7/27/2019 "Horror Show" - interviews with John Carpenter, Clive Barker, Maitland McDonagh, Michael De Luca, Charles Band

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Spike Lee's'Tales From the Hood,' above; Gliye Earker's'Lord of lllusion,' aboue right, and the Cryptkeeper in'Tales From the Grypt Presents 0emon Knight'

Bv FRANK LovEcEN JOHN Carpenter's mostrecent film "In the IVIouth ofMadness," insurance investi-gator Sam Neill asks editorJulie Carmen to kindlyexplain the appeal of horror'novels. She can't, exactly."I just like being scared,"she hnally blurts.Neill, incredulous, won-"People pay money to feel like

Well, yeah, if the words "StephenKing" ring a bell. Yet, when you'retalking horror movies, however, thebellwether words may be ".RodneyDangerfreld." Horror movies just can'tget no iesp,:ct."There's a perception in the indus-

t',:, I:: a.sF.'EP ::t to," says Carpenter matter-of-.tii l"actly. "that horror is like,; pornography, that it's kind of'- j';** il;';fi;;'?!ri"?i r"rr.' i",?;',*.aQffj '\4'hv am I making this horror'*aryW film when I shoJld be doing,*s'4F Shakespeare'l' "

Kenneth Branagh that verY'l;.,, question afber "Mary Shelley'.si l'ri'nkensLein." Yel. despite hishigh-profile flop, horror filmsare more preval-ent than in Years.#' ttrir year we've already seen "TzLlesi*i| From the Crvpt Presents DemonIers,that?"

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From the Crypi Presents DemonKnight, " "The Mangler" and"Hideaway." Upcoming is writer-director Clive Barker's "Lord ofIllusions," and the Barker-produced"Candyman 2: Farewell to the Flesh,"which opens Friday. In May comes

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the Spike Lee-produced "Tales Fromthe Hood," about three young streethustlers getting a taste of the real un-derworld. Later this year, Julia Robertsstars in "Mary Reilly," a romantic takeon "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," andJohn Carpenter has a remake of "Vil-lage of the Damned."This year's prestigious SundanceFilm Festival featured horuor films bybrand names: "The Addiction," by di-rectol Abel ("Bad Lieutenant") Ferra-ra, and the David Lynch-produced vam-pire picture "Nadja." In various stagesof development are horror hlms beingproduced by Quentin Tarantinoi"From Dusk Til' Dawn"), OliverStone ("American Psycho"), Tim Bur-ton ("The Fall of the House of Usher,"which he also might direct), MartinScorsese (a remake of "Bedlam," with a- sgript-hJlJohn Sayles). Geena Davis -*- lttre sequel to "Flies") and Chris Co-lurnbus (a remake of "Theater ofBlood" ).Why so many so suddenly? Partly,

it's coincidence. "I don't think there's alot of patterning here," says the drylyBritish Barker. " 'Lord ol Illusions' is afilm I wanted and needed to make. andI didn't say, 'Oh, it's gotta be out springol'95.' "Partly, it's just timing. "Horror is cy-clical, like most film genres," notesTony 'limpone, editor of the honor-film magazine Fangoria. "You don't seebig-budget musicals being rnade, andfor a long while you couldn't get a west-ern produced, There was a glut of hor-ror films in the mid-Eighties, then theyfaded a bit, but now they've startedcoming back.""People get lired of a genre, andyou've got to let it rest ibr a bit and thencome back with a fresh approach," ob-serves author Maitland McDonagh("Filmmakingon the Fringe: The Good...The Bad, and the Deviant i]irectors")."You're not really seeing slasher moviesanymore, except direct-to-video. Thea-tricaliy, you're seeing things like 'BramStoker's Dracula,' which took a revi-sionist approach" in attempting to dropvampire-movie conventions and befaithful to the book, much as."Unforgiv-en" took a revisionist approach to theconventibns oI westerns.And when it comes to conventions,horror, after all, has been a staple fromthe dawn of cinema, from 1910's"Frankenstein" to Freddy Krueger.

Whether in literature, folkloric tradi-tion or film, horror gives concrete formto our unspoken fears ofaging, decay orof simply losing it - shedding our civil-ized veneer and reverting to barbarism.Once our fears are given form, they'resymbolically dispatched.Through it all. l.he ingtedients of agood horror movie remain unchanged."It has to engage you on several lev-els," says Carpenter. "There's theprimitive, emotional level: Will thecharacters make it through the night?Will this evil force get thern? Thenthere's another level that works onyour mind, on all the creatures andbeasties of our unconscious. You haveto tap into that."On an entertainment level, observesMcDonagh, "it's being play-scared, Iikebciag-on--a,rollercoaster: You gt:t ttrafhyper-alert, adrenaline-rush feeling ofwhen you're scared for real, but youknow you're really safe. If you went to ahorror movie and got the feeling youget when somebody puts a gun to yourface, nobody would go to horror movies."Generally speaking," she adds,"horror falls into two categories: super-natural and psychological. That doesn'tmean a psychological thriller, wherethe intention is primarily suspense, is ahorror film. But 'Psycho' sure as hell is,and there's no supernatural monster inthat. " Likewise, supernatural elementsby themselves don't amount to horror,as romantic films from "Ghost" to"'l'he Ghost and Mrs. Muir" attest.With the rise of slasher films in the'80s (in which the bogeyrnan slices 'n'dices mostly teenagers), horror filmsmoved from the mainstream to a teen-age gross-out tributary. Even relativelytame, psychological horror films gotmislabeled "splatter" by press andpublic, creating a backlash - andlimiting the genre's appeal for the ma-jor studios.But even when majors neglected thehorror genre, it always percolated at in-dependent studios. One reason is eco-nomics: Small companies can make amicro-budget $l-million to $2-millionhorror movie and usually count on thecore audience of horror fans for a $5-million to $6-million gross. Fol the ma-jors studios, with their high overheadand even higher expectations, that's toopiddling a sum to bother with.But there's more than economics in-volved. In Hollywood, where the luridsleaziness of a "Basic Instinct" is con-sidered OK, horror still somehow;cdrriesa disreputable feel, a hint of a, carnival-sideshow fascination with the dark andgrotesque.

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HORR,OR SHOW"You always feel you're working under the mill-stone of the designation," says Wes Craven, creatorof the "Nightmare on Elm Street" films. "You feel asif you're always going to have limited audiences andrelatively small budgets and reviewers comingtoyouwith a huge prejudice and a lot of resistance on the

oart of a lot of actors to be in Ia horror filml."' Francis Ford Coppola may have gotten "Dracula"rolling at a major studio due to his prestige- andWinona Ryder's marquee clout, but much of thefilm's success rested on its being sold as a love story- a sumptuously art-directed Harlequin Romance,with flow1ng gowns and overflowing bodices'"The lmijorl studios do make horror movies,"says Michael De Luca, president of New Lini Pro'ductions. "I count 'Wolf and 'Interview With aVampire' and 'Frankenstein' last year. The majorswill do any genre ifthey get a decent enough pack-age" of itai-director-bestseller. "But the studiosfin-control police will go into overdrive saying it'snbt horror, because horror is an extreme genre thattouches on the gruesome, and if it fails, you fail withsomething that may be distasteful or disturbing.But I think a failed stupid comedy does more topollute the culture than a failed attempt at shakingbeople up or scaring people. Horror films, whenihei'"e bad, at least there's an attempt at style ortechnique."Thatrs often true, yet one reason horror survivesis that anyone lith a catnera and access to a few\i

that, horror movies tend to drop off, unless your'lfilm has mainstream appeal or big stars." The rea-son, he suggests, is "everybody likes a good scare,but horror films tend to apBeal mostlv to voungut horror tend to app-al mostly tomales. Which is unusual, because most of the peoplewho read horror hction are women."Barker, who has several best-selling homor nov-

rudimentary special effects can make a horror film.You do4't exactly need a Pulitzer Prize-winningscript, since character motivation and plot can bestripped down to the essentials. You don't needhorses, cars or other expensive props. And you don'thave to hire great actors to run and scream.Yet those very things also are horror movies'great strengths. The cheap economics provide anentry-point to fledgling talent, among them Cop-pola (1963's "Dementia 13"), Stone (1974's "Sei-Zure"), Sayles (1978's "Piranha") and Scorsese(who got flrred from 1970's "The Honeymoon Kill-ers"), A stripped-down story of human emotions attheir rawest and most atavistic can work on a pow-erfully visceral level that approaches that offable ormyth.It's precisely this emotional turbo-charge that ap-peals [o fans, every bit as much as special effects;lhat's the difference between horror'movie fansand science-fiction fans. And, "There's definitely acore fan audience," says Timpone. "They'll comeout in force the first weekend [a nlQvie opens]. After

characters as well.' A movie does that much lesswell than a book, because when you enter a book,you enter people's minds. When you turn to themovies, the characger stuffis less rich, less complex.I think also the feftale audience by and large is lesscomfortable with the shock element and the gore ofhorror cinema. On the page they can edit it in theirlminds, but I don't think they want it on a sixty-foot,".eert."While the makings of good horror remain con-lstant, the makings of a receptive horror audience,remain in flux. "We live in strange times of cynicaldisillusion," muses Carpenter, "and you find oftenitt iit""r iik" th"." *fi"tt notto" works for audi-iences."It's hard to say what in the zeitgeist seems to be1nudgingus back toward horror films. Whether it's arising iear of crime, a helplessness in the face ofpolitical extremists, or the demprqlzing divisivenessof t ut" radio, watching make-t8ieve horror con-tained and conquered seems a good theoretical safe-ty valve.- "Horror never dies," says Fool Moon Produc-tion's Charles Band. "In the theatrical world maybeit goes dormant for a while, until the next 'event'horrrir*f,ln yakes-everything up. But the horrorgenre couldn't be more alive." IFrank Louece is a frequent contributor to Fan-

\\ he explains, "whereas, movies are not. A femalereadei will say, 'I like the fantasy, the darkness, theshocks and the bloodletting, but I have to know the

7/27/2019 "Horror Show" - interviews with John Carpenter, Clive Barker, Maitland McDonagh, Michael De Luca, Charles Band

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