Carpe Noctem Interviews - Volume 2 Page 5

  I’ll answer them in the reverse order. The answer is, contractually, you never have any choice. What you’re doing essentially, when you’re asking somebody to make a movie, is they’re going to spend a million dollars, if it was the first Hellraiser, eleven million if it is the first Candyman movie, to make your idea a reality onscreen. That’s a major investment. They’re not going to enter that investment unless they know that if they make profit from the first one, they can go and make profit from the second one. There isn’t an author or a filmmaker in the world who could sign a contract without having a sequel and remake paragraph somewhere in there.

  Do you think that since it’s a foregone conclusion, the best you can hope for is damage control?

  Yeah. Absolutely. I’ve said that countless times at Fango conventions. Most recently at the one in L.A., with Doug right there in front of me. You know, Doug paid off his mortgage on Pinhead. I would love it if these movies would stop being made. Given that they are being made, and they are being made by other people and written by other people, I will continue to keep my finger in the mix if only to say “You know what? Don’t do that.” [laughs] Sometimes I will succeed and sometimes I won’t. That said, Bride of Frankenstein is a better movie than Frankenstein; House of Frankenstein is not a bad movie. There are a couple of entries into the Frankenstein and Dracula series from Hammer in the early sixties which are not bad pictures. Nightmare on Elm Street 3 is a very fine picture. It doesn’t have to happen. I actually like elements of Hellraiser 3 quite a bit. I mean, it’s not my favorite movie, but I think it’s got some cool things in it. I think there will be elements of Hellraiser 4 which I’ll like. I liked Candyman 2 an awful lot more than the critics did. I mean, I think there were problems with it, but I think there’s a problem with bringing out a man with a hook hand. The problem frankly is exposure to the monster which is a real drag. One of the reasons why, in Lord of Illusions if we make another movie about Harry D’Amour, it’ll be based around the hero. It won’t have to warm over a monster who has basically scared the fuck out of us once and can never scare us quite so much again.

  Because you’ve shown him…

  And you know who he is and you know what his voice is and you know what his modus operandi is. How scary could that be?

  I think that, in the case of Hellraiser, now that we know what Pinhead is and what he looks like, now the fear comes in not knowing when he is going to turn up next.

  He is a limited source of fear. By comparison, with the first thrill that you have when you first see him in the first movie, or the first thrill you have when you see the Alien in the first picture.

  Is it a situation this far down the road that you feel that you can be happy? If Hellraiser 5 is made, is it now no longer you looking at a film and then saying “this is really good” or is it “well, this moment is really cool.”

  Well I think it’s more of the latter and that is a function of just the audience’s exposure to those images. They’ve seen them so many times, how scary can it be? How original can it be?

  I read a blurb on it and the only thing they kept referring to it as was “Pinhead in Space.”

  Well, that’s kind of cool. There’s some very cool things in the movie, there’s no two ways about that. The issue is whether it will all hold together. There’s a Cenobite dog which is very cool and there is some very sexy stuff. I’m not knocking the picture. There’s some really cool stuff in it. You just don’t know until you see what you see. If I was directing he movie, I could give you a better assessment of how it is, but because I’m not, because I’m sitting here writing a novel and watching other people working on it, very talented people, but nevertheless, people I don’t have daily contact with, it’s really difficult to have a sense of how it’s going to play out.

  Did you have any input in the design of Angelique in Hellraiser 4?

  No. It’s Kevin Yager and the special effects guys. I’m out of all of that stuff. I was making Lord of Illusions at the time and that was a more demanding thing. Candyman was being made in one part of the city and Hellraiser 4 in another part, and Lord of Illusions in a third part. I was directing and co-producing Lord of Illusions, so that was my baby.

  Is Lord of Illusions getting to the screen, more or less, as you wished it would or have there been concessions?

  It is. It is. There’s twenty-five seconds that the M.P.A.A. took away from us, but you know, that’s not a huge bit.

  Are you serious?

  Yeah.

  Just twenty-five seconds.

  That’s not bad at all. It’s a very brutal movie.

  You once said something to me about your feelings on the M.P.A.A. Has that relationship become better?

  I think, this time around, it was better and I don’t quite know why. I don’t know what the consequences of the Bob Dole nonsense will be, to be perfectly honest.

  That whole thing is really scary.

  I fear, honestly, that we will see some knee jerk response from the M.P.A.A. on that.

  But ,you got your rating and you’re going to take it and run. [laughs]

  Well, we got our rating, but I care about the next movie. I’m not worried about this picture at all. It delivers to people, which is the main responsibility.

  Finally, you did some acting in Sleepwalkers. Based on your theater background, is that something you have any desire to do again?

  None whatsoever. What a great thrill. I get to go on set, I have two lines, I get to say something to Steve King. What fun! But no, there are people who do this professionally and well. [laughs] I’m a guy who directs movies and writes books and paints pictures. That’s what I do. It’s much more important to me to get those processes right. The acting thing is fun, but it’s never going to be a…I shouldn’t say “acting, I’m flattering myself…standing in the right spot while the camera turns is great fun and I had a thoroughly good time for a day, but that was about the limit of my contribution for that great art.

  One last thing occurs to me, David Cronenberg was in Nightbreed. Was directing him a difficult thing to do?

  David was a complete joy and very, very good about it. He promised he would never raise an eyebrow when I decided where the camera should go. He was true to that all the way through. He was wonderful. He’s one of the great talents. For me, one of the great losses to the genre [since he is not making horror films] right now. God, it would be wonderful to have a Cronenberg horror movie to look forward to.

  Man, just the thought… Will you be releasing any further books of your drawings and paintings?

  Absolutely. We are also publishing the plays. We are publishing three of the plays in December from Harper Prism in a collection called Incarnations. I am hoping that we’ll get more of this stuff to more people. That is definitely an ambition.

  Stuart Gordon

  The first time I saw Reanimator, I was blown away. The film was so daring and made no attempt to pander to what an audience might be expecting. The narrative was bold and unflinching. Later, after From Beyond came out, I was convinced the film’s director was someone to keep an eye on. I met Stuart at a Fangoria Weekend of Horrors and got his contact info. We scheduled some time to talk and I was really glad we did. Over the years, he’s made many films – some every bit as bold as the previously mentioned ones – and he remains an icon in the genre.

  Volume III, Issue 3

  Someone once said, “Art is a test designed to provoke an emotional response.” Many strive to accomplish this exalted task, but, unfortunately, few truly succeed. Writer/director Stuart Gordon managed to not only elicit a huge response with his first film, Re-Animator, but also carve a place for himself in the Horror Pantheon. Few Horror fans can see the image of a bookish young man holding a syringe of glowing, green liquid and not immediately recognize Herbert West. The visual of a young woman strapped to an examination table while the decapitated body of a family friend slowly lowers his own severed head towards her private parts has been seared into our collec
tive subconscious. Not content to serve as an anomaly, Gordon then released an equally shocking film entitled, From Beyond. Who can forget the lascivious Dr. Pretorious and otherworldly dogma of pain and pleasure? The list of Stuart Gordon’s accomplishments skyrockets from there. His films Dolls, Robot Jox, Pit and the Pendulum, and the recently released Castle Freak are like postcards sent from the imaginative mind of this gifted filmmaker. Now, Stuart Gordon is happy to quietly compile his dreams; happily straddling the fence which runs between his beloved Horror genre and his current position working for Disney films. (Huh?) We caught up with Stuart and had a chance to discuss his past films, his thoughts on the state of contemporary Horror films, and his up-coming cinematic release, Space Truckers.

  Do you believe that Horror is dead?

  No. Oh no. I think Horror movies have been around since movies started and I think they will be a staple. I don’t think they’ll ever be dead.

  Do you think it’s a cyclical thing where they come in and out of vogue? I mean that they get a wider acceptance from the marketplace, and then they go underground to the hard-core fans, and then re-surface again to some new notoriety.

  Horror movies have changed a lot over the years and they’re constantly evolving. Sometimes you feel like you’ve come to the end of a cycle and then a new one is starting. I think we are at one of those places now. We’re seeing the end of what we can call “Horror franchises”: Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street and so forth. I think it’s time for some new monsters.

  What kind of impact do you feel that the M.P.A.A. has had in the driving of the Horror genre into the underground?

  Well, I really wouldn’t blame the M.P.A.A. People will continue making Horror films, although it is true that some of the best Horror films are the ones that have been released unrated. Often times, these are small movies that come out of nowhere, like Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre or George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead…

  Or your own Re-Animator. Do you think that the M.P.A.A. acted as a parenting influence at a time when we needed it, what with the proliferation of all of the slasher films and the Cannibal Holocausts of the world?

  I think the way the M.P.A.A. sees themselves is that they are there as a service to let a parent know what they can expect when they send their kids to see a movie. They do not see themselves as a censorship organization, and I think to some degree that is true. What has given them a lot of power has been the distributors of movies, which insist that they get an “R” rating. The M.P.A.A. has even offered a new rating, the “NC-17,” which no one seems to want to use because they feel that it is commercially not viable. I think that is a mistake. I think that filmmakers should take advantage of that rating and audiences would support those films.

  Why do you think it is that no one has taken advantage of it? You released Castle Freak unrated; why did you do that as opposed to even trying for an “NC-17”?

  With Castle Freak, it was actually released in two versions: one was an “R” rated version and then there was one that was just called a “director’s cut” which allowed it to be released unrated, because you are only allowed one rating, you can’t really have two. Officially, the movie is rated “R,” but unofficially, the one that everyone goes to rent is the director’s cut.

  I’ve seen people in Blockbuster pick up Castle Freak and say, “Oh, this is the “R” rated one,” and then put it back, “We’ll go down the street and rent the unrated one.”

  Good for them!

  What was it about H. P. Lovecraft that got you to decide to do films based upon his stories?

  I really became a fan of Lovecraft when I was a college student. There’s something about his worldview that I could relate to. It is a very bleak philosophy, but in our times, there are all sorts of things afoot that we’re not really aware of, conspiracies and so forth. Lovecraft seems to fit right in. He seems very current. To sum it up in a sentence would be to say that Lovecraft believes that Man is lucky to be ignorant because if he knew the truth, it would drive him crazy or he would kill himself.

  When you released Re-Animator did you have any idea that it would hit the way it did?

  Well, you always hope that when you make a movie people will come and see it; that’s your dream, anyway. The success of Re-Animator was far beyond anything I expected, particularly in terms of the fact that it was as critically praised as it was. When I made the film, I wrote off the critics. I assumed that this was not a movie that they were going to like and I was really trying to do a film that would please the fans.

  There is a theater near me that has Midnight Movies on the weekends, and they have been running a print of Re-Animator once a week for what seems like forever and the theater is always full.

  Really? That’s great!

  When you were shooting the infamous “head scene” in Re-Animator did you think it was going to be received by the audience that way it was? I mean, people just go crazy, kicking seats, pounding up and down, just loving every minute of it.

  Well, we did know that was going to be one of the memorable moments of the movie, at least that was our goal when we were making it. As a matter of fact, even before we even began shooting, there was a piece of [promotional] artwork that was put together that featured that scene. Originally, I had cast a different actress to play the part that Barbara Crampton ultimately played, who dropped out because of that scene. It was something that was controversial to begin with.

  Is Barbara Crampton’s amiability towards doing such things as the S&M scenes in From Beyond a contributing factor as to why you use her so often?

  Well, yeah, that was part of it. Barbara is a terrific actress. My background is theater and I work with an ensemble company and we would work together from show to show. It’s the most comfortable way for me to work. When I find a good actress like Barbara I like to hang on to her and use her in as many of my films that I can.

  Is that the same reason that Jeffrey Combs continues to pop up?

  Yeah, that’s right. They’re part of the repertory company, (I guess you could call it that,) that I have created over the years making movies. You get on the same wavelength with an actor and it really saves time and it makes it a lot more fun. You don’t have to keep explaining yourself all the time.

  One last question on Re-Animator, how involved were you with the re-mastered Elite Entertainment release of the film?

  I was aware of it through Brian Yuzna and I was very, very pleased with what they did. I thought it was a sensational job. It was fun to do the commentary on it as well.

  When Pit and the Pendulum was first released I read a lot of lukewarm reviews of it, yet now, I seem to be reading a lot of genre people sitting it as a film they hold in a high regard. What are your thoughts on that?

  The thing about these movies, and I have to say, “Thank God for video,” it gives them a chance to live. You look back at a lot of movies, films like 2001 for example, which got very mixed reviews when it first came out, and now it is considered to be one of the great science fiction classics of all time, I think it is the fact that people can continue to see the film over the years and certain ones gain a reputation. I am happy that Pit and the Pendulum has been one of those films. It was a project that we put a lot of time and a lot of research into. It was not an easy movie to make. The crew and cast were sensational, so I am pleased that it is well regarded now.

  Lance Henrickson, man, was he chewing scenery or what?

  He was phenomenal. He was scary because he is really a Method Actor, so when he took on this role, he discovered that Torquemada was an ascetic who walked around bare footed and only ate stale bread and drank water. So, he decided to do the same thing. It got to a point that when he would show up on the set it was really like the Grand Inquisitor had arrived. I remember one time one of the shots was blown because the focus puller was not able to follow the movement correctly and it had to be redone. The focus puller fell on his knees in front of Lance Henrickson pleading for m
ercy. He was really Torquemada.

  Of your films a personal favorite is Dolls. In fact, I have two children and we will be in a store or something and someone will make a very grown-up comment and the kids and I look at each other, roll our eyes and say, “Yep, they wouldn’t have made it through the night.” What were the circumstances that hindered that film from being more widely seen in the theaters?

  [laughs] When it was released, the company did not have all that much faith in it. It was so different than the other movies I had done that they didn’t know what to do with it. I’m glad that you enjoyed the film; it is one of my favorites, too. I was very influenced when I was working on that film by a book I had just finished reading called The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettleheim which talks about fairy tales, the power of fairy tales, and how Grimm’s Fairy Tales were always being criticized as being too scary and too violent for kids. Bettleheim was saying that just the opposite is true. Fairy tales should be scary because the world is a scary place and that they prepare a child for going out into the world. So, that was very much in my mind when I made Dolls. It was a chance to test out Bettleheim’s theories. I had great fun working on it.

  After having worked in the television medium with Daughters of Darkness, what are your opinions on the experience?

  Initially, I didn’t view it as a good experience, because when we finished the film and it was finally shown on television, every drop of blood had been edited out of the film. And for a vampire movie that’s not good. [laughs] You get some pretty anemic vampires. What happened a couple of years ago was that they re-released it on video and restored it. They put back all of the scenes that had been cut out for television. That actually made it all worthwhile to know that the original vision of the film was maintained.