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.
With his first feature, 2002’s Dog Soldiers, writer/director Neil Marshall established himself as one of the premiere voices in horror cinema. His 2005 follow-up, The Descent, is widely considered to be among the best—if not the best—horror movies of the 2000s. Marshall closes out Tales of Halloween with his segment, “The Bad Seed,” which pays tribute to ’80s horror and buddy cop movies with a good deal of comedy. It’s a blast.
Can you offer a little background context for how your segment came to be?
Neil Marshall: I can't even remember when I had the idea. Maybe I was cutting vegetables one day and it clicked. All I know is that I was originally trying to come up with a more traditional scary story, but once the pumpkin idea fell into place, the tone kind of came with the package. You can only be so scary with a killer pumpkin. But you can be funny and gory.
How soon into writing your segment did you realize you also wanted to fold in a buddy cop movie? What made you want to skew that way instead of just pure "horror"?
Neil Marshall: It's wasn't that I set out to make a cop movie any more than, say, Jaws is a cop movie. But since it started out with a brutal murder, I figured let’s try that point of view, and these things grow organically from the situation you create. Once I got into the idea of a detective investigating the crime, then the sketch artist and forensics followed close behind, and that provided an opportunity for a lot of humor. And though I've not been known lately for doing much comedy, people forget there is a lot of gallows humor in my first feature, Dog Soldiers, which this most closely mirrors.
There are so many wonderful actors in your segment: Kristina Klebe, Pat Healy, the great Joe Dante. Maybe the one that excited me the most was John Savage. How did his casting come about?
Neil Marshall: I got incredibly lucky. I originally wrote the character of McNally as a man, but then Axelle introduced me to Kristina and immediately I reconciled the character. Thankfully, she agreed to top it. Pat I'd seen and loved in The Innkeepers, and felt he had that slightly nerdy quality about him (and I mean that in the best possible way) made believable as Forensic Bob. When it came to casting the police chief, I never imagined for a second we'd be able to land somebody with John Savage's pedigree in movies, but our casting director suggested him and I was all for it. Again, we were so lucky he said "yes!" And Joe Dante… ? Well, who else could play the mad scientist but Joe Dante?! That's all part of the tone of the piece and it's certainly a nod to Gremlins.
Because your segment is the last one in the film, you're sort of responsible for tying a lot of the previous stories together. Added pressure or all part of the fun?
Neil Marshall: That was all part of the plan. Although my segment was one of the first to be shot, it made sense that it would go last because the police angle gave us license to refer to several of the other segments. It also allowed me, in the police station scene, to include pretty much all of the other directors in cameos as cops or criminals. So this piece wraps up the whole movie in several different ways, but also leaves the movie with a bit of a cliffhanger.
There are a number of segments in the movie that feel ’80s-inspired, but yours has the biggest ’80s vibe of them all. I know you're a fan of the period (exhibit A: Doomsday), so what is it that draws you to that aesthetic?
Neil Marshall: The ’80s just had this sense of outrageous fun coupled with great stories and characters. Then there's the practical effects and buckets of gore in movies such as Evil Dead 1 and 2, Re-Animator, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Fly, The Thing, The Blob, etc., etc. These are movies that, for the most part, still stand up to this day. But I guess the real reason for my love and obsession with this period is these were my first horror movies. I was a teenager during the ’80s and I think spending that part of your life in that particular time really has an impact on you for the rest of your life.
What makes a great horror anthology?
Neil Marshall: Consistency. Quality. Pacing. The segment shouldn't be too brief—you want to get involved—but they should never outstay their welcome. I also prefer anthologies without a framing or interlinking story. You just want to get on with the next story. And the whole movie should be kind of punchy and not too long. It should feel like a group of people sitting around a campfire telling scary stories.
What is your favorite segment from any past horror anthology?
Neil Marshall: That's very difficult… I'll have to think about that.
Tales of Halloween will be released in theaters and on VOD on October 16th from Epic Pictures Group.
Patrick lives in Chicago, where he has been writing about film since 2004. A member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Online Film Critics Society, Patrick's writing also appears on About.com, DVDVerdict.com and fthismovie.net, the site he runs and hosts a weekly podcast.
He has been an obsessive fan of horror and genre films his entire life, watching, re-watching and studying everything from the Universal Monsters of the '30s and '40s to the modern explosion of indie horror. Some of his favorites include Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1931), Dawn of the Dead (1978), John Carpenter's The Thing and The Funhouse. He is a lover of Tobe Hooper and his favorite Halloween film is part 4. He knows how you feel about that. He has a great wife and two cool kids, who he hopes to raise as horror nerds.
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