All language subtitles for In.Search.Of.Darkness.1995.1999.Journey.Back.Into.Iconic.90s.Horror.2025.1080p.WEB.H264-GOREHOUNDS_track3_[eng]

The '90s, it was this very special time.

Pop culture was really important.

Maybe The X-Files is right.

It was a very, very exciting time.

It is time to go back.

I think everybody was looking
for a way to do something original,

to sort of stand out.

It's kind of a carnival atmosphere.

Exploding with like a new kind of energy
that I don't think anyone had seen before.

What does it want?
What is it thinking?

We really don't get the credit
that we deserve

for what we brought to the party.

The whole machine changes.

There's no room for imagination.

- There's some really
brilliant moments in the '90s.

Rodriguez and Tarantino killed it.

Wes Craven, he really started a whole
era of filmmaking. It's pretty amazing.

It's a scream, baby!

- Meta on meta.

The studio had no idea
what this movie was.

This is the moment
when the supposedly dead killer

comes back to life for one last scare.

The resurgence of teen horror movies.

The fear of being in high school.

The fear of being an other.

The fear of people really knowing
who you are.

I think those are really universal.

But aren't you tired
of being something you're not?

I love looking at the misbehaviors
of the human psyche.

I know this book will drive people crazy.

- Humans are the monsters in movies.

They are an amalgamation of who we are.

Extract now!

We're dealing with a lot
of social and political themes

that even then, when we were doing it,
scared people.

The emotions that it brings out
of you are real.

The world was shifting in various ways
that led to the 2000s.

Technology was advancing.
Culture was getting kind of uneasy.

Lent an air of uncertainty and anxiety
to the general atmosphere,

which is always going
to transmit itself to movies.

It is a direct correlation
to the way the generation

at that time is living.

I am the face that stares back
at you from the shadowed mirror.

Part of the reason the independent
film industry was so alive

and the mainstream film industry
was so vibrant in the '90s

was because of the advent of DVD.

You gotta love this technology.

- It was sort of the new chapter in a way,

but there's always change
and you never know

which direction things are gonna go.

Please, I don't want to die.

Hollywood always burns it out
to a crisp before they jump

on something new,

fueled my desire to make
something different.

Hungry, cold, and hunted.

If you really pay attention,
you can find gold in the '90s.

Gold is power.

That's what's great about horror.

There's so many things I haven't seen
and I can just explore.

That's what people wanted.
That's what audiences wanted.

It is time to get seriously scared.

As you wish.

IN SEARCH OF DARKNESS
1995 - 1999

JOURNEY BACK INTO ICONIC '90S HORROR

I think there's such
an interesting relationship

between horror and culture,
like a dialogue between them,

probably more so than any other genre.

In the late '80s, the Berlin Wall fell

and the fear of imminent
nuclear death was over

or it felt like that was on pause.

And I just don't think people
were as afraid.

It was like some you know, turning point.

And there was a degree of optimism
that the Cold War was over.

And that sort of blanket
of fear that had shrouded

the world for decades
and decades came to an end.

We will no longer let the powers
that be control our minds.

Peace was breaking out all over.

And people had nothing to pay attention to
except things like Monica Lewinsky.

There was a lot of fluffy news going on.

I did not have sexual relations
with that woman.

It wasn't like there was a war happening.

It wasn't like there was a recession.

It wasn't like there was
anything specific for people

to be mad about.

But that's not to say
they weren't mad, you know?

This is when we're getting
our Alanis Morissette,

our Limp Bizkit,
the suicide of Kurt Cobain.

There was definitely something happening,
but it was hard to put our finger on.

We will go together
to a world without pain.

I think we were learning
that greed was not so good.

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.

I never particularly believed
that in the first place.

But people who have bought
the whole greed is good thing

were coming rather unstuck
to an extent in the '90s.

And you see that start to feed in,
I think, to the horror landscape.

The road of excess
leads to the palace of wisdom.

For we never know how much is enough.

Inevitably, when people are afraid,

they want to experience
that kind of fear in a theater,

in a safe environment.

Like those two things
are inextricably linked.

In the '90s, it was like really
about psychological turmoil.

It was about the feelings
that people had about themselves

and maybe their place in the world,
and their disappointment with themselves.

I guess you were right, Worth.
There is no way out of here.

Suddenly, society started turning
their anger and frustration, hostility,

depression on themselves, it seems.

I don't know why.
And maybe I don't want to know why.

There's a devil inside everyone.

We could see that there were
individual lone wolves

who could shoot up a school
or bomb a building

or create mass tragedy.

These were unpredictable
and therefore, uncontrollable.

-And I'm very upset.
-Oh.

That sense of dread.

The sense that something random
and horrific could happen

to you at any given time.

I think it speaks to the pain
that kids are going through.

That they feel like they don't have
any kind of avenue besides violence.

Payback's a bitch, isn't it, Natalie?

Signing up on AOL.

Eee, woo, wee, dwoo, dwee, dwaa…

The internet starts to take hold
in the middle of the '90s.

What it promised was the idea that
the world is gonna get a bunch smaller.

And there's now this device,
this network, this method

to find your people,

which is an exciting thing
for a lonely horror nerd, right?

It's just your fate.
You're that geeky Stephen King kid.

There's one of you in every school.

I was using it to chat
with other horror fans

and connect with people around
the world and find community.

That nascent technology gave rise
to a glut of these cyber horror movies.

There was some anxiety hurtling
towards the turn

of the millennium.

There's always knee-jerk
reactions to things that evolve

that come from the fear of change.

I deal with this in all my tech docs.
It's how I feel about technology.

So the world was upside down,
because of this new thing.

New wonders, majesty, new splendors.

The late '90s, you thought,

"Okay, 2000's coming,
the millennium's coming.

What's gonna happen?
How are things gonna change?"

It's unsettling at times.

- The folks here are ready
for the big moment

where we turn the millennium over to 2000.

That moment where the calendar
was go switch over

to a zero at the end.

And what does that mean?
Is that the end of the world?

There was a lot of
millennial fear rolling through

a lot of popular culture
in the late 1990s.

For years, we had grown up
being told that the 2000s

were either post-apocalyptic hellscape
or a world with flying cars.

And all of the Star Trek
science fiction leisure

and comfort that we expected
wasn't coming to pass.

So, I think that did provide
a sense of anxiety

that the turn of the millennium is coming.

Are we ready?
Are things actually getting better at all?

The time for trickery is past.

In this game, we show ourselves
as we really are.

I wasn't so jaded.

What were the 2000s?

What were they gonna bring us?

And there was this anticipation
like we don't know,

but I hope it's good.

Something like The Matrix
comes out with the idea

that we're all living in an illusion
and this world that we inhabit,

as shitty as it is,
the real world is even worse.

This is our playground.
This is our illusion.

The Matrix really resonated with people

and why we're still using the terminology
of the red and blue pill even today.

- You take the red pill,
you stay in Wonderland,

and I show you how deep
the rabbit hole goes.

People are so afraid
of the next millennium

that they become very fundamentalist
and concretized in their thinking.

You have no idea what's going on.

There's a lot going on in the world
at that time.

A lot of cults and mass suicides.

- You had the Branch Davidians

and David Koresh
and you had Heaven's Gate.

The world is gonna shut down
and we're all gonna go

fucking nuts and kill each other.

It's a modern-day biblical story.

A doom and gloom, end-of-times scenario.

We weren't quite sure
whether we were going to get

to see the noughties
when the Y2K scare came along.

Like everyone here is waiting
for the same thing,

the stroke of midnight.

It's hard to explain to a Gen Z person

the amount of anxiety
that Y2K generated at the time.

It was a weirdly scary moment
in our culture,

because we didn't know.

End of Days with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Not even Arnold was going to be immune
from the worst-case scenario of Y2K.

Catastrophic failure.
No one wanted to be on an aeroplane.

All of our clocks weren't gonna
reset and never go back.

You were gonna lose everything
on your computer.

All we can do now is batten down
and ride it out.

I never really subscribed to that.

I was with Prince, you know,
let's party like it's 1999.

So tonight I'm going
to party like it's 1999

We were all in shock, because
we were told by the media,

by commercials, by movies, by television,

that it was gonna go very bad
and then it didn't.

This whole Y2K thing never made
any sense to me.

What's gonna happen
is the sun's gonna burn out.

It's gonna get big uh,
it'll toast what's left of the earth

and we'll be a little cinder
and that's the end.

I won't be around.
So, I-- you know, good luck.

1995

Thank you.

This is how much I love Demon Knight.

I bought these and I have
kept them for 29 years.

So glad you could join me.

Your old pal, the Crypt Keeper,
has gone Hollywood in a big way.

Demon Knight is the pinnacle of
like what a B movie is for me.

Shout out to Ernest Dickerson.
He directed the hell out of it.

Demon Knight is about a group
of desperate people

who are trapped in a church
in the middle of the desert.

A church that has become
a seedy motel that's under siege

by this demonic person called,
"The Collector" to possess

an object of awesome power
from a mysterious stranger named Brayker.

-Drop the guns or I'll kill her.
-Don't!

I said, drop your goddamn guns!

With the success of Tales from the Crypt,
the series on HBO,

Universal, who owned those rights,

approached us and said
we should make movies.

We came upon Demon Knight.

I felt it wasn't something
I wanted to direct

and we found Ernest Dickerson,
who was a much better choice

than I would have been
for that particular script.

Heads up!

What I was really fascinated by
was that it was creating

a mythology and I wanted
to be part of that.

These kinds of movies,
they're very hard to make,

because you have limited budget,
limited time,

and so the collaboration is crucial
to get what you want.

And so I found working
with Ernest to be a delight.

I mean, just a delight.

This property is hereby condemned.

The great thing about it was that
it was all shot in one location.

We were able to actually get
a decommissioned

airplane hangar at Van Nuys Airport.

You know, we didn't have
to shoot at night.

We had much more control
and it wound up being

a great experience.

I first saw Billy Zane
in the Australian film Dead Calm.

And here's this really,
really handsome guy who plays

this really psychotic killer.

He had a lot of fun with
the character of the collector.

Come on out, everybody.
Time to play.

I wanted to give the impression
that the collector loved his job.

You know, just total contempt
for humanity.

- Humans, you're not worth
the flesh you're printed on.

Fuck this cowboy shit!

You fucking hoedown, podunk,
well then there motherfucker!

Billy Zane improv'd the hell
out of that movie.

He really did a great job.

Do we have a deal?

Something tells me you don't trust me.

I just loved you know,
being able to balance the horror

and the humor in the horror.

At least we're all in one piece.

I'm sorry about that, Irene.

It's okay. Vodka's kicking in.

And Bill Sadler, who played Brayker.

Bill had this great reputation
for playing, you know, pretty bad guys.

If you don't want those planes
to start splashing

into the Potomac as they run out of fuel,
what I want is very important.

Which was ideal, because
in the beginning you don't know

who's the good guy.

It defies your expectations
pretty much at every turn,

because the characters you think
who are gonna survive don't.

And the characters you think are
gonna die and die first don't.

It's so subversive in that way.

Jada Pinkett.
I remember I'm just like, "Wait, hold up.

Is she the protagonist of this?"

And then it's like, "She's the final girl?

Oh my God."

And you're the only one left.
You're the chosen one.

That's what I came here to do.
Give you this key.

I wanted an African-American,
because everybody's gonna think

she's gonna be one of the first persons
to die, you know?

'Cause that's what always happens.

If I can't have your soul,
I'm gonna take your heart.

I was 14, I think,
when the movie came out,

I had not seen a black female
character lead a horror movie.

It was a revelation for me at the time
and probably one of the big reasons

why I cherish this movie so much.

We were able to design
some really cool demons.

You know, we had these mime artists,

who wore leg extensions
and they did an amazing job.

I had started putting my mother
in some of my movies.

And my mother thought she was
gonna play a demon in this one.

And I'm thinking, "Oh no,
I can't kill my mother on film."

Fuck that, shoot 'em both.

I loved working with Ernest.

We just had the best time making
that picture together.

It kind of broke the mold
of what the typical

Tales from the Crypt story was.

It wasn't that comeuppance
kind of a thing.

What the hell are you doing?
You call that acting?

You know, Demon Knight,
when you look at it,

is really cosmic horror.

To me, that is true horror.

The horror of the unknown of the universe.

Now that's entertainment.

Wendigo, aka Frostbiter:
Wrath of the Wendigo,

directed by Tom Chaney.

This movie was made in the '80s
but did get released

in the '90s by Troma.

Troma put out a lot
of independent filmmakers

in the '90s and it still do, of course.

Leave my land.

I'm not about to let some old bum tell me
where I can't hunt.

You have no idea
what you may be the cause of.

This movie is fantastic.

It's about a group of hunters
that summon an evil,

so to speak, in a cabin,
and all hell breaks loose.

And now a woman has to go
and clean up the mess,

which is pretty much like life.

You are the chosen one,
you must complete the circle.

It has a Sam Raimi camera movement.

Let's wear our influences
on our sleeves, and I love it.

So many practical effects,
including a little creature

that comes out of a pot of, quote,
"bodacious chili".

Want some of my bodacious chili?

Dipped in feet, this shit's getting thick
and the dinner's good and ready.

We'll never see chili the same way again.

Oh, get off me!

One of my favorite parts
about this movie is this plane

that gets attacked by this creature.

The creature is a puppet in this scene,
and it's absolutely charming.

It's all about reactions.

I told you I can't see 2 feet fairly,
how the hell can I land?

Is it a plane? It's not a plane,
but they're gonna sell it

and this is what I love about
low-budget filmmaking.

They need a plane.
They're not gonna shoot around it.

They're gonna just make this plane,

and everyone's gonna be
on board literally for it.

The music in this movie is jazz.
It's rock.

It's a little bit of everything.
It changes.

Come and get me, boys.

Get it out of here!

Who's first for my tasty treats?

And speaking of rock,
Ron Asheton is in this movie.

He's from The Stooges.

Why is a punk demigod
in a movie like this?

I have no idea, but however you got him,
I'm glad you did.

That's right. It's everywhere
and it's everything.

And spoiler alert, we do get a Wendigo,

and it's straight out
of the Ray Harryhausen handbook.

A stop-motion creature
that just looks fantastic.

It uses every trick in the book.

And if you look at someone
like Tom Chaney can do it

inspires you to think,
"I can do this, too."

Join me.
We must stop the Wendigo.

This is a great example
of something that was plucked

from the '80s and we're able
to see it in the '90s,

because of Troma doing the Lord's work.
Hail Satan.

Here's to the three-breasted women
of good old Tibetan.

I know this book will drive people crazy.

Well, let's hope so.
The movie comes out next month.

Apocalypse Trilogy is something
that I realized

I was doing a couple movies into it.

These movies are about
the end of everything.

I suppose that comes from my upbringing.

I was raised where you read
the Bible in school.

Some of that stuff's
really spooky and about the end.

Holy Toledo, really?

And I got fascinated
with the end of things.

- We have gotten reports, um,
sketchy at best, of people mutating.

Their bodies swelling and distorting.
In the Mouth of Madness kicks serious ass.

It's one of my favorite Carpenter movies.

It centers around a private investigator

who's hired to track down a genre
horror novelist who's disappeared.

Sam Neill plays the investigator
who's off trying

to track down Sutter Cane,
because his new novel,

In the Mouth of Madness, is starting

to drive people literally crazy
who are reading advanced copies.

Do you read Sutter Cane?

What?

It's all homage to H.P. Lovecraft.

It's not an homage to Stephen King.

It's all Lovecraft.

That crazy world of his.

- The Stygian world yawning
blackly beyond.

- A pulp writer. Science fiction
horror/horror stories.

His ideas were so incredible.

He had a sense of the apocalypse.

The Cthulhu mythos. Creatures imitating men.

And monsters that are
just beyond our grasp

are waiting for a portal to come in.

All those horrible, slimy things
trying to get back in.

Michael De Luca and John
wound up working together a lot

on the script and beating it
into a more Lovecraftian story.

Something he could really sink
his teeth into.

Do you want some, too, buddy?

John has a habit of asking
people to look in the mirror.

Look at themselves.

We are battling in a Sutter Cane story.

This is not reality.

Reality is not what it used to be.

Sam Neill, who I'd worked with
on the Invisible Man movie,

was my star.

And Julie Carmen and Jürgen Prochnow.

I loved working with them. Loved it.

…He the guy that writes that horror crap?

Maybe he's too sophisticated for you.

Sutter Cane happens to be
this century's most-widely-read author.

Over my shoulder here is Mrs. Pickman.

Frances Bay. She's an amazing actress.

You look as if you've been up all night.

Been reading.

When the stars align and I'm given

the extraordinary gift of a project like

In the Mouth of Madness,
it is such a peak experience.

When someone who's as thought-provoking

as John Carpenter
and Sandy King Carpenter,

when they make a film,
you can self-reflect

on so many things in your own
dream life and unconscious.

Today is Mommy's day.

I remember John saying to me
and to the people around

who were the monster makers that
with monsters, you just show a flash.

So it goes into the psyche,
but you're not even sure what that was.

When Jürgen Prochnow pushes my eyes
into the manuscript,

it's like a drop acid.

My mind is blown.

We succeeded at doing things

out of nightmare sequences
you could really have.

The contortionist Julie Carmen
out of the car.

The insane asylum pieces.

One of my favorite points
is when Sam Neill gets chased

down the hallway by the 18-foot-wide
wall of monsters.

To me, that really comes together
as a great nightmare piece.

A lot of times, I don't know
what a movie is about

until I see it
and all the pieces are together.

A lot changes in the editing.

It felt like we were documenting
the effect of anarchy

on civilization and the aftermath.

- If for any reason you are one of us

who hasn't become infected,
take shelter immediately.

I loved how it turned out.
I think it was pretty good.

- Not reality! Reality--

Such an existential,
nihilistic thunderclap.

It's haunted me ever since I've seen it.

In 10 years, human race
will just be a bedtime story

for their children.

A myth. Nothing more.

Evil Dead was a cornerstone
for many horror fans around the world.

And I had the absolute privilege
of working with Sam Raimi

on The Grudge.

Sam Raimi inspired a whole
generation of filmmakers

to take glee in the absolute fun in gore.

And Bloody Muscle Bodybuilder in Hell
is a clear, shining example.

Shinichi Fukazawa,
he wore his Sam Raimi love

very, very openly.

This is the Japanese Evil Dead.

He's the writer, the director, the star.

And it is his tribute album.

Bloody Muscle Bodybuilder in Hell
is about a bodybuilder and his girlfriend.

They find themselves trapped
in his father's house,

pursued by a vengeful spirit.

So as not to risk you missing the point,

the main character's dressed
like Ash, and he recycles

some of Ash's dialogue.

And true to the spirit
of Sam Raimi, this is a man

who had almost no money
with which to work.

And he's ending up with
something that's running

just barely over an hour.

But every single penny is on the screen.

He is putting all of that
into practical effects

and visual images.

You see his love and his work ethic
throughout it.

This filmmaker got a free location.

And in doing so, he shot the film

in that location with friends and favors
and his acting class buddy.

And when they got home, they realized that

they couldn't use about 80%
of the footage.

Instead of taking the L
and taking the loss,

he went back
and started refilming the movie

over and over in little pieces.

And it started shooting in 1995
and it didn't complete until 2012.

The ethos of the do-it-yourself,
get-it-done mentality

was so important.

You see the personality of the filmmaker

and that's part
of what you fall in love with.

- This is a filmmaker that did not stop
until his film was done.

And that is what the spirit
of independent filmmaking is.

See you in hell, baby.

- Tales from the Hood.

Tales from the Hood
is really an interesting film,

because it is a response
to the racial strife

from the earlier parts of the decade.

I've got nothing against good cops,

but I will see lowlife scum like you
run out of the department.

You shut the fuck up, cock.

A kind of broad-stroke allegory
about race relations in America

put in a kind of an EC Comics context
that is just like a spoonful of medicine.

Tales from the Hood
is an anthology horror film

that reflects what I thought was
scary in the black community

in the '90s when we made it.

Shit, man, that place does look
evil as hell.

- Man, both of y'all need
to shut the fuck up.

Dead people ain't who y'all need
to be worried about anyway.

It's not the dead that
you have to worry about.

It's the people around you.

-Oh dang!
-Psych fuck!

I've been waiting for you boys.

Clarence Williams III,
who was our mortician

in Tales from the Hood
when I was growing up,

I knew him as Linc from Mod Squad.

And working with him was
a highlight of my career.

Where's the shit?

You'll get the shit.
You'll be knee-deep in the shit.

There's a wraparound story
that kind of carries us through

four other stories about some kids
who are coming

to a funeral home to pick up some drugs.

And we see stories about people
who have left our plane.

Death, it comes in many strange packages.

How you deal with cops.

You'll lose your badges over this.
You had no reason to pull me over.

How you deal with someone attacking you
within your own race.

Where you want me
to shoot your ass, motherfucker?

How you deal with domestic violence

that could be happening in your house
or next door.

Teach you and that boy some respect.

And how you deal with your
political environment.

What you believe
and what you allow yourself

to be manipulated to believe.

Listen, by the time I finish with you,

you might even get
a few black votes in the till.

Well, the start would be just getting
the bastards off my front lawn.

This character, this racist politician,
as an actor you say,

"Can I do that and try
to put some humanity into him?"

Not make him right,
but just make him human.

You think you and some old voodoo bitch
could scare me out of my house.

I don't care how many slaves died…

This is on a set where everybody
is black, except for me.

And I'm doing this racist rant.

I'll kill you all, you--
you little nigglin's.

It was intimidating,
but it was also very freeing,

because I could just be this
thing in front of these people.

So it's a little dangerous.

I think I did it after and say,
"Hey man, that's just--

everybody, love you.

This is not me. I hope you liked that.

And I hope you probably went
like, 'Ooh man, that's real.'

You know, like, but that is not me."

For us, the horror was always human.

You little motherfucker.

You like to draw fucked-up
pictures of people, huh?

And the monster or the supernatural
or the paranormal was always redemptive.

So we were killing the things
that we hated for the most part.

It was a way of getting back.

I think there is a delightful
natural reckoning to all things

at the end of the day.

Welcome to my world.

- Here I am with these dolls.

They're just sitting there and moving.

And I got to look around and act at 'em.

And when I realize
they're coming after me,

then it's like the whole world's on me.

It obviously looks so much better
on screen

than it does when I'm sitting here acting
to a little doll right there.

What we tried to do is create
our evil villains

to be as reprehensible as possible.

Because some of the things that
we were dealing with are things

that you know in your real world.

That catharsis becomes even bigger.

- What's wrong, Jerome?

You don't like seeing
black people get killed?

Studio executives, and this is
not all of them, but enough,

want to be creative.

But they want to be creative
in your fucking shit.

Spike Lee, who I met as an actor
during School Daze,

became our executive producer on this.

And you know, they would say,
"Hey, Rusty, you know, do this."

And I go, "Huh, I don't want to do that."

And I call Spike, "Hey, Spike,
they want me to do this."

Spike said, "What?"

And then Spike would call
the studio and say,

"Yo, leave him alone."

Actually, he would say,
"Leave him the fuck alone."

And then they would leave me alone.

Because he was a creative guy
in his own right.

He just supported us,
so that we could do it.

I don't owe no responsibilities
for these motherfuckers.

But you are responsible
for the lives you've taken,

for the dreams you've turned
into nightmares.

I am one of those people
that believes that art can

influence and educate,
and sometimes change minds.

Every single human horror
in Tales from the Hood

is still with us today.

I don't think you can
rehabilitate those types.

Nah, you just kill them.

Who do you think
you fucking with, old man?

It just shows that humans are very flawed

as we see the same issues constantly
bubble up again and again,

you know, through time.

Welcome to hell!

Motherfuckers.

- Get out!

The '90s had a great amount
of serial killer films,

which was very popular then.

Mine being one of them.

Are you following me?

Oh, kind of.

Skinner is about a sociopathic
and psychopathic drifter,

who charms his way into
a modern day Los Angeles home.

Good morning.
How you doing, big guy?

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Using it as a base
all the while he is terrorizing

the community around him.

Hello, are you alright?

Everything's just fine.

You have a person that
is living publicly among

a group of people,
but in his own personal world

he really is a true psychopath.

A murderous one at that.

- Told you not to look
while I was getting dressed!

We're gonna have a talk, you bitch!

Paul Hart-Wilden wrote it.
English guy.

Very interesting guy.

And I suppose it had,
of course, correlations

with Silence of the Lambs.

You've got a guy that-- skinning people.

But then, of course, so does
Ed Gein and all of those guys.

They're all referencing,
all going back to that.

Just total different ways.

When you're playing someone
who's as unhinged

as that character Dennis Skinner,
you begin rather carefully.

But like any character you do,
you get more comfortable

as the movie progresses.

So you might as well go all the way,
because there's no going back.

I reach down and I pulled
your face right off.

I wasn't worried I was going
to start chopping the crew up.

But you do become much more comfortable
in that character's…

…well, for lack of a better word, skin.

Yes, baby!

It couldn't be now!

It was disturbing,
but it was made much easier

by the fact that my cast was great.

Especially, Traci Lords.

You've become so predictable
even after all this time.

It's the beginning of the end, Skinner.

She would come on set knowing
every one of her lines

and everybody else's lines in the scene.

That is rare to begin with.

Cheerful, positive attitude all day long.

Had crap tons of prosthetics on.

It's horribly uncomfortable.

She didn't complain once
for all the weeks we worked on that.

It made me judge actors I worked
with after that based on her.

This is what he did to me.

The money for that movie
came from some legitimate,

but also some very dubious sources,
which I don't even understand to this day.

It had a very fast release
and then they yanked it

from the theaters very quickly.

I suspect some legal troubles,
some financial troubles.

They gave a really lousy VHS print,
which was mediocre.

The DVD print looked like
someone had just stuck

a Sony Handycam in front of the TV
when they ran a version of the videotape.

I mean, it was really bad.

And then it was forgotten about,
which is fine.

I just expected it.
I'd done horror films before.

It's not the first time.

Then Severin gave it this big,
glorious 4K release.

And I was like, "What?"
You know, I couldn't believe it.

Now, whenever I'm at, you know,
horror conventions signing,

at least 15, 20 people come up
with you know, Skinner DVDs

and-- but I think the real
prized ones are the VHS copies,

'cause those are very rare.

Do you agree with me
that you and Jeff were talking

about me behind my back?

-No!
-Don't fucking lie to me!

- Clive Barker's Lord of Illusions.

The Last Illusion is a brilliant story.

And Harry D'Amour is an amazing character.

One of the few of Clive's
characters that he created,

particularly in the Books of Blood
that I coveted.

I loved the idea of him being
this you know,

mad New York paranormal
investigator who's doing it,

because he's driven
by his own demons rather than

because he's interested in the subject.

It's the darkness, D'Amour.
It's been waiting for you.

Lord of Illusions is about
the detective genre

colliding with the world of magic.

Come with me into the great beyond.

- I always found Clive Barker
very interesting.

I had just got cast in another movie,
a big epic.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Paul Verhoeven
called, the Crusades.

They started building the sets
and everything in Spain.

And that movie fell apart.
So I auditioned for Clive.

And I found the role pretty interesting
of Philip Swan, the magician.

Have you seen this before?

Clive Barker, the thing
that surprised me most

is he's very funny.

Obviously, he's very smart,
very intelligent.

Cared very much about what he was doing.

And he was a very responsible
director, too.

I worked with Scott Bakula previously

on Richard Rush's movie
the Color of Night,

such a nice guy.

One of those lead actors
that makes it easier

for everybody else.

Famke Janssen,
who I had worked with her on that

and then I worked with her again
on Deep Rising.

We became friends, her husband and I.

So that was a very friendly atmosphere.

Nix ran some kind of a cult, right?

A Charlie Manson deal?

He could get into people's heads,
make them see things, terrible things.

When it came to the cult elements
of the movie,

Nix was obviously this big presence,
evil presence.

Fire said to me, "You are my instrument.

You shall be known as the Puritan."

Working with Daniel von Bargen,
playing Nix on the movie,

I really liked Daniel.

Sort of interesting casting,
serious actor.

Later when I would see him on Seinfeld…

-George. Check it out.
-Yeah.

Three times around, no feet.
Hmm?

It's so funny, I can't get
the character of Nix

out of my mind when I watch that.

I've come back to bring you
the wisdom of the grave.

The horror elements of the film,
putting the mask on Nix

was such a throwback to the Black Sunday
with Barbara Steele.

Clive was directing Lord of Illusions

at the same time
that he was executive producing

Bloodline and Candyman 2.

We were on a night shoot on Bloodline.

And Gary Tunnicliffe, who was
my special effects makeup artist

on Bloodline, who was also doing
work on Lord of Illusions,

said to me he had to go
and deliver a mandrill…

to the set of Lord of Illusions.

Did I want to go with him?

If I had been the first AD…

…on Bloodline,
I would never have let me go

driving off into Los Angeles
in the middle of the night

in Pinhead makeup, but gave permission.

So Gary and me, and the mandrill
climbed into a car

and we drove across Los Angeles.

I don't think Clive was too impressed,
because I brought filming to a standstill.

It was worth it to see Clive's face
when Pinhead

suddenly walked onto the set
of Lord of Illusions.

I think we were all afraid of the baboon.

I remember the young actress,
the mother came up to me

and said something like,

"Uh, do you think my daughter is um,
is she showing fear enough?

Is she afraid?
Do-- do you really read that?"

And I'm like, "There is a drooling,
angry baboon in front of a 9-year-old.

Yeah, I think it's working."

I think he's in love.

When I am levitating the car,
part of the gas line broke in the car.

So I was you know, acting,
breathing this in,

and I was you know, very dizzy
all of a sudden.

And then there was a paramedic next to me.

But then I used that in the film,
little actor things

for myself that helped.

You need me alive.

Why? So you can fuck the woman I love?

Lord of Illusions.

I saw it at the premiere also
at the Chinese theater.

I liked most of it.

And then when I saw the director's cut,
I think that was even better.

He got into my head, showed me
what we really look like

when the veneer's gone.

No illusions, just the truth.

I think it fleshed out
the characters more,

and it helped the plot move along,
and it made much more sense to me.

So I really preferred that one.

What the fuck are you?

A man who wanted to be a god.

Seven.

To me, the two archetypal
'90s horror films

were Seven and Scream.

And they were both
very different from each other,

but they seemed to kind of lead
the vanguard

of what was being done in horror
at that time.

I feel like those two films,
which both landed somewhere

in the middle of the decade,
started up the engine again

and got horror more
in the driver's seat culturally.

Oh, fuck me.

Seven, it felt like
it was starting to push horror

into a deeper, darker place
than it had been in a long time.

Exploring the boundaries
of aberrant human behavior,

and doing that through
the vehicle of procedural.

He's alive!
That cocksucker's alive!

When I first read the script,
the prospective producers,

the guys that had it,
they were terrified of it.

They just thought it was just too extreme.

It was pitched to me as a low-budget film.

I think they were gonna try
and make it for like 8 million.

And they said,
"Well, what about the movie?

Don't you think it's bloody,
and gory, and-- and too much?"

I said, "No." I-- I said-- I said,
"You want the audience to think

that they saw it, but they
didn't actually see it."

Each of the crime scenes
was a work of art.

Call for help and you'll live,
but you'll be disfigured.

Or you can put yourself out
of your own misery.

Next day, my agent said I talked
my way out of a job.

I said, "What do you mean
I talked my way out?"

She said, "Ernest, before you walked
in there, they were getting ready

to just toss the script
in the garbage can.

You told them how to make the movie."

They said, "Well, that's how
we should make the movie.

We can get an A-list director."

And so I went to this guy
that had directed Alien 3.

It was David Fincher.

There are seven deadly sins, Captain.
You can expect five more of these.

- You're dealing
with the seven deadly sins,

and each one is just a little bit more
effed up than the last.

You're dealing with a serial killer,
so it's not paranormal.

It's, this shit could happen.

The sins were used in medieval sermons.

Sermons were about atonement for sin.

These murders are like forced attrition.

- Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey,
and Brad Pitt.

Probably three of the greatest actors
to ever be in a ho-- a horror film.

A cast that so elevates
what could have been

your basic serial killer,
slasher kind of film

and you know, put it into
the realm of the philosophical.

What sick, ridiculous puppets we are,
and what a gross little stage we dance on,

not knowing that
we are not what was intended.

The killer was trying
to make a moral statement about

how destroyed society was.

We're all coming from moral high ground,

judging people and making them
feel like absolute fucking shit,

when, if they turned that mirror
back around,

they would see
they're just as guilty of it

as everybody else around them.

Could you even try to say
these were innocent people

and keep a straight face?

We see a deadly sin on every
street corner. And we tolerate it.

Most people walk into the movie thinking
Brad Pitt's the star of the movie.

The movie is Morgan Freeman's movie.

It's about Morgan Freeman's character
reconnecting with his humanity.

If we catch John Doe, and he turns out
to be the devil, that might live up

to our expectations,
but he's not the devil.

He's just a man.

The whole atmosphere
of the film, which is like

Dante's Inferno,
you're constantly going down,

and it's dark, and it's raining
nearly all the time.

It's probably one of the smartest scripts
ever written.

He made me do it.
He put that thing on me.

Then he told-- he told me to fuck her.

It was a puzzle.
It was a mystery.

Kind of ripping out the underbelly

of what happens in a city,
and showing the ugly side of it.

Detective!

You're looking for me.

Kevin Spacey's killer.
Unassuming. Nothing remarkable.

He's thought ahead
of the moment that he's arrested

and set up the final denouement
in the desert.

And then goes on to do
to take the gloves off,

as far as the fallout of it goes.

I mean, and the person you think
is the hero is not always going to win.

- I visited your home this morning.

I tried to play husband.
It didn't work out.

"What's in the box?"

What's in the box?

-Not till you give me the gun.
-What's in the fucking box?

- It's just disturbing.

The studios really didn't know
what they had.

You know, I remember talking
to someone at New Line,

and they were so ready to pull
the advertising budget on Seven,

'cause they just didn't think
it was gonna work.

It hadn't tested particularly well,
'cause it was dark.

And they didn't know that
people were gonna engage

with that kind of darkness.

Wanting people to listen,
you have to hit them with a sledgehammer.

And then you'll notice
you've got their strict attention.

It, in itself, created a genre.

It suddenly gave an aesthetic that
nobody had ever really given credit to.

- There were endless Seven imitators
after that movie came out,

just like there were endless imitators
of Scream after that movie came out.

This is a movie with much more
on its mind than tracking

a serial killer who kills
in really cool ways.

This is about how did we lose
our humanity,

and how do we get to reconnect
with it again

in the midst of all these horrors?

And ultimately, the best horror movies
always celebrate that idea.

You know, this isn't gonna
have a happy ending.

Michael Myers came back and came back
with a vengeance in the '90s.

Michael Myers was particularly
haunting and occupied

a special space in my brain,

because I did see the original
Halloween on a VHS

that my brother had smuggled
into the house

when I was way too young to see it.

And it really messed me up
in a great, wonderful way.

There's something so unspeakable
about Michael Myers.

There's nothing that's going
to stop this monster,

as Dr. Loomis called him.

The Halloween franchise, I always thought

there was no story left in that
whole deal after the first one.

And boy, was I wrong.

The audience wanted to see
this Michael Myers over and over again.

Say what you will about
the Halloween franchise,

they took some swings.

Halloween III:
Season of the Witch, of course,

is the biggest example.

But The Curse of Michael Myers,
the fact that they took

the storyline
and really followed it through

this whole cult of thorn business…

The thorn symbol is actually
a constellation of stars

that appears from time to time
on Halloween night.

Whenever it appears, he appears.

- Halloween was in a tricky spot
in the '90s.

If it kept doing the same thing
again and again,

it would just be more of the same
and it would get boring.

So you have to respect the filmmakers
for taking a swing.

Curse of Michael Myers brought back
a lot of familiar faces,

including Donald Pleasence.

What makes you think he'll come back here?

This house is sacred to him.

He has all his memories here.
His rage!

And it also brought
a fresh face into the mix.

But by the time it came out,

it wasn't quite a fresh face to audiences.

Paul Rudd made his big debut in Clueless,

but he had actually shot
Curse of Michael Myers before.

I was only 8 years old when I saw him...

but I was one of the
lucky ones. I survived.

I thought it was really cool
how they revisited

Tommy Doyle's character.

Laurie Strode like babysat these two,
him being one of them.

And the fact that it's his story,
I thought was kind of a unique twist.

Michael's work isn't done in Haddonfield.

And soon, he'll come home to kill again.

- It was directed by Joe Chappelle,
a terrible example of studio meddling.

It's a film that required lots of reshoots

that were really tricky to do,
because unfortunately,

lead actor Donald Pleasence had passed.

If you think that Joe Chappelle's movie

with the whole Cult of Thorn
sounds bonkers,

consider what might have been.

It the Weinsteins had actually
asked their golden boy,

Quentin Tarantino to write a script.

And what he came up with saw Michael Myers

on a road trip with The Man
in Black driving down Route 66

slaughtering everyone in sight.

Now when I say that
this film was meddled with,

I mean it was really meddled with.

Now there is a producer's cut
in existence that I believe

adds a good 45 minutes to more
and more cult business.

It's out there for you to find.

Michael, your final sacrifice.

Terror has a new name.

♪ Mr. Jack will steal your soul ♪

Jack-O.

Growing up what got me
into horror was probably going

into a video store
and seeing all those VHS tapes

that had crazy, gory covers
and that had wild titles

and everything that had the word, evil
or demon or blood in it.

And of course you would bring it home

and you would watch it,
'cause you wanted to get scared

and you did get scared as a kid,
especially for the low-budget movies,

just renting and hiding it
from my parents.

- Mr. Jack will break your back.

Cut off your head with a whack.
Whack!

Jack-O is one of those films
that you could have sworn

you've seen a million times
just because you saw

that VHS cover at the video store.

Maybe you took him for granted,

maybe you picked him up
and checked him out,

but he was always there waiting for you.

Jack-O, directed
by Steve Latshaw is a classic,

pumpkinhead rip-off
where an old warlock is reincarnated

in modern times in the '90s.

No!

And now is out for revenge
for the ancestors

who had banished him
and who had killed him.

I am the last of the ones
who brought you into this world.

Now go back to hell.

This movie was produced by Fred Olen Ray,

Linnea Quigley is in it,
a Steve Latshaw regular.

Carolyn.

How's my boyfriend?

Ooh, you look so scary.

But also John Carradine
and Cameron Mitchell,

some old Fred Olen Ray players.

Welcome to my asylum of horrors.

And Brinke Stevens also makes
a cameo in this movie.

- Nice costume, butthead.

You're scaring my girlfriend,
now get the hell out of here.

He has a scythe, he's killing people in
the neighborhood, what more do you want?

His eyes light up.

A little big for trick-or-treating,
aren't you bucko?

You can enjoy the pumpkin head
in this movie as he's going

and killing the entire neighborhood
on Halloween.

Trick or treat!

- Vampire in Brooklyn.

I would love to have you for dinner.

People get pigeonholed into
their genre, which happens,

unfortunately, all the time.

I know Wes had to use bargaining chips.

"Okay, I'll do this horror movie
so that I can do this movie

that doesn't have horror in it."

To make passion projects
and projects that people

don't think they're capable of making

or that aren't going to be
commercially viable.

What's sad to me
is that after giving our world

so many amazing films that have
made you know, their money back,

they have to kind of create
these strange bargains

to be able to do the movie
that they really have wanted

to do their whole lives

when they've already proved themselves
10 times over to the industry.

It's a really hard business that way.

Who the fuck are you?

I'm Maximillian.
A connoisseur of death, you might say.

I was so fucking excited
for a Vampire in Brooklyn to come out.

I was like, "What?
It's Eddie Murphy as a fucking vampire!

What part of that don't you love?"

Put a little heart into it.

It's Wes Craven directing,
Angela Bassett as a fucking badass.

I thought it was funnier than hell.

Drive the limo
and shut your fucking mouth.

Vampire in Brooklyn's about
a ancient vampire

from the old world coming to Brooklyn,
to America in contemporary times.

-I need you to help me find a woman.
-A woman?

Oh, well, you came to the right spot, man.
I mean, Brooklyn's full of hoes.

I'm not interested in your hoes.

- Comedy-horror film.

It was a project that Eddie had written
with his brother, Charlie Murphy.

They had sought out Wes
to direct the film.

We shot almost entirely
on the lot at Paramount,

although we were in
and around LA a little bit.

And we shot down at the docks
for the opening of the film

with the boat smashing into
the harbor master's dock house.

It was a wolf, goddammit,
son of a bitch turned into a man!

Did the flip-flop shit on me!

Seeing Eddie Murphy lean into that.

Just watching him just mop
the floor with everybody.

Playing multiple characters,
because, you know,

God forbid we give work to other people.

He was great as possessing the pastor
and making everyone say evil is good.

-Evil is good and ass is good.
-Uh-huh

And if you get you a piece
of evil ass, whoo!

He was good as the white Italian thief.

-Garlic bread, signore.
-Oh, the fucking garlic.

Next person to offer
the garlic product is gonna get

one in the ass, alright?

There was a real kind of glint
in his eye where you could see

that he was really enjoying doing this.

You ain't got to pull that
Blacula shit with me, alright?

If you're hungry, I'll run you down to KFC

down the street
and hit you up with a two-piece.

I already had Italian.

Eddie was really cool to work with.
He's a trooper.

He loves to wear makeup,

so not problematic putting
makeup on at all.

What was a challenge on that?

Eddie Murphy, who normally would have like
Rick Baker doing the project.

Rick couldn't do this project,
because he wasn't gonna be

given the time to develop the makeups,

test the makeups,
rework the makeups if necessary.

Most of the makeups are successful.

Not crazy about Guido, the Italian guy.

That was a makeup that totally
needed tested and reworked.

We probably had 8 weeks,
10 weeks if we were lucky

to build everything for the film.

My favorite things in the movie
are the makeups that we did

once he see was
in the second stage makeup,

where it really starts
to show his vampire look.

Your turn, Rita.
Taste her and quench the hunger.

- And then the final look
that particular vampire

I really thought was cool.

Vampire in Brooklyn,
for me it doesn't work tonally,

because it doesn't find the happy medium
between horror and comedy.

It doesn't find its groove,
but there's some fun stuff in it

and there's some good performances.

Oh, you're not afraid.

It was Coming to America,

but with a vampire in the middle of it.

I think people had they
known that going in,

I think they would have enjoyed it more,
but I fucking loved it, man.

To this day, I love that film.

Still don't believe in vampires,
detective?

- If you thought it was over, think again.

Xtro: Watch the Skies.

Xtro, when it came out on video
and in those days,

it was good old VHS, it grew legs

and it just ran off
and did very, very well indeed.

I needed a job on the second one,
which I'm not happy with at all.

It was unfortunate.

-What the fuck is that?
-Shh, let's go!

The third one of these, I wanted an excuse
to make a film in Los Angeles.

Daryl Haney put together
this script from after,

you know, various drafts
and various firings

about this island
where this alien had been secreted

and closed up in a concrete
kind of sarcophagus.

These marines go there and discover it.

And it gets out and all sorts
of dreadful things happen.

This alien is essentially
tracking us, hunting us down.

He doesn't want us
on the island, doesn't want us

to find out what's going on.

I was thrilled to do that.
I'm a water sign.

And when I found out
we were gonna be in a boat

and we were gonna be on one
of the Channel Islands,

I was in seventh heaven, man.

If you should come across
any documents or uh,

let's just say any remnants of the camp,
you ought to bring them directly to me.

I love playing the antagonist.
I absolutely love it.

I've played two good guys in my career.

Never been so bored in my life.

Shoot to kill?

That's an order, Friedman!
Shoot to kill!

- Harry is quite a character.
It was quite a trip.

He would insist on getting his shot
and was adamant about it, and rightly so.

I was absolutely in control.

So that anything that's wrong
with that film is my fault.

And there's plenty of stuff
wrong with it, you know,

plenty of stuff wrong.

I think that's where I really
did feel the budget cramping us.

There are silly things that happen, like

they're in this boat
going across to this island

and you quite clearly see this jeep,
right, sitting on the boat.

And then they get on the island
and suddenly the jeep is there.

And they've been swimming to the island
on little rowboats and things like that.

People always ask, "How did the jeep
get onto the island?", you know?

"Well, it's movie magic, you see."

The specials on that and how that sort

of mirror-mirage thing happening
in the movie,

I thought that was really spectacular.

The alien in Xtro.

We all feel for it.

You could take it to all
the horrors we have visited upon

our fellow humans, be it in camps

where we imprisoned people
that we were afraid of.

I just wish it were better.

But it was our film, you know,
and we did our best.

For some reason, I find it rather bitty.

I should have been tougher.

- I have a spot in my heart for Xtro
and for Harry.

We say they're little movies.
No movie is little.

We understand how difficult
it is to have a movie made.

Having been made so long ago
that it still has legs,

so to speak, is a beautiful thing.

I know what I'd like to believe.

That there might be hope yet
for the human race.

- Stuart Gordon's Castle Freak.

Another film that was shot
at Charlie Band's castle

in the heyday of Full Moon
was Stuart Gordon's Castle Freak.

Anybody there?

- Stuart was like the top director
in that bunch of us

who were directing for Charlie.

Charlie really exploited Stuart
to make more and more movies.

Castle Freak, we're talking
about a third movie shot

at the castle I owned for many years.

It started with a piece of artwork.

So much like Dolls,
when I had this creepy image of a doll,

the eyes being pulled out.

Many years later after Stuart
had made other pictures

and Fortress, I said,

"Stuart, we gotta make a movie
at the castle.

Let's keep it simple.

We can do like we did
with Pit and the Pendulum,

but not, you know, a medieval epic.

We'll shoot it at the castle."
We'll design it around the castle.

He said, "Sounds good."
He said, "Do you have an idea?"

I said, "Not only do I have
an idea, I have a poster."

So I pulled out this poster
of this creature. Castle Freak!

And he loved it. He goes, "Okay,
we gotta go make Castle Freak."

He said, "Do you have any ideas
of who should be in it?"

I said, "We gotta get Barbara Crampton
and Jeffrey Combs."

I mean, come on.
It'd be so cool to reunite them.

Hello, ladies, I'm gonna start
making an inventory

of what we got here.
The booty.

You wanna tag along, Beck?
Get the lay of the land?

The team of Barbara Crampton
and Jeffrey Combs together,

they're both incredible.

And they all kind of shared
a unique vision

and were able to kind of bring out
the best of each other.

You brought a woman here!

I was lonely.

You were drunk!

One of the things that makes
Castle Freak so disturbing

is the design of the freak himself.

He is so damn freaky that
even a hardcore horror fan

would have to kind of turn
their eyes away on occasion.

Castle Freak was definitely--
especially being there on set,

and seeing the suit, and the poor guy
with his dick cut off, and thought,

"Oh my God, what are we doing?"

It's only about a handful
of these stories where someone

would come to me and go,
"We want to make a sequel",

or "We want to make a remake",
or "We want to", whatever it is,

"Can we license the rights?"

And in this case, it wasn't during a time
where we were starving for money,

but I love Barbara,
and we're still very close.

I thought, "Alright, well,
she's got in with some investors

and there's no reason why we can't make
another Castle Freak.

It can't hurt, you know, it just will
bring more attention to the franchise",

so she went off and made that.

This was the last movie, sadly,
that I made with Stuart Gordon,

but I'm really happy with the film.

META OR NOT, HERE WE COME

RETURN OF THE TEEN SLASHER
& META-FUELED HORROR

Usually a movie is trying to ignore

and pretend everything
that happened before it

doesn't exist, and Scream said,

"Nope, let's all agree right now,
all of us have seen

all of these movies that brought us here."

We know that you stopped
screaming at the scares

and you started laughing.

We're gonna reinvent the slasher.

You're not safe from this movie
just because you know how slashers work.

Every character in this knows it, too.

The audience's knowledge of movies becomes

a key ingredient to the success
of that picture.

- Name the killer in Halloween.

Michael. Michael Myers.

- Yes! Very good.

Scream is probably
the generation-defining movie

of the '90s when it comes to horror.

And to all the major studios out there,

it showed us that horror
no longer is being shoved

into this corner of the remakes,
and the sequels,

and the straight-to-video.

It's a juggernaut at the box office again.

Ooh, you wanna play psycho killer?

Can I be the helpless victim?

What Kevin Williamson did was
what is now referred to as, "meta",

and that is the commenting
on what is happening

as you're watching it by the person

that you're watching without them
breaking the fourth wall.

This is standard horror movie stuff.

Prom Night revisited, man.

The fact that we're so savvy
as horror-movie watchers,

let's just now start
to investigate what that means.

Let's throw that out to the audience

and let them partake in this fun
that we're going to have

in trying to figure it out.

- Scream is not the first movie
to be a meta horror movie,

but what Scream does
is it takes that concept

of meta filmmaking
and it breaks it wide open

in the mainstream.

Suddenly, that's what
everybody's talking about.

- Never say, "Who's there?"

Don't you watch scary movies?
It's a death wish.

You might as well just come out here
to investigate

a strange noise or something.

Scream, of course, was
in some ways, I feel like,

riding on the coattails of Pulp Fiction.

It was like a very Gen X kind of horror,

kind of a meditation, really,
on the genre.

Look, here comes the obligatory tit shot.

Certainly, Tarantino's influence
in his non-horror genre movies,

coupled with his own publicity
and interviews that he gave at the time,

built in this audience awareness,
this intertextuality.

- Andy, have you got the ring?
- Why, certainly.

Quentin Tarantino
is a fantastic example of the person

who had absorbed so much film culture

through his experiences
as a video store clerk

and his broad-ranging reach
of obscure genre films

to the classics of cinema,
so that when he starts making movies,

he's able to bring those references.

He's taking his love of film
and sharing it with the world

through more films and creating
this kind of feedback loop,

where people can fall in love with
Quentin Tarantino's films, then quote him.

- You hear me talking, hillbilly boy?

I'ma get medieval on your ass.

Kind of a conversation with the genre
and that just became, I think,

increasingly interesting to the audience.

There was a story
in the LA Times about how

teenagers didn't go
to teen movies anymore,

and the teen genres
weren't working at all,

that teenagers were more likely
to go see movies

with Arnold Schwarzenegger
or Sylvester Stallone

than they were to see movies
about themselves.

It isn't possible.

What's not possible?

He's fantastic.

This is his best performance ever.

Scream really changed the entire game.

It opened it up to a different audience
beyond perhaps the true horror fans,

because I think people
could hook into it more

when it was a little bit more meta
and a little bit more ironic.

Movies are not responsible
for our actions.

It's a classic case of life imitating art,

-imitating life.
-This isn't--

Suddenly, the floodgates
were opened for the horror genre

to embrace a new kind of intelligence.

Well, it's a long story.

In fact, if it was a movie,
it would take three

or four sequels just to do it justice.

I mean, the '80s had John Hughes,
which was teen angst and mostly comedy.

And then in the '90s we had Kevin,
and he brought it to horror,

but he brought it across many things.

He also had you know, teen angst
with Dawson's Creek,

and I think he ruled the '90s.

I'm not putting that hack drug
up my nose. It's so '80s.

Aliens have taken
over the Earth. Weigh it.

Kevin Williamson's so interesting,

because he went back
to the teen-driven horror

that he grew up on,
that he was inspired by.

Scream made a movie that brought
the teenagers back out again.

It was going to see
all these young, pretty faces

on a very slick-looking movie,

turning my friends who weren't
horror fans into horror fans.

"I know what you did last summer."
Ooh. What a crock of shit.

A level of polish that allowed people
to feel okay about watching them.

You know, The Burning looks like
The Burning,

but I Know What You Did Last Summer,

like Jennifer Love Hewitt's just luminous.
This looks like the cover of a magazine.

This is acceptable entertainment
where sometimes a slasher from the '80s

might have looked like three clicks over
from a snuff film.

We can tell old slasher movies
again, 'cause remember,

when Scream came out,
slasher movies were dead.

The only slasher movies were thrillers.

That's how the mainstream
kind of viewed these movies.

And all of a sudden, "Wait,
these 1981-style slasher killers

are cool again?

Hell yeah, let's go."

It's also important to note
that these films

were such big-budget blockbusters
that A-listers

were just lining up to be part of them.

Everybody wanted to be in a horror movie.

You got like Bill Pullman in Lake Placid.

You got Sam Jackson in Deep Blue Sea.

These talented people, you know,
who presumably have the option

to say no saw something in this,
so it must be worthwhile.

If you only sat down
and watched Dimension Films

from the '90s,
you would get an absolute taste

of what horror in the '90s felt like.

The Weinsteins of it aside, like
the Weinsteins were hated in the '90s.

They did a lot more than just
what you know them for

in the later years, uh, with MeToo.

They were making very interesting pickups.

Studios are like,
"Horror's done, we're done,

we don't need Michael Myers
anymore", and they went yoink.

They're like, "Hellraiser".
Yoink.

You'd see that Dimension logo
and you would get excited,

because that meant you were
gonna not just watch something

that was quality,
not just something that had

big name actors in it,

but something that was probably
gonna swing for the fences.

As an actor wanted to be a part
of Dimension Films,

you wanted to be in a movie.
"Dimension? I-- I gotta do it."

They wanted good actors
and people that got cred to lend

to small budgets that could be
big-budget franchises,

which is very smart.

Look at all the directors,
all the different people

that came out of Dimension.

The genre stuff also became
very respected.

I think sometimes too much
of a good thing…

Maybe that genre got
watered down for a moment.

If you eat peanut butter everyday,
you're gonna get sick of it eventually

and you're not gonna eat
peanut butter for a year.

- Baby, I just win!

That tail ended up wagging the dog.

They became so self-referential
that they weren't having

the courage to kind of be
actually what they were.

I do think that when self-parody
kinda runs aground,

people will ask themselves,
like that scene at the beginning

of the Twilight Zone,
"What is really scary?"

You wanna see something really scary?

Okay, go ahead.

Quite a new way of actually
provoking and exploring

those really fundamental things
that the genre does

in ways we haven't seen before.

Ah! Shit! Fuck.

- There was just a hunger for that.

Back to kind of basics,
but the main kind of goal

was to scare the crap
outta the audience, you know?

And we hadn't seen that in a while.

Blair Witch kind of was
at the beginning, you know,

the cusp of that.

Like a month later, you know,
The Sixth Sense came out.

So there was this kind of pivot
at that time.

Finally, it seemed like
there was some movement

in horror away from the bubblegum
and more towards like,

"Okay, we're gonna scare
the crap outta you here."

But there was an appetite
for that, you know?

1996

- From Dusk Till Dawn.

Dusk Till Dawn is an amazing movie.

It is awesome. It's got sex.
It's got underworld vampires.

It's got some kitsch to it.

It's over the top, but it's scary.
It's cool.

And what did I say to you?

I said, buy the road map and leave.

What the fuck am I supposed
to do, Seth? He recognized us.

From Dusk Till Dawn is about a family

who is taken hostage by criminals
on the lam

who are heading to this town called,
"El Rey",

which is taken from the book, The Getaway.

After getting across the border
successfully,

stop at a all-night strip club called,
the "Titty Twister".

A lot of people were surprised.

You know, they thought they were seeing

the standard Quentin Tarantino
gangster movie

with the criminals on the run.

Using a lot of time to establish
the characters

is not the norm in the horror genre.

You didn't really see it coming
in the beginning of the movie.

And then you were like, "Okay,
something's coming. What is it?"

But you still didn't know it was vampires.

Dinner is served.

And then suddenly it turns
into a siege film.

- Does anybody know what's going on here?

- We got a bunch
of fucking vampires out there

trying to get in here and suck
our fucking blood. And that's it.

- Night of the Living Dead
and Assault on Precinct 13

were kind of the inspirations for it.

What the fuck?

I wanted to direct the film.
I created it to direct.

I'd written a 24-page treatment.

What Quentin Tarantino brought
to the script was, first off,

he has a love for all cinema.

All the genres we were trying
to uh, mix together.

-He signaled the ranger.
-I didn't!

When they were talking,
he mouthed the words, "help us".

You fucking liar! I didn't say shit!

Why don't you shut the hell up?

He brought a sense of humor
and the sense of violence,

even throw in the meta thing into it.

I know silver bullets are werewolves,

but I'm sure silver has
something to do with vampires.

Well, does anybody have any silver?

Okay. Then who cares?

Basically, it took almost eight years

to get it off the ground,
even after the success

of Reservoir Dogs and then Pulp Fiction.

It was still a hard sell for a studio.

At one point, we almost had it set up
as Tales from the Crypt movie.

Thank God we didn't, 'cause they wanted us
to put the Crypt Keeper in it.

Once Robert became interested in it,
then everything changed.

Welcome to slavery.

I already had a wife.

Suddenly, the project became bigger.

Initially, it was like, you know,

3 million or under movie
is what we were trying to do,

and then it became
an $18 million production.

Then the cast that was
brought on, so I was like,

"Yeah, let's let Robert do it.

He's a hot new guy in town,
and he's got a lot of energy,

and I love his movies,
and I love how he shoots."

So it-- it kind of became a no-brainer,

and it was gonna be an effects
showcase for us at KNB.

So, and you know, I got my story credit,

a producing credit,
and I got to work on a bunch

of cool effects stuff in this show.

People still think that I did
the makeup effects

on Dusk Till Dawn.

I can give Greg Nicotero some
credit for becoming Sex Machine.

Greg said, "Hey, what about Tom Savini?"

And Quentin,
"Well, let's send him the script

and let him send us a video audition."

They wanted me
to play Fred Williamson's part,

'cause he has a speech about Vietnam.

So the script arrived,
but then I saw Sex Machine,

and his lines were much better.

-What's your name, girlie?
-Kate, what's yours?

Sex Machine.
Pleased to meet you.

So I wrote his lines on cue cards
and put them around the room,

and I was just reading cue cards,
but it looked like

I was talking to a bunch of people.

So it made Quentin laugh.
So they changed the body types.

Sex Machine was a little guy,
not Fred Williamson,

and Fred became Frost
with the Vietnam speech.

It was a movie that had a lot
of visual effects in it,

and the way we achieved 'em
was kind of a weird hybrid

of like, practical and digital
at that time.

Now you do it all digitally.

I love you too, Seth.

The interior of the Titty Twister
was built

in the old Lawry steak seasoning factory

somewhere right near Glendale
in California.

It was a elevated set,
so we could get underneath

and do some gags and puppeteer
the big rat sequence and everything.

Tom Savini has this really cool
vampire look.

He goes, "Whose idea was it
to give me the dick nose?"

Tom's always like,
"You guys did this on purpose

and put a dick nose on my makeup."

It was never a dick nose,
it's literally a bat nose.

Fucking bit me!

What are you gonna do about it?

Come on, Sex Machine!

Robert, he shoots so fast, which is great,

because he's shooting everything
guerrilla style,

like he did with Desperado
and El Mariachi.

You'll have a wheelchair,
he's just sitting in it

and they're wheeling him around,
he's doing crazy shots.

So we never got bored.
It was always just fun.

And the soundtrack,
that was a wonderful case

of some great bands,

Tito and the Tarantulas was phenomenal.

Robert Rodriguez he had
actually temped Dusk Till Dawn

with Dead Calm.

But I spoke some nonsense and said,

"I think the best thing to do
is write a mariachi surf opera."

But that was like the perfect three words.

I think the vampires and the gore were--
were the glue in that one.

In its initial release, it didn't do
as well as they thought it would.

It wasn't a huge success
for Miramax or Dimension,

but in the years since it's a perennial.

It's always on television,
it's always on at Halloween.

Everybody knows it,

so it's made a lot of money
over the years.

It got made the way
it was supposed to get made.

And I think that's why people
love it to this day

is because it didn't follow the norms,

it didn't have the standard
three-act structure,

pulls a rug out from
underneath you halfway through.

And it gave us a great chance to just have
so much fun with the effects.

Now let's kill that fucking band.

Fuck you, everybody!
Goodnight!

Don't Look Up was co-written
by Hideo Nakata,

who would later go on to direct the Ring,
and by Takashi Shimizu,

who would later on direct
Ju-On:The Grudge.

It's widely considered
to be semi-autobiographical,

because it's the behind-the-scenes story

of a first-time director making
his first feature film.

And unfortunately for him,

he's trying to make
this first feature film

in a completely haunted set,
very dangerous set.

Yūrei Yanagi, an actor who reappears

in Ringu as a TV reporter, is the figure

of a newbie director who's seen
by many critics

as an on-screen surrogate
for Hideo Nakata himself.

You get a really self-reflexive
meta-narrative about filmmaking.

This previous production
had a terrible traumatic event

that may be left behind some angry ghosts

who've projected their psychic visions
out onto whatever might be nearby.

Inadvertently, both the crew
and the actors find that

their gazes are always drifting
upwards towards the rafters above the set.

And sometimes they end up seeing
a spectral figure,

a woman in white.

They find, as they're checking
their dailies,

that a lot of their footage
has been compromised by the fact

that maybe the film
had been previously used

by another production

and they've just shot new footage
on top of it.

The ghost has somehow imprinted herself.

The process of continually
rewinding, replaying,

rewinding and replaying
the recorded footage actually

brings the ghost to life.

Don't Look Up starts like a drama.

And it plays like a drama
until gradually shifting

into horror movie mode.

The actress falls to her death
and now this trauma

is urgent, and real, and present.

Don't Look Up is really
a beautifully put together piece

of horror filmmaking that has
all of that disquieting aesthetic

that makes the later J-horrors work.

It's the one that's showing the pathway
that they're gonna follow.

- Hellraiser.

Bloodline.

I saw Hellraiser: Bloodline
in the theater.

I played hooky. I snuck out of class.

And I have revisited that movie
unapologetically since.

The story's pretty cool.

It's three timelines
where you're dealing with generations

within one family.

The inventor of the Lament Configuration.

All three of these stories
are braided together to tell

one kind of epic, sprawling
and complete Hellraiser story.

This triple timeline,
generational family's struggle

with their inadvertent role in evil.

A summoned demon is yours to command.

Unless you stand in Hell's way.

Outer Space. Why not?

It's by far in a way the most ambitious
of all the Hellraiser screenplays.

Bound together by the story
of the LeMarchand

who becomes Merchant family.

You know me from dreams, John LeMarchand.

We have a destiny together.

Clive is back on board
as executive producer again.

This is his storyline that
Pete Atkins again has written

brilliantly as a screenplay.

It's a very ambitious way
to try and make a film,

'cause you're really making three films.

Three separate films.

There are separate casts,
separate budget requirements,

design requirements.

It's a lot of sets.
It's a lot of locations.

Hugely ambitious.

There were problems baked into the cake.

And I think the fundamental problem
was that they gave us

the same amount of time
and the same amount of money

to make Bloodline that we had
had to make Hellraiser III.

Help me.

- I had a great working relationship
with Kevin Yagher.

Aware of his work as
a special effects makeup artist.

First time director,
but I got on great with him.

Temptation is worthless, princess.

I will teach your human Merchant
about the value of suffering.

It's very famously meddled
with by Weinsteins

who are famous meddlers when it comes
to these kind of movies.

It's really tough.

Especially, in the '90s
when that factory mentality

in the studios, you know,
is still really kind of oppressive.

Oh, you suffer beautifully
but I am here for business not pleasure.

They kept messing with the ending.

The whole point about going
into outer space

is that Merchant is bringing
Pinhead there,

because he knows he is the end
of the bloodline.

And so he lures Pinhead
to the space station.

Welcome to oblivion. Boom.

The end.
They wanted a happy ending.

The one that I wish they'd kept,

which I saw was seemed to me
rather wonderful,

because it's a time loop.

And I thought that was brilliant.
It was the end of the fight.

The end of Pinhead. Not.

I am forever.

I'm not party
to all the politicking of it,

but I know that in the creation
of the director's cut,

Kevin had a major falling out
with the producers

and parted company with the project.

I've talked to Kevin about this
subsequently.

He and I are still good friends.

But he was gone
and they now wanted reshoots.

But it wasn't reshoots.

It was really three sets

of brand new principal photography
which we shot

the following year in '95.

Joe Chappelle came in
who had just directed

Halloween 6 for Dimension.
And Joe was great.

- It's just a box.

Thank God for men of reason.

It was my second experience
of working with finance on set.

When we came to some of the space things,

we were doing one scene,
one shot, one take.

It's not a great way to work.

My understanding is the end
of it all, they said to Joe,

"We'll put your name on the picture."

And Joe said, "No, you won't.

Because a lot of the work
in the movie is Kevin's.

It's not mine."

And that's how it falls out
that I have worked

with one of the true legends
of Hollywood, Alan Smithee.

Industry code for nobody was prepared
to take responsibility for this movie.

That often means that the movie
was so awful that--

that nobody was prepared
to take credit for it.

And that's not the case in Bloodlines.

I think a co-directing credit
between Kevin and Joe

would have been the right thing,
but it isn't.

It's an Alan Smithee movie.

I am pain.

- Tremors 2: Aftershocks.

Tremors to me is baby Jurassic Park.

It didn't have the push of the studio.

It didn't have any of that,
but it had the power of the fans.

The character of Burt Gummer

is the glue of all of the Tremors.

It's fucking Burt's world
and we're all in it.

Broke into the wrong goddamn rec room,
didn't you, you bastard?

Tremors 2: Aftershocks.

I thought Tremors was gonna be a one-off.

It was not this huge hit
that we all thought it should be.

Hungry? Eat this!

Of course, I was disappointed.
There goes the feature career.

So I was as surprised as anybody
when I got a phone call.

- I'm down in Mexico, see,
and I find myself

in a sort of situation.

What kind of situation?

A graboid kind of situation.

Seriously?
They're actually doing this?

It didn't do well in the movie houses,

but by golly, it's found its way
in the aftermarket video.

"Who's gonna be in it?
Not Kevin? Not Reba?"

"Fred Ward we think is coming back."

I said, "Okay, that's good."

1, 2, 3.

What's this?

Scissors cuts paper. I win.

I was thrilled to be back
as Burt firing away.

More munitions than you could find
in the average ammo dump of NATO.

World War I anti-tank cartridge.

And still getting it wrong,
because the creatures had transformed.

Burt had dealt in Tremors 1
with these underground monsters.

What should appear
in Tremors 2: Aftershocks?

These thing called, "shriekers".

They were walking about.
They had a heat-seeking organ.

They were blind, but they could
find your heat signature.

This was completely new territory.

How's a 30-foot worm turn
into that little thing?

"I feel I was denied critical…"

…need to know information.

That line is still repeated
back to me time and again.

I am completely out of ammo.

Great writing.
Burt being caught off guard.

There's nothing better
when a writer falls in love

with your character and says,
"Oh, let's write

to the strengths of this character.

Let's run with it.
Let's have fun with that."

It's gold for an actor.

You smoked his ass.

Doing what I can with what I got.

The funny thing is Michael like--
likes art.

He's a sweet guy.

He's more closer to the dad on Family Ties
than he is Burt Gummer.

But yet, when he embodies it,
he's a fucking animal!

And he's crazy with this shit.

If certain people had bothered
to gather intelligence

on the creatures before bumbling
into the situation--

Knock it off, Burt!

If I had one problem with the piece,

we were protecting an entire community
in Tremors 1.

I said, "We're in an oil field.
Who cares about big oil?"

Thankfully, in some ways, I was wrong.

People still cared, because
the characters were so wonderful.

Doesn't anything ever get you down?

Well, I'm blessed
with a sunny disposition.

Most people seem to like it.

They brought me in it 14 years later
to be Burt Gummer's son.

Like, that's the biggest compliment.

I know that my lineage
is now set in this world

and I get a lot of love off of it.

I'm very fortunate to be part of it.

You got something to say to me?

You're suffering from a severe case
of getting too old for this crap.

So give me the vest and your flares.

- We have done seven Tremors films
as of 2024

and one television series that lasted,
I think, 13 episodes.

I will tell you that I have
a special place in my heart

for Tremors 4: The Legend Begins.

I love prequels, a historic piece
in the Old West.

I thought, "How marvelous is that?"

I feel I've not been privy to critical,
most needful information.

Hiram Gummer started out
as a man who wanted nothing

to do with these people, as I see,
snobbish, somewhat effete.

And he came to say, "I'll stay."

An ambush. We will lead them
into our very gun muzzles.

Someone who thought he was better
than everyone else.

In the course of the piece,

he learns to accept these people,
fight along with them,

and in a sense, fall in love with them.

I love a story like that.

Burt Gummer was the gift
that kept on giving.

And the trust of a few people
at Universal who kept saying,

"Let's do another."

Memo: 4 pounds of C4,

may be a little excessive.

Some of the best horror
was coming out of Europe.

The Church, by Michele Soavi.

I love The Church.

The ambiance that he's able
to achieve with it,

and some of the images
are pretty interesting.

Which really set it up for what I think

is a masterpiece,
which is Dellamorte Dellamore.

My name is Francesco Dellamorte.

Weird name, isn't it?
Francis of Death.

It was released in America
as Cemetery Man. Terrible title.

- Michele had done his two films
for Dario Argento.

He was ready to break out on his own.

And this has to be the towering
achievement of his career.

This is arguably the last great
Italian horror film.

Certainly the last great Italian
horror film that was made for theaters.

Give me the fucking spade!

Rupert Everett is a caretaker
in a very ancient,

very old cemetery where
when people get buried,

they come back after a few days

and he has to make sure
that they stay dead.

He's just resigned to that life.

- What the hell was that?

Nothing, I'm uh, just working.

His bald-headed assistant
falls in love with a girl

from the village,
and then she ends up dying.

And he brings her head back in
and is like living with this head.

It's so fucking bonkers, dude.

With your consent,
I'd like to marry Gnaghi.

-This horrible thing?
-Yeah.

It was based on the Dylan Dog comic,

which was a very popular
Italian horror comic.

The design of the character in the comic
was actually based on Rupert Everett.

So it made perfect sense to cast him.

The woman that Rupert Everett
is in love with

is played by Anna Falchi,
who is without a doubt

one of the most beautiful women on screen.

Why on your poor husband's grave, huh?

I've never kept anything from him.

We've trusted each other implicitly.

The character is called, "She",
so She becomes emblematic

of so many different women.

Dellamorte Dellamore,
of death and of love.

It's how we come to grips with the dead.

I can't forgive myself
for having lied to you.

I don't have a degree in biology.

There's all kinds of strange perversities
in this movie,

but it is an absolutely
beautifully-shot film.

The mise en scène in the movie,
the production design,

everything, the look
of the film, all the colors,

all the blues and the reds,
all the atmospheric smoke,

the fireflies, everything just gives this

kind of otherworldly,
as if you're crossing over

to the otherworld watching this movie.

No one will ever make us part.

Gnaghi, the gun!

There's a beautiful scene
where he's confronted

by the Grim Reaper.

And it's this incredible
practical effect Grim Reaper.

It's like he's just accepting his fate.

And the Grim Reaper is--
is basically is telling him,

he's like, "You are my hand,
you are my arm,

you are what keeps the dead dead.

It will always be your place."

If you don't want the dead
coming back to life,

why don't you just kill the living?

If you've ever lost somebody
that you love,

you can look at that film
and really be moved by it

and really respond to the poetry of it.

Most beautiful living woman
I have ever seen.

Will I see her again?

This really showed that
Michele Soavi was on his way

to taking over the mantle from Dario.

But unfortunately,
some life problems got involved

and also the decimation
of the Italian film industry

meant that he hasn't made
another horror movie to this day.

I'm the mayor!

Ex.

- The Craft.

The Craft is a movie
that asks the question,

what if that group of very marginal girls

at the other end of the cafeteria,
what if they actually were witches?

Oh, shit.
It's the bitches of Eastwick.

-What?
-Yeah, whatever you do,

stay away from them.
They're witches.

And what if they actually
had magical powers?

Light as a feather, stiff as a board.

Light as a feather, stiff as a board.

- Fairuza Balk, Neve Campbell,
Rachel True,

three witches already have a trio,
a coven of their own,

but they're missing their fourth.

Enter Robin Tunney, new girl at school.

As one tends to do, the misfits
kind of gravitate towards one another.

You girls watch out for those weirdos.

We are the weirdos, mister.

At one point or another,
everybody feels like an outcast.

Peter Filardi wrote a script
about four teenage girls

in high school who dabble in witchcraft

and I was brought in
to do a rewrite of it.

And as I worked on it, I realized that

I was personalizing it
to a very large degree.

My experience in high school especially,

it was kind of heavy,
it was kind of gothic.

I think teenagers feel things
more intensely than adults do,

because it's all happening
for the first time

and hormones are taking over your life.

Do you guys worship the devil?

It's like God and the devil.
It's everything.

I thought it would be nice to invest

this supernatural story
with real world problems.

-Don't you ever hit me!
-Don't you touch her! Stop!

That said, the othe-- flip side
of the coin is that

it's a little bit of a fantasy.

The only example that I had
of a movie in a similar genre

was The Lost Boys.

At one point we jokingly referred
to the movie as, "The Lost Girls".

But I really tried to ground
The Craft in reality.

It just keeps falling out!

I don't understand it.

What's really cool about The Craft is that

it's a bunch of young women
who realize that they are

so much more powerful together.

I really liked how they developed
the relationships.

You saw how complicated it was
and how terrifying,

but also how powerful and how exciting.

Do you want in or do you want
to leave the circle?

Why does it always have
to be that way with you, Nancy?

Because that's the way it is!

I believe in the casting gods
that you think you want somebody

and you don't get them

and then the person you end up
ends up being so much better

than who you originally wanted.

And I loved all four
of those girls in those parts.

They were perfect.

The four of them really clicked
in the scenes together.

But it wasn't a very social set.

Somebody had to cry almost every day
in a scene or scream or be devastated

and they took the work seriously.

It was a difficult movie.

It was exhausting and everything
was a struggle.

Sarah.

The soundtrack was very much
a collaboration between me

and the music supervisor, Ralph Sall.

The music really animates scenes for me.

It's incredibly important.

As well as the score,
Graeme Revell did an amazing score.

It was a great pleasure to bring all sorts

of different elements
into the film scoring.

All of those instruments,
all of those voices,

they just have such a beautiful human
and magical element to them.

And I think the craft was
a really good exercise in that.

The sort of the more magical
little pieces that I wrote

that ended up on the soundtrack,
that's what the audience wanted.

Fairuza was a practicing pagan
when we made the film.

When we were doing the scene on the beach
with the incantations,

the waves started coming up
harder on the beach.

But at one point, when we had this shot
with the cameras overhead spinning around,

a rogue wave came and wiped out
the whole set.

Lend us yours powers.

Show us your glory.

We invoke thee!

I remember Fairuza telling me
that was a very spiritually-enmeshed area.

We were courting danger
by making this incantation happen.

Did you feel that?
He blessed me.

I can feel him running through my veins.

We hired this technical
consultant, Pat, the witch, to help us.

I wanted to be casting spells
that would be real,

to do incantations that would be real.

While not disrespecting any real entities.

Pat, the witch, gave me a chant
when we were in post-production,

so that the movie would open number one.

I did it.

The movie did open number one,
so you know,

think what you will.

-Surprise!
-No.

Look in your eyes tells me
you might not be so sure.

It's a movie about women,
and it's not about the men

in their lives very much.

You are nothing.

The only way you know how to treat women
is by treating them like whores!

And there's something very homoerotic
about their relationship.

Something very intense and kind
of sexual in their relationship.

And I cannot tell you
how many people have come out to me

and said that the movie changed
their idea of themselves,

because they saw the queerness of it.

And I realized that I had infused
my gay sensibility into the movie

without ever uttering the word, "gay".

Put your fingers underneath.

Put your fingers where.

It's endured in a way I never
would have expected it would.

Oh, relax. It's only magic.

We don't stop till
the screaming starts, you dig?

- The Frighteners.

To us, who grew up in the '80s
and the '90s,

Peter Jackson was a master of horror
from another world

that created the bloodiest cartoons
known to man.

I think people were surprised
that this guy went

from these weird little independent
horror films

then suddenly got eyeballed
by Universal Studios

to do this movie
and got a big budget, big names,

and then he became the guy

who brought Lord of the Rings
to the world.

People forget that he's a horror nerd.

The wicked will be punished.

Carving out a career feature by feature,
and he's so passionate about film,

no matter what the genre is.

The Frighteners,
it had Michael J. Fox in it.

Yeah. What's not to like?

I mean, he's such a fantastic
screen presence.

This is a letter from my bank.

This says they want $15,000 from me
or they're gonna sell my house.

Michael J. Fox is able
to see ghosts and he basically

is using the ghosts that
he's befriended to haunt places,

so he can get paid to come
and get rid of them.

Well, folks, I can do a clearance,

-but it's not gonna be cheap.
-How much?

There's such a darkness
at the heart of The Frighteners,

and sad at parts.

You just want to kind of hug
Michael J. Fox in this,

because of some of the things
that his character has gone through.

He didn't ask for this power.

He didn't ask to be able to see ghosts.

He certainly didn't ask for them
to be hanging around,

so he could help them communicate.

What do you think?
Pretty scary, huh?

Don't you ever do that again.

Not a straight up heroic role
for Michael J. Fox,

which was the norm at this time.

He's either Alex Keaton or Marty McFly,

and here he's a broken man
making his living

by swindling people.

He ends up crossing paths
with a very evil spirit.

Jake Busey, he is just
a sinister, sinister character

who is trying to beat the numbers of guys

like Charles Starkweather
when it comes to killing people.

I want to kill her now, Betty.

That'll give us 41.

That's eight clear of Gacy.

Another nine will have broken
Bundy's record.

Peter Jackson, of course,
knows all those tropes

and really played with it
in The Frighteners

and appreciated actors like
Jeffrey Combs and Dee Wallace.

Patronizing do-gooder bitch.

Oh, Patricia, you kill her.
I'll watch.

There's no one who was gonna steal a movie

from Michael J. Fox
and then Jeffrey Combs says,

"Hold my beer."

You claim he's a bona fide psychic,
yet all I've heard

is a lot of ill-informed
meandering waffle.

As this crazy OCD federal agent

who has spent way too much time

in with cults
and the fucking supernatural.

We have 28 unexplained deaths here.

I think you are involved in each
and every one of them.

Filmed in Wellington,
where I was living at the time.

In New Zealand, we have this
ability to shoot things here

and pretend they're in the States.

That's a pretty cool trick.
And we do it a lot.

The Frighteners, which I really enjoyed,
design-wise, it was really satisfying.

It was really great to watch the form
moving under the wallpaper and stuff.

In Braindead, it was all in camera.

Heavenly creatures came along
and they started to experiment

with what digital could do.

And then The Frighteners was the next step

where it was looking really seamless
and impressive.

The Frighteners is finally getting,
I think, the love it deserves.

It did okay when it was released,

but I think a lot of people didn't know
what to take from it.

And then the studio didn't
really know how to market it.

It was up against the juggernaut
that was ID4, Independence Day,

which everyone saw.

And then it opened on the same day
as the Summer Olympics.

And so it just didn't have a chance.
It got clobbered right away.

You are such an asshole.

Yes, I am. I'm an asshole with an Uzi.

I don't doubt for a minute that
he's still a dedicated fan to the genre.

Peter Jackson always, in his head,
knew the tone of this film.

He knew how it was gonna succeed.

I saw it in the cinema at the premiere,
actually, with Peter.

I just watched it as a fan.
I really enjoyed it.

They don't call me
the “hanging judge” for nothing.

- Tales from the Crypt presents
Bordello of Blood.

Alan Katz and I finished
with Demon Knight,

and right away Universal says,
"What's the next one?"

And Alan and I had read a script
called, "Fat Tuesday".

It wasn't terribly right on the money,
but it was close.

And so we rewrote it
and called it, "Dead Easy".

And Universal said,
"Great, let's go make it."

We go to New Orleans,
where it's gonna take place.

We're looking at locations
and we get a call from Joel Silver.

They want to do another movie
that Bob Zemeckis

and Bob Gale wrote that they bought.

It's called, "Bordello of Blood".

-Hi, boys.
-Hey, girl.

How would you like to take
the Skin Express to Tuna Town?

"You need to rewrite it
in three weeks with Alan,

and you start shooting
in three weeks in Vancouver."

And we're like, "Is this a joke, Joel?

Is this-- is this supposed to be funny?"

"Just get on the plane.
Get out of there. Stop spending money."

And that's how Bordello of Blood

became the second
Tales from the Crypt movie.

Universal paid Bob and Bob
a half a million dollars for that script,

and it was a time when Steven Spielberg
had just started DreamWorks.

Universal was afraid that Bob
was gonna go over to DreamWorks

and they were gonna lose
Bob Zemeckis off the lot.

This here is the most horrible woman
the world has ever known.

And she's all mine.

Now, I guess it's my fault in a way
that I had the opportunity to say no.

I mean, I could have just walked away
from that script, but I didn't want to,

because I thought, I may never
get the opportunity

to direct a Tales from the Crypt movie.

And so I said, "Okay, we'll do it."

We have a podcast called,
"How Not to Make a Movie",

and it started, because Alan said,
"We should tell the story."

And it was relatively,
I think, good therapy.

I know a place you can get
the best goddamn piece of ass.

Bordello of Blood had an interesting cast.

It had Phil Fondacaro.

The mother of all vampires!

My favorite.

And then Angie Everhart.

I just love a man who gives you head
and lets you keep it.

Eric Eleniak.

A whore house?

A house inhabited by whores.

Chris Sarandon played the preacher.

He was a delight to work with as well.

Vile, pernicious,
disgusting little harlot.

You're not so bad yourself.

We had Corey Feldman in the cast.

Hey baby, don't touch me
unless you love me.

Come on, dude. Let's party.

- Corey just nailed it
and he was just delightful.

One of the stars of Demon Knight,
Bill Sadler.

And then she rips his face off
and she eats him.

"We'll put him in the wraparound
with the Crypt Keeper,

and that should be, I think,
very, very exciting for the fans."

He'd give his left nut
to work with me, I know.

I'd give my left nut
for this lunch to be over.

And the lead, of course,
was a stand-up comic, Dennis Miller.

Last call, let's get it.

Cha-ching.

Dennis Miller, he said, you know,
"I have an HBO show on Friday nights,

so I'm not gonna be shooting Fridays.

And I only work an eight-hour day."

And I would go, "No.

And nobody in this business works
an eight-hour day."

So that's how it started.

Then he didn't like the script,
and he said,

"I can't remember these lines,
so I'm just gonna make up lines.

And then you'll edit them."
I go, "No."

And he wound up doing mainly that anyway.

Guess where you've just landed, lover?

Larry Flynt's id?

So it was a terrible punching bag
kind of relationship with him.

-Uh-huh.
-You comfy?

Mm-hmm.

Bordello of Blood, you know,
it was the worst experience in my career.

It was just terrible.

We had problems in every respect.

We had problems with crewing.
We had problems with casting.

Once we did get cast,
we had problems with shooting.

It was just the worst experience
I've ever had.

You wanna try to keep it
down here, please?

I'm trying to rest.

"Dennis, you know, you've given me
a rough time the entire shoot,

from the very first day that you got here.

It's been like pulling teeth
with you every bloody day."

At the end of the movie, though,
he came over and thanked me

and said, "You know,
if my wife and I invite you up

to Santa Barbara for dinner,
you and your wife will come up, right?"

And I said, "No, I don't think so."

That's how we ended it.

Can we talk about this?

As far as I'm concerned,
you and I are through.

After we shot it and it came out,

I just wiped it off
out of my mind, pretty much.

It was that painful an experience.
It really was.

First I'll rip your dick off.

Then I'm gonna grind your balls
into guacamole.

The 20th anniversary of the movie.

Here in Vancouver,
there's a theater called, "The Rio",

that has these retrospectives
and they wanted to do a screening.

It's sold out. I'm going, "Oh my God,
these people are out of their minds."

It's amazing how many people
have fond memories of that movie.

It's beyond understanding for me.

I feel like I'm in a bad
Tales from the Crypt episode.

- The Island of Dr. Moreau.

For me, horror is some
of the best surrealist films

being made, you know?

Looking at life and looking at existence
from a whole another side.

Oh my God.

The first filmed version
of Island of Doctor Moreau

by H. G. Wells was in the '30s

and H. G. Wells famously hated
this version, because the studio

put in a character called,
the "Panther Girl".

They wanted some love
and some kind of erotic element to it.

What's that?

It's the house.
The house of pain.

They tried to remake it again in the '70s
with Burt Lancaster and Michael York.

I created you.
I created you.

And then they thought
they would make a better,

more definitive version of all of that

with The Island of Dr. Moreau
starring Marlon Brando,

Val Kilmer, David Thewlis,
and that was a complete mess.

Move back!

Brando had made me curious,
but then I saw what he was doing.

Oh lord, lord, lord.

He's such a great actor,
but he did some crazy things.

It is here on this very island
that I, sir,

have found the very essence of the devil.

I am a filmmaker who worked
with Val Kilmer.

We are like a little club,
the directors of Val Kilmer movies,

because we all share
our war stories with each other.

Not without this you don't.

This is the Val Kilmer that thought
he was the reincarnation of Marlon Brando.

And he would tell me this.

This was the movie where he felt

Marlon Brando's soul entering him.
True story.

Tell me what I need.

Shut up! Shut up!
Where is it?

That is a remarkable story in
and of itself.

And by the way, also ended up
becoming a terrific documentary

about that subject matter.

This was just a complete
and utter shit show.

This is the most outrageous spectacle
I have ever witnessed.

I understand that I must be
shocking to you.

- I was working with Richard Stanley.

I put out the Blu-ray of Hardware

and I plucked up the courage
to ask him like

what happened on The Island of Dr. Moreau
and he just started talking like

he took a big breath
and he just talked for hours

about what went wrong
on The Island of Dr. Moreau.

It's amazing they got a film out of it.

When you've got two leads
who are just not only

non-cooperative with the production,

but going out of their way
to sabotage the production,

that is a very difficult thing
to manage as a director

and the producers were halfway
across the world,

so these stories were coming in
from Cairns in Australia

that things were not going well.

Oh, what a surprise.

I didn't mean to startle you.

They'd actually set the set an hour away
from where home base was,

so they lose two hours of the day
just getting to and from the set.

There was a lot of drugs
on the set that the extras,

the beast people were,
'cause they had nothing else to do.

They were just sitting around
in the jungle.

They were in full makeup.

So they were just partying the whole time.

-I had a little methamphetamine,
some morphine, some shrooms,

and some other shit.

Keeps you coming back for more.

The problem was that Richard and Hollywood
weren't necessarily the best bedfellows

and so you lose a day,
you lose millions of dollars.

Richard's defense is that
there were storms

on the island and all kinds of things
that just messed up the shooting.

But New Line just saw
the dailies that were coming in

and they didn't see Val Kilmer
in the dailies at all

and so they fired Richard
and they replaced him

with John Frankenheimer.

Not only did he get fired,
but he stayed on the location

and got himself made up
as one of the half-human

half-animal characters
and observed things like

in this very bizarre dangerous
and kind of odd way.

Some say to sabotage it.

Some say just to be there
to watch it go down in flames.

It is a movie where the madness infested

the production and the cast

and you actually watch it happen on film.

Who's the animal?

Be calm, calm.

We've got to think and reason
this through together.

Fairuza Balk and all.

No one is immune
from The Island of Dr. Moreau.

I want to be like you.

I mean, how would you look
if you were like me?

You see?
I've made you smile.

They knew that Brando
was already being difficult,

so they decided they needed kind

of a military drill sergeant
type of director.

John Frankenheimer fit the bill.

To walk on all fours,

that is the law.

I actually really love this movie,
'cause it is just so,

"What the fuck?"

Good doggy.

It's a movie about a crazy doctor
creating craziness

and it itself is a crazy thing.

Look at these people!
Look at him!

So here's a movie that was
a box office disaster, right?

That disaster has somehow found
its way into the zeitgeist

in such a strong way that
other filmmakers were inspired

to make movies about
what these guys had made.

What the hell are you supposed
to be anyway?

It doesn't look like anything!

I would really like to have seen
what Richard

would have done with it and I think it,

honestly, if it had gone ahead
with Jürgen Prochnow as Moreau,

it would have been a $5 million movie
and it probably would have got made.

Would it have been a masterpiece?
Who knows?

But it certainly wouldn't have been
the mess that it ended up being.

- Sometimes They Come Back… Again.

I found the idea of
Sometimes They Come Back… Again

interesting, because
of the demonic forces involved.

Close your eyes.

Okay. Surprise!

I had been a big fan of The Exorcist,
saw it a number of times.

I watched it one Christmas
with the family,

because I thought it was
a very faith-affirming film.

Good versus evil. The exorcism.
Conquering the devil.

Sometimes They Come Back… Again,

I thought, "Alright, this sounds like fun.

A bit crazy."

I'm your childhood friend, Johnny!

From the time I was hired
to the time I wound up on set

was a very short amount of time.

So basically, it was dealing
with the script itself.

Did not delve into the hundreds
of pages of Stephen King,

nor did I see the first one.

It's like, "Alright, put your boots on,

pull up your trousers,
and appear on the set."

I thought it was a fascinating cast.

Alexis Arquette?
I didn't know what hit me.

I thought he was one
of the strangest human beings

I had ever met in my life.

His looks, his attitude, fascinating.
And well cast.

Looks great on you.

Just consider it
an early birthday present.

The active threat that he was.

I thought, "He's so strange,
what father would let him

into his house in the first place?"

You're disgusting.

That's true.

But no one does a tongue tango
like I do, sweetheart.

I loved working with Hilary Swank
before she became the Hilary Swank.

What was that all about?

I don't like him.

I noticed that.
What's the deal?

He reminds me of someone
I used to know.

A loving daughter who's put in
life-threatening circumstances,

up for anything, thrilled to be working
as a young actress,

and just a delightful human being.

That was my grandmother's pet,

and somebody stabbed it
to death with a fire poker.

If you could please find out who did it,
we'd all feel a lot safer, okay?

Sometimes They Come Back… Again

had a great number
of uncomfortable situations.

Physically and mentally,

physically cutting off parts
of one's own finger.

Fire, blood, electrocution,
et cetera, et cetera.

A father's worst nightmare?

Seeing his daughter in a sexual situation
with a demon?

Don't date that particular boy.

He's bleeding like a stuck pig
in summertime.

There's no stopping this heavy flow.

- Character of the father
had so much to confront.

He was literally saving
his daughter's life

and his own life, his own sanity.

Uh-uh. Guns are not allowed.

What I find most interesting
about dealing with the demonic

rather than a monster is a monster
is something outside ourselves,

whereas the demonic is very much
a part of human nature.

Looks to me like a bad hair day.

It's a very human condition
having the past revisit you

in an uncomfortable way.

Catch you later.

- The Dentist.

I did L.A. Law, Major League,

and then you're trying to find
what's the next thing.

And I've always enjoyed jumping
around a bit.

When I got the chance to jump
into the horror, it felt good.

- Oh, God.

People are generally petrified
of the dentist.

You're just vulnerable.
You're leaning back.

You're opening your mouth, which is like,
can you make yourself any more vulnerable?

But the guy's got sharp objects
and sounds.

You've got pain that
you're already trying to deal with.

It's the culmination
of the most bizarre experiences.

What did you do?
He's bleeding!

The Dentist was really interesting,

because you have this guy
who just wants cleanliness.

He wants beauty.

He wants everything beauti--
"I can make you beautiful."

- I am an instrument
of perfection and hygiene.

The enemy of decay and corruption.

And catches his wife doing it
with an oily, greasy pool man

on their anniversary.

Just enough for him to flip the switch
and go off the deep end, as he does.

Dr. Feinstone! I am a dentist!

And this is my wife!
You filthy piece of shit!

You don't want to be his patient that day.

Open wide.

The first draft of the script was
by Stuart Gordon and Dennis Paoli.

Charles Finch,
he added a bunch of elements.

I think Stuart said the scariest words

in the English language is,
"The dentist will see you now."

Sarah, you're up next.

With The Dentist, once again,
it's no money.

But what I did is
I really tried to design it,

'cause it was a very enclosed thing.

It was just in a dental office.

There's no dark stuff.
It's just bright lights.

And so that was kind of a challenge to me.

Power. 'Cause as much as it pains you,
no pun intended,

to sit back with your mouth open
and feel vulnerable,

to have those sharp objects
and you're the one I'm looking at.

That's some power right there.

Needles really freak me out.

Have you ever had nitrous oxide?

It's very strange that these obje--

and they're obviously not as sharp
as they would be

in the dentist's office,
but you're in some-- another actor's mouth

and internally, you're freaking out.

You're angry.

Just like Matt.

I just basically copied
some Hitchcock scenes

like the Dial M for Murder.

I wanted to play up the horror.

And so we built a huge mouth
and so we had a giant needle

and we had big teeth,

but we could only afford
one half of the mouth.

We couldn't afford to build a whole mouth

and then flip the film to show
the other side.

Get it out of the way, goddammit!

The beauty of the opera
and him on a stage.

That's where you really lean
on a director to say, "Is it too far?"

And I think Brian just was like,
"Bring it.

Just keep bringing it, man."

It was the most intense shoot
I've ever been on.

The days were just brutal. Brutal.

I mean the place you just had
to get to every day consistently

for I think what,
three weeks or something.

It took me a little while to dump him.

I like how stylish the movie is.

I thought that movie
was gonna be a disaster.

And I was really surprised when it worked.

I loved how the opening
with Corbin in the padded cell

and how he's telling the story.

What I liked about that was that
it just made it an unreliable narrator.

You don't know what happened,
because this guy's crazy.

Leeches.
Blood-sucking leeches!

My personal dentist at the time,
I'd done Dentist 1,

movie was out, and he said,
"I saw that Dentist movie."

I went, "Oh, okay."

He said, "Yeah, it was great."
He said, "But I've got to ask you a favor.

Please don't do any more
of these movies." I'm like…

And my mouth is wide open.

"What are you talking about? Ah."
I thought he was joking.

"We spend millions,
and millions, and millions

of dollars to uh-- and convince people
that dentistry is safe and it's harmless.

And you come along and do these movies
and destroy all of it."

I sort of promised him.
I said, "Yeah, no more."

I said, "That was--
it was too hard to do."

Much worse than I thought, Mark.

The decay is out of control.

Then we went and made Dentist 2.

You'll never take it off.

- Stephen King's Thinner.

Adapting a novel is a very daunting task,

no matter what format
you're adapting it for.

When you're adapting an author
like Stephen King,

who writes such rich
and dense worlds, adapting him

for a feature film is fraught
with challenges.

And that's why you have
this spectrum of quality

when it comes to Stephen King adaptations.

It's not easy to do.

And sometimes even the best intentions
aren't enough

to contort that material
in enough of a way to get it

to fit onto that screen.

-You weigh yourself?
-297.

Billy, you were 297 last week.

Well, it takes some time
for these diets to work.

A great film doesn't get a lot
of lip service is Thinner,

Stephen King's story, directed
by Tom Holland. Fantastic.

-To winning!
-To winning!

May it ever be so sweet.

In which a very boorish,
very rotund guy runs afoul

of some gypsies…

who are able to wield a curse against him.

The curse being that he loses weight.

283.
Somebody call Richard Simmons.

All be so cursed, right?

However, this curse doesn't stop.

His weight loss continues
until he is a wreck of a human being.

It's not anorexia.
I don't have a tapeworm.

I've been eating like mad
for over six weeks

and I'm still losing weight.

My buddy Robert Burke is in it.

I want to find the old guy.

Find him and tell him
we don't deserve this.

I want you to kill that old bastard
and you say it's from me.

Michael Constantine
from Room 222 is in it.

I make sure something happen to them.

That justice, white man, gypsy justice.

Michael Constantine giving Robert Burke

the back of his hand
and cursing him by saying…

Thinner.

…is pretty scary.

And it's a really, really enjoyable film.

Excellent special effects, great makeup
and really effective performances.

-This is getting out of hand.
-This has been out of hand.

And I'm just the guy
to put it back in hand.

- It is hard to watch in the best sense.

It's a very effective movie.

Strawberry pie, mm.

For someone growing up in the '90s
and for a Stephen King fan,

these things had a profound impact on me.

Not only as a fan,
but as someone who would

in another decade be making
my own adaptations.

I can see how all
of these examples in this era

made me the filmmaker that I am today.

I'm being erased.

- Necronomicon: The Book of the Dead.

The '90s were a good time for me
because I was able

to be generally working on
one movie after another.

Mr. Lovecraft. Always a treat.

And even stuff that I had originated
like the Necronomicon

which was just kind of
an experiment in financing.

Getting the financing
from Europe and from Asia.

Getting a director from each one
and doing Lovecraft movie here.

I take great pride in presenting
fictional possibilities

to enlighten the darkest depths
of experience.

Necronomicon was an anthology
and that's not generally a good thing.

It wasn't very successful.
I had great hopes for that movie.

You are not alone.

Necronomicon
was Christophe Gans' first movie.

He did the opening segment
and he's a French critic of movies

and just has all these references.

And I think the episode
that I did is very off-putting.

They took my mind.

They need us to breed.

But I really like it.

I think there's some
really good stuff in it.

Seems inhumane but we needed it

for our self-preservation
and it's all we can do.

I was able to do
the body melt deterioration

just the way I wanted it.

I love that kind of stuff
and I think it's a really good one.

It was fun to make Jeffrey Combs
look like H. P. Lovecraft

and all the goofy stuff in it.

The Omniati monks and the great library
which was actually a mausoleum in Compton.

You could smell corpses in there
when we were shooting.

It was a little bit, you know, disgusting.

It's coming!

Most filmmakers are fans of anthologies,
but the audience isn't.

They don't like the stop and start.

But we got to do a lot
of really cool stuff.

I like that movie.

Consider your privileges
revoked, Mr. Lovecraft.

Killer Tongue, one of the stranger movies
I've been involved in.

I got the chance
to work with Chris Figg again

who had produced the first two
Hellraiser movies and Nightbreed.

He contacted me with a script,
called, "La Lengua Asesina",

Killer Tongue.

Maddest thing I've ever read.

In Killer Tongue
I play a convict called, "Wiggy".

Robert Englund plays the chief screw.

We're on a kind of chain gang.

The fuck are you looking at, huh?

You wipe that smile off your face!

A meteor is falling through space,
cut back to Melinda Clarke as Candy,

the pregnant nun, and her poodles.

The fragment of comet lands
in each bowl of soup.

And when the poodles drink the soup,
they get transformed into drag queens.

It's us. You're bitches.
Remember? Little fluffy things?

The effect that the meteor
tainted soup had on Candy,

Melinda Clarke's character,
was an alien in her mouth.

She is now possessed
of a 6-foot-long tongue

which has a mind of its own
and a very, very bad attitude

to almost everything
and everyone around her.

And she can't quite control it.

-Goddamn, I'm sexy.
-Get out of my body.

What do you want me to do,
grow legs and rent an apartment?

When I mention Killer Tongue to people,

I often hasten to point out
that it's not a porn movie.

Meanwhile, the rest of the comet
lands in the desert.

When you get very close
to the comet, it sends you

into throes of sexual ecstasy.

Unless you actually make
the mistake, as the convict

sitting next to me did, of touching it,
in which case you explode.

All out of the brilliant
and remarkable mind

of Alberto Sciamma, a Spanish filmmaker
who wrote and directed it.

We were actually filming
on the spaghetti western set.

The towns that were built
for fistful of dollars

and so forth, still standing,
which was kind of exciting.

This was a point at which
I still had hair.

But I'd reached that point
where the egg in the nest

was very apparent
in the chain gang quarters.

I had a little glass case
with all my wigs in.

This was Alberto's idea. It was brilliant.

So you start with a very small hair piece

and then it grows
as the ball spot gets bigger.

Anybody else wanna play ball?

For me it sits there
in the middle of the '90s

as a point at which
mainstream horror meets

the explosion of Spanish cinema.

The spirit of Almodóvar and all of that.

It is quite the maddest thing
I've ever seen.

And everybody should rush to see it.

Not scared, are ya?

- Scream.

Scream really had everything
going against it

when it came to Hollywood.

Hollywood thought that audiences
were tired of the teen-slasher movie.

But combined with a script
by Kevin Williamson

that was so deliciously meta
and managed to adhere

to some of those slasher tropes
while also turning them

on their head,
it changed the game forever.

-I'm getting ready to watch a video.
-Really? What?

Oh, just some scary movie.

-You like scary movies?
-Uh-huh.

They were so lucky that Wes,
who wanted to reinvent himself again,

said yes to directing that movie.

When we first read it,
we didn't quite get it.

At first we were like,
"Why is Wes doing this?"

Not quite getting the whole meta thing
and how that was gonna play out.

-What's your favorite scary movie?
-Halloween.

You know, the one with the guy
in the white mask

who walks around and stalks babysitters?

Wes is the master.
Kevin is the new phenomenon.

So he has this beautiful,
amazing ingredients

and Wes is like, "I'm gonna
show you how to cook it."

Kevin Williamson needed Wes
to bring this incredible,

beautiful source material to life.

That original script was so true.

So perfectly on point.

It was like whispers from God.

Everything works.
Makes sense.

Completely delineated
each character and spoke

to people as if they were feeling it.

- You never told me your name.

Why do you want to know my name?

- 'Cause I want to know
who I'm looking at.

The whole Drew Barrymore prologue.

The idea of having a celebrity
of her stature open the movie like that.

And that was a kind of repurposing

of Alfred Hitchcock's casting
of Janet Leigh in Psycho.

I think was culturally
incredibly impactful.

-Listen, asshole!
-No, you listen, you little bitch!

You hang up on me again,
I'll gut you like a fish. Understand?

Wes he had just put together
the first Drew stuff

and he was dead tired.

And it was literally
shipped to Cannes.

He's like, "This is gonna make
or break our production,

because they don't understand the movie."

Because they didn't know what they had.

The essence of who they cast,
there's a wink of like,

"This is just a little off."

And that's what makes it different.

Casey Becker and Steve Orth
were killed last night.

What? No way!

And we're not just talking killed.

We're talking splatter-movie killed.

The reporter which is Courteney.
The ingénue which is Neve.

The sexy, mysterious,
could be killer, which is Skeet.

His wild best friend, which is Matt.

Dewey, who's our millennial
version of Barney Fife.

David was just playing him
and he's an eccentric wonderful person.

You look awfully young
to be a police officer.

I'm 25 years old.

'Cause of my boyish good looks,
muscle mass has increased

my acceptance as a serious police officer.

My character Randy,

just him saying the rules
of what was going on.

There are certain rules
that one must abide by

in order to successfully survive
a horror movie.

Number one, you can never have sex.

He took these things that were in movies

and he made them galvanized
as the Commandments.

Number two, you can never drink
or do drugs.

And number three, never say,

"I'll be right back."
'Cause you won't be back.

Everyone was super inclusive.
Wes would arrange a dinner.

Courteney would arrange wine.

Neve would have like little get-togethers
after long days of shoot in her room.

Dave would have parties.

Matt and Skeet would set up like, we would
play sports. I mean, it was amazing.

- How come Jamie Lee Curtis is
in all of these movies?

She's the scream queen.

With a set of lungs like that
she should be.

Wes wasn't just shooting it,
he knew exactly the edits.

He would say, "I'm gonna edit this here.
I've got the music's thing there.

Okay. I've got the fear part here."

He would say this stuff
and it was a puzzle to him.

-Damn little shits.
-What'd you call me?

I had no preconceptions of horror movies.

In fact, Wes taught me a lot
about how to approach scenes.

About how to maybe go quiet
before something big is gonna happen.

It puts the audience more on edge.

He would encourage me to explore.
That's really what he did.

He encouraged the creative aspect.

The Red Right Hand song,
the Nick Cave song

was really formative for Wes Craven
in the movie.

♪ Designed and directed
by his red right hand ♪

That inspired me to also work outside
just an orchestral framework.

Sidney's theme, I felt an affinity
with the Sidney character.

I think Wes really appreciated
that I was trying to go

for this more human approach

rather than just a kind
of ticking-clock type of score.

One of the most, if not
the most iconic kill is Rose.

Rose through the doggy door.

Commenting on it without commenting on it.

No, please don't kill me, Mr. Ghostface.
I want to be in the sequel.

And dying in a unique way,
that to me was a real tone setter.

Watching a movie about horror movies

and watching people get killed
in a horror movie

and you're watching these people
watch that happen.

It is almost like
you're part of that group

in the living room with us.

That was just never done before.

-Ooh, ooh!
-Yes, yes!

Skeet's behind me and I'm watching

Jamie Lee Curtis and I'm going,
"Jamie, look behind you."

Jamie, look behind you.
Look behind you.

So the fact that my name just happens
to be Jamie, the actor.

I-- when I did that, I'll never forget it.

And Wes goes, he's like, "Easter egg."

He had no known that the gods,
the universe,

the powers had aligned.

Behind you.

And that's the only time
in the whole franchise

that Skeet put the costume on
to kill someone.

The rest of the time, it's stunt guys.

The first time I'd heard that
it was screening.

I want to say it was in Poughkeepsie.
Poughkeepsie, New York.

So they were playing for real people.

And apparently Wes said,
we had an amazing screening.

Some people screamed.
Some people laughed.

But they were completely
engulfed in the movie.

And I said, "Holy shit.
People are liking this."

We opened to 6 million.

Then the next week, we kept going up.

It's just the superest, rarest thing.

The trajectory is always down.
And it started going nuts.

We all go a little mad sometimes.

What makes Scream,
not just a horror movie.

Forget it.
It's not just a movie.

It's a pop culture phenomenon
that is only getting bigger by the day.

I knew it would leave a mark.
I knew it would be interesting.

But I didn't-- I could not predict
the veracity of what it is.

I mean, Ghostface is almost
a spiritual being at this point.

And it's incredible.

And it's obviously super humbling
to be a part of something like that.

I'll be right back!

Oh!

SCORE VS. SOUNDTRACK:
THE MUSIC OF '90S HORROR

Soundtracks, of course, are so important
to the films themselves.

But the '90s was perhaps
the peak of the integration

with a pop culture soundtrack.

Bands that you know with the film.

The '80s into the '90s was a great time
for music and movies.

And it was another way
of promoting your film.

That's more like it.

♪ Well, sweet a little sista's
high in hell cheatin' on a halo ♪

This was a period
where the soundtrack album became massive.

With Pulp Fiction,

Tarantino had a huge influence
on a lot of us.

And he had all these classic needle drops.

Uma Thurman dancing to Urge Overkill.

Playing a Neil Diamond riff
in a Quentin Tarantino movie,

merging the old and the new together

in a way you didn't know
you always wanted.

♪ You'll be a woman soon ♪

Well, the studios realized
quickly after that

that this was a major
marketing possibility.

Whether or not it was on MTV or radio.

♪ Deepest, bluest, my hat
is like a shark's fin ♪

♪ Deepest, bluest, my hat
is like a shark's fin ♪

The studios really wanted
to take advantage

of popular music
or a certain kind of music

on a soundtrack with a classic score
and it worked.

We got a lot of great soundtracks
from the '90s.

♪ She's a lot like you,
the dangerous type ♪

The Craft, The Crow, Blade,
like those are soundtracks

that I still listen to to this day.

♪ Dream the crow black dream ♪

Jawbreaker had Imperial Teen in it
and it was spot on.

You cannot think of Jawbreaker
without hearing that song in your head.

♪ She said yoo-hoo ♪

♪ Ah yoo-hoo, ah yoo-hoo ♪

I remember a lot of like '90s grunge music
being in I Know What You Did Last Summer.

- Stop screaming and listen to
I Know What You Did Last Summer,

the album, out now
on Columbia CDs and cassettes.

A lot of the soundtracks
of the era actually had a cover

or two of an older song as its big hook.

But then it was also an opportunity
for these record labels to kind of sneak

lesser-known bands in on it.

As a result you had a readymade mixtape.

All of our soundtracks
were loaded with new bands

and loaded with alternative bands,
'cause alternative was the thing.

It was about selling the movie,
but it was also about

selling the soundtrack
to the point where we actually

talk about the band Garbage
in the movie.

-You like Garbage?
-Oh yeah, Shirley Manson, she rocks.

Strangeland, my son Jesse
who was 15 at the time

he was very involved
in choosing the music for the movie,

'cause he was much more familiar
with the newer bands.

A band like System of a Down,
they were unknown.

The soundtrack was bigger
at the time than the movie was.

It was a hell of a soundtrack.

It's time to expand
your spiritual horizons.

My first movie, Shopping,
was partly financed,

because we actually put together
the soundtrack album

before we even put together the movie.

And we brought on bands
like Jesus Jones, EMF, Orbital.

I loved Orbital.

They were part of this kind
of young techno wave

that were coming out of Europe
that the studio didn't quite get.

When I'd done Mortal Kombat,
which was the movie I did before

Event Horizon, you know,
I put an entire kind

of house techno soundtrack on that movie.

♪ Mortal Kombat ♪

Studio freaked out.
They didn't like it at all.

So I had to really fight for that.

Ultimately, they were glad that
we did go that direction,

because the soundtrack album
went platinum.

I was pushing in that direction
for Event Horizon.

The last track in the movie
is The Prodigy.

They said, "No, you can't end
the movie like that."

And then the track got released
in America, became huge.

And then the studio were like,
"Oh yeah, we like it.

We like that idea."

And of course, at that point,
once the track had become huge,

it cost five times as much
as we could have bought it

for a couple of weeks beforehand.

That was another thing that killed me.

Like the budgets for, you know,
just one song being more

than the whole scoring budget.

♪ We don't need no education ♪

Music supervisors hired usually
by the studio or someone.

Because to get songs in a movie,
it's a lot of work.

The artists have to approach the label.

Sometimes they want to use,
not the song in complete,

but they want to use parts.

Can they break it up?
Can they get stems from it?

Meaning, can they use parts
of the song without the vocal?

Or can they remix it?

Figuring out a license for that.
Figuring out the budgets.

"How much can we spend on this?"

You know, it's not just straightforward

as, "Hey, can we use your song
in the movie?"

Now, get focused!
Or get the fuck off my team!

There are ways songs can do
things that score can't.

Classical and rock,
if you pick the right pieces,

can really work together really well.

- Think of The Crow original soundtrack
with bands like Pantera and Filter.

And it was the kind of music I understood.

I could come in and say,
"Look, I can write a score

where the intros and outros are the songs.

I can make it sound like
it's all meant to be there."

The score album is all the other elements
that aren't songs.

The soundtrack album of The Crow,
which I also had a song at the end of,

sold 3 million records at some point.

And the score album had sold
1 million records, which was a shock.

And my lawyer said to me,
"Well, obviously,

all those 1 million people
bought yours by mistake.

They were looking for the other one."

"Fuck you."

It could be true,
but I'm never going to admit it.

It was very hard
to find these horror scores.

And so you'd have
to really know where to look.

A score for something like Scream,
you could find the soundtrack everywhere,

but you can't find that
Marco Beltrami score anywhere.

Varèse Sarabande was always
the sort of go-to label

if you wanted the--
particularly obscure films.

A lot of stuff sounds the same.

Like there was a lot of John Williams
wannabe type of music.

Wes Craven, he helped me a lot
with how I score.

The Scream movies were bigger,
bombastic type of scores,

so it had to be a ride.

Wasn't just like one particular style,
it was all over the map.

Wes was really tapped
into the teen zeitgeist.

He would encourage me to explore.

Film is telling a story.

It is trying to propound
certain emotions or surprise.

Especially in horror movies,
a lot of red herrings.

I look for that core of humanity,

or who's going through
the drama, who's trying

to find redemption or overcome
whatever it is.

Legal troubles over copyright
infringements

aren't slowing down Napster.

The song swapping company is now
in the top 50 list

of most visited sites on the web.

Going into the 2000s
when the file sharing thing

became a legal issue,

the tendency to use those soundtracks
started to tail off.

The long-term outcome
of that whole process has been

what they call, "the democratization

of music production",
which is a fabulous thing

as far as creativity goes,

but it's the antithesis
of fabulous, because all the--

the platforms just hoover up
all the money.

I would hate to be starting out
as an artist now.

I mean, the idea of even making a penny,
it is very, very difficult.

Jesus, the music scene's gone
to hell since I've been dead.

1997

Peter Hyams directed The Relic,
which is about this ancient monster

that is terrorizing
the Field Museum in Chicago.

Relic was based on a novel from 1995.

It's up to a detective and a biologist

to track down this creature
and contain it as best they can.

The detective is played by Tom Sizemore,

and the biologist is played by
Penelope Ann Miller,

and they do a great job.

-Where is this head?
-It's over there by the sink.

Lieutenant D'Agosta.

-Oh my God! Oh! Oh!
-Get her out of here!

I hadn't done anything like it,

so I-- I just was fascinated
with the idea of it.

Oh my God. The Kothoga.

- Gale Anne Hurd,
tremendously bright woman.

It was originally written
for the Museum of Natural History.

A lot of pre-production
had already been set,

then the museum said no.
And it really broke my heart.

The museum in Chicago and--
and the fact that Chicago

is such a photogenic city.

I rationalized my way into it.

However, I wish I had shot it in New York.

Whatever this thing was,
it ate those leaves

and is rapidly evolving
into something reptilian.

The creature designed
by Stan Winston is a marvel

of practical effects.

The design of that creature
was pretty important.

I had worked with Stan,
'cause I had produced a film

called The Monster Squad.

I loved working with Stan Winston.

Brilliantly talented and has a bunch
of uber talents around him.

We just went through sketch
after sketch, different ideas.

It is a hybrid creature
and I think one of the things

that Relic does really,
really well is the conception

of that creature. It looks great.

It's the perfect creature
to wreak havoc on a bunch

of oblivious party-goers at the museum.

- If you're doing a chase
to kind of grab people

and have them nervous, their Adam's apple

bobbing up and down,
you set the chase in a confined space.

The more frightening it is,
the more nerve-wracking it is.

My favorite moment in that film
is after people have been killed

and the museum has gone on lockdown.

It's like the guy is like
bitching and moaning about

how he's not gonna get blamed for this.

-I'm not taking the fall--
-Dad.

For this fiasco, I can tell you that.

And then out of nowhere
the Kothoga comes down,

grabs him, and like rips his head off.

When I get my hands on him…

And that jump scare, muah, I love it.

It's my favorite moment in the film.

We know this thing is part reptilian,
probably ectothermic.

Maybe if we can change
his temperature by 40 degrees,

we can freeze this son of bitch.

Opening day in LA, it was playing
at the National Theatre.

It was pretty empty.
I went, "Well, it failed."

I was inconsolable.

Then at 11:30 at that night,
the phone rang

and it was Sherry Lansing
and she said, "How does it feel

to have the number one picture
in America?"

I don't want a way out.
We've got to stop it!

I'll stay with you!

-Get inside! Get inside!
-This is crazy!

I think people want to have
an emotional ride in a movie

and that's why those kinds
of movies do well.

I know who you are.

From the point where I saw
Eraserhead for the first time

I watched every David Lynch film
instantly when it came out.

Oh, mommy! Mommy!

They were totally fucked up,
you would say, you know?

And that's amazing.

You can not underestimate
someone like David Lynch,

because that's someone
who really has a vision.

- Here I am.

I love that David Lynch
has never felt the need

to confine himself to the boxes
of simplifying any of his stories.

And your name.
What the fuck is your name?

Something about Lost Highway
and realizing that what you see

is never what it is and things
are never as they appear.

Sure, that's an old trope,
but David Lynch takes it to another level.

I like to remember things my own way.

-What do you mean by that?

-How I remembered them,
not necessarily the way they happened.

The thing about horror that
makes horror work so well

is when you can't explain
what's happening.

The unexplainable to me is
the scariest thing in the world.

It's sort of about somebody
who dissociates so much

they don't even really know
who they are anymore.

Whether they killed somebody
or whether they didn't kill them.

-Renee!
-Sit down, killer!

Lynch himself became
very interested if not obsessed

with the idea of somebody
divorcing themselves

from the reality of an act
they very likely committed.

He was thinking of O.J. Simpson.

This really was a fixation for Lynch
during the development of the film.

The jury having found you guilty
of murder in the first degree,

it is my order that you be put
to death in the electric chair.

David Lynch is sitting home
watching the O.J. trial

and watching a person
who he believes to be guilty

and is recognizing that that person
doesn't believe they're guilty.

That the cognitive dissonance has happened

to such a degree that
O.J. believes he's innocent

and O.J.'s making promises
to find the real killers

and that sort of schism fed directly

into Bill Pullman's character
in Lost Highway.

Dick Laurent is dead, isn't he?

I didn't think you knew Dick.

-How do you know he's dead?
-I don't.

That O.J. thing, it was everywhere anyway.

But if you were in Los Angeles,
it was inescapable.

I've never talked about this
on any interview before.

When we shot Tales from the Hood,
one of O.J.'s daughters, Arnelle Simpson,

was our stunt double for Paula Jai Parker.

Every day, every now and then,
we would have to stop,

'cause of the helicopters going over
for the trial of a man accused

of being a batterer and a-- a murderer

while we're shooting David Alan Grier
beating Arnelle,

'cause she's the stunt double.

It was bizarro.

She was just like the sweetest person

and she would hang out
even when she wasn't shooting.

I think because it was
one of the few places

you could escape that trial.

Where the fuck are we going, Alice?

We have to go to the desert, baby.

You can't get away from the fact
that the white Bronco

is on a road and it's a lonely road,

and there's nobody around
except that murderer

and his buddy in the car.

And then next thing you know
you've got Lost Highway.

I'm willing to drive down the Lost Highway
with uh, Dave Lynch.

I love Lost Highway.

It's a film that I look at over
and over, and over again.

It's nightmarish.

- I love and I'm totally
made uncomfortable

by the spooky feelings
that a David Lynch moment

can create in me.

Like a man walking up to me
and handing me his phone and saying…

I'm there right now.

What do you mean you're where?

At your house.

I mean, who thinks of that stuff?

Robert Blake gives kind of
a beautiful strange,

scary nightmarish performance
and Bill Pullman,

he's just absolutely,
I would say, terrified

at the exchange that
he and Robert Blake have.

This scene really stands out
as an example of Lynch's power

to really unnerve its viewer.

Ironically, the great actor Robert Blake,

who we know from In Cold Blood,
Electra Glide in Blue, Baretta,

was himself years later involved
in another high-profile murder

of his uh, I guess baby mama.
Kind of weird. Lynchian.

- What is it Al?
What do you think?

I think there's no such thing
as a bad coincidence.

- Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks,
Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive.

Truly an incredible body of work.

And there's no other director
who is like David Lynch.

That's for sure.

It's been a pleasure talking to you.

Premutos: The Fallen Angel.

Directed by Olaf Ittenbach.

It is a German movie.

All I can say it's layers
of gore on gore, on gore.

Practical effect gore.

The '90s gave us all these
low-budget German filmmakers

that were very much in this like
exploitation gore space.

It is about a book that
is found that releases a curse

that summons the dead.

But that's not why you watch it.

This is a showcase
of every practical effect

that you can do in your home.

It literally stains the walls.

It stains the carpets.

It is highly offensive
but really, really fun.

Premutos does go back and forth
between different time periods

which is very ambitious
for a no-budget film

done in someone's backyard.

The other kind of aspect of--
that I love about it

is that it makes use of snow.

It's this white surface
and you can just put a lot of gore on it.

There's intestines.
There's blood. There's guts.

There's knife through a head.

There's sword play.

And it's this great example
of like you're not having

to clean up, because
it's outside and it's water.

Things explode. Things gush.

Also an incredible amount
of dick trauma in this movie.

Every dick gets kicked.

It gets surgically altered by a doctor.

There's so much dick trauma in this movie
and I am so here for it.

This is a movie that celebrates
just the gross and the squish.

It's a love letter to practical effects.

The Wax Mask is another example
of late Italian horror

which I think is very worthy of watching.

It is basically a remake of House of Wax

which was a remake
of Mystery of the Wax Museum,

the Gaston Leroux story.

It takes place in Paris
where there's a guy

who runs a wax museum
and it's not going to plan.

He gets disfigured
and he goes on a murder spree

trying to find people to put
in his wax works.

It stars Robert Hossein
who was a filmmaker, a director

in his own right,
and also a very prolific actor.

He actually directed plays
at the Grand-Guignol Theatre in Paris.

So he really is the right guy
for this role.

- And what exactly are you researching?

Perfection.
I'm using techniques…

new to the artistic world.

Sergio Stivaletti,
while he's no as Michele Soavi,

he still was also was on his way
to being you know, a decent director.

But unfortunately, the bottom
fell out of the industry.

I'm sure I recognize her.

Different hair coloring, but it's her.

What a strange coincidence.

Wax Mask started life
as a Lucio Fulci film

with Dario Argento producing,

which was just a very tantalizing prospect
for any horror fan of the era

that Lucio was finally
going to have a budget.

Unfortunately, Fulci died.

So the project just was stuck in limbo.

And they had to find
a replacement director,

'cause they'd already done
the pre-production

with Stivaletti doing the effects.

It has a really pretty good
steampunk look about it,

and a lot of good production value.

So it has all the elements
to make something,

but you can't help but wonder
what it would have been

had it been a Fulci movie.

- Stephen King's The Shining.

Outside of It and The Stand,
which are kind of the juggernauts

of the King television miniseries
explosion of the '90s,

you've got a bunch of others
that are events of different degrees.

You've got The Tommyknockers,
and The Langoliers,

and The Golden Years,
and Storm of the Century.

Stephen King himself would take advantage

of the novel on television approach
to correct in his mind

one of the biggest failures
of adaptation in his career.

Here's Johnny!

There's no mystery about
Stephen King's opinion

of Stanley Kubrick's version
of The Shining.

It was well known even at the time
that he did not appreciate it.

And-- and I think it's because
the book was so personal to King

and so autobiographical.

He wrote a draft or two
for the Kubrick film

that Kubrick just chucked aside.

After the success of The Stand,
ABC went to King and said,

"What would you like to do next?"

And he said, "You know,
I'd really like to do

The Shining the way it was intended.

Hello Danny, I've been waiting for you.

When he wrote the book,
he was a wet alcoholic.

When he wrote the miniseries,
he was a dry alcoholic.

He hadn't drunk for years
and he could see it

with even more clarity
and from a different perspective.

It became really evident to me
when I called Gary Sinise

before we started the casting process
and Gary said to me,

"You know, I'd really be hesitant about
stepping into the shoes of Jack Nicholson.

Suddenly, it came crashing down
on me like a load of bricks

that this is not going to be an easy task.

Boo.

We didn't cast Steven Weber
until three days

before shooting was to begin.

King said, "If we don't do it today,

I'm pulling the plug.
That's it."

Fe-fi-fo-fum.

Uh, the giant has come
to eat you up in your bed.

It was a great role
and I had no kind of fears

that it would be
in the shadow of Jack Nicholson

or that this whole project
would be in the shadows

of the Kubrick film.

Stephen King and director Mick Garris

liked me enough to then pair me
in a reading

with Rebecca De Mornay and we clicked

and had a chemistry
that they seemed to like.

And I think what they seemed
to like was that I had a degree

of normalcy about me.

That I didn't go in uh, grinning
and arching my eyebrows

and being Jack,
which had become so iconic.

Warner Brothers was sending us to Canada.

Everything was a financial decision.

And I said, I'm begging you,
let us stop in Estes Park, Colorado

and go to the Stanley Hotel.

Stephen King was in the bar,
closing night of the season,

looking into the mirrored wall
and he saw the whole story

laid out in front of him there.

And so we shot where it takes place.

Aren't you the caretaker here, Wes?

Oh, I don't believe so, sir.

You've always been the caretaker.

It was a gigantic production
which extended over months

and Stephen King was very available.

He was around all the time.

He actually did a cameo
in a really fantastic scene

where he was the conductor
of a ghost orchestra.

Wanna go upstairs?
See the sights?

I was reading the book
while we were shooting

and there was this little kind
of couplet that I found.

"Wow, that's beautiful.
It's poetic.

Uh, what does it mean?

Stephen King's downstairs.
I'm going to ask him."

People with the shining see things
like pictures in a book.

And sometimes book pictures can be scary.

So much of what happens to Jack Torrance

in terms of his being possessed
by these evil spirits

is in fact, a very concise way
of describing what happens to the addict.

The irresistible pull towards
self-destruction, self-loathing.

Taking his family, who he loves
so deeply, down with him.

There are ghosts here.
You know there are.

And other things, too.

Courtland Mead was a joy.
He was very precocious.

He took direction beautifully.

A perfect little Danny Torrance.

And working with Rebecca De Mornay
was fantastic.

I think she had a really good grasp
of Wendy Torrance.

And what she brought to it was
a fuller humanity to this role.

-Who did this to you, huh?
-Don't you touch him!

You so much as lay a finger on him again,

I will wait till you're asleep
and I will kill you.

The monster aspect of things.

I loved wearing that makeup
in certain sequences.

There you are, doc, been looking for ya.

I loved chasing Danny down this corridor,
swinging a mallet.

Danny!

Weber, I think, deserves
so many kudos playing the shit

out of the part and doing an amazing job.

There was so much more
complexity, and humanity,

and pain that he brought to it.

Just one is no longer my vocabulary.

Got a lot of lost time to make up for
and uh, it's been a dry century.

There was still a real hard line
between cinema and television

and so we were still--
but we're just television.

So, well done, but it'll never
be anything great.

But over the years, I've seen
enthusiasm and support

for the miniseries version of The Shining
growing by leaps and bounds.

And so that's very gratifying.

Great party, isn't it?

The reviews were great.

It was number 1, 2, and 3
in the ratings for the week.

There was a lot of gratification
more on King's part

than on mine, I think.

Because he was the mover
and shaker behind it

getting made his way.

To have him be able to smile
and say, "We did it",

was one of the best feelings
you could possibly imagine.

Stay close, darling.
I'll be back.

God help us.

Event Horizon is not only
one of Paul W. S. Anderson's best films,

it's also one of those movies
that is criminally underrated.

I can remember us all just being
like, "Holy fucking,

what did we just see?"

I'm waiting.

Ah!

Event Horizon is about
the discovery of a ship,

the Event Horizon,
that was long thought lost

by creating a black hole to get
from one point in space to another.

- Jesus.

-Very impressive ship, Doctor.
-Thank you.

There's something about not
being able to get outside

of your environment
that just adds to the tension

and the danger of everything.

- What the hell happened to his eyes?

-Explosive decompression.
-Decompression doesn't do that.

I'd kind of grown up watching
big American action movies

as well as the horror movies.

As a lifelong fan of Alien,
this was an opportunity for me

to go out into space and try
and terrify people.

And I thought Philip Eisner's
concept of making

a haunted house movie in space was genius.

In Philip's original draft,

the spaceship
wasn't so much haunted as it was

kind of overrun by these creatures
from a different dimension.

And I wanted to kind of steer
the movie away from that

and introduce the idea of hell.

- Be with me… forever.

Andrew Kevin Walker came in
to do a specific draft

to move the movie into a more kind of
hellish horror movie realm.

He'd just come off doing Seven
and then Fish said,

"I don't want to say hell.
I think it's too on the nose."

And the compromise we came up
with was I got Fish

to say it one time.

So you kind of pick where you feel like
it's gonna have the most impact.

And that's in the conversation
with Jason Isaacs.

This ship has been beyond
the boundaries of our universe.

Who knows where it's been
and what it's brought back with it.

From hell.

Working with Fishburne was fantastic.

I wasn't hugely experienced working
with actors of his caliber.

And you know, he could have
kind of taken over the set.

He could have been very intimidating.

He wasn't. He was very giving.
He was very supportive.

And by the way, so was Sam Neill.

The crew is dead, Doctor.
Your ship killed them.

-We came here to do a job.
-We're aborting, Doctor.

I learnt a lot about actors on that movie.

They both became like godfathers
to me in terms of kind

of teaching me an actor's craft.

-It shows you things.
-What does?

The dark inside me.

It was an intense experience
for the actors,

because we were shooting
entirely on sets in a studio.

And it became very claustrophobic.

I remember talking
to Joely Richardson about it

where she said, you know,
"I'm just dreading coming

to work, going back into this same room

that's covered in blood with intestines
hanging from the ceiling.

It's like it's getting to me."

And I thought that was good.
It kind of put all the actors on edge.

Okay, baby bear.
I got it.

I felt like the movie had
to have some unique thought

behind the design of the sets.

Because the sets were the creature.

The spaceship is the adversary.
That's what wants to kill you.

I wanted the images of the Event Horizon

to be beautiful, but also incredibly
disturbing at the same time.

And you see that in the flashes of hell.

They have an almost painterly
feel to them.

And that's very much
the influence of Witkin, Bosch,

Bruegel, artists like that.

In any horror movie, it's a truism

that what people imagine is much worse
than anything you can show them.

'Cause you never see
where the Event Horizon goes

in anything other than flashes.

Liberate tutemet ex inferis.

We're leaving.

I've had people come up to me
and say, "Oh, I saw your movie.

It was-- it was just so terrible."

And they tell me these things
that they saw in the film

that I never shot, but they've imagined
in those flashes of horror.

They're imagining what scares them

and they're kind of projecting
that onto the movie that I made.

What happened to your eyes?

Where we're we going,
we won't need eyes to see.

Titanic was supposed
to have our release date

at the end of summer,
but Titanic wasn't gonna be ready.

So suddenly Titanic got pushed
to Christmas

and we were like, "You're in.

You're getting released on this date."

It's hard to say whether I was happy
with the theatrical cut or not.

The theatrical cut was done very quickly

and I think we probably trimmed
the movie a little bit too much

before putting it into theaters.

So could we have put more
visions of hell in there? Perhaps.

But would that have been too much?

I think there's a power to kind
of being more restrained.

But I'm very proud of the movie.

You know, I really stand behind it.

It's not like I feel like
the movie was destroyed

by Paramount in any way.

I think cinema audiences, and especially
American cinema audiences,

they don't like ambiguity.
They react negatively about it.

I think that hurt us
when we first released the movie.

But I think that ambiguity
is what people talk about.

It's what people theorize about.

And I think that has given
the movie life over time.

So I think the movie would not have become
the kind of cult classic that it is

if we'd taken all the ambiguity out.

I would trade the longevity
of Event Horizon

for another $10, $20 million
at the box office

any day of the week.

They're fine. They're with us.

They're with us.

- Mimic.

Guillermo del Toro is another one
who came up in the '90s.

Cronos was his feature debut,
which made a splash

amongst the horror faithful.

That got him on the radar of Miramax,
who hired him to do Mimic.

It's about giant cockroaches
in the sewers of New York.

But in typical Guillermo fashion
has given it

a kind of fairy tale sheen
that elevates it beyond that.

The creature design, of course,
is really unsettling,

because the reason it's called, "Mimic"

is 'cause the cockroaches have evolved
to disguise themselves

to look like humans.

- These things can imitate us.

They can infiltrate us and breed a legion
before anyone would even notice.

Del Toro is from Mexico,
and he took a very American

sort of locale,
which is the New York subway,

and he really exploited
that horror baggage

in an effective way
with the idea that a bug

could be standing in a crowd of commuters
and-- and you wouldn't notice them.

Do you have the time?
Sir, the time?

- It's a really effective bit of
sleight of hand in those moments.

They're really unsettling.

I love being in dark underground spaces
and you know, who isn't scared of bugs?

I'm from a family of coal miners,

so I think kind of going
into dark underground spaces

is something that really
speaks to me almost

on a kind of genetic level.

Mimic, I think, suffered from the presence

of the Weinsteins, the now
infamous Brothers Weinstein,

who on-- I happen to know on at least one,

maybe several occasions,
tried to fire Guillermo

from his own movie
and made his life a living hell.

What the hell is going on around here?

Oh God!

In fact, Bob Weinstein famously
showed up on set

and tried to fire Guillermo del Toro,

and star Mira Sorvino
had to step in and say,

"If he goes, I go."

And in spite of that, I think he crafted

what is a very beautiful
and evocative creature feature,

beautifully photographed, painterly.

Now if we could catch that male
and kill him,

then the females won't be able to breed
and the whole generation could die out.

The Weinsteins had this horrible way
of working

where they would ghost cut the movies,

like Guillermo was there working
with his editor and doing this,

but yet they would take the footage
and they would ghost cut their own thing.

It seemed like they were browbeating him.
It made things difficult for me as well.

Working with Guillermo del Toro was really
a inspiring process for me.

He has a great flair
for the visual. Imagination.

This whole creepiness
of the bugs and all that

sort of came up with
a musical language that was,

Guillermo used to say, "It gives me
the butt willies to hear this music."

That was his shorthand.

When he wanted something like that,
he'd give me the scene

and say, "I need you
to do the butt willy music."

- Come here.
Come here, come here.

When I finally saw the movie
all put together

with the music and everything,

I thought it was a powerful experience.

- Mimic finally was rescued
in a director's cut.

I'm told that's his preferred
vision, so you know,

there's a happier ending for Mimic.

- Keep saying something like
the dark angels

are coming to get her.

Chinese people come up
with some pretty wild stuff.

It offers some of the promise
of what Guillermo

would become as a filmmaker.

- You really feel like
he's one of the icons of the genre,

if not a patron saint of the genre,

because he is so effusive
and articulate about

why horror films are important
and why creatures, not monsters,

as he would say, are important
to us as a society.

Funny, funny shoes.

- Wishmaster.
Careful what you wish for.

There were many, many new types
of villains in the '90s, that's for sure.

Wishmaster's The Djinn, of course,
is a very, very old myth.

It's a wonderful one
that isn't a traditional monster.

Careful what you wish for.

Be careful what you wish for.

Because if you wish too far,
it might come back to bite you.

- Hey buddy, you okay?

Wishmaster is about a malevolent genie
who's unleashed in the present day.

We were trying
to create a new horror icon.

You know, it was my second film,
but I wanted to surround myself

with a team that would help, and actors,
and as well as a creative team

that would give me a comfort level.

You did have your executives
and the pressure

of the three or four
or five producers involved.

And then, you know, bring in Wes Craven

to exec produce, 'cause I had
a relationship with Wes

and that was very helpful
and he was very supportive

and he was always there to go to.

-This is not something you wish to see.
-Uh-huh.

- Neon Maniacs was my really first
sort of outreach in horror

and my first realization, by the way,
of what an art special effects makeup is.

The Djinn, I'm very proud
of the fact that I got

to play both the human
and the monster version of it.

Quite frankly, as a kid growing up,
I'd have severe acne

and so I never considered
myself attractive.

And so, now playing this presumably
debonair, suave dude, I'm thinking,

"I don't know about that."

Does it bother you knowing
that your beauty will fade?

That your looking glass
will day by day tell you

a long and unhappy story?

The look in Demerest's eyes
is Richard Ramirez.

There is nobody that I've looked
at that scares me like he did.

I knew that was pure evil.

Ask for an end to change, an end to decay.

Say, "I wish to be beautiful forever."

I wish to be beautiful forever.

The voice came about,
is it a British accent?

Is it a Middle Eastern accent?

For me, it was almost
as if it had to be a gaseous burp

coming up out of the earth.

Spare me, child.

Behold my true face.

For energy, and because
I could eat it quickly,

I was eating jelly beans.

Jelly beans are made with whey.

And I realized that if it coated
my throat and I didn't clear it,

it would make the voice very gurgly.

Even more gurgly than this.

Make your wish.

- Robert is an amazing artist,
so working with him

as a director, very specific,
but would then get out of the way.

Knew, of course, what he wanted.
Had done all the conceptual art.

I mean, he went to bed
and dreamed about it and woke up

and had breakfast with it.

There was no question
that he knew every single mile marker

on that long road.

- A court sorcerer is said
to have imprisoned

an evil spirit within it.

A creature from the spaces
between the worlds. A Djinn.

I stacked the cast with all these people
that I had worked with before.

Once Robert Englund was brought
onto the film, then it was like,

"Oh, well, why don't we get Kane Hodder
and get Tony Todd and then we have like,

these three icons of horror that
we can use as a marketing hook.

A lot of people call it like,
"The Expendables of horror films".

You had Ted Raimi and Danny Hicks
from Evil Dead 2,

Joe Pilato from Day of the Dead,

Angus Scrimm, his voiceover really sets
the tone at the opening of the movie.

- In the time before time,

God breathed life into the universe.

I just wanted all my friends
in the movie, you know?

God, how I'd love
to host a party like that.

As you wish.

My big monster brothers,
who were my mentors

for that film and were wonderful guides.

I'll never forget that.

The name is Valentine.
Johnny Valentine.

You remember that when they
ask how you lost your eye.

My favorite kill, approaching the guard,
played by Kane Hodder.

I asked Robert Kurtzman, would it be okay
to do this one right down the barrel?

I say, "I have to get in there",
something like that. And he says…

Well, now you'd have to go through me
and that is something I would love to see.

And so as I'm walking,
I look right down the lens

and I smile like, we know what's coming.

Bookending the movie
with these big action set pieces

was probably my favorite thing to do.

Free us, Wizard.
Lift this curse. Help us.

I was very comfortable,
of course, in the doing those sequences,

because they were effects-heavy
sequences, too.

A true cult classic now.

In the hands of many
other directors that story

might have fallen flat,
but Bob really managed

to make it into something really fun.

- As the movie got older
and more people discovered it

over the years, it became more beloved.

And of course, it spawned
three sequels after that.

- I want to walk right
through the bars, man.

-Walk right on out of the jail.
-Done.

I'm always impressed
when I go to a fan convention

how many people love the character

and they come up
with Wishmaster-inspired things.

So I just love that people love it
all these years later.

What a beautiful, beautiful monster
they came up with.

Did I hear you say, "freeze"?

- I made this.

This is my version of the Wishmaster.

It is a 360-degree version.
Took me 200 hours to sculpt.

This is 2 ounces of silver.

And it's quite beautiful
if I say so myself.

Magic.

I can't tell you, a kid that grew up
not being able

to see horror movies
to now know that I guess

in some way or another it is
in the pantheon of monsters,

monster movies. I couldn't be prouder.

Pleasure doing business with you.

- Texas Chainsaw Massacre:
The Next Generation.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

That's not a found footage film,
but God bless America

did it feel like I was watching something

I shouldn't have been watching
when I first saw it.

What I love about Return
of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre

is that it is written and directed
by the screenwriter of the original.

He had written about these kids
being carved up by this family

Twenty years earlier and the sympathies
are all with those kids.

He comes back a middle-aged man
and he fucking hates those kids.

Guys need sex, okay?
You can get prostrate cancer.

You can't get cancer from not having sex.

Like you'd know. Never had a date
in your life. You're so ugly.

They're terrible people.

You kind of are fully
on the side of the family

when these teens get got as they say.

Heather!

We are gifted with a Texas Chainsaw movie

that has Renée Zellweger
and Matthew McConaughey in it.

Stop. You're scaring me.

You don't know shit about being scared,
little girl. Not yet.

The first time you see Leatherface in
Texas Chainsaw: The Next Generation,

and it's one of the most unsettling,
strange moments

Kim didn't want to let go of.

That he's not just running towards you
with a chainsaw.

That there's a lot going on
in this character

that is very strange and unpredictable.

There's two versions of Leatherface
in nine movies

that is shrill and shrieking,

and feels like something unknowable.

And it's the original and it's this one.

Stop! Stop!

- He's the angry, screaming teen
when he's got that one face on

and then he gets dressed for dinner
and he's a little more ladylike.

You sit the fuck down!

I like to refer to Leatherface
in the they/them pronouns

because I believe
they are in this discovery

of what their identity may be.

I thought it was really profound
and powerful the way that

they presented Leatherface in that film.

And I think if you get too attached
to wanting

your movie monsters to be exactly the way

that they were when you first
fell in love with them,

then you're never going
to appreciate their--

all these incredible manifestations
of the way

these characters can evolve over time.

- I think Kim, it's part
of a world that he's lived in

for so long, that he helped birth

and then he understands it
really, really well.

Are we having a party or what?
Here we go!

I'm sorry! Please, no!

Fire in the hole!

- What's scary is the family.

And Leatherface is only one facet
of the family.

The idea that the tow truck driver

who's gonna pick up your car
is going to murder you.

Boy's dead.

No, he's not.
He just passed out.

- He's dead now.

Or that the nice real estate lady
with the boob job is part of this family.

Phony three dollar bills.
Changed my life, though.

It resonates more for me
as I get older, I think,

that there are people who are
kind of functioning members

of society who are really batshit.

There's something so wonderful
and true to the spirit

of what Tobe Hooper created
in the first film

and yet takes it now into the '90s.

There is this weird almost Wall Street

secret society culture of wealth
that is somehow exploited

like the deep dark heart
of American farmland

and you go, "Oh my God,
this is a movie of right now."

Do you know how you always hear
these stories about these people

who run everything,
but nobody knows who they are?

Well, it's true.

It's kind of meta but nobody
gives it credit for being meta.

This Illuminati character,
with his pierced nipples and whatnot,

pulls up in the limo
and he chastises them,

'cause he's the boss and to me
the only thing that makes sense

is that that's an avatar for Kim Henkel.

I want these people
to know the meaning of horror.

It played once in '95 under Return

and then it got released in '97
under the title, Next Generation.

Matthew McConaughey
and Renée Zellweger were just

starting their careers when they got cast
in Texas Chainsaw: Next Generation.

By the time the film actually came out,

they wanted to distance themselves
from it and it's a shame,

because it is a strange kind of experiment
in what horror could be

and I think it's one of the most
underrated films in the canon.

Welcome to my world.

- I Know What You Did Last Summer.

If I'm gonna be perfectly honest
like I was like

a '90s ironic cool kid like I enjoyed
I Know What You Did Last Summer,

but I smoked a Parliament afterwards
and made fun of it.

To our last summer of immature
adolescent decadence.

I think I was like a little too cool
for school back then.

I think that I could appreciate it more.

I Know What You Did Last Summer
has such an elegant set-up.

It's a bunch of kids that are having fun
and driving a windy road

and they accidentally hit somebody.

Watch out!

They all panic and freak out
and talk about what to do.

This is your future, Julie.

College. It's your scholarship.

The guy's already dead.
If we go to the police, we're dead, too.

And they make the very
unfortunate decision

to not say anything
and they let it fester for a year.

We make a pact.

Right here and now,
we take this to our grave.

- That is kind of where the story starts.

This is the post-Scream world,
so now studios are like

very into teenagers.
Very into teen horror.

They're seeing money signs everywhere.

It stars Freddie Prinze Jr.,
Jennifer Love Hewitt,

Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Ryan Phillippe.

Jennifer Love Hewitt was already
a big star on the small screen.

She goes from the small screen
Party of Five

to the party of four killer teenagers
in I Know What You Did Last Summer.

He's just out there
and he's watching us and waiting.

What are you waiting for? Huh?
What are you waiting for?

This was written by Kevin Williamson
before he wrote Scream actually.

He had the script for
I Know What You Did Last Summer.

That's why the script didn't sell.

Scream hit it big
and then suddenly everybody

was knocking on Kevin Williamson's door.
"What else you got?"

Lucky for us he said,

"Boom, I've got this little thing called,
I Know What You Did Last Summer."

Behind you!

No!

This film was rushed into production
following the success of Scream.

But the similarities end there.

Directed by Jim Gillespie,
who didn't do a lot of horror,

the film was adapted from a 1973 novel

and the novelist purportedly was horrified

that they turned her story
into a slasher movie,

but it worked so well.

You've got a really imposing
figure in the killer

and he's using a fisherman's hook
played by Muse Watson. Perfection.

What do you want?

We get a little bit
of the Scooby-Doo element

in the sense that it's a whodunnit.

We're introduced to characters
and storylines very early on.

We're planting seeds.

Hey!
You forgot your cigarettes.

We're going this direction,
this direction, this direction.

A lot of misdirection.

And typical of the era,
I Know What You Did Last Summer

is jam-packed with amazing banger tracks
from bands who were big at the time.

You've got Kula Shaker,
Offspring, Korn, Soul Asylum,

a veritable who's who
of the '90s alt-rock scene.

The film was such a hit that
a sequel was perhaps inevitable

and indeed the very last stinger
at the end of the film

sets it up perfectly.

For I Still Know What You Did Last Summer,

Jennifer Love Hewitt,
Freddie Prinze Jr., and Muse Watson

return to their roles from the original.

And they're joined by newcomers
Brandy, Mekhi Phifer,

and Matthew Settle.

Trey Callaway steps in
and pens this script.

The movie like I Still Know
What You Did Last Summer is

so bankrupt of ideas
that it can't even come up

with interesting clichés.

Wasn't that the karaoke scene
where she's like singing karaoke

and then it says,
"I Know What You Did Last Summer"

on the karaoke machine?
Like that is iconic.

-Come on.
-Hey.

- The Creeps.

One of the most bizarre films
in the Full Moon canon

is a little movie called, "The Creeps".

It was directed by Charlie Band,

the great cinematographer
Adolfo Bartoli shot it.

It's the story of a mad scientist

who wants to recreate
all of the classic monsters

of the Universal horror films.

Something goes wrong along the way
and he creates the monsters,

but they are all little diminutive
monsters played by

Phil Fondacaro and a number
of other actors.

You will be so kind as to explain
all of this, my friend.

Phil Fondacaro was kind of like
a part of the family

for a long, long time.

As far back, or probably farther back than
John Buechler's film, Troll.

Welcome, Brother Elf.

I've always had this fascination
with little people

and they've been woven in
and out of my movies

and I thought, "You know,
wouldn't it be cool to

take some of the classic monsters
of literature…

Bram Stoker's Dracula. Yes.

This mad scientist type character,
what he needs to do

is to steal the original manuscripts

of Shelley's Frankenstein
and so forth and so on.

Freeze, book thief!

Puts these manuscripts in some
sort of hocus-pocus contraption.

He's got these pods that are,
you know, 7 feet tall

and that's where we are waiting
as an audience for Frankenstein

to come back, and the werewolf
to come back,

and the mummy to come back.

In just a few minutes,

I am going to bring four cultural
archetypes to life.

The four figures most emblematic
of the powers of d-- darkness.

And boom, boom, boom, he does it
and all these doors open

and they all walk out,
but they are 3-feet tall dwarves.

I am told almost everyone knows of me.

Though, perhaps you imagined me
somewhat taller.

In addition to that,
which was already challenging,

this is back in the 35mm days,

I thought, "Wow, we got to make
this movie in 3D."

Now no one could care less at that time.
3D was dead again.

Back then you had to equip the screen.

And so it was not like,
oh, you just put a different print in.

You had the screen,
and the thing, and the lenses.

So I remember finishing
the movie, and we tested it,

and it looked great,
if you had the glasses.

But then there was so much resistance
from the distributors to equipping movies.

Said, "You're-- no one is gonna
be interested in this movie.

Plus, what the fuck movie is this about?

Like these little dwarves
and Frankenstein."

But I am proud of the movie
and other than those few people

at that one screening who saw it in 3D,
no one on Earth has seen it in 3D.

And then I would have people ask me,

who didn't know that it was originally
filmed as a 3D movie,

"How come this thing is poking
at the screen?"

'Cause you know, I did tricks
that are 3D tricks.

You better stay right
where you are, little guy,

or I'm gonna brain you with this.

"Director is weird. He's like doing stuff
that doesn't make any sense."

As small as this movie was in scope

and literally with as the--
the leads, it looks beautiful.

I think the 3D when people see it
are gonna love it.

And the makeup effects, I think,
are just fantastic.

So come on. You can't fault us
for not being unique.

And we four, we nightmares
shall walk the night again.

- You've always wanted
to know what hell was like.

Now you will know.

Another fascinating King adaptation
from the '90s is The Night Flyer.

It's one of those premises
from a King short story

that you don't think is gonna work.

It's about a vampire who flies a Cessna

and he lands in different airports,
and he kills people,

and then he takes off again.

It's funny. It's dark.

It's one of those things
where you're like,

"Why hasn't this been explored
before in the vampire canon?"

Oh, Jesus, save me.

Miguel Ferrer plays the lead
as a tabloid reporter

who's chasing down the story
of the Night Flier.

The movie's real good.
He's great in it.

I said, move it along, buddy.

Get your hands off me, pal.
I'm the fucking press.

There's a sequence that starts
with one of the coolest,

weirdest, and funniest things
I've ever seen,

where he's in a bathroom,
and he's at the mirror,

and he hears someone come in,

but he's looking in the reflection
and he can't see anybody.

And the vampire goes to a urinal
and you just see

a phantom stream of bloody piss
in the urinal,

'cause the vampire is taking a leak.

After that scene,
there's a great conversation

between the vampire and the reporter.

- Listen closely, my inquisitive friend.

Do not follow me anymore
or I will swallow you whole.

And then a nightmarish final sequence
in the airport

that is terrifying, and dark,
and really brutal.

You know what I had to do
to get this, Richard?

I had to pull it out of me.

But ends on a perfect note
that is completely dictated by

who that character is.

I think The Night Flier is a blast.

- Jack Frost.

Jack Frost, 1997.

Not to be confused with Jack Frost, 1998.

Charlie, it's me, Dad!

-I can explain everything!
-Ah, get away from me! Ah!

Well, I can't explain the part
about me being a snowman.

Concerns a serial killer who,
in transit to death row,

is involved in a collision
with a genetic research truck.

Looks like deep-fried Jack's off the menu.

And winds up turned
into an abominable snowman.

Well, it ain't fuckin' Frosty!

Listen, I couldn't make this up.

-What the hell are you?
-World's most pissed-off snow cone.

The result of which is a snowman
wreaking havoc

in the holiday season with crazy kills

that all have to do
with Christmas ephemera.

"Here's the windup and the pitch!"

Icicles, broken ornaments, name it,
they just throw it at the camera.

This film was directed by Michael Cooney,
who also went on to direct the sequel,

and it's entirely a labor of love.

Who's Jack Frost?

Jack Frost is a very bad man,
honey, but now he's gone. Oof.

Michael Cooney actually intended this film

to be a big-budget blockbuster,
but when the film landed,

famously, on the table
of none other than Renny Harlin,

his partner at the time,
Geena Davis, said, "No way."

I just saw something that
doesn't belong in this world,

and it's out there killing my friends.

-Now tell me what it is!
-Jack Frost.

I'm so sorry, Shannon Elizabeth.

Perhaps, she would like to strike this one
from her filmography, but she did make

her big screen debut in a very
MeToo questionable scene

involving Jack Frost in the shower.

The snowman actually ate up
a lot of the budget.

It was created by Screaming Mad George
and they had only one for the entire shoot

and had to make him as menacing
as they could.

They worked it out.

Frostbite, next time we'll use mistletoe.

As the shoot progressed, of course,

this white costume just got
dirtier and dirtier

as the film gets dirtier,
come to think of it.

You are so fucking dead.

Just what I was thinking.

And by the end of it,
the cast was so delighted

to be rid of it that
they actually burned it.

Somebody remember to put out the cat.

It definitely had a shoestring budget
that it stretched

as far as it would go,
but I think the affection

for the material
and the humor that permeates

throughout is really palpable

and why it remains
a cult classic to this day.

-Hey, Jack!
-What?

What's the difference between
snowmen and snowwomen?

-I don't know.
-No balls.

- What's your favorite scary movie?

So the success of Scream meant
that a sequel

was pretty much inevitable,
but how do you top Scream exactly?

Any good sequel is going
to take the root film

and expand upon its world.

What Scream 2 did was it took
the meta even further.

- Look out back.

Do you see your boyfriend anywhere?

That's pretty much a perfect sequel.

More blood, more gore.
Carnage candy.

Your core audience just expects it.

I really thought Scream was a one-off.

I mean in a way it was perceived
and then ended.

To me, it could have been a one-off
and been perfect and done with it.

Not in my movie.

Dewey was dead.

Tested so well,
that Wes shot him giving him

the thumbs-up just in case.

And so it's little things
like that gave it life to go.

- Hello, Sidney.

Yes?

- What's your favorite scary movie?

Scream 2 starts off with Omar Epps
and Jada Pinkett Smith.

And you kind of knew that
if they're in the opening,

they're gonna die.

Scream 2 knew it had to one-up itself,

so then it took great pleasure
in breaking its own rules.

- The vibe on 2 was incredible.

The vibe on 1 was amazing,
but I was scared, you know?

And-- but we were all just kind of like
this little amoeba being born.

But 2 was like, "Wow,
we have something in the can."

You know, David and Courteney
were becoming an item.

And Neve and Matt were an item.
But Matt was dead.

Skeet was dead.
So then we had these newids.

Like I felt very, the cock of the walk.

I felt very comfortable.
I mean, it was our world, man.

So we were-- took over this college

for a whole summer and had fun.
We had parties. A lot of fun.

Portia de Rossi and myself,
we were both auditioning

for the same role.

They turned that character
into two people,

'cause they couldn't decide
who they wanted.

This must be flat out hell for you.

I manage.

Sid, we have our eyes on you.

You hang in there
and if there is anything we can do…

People wanted to be in the movie.

They were clamoring for it.
And Stab was just wild.

Luke being Skeet and Heather being Drew.

It was meta on meta with meta
and it was like this tiny community.

You know, not easy movie to shoot.

It was very hot in Atlanta.
Huge cast. Lots of extras.

I think a lot of pressure for Scream 2,
because Scream 1 performed so well.

Hello.

When we started Scream 2,
we only had three quarters of a script.

So they didn't have an ending.

- I also heard that the script
was leaked which I don't know

how that happened or who did it,
but they were so careful.

We were on a need-to-know basis.

I don't think I got the script
until I got to Atlanta.

It was uh, pretty locked down.

I think they made a fake one
and leaked that

to like throw the scent off the real one.

Kevin Williamson was around a lot
and the script changed often.

Multiple times in a day.

So no one really knew
how the movie was gonna end.

Which was exciting though,
because anything can happen.

You know, it's happening
as we're shooting it almost.

Why don't you show your face,
you fucking coward?

-My pleasure.
-Derek!

I'm positive Kevin knew all along,
but you know he tried

to take us this way,
and this way, and this way.

We had a lot of meta, meta in Scream 2.

If Tori Spelling plays Sid
and they cast Joe Blow Nobody to play me.

At least, you get David Schwimmer.

They made jokes about friends
because of Courteney obviously.

When did she start smoking?

Ever since those nude pictures
on the internet.

It was just my head.
It was Jennifer Aniston's body.

We want that, because you're thinking it

when you're watching the movie
anyway, so why not say it?

Don't ask don't tell.

I think there's some good stuff in there.

"Mrs. Voorhees, was a…"

…terrific serial killer

and there's always room
for Candyman's daughter.

I love, "sequels suck".

Sequels suck.

I sign that all the time.

It's by definition alone,
they're inferior films.

We're shooting it on a cafe
in UCLA in the summer.

David has like an eighth
of the lines compared to me

and yet he's so great in the scene

and he's just so engaged, and so funny.

I really learned a lot that day.

It's like you don't need to speak
to be interesting.

Maybe you are a suspect.

Well if I'm a suspect, you're a suspect.

Do you have a point?

Okay. Let's move on.

I gotta tell you this.
Spoiler alert.

I don't know. I die.

They didn't have the third act
yet when we got there

and I was like, "Shit!"

But then I thought, "Hey man,
this is the world we've chosen",

so-- and I had a huge part.

So I was like, "Fine.

And then I'll be done and I'll move on
to my romantic comedies."

Roger L. Jackson.
He is the voice of Ghostface.

He is everything that you fear.

What's wild about that day was
I thought someone was gonna read me

the lines off-camera.

They didn't do that.
Wes says, "I'm gonna call you."

And then when Wes calls me,
he had Roger call me.

He had the actual character call.

They kinda had him fuck with me. Right?

He said all those lines and he goes,
"I have your mother with me."

And I'm like, "My mom is there."

You'll look the surprise on
my face and stuff.

That's because he's really saying
this shit about my mom.

Wes played the beautiful game.
And then we're done.

Everyone's clapping and laughing.
And I was like, "Are you okay, mom?"

She's like, "I was right here.
Roger's over here. I just met Roger."

And then I met Roger.
Like I never had known him.

- Have you ever felt a knife
cut through human flesh

and scrape the bone beneath?

It's him.

I thought it was a rite
of passage quite frankly.

So I was like,
"I'm gonna make it the goriest."

And so I'm like, "Dude,
I want them to fucking feel something."

And Wes is like, "You wanna do it?"

And I was like, "Yeah."
And he's like, "Alright. Load him up."

And they put so much blood on me
and on my face.

He said I already got it,
but I'll give you a gory one.

If Scream didn't have
the benefit of being first,

Scream 2 is right there.

It works on every level
and it does not let down.

We came out and we did huge.
It was incredible.

Wes has the greatest house

and the house that lives next door to him
is Pauly Shore's.

And I could cry but when Scream 2 opened,

Pauly put a huge banner in the driveway

and say, "Congratulations,
the number one opening

horror movie history. You did it."

That was the sweetest thing for Wes.
And Wes never forgot it.

And I just thought
that was the classiest thing.

-How would you make it different?
-I'd let the geek get the girl.

So at one of his dinners, he's like,

"I think I can get you in Scream 3."

I was like, "What?"
He's like, "Yup, I got an idea."

And it's-- it's such a clever idea
of how they did it.

And they brought me back
via the video tape.

-Told you I'd make a movie someday.
-Oh my God.

People come up to me all the time
and tell me

how much they just love me that I'm in it.
It had a lot of meaning.

If you're dealing
with an unexpected backstory

and a preponderance of exposition,
then the sequel rules do not apply.

I'll never forget, I go to Scream 4.

I'm not in it. I'm dead.

And I went and did
the whole carpet and everything.

I was very happy to go.
Bob Weinstein was there.

He goes, "You know, should've
never fucking killed you."

And I said, "Really?"
He goes, "Yeah.

It was a mistake.
They love you."

I shook his hand and I went off.
And I was like…

And I don't know.
Maybe Harvey did it.

I have no idea.

To this day,
the Scream universe gets along.

And it started with Wes.

Wes sprinkled all this beautiful
pixie dust on us.

- Why are you even here, Randy?

You will be the leading man.

Fuck you!

Why are the Japanese making
such dark, dark films?

Cure is a Japanese horror movie
that is much more sophisticated

than its predecessors.

The film is spooky and creepy,
and it is artfully made.

Cure has this amazing set-up
where there is a police detective

who is investigating a series
of brutal killings.

All of them committed
using the same methodology.

But each of them has been committed by

a completely different person
under different circumstances

and each time the killers
have turned themselves in,

and confessed to their crimes.

The counterpart character
in Cure is this loner named Mamiya

who is wandering the countryside
asking existential questions.

And anybody fool enough to carry
on a conversation with this guy

is gonna find their life upended
and the people around them killed.

He's a master hypnotist
and with a few little tricks

he's able to get you into a trance

and then you're gonna go
and do his bidding.

You're gonna murder them
and then you're gonna carve a big X

in their chest or on their neck,

and then the horror sets in
of what you have done.

The detective character
is played by actor Kōji Yakusho

who is one of Japan's greatest
actors of his generation.

He is able to bring
such a sense of opaqueness

to a character whose internal life
is clearly in turmoil.

He's experiencing an emotional breakdown,

because he is dealing
with the psychological deterioration

of his wife at home.

This unstable man is probably
not the person

you want to bring into the orbit
of a person who is capable

of turning any stable person
into a killer.

Cure is a psychological thriller

about alienation
that has the effect of making

the audience feel alienated
in order to work

its sort of hypnotic magic on people.

Cure launched Kiyoshi Kurosawa
into the top tier of directors.

He was fascinated with that notion
that ordinary people can be killers.

Your neighbors can be killers.

Your family members can be killers.
You could be a killer.

In many ways, the success of Cure,

like the success of Ring,
helped establish this notion

of a more restrained version of horror,

one that's more psychological,
asking the audience

to be a contributing participant
in how the story is being told.

It's when you add it all up afterwards

as you're piecing it
all together that maybe

it becomes even more terrifying
in retrospect

as you begin to realize
what it is you actually witnessed.

J-HORROR EXPLOSION
THE WORLDWIDE IMPACT OF ASIAN FILMS

Filmmakers from the whole Asian culture

have such a unique point of view,
and they go all out.

They go balls to the wall.

I think the fascination
of J-horror for North American

and global audiences
more generally all had to do

with the exhaustion of certain
horror franchise conventions

that were coming out of Hollywood.

Audiences who were thirsting
for something darker,

something innovative, in some cases,

something really extreme,
could find it in J-horror films.

The term, "J-horror"
is the one that typically gets

applied to the genre,
but that's very reductionist,

because there are very similarly coded

and similarly themed films
that emerged from other traditions

in other countries, South Korea,
in Taiwan, Thailand, in India,

and ultimately, remakes
in the United States.

The mood of these films
is a kind of melancholia

that you didn't see
in Hollywood horror films.

These films did not obey
the tight linear causality

of Hollywood narrative cinema.

Less to explain the horror away,

and more to stay with the inexplicability

and to explore the darkness that's there.

The biggest difference between
Western horror

and then Japanese horror in the '90s were
at a conceptual level.

They didn't have bloodthirsty killers.

No Leatherface, no Ghostface.

There it was much more spiritual.
It was an evil, spiritual curse.

Once you start the curse,
there's nothing you can do to stop it.

One of the obvious recurring elements
of J-horror films

is that Sadako-like figure,
the ghostly girl with the long black hair.

That visual image.

Their monster aesthetic
was slightly different.

They moved weird.

That feeling of, "I know what you are
and I don't know what you are."

On some level, these supernatural specters
are deeply human.

And I think that's part
of the appeal to global audiences.

In J-horror, technology
is definitely not your friend.

Whether it's a videocassette
at home or a cell phone

in their pocket.

What if there was a malevolent
being that existed

inside of these devices?

What if these devices themselves
that you have in your house

right now can kill you?

The marriage of the supernatural
with the technological

was really intriguing to me.

And all of those things feel alien,
I think, to a western audience.

And for that reason are
really unsettling to them.

There are things, you know,
beyond our realm

that we don't understand.

A glimpse into that could,
you know, bring madness.

I don't think that
the Japanese approach their horror

in a humanistic way.

I think they have a much more
Lovecraftian view of the cosmos,

which is a colder view.

A Shintoist or a Zen kind
of philosophical perspective

on the universe where humans
are just part of a larger puzzle,

and we are not the center of the universe.

Come into the spiral…

- At the turn of the millennium,
Hollywood horror was poised

to turn a more profitable corner.

But to do that, they needed
an infusion of new ideas.

And one of the places they looked
was J-horror and Asian horror.

The remake of The Ring
was incredibly successful.

The Grudge was incredibly successful.

So there was a sudden focus
in Hollywood about,

"Well, what's gonna be the next Ring,
the next Grudge?"

Suddenly, that horror audience
becomes very hungry

for more of that, which leads to kind of
a floodgate effect of J-horror happening.

There's no way you can talk
about Hollywood remakes

of Asian horror without knowing
the name Roy Lee.

In the late '90s,
Japanese horror was still

relatively underground.

A young producer named, "Roy Lee",
got his hands on a videocassette of Ring,

and he loved it so much, he flew to Japan.

He met with the producer
of The Ring and said,

"I just want two weeks with this,
and let me show you what I can do."

He got multiple offers.

DreamWorks ended up bidding on it
and purchasing it for $2 million.

They can see the marketing potential
in what a Western remake could be.

And Roy Lee is responsible single-handedly

for The Ring, The Grudge, Dark Water,

Tale of Two Sisters out of Korea,
Oldboy from Korea,

Infernal Affairs, which became
The Departed.

I mean, there were all high-caliber films
from a different country.

He had the foresight to see
that these would play really well

in the United States.

I'm gonna keep going, till I can
pull your head off

with my bare hands.

We couldn't get enough of it.

All of the sudden, we're importing
every J-horror film we can get.

We are just digesting it
and talking about it,

writing about it online.

- One of the ways that
I discovered Asian horror

and J-horror, in particular, was through

the Tartan Extreme DVD series.

It was horror films
from a handful of industries,

so it's really Japan, South Korea,
Hong Kong, Thailand.

It took you to an absolute edge
of gruesomeness and darkness

and something really malignant
and complex in the human psyche.

With labels like Tartan,
people were seeing horror movies

the likes of which
they had never seen before.

Very scintillating and exciting
for the horror fan who thought

that they'd seen it all simply
because they'd gone through

the entire catalogue of Blockbuster.

Hong Kong cinema, in particular,
had Category III films

that appealed to a particular subset
of moviegoers

that were really looking
for this particularly gruesome,

edgy combination of sex and violence.

There were a great many
Japanese horror films

that didn't necessarily
launch franchises and--

and didn't get American remakes,

but which are fantastic
stand-alone pictures.

You get something like Uzumaki,
the Spiral or Parasite Eve

or Shikoku or Inugami.
Some extraordinary films.

Dumplings, which was
a really terrifying horror film

by Fruit Chan, also from Hong Kong.

Eat all the shrimp dumplings you can
before you watch the film,

because you're not gonna be able
to eat hakao

for a while afterwards.

There was also a concurrent tradition

of very similarly-styled
horror films in South Korea.

Whispering Corridors.

Each of them involved
ghost stories set at schools.

Memento Mori is a Korean horror film

that unfolds over the course
of a single day.

The film is memorable and important

for its devastating critique
of Korean social institutions

that are homophobic.
It's genuinely creepy.

The haunting is deeply physical,
invasive, and erotic.

Tale of Two Sisters is another
fantastic South Korean

horror film from that era.

A Quiet Family would be sort
of the horror version

of Fawlty Towers.

A fantastic combination of arch comedy

and workplace drama, plus serial killing.

And we really shouldn't ignore
the role that anime plays in this

or the-- the subset within
that of horror anime.

Things like Akira, the Ring,
Battle Royale.

These were in different media,
and different genres,

and appealing to different audiences,
but they were all their own rabbit holes.

And you find your way to one
and you start to find

your way to the others.

And so many people in the 1990s
were finding their way

to Japanese popular culture
and recognizing how much

there was there to reward that interest.

1998

- Deep Rising.

Deep Rising is one of those joyous things
that just came out of nowhere.

Stephen Sommers, who would go on
to be a huge director

for several years, doing big
adventure horror adaptations.

Probably just a pod of whales.

Moving at 31 knots, sir?
I-- I don't think so.

-Where is it coming from?
-A 160 meters directly beneath us

and rising very quickly.

Deep Rising is about
a group of mercenaries

who come across a ghost ship,

a derelict ship with nobody on it,
real rich, real expensive,

only to find out why everyone is gone.

Everyone is dead, and then the reason

why everyone is dead
is that some deep, deep,

deep sea creature has come up
and basically killed everyone.

Kind of a mashup of action,
and some horror elements,

and some comedy,
and absolutely a creature feature.

When I first got the script,
it was called, "Tentacles".

There were definitely several
light-hearted moments mixed in

with the action and the horror.

I don't mean to sound
like a pussy, but this shit

is starting to freak me out, man.

And then I found out later
how much Stephen Sommers

really loves Abbott
and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

I was excited that there was
that sort of spirit.

Now what?

-Not you!
-Get off of that!

We were in Vancouver for about
four and a half months.

Steve is very much like his movies,
extremely energetic, quick-thinking.

He's very fun to work with.
I mean, he's a real crowd-pleaser.

Like a fine wine,
I'm aging gracefully. Thank you.

You look more like a keg of beer to me.

It was so great working
with Treat Williams.

We liked that there was
a little comic bit right before

the creature arrives to sort of
maybe throw people off a little.

What you got there?

-Peanut.
-Peanut?

The actors that were in that film,
we really got along.

It was really great. Famke Janssen.

I think she broke my nose.

Yeah, give me a chance
I'll break the rest of your face.

Not that anyone would notice.

-Djimon Hounsou.
-Money, money, money, money.

-Anthony Heald.
-The Ottoia are very crafty.

Catch their victims with spiny tentacles
and then crush them between massive jaws.

-And then they eat you, right?
-No. They drink you alive.

Una Damon, who played Leila,
she was great.

We got along really well.

She was really nice, but very,
you know, business.

She was nobody's fool.
In fact, I was a little intimidated.

And I said, "That's perfect.

Joey would be intimidated
of his girlfriend."

Hold still, you big dummy.

I'm sorry. It stings.

Wes Studi, I loved
and hung around with Wes maybe

more than anybody on that.

They're catching up.
We gotta slow 'em down.

The only way to slow 'em down
is to feed 'em.

All I got is a wet stick of gum
and a breath mint.

I didn't get to be around
Rob Bottin a whole lot,

but I really admired his work.

Like I was really excited that
he was involved with this.

Jesus Christ.

We were in water a lot.

We did have wetsuits uh,
'cause we were in there for hours,

underneath our costumes.

So I mean, it was fun,
but it was damp and cold definitely.

What the hell is that?

The Girl From Ipanema.

♪ Pa, pararapa, paraparapa ♪

They actually had me revise that,
where I can't get the song out of my head.

I mean, I never thought
there would be a part two

to that line, but there was.

I can't get that song out of my head.

Deep Rising was supposed
to come out in the fall of '97,

and then it got moved to '98.

No one's gonna even try to attempt

to go up against Titanic
at the box office.

And they were both on water.
It was a big boat.

I remember one of the producers
was saying something

to Treat and I about how he,
in a way, wished

it was still titled, "Tentacles",
because that's what it was.

You got what you paid for.

Finnegan! Faster! Faster!

So I think Deep Rising,
even though I liked the title,

I think it was a little obscure.

So it did have a little trouble,
I think, finding its audience.

Years later, I think that movie,
Deep Rising,

was able to settle in more with fans.

I remember seeing the Blu-ray

where they did a really nice cover
for the movie.

I think that hit the nail on the head.

It had the monster and the ship,
and it just looked like a ball.

You know, like a real blast.

Something like that type of marketing.

Maybe that would have been
a little more accurate

to what the movie was.

This is turning out
to be one hell of a day.

Ringu felt like it came
from another planet,

just in terms of how the horror
was dealt with.

The atmosphere of it was
so specific to Japanese culture.

It had a kind of aura of dread

that I hadn't really seen
in an American film.

Easily the best haunted tape movie
ever to come out ever.

It like gets under your skin,
it's definitely a slow burn,

but the visuals of it I think
really stick to people.

Hideo Nakata's Ringu is about
a female television journalist

investigating an urban legend
about a cursed videotape.

So you watch the videocassette
and then within moments

you'll get a phone call
and it'll say, seven days

and then you die.

She moves from being a very
skeptical media professional

to somebody who is abjectly terrified.

When you heard that
there was a videotape that you watch

and it can kill you, you want to know how.

It didn't show you exactly
how these characters died.

It would show you the aftermath
and it looked horrifying.

They challenge the audience to say,
"What the fuck happened to this woman?"

The audience is fiending to actually see

what the footage looks like
and then they show it to you.

While you're watching it, "Wait a minute,

am I actually going to watch
something that is going

to curse me as well?"

And in a very meta way,
it scared people on a level

that they weren't expecting.

- That's what all horror films
want to evoke.

They want to blur the distinction between

fictional screen terror
and your non-fictional real life.

Sadako was still alive!

She tried to climb out.

- This girl who's other,
she doesn't fit in

and she's been thrown
into this well to die.

She's been rejected by the world,
by her family, by everyone.

Sadako!

Sadako is a victim.

This absolute parental rejection
that is communicated

by the act of infanticide
killing your own child.

The cursed videotape contains images
that no camera ever filmed,

because they are the imprint
of the ghost's own traumatized psyche.

There's an ethical quandary
that exists in the Ring,

where if you were to watch
this videocassette,

you would get cursed.

But if you were to show
the videocassette to somebody else,

they would get cursed
and you would survive.

So it is this system
that is created in this movie

that kind of challenges
each of the characters to see

how far they would go.

It incentivizes its own reproduction
by turning people

against one another.

The film ends with Sadako
crawling out of the TV

into the real world

and it is one of the great
bravura moments of horror cinema.

What a brilliant idea to have
her come through the screen.

Disturbing, really disturbing.
It scared the shit out of us.

Something that you can point to and say,
“That is what Japanese horror is."

Ring was written by a novelist,
Koji Suzuki,

who was telling this story
of a disrupted family.

The trilogy of books, Ring,
Spiral, and Loop,

essentially tell the same thematic story.

When the producers of the Ring
were making that film,

they went ahead
and had a production team make

Spiral into a companion film
such that the first movie

and its sequel would be released
as a double feature.

Spiral was directed by a man
named, "George Iida" or "Jôji Iida".

He actually had previously worked
on a television adaptation of the Ring

that preceded Hideo Nakata's film.

It largely deals with a different cast

and a wholly different genre,
so it didn't feel like a sequel.

And audiences weren't satisfied with it.

If you are a completist,
I would definitely implore you

to watch Ring Spiral after watching Ring.

Because it is an interesting exploration

on what the curse is
and how it could have come to be.

At the time, Ring did gangbusters
and Spiral didn't.

The producers decided,
"Let's get Hideo Nakata back in the studio

and let's make something
that looks like the Ring,

and it sounds like the Ring,
and it feels like the Ring."

So the Ring 2 is a fantastic
sequence of these horror set pieces,

each one more extraordinary than the last.

It was a maturation of the curse,

and it was things that
what you saw in the first film

weren't limited to anymore.

And it wasn't just a videocassette
that can kill you.

It was technology.

That rage grew so much
that her ire turned against society.

There's no reasoning
with this kind of a ghost

and that's terrifying.

It's almost impossible to overstate
the blockbuster explosion of the Ring.

You still have images
and ideas reverberating through

modern horror films by western directors
that clearly were influenced,

so the effect continues to ripple outward.

Disembodied directed by William Kersten.

This is a movie about a girl
who checks into a roach motel

and then keeps her brain
in a little jar on the dresser.

And then she goes out at night
and starts killing people…

…with the help of little creatures
that sprout from her face.

And these little creatures
are stop motion clay-animated beasties

and they look a lot like vaginas.

I think a good touchpoint
for this film is that

it is very Lynchian, it's very surreal,
and nonsensical at times.

And it has a little bit of Cronenberg
with a little body horror thrown in.

This movie really sets up this
fantastic little world

where all this stuff unfolds.

It has one of the most disgusting
bathroom scenes

where she's like sitting
in this fetid bathtub

and there's like little creatures
that crawl around.

The characters are really rough
and they look dirty.

Two teenage actors
who are really selling it.

There's this sunny sort of prostitute

and this like goth girl
with a brain in a jar.

And the combination of the two
is really beautiful

to see on screen.

You and me are a lot alike.
I could tell the first time I saw you.

-You could?
-Yeah.

Both stuck in a sewer,
but we got big plans for the future.

I think Disembodied is a great example

of micro-budgeting filmmaking
that's pulling out, you know,

all the stops with their own
stop motion, and set design,

and real amateur acting.

Your friend may actually be
the result of an obscene merger

of human and extraterrestrial DNA.

But it really results in this movie

that has its own little world
with its own little rules.

It makes sense
on its own logical timeline.

Wow.

- Disturbing Behavior.

I can distill the plot
of Disturbing Behavior

in perhaps two words. Stepford and wives.

- I was just going to give you coffee.

I thought we were friends.
I thought we were friends.

- There's a reason
The Stepford Wives are a classic

and it actually applies
very beautifully to teenagers.

What are teenagers,
but you know, a force of nature

coming up against conformity.

Blue ribbons. Community group.

-Good kids. Have bake sales.
-Blue robots.

James Marsden who plays
the new kid in school.

He quickly realizes
that something is amiss

with all the popular kids in the school.

-What the fuck?
-The troops shall set you free.

And so he kind of aligns
with the misfits of the school

played by Nick Stahl and Katie Holmes
playing against type.

-This is Rachel Cook's Ridge trash.
-Bite me.

She's a good girl in Dawson's Creek

but she's a naughty girl
in Disturbing behavior,

'cause she's got a nose ring.

Gavin thinks some sinister force
is taking over

-the Cradle Bay meatheads.
-No, you know what it is.

It's like, "Oh, that girl
from Dawson's Creek

and the kid from The Man Without a Face

and it's The Stepford Wives
with teenagers. I'm there.

-They're hypnotized.
-What?

Okay. Maybe not hypnotized.

Brainwashed. Lobotomized. Programmed.

The atmosphere of the town
that it takes place in.

Teenage alienation, of course.

It just captures a mood
and a vibe that I-- I think is

so redolent of '90s horror.

The movie is such a taut, tight,
well-paced science fiction,

horror, action thriller
that fires on all cylinders.

-Jesus Christ.
-Wrong. Bad.

Wrong. Bad. Wrong. Bad. Bad.

James Marsden is crushing it
in this movie.

You've got William Sadler
and you've got Bruce Greenwood.

Two guys who are amazing character actors.

- Every time one of these kids
gets a hard-on,

they go out and beat somebody with it.

Cut a craniotomy flap,
I'll get elbow deep, see what happens.

Dr. Caldicott.

They find out that he's done the surgery
to his own daughter. And he goes…

She wasn't that bright to begin with.

And it's like, "Oh my God, he's horrible."

Straight A's and a leather jacket
and every now and then you rape and kill.

Cure cancer,
you gotta kill a few white mice.

I think one of the most
special things about this film

that lives rent-free in my mind
was when the jock looks at her

and his hormones have this like throbbing,

sweaty hormono-vision
when he's looking at her.

I think that is the teenage
experience incarnate.

Mark Snow did the music score.

It's very X-Files adjacent.

May I have this dance, Steven?

Where's Rachel?

She's gone to an institute
of higher learning.

If Disturbing Behavior feels
a little bit different

from many of the slasher
teen horror films of its ilk,

that's because director David Nutter
had cut his teeth in X-Files episodes,

which kind of lends everything

a very spooky, supernatural,
unique feel to it.

And I'm not just talking about
the blue filter.

But as much as we loved
that uniqueness, the studios did not.

And they actually wound up
cutting about 30 minutes from it,

hoping for something
more adjacent to Scream

and everything else that came before.

It famously has a completely
rewritten ending,

because test audiences
didn't connect with it.

Nobody really knew what to make of it.
Is it a horror movie? What is it?

The marketing at the time,
everybody was trying

to make a movie Scream.

And when it wasn't Scream,
people walked out grumbling about it.

And so it wasn't able
to be taken on its own.

And when you take
Disturbing Behavior on its own,

it's really great.

Welcome to Cradle Bay High, Stevie Boy.

Welcome to my nightmare.

- Halloween H2O.

As a director, the sooner
I embraced the business of Hollywood,

the better off I am.

And the reason they make
horror films is because

some of them make a lot of money.

And they're cheap.

And it isn't because of the art,
it's because of the commerce.

Coming in hot in 1998,

Halloween kind of saw
an opportunity to hit the reset button

with a little bit of the meta
that Scream had made

into the industry standard at the time.

Jimmy!

It's a Halloween sequel
that's really aware of Scream.

It's got that Kevin Williamson,
Dawson's Creek

kind of hotness to it
with Michelle Williams and Josh Hartnett.

What's the plan?

Romantic dinner. Candlelight. Soft music.

Animal sex.

You need a hormone suppressant.

Kevin Williamson had been tapped
to write a treatment

that this script was based upon.

The working title of this film

was, "Halloween 7:
The Revenge of Laurie Strode".

- Michael!

Michael!

And then you get a movie
that's unnaturally short,

because the writers
that were brought in were told,

"Just expand this brilliant treatment
by Kevin Williamson

and don't change a thing."

And they're just kind of stretching it out
in any way they can

without adding anything that messes it up.

I think it's like 85 minutes.
It's like super short.

Regardless of the Screamification
of the film,

it's good to see Jamie Lee Curtis back.

Jamie Lee Curtis in the time
between Halloween and H2O

had become a very celebrated actress.

She was an A-lister.
And the fact that she was coming back

to do a Halloween movie was like
huge news to horror fans.

And that raised this to a level
of expectation

that this franchise probably
hadn't had in decades.

Michael Myers is dead 20 years.

Don't you think
he would have shown up by now?

They were able to get her back
with the promise

of reuniting with John Carpenter.

Alas, he wasn't able to strike a deal

to his satisfaction
and so he doesn't return.

But Jamie did anyway.
And God bless her for it.

No musical sleeping bags.
No booze.

-Aww.
-No drugs. No kidding.

She's running a boarding school
and that's where we get our cast

of disposable teenagers for Michael Myers
to slice and dice.

- It wasn't just hype. She delivered.

It was a new wrinkle on that character.

She wasn't the innocent final girl.

She was a survivor
who was dealing with stuff

and she was an alcoholic
as a result of it.

And it was really a kind
of a deep portrayal

that maybe people weren't expecting.

But I think which really added
a lot of gravitas to that movie.

What happened to the sister?
She died, right?

No. She faked her death.

And now she's the headmistress
of a very posh secluded

private school in Northern California.

- Steve Miner directing,
ignoring everything

that happened after Halloween II

and really kind of pulling out
some skills.

He did a serviceable job
on Friday the 13th, 2 and 3

and I thought he did a pretty
good job on Halloween H2O.

Oh, please.

The production was a little bit
troubled and they were trying to land on

what the look was for the Shape mask

and so it changes about
two or three times in that movie.

I think one of them is CGI.

Hi.

Making a replica
is the hardest thing there is.

And I think we just see that
in all the Halloween masks.

God knows they've been trying
for how many movies now.

- Annie!

By the time they got to Halloween H2O,
the mask just wasn't happening.

They weren't able to get it right.

Will!

Don Post Studios, which was in Burbank,

we made the original mask which
was William Shatner, you know?

I sculpted a uh, Captain Kirk mask.

One day, John Carpenter
and his crew showed up

and wanted me to paint one white
and spray paint the hair black.

And a few months later we saw
Halloween and you know,

as they say, the rest is history.

- Halloween H2O, that was a tough project.

It was a replacement score
of fine composer John Ottman.

For whatever reason,
they decided it didn't work

and so they wanted me
to replace maybe like 60% of it.

Use the original material,
but make it a little bit more

larger than life.

Oh! Oh my God, oh!

They gave me like a week
and a half or two weeks,

something crazy to write,
you know, over half the score.

I didn't enjoy it at all.

-Mom!
-Oh my God!

Oh! Oh my God!

Well, the thing about H2O is
I really wasn't involved at all with it.

Jamie Lee wanted me to direct it.

There just wasn't money in it.

It was the Weinsteins
and they were rough trade.

So I said, "No, thank you."

I tried to write something for them,
but it didn't work out, so.

Anyway, enough said.

They have their just desserts.
We all get our just desserts in the end.

Well hey, it's Halloween.

I guess everyone is entitled
to one good scare.

- Blade.

Howard the Duck might have been
the first Marvel adaptation,

but Blade takes the cake.

This movie is so goth.

- It's Blade. It's the daywalker.

You can't talk about Blade
without talking about

that club scene set
to New Order's Confusion.

A guy is walking into a club

and it's this very cool, very sexy vibe.

Blood comes down from the sprinklers

and you realize everybody
in this club is a vampire.

What's wrong, baby?

An amazing, incredible introduction
of a badass character.

And it's one of those introductions
where you know

who that character is immediately.

So fucking cool.

You can only really know perfect
casting in hindsight,

but Wesley Snipes as Blade
makes absolute sense.

There's worse things out tonight
than vampires.

-Like what?
-Like me.

He leaned into that role so much
and he knew what the character was.

Crosses and running water don't do dicks,
so forget what you've seen in the movies.

You use a stake, silver or sunlight.

He's a really fascinating anti-hero,
'cause he needs blood as well.

He is a half-human, half-vampire.
They call him, the "Daywalker",

because he's able to walk out in daylight

and he's slaying vampires
left, right, and center.

You better wake up.

The world you live in
is just a sugar-coated topping.

There is another world beneath it.
The real world.

So in the movie we have him
coming up against

a whole coven of vampires with designs

on world domination
and he just busts them up.

Going around L.A.
killing hipster vampires.

Yeah.

Wesley Snipes had
an incredible supporting cast.

You had N'Bushe Wright
as Karen, the doctor

and also his love interest.

You have a lot of love for him, don't you?

We have a good arrangement.

He makes the weapons. I use 'em.

Kris Kristofferson is kind
of his “Q” and his mentor.

Still heavy.

You're so big.

And Stephen Dorff as Deacon Frost,
the villain in the role.

We should be ruling the human,
not running around

making back alley treaties with them.

For fuck's sake,
these people are our food.

And also Donal Logue
as one of the henchmen

who like stole every scene he was in.

You can slice him, you can dice him,
but the Quinn man just keeps on coming.

There's a sub-genre of superhero horror
that was birthed with Blade.

He was the epitome of cool.

He had dark, form-fitting clothes.

He had a samurai sword.
And he wore sunglasses at night.

It doesn't get cooler than that.

- I believe it was Blade
that honestly kicked off

the superhero surgence
that we are still living through today.

Because Blade was the first
real superhero movie

that showed it could be done
in a realistic

and grounded, believable way.

And also make money.

Hey Blade! Let's do this.

- August, much like January,
was considered a dumping ground

for movies that the studio
didn't care about.

And like Blade proved
that a movie released in August

could make money.

So Blade's release expanded
the summer movie season

to go from May and July,
from May to August.

The movie was gangbusters.

It was a huge hit, spawning a sequel,

helmed by Guillermo del Toro,
and then a third one as well,

wrapping up a nice trilogy.

Blade is a great franchise.

The first movie, Steve Norrington,
a friend of mine, did a great, great job.

And then really, Guillermo kind
of elevated it with Blade II.

He was the James Cameron to Ridley Scott.

You know, he kind of took
something and made something

slightly different with it,
which I thought was great.

Some motherfuckers are always
trying to ice-skate uphill.

We are the key.

The cube, is us.

Cube is about six strangers
who wake up in a maze

of identical rooms that are all cubes.

Some rooms are safe,
and some rooms have booby traps,

and they have to work together
to find a way to escape.

There's a way in here,
so there's gotta be a way out.

We can avoid the traps using the boot.

We just have to stay calm
and work together as a team.

I thought, "Wouldn't it be interesting
if you made a film

that took place entirely in hell?"

And then I thought, "What is the
21st century version of hell?

What's our contemporary version?"

And I thought,
"It would be a geometric hell.

It would be a Bauhaus hell.

It would be modern architecture.
It would be mathematical."

Of course, coded Cartesian coordinates.

The numbers tell us where we are
inside the cube.

- The writing of it, which I did
with my lifelong friend André Bijelic,

I just sort of stumbled on this
very archetypal concept

and for that reason it resonated.

The initial draft that I wrote
entirely on my own

was much more absurdist and fantastical.

There was moss on the walls,
and there was a kind of Minotaur,

although not really, in the maze,
and it just had a lot of stuff.

I usually find in writing it's about,

after that first draft,
it's about pulling things away.

- Only the government could build
something this ugly.

-Oh, it ain't government.
-Then what is it?

-I don't know.
-Aliens.

These people should arrive
in the cube with nothing

but the clothes on their back.

There's nothing there to help them,
and the ticking clock of the movie is

they're gonna starve
or die of dehydration.

Heat, stress, physical exertion
as the body

eventually begins to break down
its own tissue.

Cube, like many horror films,

I think it's dealing
with something very primal.

It is tweaking a nerve that felt
a bit raw at that moment

in the mid-'90s.

It's like an existential nerve.

It was like a sense of like,
"Well, what are we doing here?

What is our future?"

- I mean, nobody wants
to see the big picture.

Life's too complicated.
Let's face it.

The reason we're here
is that it's out of control.

- The set itself was one and a half cubes.

So when desired, we could have
a cube that was six walls

plus a cube that was three walls.

So you could carry the characters
from one room to another.

You always had a view into another room.

And we could pull out one wall
from the six-wall cube,

which is generally how we shot the film.

But the problem with that was
that only gave me

a 180-degree view.

It shows the magic of cinema
that it feels like

a fully-enclosed set.

Merde.

I'm sure I'd be the first person
to die in the cube.

I wouldn't last a minute.

My favorite death in Cube
is the first one,

played by the ubiquitous Julian Richings,

who gets literally cubed by a wire mesh.

We met this amazing makeup
effects company called, "Caligari",

and they built a silicone replica,
which was basically a building block set.

You just stacked it all together,

and on the very last day,
the very last shot,

which came after 30 consecutive
hours of shooting,

we shot Julian being cubed.

And we got it in one take. Thank God.

Life imitated art on the Cube,
because being in the cube

was a kind of psychological experiment.

Because the cube itself was lit
by literally thousands

of 100 watt bulbs outside
of the plexiglass walls.

So, in a very short order,
it became an oven.

And then, add to that,
the colors of the walls

had an impact on people psychologically.

And there's no question that
when we were in the red room,

that's when people kind of went crazy.

But I think in a positive way,
it kind of bled into the performances.

Like there was a real tension on the set.

Put us out of your misery,
so we can get on with getting out of here.

-Oh, you're not getting out of here.
-Yes, we are!

There is no way out of here!

We never really had enough money
or time to do the movie,

as is often the case.

So, it was a super intense hard process
that nearly killed me.

In fact, literally so,
because at one point,

the set almost collapsed on top of me.

You would think shooting in a box
would be really easy,

but it's not. It's horrible.

There is a purpose.

We are the purpose.
The cube is us.

That movie was made at a time

when the independent film market
was very robust.

The video market, which is really where
in North America, Cube found its audience.

I think if Cube were made now,
unless we were really lucky,

it wouldn't have that kind of life
that films could have at that time.

It has survived.

Like, it's a kind of film
that you could watch now

and maybe not know when it was made.

I'm touched and flattered
that there are sequels to Cube

and a remake, but I never wanted
to have anything to do with the sequels,

'cause it was kind of only one story
to tell in the Cube that I could see.

I'd have to calculate the number
of factors in each set.

-Figure it out.
-I can't!

I'm not dying in a fucking rat maze!

It's about how we are all dropped
into this world

without being given
any kind of formula or math

as to how to live our lives.

And we're here with other people
with whom we choose

to make allies or enemies.

Kind of defines the road that we take.

I think on some level
that's really what the movie is about.

You've got to save yourselves
from yourselves.

That's the real challenge.

Someone out there is taking
all these urban legends

and making them reality.

- Urban Legend.

Scream really did pave the way
for other horror movies

that were a little bit different.

We've all heard
these urban legends, I think.

I mean, everyone I know has heard them,

especially the Pop Rocks
and the Coca-Cola,

Flashing your lights.

I don't know how before internet
it circulated, but it did.

It was, you know,

someone's friend's brother's
uncle's sister's son.

This really happened to them.

Urban Legend is about these college kids
who are getting killed off one by one.

And the hook is people are being killed
with Urban Legends.

A call's coming from inside the house.

Could it be an urban legend?

- Jamie Blanks, the director
of Urban Legend.

Talk about someone else
who shares an affinity for horror movies.

This guy knows everything about
horror movies.

You would never know that
Jamie Blanks was a first-time director,

because he really knew what he was doing.

Working with him, you would just watch him

and it was like watching a kid
in a candy shop.

He was like giddy.
Every day. Giddy.

- The fact that Jamie cast
Brad Dourif and Robert Englund

was a clear nod to the horror community.

Someone's in the back seat!

- When we had Robert Englund on the set,
we were both starstruck.

I had him sign my Fangoria Magazine.

The babysitter and the man upstairs

is what we call, "an urban legend".

The cast of Urban Legend is impressive

and I think it says a lot about
what was going on at that time,

because every actor wanted to do
a horror movie.

It felt like we were just at camp.

Rebecca Gayheart,
the face of Noxzema. Right?

She was beautiful inside out.

And Brenda's the girl
in that Noxzema commercial.

-What if there is a lunatic on campus?
-Fine with me.

I'm hitting the halfpipe
at Killington this weekend.

When I read the script for Urban Legend,

I immediately was like,
"I want to play Brenda Bates.

I have to play Brenda."

Is this what you do
with your free time, Damon?

Just hang out in the dark by yourself

waiting to scare people
like a total freak?

Initially, they wanted it
to be shot in the winter.

This dark gray college campus
and that did not work out

for the shooting schedule for the movie.

So, you know,
we all had to pivot and it was hot out.

It was summertime in Toronto.

When I think about Scream 2,
going from that set

to Urban Legend, I just had more to do.

So there was a lot more work.
So I had to focus more.

You don't waste any time, do you, Natalie?

-Brenda!
-Here. It's light.

The choice for the killer
to wear the parka,

I believe it was a throwback
to the poster of The Thing,

which I think is smart.

- They gave us a parka for our gift.

They gave the whole crew and cast.
I still have mine.

I'm the only one
who has my Urban Legend parka.

There were a lot of stuff cut
that I was bummed about.

Like there was a sex scene.
Why do they always cut my sex scene?

Tara Reid and I had a sex scene.

We're going at it and Hootie,
my dog, comes over

and has a finger in its mouth.

"Jamie, whose finger was that?"
Maybe that's why it got cut. I don't know.

One of the kills
in one of the Urban Legends

that I did not like
and I did not approve of

was the dog in the microwave.
I hated that so much.

Goddamn.
Fucking sick motherfucker!

As an actor, when you read the script,

you're like, "I'm still alive.
I'm still alive.

Ah, shit. They got me.
But at least I lasted.

I think there's only 15 pages left.

Alright. That's good. That's good."

I got the Pop Rocks and Drano
and that was hard to shoot,

'cause I was tied up to a turlet,

as we call it in Indiana, and they just
put that funnel down my mouth

and they're pouring all this stuff.

You're like, "Ah!"
And you're moving your body.

Your whole body hurts
for a week after these scenes.

I still have a Polaroid picture
of me dead, lying on the ground.

It was a great death.

I think the killer in the back seat

is probably the scariest
and I think we've all checked.

We've all thought about it.

I still check sometimes.

Spoiler alert to those of you
who don't know,

Brenda Bates is indeed the killer.

Got ya.

And there's very few female serial killers
at all in movies, period.

Is this the kidney?
Or is that the liver?

I was always such a dope in anatomy.

I wanted the audience to understand

why she was so hurt that
she sort of became mentally ill

and went to this place.

Oh my God.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding!

- As a cast, we saw a rough cut.

So, at the premiere,
it felt like the first time

watching the movie.

Of course, I wanted to disappear.

It's horrible as an actress
watching movies

with other people, if I'm in it.

If I'm in the movie,
I prefer watching by myself.

I have already tried therapy!

Obviously, it did me no good, Natalie.

And I must say, I am kind
of enjoying all this.

The only thing I was worried about
as an actor is not getting fired.

It was my first big role.

I was not just in the movie,
but I was into the movie.

There were some great scares
and I just was really proud

that it was such a good-looking movie
and it did what it was supposed to do.

- Don't you want to be an urban legend?

All your friends are now.

The fans of Urban Legend,
they love Brenda. And I love that.

So it's really fun
if someone ever comes up

and mentions it to me.

We have a good laugh about it.

We are still talking about it.
They are doing a remake.

There's been an Urban Legend 2.

I like the legacy.
I like that it lives on.

My kids are teenagers.

I have taken 15 years off from acting.

I've done tiny cameos, but otherwise
I haven't worked in a very long time.

I think I would definitely return
to the horror genre.

I want to get my hands back
into all mediums.

So if this is an urban legend,
at what point do we get to the twist?

Want to play ball, Scarecrow.

- Strangeland.

Horror has always played around
with the idea

of what's real and what's not.

There were tons of stories of people,

they didn't even call it
catfishing back then,

but everybody was worried about
their young daughter,

people going into a chat room,

and the bad things
that could happen to you,

because you don't know
who's on the other side.

You're going on a blind date
with a screen name?

- Where have you been?

Someday we'll meet, marry,
and have cybersex with the man

of our dreams online.

Strangeland was completely
intended to be a cautionary tale.

And what would you do
if your child was kidnapped,

if your child was being tortured?

The original Strangeland
was called, "Helltown",

and it was just a slasher movie.

Captain Howdy came from a couple
of Twisted Sister songs,

and I sent it to my friend Tom Savini,

who had done special effects
on a Twisted Sister video

called, "Be Chrool to Your Scuel".

♪ Be cool to your school ♪

♪ 'Cause you may never get another ♪

And Tom called me and said, "It sucks."

And I took a eight-hour train ride
from Long Island

to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

to sit at the knee of Tom Savini,
a man who knows horror.

And he explained how mundane
what I was doing,

how derivative what I was doing,
and why it was not scary.

And I started thinking about horror,
thinking about what scared me.

When you're bound and helpless,
that's terrifying.

And what's scarier than dying?

Suffering. Being tortured, and not dying.

- Sure, it is a touchy operation,
and God forbid,

you hit the cavernosum.
Blood squirts everywhere.

I owe Tom Savini for pushing me
to go further,

go deeper, think more.

Inspiration for Strangeland was Seven,
was Silence of the Lambs.

Movies grounded in reality.
It could happen.

I got the idea.
I said, "You know, wow, this AOL thing,

these chat rooms, you could really do
some damage with that."

And I experimented and I said,

"You know, I'm going to create
a personality that's a teenager,

lives in the next town",
and I went to the chat room, and I said,

"Let me see if I can get some
of these young girls to agree

to come over to my house."

And mind you, I'm in my 40s at the time.

Sure enough, I said,
"Hey, wanna come to a party?"

And this young girl goes, "Where? When?"

And I said, "Oh shit!"

And I remember literally yanking
the plug out of the wall,

'cause I was like, "Holy crap, it worked!"

Where's my daughter, Hendricks?

Genevieve's with me.

I'm taking especially good care of her.

By the way, the name, "Captain Howdy",
it comes from The Exorcist.

You really don't want me to play, huh?

No, I do. Captain Howdy said no.

I was tired of watching Chucky
and Leprechaun.

I didn't want people liking the villain.

I wanted people to be terrified
of the villain.

Here he comes.

I started to discover
the modern primitive movement,

the body modification movement.

In the mid-'90s, it was not
as widely as acceptable.

It was still sort
of a Dark Corners kind of thing.

And incorporated that into my character.

He spews the rhetoric,
but he doesn't believe a word of it.

He uses it like it's an excuse
for everything he does.

But he just wants to hurt people.

This pain is an important part
of our bonding.

Physical horror that binds us
even tighter.

- Carleton Hendricks, his alter ego,
is a completely different person.

Bright windows in this life of ours,

lit by the shining souls of men.

You know, he's mentally unstable,
obviously.

But he actually needs to be medicated.

I haven't been afraid of anything
in my whole life.

Do you know why?
Because I wish I was dead.

- Special effects legend Michael Burnett,

he did that stuff and the piercings
and all that. Took 12 hours.

So I would get there at midnight.

We'd finish at noon the next day.

Then we'd shoot until midnight
the next day.

There were times
where I was doing rewrites

in full Captain Howdy regalia.

Sitting there at the typewriter.

Fortunately, I had youth, and enthusiasm,

and also just this joy of having
something I had created

being brought to life.

What a rush!

Credit to Linda Cardellini,
a brilliant young actress

who was unknown at that time.

She's a chatterbox.

The toughest thing for Linda was
when she had the prosthetic on

and couldn't talk for a couple hours.

When they would open it up,
she's like, "Thank God!"

-You.
-Want to play ball, Scarecrow?

Robert Englund, when he read the script

and said he would be a victim
to my villain,

Freddy Krueger was gonna
allow himself to be tortured

and tormented by my bad guy.

When he's in the cradle,
his eyes sewn shut,

his mouth sewn shut,
and he just fed the fires of fear.

Fed the fires of fear!
Ooh, write that down.

Somebody write that down!

You don't like me very much,
do you, Jackson?

I understand.

The MPAA was mortified by Strangeland.

They were approving every slasher film
in the world

without thinking about it twice.

In most of the movie,
I didn't show the actual torture itself.

I showed the reactions.

Strangeland came out
and it just laid there.

It wasn't embraced.

People were thrown by it, if anything.

First you dream, and then you die.

I really thought that as ready
as I was as a horror fan

for something new and fresh,

people were going to be
all over this thing.

And it was like, "Oh well,
back to the drawing board."

And it took a little more time
before the Saws, and the Hostels,

and the other, you know,
torture genre movies started coming out.

And people started embracing it.

But it changed the game
for some young creators out there,

like James Wan and like Eli Roth

who were like myself, saying,
"What can we do that's different?

How can we change this up?"

You know, Daddy, so Genevieve screamed.

I've had many, many, many people tell me

they had their children watch
that to scare them away,

to make them aware of the possibilities
of the internet.

So much flesh, so little time.

Phantasm franchise,
it has had its ups and downs,

but as long as the Tall Man is there,

as long as those silver spheres
are wreaking havoc, I'm there.

So it begins.

This weird mishmash of horror and sci-fi,

what makes the Phantasm films
so good is that

they feel gritty and independent.

They don't need a massive budget.

All you need is that guy,
and the voice, and the balls.

You have to have the balls
if you're gonna have a Phantasm movie.

You wanna get it on, Reggie.

Phantasm Oblivion, or Phantasm IV,
it's an origin story, really.

Kind of. Phantasm style.

So we're gonna go back a little bit
in time through the magic of space gates

and we're gonna see the Tall Man
during the Civil War.

We're gonna see that he was
a Civil War doctor.

It all went bad from there.
Lesson? War is bad.

Filmmaking is a challenge.
It's a bit like going to war a little bit.

It's a battle every day.
There's many, many moving parts.

And to hold all those parts together
is definitely a challenge.

It can be thrilling, and it's super fun,
and it can be rewarding.

You call up your local Civil War
reenactors and like,

"Hey man, let's make a movie."
And they say, "Where do we show up?"

- Where do you think you're going, boy?

There is no escape from me.

It's nice to see Angus getting
an opportunity

to play not quite such a scowl.

Have we met?

I don't believe so.

Have you traveled far?

Don Coscarelli and I, of course,
have been making movies together

since 1975 roughly.

Phantasm Oblivion came around
and I wasn't particularly motivated.

So I said, "Well, let me produce the movie
and that'll give me some gumption."

I've been kind of running away
from my own acting career

my whole life since I started so young.

And for that reason,
I never, never recommend

that kids become professional actors.

I think it's a mistake, frankly.

Oblivion comes along and so now
I'm producing the film with Don

and he's a good teacher and we worked
pretty well together, I think.

Coscarelli, he saved all that
original negative from Phantasm.

It's unique in that he's able
to take these old unused pieces

of the original Phantasm
and edit them into the new story

in Oblivion, which you could say
is a cost-saving measure.

But also, since it's the same actors,

it's a pretty cool side-by-side
display of what can be done.

In the original Phantasm,

there was a whole two
or three nights, at least,

spent in Agoura, California,
shooting this hanging tree scene.

Why a 13-year-old is working
at 4:00 in the morning,

I don't know, but you know,
that's a story for another day.

And then none of that footage
ends up in the film.

Cut me down, boy!

Coscarelli's able to save that footage,
bring it back, put it into Oblivion,

tie it into the hanging scene
in the desert,

where adult Mike is now hanging himself,
which is pretty sad

when you think about it.
But it's a nice tie-in.

And you know, Don is smart that way.

"So you got some old footage,
can you make it work?

Can you save a few bucks?

Can you tie it into something
that's happening now?"

And it all works pretty nicely together.

Boy!

I remember when Oblivion first
came out, fans, at least,

were pretty blown away
by the so-called found footage.

Watching movies is just so different
than actually making them.

Oftentimes, when we look at a film
that we have worked on,

you know, you see the things
that went wrong that day

or you remember, you know, the bad lunch.

Or that, "Oh, that's when the movie
almost crashed and died.

I remember that. That was great.
That was fantastic."

You remember the battles
and the challenging aspects

of just filmmaking generally,
which is not an easy task.

I think the budget was about
800,000 bucks for that movie,

so with micro-budgets like that,
you know, small errors,

small mistakes, small mishaps
get big very quickly.

He's coming for me.
He's gonna rip open my skull,

and there's nothing I can do about it.

So, by the time you're looking
at that film and it's completed,

and the post is done, you're seeing--

you're watching
a first rough cut, let's say,

you're so relieved to not have
to be actually making the movie

that it all seems great.

'Cause you really wouldn't probably
want to go over and do it again.

This won't hurt a bit.

Well, maybe just a little bit.

The outlier the franchise of Phantasm.

We all love the franchise.
I personally grew up in it.

It's certainly gratifying that
it has had legs all these years later.

We certainly did not know that
was gonna happen.

I've been waiting for you
a very long time.

- Bride of Chucky.
- ♪ It's nice day for white wedding ♪

Films that explore the darkly humorous

with the hyper-violent gory,
they're very important films to me.

So when a film like
Bride of Chucky comes along,

"Oh, this is right up my alley."

Because it's dirty,
the sense of humor is raunchy,

it's so funny.

-Chucky? He's so '80s.
-No he's not.

-He isn’t even scary.
-Yes, he is.

What you looking at punk? Looking at me?

Bride of Chucky evolved the story.

Don Mancini kind of decided
to go full tilt crazy with this.

And there was no limitations.

Ain't the size that counts, asshole.

It's what you do with it.

Bride of Chucky,

we came back six years
after Child's Play 3.

The horror landscape has been changed.

Largely by Kevin Williamson
and his meta self-conscious spirit.

How you been?

-Okay. You?
-Peachy.

Actually to tell you the truth,
I've been kinda out of it.

David Kirschner who was the producer
on all of the Chucky movies

always saw the comedic potential
in Chucky.

We created new characters.

The character of Tiffany,
the bride of Chucky.

Charles Lee Ray's paramour back in life.

You son of a bitch!
What did you do to me?

And then we sent her
on these two new teenagers

played by Katherine Heigl
and Nick Stabile.

It was a whole new ball game.

You know my neighbor Tiffany?

She's paying me $500
to take a couple of dolls

to a friend of hers in Jersey.

I knew from the get-go that
we had to get Jennifer Tilly.

That she was the one person
who could really

knock that out of the park.

The studio didn't want to pay for her
so David Kirschner and I

pooled together our own money to get her.

And we have never regretted that.

Barbie, eat your heart out.

- Tiffany is her own woman.
Plastic or otherwise.

Gives Chucky a run for his money.

God's sake, Chucky,
drag yourself into the '90s.

Stabbings went out with Bundy and Dahmer.

You look like Martha Stewart
with that thing.

I love the fact that even
a homicidal maniacal

reincarnated serial killer as a doll
needs a little lovin', too.

Tiffany, will you be my bride?

Oh, Chucky. Yes.

How fun is this movie?
We get a doll on doll sex scene.

Kind of illustrates the vibe of this movie
and where the franchise, whoo, veers off

and goes in a completely different
direction beginning with Bride.

-Have I got a rubber?
-Yeah.

-Tiff.
-What?

- Look at me. I'm all rubber.

Ronnie Yu was suggested to us by my agent

at the time at Gersh.

Because of the camp and the comedy,

we knew that its visual presentation
needed to be stylized.

There was some pushback
from the studio about that.

I think it was reinvigorating
for the Chucky franchise.

Bride of Chucky,
I could take quite a different

point of view some strange little voices,
you know, "Ooh, ooh."

That sort of weird stuff.

Whatever was in the bag
we'll see how that works.

It's certainly the one
that I hear most people

enjoy the most out of the franchise.

Life sure is full of surprises.

- It's always quite fun to write,
you know, to set up a scare

or the red herring, where everybody thinks

it's about to be a scare,
but actually it isn't.

It comes about two seconds later.

I love that about the genre.

The "Franken-Chucky look" as we called it.

I think I just wanted
to give Chucky damage

to his face in different ways.

I think it's fun to give him
a new look for every era.

I spend an unholy amount of time
thinking about Chucky.

So I have all kinds of concepts
for characters, and kills,

and situations that are just filed away.

There is, I think, an implied humor

when that kind of grandiose violence
is committed

by this little doll.

He just like, instigates
these kind of Rube Goldberg situations.

Now!

Why does that look so familiar?

He and Tiffany in that movie
have a kind of competition going on.

You know, like,
"How can we one-up ourselves?"

Now that's the work
of a true homicidal genius.

Not bad for an amateur.

The whole experience
of Bride of Chucky was great.

It was very positive.

It was one of those movies
where everything went right.

I sort of came into my own
as a writer with that script.

- I wonder if all the plumbing works.

Well, I don't know about you,

but I'm starting to feel like
Pinocchio here.

It was great working with Jennifer Tilly
for the first time.

I didn't know it at the time

that she would become
one of my best friends

and one of my biggest
working colleagues still to this day.

And I think that the studio
unlike with Child's Play 3,

you know, they were very behind the movie,

and I think they did a great job
marketing it and selling it.

It was a swell experience.

Well, at least you haven't forgotten
how to show a girl a good time.

- From the master of terror
comes a new breed of evil.

John Carpenter's Vampires.

Perhaps, the last kick-ass
John Carpenter movie

that just does not get enough love
these days.

I'm not giving a thumbs up.

I'll concede that it could be considered
in some circles as a guilty pleasure.

Oh, he's getting close

-to agreeing with me.
-Yeah, but uh…

What would happen if you really
find a nest of vampires?

John Carpenter's Vampires is set
in the New Mexican desert.

How's it look?

Like another New Mexican shithole.

Perfect spot for a nest.

The master vampire, Valek,
has come up out of the earth

with his minions and is ruling
the town of Santiago.

James Woods leads a group
of vampire hunters

who are every bit as tough
as the vampires.

The good guy gang versus the bad guy gang.

It was like an old western.

Vampires I thought
was an interesting idea.

I adapted it.

I was in my western
Peckinpah Robert Aldrich mood

when I made that.

Felt like New Mexico really made
that western edge come out for us.

It was a great one of those
creeping around the corners

and boo kind of deals.

Now fire!

Well, they were rats in my movie.
They were hiding in the dark.

And then you bring 'em out in the light.

-There!
-Stake her!

Montoya, we got a fish! Go!

It's kind of my favorite thing
in the movie was

where we drag out the dummies
and the stunt guys

and they would ignite in flames
screaming and everything.

Enjoy the barbecue, baby.

So we had a lot of crossover
with stunts and pyro.

I got to do some of the unusual casting
with James Woods as an action hero.

He longed to do that.

He was a challenging actor for a guy,
but I got along with him real well.

You can't ever tell James Woods
what to do.

He's gonna do what he does.
But you can kind of corral him.

He did some scenes
that were just completely improv,

but they were so wonderful.

He's going to start receiving
his thoughts, seeing what he sees.

Exactly.

So we can find him
and shove a stake right up his ass.

I'm really happy with the result
and it was worth every second of it.

You never told me they could do that.
I didn't know they could do that.

I felt like we really scored
on the casting.

Thomas Ian Griffith
had all the sensuality and sexiness

you want in a master vampire.

I really loved the really sexy scene
between Thomas Ian Griffith and Sheryl Lee

when it's like really a seduction scene
when he goes after her.

Doesn't it feel beautiful?

Something you'll never forget.

Sheryl Lee is an awesome individual.
I loved her.

It depends on the actor
whether or not I struggle in naked scenes.

I take their guide,
because I'm just appreciative

that they do it.

I was happy that Sheryl did it for me.

She said, "Is it necessary?"
I said, "Yes", and she was right with it.

- A master vampire has a telepathic link
with his victims.

You're gonna help us find them.

You had these rowdy vampire slayers
who are partying

with a bunch of hookers in a motel.

We give you the salaciousness.

Tell the lady what we do for a living.

Kill vampires. Hunt 'em down.
Kick the shit out of 'em.

The massacre at the motel was fun largely,

because Mark Boone Jr.
got completely freaked out

by his double that KNB had made
that got split in half.

You know, where he would look over at it
and just kind of go, "Whoa."

We did this really cool dummy
that's there for a moment

and then it just kind of peels
into two sections.

- He was just like, "Damn."

And that was actually the scene
that was being shot

when we got into the super-soaker fight
full of blood all over the set.

Those were all spirited actors.

That's about as far as I can go
with that one.

Everybody has a good time.
These are old rock and rollers, man.

It's hard to keep up with them
when you're a young guy

like I was at the time.

Man, can they party. Whew. Lord.

Okay, boys. Time to mop it up.

- Mother! Oh God! Mother!

Gus Van Sant makes Good Will Hunting,
which is a fantastically great movie.

Wins Oscars. Everybody's happy.

He's the toast of the town.

Next thing you know,
"What do you want to do next, Gus?"

And so he decides to make a shot-for-shot,

cut-for-cut remake of Psycho
of all movies.

Why remake Psycho, Gus?

- I won't have you bringing
strange young girls in for supper

in the cheap erotic fashion of young men
with cheap erotic minds.

- Shut up!

When you take a part of something
and you use it a little differently,

it's still a creative choice
that is different

from the thing you're stealing it from.

I understand that it was kind
of an art project,

but I just think it's so hard
to get movies made.

So if you have that golden ticket
to do anything,

do not waste it on remaking a masterpiece.

- It's not as if she were a maniac
or a raving thing.

She just goes a little mad sometimes.

We all go a little mad sometimes.

In 1960, when they made Psycho,
the original Psycho,

if you take that dialogue
exactly the way it was,

it doesn't work in modern actors' voices.

It just sounds funny,
sounds stilted, fake.

Taking the original script and redoing it,

it just didn't work for me.

Do you have a vacancy?

Oh, we have 12 in fact.
12 cabins. 12 vacancies.

It does have a great cast.
The performances are good.

Everybody's doing a great job.
These are all super pro people.

They know what to do.

'Cause I've been to so many motels,
my eyes are blurry with the neon.

But you know, this is
the first one that looks like

it's hiding from the world.

Almost a shot-for-shot remake.

A lot of people are very dismissive of it.

I find it very interesting
as an experiment,

and so I'm glad that it exists.

Every experiment has some value.

That Gus Van Sant did this experiment
on Universal's dime is kind of awesome.

I fully respect that grift.

-Anyone at home?
-There's someone sitting up in the window.

Oh, that's my mother.

She's an-- an in-- invalid.

For some reason, horror films are probably
the most remade films of any genre.

The good remakes are very innovative.

They work, because they
in no way imitate the original.

- Norman Bates no longer exists.

He only half existed to begin with.

Now, the other half has taken over.

Looking at the Psycho remake now,

it feels like a kind of satirical
commentary on remake culture.

And I think it has value.

If the Psycho remake came at the end
of the remake cycle of the 2000s,

it would be a brilliant commentary
on that cycle.

But it's first.

So, in a weird way, in '98,
we didn't know what to do with it.

Don't you go out?
W-- with friends?

Uh, a boy's best friend's his mother.

I strongly support the remaking of movies
that have good premises,

but were not fully realized
the first time.

The ones that had promise,
but what they always do

is remake the films that
they did get right the first time.

You can show this to film students
and say,

"This is what they said
they were going to do.

They said they were gonna do
a shot for shot remake

and each shot will be the same length
and this and that,

but everything else
they're going to try to change."

So it's garishly colorful
where the original wasn't.

The costumes are all different.

Anything that doesn't adhere
to the thing they said

they were going to do, they go wildly

in another direction just to see
how that would play.

Norman Bates is peeping through
the peephole at Anne Heche

and he's now masturbating.

I'm pretty sure that's not
in the Hitchcock's version.

Why did they break the rule for that?
I don't know.

I think they were sitting around
the campfire and you know,

"I know what we'll do next.
This is gonna be great."

I remember actively wondering and thinking

if they were going to really pull
the rug out from under the audience

and when they get to the big scene,
the shower scene,

that it would take a turn.

Literally like something like Marion
would kill Norman or something.

And I remember thinking,
"I hope they fucking do that."

When, of course, they didn't.

Watching Gus Van Sant's Psycho remake
is a good way

to learn why the original is so good.

Watching it after watching the remake,

it kind of wakes up your brain
to the choices

that are happening in the original.

There are some films that should
just be left alone,

because they exist within the space
and time that they were created.

That's the way I look at it.

And in some cases,
they were just created by masters

that should be fucking left alone.

Mrs. Bates.

I really think that
that was a cautionary tale

for anyone who has tremendous success

and can do whatever they want
to do and waste it.

And I'm sorry, Gus Van Sant, 'cause
I think he's a very, very gifted filmmaker

but I think that was a--
on every possible level,

a complete failure
and thank God, it failed,

because if it hadn't,
we would have had to have sat through

a shot by shot remake
of every successful horror film

starting with The Exorcist.

- Why she wouldn't even harm a fly.

- The Faculty.

The Faculty is another thunderclap
of the '90s

in the teen-slasher cycle.

Written by Kevin Williamson
and directed by Robert Rodriguez,

it deals in a high school milieu
with a lot of the conventional

high-schooler tropes.

You've got the outsider,

and the nerd, and the jock
and the druggie.

But they all come together when the school

is becoming overrun by an alien life form

that's just infecting everybody
and turning them

into tentacle creatures.

No fucking way.

A fantastic film,
part Invasion of the Body Snatchers

and also a John Hughes high-school flick.

It was all of the hot teen actors.

Josh Hartnett, Elijah Wood, Clea DuVall.

So it was kind of like the '90s
Brat Pack horror movie.

- And that was something
we kind of all felt

in high school, I think.

That most of your teachers were aliens.

At least, I did.

Good morning, Mrs. Olsen.
You look very, very pretty today.

The metaphor going on
in The Faculty, I think,

is really clever.

They say a lot about
high school conformity.

I really love how the plot
involves these kids

stepping out of their comfort zone.

Man, the only person in this school
who's an alien is you, man.

Fuck you, Zeke.

This film also had a tremendous tie-in
with Tommy Hilfiger,

where they were appearing
in these fashion ads.

It was a real pop culture phenomenon.

Tommy Jeans make a scene!

The Faculty for me was like a movie

where I could apply
all of my horror knowledge.

I knew what the movie was doing

and I felt like superior
to my friends in that, like,

"This is Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

And hey, that scene
is like a direct homage

to the test scene
in John Carpenter's The Thing."

Easy, boy.

- What about you, Zeke?

How do we know you're not
one of those fucking things?

For me, that was like,
"Alright, we can all pull

from the horror movies
that influenced us",

which I continue to do today.

There's nowhere to go.
Nowhere to hide.

-We're everywhere.
-I'll fucking shoot her.

It's about the suspense,
and for me, it's about the lead-up.

I'm more into like creature films,
like The Faculty,

are over just straight-up gore films.

Robert's an interesting guy.
I really liked him a lot.

I had a studio in Santa Monica,
and he would come by,

and he'd listen to stuff.
He loved everything.

And then when we were scoring,
he's sitting on the back,

noodling on his guitar.

I didn't do any Spanish guitar
type stuff at all for that score.

Any of that-- those choices
were all made by him after the score.

- Oh, come on!

♪ We don't need no thought control ♪

In The Faculty, they did covers
of a lot of songs.

Alice Cooper, for instance,
a sign of the times.

- Creed, Soul Asylum, and more.

The Faculty, in stores now.

The soundtrack is banging

and the special effects
are absolutely incredible.

We did what was kind of the last
big animatronic monster, I believe.

Run!

- Big computer-controlled
slave system puppeteered rigs

that were hydraulic,

and it took a lot of work
and cost a lot of money.

And I thought it blended seamlessly
with the CG.

Every movie had to have everything CGI,

and that was it on
any of the big monsters.

It's hard to watch The Faculty

after you've seen The Puppet Masters
in theaters a few years before,

so it's Scream-Puppet Masters?

I always wanted to do that.

Later on, as you grow older
and you're not you know,

a 20-something dorkish
video store clerk, you go,

"That's actually a really cool mix-up.
Like that was actually pretty rad."

Report to the principal's office.

LEFT-HANGING:
UNMADE '90S HORROR PROJECTS

I have a permanent office
in development hell.

That's where I live.

It's really come to a point
where horror films

almost, by definition,
have to be low-budget.

Because there is a dedicated audience
for horror film,

but it's not a four-quadrant audience.

Your grandmother, your little sister,
may not want to see a horror film.

And so,
that's why development hell exists,

especially for people like me.

Because we're trying to do things
that are not for everybody.

And we're trying to convince
the money people

that they're for more people
than maybe they think they are.

I don't see anything less than a miracle.

One of the things that prepares you
for writing horror

is experiencing the horror of Hollywood.

You know, David Puttnam once said,
"You haven't really been to Hollywood

unless you've curled up in a
ball crying in a hotel room.

Creature from the Black Lagoon
was one that we were developing

for Universal right around the time
they were shooting Jurassic Park.

At the time,
it was felt that genre pictures

only made money if they were
made for $15 million or less.

I think the greatest thing
with Universal classic monsters is

they're not the monster.

They're the victim.

You can always tell who isn't a horror fan

by whether they try
and make the monster the monster

instead of the victim

and that we're the monster
for going after 'em.

This is hand-painted
and done by Rick Baker.

It's beautiful.

This is what the creature
would have looked like.

I brought this in to show Tom Pollock,

president of Universal,
along with the budget

and he had already read the script
and it was coming in

at about $25 or $30 million,
because it was an underwater show.

Also, the materials to make a suit
could survive for a length of time

and hold up and do all the things.

Building sets underwater
and shooting a creature underwater.

So, Tom Pollock, he thought it was great

and he said, "This is just too expensive."

And he goes, "Right now
I've got this $80 million

fucking lizard picture.

It's gonna bankrupt the studio."

And that, of course, was Jurassic Park.

It's why the creature
didn't get made at that time.

Then, of course, we all know that Jurassic

went on to be this gigantic hit
and I sent Tom a "congratulations

on your fucking lizard picture" note.

I was gonna do a remake of The Gate
That I worked on for a while.

'Cause I loved the original so much,
I was gonna do 3D.

Andras Hamori, who produced
the original Gate, brought it to me.

He was actually a fan of mine
and he particularly liked

my Ben 10 movies,
which were very kid Jeopardy movies.

I wanted to make kind
of like Saving Private Ryan with kids

and sort of that visceral experience

of being kind of abandoned
by your parents over a weekend.

Just complete warfare
that takes place between these kids

and these minions.

Minions were gonna be a combination of CG
and animatronic, and stop motion.

And then Stranger Things happened.

Now I just feel like the audiences
have seen this.

You know, they've seen sort of kids
in the supernatural

in that way, and it just felt pointless

or like a knock-off
and I didn't want to do a knock-off

so I just said, "That's done."

Apparently, uh, Roger Avery
and Tarantino were both

big Phantasm fans and had hung out
with Coscarelli a little bit

before they were huge and famous.

Next thing you know they win
an Oscar for Pulp Fiction

and Roger Avery kind of like,
"I'm going to Disneyland."

He says something along the lines of,
"I'm gonna write a Phantasm movie."

And then he does
and he writes Phantasm 1999

which is a cool script,
you know of course, he wrote it.

Does not come to fruition.

Years it takes to find out that this movie
is just not gonna get made

and Bruce Campbell I guess
was gonna possibly be in it

and it was a whole different
direction for Phantasm,

but at the end of the day,
it didn't happen

and then we make
Phantasm Oblivion instead.

Ice cream man, it's all in his head.

It might be true also
that there are elements

from that Avery script that made
it into Phantasm: Ravager,

post-apocalyptic world gone mad,
more of a military element

going on there, so yeah, those--
those things could be lifted.

Wake the Dead was brought to me
by the director

of Tuck Everlasting, that I worked with,

based on a graphic novel
and it is a contemporary telling

of Frankenstein
with the teenage genre in it.

That it's the teenage college
medical students experimenting

and it's a wonderful,
wonderful graphic novel

and it's a wonderful retelling
of Frankenstein myth today.

Where you turn your best friend
into the creature

and they get killed in a car wreck.

We've come so close so many times

and I still don't know
why Wake the Dead is so popular

in the graphic novel world,
why we can't get it done.

We've gone independent,
we've had money put up,

we're-- we're gonna go to Australia,
we're gonna go to New Zealand

and I think maybe someday
we'll get a shot.

We didn't get it done
and uh, what an expensive film

and I think we'll keep trying.

The quandary of any writer in Hollywood,

they see you as have a specific wheelhouse

and so mine was kind of
childhood horror thing.

I sold a project to TriStar,
called, "Miss Malicious".

A psychological horror story
about a teenage girl's imaginary friend.

There's some thematic overlap with Chucky.

Thanks for coming after me.

What are friends for?

I also-- I sold to Warner Brothers
a project called, "P.E.T.S".

This concept of robot dogs
that look and behave

completely real, but of course,
they run amok and start killing people.

I sold that and wrote that,
and it didn't get made.

There was a lot of money
in this business in the '90s.

It's very different nowadays.

That doesn't happen,
but those were the salad days

where you could just like
think up an idea for a movie

on your way to a meeting
and people would say,

"You're hired, let's do it."

As opposed to now when you can
have someone make a whole franchise film,

complete it and have it decimated
as a tax write-off

which is a very new kind of nightmare.

My power has nothing to do with money.

Power is what holds things together!

The road to Hollywood is littered
with disappointments

but you carry on, you carry on
hoping the next one.

You know, good things come out
of pain and suffering,

and my time in development hell
has led to good things

and you know, occasionally something
slips out into the world.

Something that perhaps shouldn't.

Something that by all rights
shouldn't exist

and when that happens,
it's the greatest feeling in the world,

because it's a miracle.

1999

No!

A tugboat crew in a storm,
they lose their tow.

They're not gonna survive.

Captain, the engine room
is taking on water.

Well then, pump it out, mister.
You're the bloody engineer.

And they are lucky enough to come
into the eye of the storm.

They come across a vessel
which is a Russian ship,

but once on board,
they find that a life form

of electrical nature is transmitted down
onto the ship and took over the computers,

and then little machines started
killing everyone.

I was friends with Jim Cameron
before I ever worked with him.

It was Terminator 2: 3D which Jim said,

"Why don't you be a co-director?"
'Cause he was writing Titanic.

And that was a really big deal
for Universal Studio.

They were very happy
with the work to the point

where they're gonna offer you
a film to direct.

I was given a script called,
"Virus" and a graphic novel, Virus.

Gale Anne Hurd, who you know,
is the producer of this film.

And it was a script by Chuck Pfarrer.

Chuck contacted uh, Mike Richardson
at Dark Horse Comics.

They turned that script
into a graphic novel.

It was actually a hit
in the world of comics

and film geeks loved this thing.

Within two days of that meeting,
Jim said, "We're gonna dive to Titanic.

Tell no one, not the studio,
especially not Gale yet.

We're gonna dive and try to get some shots

for the opening of the film
to prove that we can do this movie."

So for the next 30 days
I lived on a Russian ship.

600 miles off the coast of Nova Scotia.

It was pretty wild.

And then finally Jim came to me
and said, "Well, hey,

you're gonna have to make a decision.

Are you going to do Virus or Titanic?"

It's fitted for scientific purposes.

Their biggest, 42 labs, 5 machine shops,
outfitted with advanced robotics.

Then we got a sat phone, satellite call
from Gale, who basically said,

"Are you gonna do this
fucking film or what?"

I said, "Yes."

Drawing on my own background in design,
storyboarding, illustrations.

All these people, we all worked in a room,
handing off drawings to each other.

It was a good experience in the beginning.
I was having fun.

Jamie Lee Curtis,
she brought a lot of energy to the set

and she would always
tell everybody to like,

"Get it, let's go,
get on your marks", you know,

"Get ready, we-- we gotta go."

You're no longer in charge!

- Donald Sutherland, as the captain,
was sort of acting the part.

He'd push people, push the actors.

One of my men is missing.
And I want some answers.

And no more of this Twilight Zone stuff.

Billy Baldwin, he went out
of his way constantly to do it right.

He wanted to do another one.
"Can I do another one?" I'd let him go.

What the hell is that?

It had sort of international cast.

They all tried their best.
It was fantastic.

What is this thing that's inside
the computer, huh?

It's a life form. Unlike anything we know.

Everything is practical in Virus.

Even our miniature ship in the storm,
it's 50-feet long.

Then we had a full-size ship
in the James River Fleet called,

the Hoyt S. Vandenberg.
It's a satellite tracking ship.

For a dollar, we bought the ship
and refurbished it.

We painted one side and that's how
we-- we dealt with filming.

By the way, we really dropped
an anchor through the ship.

And we had stunt people
like dive out of the way.

They kept telling me
there's not a big budget

to do everything digital or CG.

So I approached the whole film,
all the creature work, all the robotics,

Steve Johnson made all these little actual

animatronic creatures, puppeted
or radio-controlled.

It was really kind of cool.

So the bulk of the film
became practical robotics,

for real, that worked.

Phil Tippett's company, Phil,
who I'd worked with previously

at ILM and other projects,
agreed to do it.

And they basically did
an animated 3D version

of Goliath that worked quite well.

And I was quite pleased
that you couldn't quite tell

the difference in the final output
of the film.

Checkmate.

I wanted to hire another
visual effects supervisor

and they said,
"No, you know, we're hiring you

to be the director
and the visual effects supervisor.

That's two separate jobs."

Although I was doing it, it--
it makes it so much harder.

Jesus Christ.

You don't recognize me.
What's wrong?

So I called my friend, Jim Cameron,
who was in Mexico shooting Titanic.

And I'd ask him how his day went.

We would sort of compare notes
and he'd give me some advice

on how to deal with whatever, you know,
problems I might be having.

English.

-Do you speak English?
-Fuck you.

The first cut of the movie
was 2 hours and 15 minutes.

It's now just under 90.

We previewed the film
at Universal CityWalk.

Audience liked it.

Steve.

- We had toys.
There was a updated graphic novel.

Even a video game, I think.

And they were delivered
to my office for approval.

The actors had to approve theirs.

They all got an action figure.

They were like monster action figures.

It was a big movie.

Oh, closer.

In the end, they delayed the release
of the film by a month,

which took it out of the summer.

Released in the winter,
we knew it was like

it would hurt the film, which is too bad.

- You are virus.

- The Rage: Carrie 2.

I have a very interesting, long-standing
interest in the Carrie series,

because I think the book is so good.

And I love the original film.

There was a period of time
where people couldn't get arrested

for making a Stephen King movie.

And this was in that era.

Somebody said, "What if we took
Stephen King and Scream-ed it up a bit?"

I was fascinated with the cover
of the VCR box.

Just seeing Sissy Spacek in the blood,
in the dress, that iconic image.

Carrie 2, I don't think
I expected that it would be

the same classic as a sequel,
but I felt a big responsibility.

I had also never acted
on camera professionally at all.

So I wanted to bring
as much reality as I could,

as much of my experience.

I don't know that I believe in it.

-Believe in what?
-Love.

Then you've got bigger problems
than passing this class.

This movie went through a lot of changes.

The original director was Bob Mandel.

And it was called, "The Curse".

It was less of a sequel
and I would say maybe even more

of a '90s reboot.

And then MGM put the movie on the shelf.

They stopped production and they said,

"Kids don't want to watch
horror movies anymore."

And then a few months later,
Scream came out.

And obviously, they changed
their minds about kids wanting

to watch horror movies.

We even quote Scream in the movie.

-Hello.
-What's your favorite scary movie?

They wanted it a little more
tongue in cheek.

They changed huge plot points
and then two weeks into shooting

fired everybody on the movie.

And then Katt Shea came aboard
and took the helm.

I'm a big Poison Ivy fan
and I thought she brought

a great perspective.

It must be nice just not having
to be like everybody else.

Sometimes I really wish I could just be
one of the shiny happy people.

It's a movie about a young woman
whose mother struggles

with mental illness and she's afraid that

that will be passed on to her genetically.

Which was the struggle
of our screenwriter Rafael Moreau.

So I think this movie is really powerful,

because it comes
from such a personal place.

What are you saying I have?

- I'm saying you're not crazy
and it's not the devil.

It's a trait, Rachel, you've inherited.

This is pre-MeToo and the movie
was really visionary for its time,

because it's about
a young woman taking revenge,

because she's in this environment

where men are looking to score
on women for points.

How many points do I get
if I do that chick over there?

That fat one? Six.

No, bro, I did her last week

and you only gave me five
and she's not fat.

Based on a real '90s phenomenon
of a group of jocks called,

the "Spur Posse"
who are basically recording

sleeping with women as a point system
and did commit statutory rape.

That kind of what we would call,
"toxic masculinity",

although we had no term for it back then.

After that half-ass block
I just wanted to check

to see if maybe you had a tampon string
hanging between your legs.

I think it's also about
the fronts that we put on.

I think all horror movies
are about the monster within us

and being afraid of people getting to know
who we really are.

Jason London's character
and my character were very similar,

because they both had to put up
these tough exteriors to survive

Make your own path.

-Think so?
-Word.

I actually provided all the slang
that was in the movie,

including swank, dope, and word.

I just said, "Look,
can we have the teenagers saying

what actual teenagers say?"

Swank.

I prefer La Rage: Carrie Deux.
The Rage colon Carrie 2. It all works.

Night of the prom,
73 people died, few us survived,

but we never talked about that night.

Amy Irving was so, so cool to me
and really took me under her wing.

She told me stories about the original.

Just how wild it was.

I mean, it was pretty wild on our set,

but in the '70s, I mean, forget about it.

I want you to see how many points
Jesse got for you.

Everyone knows at the end of Carrie,
there's gonna be a big payoff body count.

And then, carnage.

Carnage with spear guns.

Carnage with CDs.

Carnage with shattering glass.

By the way, that glass was real.
We did not have CGI.

They really did explode a two-story window
of candy glass on me.

And I had a scar from it
for a little while,

'cause candy glass
can still cut you a little bit.

It was absolutely insane,
but I didn't know any better.

And I was just so excited
to get my big break.

The entire thing was shot indoors
in this stadium

that was about to be demolished.

So we were filming around the clock,
because we were gonna lose the location.

Burning a house down inside.

The director was wearing
a gas mask the entire time.

It was wild.

It was really, really wild.

After I did Carrie,
there was a lot of interest in me

doing a lot of other horror movies.

I was a theater actor first and foremost.

So instead of using the heat
that I got out of the movie

to do more horror movies,
I went and I did Broadway.

And then I ended up doing
a lot of TV as well.

I would do a horror movie now.

I think the horror genre
is more serious now

and the scripts are better.

Like I love a camp horror movie,
don't get me wrong.

I want to jump back in.

Did you lose something there, bud?

- Idle Hands.

Idle Hands is rad.

Idle Hands is the story
of this loser stoner,

perhaps one of the most pathetic men
in horror history.

It's under the bed!

Ow!

Played brilliantly by Devon Sawa.

Don't you think
you should have some ambition?

Like a goal?

I mean, my dream life would be
to lie around all day in bed

and watch TV while some hot
broad delivers me food and shit.

He's so likable, but he's such a big loser

that a demon is able to possess
his hand and cause his hand

to do horrible, horrible things.

-…A beer?
-No, thanks.

-You sure, 'cause…

The movie really is a collection
of horror tropes.

- Everything's gonna be cool, man.

Everything's gonna be…

But it's elevating
all those tropes together

into this great mashup horror comedy.

- They were killed by ants?

Please don't be stupid.
Do you have like an evil aunt?

Making references to horror films
in your horror film.

That was something that we had
become accustomed to.

Oh, look at me! Look at me!
I'm Leatherface!

You've got the teen-driven comedy,

but the teens aren't the good-looking,
slick, popular kids

like in a Kevin Williamson movie.

These are the loser kids
that they make fun of.

Halloween thing in the gym.

-You guys going?
-Hell no.

Can you see us dressing up
in some stupid-ass costumes?

Grooving to Hanson and Jewel.

What do we look like, total losers, man?

You've got Seth Green,
you've got Elden Henson,

and they are these best friends
to this guy,

who aren't really best friends
to this guy.

That's the hilarious part
about their thing.

They're best friends with each other.

They don't really like him,
but they keep him around.

And then they're stuck with him
for all eternity, ostensibly,

when they are brought back from the dead.

Don't take this the wrong way, Anton,
but you look really queer doing that.

"Idle hands are the devil's playpen",
so I'm thinking,

you know, keep my hands occupied, right?

They are the Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern of this movie,

kind of wandering around
to just kind of point out

and go, "You know, that's kind of
fucked up that you killed that guy."

Vivica A. Fox, of course,
driving around in a Winnebago,

tracking down a demon,
just smoking hot, being awesome.

"I'm giving you
all the information you need."

I come from a long line
of Druidic priestesses sworn

to fight a certain evil force
that possesses

the laziest fuckup it can find.

And you're also introducing
Jessica Alba to audiences

for the first time,
and America is falling madly in love.

Aren't you a little old
for ding-dong ditch?

Sorry about your bush.

In such a way that they were so in love

that after the test screening,
they literally reshot a new ending,

so they could take her clothes off.

Help me!

Being also very '90s,
you've got The Offspring showing up.

They're on the radio all the time.

They not only show up
on the soundtrack of this,

they're playing a Ramones song,
like they're in rock and roll high school.

♪ 20, 20, 24 hours to go,
I wanna be sedated ♪

I was aware of who was
on the rock and roll soundtrack

before I started to write my score,

so I dipped into my industrial past,
I suppose,

with a bit more trash involved,

so there-- there's quite
a punky feel about it,

rather than strictly sort of doom-laden.

See, now you're taking Anton-time.

There weren't many good horror
comedies hitting at the time,

and Idle Hands was one of those movies
that was just a cult film from the get-go.

The studio just didn't get behind it.

Could have done a whole lot better
than it did.

- Columbine happened,
and all of a sudden, teenagers

and violence in a high school,
that was real.

That was scary.
That was on everyone's mind.

And they canceled the premiere
for Idle Hands,

kind of pulled back on
some of the advertising.

Of course, that would fade away
very quickly

as people come to their senses and go,

"Oh yeah, these two kids doing this
horrific thing has nothing to do with,

you know, a kid with a possessed hand."

I cut off my hand,
and it's gonna kill you all!

-Get off the stage!
-Yeah!

Despite bombing, it came out on video,
and we all watched it

and fell in love with it,
and it was an instant cult hit

with at-home stoners and cinephiles.

What the fuck are you doing, man?
That's my dad! Come on!

CPR, man!
I saw it on Baywatch!

The original Mummies, you know,
were just classic, and as--

as a kid, it's just creepy as hell.

Slow-moving mummy, you know,
you're kinda used to that,

so like this one comes out.

It was like the perfect mix of classic
horror and Indiana Jones adventure.

Such a fun movie.

I think I saw it like two or three times
in the movie theater, actually.

Who the hell are these guys?

-Priests.
-Alright, then.

Steve Sommers has been
very generous with me

when it comes to work.

Well, if it ain't my little buddy Beni.

I think I'll kill you.

-Think of my children!
-You don't have any.

-Someday I might.
-Shut up!

Stephen's pitch for that time
and for the studio seemed

to be the right one that they wanted.

I had worked with Brendan Fraser on
a movie called, "Gods and Monsters".

He was a perfect match
for Stephen Sommers as a leading man.

There's something out there.

Something underneath that sand.

Brendan knows how to touch
on all the different parts that you need.

The adventure, the action,
the romantic, definitely comic,

he's so good at.

Rachel Weisz and John Hannah.

Besides being excellent actors,
John and Rachel,

and Brendan too,
they're all very likeable people.

On screen and in person,
they're all charming in their own way.

- Never did like camels.

'Cause they smell, they bite,
they spit. Disgusting.

I think they're adorable.

Arnold Vosloo, he's a very serious actor.

He really cares about what he's doing.

- Imhotep! Imhotep!

[speaks Ancient Egyptian]

Beni is a weasel, just backstabbing,
just the worst.

The challenge is to somehow,
still in a way, you might root

for Beni at certain points.

But then you come to your senses
and go, "No."

The Prince must finish the job.
And consummates the curse.

It was just to save my own skin
and kiss up to Imhotep.

Oh my God.
What an amazing boss to have.

Imhotep. The best!
So that's Beni's thinking.

I love the whole sand-wall trick.

It was beautiful. This bastard.

Steve Sommers, I think,
gave us the direction

when they yell at each other.

Brendan Fraser and myself.
That you know, "They're high schoolers.

They're two guys that love
getting under each other's skin, you know?

You can sound like two
10-year-olds yelling at each other,

which I love that direction."

It looks to me like I got all the horses!

Looks to me like you're on the wrong side
of the river!

You don't believe, if you've never
been on one, how high up the camel is.

And they're not as smooth as a horse.
And they're not as smart as a horse.

That was another terrifying day for me.

And Steve Sommers said to me,
"Breaking news, I didn't cast you

for your camel riding.”

So long, Beni!

Luckily, we did the Morocco section first,

and then we went to London
for the second half of the film.

Because, as you can tell by looking at me,

I wasn't someone born in the desert.

Everybody got sick from food or ice.

Arnold Vosloo lost about 10 pounds
after he got sick.

I was so sick, I don't know what it was,

but I was seeing like you know,
three arms or four arms on myself.

I mean, I was like out of it
completely for days.

-Go!

- One of the crew members got bit
by a scorpion.

They had to be helicoptered out of there.
They had to go to a hospital.

So you can imagine
how well I slept that night.

It was a hard shoot. Physically hard.

Once we got back to London
though, it was great.

I love the design of that mummy.

Because it looks like an EC Comic book
come to life from the '50s.

We are in serious trouble.

There were a couple of times
I remember having to ask

what this will look like later,

when they finish the CGI
or the matte work or whatever.

The scene where I meet Imhotep
and I'm walking backwards

and I'm pulling out the religious things.

I did it first with Arnold

who had some special effects tape on,
whatever he had, some sort of suit.

And then they got rid of Arnold
and I had to do it by myself.

-[speaks Hebrew]
-[speaks Ancient Egyptian]

That's even harder than the big sand wave,

because you can look pretty much
anywhere in it.

You're gonna be looking at it.
This you had to really look.

Towards the end when I'm trying
to scramble out of there,

the art department just spray-painted
that ceiling that was falling on me.

I'm holding a torch. The flame hit it.

It went up my arm.

It burnt off my eyebrow, and my eyelashes,
and my hair on that arm.

It happened like that.
Like you're Wile E. Coyote.

And I remember Brendan Fraser saying,
"Are you alright? Are you alright?"

I said, "What happened?"
And they were extremely apologetic.

And then of course, later I saw
Brendan turn around laughing his ass off.

Oh yeah. This just keeps getting
better and better.

I remember going to the premiere
of The Mummy and I'm like,

"Oh my gosh. I'm in that."

So that was sort of mind-blowing.

I really enjoyed watching it.

The Mummy opened up first
and then I didn't know what would happen

if it would just get completely squashed
by The Phantom Menace.

And to our great surprise
it just sort of stayed around.

The Mummy just kept hanging in there.

It led to a couple of sequels.
A prequel, The Scorpion King.

A rollercoaster ride.

Not-- not in the world would I ever
thought before the movie opened.

"Oh, there's gonna be a ride
at Universal." It's great.

Goodbye, Beni.

Sometimes Hollywood's formula
for success is copying

something else that was successful.
You know, Jaws.

I can go slow ahead.
Come on down and chomp some of this shit.

Jaws is one of the movies that
made me want to make movies.

I've seen that movie like easily
200 times in my life.

I love Jaws.
I love movies about sharks.

I'll watch any movie about a shark.

Until of course, you know we get
to Sharknado.

And it becomes something
entirely different.

I'll watch Sharknado.
All of 'em I have.

I saw Deep Blue Sea,
because there were sharks.

Deep Blue Sea is the story
of a research facility

that is developing a drug
to combat Alzheimer's

based on a hormone that exists
in the brain of the mako shark.

To harvest enough levels of this hormone,

they have increased the size of the brains
of the mako sharks.

And as a side effect,
those sharks have gotten real smart.

Tell me I didn't see that.

They recognized that gun.

There's a storm. The facility floods.

Go, go!

And the sharks have a plan.

They aren't just breaking down doors
for the sheer joy of it, are they?

-They're after us.
-It's pretty damn obvious.

We don't know what they're doing yet.

This movie is a blast.

It's directed by Renny Harlin,
who at the time

had kind of ridden the wave
of the Hollywood system

and had huge success
in big-studio movies and huge,

very public failures in big-studio movies.

And now comes to do this shark movie
that is just a riot.

The cast is spectacular.

And you've got Saffron Burrows,
and Thomas Jane,

and Samuel L. Jackson,
and Michael Rapaport, and LL Cool J,

and Stellan Skarsgård battling both
practical effect sharks and CG sharks.

As they try to survive.

Bring your feathery ass here, come on. Oh!

And it all kind of hinges on scenes
that should be ridiculous.

None of this should work. It all works.

You ate my bird.

It has death scenes that are famous
for subverting expectations.

There is that moment
when Samuel L. Jackson,

who we think is the protagonist
at this point when you're seeing the film,

is giving his hero's speech.

- We're not going to fight anymore.

We're going to pull together

and we're gonna find a way
to get out of here.

And I remember sitting
in the theater being like,

"Oh my God!"

First, we're gonna seal off this…

I was really with the movie at that point,
'cause it also meant anybody could die

if they literally just killed off

who you thought was gonna be
the protagonist.

And it's Samuel L. Jackson.

You have to give it to Renny Harlin.

He had to have known exactly
what he was doing.

And he played the audience
perfectly with that.

The movie has no business being
as great as it is.

It is riotously entertaining.

Like, I've probably watched
Deep Blue Sea 10 times

and I like it more every time I see it.

Look, I hate to interrupt this moment
of burgeoning intimacy,

but can we get the fuck out of here?

I'm gonna die out here.

The Blair Witch Project purports
to be a collection of footage

from three kind of
young student filmmakers

who went missing in the woods
Burkittsville, Maryland

while researching the legend
of the Blair Witch.

Yeah, it's a story my grandmother
used to tell us all.

A terrible thing.
Just tore the whole community up.

And their footage has been found
and cut together.

That found footage,
which were words that had

not collided that way before this movie.

- You had an encounter
with the Blair Witch?

Yes, that is um, a really kind
of scary story.

It really felt like something
that had been found.

And that made it so much more scary.

-Holy shit.
-That's fucking creepy.

I thought it was a true story.
I was terrified.

And I'm also sitting there
in disbelief thinking

this documentary appears
to have captured proof of the paranormal.

I mean-- I mean, I bought this
thing hook, line, and sinker.

-It sounds like footsteps.
-I know, that's a fucking person.

- It's all around us.
That is fucking weird.

- Dan Myrick and I were in film school
together in the early '90s.

And we started talking about
what kinds of things scared us as kids.

And we went out and rented
a bunch of VHSs.

Rented these pseudo documentaries.

One called, "Legend of Boggy Creek".

And we got some VHSs of a show
called, "In Search Of…",

which we really loved in the '70s
with Leonard Nimoy narrating.

And we loved the idea that
these things gave us this feeling

of just creepiness that
other movies didn't give us.

And we came up with the basic idea

of these filmmakers,
this documentary team.

And our original idea was like
the documentary

was gonna take place in the '70s

and we were gonna find
the footage in the '90s.

Every time we thought about it,
we're like,

"Man, this is the perfect
low-budget movie." You know?

We don't have to light it.
We don't have to like have stars.

We don't even have to have music.
The sound can be crappy.

So the plan to do low budget,
kind of do it ourselves was--

that was the thing all along.

If you've known where we were going,
we wouldn't be hiking like--

- We're in the middle
of the fucking woods.

-How could you pos--
- Some of it is off-trail hiking.

And we went through about
a thousand people.

And Joshua Leonard
was the first one we cast.

Then Heather Donahue.

She just brought an intensity
that we didn't see with anybody else.

Really taking me
to a very uncomfortable place

there in the audition space.

And then Mike Williams brought
like a different flavor

than Heather and Josh.

We just thought that
these three people like

complemented each other really well.

I don't know why I have
to have every conversation on video, man.

-Tape some animals.
- 'Cause we're making a documentary.

Not about us getting lost.
We're making a documentary about a witch.

We got so lucky with this casting.

I think it was really courageous
of them to go into the woods

with people in charge that
they didn't know.

Especially, Heather.
You know, a bunch of guys.

It could have easily turned
into a snuff film.

But they trusted us and we trusted them.

You know, we handed them
the cameras to shoot our movie.

This experiment that luckily
worked out for us.

- Whatever it is is gonna come back.
We know that.

-We don't know that for a fact.
-Well, it came three nights in a row

and it's getting worse every night.

We kept the actors like out
of the loop as much as possible.

We never showed them the script.

They knew something bad was
gonna happen each night, you know?

But they had no idea
when it was gonna happen

or what was gonna happen.

- Oh my God! What the fuck is that?

What the fuck is that?

The bundle of sticks scene.
Not knowing is creepier.

And it's obviously something bad.

Her reaction is what sells it.

The ending of the movie was something
that we came up with

just a few days before we shot it.

We were like, "They go into the cellar
and then something creepy happens."

Come on! I hear him downstairs!

-No!
-Come on!

Not everybody was gonna get it,
but we knew that like the people

that were paying attention
to the beginning

when they see that, it's gonna
freak them out.

"And was it real?" And this and that.

I'm scared to close my eyes.
I'm scared to open them.

Artisan bought the movie
and they started test screenings

and they were like, "Hey, uh,
we want you to reshoot the endings.

Maybe give us a couple alternates."

The alternate endings were all
just variations on Mike.

He's on a-- like a stick figure crucifix.

I think there was one where like
his shirt is opened

and he's all bloody chested.

We were just hoping that
they would let us go

with our original ending
and luckily, they did.

They really did let us release
our director's cut

which was an amazing thing
for first-time filmmakers.

- You're gonna write us
a happy ending, Heather?

I think at Sundance somebody
copied the tape

and that was the one that spread
all over Hollywood.

And pretty much everybody
in the business that I've met

is like, "Oh, I-- I saw that two months
before it came out", and this and that.

A bootleg of our movie actually helped
you know, the hype.

Something that for most movies
is a detriment ended up being

something that helped us in the end.

Please help us!

The marketing was kind
of bittersweet for us,

because they told us that,
"Oh, we're gonna market it

as if it was real.

You know, and we're gonna let
the actors not do interviews

for about two or three weeks."

And we figured that they knew
what they were doing.

I remember when the movie opened
in New York, there's a big line,

I'm across the street with Mike Williams

and he's like, "Man, I, you know,
I spent all my life

you know, being-- wanting to be
an actor and be successful

and there's literally like
a line around the block

to see my movie
and I can't go over there."

But then later on,
they definitely got their spotlight,

but I think for them,
it was very frustrating

for the first two weeks or three weeks
not being able to like be seen.

And also they were getting
a lot of like you know,

people contacting their families
and saying, "Oh my God,

you know, I can't believe,
you know, Josh is dead or Heather's dead."

Looking back on it, we would
have changed a few things,

you know, just to-- to make things
a little more sane now.

When you're not home today,
when I'm not home today,

people are gonna start noticing
like my dad--

my girlfriend's definitely gonna notice
that I'm not back.

The movie was so shaky.

If we had known that the movie
was gonna be in the theaters,

we would have found some way
to stabilize the video.

Looking back on it, I think,
you know having like a Blair Witch Project

barf bag with the stick man
collector's item,

I think that would have been
something cool to have.

- There's a fucking witch
and she keeps leaving shit

outside your door.

There's no one here to help you.

She left little trinkets,
you fucking took one of 'em.

We somehow tapped into something
that you know,

inspired a lot of people.

There's so many great found footage movies

that come after us you know,
Paranormal Activity and Rec,

and the Europa Report, Host.

What?

The parodies were, you know, so much fun.

Saturday Night Live
and the idea that like you know,

Scooby-Doo is involved
with the Blair Witch

was just blew my mind and I still love it.

- Somebody's been in our backpacks.

Oh! Scooby-Doo!

The aftermath of Blair Witch was you know,

there's a lot of pressure
coming off of like

this really successful movie.

This little movie that you made
for like you know 25,000 bucks.

We all kind of went through
this phase of like having

a crazy amount of attention

and then having no attention
at all, you know?

Almost having to start all
from scratch again.

The good definitely outweighed the bad.

Being part of The Blair Witch Project
was such a blessing.

And then now, there's still so much fandom

and there's so much excitement
about this movie.

We lit the flame, you know?

I never thought I would be
you know, talking about

one of my movies being this influential.

It became something that I never
imagined it would become.

I am so, so sorry…

for everything that has happened.

Please make them leave.

I'm working on it.

All you need to say is,
"I see dead people",

and everybody knows exactly
what you're talking about.

I see dead people.

The Sixth Sense came out of nowhere
and it blew everyone away.

Here's this quiet supernatural film
starring Bruce Willis, mind you.

Nobody expected the impact
it would have on pop culture and cinema.

Written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan
who was then completely unknown.

Bruce Willis plays a child psychologist
who has a client

claiming he can speak to the dead.

He investigates this claim
and kind of has to come to grips

with supernatural elements competing
with his medical background

then a spoiler of an ending
that is 40 years old.

The cast is rounded out by Toni Collette
who plays the boy's mother.

Cole, you're scaring me.

They scare me too sometimes.

-They?
-Ghosts.

And of course, Haley Joel Osment
who became a sensation overnight.

- You shouldn't look at people,
it makes them feel bad.

--How did you--
-Stop looking at me!

-Who had--
-Stuttering Stanley!

Stuttering Stanley!

The performances in that film
were top notch.

A single mom. A little boy.
An average situation.

Something a lot of people can relate to.

I'm tired in my body.
I'm tired in my mind.

I'm tired in my heart.

You know, I don't know if you noticed,
but our little family isn't doing so good.

It's terrifying for the little boy

and what he's going through,
but as the moviegoer

and seeing Bruce Willis' journey.

We think about it as we get older.

We're thinking about our mortality.

What's really on the other side?

You ever feel the prickly things
on the back of your neck?

That's them.

In one fell swoop M. Night Shyamalan
with The Sixth Sense

changed the course of horror,

because up until that point
meta films and horror films

that were commenting on themselves,

and that were deeply ironic
and postmodern were

in some ways undermining
what makes horror so potent.

At our core, we all know we're gonna die

and I think every horror film
on some level taps into that

basic existential issue
and with The Sixth Sense,

we returned to that core fear.

The brilliance of that screenplay
and that film was

you never see Bruce truly interacting

with anyone other than Haley,
because Haley's the only person

that can see these dead people
which you don't realize at the top.

Cole has scratches on his arm.

I think they might be fingernail cuts,
defensive cuts maybe, I don't know. I…

I still get the chills.

That feeling I got in the theater

when he found out that he was dead.

It was chilling.

I see people…

they don't know they're dead.

To withhold so much information
and truth from the audience

and then turn it all around
at the very, very end,

you know, no one had really had
the bravery to do that

as a filmmaker or as a studio
to kind of stand behind

that kind of storytelling.

A clever, clever, clever film
and it's such a cool,

"Oh my God!", at the end.

I think M. Night has tried to chase that.

It's a blessing,
but it's also kind of a curse.

People are expecting it.

So now they're, "You know,
you know what he likes to do.

He likes to trick you."

Well, good luck, 'cause now
we're all paying attention.

-Mama.
-Dinner is not ready.

You can't hurt me anymore!

It had been a long time since
there was a word-of-mouth movie

that made you feel like
you were part of the secret.

That like, once you saw it,
now you're complicit.

Like now it's your job
to get somebody else to see it,

but not tell them. Don't ruin it.

Let that person
have the experience you had,

which is kind of a secret sauce
in terms of marketing a movie.

If you can make an audience member
go become your foot soldier,

you've done something really special
in that case.

Hey, come on.

I'll show you where my dad keeps his gun.
Come on.

My blockbuster had 200 copies of it.

It was such a big cultural phenomenon

that the video store chain used it
as their big thing of like,

"See the movie before someone
spoils the twist."

It doesn't even hurt anymore.

That movie is all about death.
The whole film. Every frame of it.

And it has this beautiful somber
and yet deeply emotional tone to it.

Really made horror films serious again.

Made them about something.
Not just about themselves.

I think I can go now.

I want you to shut it.

The ghost story has never died.
And never will die.

And there have always been people
who bring something new,

and fresh, and exciting into it.

Stir of Echoes was based on a novel
by Richard Matheson.

It's David Koepp, the writer director
also wrote Jurassic Park screenplay.

Starring Kevin Bacon.

What was it then? An hallucination?

Yeah. Yeah. A bunch of 'em.
It's hard to explain.

It's like all these thoughts
just kept coming.

Richard Matheson.
One of the great genre writers.

He wrote the classic
Twilight Zone episode,

one of the greatest ones ever,
Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.

Is credited with possibly creating

post-apocalyptic literature
with I Am Legend.

And he wrote this great story
that would then be ripped off

for decades by other horror
writers called, "Stir of Echoes".

What the hell was that?

It's a story of a guy who starts
experiencing things in his house

and his kid starts seeing
a spirit around the house.

Does it hurt to be dead?

- The question is,
"Is the kid psychologically broken?

Is there something going on?"

And the investigation
into this spirit in a house.

- It's a terrific and surprising
ghost story

about a young woman who was murdered
whose body was never found

and so her soul was never set free.

It has elements of an EC Comic story,
but it is so much deeper than that.

It's chipping away at what's bothering you

and getting in your head
and you don't know what it is,

and it's something horrific.

Why are you digging?

Question, Maggie, as you can plainly see
I am very busy trying to answer.

The question is where?

It's blue collar. It's realistic.

It's mysterious. And it's heartbreaking.

Samantha is my oldest daughter.

-She ran away about six months ago.
-No, she didn't run away.

She was kidnapped or something
and the little boy said he saw her.

It stirs that in-between world.

So I was so terrified watching it.

-Look at the screen.
-Okay.

- I love movies that make you hurt
and this is a movie

that makes you hurt
in a very emotional sense.

This is the most important thing
that's ever happened to me

in my whole life, in my whole stupid life.

The irony of Stir of Echoes
being a great film,

coming out around the exact
same time as Sixth Sense

and being a blip.

It just didn't connect until years later

when people could put
those two movies together,

watch them back to back,
compare and contrast,

and see that they were two
very different movies

drawing from the same inspiration.

But what a good film it is
and so underrated.

Limbo, directed by Tina Krause.

Tina Krause is known for being
in WAVE movies.

WAVE, W-A-V-E, it's an acronym.

These are movies that are basically
a send-away video production.

You make a script and you send it
to this production company

and they'll make it for you.

Almost always there's some
element of fetish.

There's almost always nudity
and girls getting undressed.

And for some reason,
a lot of girls drowning in quicksand.

Tina Krause appears
in a little WAVE movie called,

"Eaten Alive: A Tasteful Revenge".

Where women are shrinking each other
and then get eaten.

Stop! Oh God, no!

- It's easy to excuse her as somebody
who's just like,

you know, doing these silly little movies
in New Jersey,

but she's actually a great filmmaker.

And Limbo is a great example of something

that she did on her own.
It's shot on video.

It's about a woman's descent
into madness and being in limbo.

Time means nothing anymore.

We're all gonna rot here.

You can't stop it!

It feels like a Nine Inch Nails video shot
in an abandoned warehouse in New Jersey.

It's this fever dream of hers that
she is working through on camera.

See what you've done?
Now see it through my eyes!

This is a passion project for her.

She had submitted to a bunch of festivals
and had gotten rejected.

And somebody said, like,

"Why don't you change the name
on the movie, so it's not yours?"

And so she did, and then it got in.

So she was dealing with
a lot of like, sexism.

A lot of people
who didn't take her seriously.

Get off of me!

-Baby. Come on, baby.
-Don't touch me. Disgusting!

I love this movie.

It is experimental in a way
that I think a lot of people

don't give it credit for.

And Tina Krause is an incredible person.

She is a spitfire.
She is punk reincarnated.

Doing this all on her own.

She's getting to fight
with like, people who are, you know,

coming into the production,
who shouldn't be there.

She takes everything seriously
and she loves doing what she does.

She should be taken seriously
as a filmmaker.

Feeling a little queasy?

Oh, Audition's a whole another thing. Yo.

Takashi Miike is a filmmaker
who is tremendously prolific.

To call him prolific is an understatement.

He would make up to five films a year.

Many of them in a horror space
or a horror adjacent.

- Audition is probably
one of his best-known

and appreciated movies.

This quiet and intense movie,
Audition, I think changed a lot.

The whole idea of casting a girlfriend

comes from the Japanese hierarchy system.

It starts out like a romantic comedy

and then it just turns dark
as dark can be.

Just pitch black.

The nicest of the two guys ends up having

the worst experience
you could possibly have.

- Not only was she a female villain,
she also was very fragile.

You wouldn't know what she was capable of.

It has this one moment
where the whole movie turns.

The guy is trying to call the girl

and the phone is ringing,
the phone is ringing.

And there's this canvas bag
and all of a sudden, it just moves.

You just go, "Whoa!"

It's a brilliant, brilliant,
absolutely brilliant moment of horror.

It is a slow burn.

But for that reason, the tension
ratchets up to a level

that when it finally comes,
it's a totally wild, cathartic experience.

The torture she's giving this main actor
is so painful and effective,

because you can imagine what it feels like

when someone sticks a needle,
you know, in your belly.

It was rough. It was really rough.

Oh, lord.

This character takes amazing
glee in her actions.

Using piano wire like
you've never seen it used before.

It's horrifying and kind of hilarious
at the same time.

"Kiri kiri kiri."

- Why are the Japanese people
so afraid of women?

There must be some revolution going on.

Some feministic subplot, you know?

I think in the sort of post-MeToo era,
Audition is extremely relevant.

Like, that film has become
only more potent

in our current era and I think
blew people's minds at the time,

because there just wasn't anything
like it in America.

Audition sits in a very interesting place

within discussions of
whether or not it's feminist

and whether or not it's misogynist.

And I think the fact that
it doesn't fall very neatly

into one bucket or the other
is among its many charms.

You… are beautiful.

Love me and nobody else.

We really come to sympathize
with the protagonist

that he is truly trying to find true love.

He's a good guy. He treats her well.

But at the same time,
Asami is the monster that she is,

because of sexism, because
of patriarchy, because of misogyny,

because of a lifetime
of objectification and abuse.

So it kind of rides that line.

It kind of feels like uh,
disgruntled actors got together

and decided to make a movie
about the nightmares of auditioning.

And it's not far off, you know?
It's really not.

It's punishment for the casting couch.
That's what Audition is.

"You know, you're gonna mess with actors

and just manipulate them,
so you can have sex with them?

Well, then we're gonna cut
your freaking feet off."

It was so impressive that
that's why I hired Takeshi Miike

to do one of the Masters of Horror
episodes,

which was every bit as harrowing,
in fact, to the point

where Showtime wouldn't even air it
when it was made.

The first horror film that kind
of crossed the desk, you know,

if you will, it was The First Power.

And there was a lot that made me
very, very excited about that.

Not only was this horror,
but they were asking me

to be the lead back in the day,
and even to a certain extent now,

you know, Hollywood almost has to justify
an ethnic person being a role.

And it's one of the few in my filmography

that I would 100% go back to and say,
"Let's do a sequel to this."

Tess, there's nothing out there.

Like Hitchcock's Birds,
Bats is about bats.

It's about nature gone awry
and our inability

to defend ourselves against it.

Bats is a wonderful throwback
to the creature features of the '50s,

but builds on that, I think, a little bit.

Here we have a requisite,
you know, mad scientist who,

for whatever reason, you know, starts uh,

genetically mutating bats,
and you know, I mean,

what could go wrong?

Bob Gunton brought amazing gravitas to it.

You've somehow increased
their natural intelligence.

And their ability to work together.

Why would you do that?

Because I'm a scientist.
That's what we do.

Dina Meyer comes on,
and she brings a lot of genre cred,

you know, after Starship Troopers
and whatnot.

And she's, you know, action-film ready.

Leon, who does not have a full name.

By the way, you know,
try calling the hotel

and asking for Leon.

And the you know,
receptionist says, "Leon who?"

"I don't know. I think it's just Leon."

Clip their wings?

Would you shoot their damn heads off?
And don't miss.

These are real, ordinary people
thrown into extraordinary,

sometimes even supernatural situations.

The characters have to be grounded,
or you don't buy the premise.

I tell you, I'm not gonna let 'em
blow my town

off the face of the earth without a fight.

People got their homes here.

It's my job to make sure they got
something to come back to.

The budget of Bats was like
$5 to $6 million, you know?

I mean, it-- it-- it was not big.

Louis Morneau, and I have
to credit George Mooradian, the DP,

I really, really think
they elevated that film.

They pumped up the color.
They pumped up the action.

The cinematography was fantastic.

They really upped the game,

and I watched them do that
on a daily basis.

Bats has a big scope, you know?

So big skies, lots of black things
flying around.

And I actually created a sound
out of bat wings,

made it electronic,
and tried to make a swarm,

and things like that.

I was a great lover of Penderecki,
so I thought,

"Well, I'll try and mix bat wings
with Penderecki, and see what happens."

- Filmed it in Utah.

You know, it's--
it's set in a small Texas town,

but okay, let's go to Utah.

What in heaven's name is going on here?

Well, as far as we can tell,
we think this was done

by some sort of…

-bats.
-One bat.

Only one real bat in the entire making
of the film Bats,

and that was the little cute guy
in the beginning.

The rest of them, it was puppetry,
the big ones, and CGI.

Because it was so much night shooting,
we were on splits.

Literally, you know,
from the beginning of the schedule.

So, I mean, you're living like a vampire.

You know, you go to work at noon,

you don't get off till, you know,
midnight or 1:00 or something.

And so, it was a bit of a fever dream.

No!

We shot in a real silver mine.
I mean, it was ridiculous.

We were like a mile below the surface.

Highly claustrophobic.
I mean, you know, it took us 10 minutes

in a blackened elevator to get
to the bottom.

I mean, that's a little freaky.

The town was Magna, Utah.

I'm in the middle of Main Street Magna,

and Louis gives me this gun with
like, 13 rounds in it. Blanks.

"Listen, just-- just shoot
and wherever you shoot,

don't worry, you won't miss.
I'll make sure you hit a bat."

Sure enough, "Action."

Roll under the pickup. You know?

And you know, like, 500 people, "Whoa!"

Standing ovation.

And I felt like, you know,
Martin Landau playing Bela Lugosi

wrestling the big, giant octopus.

It's like, "Wow.

I'm a grown-ass man,
and this is what I do for a living."

You know?

You gotta commit to the bit.

Stay calm!

And yes, they-- they're playing Nosferatu
in the town cinema.

I don't know of a little,
small town in Texas

that would ever play Nosferatu.

You know, most people go,
"What, what is that?

Is that-- it that a Mexican dish?

I'd like some Nosferatu
with some chilaquiles."

It knew what it was supposed to be.

And Bats achieved everything
I think that it set out to achieve.

So much so that it got a sequel
that they didn't call me for.

But that went straight to video.

This film was released in theaters

and actually, you know,
it did fairly well.

I think it opened up in the top five

and made its money back
very, very quickly.

Decades later,
Bats has a lot of fans out there,

because they really, really
enjoyed the film.

And to me, that's a testament
to the filmmakers

and what we were trying to do,
if it stands the test of time.

And people continue to discover it,
and they continue to enjoy it.

Are you kidding me?
I am not up to my chest in bat shit!

House on Haunted Hill
is about a group of people

who are invited to a party
at this mansion,

which actually turns out to be
a former mental institution.

And they wind up getting locked in
and they have to survive the night.

And if they do survive,
they can get a $1 million each.

We get paid this money when?

The second the sun hits tomorrow morning.

Assuming you've stayed the entire night
and that you're still alive, of course.

Of course, we know what's gonna happen.

Gil Adler, I had worked with him
on Freddy's Nightmares.

Later on, he became a producer
on Tales from the Crypt.

And so I did an episode called,
"Only Skin Deep",

which God bless him,
Bob Zemeckis flipped out over.

Then Joel Silver,
and Bob Zemeckis, and Gil

asked me if I could develop
House on Haunted Hill,

'cause they had gotten the rights
to the William Castle catalog of films.

- Met with his daughter, Terry Castle,

who couldn't have been nicer,
and she loved the idea

that we wanted to take
some of those movies

and remake them
as Tales from the Crypt movies.

Bill had done a number
of Tales from the Crypt,

and he's a very underrated
director, in my opinion.

This new company, Dark Castle.

It just felt like, okay,
this was a new and different arena,

and we'll call it something different.

And on that mercenary note,
dear friends, let the games begin.

The first script was a disaster.

That was Dick Beebe, who was a lovely guy,

but he had a little problem
with the tubes.

I think he wrote the first draft
like the night before.

I said, "Let's go watch the original,
write down everything we love about it."

And the only thing that came up
that we were disappointed in

was the fact that there were
no real ghosts in the movie.

So I said, "Let's put real ghosts
in this time."

I really wanted to make a movie
that was like gothic, and dark,

and just like dripping
with atmosphere and stuff.

I wanted Geoffrey Rush to play the lead.

When I met Geoffrey, I said,

"Why do you want to be in a horror film?"

And he said, "Well, I'm tired
of playing men in tights.

I want to be an action hero."

And I said, "I'm your guy."

You think I'd invite that bunch
of social rejects?

Sure know, it wasn't me.
And if you say it wasn't you,

then who the hell did, Evelyn?
Ghosts?

We wanted the characters to be,
at least pay attention

to what was going on, you know,
in the society at the time.

The doctor who's a little sleazy,
a fallen athlete,

a newscaster who was trying
to be rich and famous.

Nothing has changed really.

In fact, it was maybe portending
of things to come.

If I can just get something
bizarre enough on tape,

I think I can parlay it
into getting myself

some sort of a wackiest home videos gig.

The biggest challenge on this,
on House on Haunted Hill was surviving it.

That's the truth.

There was just a lot of personalities
involved that were difficult.

And it made it a very challenging shoot.

Most of the effects were done by KNB,

which is Nicotero and his crew.

What do you think, Dr. Vannacutt?

In Ghost Story, there was this face
that Dick Smith did

that had just a mouth and teeth
and it was like a screaming head.

Bill loved that image so much
that he made a deal

for the rights to it.

And then we had to recreate that.

Just something cool that we got
to redo a Dick Smith creation.

The film at the time got criticized
for too much CG

and there wasn't,
there was only two shots.

The sort of ghost plasma
goes up the stairs.

Where are you going?
You have to stay for my show.

The only other CG
is just where I think the rope

at the end is burning
and for whatever reason,

they decided to do that as a CG shot.

The rest of it's all in camera.
All the effects that you see.

Now it's so common that uh,
you know, people think that

they're seeing CG when they're not.

Pritchett was right. The house is alive.

There are some product placements
which I thought were very clunky.

The Blockbuster thing,
which by the way was a visual effect.

If you watch it,
it's wobbling as it's going.

I guess when you bought your ticket,
you got a scratcher thing.

It was just a gimmick
and I think they were trying

to come up with something kind
of like William Castle would have done.

- Play the House on Haunted Hill game.

See the movie
and you could win a $100,000.

"Maybe you'll win a $1 million.

Or maybe you'll just get a free
video rental at Blockbuster."

- Including Blockbuster movie rentals.

We never really gave away
a $1 million nor did we have it.

I don't know if that's even legal.

How is she pulling this off?

When I saw the film cut together
I thought, "This is going to work."

And then we ran it for the studio.
They really got behind it.

And then we were able to get
some of the things,

like I wanted uh,
Marilyn Manson's Sweet Dreams.

They sort of balked at the price
you know, until they saw the film

and said, "Yes, let's put it in there."

So everyone was on board at that point.

♪ Everybody is looking for something ♪

Seeing it with an audience,
they were jumping out of their seat

and having a great time.

I remember one girl left
in the middle of the movie.

I said, "You didn't like the movie?"

She said, "No, it's too scary."
I said, "Yes!"

Sure is a funky old house, ain't it?

You could take half a dozen directors

and give them Sleepy Hollow
as a short story

and say, "What would you do with this?"

They'd all do something different.
Ridley Scott would make a different film.

Stanley Kubrick would make
a different film.

Chris Nolan would make a different one.

And that's the beauty of what
we love about filmmaking.

Sleepy Hollow, of course,
is probably inspired

by the original Walt Disney film.

Because Tim Burton originally
worked at Walt Disney.

But he creates something very,
very different out of it.

Sleepy Hollow largely follows
the old legend

that we've all come to know and love.

Only this film casts Ichabod Crane
as a detective

sent from the big city to investigate
a rash of decapitations

in the sleepy town of Sleepy Hollow.

I am Constable Ichabod Crane.

Sent to you from New York
to investigate murder in Sleepy Hollow.

- I thought this detective angle
worked well.

It's a really amazing-looking movie.

Tim Burton described the movie as a cross

between a Merchant Ivory movie
and a Hammer movie

which I thought was great.

- He really took the concept
of a Hammer movie

and put all the production value into it.

Cool to see him kind of play
on that large canvas in a horror space.

- Tim Burton who was coming off
the troubled production

of Superman Lives was only too
happy to pick up the mantle

on Sleepy Hollow and turn it
into the goth nightmare

that he's known for.

What is it?

The entire idea of this film
was conceived by Kevin Yagher

and so he collaborated with
Seven's screenwriter,

Andrew Kevin Walker.

Kevin Yagher actually intended
this to be a low-budget showcase

of some special effects stuff,
but once you get Tim Burton in the mix,

it becomes something else entirely.

- Johnny Depp is Tim Burton's alter ego.

He can't resist pulling him in really.

Villainy wears many masks.

None so dangerous as the mask of virtue.

Depp and Burton had agreed
on a descriptor.

They called him,
"Ichabod Crane girl detective".

So he's there to investigate
and he's there to solve the crime,

but he's very prissy
and easily frightened,

and has to sort of rise to the challenge.

It's a very Burton choice.

It was an interesting spin
on the whole thing.

It is what we call, "Optics". It is truth.

But truth is not always appearance.

One of the most enduring things
about Sleepy Hollow is

the headless horseman played
by Christopher Walken.

He looks amazing.

It's so memorable when he holds up
the flaming pumpkin. It's great.

Christopher Walken is memorable
in that role.

Frightening and sort of insane.

It's a really brave choice
to put Christopher Walken

in a movie and not give him any lines.

You look better without a head.

- He's played by Christopher Walken

when his face is shown, but when it's not,
that's The Phantom Menace star, Ray Park.

Everything is fantastical and mystical.

You've got a beautiful
incredible score by Danny Elfman.

It's a scary fairy tale come to life.

Sleepy Hollow did perform
very well at the box office

in spite of the fact
that it opened opposite

the new James Bond movie at the time,

The World Is Not Enough
and that's saying a lot.

- Is he dead?

That's the problem.
He was dead to begin with.

When movies do well,
they often get a sequel,

but I'm glad this one was a one-off.

- Prepare for the end of days.

Arnold versus the Devil
on the eve of the millennium.

Who doesn't want to see that match up?

I had been working with Jim Cameron
for most of a year.

We became pretty close.

I came to Jim and I said,

"I'm gonna do this movie
with Arnold Kopelson."

It was a sequel, prequel, quadriquel,
whatever it was, of The Omen.

And Jim said, "You're not doing that."

I said, "Oh?" He said,
"No, you're doing this other film.

It's called, 'End of Days.'
It's with Arnold."

And I said, "Well, why am I doing it?"

And Jim's quote was,
"I want to protect my franchise."

Get down or I'll put you down.

A thousand years has ended.

You don't know what you've done.

I'm not sure that Marcus Nispel
dropped out of the movie

or Arnold was not happy.

It was not in good shape.

There had been a lot of time
which is money spent.

I think Arnold was deeply frustrated.

You wish entrance?

Yes.

You have much hatred
and vengeance in your heart.

- He had had a heart issue
and he had a serious operation,

and so he hadn't worked in two years.

Who the fuck are you?

Oh, I think you know who I am.

You just don't want to believe it.

Listen, anybody who thinks that
Arnold Schwarzenegger

is just a big bunch of muscles
is in for a very, very rude awakening.

You don't want to see me upset.

Oh, you want to fuck with me?

You're a fucking choir boy compared to me!

A choir boy!

He's very bright. He's always prepared.

You kind of have to be on your game

if you're gonna make a picture
with Arnold.

He is a movie star.

He was used to getting his way
and in many instances,

he got his way and in some instances,
he didn't.

-What happened?
-We had a difference of opinion.

I thought that my wife
and daughter should live

and he felt otherwise.

I wanted to make him as human
and as sympathetic as possible

and Arnold was game.

-He was great.
-No!

The beginning of the film,
I had done his close-up.

Arnold said, "Wait a minute,
I have an announcement to make.

This is the best close-up of me
that I've ever had taken."

It was so nice of Arnold
to do-- to have done that.

It was so supportive.

A thousand years
you have waited for my return

and with your last breath
I shall bear witness to the end of days.

Gabriel Byrne was just a lovely man.
I adored him.

And I loved talking to him.

I couldn't convince her to come here.

Yuck. Then I shall have to go to her.

Kevin Pollak was manically funny.

He'd be off doing Columbo
and he could make

one eye go like that.

-Ah, fuck!
-You're bleeding.

Of course, I'm bleeding,
you fucking shot me.

-I just needed to find out.
-Well, you found out, okay?

Robin Tunney was already cast
in the movie.

She's really a good actress.

How do you know my name?

He's gonna fuck you. Can you see him?

Who are you?
How do you know my name?

This very imposing figure
of Arnold Schwarzenegger is on the set.

Nobody wanted to appear unprepared.

Nobody wanted to blow takes,

because they couldn't remember
their lines.

So everybody knew what they were
supposed to do and they did it.

If you read the Bible,
you can't miss it. Faith.

Between your faith and my GLOCK 9mm,
I take my GLOCK.

You know, there was some
pretty big set pieces.

There was one with the subway train
and there was a fight.

That New Year's Eve was as cold
as anything I remember.

We never got warm.

Camera assistant was taken away
by ambulance,

'cause he had hypothermia.

I remember shooting two endings.

Because I had this idea that
he should die,

which, among other things,
would humanize him.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is an industry.

Best movie to make is a movie
with him in it, because he's in it.

So the Prince of Darkness
wants to conquer the earth,

but he has to wait until an hour
before midnight of New Year's Eve.

This is Eastern time?

The film is as good
as I could have made it.

When you do a film,
you want people to see it.

Box office success certainly at that time

was a direct indicator as to whether
there are a lot of eyeballs on the movie.

To me, it wasn't money.
It was you wanted people to see it.

I can do this all day long.

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

Back in the olden days,
if we wanted to watch movies,

we had to go to a store

and they would have them
in these little boxes

and you would IRL like go
and see what kind of movies

you wanted to rent.

- This is DVD.

The late '90s, early 2000s
was the height of the DVD boom

and it never got better for studios.

I loved all the extras you used
to get on DVD.

I loved the director's commentary.

I loved the director's cut,
the deleted scenes.

You know, as a film enthusiast
I think all of that stuff

is really exciting
and I kind of miss it, because

although, you know, when you buy
an exclusive on Apple,

you get a few bits and pieces,
it's nowhere near the depth

that you used to have.

People bought a lot of copies
of VHS Event Horizon,

and then when DVD came along,
they threw out their VHSs

and they bought it on DVD.

Then they bought it on 4K.

You know, we really benefited
from the DVD revolution.

♪ Blockbuster Video,
wow, what a difference ♪

A lot of people get nostalgic
about Blockbuster,

myself included on-- in certain elements,

but Blockbuster has this really
unique position

of being both hero and villain.

If you lived somewhere
where maybe you didn't have

a ton of mom and pop stores
giving you access to things,

giant corporation Blockbuster comes in,

and now maybe you have more
access to movies

that you didn't have before.

But in areas where you did have
those mom and pop shops,

they can't compete with the Blockbuster.

So slowly mom and pop shops
are getting elbowed out,

which is a bummer.

As we become adults,
those are the businesses

that I love to support, right?

The small businesses.

The mom and pop independents,
because they're the ones

bringing you cool shit
that you haven't seen before.

They're playing by their own rules

versus the gigantic corporations
that are like,

"These are our rules
and this is how it's gonna be."

So it's kind of a double-edged
sword with Blockbuster.

I don't necessarily see a future
for the return of the video store.

It is a relic of the past.

But, having said that,
the actual physical ownership

of your own video store,
that is something that you can do now

with buying up special editions
from boutique labels like

Severin, like Vinegar Syndrome,
like Blue Underground,

like Mondo Macabro.

There's many of us doing it.

But uh, but that's probably
where you'll get the wild

and more interesting side of cinema.

Heya!

- When VOD came along, and now streaming,
it killed the DVD market.

So that safety net went away.

Part of the reason Hollywood
just makes big franchise movies

is because that's the safest way
for them to make their money back.

The pandemic broke people out
of the habit of going to movies.

And so, I think the studios,
they're starting to realize

that they need to start
that habit up again.

They need the theatrical
component to survive.

So my hope is that, yeah,
we do kind of swing back

to where things used to be,
to a model that actually worked

rather than this current model
which doesn't,

and I'm speaking purely in
business terms, isn't really working.

But then of course, like
on the horizon also is AI

and the chaos that that is going
to bring with it.

But I have a weirdly optimistic
view of the near future.

I think things are gonna get better.

What cinemas had to do is, of course,

offer more comfortable environments
to entice people in.

It is still a unique thing that
when you watch a film in the cinema

with a group of people, you have
that collective experience.

And if it's a horror, everyone's feeling
the fright at the same time.

There's nothing like it.

I don't believe movies
are the premier medium anymore.

I think we live in a kind
of dysphoric time,

where people's attention goes to
a lot of different things.

Film has its place, but I don't think

it's the apex predator
that it used to be, sadly.

Maybe it will be again one day,
but at the moment, not really.

There's the same excitement
there was in the '90s

as there is in every decade
and the burnout.

- I think that the end of the '90s,
like the end of the '80s, was rebellion.

There was a kind of aversion
to this sort of

mainstream entertainment,
both in film and music,

that had gotten so big,
and so glossy, and so soulless.

I would say that the films that
really were seminal

in the sort of horror-thriller genre

at the back end of the '90s
were 100% a rebuttal against

the exploding gloss of the '90s.

I do think there was a splitting
of the horror genre

at the end of the '90s.

Down one path, it goes down the route
of mainstream adventure stories,

larger-than-life monster flicks
for the mass audience.

And there's this other little
slightly overgrown path

which leads you through
Blair Witch Project,

independent cinema,
off-the-wall directors,

directors creating their things
that the studios wouldn't understand.

And I really think into the 21st century,

those two paths have been
maintained more or less.

- Hello!

Blair Witch 100% connected with the public

and their appetite for something
more grounded,

more in line with who they were.

The famous shot from Blair Witch
is the girl with the tear,

like super close-up in a camera.

That could have been shot with
your shitty handycam in your backyard.

That's your life, your experience.

It's not Tom Cruise
with a giant wig, and fake nails,

and a huge garish set.

And I think folks were ready.

- Meta became too meta,
I guess you could say.

What did you get?
You got some Scary Movie.

-What's up?
-What's up?

Boom. "Alright, well, let's go to
the complete antithesis of that.

And make a Saw."

Rob Zombie movies. Hostel.

And it went really dark.

- I do think the pendulum swung far.

Maybe a little too dark for my taste.

But I think teenage movies
specifically are always

gonna be important.

We are definitely back making
remakes of all the movies

from back in the day, back in the '90s,
because that's what the kids want.

They're really into Scream again.

I have two daughters, teenage daughters.

I get a little street cred,
because of Jawbreaker

and Urban Legend. And Scream.

But they're watching
all those movies again.

And they're remaking
all those movies again.

They're not gonna stop making
those movies.

Maybe they'll never stop.

We might get a Scream 15,

which I don't think
it's necessarily a bad thing.

Listen, if Kevin's directing
and Kevin's writing,

he knows what he's doing.

Maybe it was lightning in a bottle.

I'm so happy that I got to be
a part of that '90s golden era,

that golden age,
because I think it was special.

IN SEARCH OF DARKNESS
1995 - 1999

JOURNEY BACK INTO ICONIC '90S HORROR