"Give me the power." "I beg of you!" "There was a creative ferment that went beyond just trying to do a slasher film with a greater body count." "If you're gonna become the new kid on the block, you've got to somehow top everything that's been done before." "There was a boom of horror film production in the 1980s." "I think production spiked 33%." "So, it was a vast increase in the number of horror films being made." "There's a theory that horror movies thrive during repressive regimes." "You know, the 70's and the 80's were no exception" "When people looked back at '70s movies, they're astonished at how violent they are, and astonished at how much nudity there is." "And that's because that was what was going on in the culture at that time." "The '80s was the Reagan era." "So, you know, the pictures started to get..." "They had a lot less nudity and a lot less sex." "And sex is always punished ." "We were in the second decade of the Cold War with the Soviet Union." "1980s was the decade where we became aware of AIDS and AIDS became an epidemic." "You sort of have, in that time, all of these things coming together that I see as an apocalypse mentality." "This mentality that there's going to be the end of the world coming very soon" "And to use a, sort of, quotation from the '80s, that "trickles down" into the cinema." "In the '80s, everything was about excess." "You know, big cars , big hair..." "Um, let's see." "What else was big?" "Oh, yeah." "Horror movies." "If you look at the history of the movie business, and why people make films, you can't make a movie, until recently, unless you had a lot of money." "And no one was gonna give you money unless they thought they were gonna make money." "There was a company called AVCO Embassy Pictures, and they produced a number of pretty seminal horror films." "And I think the success of these pictures did a lot to kick off a sort of, a new genre revival." "And major studios started to imitate." "It was a real boom time for horror movies." "It was a very exciting time." "That's when I first starte d at Fangoriamagazine, and that's when the circulation of the magazine started going through the roof." "Horror has always been one of the most popular genres, and it also is a genre that can be produced fairly inexpensively." "So, if you could deliver enough, either monster, or gore, or whatever the element was, you could rely on a certain return." "Of all the genres, the horror movie is probably the one that uses the most cinematic tools to be able to create what it's about." "With horror movies, you have to suspend people's disbelief." "You have to create suspense." "You have to create atmosphere." "How it looks is incredibly important, how it sounds is important, the music is important." "Most really good filmmakers have dabbled in trying to create, you know, horror movies." "To horrify someone is easy" "Show a gruesome picture, you can horrify someone." "You wanna create suspense, generate suspense through the audience's concern for the characters" ". and the story and all that stuff" "That's more difficult." "That's more challenging." "Some of the greatest masters of horror were doing their greatest work during the 1980s." "You had David Cronenberg, John Carpenter," "Tobe Hooper, George Romero , Joe Dante, me, Wes Craven." "A lot of very interesting people making horror pictures." "Most of whom, who took it pretty seriously as filmmakers." "MAN:" "I borrowed your razor." "Well, you'll read all about it." "As we get into the 1980s, you're seeing that we're continuing the gritt y cinema of the 1970s where we're demanding things be very naturalistic and very real." "So much so that, for a good portion of the 1980s, the slasher films are just, sort of, unkillable boogeyman going after babysitters." "There is all those films where you just," ""Let's have attractive kids, and then murder them."" "Basic run of early '80s pictures were the impaled teenagers movies." "A lot of horror movies seem to have similar stories." "You know, good looking teenagers making out, only to wind up on the business end of a madman's chain saw." "I mean, it's not the best way to spend a Saturday night, but, what the heck, at least it's better than going bowling." "No chemicals or preservatives." "Just 100%, honest to goodness, hickory-smoked meat." "It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent's fritters." ""It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent's fritters." "That was the ad line for Motel Hell, which is one of my favorit e horror films of the 1980s." "They're good animals." "Not like taking care of chickens or hogs." "In the film, there are two killers, the farmer and his sister, Ida." "What is this, dog style?" "No, ma'am." "Hog." "They run a motel, and the people who com e to the hotel, they sort of turn into sausage." "What could be more wholesome than a brother and sister making sausages out of their guests?" "Of course, I have to wonde r if it was kosher." "I guess it depends on how you kill them." "Ha!" "The hypocrisy of these people, you know, is just astounding." "The farmer, at the end of the film, has a deathbed confession." "I..." "I used" "preservatives." "What are you gonna do, Bob?" "There started an interesting trend in about the mid-1980s in horror." "Some very clever filmmakers began to incorporate comedy into the horror film." "Comedy and horror, in the 1980s, went together hand-in-hand , or maybe that should've been severed head-in-hand." "There's humor in life, and to be realistic..." "And if you're gonna be scary, you have to be realistic, you have to be funny." "You will never find an audience that wants to laugh more than a horror movie audience." "And one of the things that I learned was tha t you better give them something to laugh at." "Or they will start laughin g at the movie, itself." "Time for incoming mail !" "As soon as chainsaw started, from the very seconds of its opening, everybody..." "There was a hush in the crowd." "We all knew this is something heavy." "This is..." "Wait a minute." "What is this?" "The original Texas Chain Saw Massacre was such a horrifying and grueling experience." "Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 was a satire." "I love this town." "This town loves prime meat." "What?" "Tobe Hooper is a reall y interesting director." "He took characters who had been one way in the 1970s, and he said, "You know what?" "In the 1980s," ""let's say these character s benefited from the Reagan revolution."" "So, the cannibal family..." "The killer cannibals in that film, they're running a chili stand." "They're having a chili competition." "Now, here's a family, living the American dream." "They had an idea, and they toiled night and day to make it a reality." "So what if they were cannibalistic murderers?" "They owned their own business." "You know, that is what capitalism is all about." "This is now..." "Let's see, it's 2007." "We did it in 1986." "So this is 21 years old." "And you know what's amazing?" "It still lights." "These filmmakers were paying heed to the fact that the characters in the film were aware of horror movies." "Did you see that movie, Night of the Living Dead?" "Yeah, yeah, yeah." "That's the one where the corpses start eating the people, right?" "Dan O'Bannon's Return of the Living Dead." "s When I saw it, I had very low expectation 'cause I thought, "What a shitty idea." "George isn't doing it, and..."" "And I actually thought it was pretty funny." "And the idea of that zombie saying , Send more police, made me laugh." "And the hysteria of some of the performances, and Linnea Quigley being naked for no reason." "And what I liked was the shamelessness of it." "Dan O'Bannon made the wise decision that" ""Okay, we've seen zombies before." "Let me do something different."" "Zombies are terrifying" "I mean, being stalked by a mob of ugly, filthy, relentless creatures with just one thin g on their mind..." "It kind of reminds me of high school." "Hmm!" "He came up with very funny characters." "He made his zombies speak and move quickly." "And he also had some reall y fun special effect scenes." "And, you know, we really hadn't seen that before." "When I saw it all put together, it was obviously hilarious." "Um, so, I was like, "Oh, that's the kind of movie we're making." ""It's a horror movie, but it's funny."" "It doesn't take you out of the narrative so that you say, "Oh, I don't believe in this world anymore." "Instead, it works very har d to create scenes that are funny to the viewer, but not necessarily funny to the people who are involved with them." "You know, it looks like rigor mortis is setting in" "Rigor mortis?" "What do you mean, rigor mortis?" "I've always thought that because horror movies are so close to absurdity, anyway, that, you know, you have t o find the humor in it." "What's your name?" "Hi." "I'm Chucky, and I'm your friend to the end." "Hidee-Ho." "Ha, ha, ha." "I love the Dan Curtis television show called Trilogy of Terror." "And I think Richard Matheson wrote a short story called The Zuni Doll, which Dan Curtis did." "It was just wonderful." "And I knew that there was a terror in dolls." "Hey, wanna play?" "Tom Holland uses his films as text to comment on the '80s, with Child's Playreferencing toys, and children's toys, as programming in commercials, and consumerism, and the Cabbage Patch craze." "There was a universal fear that Child's Play was tapping into, which is, all of us, when we were kids, have looked at our play things, especially the dolls or the action figures, and said, "What would happen if they come alive?" "Hi." "I'm Chucky." "Wanna play?" "I think the great thing about Chucky is, he has such a personality that actually the audience..." "You love to hate him." "You know, when he's in the elevator and says..." "Ugly doll." "Fuck you." "You know, it's just a huge laugh." "It was a movie that you could think as pretty silly." "A killer doll!" "But the film was well written enough, well directed, and well acted, that it just took off with the audience." "That something small could not only kick you in the ankles, but slash your throat..." "Chucky had a big crush on me." "And I have to admit, he really knew how to handle a knife." "But that jumper suit and those red shoes and that hair!" "It was like a fashion nightmare." "Oh, well, tough luck, Chuck." "David Cronenberg is the most thoughtful filmmaker working in the horror genre." "His films are very thought provoking." "They're very intellectual." "They're very unique." "No other filmmaker can imitate a David Cronenberg film." "The Brood is David Cronenberg's..." "His fascination with the flesh." "These organic midget monsters come out of Samantha Eggar." "That's a creepy movie." "All of his films, to one extent or another, are about, sort of, this imperfect machine called humanity." "And the idea in The Broodis that these creatures are coming out because of the psychological rage of this one character." "His movies are about the human body, the vessel we're in, and disease and decay." "Mmm." "You know, some of us were interested in becoming writers, and some of us in directors, but there was a whole other group, like Rick Baker, or Stan Winston, or Dennis Muren." "There are a lot of these guys who were more interested in makeup, more interested in special effects" "So, the real sea chang e in the late '70s, all the way through the '80s and '90s till now, has been in special effects." "We saw an explosion and a revolution in special effects, and special makeup effects" "Brains." "For the first time, Hollywood's crafts people can turn everyday actors into werewolves, and demons, and zombies, and ghosts," "utilizing new innovations in latex effects, animatronics, all kinds of makeup substances and appliances." "You really couldn't do as much in the '70s and before that." "In the 1980s, audiences were demanding a greater amount of realism in their films." "They wanted to see more, and they want it to be realistic." "With computer effects these days, you can remove wires, create new monsters from scratch, or enhance whatever's already on the screen." "Of course, some things don't need any computer enhancements." "They're perfect just the way they are." "The Howlingwas part of the werewolf trend of 1981, with American Werewolf in London,and also Wolfen." "Joe Dante was the director." "I met John Landis when I came out here in 1975." "And he was a film buff , and we got along great" "I knew John throug h that entire period" "We weren't like, you know, living together, but I knew him well." "And I knew that he wanted to do a werewolf picture, but he had never gotten it together" "I had written An American Werewolfwhen I was 18." "So it was, like, 1969, and I didn't make it till '81." "And then Rick Baker, who I had been talking about it with since 1971.." "He said, "Oh, you know, I just..." ""I'm working on a werewolf movie." I was like, "What?"" "One session with Rick doing some stuff for us, and all of a sudden, Rick..." "I get a call from Rick, "Uh, John's doing his picture." "I can't do yours." ""So, you know, Rob Bottin can do it, because he's my protege."" "And it all worked out fine." "Rob took up the slack, and with very little money" "I mean, the whole movie cost just over a million." "And the original budget for special effects was only $50,000." "In the past, when Lon Chaney Jr." "turned into a werewolf it was done with a series of dissolves from one makeup to another but in The Howling, it was a very physical and very painful process." "The transformation sequences which were done with groundbreaking air bladders and condoms, and things underneath, pieces of latex that can be expanded and blow up..." "And it makes the transformation look like no others had done, and also painful." "When you were trying to do you know, uh, groundbreaking effects with physical materials, you were bound by what was available." "The liquid latex, and the mechanics, and all those kind of things that were being created, limited you." "But within that limitation you found a certain freedom." "The care taken, not only in the creation of the werewolf, but in how it was lit and handled on the set, was so intricate, you know." "That's really what made the movie." "Those people had incredible imaginations, inspiring a new generation of effects artists throughout the '80s." "People like Rick Baker and Stan Winston would hire enormous crews to bring a lot of these nightmarish visions to life." "Well, compared to now, it was very crude." "It was just all mechanical ." "You had no CGI." "So it had to be done live, which, I think, is a great way, and in some ways, a preferable way to do it because you have more control, as a director, over what happens." "And if it doesn't work, you know you got to make it work one way or the other." "GORDON:" "To me, uh, I much prefer effects that can be done with the actors there." "Where the actors can actually interact with the effects." "They can see them." "You know, when you're doing CG, you know, you've got a greenscreen or something and you're telling them, "There's this really scary monster coming at you,"" "and they have no idea exactly what it is." "But what was interesting about the '80s is that there were some attempts in the '80s to have a back trend and bring up something else." "For instance, there was a resurgence of supernatural films." "We had Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist." "We had John Carpenter' s The Fog." "A number of very talented directors were trying to, kind of, get the supernatural film, the ghost story, back into the forefront." "There's that scene in Poltergeist II, where Craig T. Nelson swallows the evil worm at the bottom of the tequila bottle." "I mean, talk about someone not being able to handle his booze." "That's the last time I eve r invite him for two-for-one happy hour." "John Carpenter did some very interesting work in horror in the 1980s." "You know, of course, we think about him in the '70s doing Halloween, but in the 1980s he just went from, sort of, strength to strength." "Carpenter is not only, sort of, the foremost stylist, I think." "I really think that he had a lot going on thematically." "The Fog had an impact on '80s horror because it was sort of like an old fashioned ghost story." "It had a great cast." "Uh, it was a fun, little drive-in movie that seemed to win Carpenter even more fans." "By the end of the '80s, the horror genre shifted away from slasher movies and more towards psychological thrillers." "I guess audiences decided they'd rather have their heads played with, instead of just having the m removed with a chainsaw." "As if!" "I don't know anyone who's ever been killed by a vampire, a werewolf, a monster from space, a giant squid." "Uh, what else?" "I mean, gorillas." "I don't know of any people killed by monsters or zombies, but I know thousands of people who've been killed by madmen." "Well, John, let me just tell you that several of my friends met their grizzly ends thanks to monsters." "Zombies ate Jerry." "Vampire got Cindy." "Tom, chain sawed in two." "And Bob, of course, was done in by a werewolf." "I mean, never mind that the werewolf ran him over in a car." "It still counts." "At the end of the '80s, people began to realize, this is..." "The faceless slasher is kind of played out." "Almost done." "In the early 1990s, there were films where your serial killer was suddenly not this faceless, speechless, monster in a mask, but a very charismatic, very interesting person." "Oh, and, Senator, just one more thing." "Love your suit." "I don't know what all the big fuss was about Hannibal Lecter." "Sure, he ate people and..." "Oh, yeah, he wore that one guy's face." "But, hello, girls, the guy is a doctor!" "A horror film has intricate relationships and stories that build and, you know, flow." "All of the tools in cinema are on display in horror films." "They have to be." "Film is, as of now, still the best medium for the fantastic, because you can see it ." "You can make it real."