ALL THE HAUNTS BE OURS Volume 2 Interview with Kier-La Janisse

How thankful I am for the dedication of Kier-La Janisse and the team at Severin films! Not only did we get one incredibly comprehensive box set dedicated to folk horror from around the world (along with the must-see Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched documentary), but a second volume has been recently released, with 24 films, dozens of hours of special features, and a brand-new book of folk horror fiction. With countless hours dedicated to the meticulous restoration and preservation of these films, I caught up with Kier-La Janisse to discuss the work that went into the creation of the All The Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium Of Folk Horror Volume 2:

The first volume was a monumental undertaking, and I can only imagine how much blood, sweat, and tears went into Volume 2. When did you know that you were going to release a second volume? Was it organically, as you were working through volume 1 and there were movies you wanted to include but weren't able to?

Kier-La Janisse: It was literally just as you described, where we had films we were trying to get for volume one, and we just weren't getting there fast enough in time for when we needed things for the box set and we didn't know whether some of these films were going to come through or not. So we released the first box set, but we had these other movies that we had been trying to get. We just kept trying to pursue them, thinking if this box set does well, then we'll do another one. And so one of those movies was The Rites of May, the Mike De Leon film, which is the very last movie in the set. It's on a disc with City of the Dead, which I think is funny because it's the only disc that does not seem curated where the films match each other, and that's because they were literally the last two films to come in. But yeah, The Rites of May, we were trying to get it for the first box set, and it took us until pretty much down to the zero hour of the second box set before we were able to actually get a signed contract for that movie. It was [basically] another three year process to put together the second box set.

There are a lot of folks that pick up a movie from Severin or from Vinegar or Scream Factory, but they don't necessarily know all of what goes into restoring these films. Can you give some insight into the process that goes into creating a box set like this?

Kier-La Janisse: Typically, it starts with you deciding what film or films you want, and then trying to find who the rights holder is. That isn't always clear, and sometimes you even have different people claiming to be the rights holder. Or, because everything's done by territory, you have people who have specific territories but not other territories, and everybody has to check their contracts and see what rights they actually have.

So a lot of times there's bureaucratic stuff at the beginning just trying to sort out who even has the rights, and then once you get over that hurdle, you make an agreement with them, which is often sensitive depending on whether or not there's any actual film elements to work from. Because sometimes the rights holders of the films don't actually have access to the negatives or any good film prints. So they're like, "I can license you the rights, but I don't know where you're going to get the actual film from."

And so you have to start looking through archives, and that usually involves a lot of contacts in other countries who can speak to the archives on your behalf, or go to the archives and see what they have. And then if you do find the film elements, and they can honestly be found anywhere. You can be looking for a German movie, but the negatives are in Argentina [for example]. So it really is an international search, often trying to find the archival film elements.

Then you have to get them scanned at a lab. We have scanning facilities at Severin, but, a lot of time, if you're dealing with somebody in Japan or Eastern Europe, they would prefer their negatives are not leaving their country, because they're obviously the only negatives, so they want you to do them at a lab there. And so you'll have to then negotiate with the lab, negotiate the transfer of the materials from the archive to the lab, and then get these gigantic files that are usually in a million tiny pieces that our post-production supervisor, Andrew, has to stitch everything back together, including sound, because the sound is usually an element that gets scanned separately.

So then you have the film in a full piece, but you still have to do the aspect ratio, the framing, and the color grade. There's various stages of the restoration that have to happen, and all of these stages cost thousands of dollars. So it can get quite expensive for a movie, even if the film is very well known in its own country, that's totally unknown in North America. So you really are taking a chance any time you do this kind of thing, that you're going to be able to help create an audience for that film to justify all the expenses that go into the restoration.

That's the great thing about this box set: there are films that a horror fan may be unaware of or may not have purchased separately, but by putting it together in this box set, you're giving exposure to something that may have gone overlooked. It really sounds like there are hundreds of people who are involved behind the scenes to put all of this together.

Kier-La Janisse: Yes, for the whole box set there are hundreds, because I had to compile the contributors list to send everybody their comps, and it was hundreds of people.

And, speaking of all of the people involved, I really loved the 252-page book that comes with the box set.

Kier-La Janisse: Last time, we had a book of essays that came with the box set, and so I wanted to do something different for this volume. We had Sean Hogan make a short film, To Fire You Come At Last; it's like the first movie on the box set. And so I said, "Since we funded a new narrative film as part of this process, why don't we also extend that to the book? Instead of having a book of essays, we can have a new book of fiction." It was great preparing for the book because I just got to read all these different authors to pick who I wanted for the book. So I just got to just read all these books and short stories, so that was a super fun process.

And then my friend Grady Hendrix, who is a very celebrated horror author, helped connect me to a bunch of the authors for the book that I wanted and he made recommendations to me and everything. So I contacted everybody and I gave them this very loose guideline, which is the same guideline I'd given Sean Hogan for the film, which was, "I want you to take some sort of a real folk belief, tradition, or ritual and make a fictional story about that. But it should be based on something that really exists so that anyone reading that story could then go Google whatever that thing is, and they'll be able to find all kinds of other historical information." And so other than that, people were allowed to interpret it however they wanted and then they just handed in their stories. So it was great because it was not a matter of me going through pre-existing stories and selecting stories that already existed for a collection. It was really like a commission where they made these stories specifically for this book.

I'm super proud of it. The very first story is by an author named Eden Royce, and it's called Every Second Saturday Sea Island Silencers Meet In Secret. It was the first story that got handed in, and her story is probably my favorite, but there's so much great stuff. We've got Kim Newman and Ramsey Campbell, so there's some veteran really big horror authors in there, but then also tons of Bram Stoker-winning authors like Cynthia Pelayo, Sarah Gailey, and Erika Wurth. Lynda Rucker's story is really amazing too. I had three copy editors crying when they read it. And then also Drazen Kozjan, who is a Canadian illustrator, and he made original illustrations for all the stories too.

You had mentioned Rites of May earlier as a title that you weren't sure you were going to be able to get for the set. Were there any other films that were especially challenging to acquire?

Kier-La Janisse: I would say Io Island, which is the South Korean film by Kim Ki-young, that one was hard to get in the sense that the ownership had changed and each side was kind of fighting against each other. We ended up having to do a new restoration because they wouldn't give us access to their [restoration], largely because of their feud. So I don't think it had anything to do with us, but luckily we were able to get the film, and we were able to do a new restoration of it, specifically the sound. Our sound is vastly improved over the Korean release, and that's all down to Andrew Furtado who is our post-production supervisor at Severin. I mean, he has his hands so full. Him and Todd Wieneke, who works with him in the sort of post-production department, that's it. It's them and a handful of QC people that they work with. They do every single Severin release, so I'm always in awe of their work, because I get to pick and choose what I work on, but they do everything. Every single movie we release, they are working on it. So anyway, we got this film; it's an amazing film, and it's definitely one of my favorites on the box set.

And then the other one I would really say is Who Fears the Devil, that's also known as The Legend of Hillbilly John. Kino Lorber had announced that film a few years ago, and it never came out ,and everybody was wondering, "What happened to this movie?" Again, it was a dispute between the rights holder and a one-time distributor of the film, who claimed to still be the rights holder, but his rights had long since lapsed. And so there was kind of dispute between them that we had to sort out. Also, the producer of the film, who was also the creator of Cagney & Lacey, gave us a great interview. It's also a very poignant interview, because when the movie came out, it was not successful at all, and he was very crestfallen about it, so he's very honest in the film about how kind of traumatizing an experience it was to release this film, and how it wasn't as good as he wanted it to be.

But I feel like that movie has really stood the test of time, because when that movie came out... It's based on Manly Wade Wellman stories, and a lot of fans of Manly Wade Wellman were just like, "Oh my God, this movie is terrible." But, now, when you look at it, it really just feels like a Jason and the Argonauts-type of movie. It's got the Harryhausen-esque type of effects. They're not at the level of Ray Harryhausen, admittedly, but it's a very charming movie. It's just got all this mountain folk occultism mixed with the folk music, and so I actually just totally love that movie.

There are a lot of great films on in this box set, many of which I had never seen previously, but I was excited by the inclusion of Psychomania, because it's a personal favorite of mine, and I'm glad more people are going to be able to see it. Why did you feel like it was a good fit for this set?

Kier-La Janisse: It's funny because somebody else asked me about Psychomania and they were sort of like, "Of all the rare movies you guys usually go after, it was surprising that you Psychomania because it's actually been released so many times before." And I was saying, "It's true, but the thing is it's one of my favorite movies." Not even just folk horror; it's just one of my favorite horror movies. And same with David Gregory, who owns Severin. So that film became available and we both were like, "Oh my God, Psychomania." And Severin released Psychomania before, many years ago, so we already had a certain amount of extras that we had made, so we were just like, "Yeah, let's include it." Sure, it's not as obscure as a lot of other things, but it's so fun. For anybody who has not seen Psychomania, it's like, "Why not bring that movie to them?"

I know this massive box set was just released, and it took years to put together, but are you already thinking about what could go into a third volume?

Kier-La Janisse: No. I'm very done at this point. I have like 10 other projects that I have in the works, including a whole new documentary. I made the "Woodlands Dark" documentary that's in the first box, and so I am doing a new documentary. We optioned the rights to the book Killing for Culture by David Kerekes and David Slater, which is a classic book from the '90s about sort of mondo films, snuff films, stuff like that. I'm going to be making a documentary based on that book, and so that's what I need to focus on a lot over the next year or two.

Are there any other upcoming projects you can tease to our readers?

Kier-La Janisse: Well, there's tons of stuff I'm working on that I cannot announce, but I will say for fans of my book, House of Psychotic Women, that they should look out for something related.

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For more details and to pick up this set for yourself, visit: https://severinfilms.com/