How do you think that impacts, what I call "sequelitis?" I mean, for example, in Hellraiser once you’ve seen the Cenobites, it’s hard to recreate that tension again.
That’s why I don’t like the Hellraiser series. I mean, I never did. I never went in for the fact that you open a stupid little box and things start walking out of the walls. I mean, what’s the connection? You either buy it or you don’t, and I never bought it. It’s true, once you see the Cenobites, then, that’s it, I can deal with that, unless they get stranger every time I see them.
How does that apply to your involvement with the Friday The 13th films? Was that you just "doing a job?"
Well, on Friday The 13th, they approached me after Dawn of the Dead came out, and it was just me doing a job, but it was getting my name out there. I did that for pennies just to get my name on another film. You don’t see who’s killing anybody until the end. It’s like a murder mystery, when they show you Jason’s mother and not Jason. The subsequent films all want you to believe that Jason is alive when he was never even alive in the first film. He was a kid that drowned in a lake. That is why I turned down Part II. When they sent me the script I said, "Look you guys, you’ve got Jason running around here. There is no Jason." They said, "Oh yeah, we were going to change that." So, I chose to do The Burning instead for Miramax. Friday The 13th came out, and there was Jason running around again.
Did that give you some level of satisfaction to be the one who killed him?
You mean in Part IV? Oh yeah, it was the Frankenstein Syndrome. I turned down Part II. They didn’t offer me Part III, and then I got Part IV. I got to kill the monster I created.
Dawn of the Dead was one of the first films that absolutely piled on the FX. It seemed like, for a while there, that was the pinnacle of your work, and of an FX film. Now, with films like Dead/Alive, it seems that people keep trying to top your stuff. Did you find that you were throwing ideas out and George was receptive to them?
We did that all the time. That was the fun on that job. We would go to George and say, "How about if we drive a screwdriver into a zombie's ear?" He’d just think for a second and say, "Yeah, go ahead."
How was he to work with?
He was the easiest. As an actor, he lets you improvise, and as an FX person he lets you improvise, which is ideal.
In Maniac, were you consciously trying to push your limits and the limits of what the audience would stand?
I think the director and Joe Spinell were doing that. I mean, you wouldn’t believe some of the things they wanted to do. It was Joe Spinell and Bill Lustig’s (who is now doing a movie which I had to back out of called Dead on the Fourth of July) idea. In fact, I kept saying things like, "Why are we doing this? You’re not going to get away with any of this. They’re never going to show any of this," and they got to show all of it.
I recently showed a copy of an old film of yours called The Prowler to a group of friends.
That’s a good film.
Yeah! There were a couple of things which really amazed them. One was the throat slit in the pool effect and the final Farley Granger shotgun decapitation. Number one, do you ever sit in theaters when your movies play?
Absolutely. I don’t watch the movie, I watch the audience.
See, that’s what I would be curious about. You work so hard on something and then sit there and watch the crowd for it to pay off. Is that sometimes better for you than the paycheck?
No, nothing’s better than the paycheck.
On Creepshow you created a creature named Fluffy that still gives my children major creeps. Was that a difficult suit to build? It looked horribly limiting for the actor and then to think you had to put animatronics in the head.
I had never done anything like that, so I called Rob Bottin because I had seen his Tanya’s Island head and he explained to me over the phone exactly how to do it, step by step. I had never built an animatronic creature head like that before. So, I looked to him, and then when I went to California for the premiere of Knightriders I went to Rob’s house and got a firsthand look at all the stuff from The Howling.
One always hears how competitive your business is, but it’s been my experience that a lot of the FX people get together and there is a huge support network.
I had never thought of it as a competitive thing. I think it’s a brotherhood. There are so many guys who started out with me and have moved to California and formed their own companies. Greg Nicotero [of KNB FX Group] for example, and Greg Funk who was my ace assistant for a while, he went out there and six months later won an Emmy for Babylon Five. I call those guys all the time. In fact, I’ve been working with Greg on some stuff, budgets and things I wanted to do FX on for some films I might be directing. I think it’s a brotherhood. I talk to Rick Baker. I talk to Rob Bottin every now and then. Dick Smith just called me to wish me happy birthday.
On Day of the Dead you managed to create a literal army of zombies. Did you use a number of standard appliances or was each character individually sculpted?
Well, on Day of the Dead we made generic appliances - small, medium, and large. If you walked in we just figured out if you were a small, medium, or large, slapped them on you, gave you small, medium, or large generic zombie teeth, and you were on your way.
I’d like to talk a little about your re-make of Night of the Living Dead. First of all, I felt the changes that you made, in a lot of ways, made the story stronger. Was the contractual obligation to deliver an "R" rated picture a concern for you, or did you just go out and shoot what you thought the film should have been, and, as a by-product of that, that vision wasn’t as bloody and over the top as people probably expected?
Well, it wasn’t bloody like people expected because they cut so much out of it. The uncut version of that film is so much better. Unfortunately you’ll never see it because it just wasn’t made.
Wasn’t any of that film saved that you mentioned was cut?
Oh, I have an uncut version of it on tape.
If someone approached you, would you ever release that unrated?
I don’t have the power to do that. I send copies to friends of mine.
I’ve seen on the video tape black market...
I’ve heard of that. I’m glad it’s out there. At least people are seeing it.
Making sort of a jump here, were you disappointed when Dario Argento’s Trauma finally hit the screens?
I saw it on tape. They sent me a copy of it. I don’t think there is enough information in it to understand what is going on. Then I saw a two hour version of it and the same thing. I know we shot a lot more coverage than is in the film. Everybody I talk to seems confused by what was going on. I don’t know what the hell happened. Disappointed? I don’t know. It’s not Dario’s usual visual style, like Opera blew me away.
Getting more contemporary, I know you are in Robert Rodriguez’ new film From Dusk Till Dawn. Was that something you went and auditioned for, or did they specifically ask for you?
In that case, I got a call from the casting director, I think on Quentin Tarantino’s recommendation, asking if I could come out to Los Angeles and audition. Well, I couldn’t, so I asked about sending in an audition tape, and they said they would FedEx me the script the next day, for viewing on Monday. I didn’t get the script until Thursday, so I had no time to memorize the lines. I had to send them the tape so it would be there Friday. I actually didn’t audition for the part they wanted me for. I saw this other part that I liked better, so I put that in tape and sent it, and I got the part. Apparently, I made Quentin laugh, they tell me.
Is acting something you want to do more of?
Yeah, I think I’d just prefer to do that.
You don’t get your hands dirty that way, right?
Well, it’s not just that. I get my hands dirty in my spare time with personal projects. As an actor, when you arrive on the set, you’ve arrived with everything you need. An FX guy needs cases, equipment, trucks, and people.
What do you thi
nk the reaction is going to be to that film?
That’s a good question.
Have you seen it?
I’ve seen bits and pieces of it. I was out there looping my dialogue a couple of weeks ago and it’s wild. I mean, you’ve never seen anything like this.
At the last FANGO convention...
Robert Rodriguez showed a little trailer there.
...and people went nuts.
I think everybody was waiting for it, even before they saw the preview. There’s all this talk in FANGO about no decent horror movies being out. Someone said, "We wish Quentin Tarantino would do a horror movie," so he did.
Be careful what you wish for.
Yeah, he did and there it is.
I’d like to ask you about censorship. I’m hearing from a lot of FX people, and in an interview I saw with Howard Berger he said that he was kind of bummed out that a lot of FX don’t make it to the screen. Can you give me some insight about what it's like to pour your heart into something and see it hit the cutting room floor?
Well, you certainly want people to see the stuff because it does you good. If you get booked and it helps your reputation. But you did the effect, you got paid for it. As the director, I can see why people make certain choices. If it’s the censorship thing, then I have a problem. I don’t really agree with a lot of the censorship that goes on. I think From Dusk Till Dawn supposedly is trying to get an NC-17. Wouldn’t that be the first horror movie that happened to? I think it would be.
I think so. Other than instances like Day of the Dead, which was released unrated.
Yeah. If that happens, hopefully it’ll start a trend.
How do you feel when people say, "Oh well, the kids..." Personally, I feel if I were making a film I wouldn’t want my kids to go to a "balls-out" horror film.
I don’t let my daughter see that, either. If it’s NC-17, then you're just not allowed in, although there’s a lot of sneaking going around. If you got a kid that is ballsy enough to sneak into a NC-17 movie, then he knows what’s going on anyway. You’re not going to defile some young mind. Of course, I turn on HBO at four o’clock in the afternoon and I can’t believe what I see, and any kid can turn that on. So, censorship just isn’t fair. Fair, in that it’s not wide-spread enough. It’s not controlled enough. Kids can rent videos. Kids can turn on HBO. Real Sex comes on. Who says those kids have to be in bed before that comes on?
They think that by ten o’clock all the impressionable youth is tucked away.
That’s the myth. Not realistic.
We’ve seen the days of the films with "the more gore the better," that wave seems to have crashed...
The splatter films.
What place do you see your work having in both mainstream and horror films? Is subtlety the watchword now?
My work isn’t just gore. It’s creatures, and I’ve done a lot of other things. I think there’s still a touch of what used to be splatter films, even in the psychological thrillers, which I think have replaced the splatter movies, thank god. I prefer the monsters and the creatures to come back. Well, we’ve been getting some good monsters with the Predator and the Alien, and Species, although you didn’t get to see that one too well. I prefer the monsters and the creatures to come back. It’s not very likely, unless you get a sequel. You got an Alien 4 coming out. Predator 3, where they go to a planet of Predators. So they're going to come back in that way. But I think, to answer your question, the effects will always be around, they’ve always been around. It’s just that maybe they won’t dominate the film as the splatter movies do.
Going back to something you said earlier, I know you have children. You said that your daughter doesn’t see too much of your work on film. Is she pretty well grounded as far as "fantasy vs. reality?"
Oh, I think so, yeah.
I would think that she would, since she sees the work in progress around the house.
I took her to see Bram Stoker’s Dracula six times. And I’m sure there were people in the audience that were saying, ‘Wow, what’s that little girl doing here? This guy has his daughter here?’ But if they were to sit next to her, they’d hear her say shit like, "Dad, is that gelatin or foam latex? Is that yak hair or human hair?"
It’s funny, I have a ten year old boy who’s been around enough and seen enough where something will happen in the film and he will lean over and assuredly say, "Rod puppet, Dad."
[laughs] Yeah. Right. Right. Blue screen.
And I think that goes back to what you were saying earlier about kids sneaking in and kids more aware than people like Jack Valenti and his organization [the M.P.A.A.] would like to believe.
A lot of kids are just fans of the latest exhibit from their favorite artist.
That’s interesting you say that. What were your thoughts when you found that you, as an FX person, became a real draw to a film? I mean, films would come out that normally would have slipped into oblivion, but people would say, "Yeah, but Savini did the FX," and that was reason enough to go see it.
I guess it’s the same kind of feeling an actor gets when he gets popular because people like seeing him in a movie. Like I said, it’s the latest exhibit from your favorite artist. Also, FANGO helps to make you famous.
You mentioned FANGO saying there are no good horror films out. Do you think the horror genre is dying, or is it just mutating?
I don’t think it will ever die. It’s always just had its hey-day, had its moments. I think it just seeks new forms. Don’t forget we had the monsters and the creatures - Frankenstein, Wolfman, Dracula. They stopped being scary when they were being teamed up with Abbott and Costello. Then, like in Ed Wood, the science fiction movies took over. Then, what did we have after that? Psycho...
The whole radioactive atom bomb thing.
Then there was splatter, the psychological, but there’s always a bit of everything else when you have that stuff. Even when the psychological thrillers arrived, there were still Jason, and Freddy, and those guys...unfortunately.
And now, this whole Freddy vs. Jason thing...
It’s like studio wrestling.
Have there been any films, as far as FX, that just blew you away?
Well, the scary ones have been Exorcist and Alien. FX-wise, American Werewolf, The Howling, The Thing, anything Dick Smith does, Bram Stoker’s Dracula because of the old style FX. I mean, that was great to me.
Do you find that knowing how the trick is done takes away from your enjoyment, or is it the reverse?
Oh, it always takes away. Yeah, knowing how the trick is done always takes away because you see a magician do a trick and you say, "God! How did he do that?" The illusion is alive. As soon as you hear how it’s done, it’s dead forever. The thing is to keep the illusion alive for all time. I hate before a movie comes out, almost any movie, where they advertise so much from that movie. I prefer that people didn’t know that there were vampires in From Dusk Till Dawn because it’s a big surprise in the movie when they hit the nightclub. I remember opening Time Magazine and there was a double-page spread of the mother ship coming over Devil’s Tower in Close Encounters. I wish I hadn’t seen that because it completely ruined that moment for me in the movie. If I hadn’t seen that it would have been a wonderful moment. I saw it in Time Magazine so I just knew it was coming, and I felt cheated. I felt robbed, actually. You pay to see this movie, and if I had wanted to see it in this magazine, I’d be reading the magazine and not watching a movie.
So, I guess it comes down to once you know how the trick is done, do you then marvel at the execution?
Personally, yes. I love reading about how Dick Smith does something. I have my second book coming out, Grande Illusions Book 2, where I give away a lot of technical stuff on how we do stuff and how we achieve certain illusions in a film that you might have seen. I get off on the technical bravado that somebody else used to achieve something.
If you were offered a film like a remake of It’s A Wonderful Life, is that something you would jump at?
/> It’s A Wonderful Life not particularly, but a love story. I’m crazy about love stories. Any swashbuckler. A remake of Trapeze, the Burt Lancaster/Tony Curtis film. There’s lots of stuff I’d like to do outside of the horror genre, sure.
Do you sometimes feel confined by your...
Typing? Did Boris Karloff hate Frankenstein? No. He thanks the gentleman for sending him off on a career. I’m glad that my name got out there as something when the splatter craze came out because it leads to other things. It’s usually horror related because my name is usually associated with that now. I think it would be quite the scenario to have people accept something that I’ve done that’s not in that genre. Let’s say I directed a few horror movies, then had a try at something else like George [Romero] did with Knightriders. That would be the way to do it. I think right off the bat it has to be horror related or the whole other end like children’s movies.
Carpe Noctem Interviews, Vol 3 Page 13
