Interview with TALES OF HALLOWEEN’s John Skipp and Andrew Kasch

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.

The only directing duo contributing to Tales of Halloween, John Skipp (writer of A Nightmare on Elm Street 5) and Andrew Kasch (Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy) have a lot to say about making a movie with their friends and the current state of horror. Their segment, “This Means War,” about a pair of neighbors feuding over Halloween decorations, deals with this very subject.

One of the things I love about Tales of Halloween is that so many of the segments deal with different aspects of the holiday. Yours tackles Halloween decorations... sort of. Where did the inspiration for your short, "This Means War", come from?

Andrew Kasch: Halloween haunts are my jam! Each year, I hit up every haunted attraction in the greater Los Angeles area and I cruise by all the major neighborhood displays in The Valley. I love the craft and the creativity people put behind it and more than anything, it's what I look forward to most during the season.

Our first pitch actually took place in a Christian fundamentalist Hell House—those October "haunts" put on by churches to try to scare people into converting. In our scenario, the Devil was actually running the Hell House and whacking the believers at the end. For whatever reason, it made some people nervous, so the idea of two neighbors feuding over their Halloween displays came naturally since my head was already into doing something attraction-based. Little did we know what we were in for, trying to build up and shoot two large lawn displays in the space of a few days...

John Skipp: Once we established that we were doing the dueling neighbors, my job was to figure out who these guys were. That's when I came up with Boris and Dante, and the whole thing came into focus. We couldn't just have two Rob Zombie fans trying to top each other's torsos and out-metal each other. What we needed was a study in contrasts.

Your piece also deals with the very real schism that exists in horror right now between the classic monster fans and the more "modern" gorehounds. What is it that you were hoping to say about that divide? Is there a particular side either of you fall on?

John Skipp: Thanks for bringing that up! Because that's the whole point. When I broke into the literary horror scene with The Light at the End back in 1986, the whole splatterpunk tag sprang from the intense resistance we got from the horror establishment. These were guys in nice clothes who worshipped Val Lewton, James Whale, and Shirley Jackson; and here we were in black leather, fucking shit up and grinning crazily. But the thing was, we loved the classics, too. We just wanted to up the voltage in our own work. The "loud vs. quiet horror" war in ’80s horror fiction paralleled what was happening in film. And we found that the fissures ran deep.

So for this story, we just took that schism and ran with it. In my early drafts, their confrontation had a lot more verbal sparring of the sort that these two camps use when confronting each other on matters of taste, escalating its way to the inevitable explosion. The dialogue was meaner and had a lot more teeth (at one point, Boris roared, "YOU RUINED HORROR!").

This met with a lot of resistance on the production end. So in the end, we went with something much closer to a cartoon/silent movie approach, which streamlined it and made it goofier, but also made it fall more on the "pure fun" end of the spectrum. And once we settled on that, we just ran with it, letting the visuals do the talking and the action speak for itself. It also cut two minutes off our running time, which is why we're one of the shortest and speediest. So in the end, it all worked out. I really love what we managed to pull off in two days of shooting. Such an astonishing challenge with such cool people, all up and down the chain.

Andrew Kasch: We just wanted to comment on the absurdity that there is a divide. To me, they're like peanut butter and chocolate—each one is delicious, but when you mash ’em together, that's when they're the tastiest! I'm the kind of horror fan who loves every era and I think if you dismiss one or the other, you're doing yourself a disservice.

The key with both neighbors was to lovingly poke fun at both sides without favoring one. And it's been an interesting test to see where viewers fall. Some people say, "Dana's character is such a tight-ass prick!" while others think James Duval's metalhead "is a fucking asshole!" We love to see people get worked up like the characters do!

John Skipp: As for where I stand: I just love great horror. Old, new, fast, slow, mixing and matching wherever it can. My favorite stuff tends to be thoughtful and snappy, overt and covert by turns. I like layers of depth pinned to fierce velocity and "holy shit" action set pieces. But mostly, all I want is for it to be great.

Dana Gould is such perfect casting for the classic monster fan neighbor, as we know he's way into all of that stuff. Is that what led you to cast him in the role or was it something else?

Andrew Kasch: We've always loved Dana's comedy and I knew he was a real deal fan who was hardcore into the Famous Monsters generation. You can't fake that kind of devotion, so we knew he would bring something really authentic to it. When we pitched it to Dana, he went, "That's me! I get into these kind of debates all the time!" and modeled his character after some of the stuffier classic horror scholars. He nailed that and rolled with the micro-budget insanity of the production. I had a lot of fun quoting Planet of the Apes and Ed Wood with him through filming.

John Skipp: Dana's a comedy god. And Jimmy Duval was his perfect foil. Through our teensy rehearsal and even on-set, they were dialing each other, evolving their dialogue, changing lines. We weren't precious about that. The important thing was to establish their relationship and have them feel it so they could play it for all it was worth. This made production nervous, as the clock was ticking. But we didn't want two actors spouting lines at each other. They needed to connect. And they did so beautifully. So by the time they were physically going at each other, they were whipped up for the kill. That's creativity in action. And so much fun!

Though there's not a traditional "wraparound" story in the anthology, your segment helps unify the movie in that it pulls in faces from the other segments. Was that something you set out wanting to do or was it something that happened more on set?

Andrew Kasch: All of us were very conscious in doing that throughout the film and our segment is sort of the collision point where most of the reoccurring characters and extras all merge to watch a fight unfold. We had about 50–60 extras and the ones who aren't from other segments are horror industry cameos—writers, directors, authors, actors, scream queens, etc… It was one of the most fun things I've ever shot!

John Skipp: We didn't know who was gonna show up. But then all these people showed up. It was such a love moment. And shooting the crowd scene was one of the funnest things we've ever done. While Andrew was working tight with our amazing DP, Jan-Michael Losada, I was choreographing the crowd, dialing their responses, telling them who they were in the context of the scene, who was into the fight, who was calling the cops. And every character from the other segments who showed up were put front and center.

Then, when we actually rolled camera, I stood out in Boris' lawn and acted out the fight scene, physically throwing myself all over the fucking yard, pulling the crowd's gaze to where it needed to be for each stage of the fight. Being their sight line, so they knew when to look here, look there, pause in mid-fight, roar as more fight happened, respond in shock for the grand finale.

For the finale, Jimmy Duval came out and played the last beat with me, to goose the crowd's reaction. I can't even tell you how much fun that was. By the end, I was bruised as hell, and just laid on the lawn for the last close-ups while Andrew and Jan steered the camera. Hope to God some of that footage winds up in the Special Features!

What do you think makes a great horror anthology?

John Skipp: Quality throughout. No duds to slog through. It's pretty much as simple as that. All art's a Rorschach test, and you'll like what you like because that's what you like. But if it's good, it's good, whether you like it or not.

That's my favorite thing about Tales of Halloween: everybody threw down and made something of quality that they totally cared about. Nobody phoned this in. It really was a total labor of love.

Andrew Kasch: For me, it's all about diversity. People almost never recognize that horror is the most diverse genre out there because you can mix any other genre into it. When you make a straight feature, you're bending over backwards figuring out the tone and making sure it's consistent. You don't have to do that with an anthology, so you can break all the rules and really let the freak flag fly!

What's your all-time favorite segment in any horror anthology?

Andrew Kasch: There's no way I can pick just one! In movies, I would say my favorites are: George Miller's "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" from Twilight Zone: The Movie, "Drop of Water" from Black Sabbath, "Amelia" from Trilogy of Terror, and more recently, "Safe Haven" from V/H/S/ 2 and every second of Trick 'r Treat.

If we're talking television: "Time Enough to Last" from Twilight Zone, "Yellow" from Tales From the Crypt, and "Battleground" from Nightmares & Dreamscapes (still one of my favorite Stephen King adaptations ever!).

John Skipp: Creepshow is my go-to anthology, flat-out. Romero and King nailed that thing from top to bottom. I watch it every Halloween. Some argue that "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" is the weak point. But every time someone says, "METEOR SHIT!", my faith in God is restored and I laugh out loud.

Past Andrew's smart recommendations, I'll just add Adam Green's "The Diary of Anne Frankenstein" from Chillerama and Federico Fellini's "Toby Dammit (or "Never Bet the Devil Your Head") from Spirits of the Dead. But seriously? I could go on all day.

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