Interview with TALES OF HALLOWEEN’s Lucky McKee

To celebrate the October 16th release of the horror anthology Tales of Halloween, Daily Dead spoke to the filmmakers behind the movie to discuss the project, their individual contributions and more.

Lucky McKee is a completely singular filmmaker. From The Woods to The Woman, May to All Cheerleaders Die, he has worked through similar, often feminist, themes but never made the same movie twice. His segment in Tales of Halloween, a beautiful dark fairy tale called “Ding Dong,” represents yet another change of pace for the director.

How did you come to be involved with the movie? If I’m not mistaken, you’re the only filmmaker who’s not based in L.A. and who flew into town to shoot a segment.

Lucky McKee: Yeah, I was in the middle of a road trip and Axelle called me to ask if I wanted in on Tales of Halloween. I guess she had wanted me in from the beginning, but because I didn’t live in L.A. she didn’t think to ask… but I guess she got approval for them to fly me out there. They took really good care of me and I got to join in the fun.

When you know you only have, say, seven or eight minutes per short, where do you even start coming up with the idea for your segment?

Lucky McKee: It was a little bit tricky from the get-go because I was the last person in. Everyone else was already in the middle of shooting. I think mine was actually the last segment shot. So other people had already picked through a lot of the great ideas and themes around Halloween. So I did what I usually do when coming up with a story, which is start thinking about things that have been bugging me or observations I’ve made in life, and started thinking about how awful it would be for a childless couple to deal with cute little children coming up to their door over and over again on Halloween night. It just kind of grew from there.

Like you said, each of the segments seems to deal with a different aspect of Halloween. Yours touches on “the bad house”—the scary house that we all remember going to (without giving too much away). It’s really interesting that, rather than tell it from the point of view of the kids approaching the scary house, you stay in the house itself and tell the story from the couple’s perspective.

Lucky McKee: More specifically, it’s actually from the man’s perspective—the husband—and you’re kind of half in reality and half in his brain. I’m really into subjectivity; it’s always where I lean, just picking a point of view and sticking with it. I felt like I was kind of creating a “male nightmare.” I’ve made a lot of movies focusing on women and I thought it would be interesting to tap into a male fear, which is having kids and the scary responsibility that comes with having children.

Did you know all along that you were writing the role of the wife for Pollyanna McIntosh?

Lucky McKee: Yes. I had this image of her with a red face and a big, scary smile, because she has this fantastic smile, fantastic teeth. Something about her face just appeared in my head and I couldn’t let it go.

Obviously I’m a fan of her work in general, but I was amazed that even in a short amount of time we spend with her in the film, she’s funny and she’s sexy and she’s sympathetic at points—she really can do anything. It’s pretty incredible.

Lucky McKee: Yeah, for me it was really awesome because she wasn’t covered in filth. In The Woman she obviously hasn’t… been to the salon… but this was nice because she’s just such a lovely, interesting-looking woman. It was cool to be able to give her a couple of new faces.

And was Marc Senter someone you had in mind when writing the piece?

Lucky McKee: Mark is somebody I’ve wanted to work with ever since helping produce The Lost, which is where I first met him. We’ve almost worked together a few times over the years, but it didn’t work out here, didn’t work out there. So then it was just like, “Fuck it, I’m doing this thing out in L.A. Make yourself available.” We were shooting right before Christmas, and he was kind enough to rearrange his schedule and make it possible for us to work together. So we finally broke our cherry. Love that guy. He’s a really good friend, too, and a really gifted actor.

That’s one of the things that really comes across in the film—that spirit of community. It feels like a group of friends making a movie, but not in that masturbatory, Adam Sandler, let’s-all-go-to-Hawaii way, but where everybody’s bringing out the best in each other.

Lucky McKee: Absolutely. When you’re working in that kind of amazing company, it elevates you. It elevates everybody’s work. Everybody was kind to each other in terms of notes and stuff, but just to get notes from Neil Marshall or Mike Mendez or Axelle [Carolyn] or any of the people involved was cool. Neil gave me some good cutting advice, and Axelle had a pretty strong emotional reaction to the script and helped me get it into an area that wasn’t too dicey… but no matter what, I always seem to offend someone when I make something. I don’t know why that is. All in good fun, I guess.

I was so struck by the, for lack of a better word, “creature.” There’s something that’s very simple about it—there aren’t a ton of prosthetics or appliances or anything like that—and yet it’s such a striking and disturbing image. Did you always know how you were going to achieve that look?

Lucky McKee: My wife is an illustrator, so I told her what I was thinking and she took some photos of the actor. I told her there was a little "Hansel and Gretel" element, combined with The Wizard of Oz. The witch in The Wizard of Oz, her bright green technicolor face, is just so disturbing. So it was just something that kind of grew from there. My wife was there to oversee the design on set because she really knows how my brain works and what I was going for. It was just a good team effort with the makeup effects people. It was important to me to use more 20th century film technique, where we weren’t really relying on digital. I wanted to do as much as possible practically on set. But it was fun to come up with. I think it’s pretty striking.

I was so blown away by the simplicity—not of the design, but of how you achieved the effect. There’s something so, as you said, old school about it.

Lucky McKee: Something psychologically happens when you see a really bright primary color. Why that is, I don’t know. If you’ve ever seen A Clockwork Orange on the big screen, the minute those opening titles come up when it’s just switching from color to color, from blue to orange to red. Something about it just has an effect on your psyche that’s really hard to pin down. I guess it kind of came from my fascination with that.

What makes a great horror anthology?

Lucky McKee: Just good stories. In this case, what makes Tales of Halloween cool is that there are so many different points of view. There’s something for everyone. It’s like a badass mix tape.

The short form works so well for horror because you can focus down to one idea. It becomes more like poetry than just long-form narrative, which I think is really fun.

Do you have a favorite segment from any horror anthology ever?

Lucky McKee: That’s a tough one. I really like Cat’s Eye. Everybody talks about Creepshow, but I’m a big fan of Cat’s Eye, actually. There’s some really interesting stuff going on in there. I don’t know if people talk about Lewis Teague as a filmmaker and what that guy actually pulled off when he was in his heyday. Cujo is one of my all-time favorite films. But Cat’s Eye has some really striking stuff.

Tales of Halloween will be released in theaters and on VOD on October 16 from Epic Pictures Productions.