, that was a really cool effect, we

built an inverted table and inverted the background and
inverted the camera the same way and just let the liver roll.

But then it looks like it's moving until it leaps on Treat's face.

Ducks, chickens, fish, you name it, they all came to life.

Part of the way through the film Treat Williams dies,
they bring him

back from the dead so that he can
solve the crime of who murdered him.

Hi guys.

The longer he's been dead,
the more alive he comes and that's reflected in the

makeup. When he's handcuffed to the back of the van,
car rolls down explodes,

he comes out and he's suddenly cool because his hair is
all punked out and it's black. He's got a piece of shrapnel

for a long earring. And his blue ridiculous Hawaiian
shirt is all black and he looks hip and he looks cool.

Detective Mortis, homicide.

At the end of the film,
Treat Williams and Joe Piscopo

are both back from the dead,
sinew is flying everywhere.

It's a spectacle that you need to see.

Next to maniac,
"Maniac Cop" is Bill Lustig's magnum opus. How can you not love

a movie about a killer cop written by
Larry Cohen and directed by Bill Lustig?

Bill Lustig went out and found the money for "Maniac Cop",
and was the understanding that

he would direct the picture. I didn't want to direct it anyway,
so it all worked out okay.

There's a killer on the streets and he's killing
indiscriminately. And a lot of people believe that

it is Matt Cordell,
a good police officer that was killed in prison but is now back for revenge.

Tom Atkins plays the cop,
who's on the trail of Matt Cordell,

trying to undo If it's really this
killer cop back from the dead.

It's called "Maniac
Cop" because it's got a

maniac cop in it. And
it was my job to find

him and to kill him. But I didn't,
he killed me,

threw me out of
window on top of a cab.

Died, ignominiously.

The maniac cop Matt Cordell is played by Robert Z'Dar,
who is quite possibly the only actor

in history, who has a more impressive chin than Bruce Campbell,
who is also in the movie.

He has a rare medical condition called
cherubism. And they use that to great

effect in this movie,
and it actually ended up benefiting him in his movie career.

The climax of the film
starts with a car chase and

culminates in one of the
best villain deaths in the '80s. It

ends with a cliffhanger that
leads into "Maniac Cop 2",

which is in my humble opinion,
the best of the series.

My one question is, what the hell is the matter with
William Lustig? Bruce Campbell and I, we run into each

other every once in a while and he said the same thing [chuckles],
"What the hell is up with Bill Lustig"?

"You're the star the first one" he says to me,
and 25 minutes into the movie, you're dead

and out the window on top of a cab at the
hands of the maniac cop. In the second one,

I'm the star [chuckles] and I go to a news stand to buy a magazine,
somebody

stabs me to death. It has nothing to
do with anything and I'm dead [laughing].

There you are. William Lustig, nuts.

I had thought, well, it's "Poltergeist”,
you know, it's this, it is a sequel.

It's a popular franchise,
I thought this could be a lot of fun to do this.

Gary Sherman had this thick book and
he had everything - he was like a scientist,

he had everything laid out and
how this was going to be done.

And the special effects were going to be real and challenging. And I thought,
well, that's

sort of right up my alley. With my dance background. I can -I can do this,
you know?

But it was brutal to shoot, it really was difficult.

We're back.

The use of the double and the mirrors and all of that.
And when you had the long hallway of mirrors, and you

had different characters, I think at one point,
there were maybe five different characters that were involved.

It was extremely difficult and frustrating,
and it all had to be timed and perfect.

And even with the queues,
one thing could go off and you had to start all over again.

Because everything took two three times as long as it
would have the way we shot it. The payoff, of course is it's

like oh, that was worth it. You see it. And I think the
hallway scene is a great case of, oh, look, that really worked.

It was great. And there's something magical in the moment, you know.

Hello? - Hello? - Hello?

Zelda Rubinstein [chuckles]. Oh,
my God, she was so much fun. We

really had a blast. And she had a lot of boyfriends,
I know that [laughing].

Zelda attracted very handsome young boys.

I can lead you into the light! I have the knowledge and the power!

What I honestly remember most about that film,
other than being wet for a very long time [chuckles],

when we were running around,
was Heather O'Rourke. She was just a real little girl, she liked Barbies,

and she loved her mother. She wasn't a child actress. I mean,
she had none of that

going on. And there was so much chaos on that set,
because it was so challenging.

But whenever Heather was on the set,
it was like, she was like a grounding force.

A woman's entitled to change her mind.

And I always feel like I can relax. Heather is
here. It's kind of funny when you think about it.

And I always think about, you know,
the tragedy of her loss and all and how unnecessary it was.

But the fact that she had this old soul,
you know, and that's the

only way that l can look at it
that I don't feel so desperately sad.

"Waxwork" is somewhat
inspired by other wax movies,

like the 1924 silent film "Waxworks",
and the

1933 and 1953 versions
of "House of Wax". This

one is more about the
wax figures coming to life.

You have a familiar face, Zach Galligan from "Gremlins".

Welcome to the Waxwork!

He and his fellow students go to a
wax museum that's full of classic car

scenes. And when they wander into the display,
they become part of it.

One of the girls goes into this area, and it's a vampire.

Or you have one person goes into a an area,
and it's a werewolf. A lot of them are based on the old horror tropes.

It's very clever because the way that they do it is after the person dies,
then they become part of the exhibit.

They become wax models like in "House of Wax".

They had the marquee de sade, they had zombies,
they had a wide variety of different exhibits. The

effects are better than you probably would be
expecting with a movie like this. Sadly, the original cut

of the film got rated X
and they had to cut out

some of the gore in order
to get it down to an R rating.

The ending is crazy,
because everything in the museum attacks. I mean,

this is '80s excess and it reminds
you what you love about the decade.

Take me! - Take this.

"Cellar Dweller" [laughing],
really? Well, this is what I remember

about "Cellar Dweller". Stuart
was shooting "Robot Jox" in Italy,

And he said, "You know, I want you to do a cameo in this."

Damn right he's got a chance, he's got to kill that convict!

And then Charlie, I believe, called me and said,
"Listen, while you're over there, do you think that

you could also do a day on this other movie kind
of a half day of reacting and carrying a hatchet?"

We had Jeffrey Combs appears as
the comic book artist from the past in this

sort of pre title sequence to "Cellar Dweller”,
just to set up the whole story.

And he's drawing on the inspiration of
the dark arts as embodied in this book,

clearly ripped off from "The Evil Dead"
[laughing] and he pays the price and he dies.

I certainly felt like I'm
going to write the best

version of a movie called
"Cellar Dweller" starring

this John Buechler designed monster
that all takes place in one building,

that is humanly possible.

Are you trying to say to me
that a monster you drew just

stepped of the page and
devoured Amanda and Norman?

That's how I got into the "Cellar Dweller. It's like,
"Here's the monster, write a

movie called "Cellar Dweller' with this
monster” that was Charles Band's way.

But there's a lot to be said for having set parameters. And you know,
I mean, my god

Michelangelo just,
he only had that ceiling. I still think the monster is really cool.

More and more as time goes on,
I do meet "Cellar Dweller” fans, which at first kind of

surprised me, but now we kind of. you know,
is heartwarming [chuckles]. You know, it's -

it's nice that like you write something and
then you might just sort of shrug it off and not

think about it for a few decades and you find out
that actually had a positive effect on somebody.

People love that movie! And I find it to be so campy.

Hey grandpa,
look at the mirror! [people laughing] - You stupid bastards!

I really wanted to
prove myself on that,

even though it was a very low budget movie,
we did the best we could.

"Night of the Demons" is about these girls that have a party,
and everybody's excited

to go and they're all dressed up in different costumes,
and they call out a demon.

I get possessed
and I just go crazy.

I am writing on my
face with lipstick,

I'm making lipstick disappear in my breasts,
which nobody expects.

It's like it's supposed to be
kind of titillating. Hahaha. But

it becomes weird. When they do the effect on camera,
they

show my breasts,
then they cut away and then there's a

mold of me. From here to there,
they had cut out a little slit.

So when I'm doing my lipstick trick,
that lipstick just goes right through there.

When I first met Steve Johnson,
who did the effects, I went to his shop

and they had to do alive cast of my
breast. I had a crush on him right away.

And then I guess he kind of had a crush
on me too. So it was very awkward because

he's putting alginate which is like a
plaster type thing that hardens on me.

And then they're wrapping me like a
mummy with bandages and having to

touch my breasts,
and it was just very awkward. So it was interesting how we met.

I enjoyed that effect,
because it wasn't on my face and I

didn't feel like I was like
covered in all this horrible stuff.

But I'm like a very
vain girl in this movie.

And I have to ask if
my makeup's okay.

Is my makeup okay?

I put my head back, you know, they cut away and then I'm possessed.

Stop looking at me! - Ah!

I had contacts and teeth and all this makeup that was glued to me,
and then I surprised him by

poking his eyes out and in fact it's not my
hands that are doing it because I didn't do it right.

They had to like put
my bracelet on this guy's

hands and have him poke
my eyes out professionally.

I could look at it and see how it would scare
the shit at certain scenes. You see Angela gliding

down the hall and going through the shadows
and light with that face. It's pretty - pretty creepy.

Most of the cast thought
the house was haunted. They

thought there was really
hauntings. I think it scared them.

As a horror fan,
you were kind of learning that the business - the movie business was very fickle.

So any number of your horror icon directors
can be jumping to any project at any given minute.

Every month in Fangoria, there's a section called Monster Invasion,
and that's news of upcoming

releases. And there would always be a
paragraph at the bottom called The Terror Teletype.

"Director X is making film Y
with actor Z" and you'd be like,

"Wow, I want to see that."

And then that movie would never happen. And that happened a lot.

"The Fly" is one of my
favorite films of all time. And

given the opportunity to
write the sequel was incredibly

exciting to me. And what I
came up with bears very little

resemblance [chuckles] to the
movie that was eventually made.

The original "Fly 2" that I came up
with had a lot to do with something that

was going on at the time,
there was a couple named Tony and Susan Alamo,

and they would try to find mothers talk
them out of the abortions and talk them into

raising good Christian,
God fearing children. So I took it a step further and said,

well, let's find an organization that not only wants them not to abort,
they are

also training them, as the Soviet Union did decades ago,
creating super children.

If Veronica Quaife and Seth Brundle had had that baby,
and Veronica wanted to abort because of the

monster she knew
it would become,

but was talked into giving up her
baby for adoption by this group.

They suddenly are in possession of this
super powerful creature that looked human,

but was much more than that. It

would become the first line
of defense in a new Christian

army. Then along came a new studio head,
Leonard Goldberg.

He had a very short life as a
feature studio at 20th Century Fox. He

wanted a teenage monster movie,
that's what was popular in the '80s.

So suddenly,

what I thought could be a good
companion piece to the Cronenberg

movie became something much more

mundane. I did
write a version of that.

But left to direct my first movie "Critters 2" at that time,
and Frank Darabont

came on board as the second writer
on "Fly 2" and then Jim and Ken Wheat.

So in the resulting movie,
I was sitting in my seat,

and I was watching it unspool,

and I'm sinking lower and lower [chuckles].
It's so far removed from what the intent was.

And I thought Chris Wallace did a great job as a director,
good cast and everything but - but

it was so far afield from what I had intended.
That it I haven't watched it since [chuckles).

"Pumpkinhead”,
it's a morality tale,

which always make for the
best movies. I have been trying

to get back into the world of "Pumpkinhead”
and get the rights back to do a prequel that -

that sort of sets up the story
and tells it in a linear fashion,

so that it leads and ends up
with the Stan Winston movie

from the '80s. But - but while that could be a long, long,
long process with - with yielding very little [chuckles].

After "Chainsaw 2",

I wrote a treatment for "Chainsaw 3" and
Sawyers have now moved to New York City,

Leatherface and Stretch are married.
They have a little baby in a bone

crib with like a little leather mask
on. Chop Top is a DJ in a disco club.

Leather Face by day works for Parks and Recreation,
sewing off limbs in Central

Park. And Jim Siedow, the cook,
has a famous chili restaurant down in Soho,

and at night Leather Face goes into the
steam tunnels under Grand Central and chops

up some of the homeless,
and that's the meat for Jim Siedow's award-winning chili.

Tobe didn't really want
to go to that place. So

that was you know that -
that was kind of stillborn.

We thought that the follow up to
"Re-animator” wouldn't be "Re-animator 2".

The idea of doing a
series of movies based on

Lovecraft was something
that really appealed to us.

And so the next project was going to be "Shadow over Innsmouth”,
which is a story about

people turning into fish. Lovecraft is
taking evolution and turning it upside down.

Instead of,
you know - you know the idea of us coming out of the sea,

we're going back into the sea. People
are changing into underwater creatures.

And Dennis actually wrote the script of that while
we were in post production for "Re-animator”. That to

me seemed like the sequel,
just like the sequel to the "House of Usher" was "The Pit and the Pendulum".

We'd get Jeffrey and
Barbara do it more like a

William Castle series of
movies or a Corman Poe series.

Everybody, including Charlie Band,
who owned the studio

that were making the films
thought this concept was ridiculous.

And no one's gonna want to see
a movie like this. Brian Yuzna and

I took that concept and pitched it
to just about every studio in town.

The closest we ever got to getting it made was one guy who said,
"Well,

if you make them werewolves,
we'll do it. Turning into fish is not scary.”

And I wanted to say to that guy, you know,
how about if I just bring a big fish in and put it on your

desk right now, you know,
or shark or something? I think you might find that a little disturbing.

Shadow had a ton of really
cool production concepts that

were developed by the masterful
illustrator Bernie Wrightson.

Stuart Gordon never got to
make "Shadow over Innsmouth”.

But he did get to use some
of those elements in "Dagon"”.

The thing about "Shadow
over Innsmouth” is it's one of the

most action packed Lovecraft
stories ever that he ever wrote.

And "Shadow Over Innsmouth,”

it really is like the closest
he ever got to a novel.

You know,
I read somewhere that Fritz Lang wanted to make it way back in the day,

which would have been wonderful.

"Bad Taste" was my personal introduction to Peter
Jackson. And I've been in love with his work ever since.

He was a New Zealand filmmaker who wanted to
move on to bigger and better things and he certainly did.

He was getting a lot of attention for
"Meet the Feebles" but that one still didn't go

over quite as well. This was the movie
that kind of broke him to American audiences.

And then of course, this led into "Dead Alive”,
which made people stand up and take notice. "Bad

Taste", it's about aliens that come down and find
the new taste sensation on earth is human flesh.

Tomorrow we're having you for lunch [screaming]

It is a film that only could
have come from the mind of

Peter Jackson. The aliens are these big,
dumb monsters that

have asses that stick out really far
[chuckles]. They're not scary at all,

they're completely
meant to be dumb.

Peter Jackson is starring
in the film as well. He plays

a guy named Derek. And as we know,
Dereks don't run.

I'm a Derek, Dereks don't run.

He falls off a cliff and his skull breaks
open so part of his brain falls out. Throughout

the film, his back of his head keeps falling open,
and his brain keeps getting exposed.

He starts picking up brains along the way and shoving
them back into his head. And he takes his belt off and

puts it around his head to keep his skull closed to
stop his brain from falling out all the time [chuckles].

The effects in the movie are
outstanding. You can actually look at

this and if you look at Peter
Jackson's work with "Lord of the Rings",

You had the foundations
of Weta who goes

on to be this in-demand
Oscar award winning

effects company,

that was making this really
goofy weird stuff back in the '80s.

"Halloween 5" is the revenge
of Michael Myers. And it's

when the series starts to introduce
some of the weirder aspects.

There's apparently now a psychic connection
between Michael and Jamie Lloyd and

he's sporting a tattoo that would come
to be part of the curse of the Thorne cult,

but you don't get that weird green blood
that Michael Myers has in the next one.

I rewatched 5, and it's actually really,
really good, maybe even better

than 2. And it really is the return of
this horrific mad man to his hometown.

Fundamentally, what is scary about Michael Myers is that mask,
that rubber mask,

that white face,
that unknowable entity that is consistent throughout the franchise,

even though the mask changed,
I think not usually for the better over the sequels,

people saw that original mask,
and went, "That is scary."”

Every horror movie works if it's got a well written script,
it's not about budget, it's

about the story. There has to be some different
elements where you care about the characters.

Can you kill him? - I think so.

Wait a minute - - There isn't a minute to wait.

And that's kind of the whole crux of that movie,
and why we care,

because we know the showdown is coming
between characters that we care about,

And that's why the movie
resonates because you

care about what happens
at the finish of this movie.

Horace Pinker is a serial killer,
he goes on death row, death by electric chair.

He gets shocked, but then, like feels the power.

And survives it, and comes back from the dead as an electric murderer.

The reason why "Shocker" really works is because the character of Horace Pinker,
the murderer, is

played by Mitch Pileggi who was Skinner in "The X
Files". He plays it really evil and mean and straight.

[screaming]. - Finger looking good [laughing].

He's got that look and so it works.

Horace Pinker's makeup was really interesting in
that everything in that movie is practical, everything.

I went to visit my boyfriend, David Anderson,
on the set. They were rolling gurneys out of the house,

And I'm like, "Wes,
I'm gonna get on one of the gurneys and play a dead body."” He was like,

"great”. And then I just got on it one of the
gurneys and they rolled me out under a blanket.

That's me. It was pretty ridiculous. Somebody put me in the credits,
that was probably Wes, he has

a sense of humor. Watching horror movies being filmed by Wes Craven,
there's never a dull moment.

I've heard of audience participation shows, but this is ridiculous.

When you talk about the connection between heavy metal and horror movies,
"Shocker"

is probably the epitome of it because they
had some heavy hitters on that soundtrack.

The theme song is called Shocker. And
it's by a band called The Dudes of Wrath.

Who are The Dudes of Wrath? Paul Stanley on vocals,
Desmond Child on vocals, Rudy

Sarzo on bass from the Ozzy's band,
Tommy Lee on drums and Guy Mann Dude on guitar.

There's no way that can be a real name.

I'm playing Ricky the Santa Claus killer.

I've escaped from
the prison hospital,

I've come to after being in some kind
of a coma. I'm wearing my brain cap,

which is basically a clear salad
bowl with a bunch of blinking lights

with a rubber brain with a bunch
of orange liquid swirling around in it.

I liked gutting Tony from "West
Side Story" Richard Beymer,

the therapist
going "Ricky Ricky".

Come on, Ricky.

I don't like to hurt anybody on the set. I did a couple
takes and he complained that I wasn't doing it hard enough.

He challenged my manhood. I remember basically it
so it felt and so I did [laughing) really [crying out in pain].

Yeah. That got the Richard Beymer's seal of approval.

Carlos Palomino picks me up for a
middleweight boxing champion of the world.

Merry Christmas, buddy. Hop in! [sound of car door closing]

Working his way up the ladder [chuckles] in the acting business.

Listo [spanish for: ready]. What happened to you,
man? You get a head transplant?

That's the last we see of Carlos.
The next thing we see of me is I'm

wearing Carlos's clothes and I'm
knocking on the door of a - of a house.

Yes?

An old, kindly old woman opens up and she goes,
"Oh, you look like

you're a homeless man. Why don't you come in,
I'll give you something to eat".

I had a fear, a secret actors fear and that was that I would
never be able to cry. Some actors really just were in touch with

their emotions. They could turn the you know,
the water on and off and I just thought, geese'll never be able to do that.

And I remember looking
up at this kind - this lady,

they beautifully cast. She's
beaming down at me and I started

to cry. This moment was so loving,
the tears started falling out of my eyes,

and then all of a
sudden Monte goes,

"And cut." [whispering]

“Sotto voce". And all of a sudden
the crew starts spontaneously clapping.

As these tears are coming
down Ricky the Santa Claus killer's

cheeks. And I just remember thinking,
this is fucking weird {laughing).

The power of that movie is the truth of
that movie. "Henry: Portrait of a Serial

Killer" was based on a true story.
And it's something that goes for the gut.

I personally love to
hate serial killer movies.

They scare me a lot because
they're representative of

something that really
happens. "Henry: Portrait

of a Serial Killer” that one
feels very raw and gritty.

Don't do that, Otis, she's your sister.
- Okay, I was only kidding around, Henry.

- Tell her you're sorry. - Okay.

They did that on a very,
very low budget. That was one of the first

movies that Michael Rooker did.
His performance in that film is so scary.

You strangle one and stab another an
then when you cut up when you're done,

the police don't
know what to do.

Seemingly having a normal life with kind of an almost girlfriend and a friend,
and he

was living with somebody but all the while
committing these crazy murders is chilling.

I'm really fascinated by this sort of psychological
reasons why we become who we are. And that

is an obvious clear case of some sort of deep
childhood trauma that hasn't been addressed,

and some sort of unhealthy relationship
with his mom. Mentally unstable people with

childhood traumas who then manifest those traumas into real life horror shows,
it happens.

And that is scary.

Sometimes you beat me, make me wear a dress, watch you doing it.

This is less of a, you know,
exploitation movie and more

of a character study. And
that's the kind of stuff I dial into.

Maybe there is a line that you can cross "Henry:
Portrait of a Serial Killer" came close to that,

but that just makes a great horror movie that
gets under your skin and becomes super memorable.

There's so many things that a
horror film can do for you. And I

think a lot of the fans find it very healing,
that have gone through things,

or going through things.

They find hope in that,
and they think - they live through you vicariously going,

"I'm going to kick ass,
I'm going to get rid of all these bad things in my life".

And I've had fans come and say that to me,
"I didn't have friends" or "I was teased"” or gender

issues. And this was one world where the
monster gets payback when you're a kid [laughing].

I've been bullied,
I've been an outcast. And I think that is kind of what resonates with fans,

because a lot of my fans will tell me they've had
similar issues when they were a kid or a teenager.

People are watching horror because it's,
"Oh I see myself in it. Oh, this got me through

a tough time. Oh,
this final girl reminded me of this trauma that I experienced”.

And they're turning it into a kind of therapy.

People are even kind of dissecting what the movies meant to them,
it's

refreshing because all I've been hearing about,
"Oh, it's such a great movie."

But now "it's a great movie,

because this is what it
meant to me and this is why".

Horror is personal. I think it represents
not only our personal styles and our personal

feelings, you know,
about the genre and what we love about it. But I think for a lot of us,

it becomes part of our journey for as
scary as it can be and as fun as it can be,

regardless of the quote unquote
quality of it. It still means something to us.

We're talking about this like incredibly respected,
well done horror film, or this sort of

campy horror film that's actually terrible but everyone loves it,
and everything in between.

It's kind of inspiring to see
people so deeply excited

and invested in entertainment,
you know, it feeds them.

They stand the test of time, because there's - they're super fun.

When you look at a lot of films,
specifically horror movies during the '80s,

they were taking a beating
left and right from critics.

But I think that kind of goes to show that you really
shouldn't judge movies based on sort of that time that they

released, because ultimately, I think they're going to live
on and in very different ways and come to mean a lot to fans.

I think we're all
missing our youth,

basically. The '80s to me was a great time,
I was vibrant, more [laughing].

So the nostalgia is breaking down meaning.

The good, the bad, the in between. It all means something to all of us,
in one way or another. Emotions

and memories and nostalgia that it's tied to these
films. For a lot of us who grew up during that time.

Film is an art unto itself,
you need to look back at its history

because it's not only the technology,
it's the storytelling, the narrative.

There's only so many stories to tell around the campfire,
never neglect that stuff, even if your

appreciation for it is as something primitive,
and - and - and old and naive. You still need to see it.

I think there's so
much access to just

everything now that
a lot of stuff gets lost.

So if you curate the ones that
you feel are important to be seen,

then you bring attention that they
might not have gotten otherwise.

Curation is key.

I think it's important to keep digging up films and
putting them in front of new eyeballs, because the pool is just

getting more and more narrow. I don't know,
I just want people to be excited about the discovery of these older films.

Word of mouth keeps '80s horror alive.

I have a list at home,
'things I have not seen that I need to watch'. Because of the

horror community,
every time something comes up that I haven't seen, I write it down.

Because how could you - how
could I have missed that? You know,

the horror family is a family,
the knowledge base there is incredible.

I think revisiting the films is really
interesting if you revisit them at later points in

your life, so you can revisit a film, a well made film,
and it will yield new things for you.

That's incredibly influential to me.

People can talk about "80s horror till the sun comes up. I sure do.