Interviews

I'm guessing that if you're reading this interview, you already know who the great Lin Shaye is, but in case you've recently experienced a small dose of head trauma, Shaye is the character actress perhaps best recognized for her crude comedy roles in Kingpin, There's Something About Mary and Dumb & Dumber, but she's also been popping up in our genre for decades. Her flirtation with horror started with A Nightmare on Elm Street, but since then she's popped up in everything from Critters to The Running Man to Killer Pad, Snakes on a Plane and a whole lot more.

She can most recently be seen in Tim Sullivan's 2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams, out now on DVD and Blu-ray from First Look Studios.

Horror Squad: Before we move onto 2001 Maniacs, I'd love to share my love for a movie you did a number of years ago, Dead End. Not only is it one of my favorite roles of yours, but it's one of my favorite under-seen horror gems.

Lin Shaye: Do you know that's truly been one of my favorite things I've ever done? It has an amazing fan base and I don't even know how that happened. Lionsgate bought the film and we were hoping they would do some kind of midnight release because people loved it, but over the years it's been on Pay-Per View and various other venues and people have been eventually discovering it.

Naked girls, a cabin in the woods, lots of blood, and a good chase are all elements of a great 80's horror homage. The SuicideGirls get this, and have tapped into their inner scream queens for what they are dubbing the first "reality horror film," Suicide Girls Must Die!.

So what does that mean exactly? Take twelve unsuspecting hotties to a remote cabin in Maine for the weekend under the guise of a calendar photoshoot, and then start picking them off one by one -- well, not really -- but you get the picture. Their (often hilarious) reactions are all caught on camera, along with lots of boobs and even a hot tub makeout party. These aren't your typical girls though. You won't find your average bimbo with nary a tattoo or piercing to gawk at. While I could make the argument that alt beauty is becoming the mainstream now, the SuicideGirls' continued success proves that not everyone shares the same standard perceptions when it comes to what is pleasing to the eye.

I had the opportunity to talk with Sawa Suicide, director of the girls' new film, and the SuicideGirls' founder, Missy Suicide. We chatted about horror films, women in the genre, the difficulty in keeping something secret, and what's on tap next for the ladies. First Look Studios, who brought us Christopher Smith's mind bender Triangle, are releasing the film on DVD June 29th. You can pick up a copy of the unrated film over here. Hit the jump for more with Missy and Sawa.

With each passing day we get a little closer to seeing The Walking Dead debut on AMC. The cable channel's been fantastic about promoting their newest program on their website -- and the latest update has executive producer and comic creator Robert Kirkman reporting in from the set. Read on to find out what Kirkman thinks about seeing his baby brought to life.

When asked what it feels like to finally be on a set, seeing his work come to life, Kirkman responds with "'Surreal,' I guess, is a word I've been saying a lot. 'Amazing' is another word. I was on a movie set last summer that was like a big budget blockbuster, and before I got out here I told myself, "I'm not going to be seeing the same kind of stuff because they don't have a budget like a summer blockbuster." But you know what? It's almost bigger."

It's hard not to notice how excited Kirkman is about the way the Frank Darabont-produced series is shaping up. The enthusiasm is inherent in each response in the full interview (warning -- it contains some spoilers for the comic series). It's also interesting to get his take on some of the changes Darabont and crew are making to his source material. While some writers would bristle at having their work altered, Kirkman appears to be loving it. The author will also get the opportunity to rewrite his own material, as he's penning the script for one of the first season's episodes.

There's a lot more to uncover in the chat, but I'll not relate it all here. Head on over to AMC and check out Kirkman's full interview. The zombies of The Walking Dead invade Atlanta later this year.

He's written cult classic films, novels of all genres, comic books, television shows, and is a master of martial arts. Judging by the majority of his work, anyone could be forgiven of being terrified to meet the man. The brutality exhibited within some of his stories hits you with a punch to the gut. It's unrelenting and filthy. On more than one occasion, I've felt the need to shower afterwards (The Night They Missed the Horror Show, I'm looking at you). But . . . he's the most genial fellow you can imagine. Oh yeah - and he wrote Bubba Hotep!

Joe R. Lansdale has racked up more awards than I should list here. Most notably, he's won the Bram Stoker award an astounding seven times. His works are generally laden with all manner of unseemly things, and set within the backwoods of East Texas. The League of Extremely Ordinary Gentlemen, a podcast I'm a regular on, had the extraordinary fortune to interview him at length recently. He's promoting the release of the Complete Drive-In, which collects all three of his stories of an all-night horror movie marathon gone straight to hell.

It's a meandering interview, I'll admit, one that takes on the tone of a tangent-ridden conversation more than a pointed question-and-answer. Lansdale was a great sport, however, and proved to be an expert raconteur. While we initially set out to talk briefly about the Drive-In before transitioning into Westerns (the ostensible topic of the night), well . . . I was behind the mic. Naturally, that means I kept re-directing the chat to all things horror. We were all over the place, enthralled by his tales of rabid puppies, racism, Jonah Hex, and his recollections of working with Don Coscarelli and Angus Scrimm.

Click past the jump for 2 hours of storytelling from Joe R. Lansdale.

Bitter Feast, the first horror film from indie director Joe Maggio and the latest from House of the Devil and I Sell the Dead production house Glass Eye Pix, has its world premiere tonight at the Los Angeles Film Festival. I've said it on the site already, but there's nothing wrong with repetition: If you can make the screening, I certainly recommend you do. But if for whatever you still don't trust my film recommendations (spoiler alert: I'm never wrong), perhaps our interview with Maggio should help provide you some incentive for this highly satisfying chef versus critic showdown.

Horror Squad: How did you first conceive of the idea for Bitter Feast?

Joe Maggio: Let me just say I'm a huge food guy. Becoming a chef was the first thing I wanted to do before going into film. I read mostly food magazines, I love shopping for food, eating, drinking, the whole deal. I read the New York Times' dining section pretty religiously and back in June of 2007 Gordon Ramsay was opening his first restaurant in NYC. It was a highly anticipated opening and Frank Bruni, who was the most influential food critic in the country at the time, wrote this review that was just awful.

Not that it was a negative review, it was just indifferent; this lazy kind of review. His big thing was that the restaurant just "lacks excitement". And I was like, What the f*ck? Do you know how hard it is to open a restaurant? Especially for a guy as high profile as Ramsay, the stakes are so high that if it fails it could be really damaging for his career. And that is what you call him on? Not the food, just this vague, intangible complaint.

Last week we posted the first part of our interview with Splice director Vincenzo Natali in which he discussed how he would adapt a few of his future projects, mainly William Gibson's Neuromancer and J.G. Ballard's High Rise. This week, however, the interview is all about his wonderfully twisted and brave creature feature opening everywhere this Friday (that's June 4th if you don't have a calendar handy).

Cinematical: After Sundance, when Warner Brothers picked Splice up and gave it to Dark Castle, there was a lot of talk of it getting re-edited, what exactly is the difference between this cut and the Sundance/Sitges cuts? I'm assuming those two were identical.

Vincenzo Natali: That's right. This is a new version. It's marginally different. It's two minutes and eleven seconds shorter. It's really cosmetic kind of stuff that we did to the film with a few small exceptions. I cut out a short scene at the end of the movie where Adrien Brody finds something just because it was slowing action down when it should have been moving. And we added one shot to help clarify the final reveal of Dren. Other than that, it's basically the same film. We cleaned up the dialogue a bit in the mix and we did some work on the color grade, too.

I was terrified, believe me. I was elated and terrified at the same time when Joel Silver picked up the film, because it was obviously such a wonderful opportunity but at the same time I didn't know him, except by reputation, and I didn't know what he was going to do to the film. And I didn't have control over it, either.

Read the rest of this interview over at Cinematical.

In honor of the DVD and Blu-ray release of Joe Johnston's The Wolfman remake, Universal was kind enough to arrange an interview between Horror Squad and legendary makeup maestro Rick Baker. I'm not going to pretend like I wasn't intimidated to do it, either, but once the man behind a fleet of iconic masks opened the conversation with fond memories of his similarly-named friend, Kevin Peter Hall, who played Harry in Harry and the Hendersons, I knew there wasn't any reason to be intimidated.

What I didn't realize, however, was how candid Baker would be about his work on The Wolfman. The film quickly became notorious due to a torrent of production problems and, fortunately for us, Baker was happy to open up about what were actual problems with the film and what may have just been symptomatic of fan backlash.

Horror Squad: So why the pursuit of The Wolfman over any of the other projects in Hollywood? I know that you've said once you heard about the film you actively went after it, which is not something you normally do.

Rick Baker: It's one the films that made me want to do what I do for a living. It's one of the films that made me who I am. So many people of my generation all grew up with that shock theater package on television of Frankenstein, Wolfman, Dracula, Mummy, all the Universal stuff. And then we had Famous Monsters of Film Land magazine, we had the Aurora model kit stuff. It's a film that kind of just shaped my being, you know?

Recently I had the very fortunate privilege to speak with actor Kevin Pollak (The Usual Suspects, A Few Good Men, The Whole Nine Yards) regarding his new project Vamped Out. Vamped Out is a web series chronicling the trials and tribulations of an actor trying to make it in LA. But Alowisus is no ordinary actor, he's an honest-to-goodness vampire struggling to get cast...as a vampire. The series is filmed documentary style with Kevin Pollak (who also wrote and directed the series) playing the intrepid filmmaker who cataloged the actor/vampires exploits and then, during post-production, went missing. The show is an irreverent commentary on the state of vampire entertainment as it exists today and delivers some well-deserved pot shots. To hear what writer/director/star Kevin Pollak had to say about the project, jump past the bump. The first episode is available on Babelgum and you can also view it post-bump.