Tracy Letts may have just won a Pulitzer Prize but in the hearts of horror fans, his play August: Osage County will never dethrone his nasty little paranoid creepshow Bug. Unfortunately, misleading blood-and-guts promos plagued William Friedkin's 2006 movie adaptation. "People who would have enjoyed the film didn't go see it, because they were put off by the marketing campaign," says Letts, "And kids who were enthusiastic to see the movie were furious -- 'Why are these people talking?' They didn't understand that there would be these long scenes of dialogue, so they felt cheated. Because they were cheated!" 

Letts himself is quite democratic in his love of horror. "It's tough to identify what it is I like about it. But I like pretty much everything about it!" he says. "I was into J-horror when that started to appear, but then they all got remade and watered down." The last movie that really got under his skin? "The remake of The Hills Have Eyes of all things!" admits Letts. "I don't know that here's acres of social commentary, but it was a pretty good scare."

Tracy Letts' Top 10 Horror Movies

Continue reading "Pulitzer Prize Winner Tracy Letts on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, "Poorly Acted, Poorly Directed .... Genius."" »

Maybe you already saw Teeth maybe you didn't... but either way, you've probably already cracked a joke about it. Mitchell Lichtenstein's vagina dentata movie rode a wave of one-liners to the top of many people's 2007 must-see movie lists, and arrives on DVD today. Lichtenstein took a break from filming his new movie (Happy Tears, starring Demi Moore and Parker Posey) to comment on whether fans of the radiant Jess Weixler can look forward to more Teeth turns in the future.

Q: Teeth was gratefully received by horror fans, and they have a long memory. Do you have plans to return to the genre anytime soon or revisiting the story?

A: Conceivably. It's left sort of open-ended so that there could certainly be the further adventures of Dawn, but I don't quite know what they would be yet. I don't want her to turn into Aileen Wuornos... but I enjoy the genre so maybe I'll come up with something.

Q: The special effects were pretty graphic. Did capturing an R rating impose constraints on your creativity?

Continue reading "Director Mitchell Lichtenstein Says the Ratings Board Thought Teeth Was a Cautionary Tale " »

A gentle man with a fearful occupation, Dr. Charles Ptak D.D.S knows that his work can be off-putting. "Many people don't understand how you could handle the blood, or drilling in the oral cavity with blood and saliva and infectious material and so forth," he says, adding: "I've seen a lot over the 25 years I've practiced; I can be amazed, but not surprised."

While many people consider the prospect of oral surgery to be scarier than a visit from Pinhead or Freddy Krueger, Dr. Ptak isn't himself immune to the allure of a great scary movie. The classic creature-features that Shock Theater played on TV in the late '50s primed him for a later interest in darker fare, such as Hellraiser, and clinical detachment doesn't help. "I'm not so far removed from my emotions and empathy for other people that it doesn't get to me. That film was horrible, very expressive -- and that's why we love movies," says Dr. Ptak.

Dr. Charles Ptak's Top 10 Horror Movies

Continue reading "Classic Creature Features Primed Oral Surgeon Charles Ptak for Darker Fare " »

Horror doesn't show its face in Sloane Crosley's new book, I Was Told There'd Be Cake -- unless the agony of quitting one's first job or locking oneself out of an apartment counts. "Few tragic events in our lives are purely tragic, even as they're happening," says Crosley, "But even throughout those more trying incidents, there's always a little bit of funny to be found." However, if one of her stories was to be given a Hollywood horror makeover, she's rooting for Sign Language for Infidels -- the essay in which she accidentally kidnaps a small animal: "There are a lot of little revelations and visual discoveries in that essay that cry out for some zoomed-in shots and dramatic music."

Her fondness for a good scare transcends genre, but Crosley knows what she's looking for. "If you could conduct a scientific experiment in which you had a subject watch Terms of Endearment, Casablanca, and The Shining, you'd find the most physiological changes occurred while watching The Shining," she says. "Even if you cry hysterically or swoon over the other two films, the thrillers hook you differently." Of course, in the case of Requiem for a Dream, you get to have it all.

Sloane Crosley's Top 10 Horror Films

Continue reading "Essayist Sloane Crosley Kidnaps Small Animals; Thought Baby Jane Was Real" »

Matthew Holtzclaw believes that our fondnesses for horror movies and stage magic spring from the same dark well. "Magic should be scary. It should unsettle," he says. "The construction of a moment of horror is similar to the construction of a moment of magic... I always say, the monster in your front yard is more disturbing than the one in the haunted house. You walk into a bad place expecting bad things. A good magic trick sneaks up on you while you're just relaxing."

This seasoned performer also works as a consultant on magical effects in theater and film, recently working with Teller (yes, that Teller) on a particularly violent version of Macbeth. "I'm now consulting for a stage production of Dracula," he says. "Strangely, I'm often asked to find creative ways to kill people."

Matthew Holtzclaw's Top 10 Horror Films

Continue reading "Magician and Horror Buff Matthew Holtzclaw Admits He's Asked to Find Creative Ways to Kill" »

Editing news footage goes hand-in-hand with a love of film, says CNN video editor Lee Hughey. Who better than "David Lynch and Sergio Leone to teach you composition, Robert Altman to teach you editing and pacing, Peter Greenaway and Danny Boyle to teach you about the use of music to tell a story?" he explains. Darker films play their part too: "Horror movies are all about creating mood, and about delivering little jolts or surprises to the audience when they aren't expecting them." Hughey adds, "Even when your subject isn't horror, I think that's an effective tool for keeping the audience interested in your story. Obviously, you apply it a little differently to news and documentaries than you do to dramatic films."

Fact and fiction affect people much differently, though, says Hughey, and grim reality can be especially difficult to stomach. "During the war in Bosnia, I knew people who started to suffer the effects of PTSD just because of the terrible, terrible things we were seeing in the raw video being fed back to Atlanta -- horrible images of death, dismemberment, really unimaginable suffering," he recalls. "Real-life images can affect you in ways that fictional images never will, because you don't have that emotional distance from them."

Lee Hughey's Top 10 Horror Films:

Continue reading "Appreciating the Unexpected Jolts of Surprise, CNN Video Editor Loves Horror" »

Kids headed to college know little about the strange places academia may take them -- and Helen Matthews may just be their hero. Her graduate degree in French Literature from the University of North Carolina has become a springboard for her interest in the tales of Haiti's walking dead. "The zombi [the correct Haitian term] activates themes of slavery, American occupation, womanhood, dictatorship," says Matthews, "And, most importantly to my research, exploitation."

How does modern zombie mythology measure up? "At this point, most zombie movies are so far removed from Haitian mythology that they don't have any right to pay homage." They still play an important role in her work, however: "I was never a huge fan, and you'll notice that none made my top 10, but my Netflix queue is teeming with them. I watch them mainly to stroke my imaginary beard and ponder the many ways in which Haitian mythology is being exploited by American popular culture." Our appetite for apocalyptic viruses speaks for itself, she suspects. "Watching contagious zombies eat flesh and run really fast is way more entertaining than pondering the pain of losing your individuality and being forced into labor on a Haitian plantation," says Matthews.

Helen Matthews' Top 10 Horror Movies:

Continue reading "Zombie Authority Helen Matthews Watches Pumpkinhead While Grading Papers" »

Singer/songwriter Jill Sobule has built a career on making light of the horror of adolescence. Her 1995 hit "I Kissed A Girl" was many a teen's pre-L Word fantasy come to life, and the video for her follow-up, "Supermodel" (which landed on the Clueless soundtrack), was a mini-remake of the 1976 classic Carrie. "We even made the same dress she wore and poured fake pig blood on it. I was in horror heaven," says Sobule, though the video ended up in purgatory: "I think it was a bit gory for MTV. It played, maybe, twice -- at 2:00 in the morning."

Though Sobule has five studio albums under her belt, it's her most recent victory that's shaking things up: In January she side-stepped the music industry by asking fans to invest $75,000 in her next record. The result? $81,882 and counting, in just three months. Still, Sobule has few illusions about the glamorous life of a folk star. "My old manager would book me at what seemed like (by the hour) hooker or serial killer hotels," she says. "You know, the kind where the crusty guy at the front desk is protected in a cage-like structure and hands you your key like he is trying to warn you. And you can't sleep 'cause your mind is racing about all the bad things that have happened in the past in the same room." When your taste in movies runs toward the macabre, a good night's sleep can be hard to come by no matter where you're staying.

Jill Sobule's Top 10 horror movies:

Continue reading ""Give Me Mia Farrow Eating Raw Meat Any Day," Musician Jill Sobule Loves Horror" »

"I've always been sort of a thinker," says McDonald. To explain, she shares a childhood memory: Imagining her father's death at the tender age of three. If you think this morbid mind would have then fostered a love of horror films, you'd be wrong. "I couldn't even watch them," she admits. "I never related to them and I don't enjoy being scared." So, how is it she now takes pleasure in creating zombies, inserting herself into horror films, being chased through the woods and turning into a vampire?

A multimedia, performance artist, much of McDonald's work explores fan worship and movie madness (Me and Billy Bob, Screen Kiss) and through it, she's garnered a cult following of her own. In 2006, she found herself thinking, "Why is it people enjoy being afraid? And how is it there can be such a huge fan base for horror films?" She tried reading books on film theory, but quickly realized that was "ridiculous" and forced herself to watch the films. "I totally changed my perspective," says the new fan. What she thought would inspire one or two pieces has turned into a huge body of work that is still ongoing.

So, you swear you saw a woman turn into a zombie on the L Train to Brooklyn? It was McDonald. Plenty of ladies put on make-up while riding the subway, but her beauty ritual ends with fake blood and green teeth (watch horror make-up). This month in Chicago, while other commuters put on their game face, she turned herself into a monster. (Her gruesome beauty advice: "Make sure you look dead enough" but as with any kind of make-up "the thing is to look natural.") In one of her favorite pieces, The Screaming, she inserts herself into scenes from eleven films including The Shining and Alien. When a woman screams in a horror film, her end is near, but when McDonald' screams, it's the monsters that are killed or run away.

Jillian McDonald's Top Ten:

Continue reading "When She Screams, Monsters Run: Performance Artist Jillian McDonald " »

Among the DVDs being released today is Frank Darabont's version of Stephen King's The Mist. The landmark horror tale -- about things that go bump in that fog -- is also about a government gone terribly wrong. In fact, Darabont claims his film is somewhat of an allegory inspired by the specious doings of the George Bush administration. Each character in the movie must deal with a fear of the unknown in their own way. Some freak out, some call upon religion for hope, and some rise to the occasion to become courageous and brave. Laurie Holden's Amanda Dunfrey is among the latter, bucking up under the pressure of the thick, killing mist and the monsters hidden within.

Darabont, who worked with Holden on The Majestic, contacted her directly for the role. The actress jumped at the chance to work with the Oscar-nominated director again, but she knew she was in for "seat of your pants filmmaking." While The Majestic was a very planned, very Hollywood movie, The Mist relied more upon indie-style guerilla filmmaking. It was shot on a very tight schedule, mainly in a supermarket, often without rehearsal. Says Holden, "We were there for so many hours, that we started to eat the snacks that were on the shelves. So they put up a sign that said, 'Don't eat the food.'"

Continue reading "From Optimist to Pragmatist, an Interview with Laurie Holden about The Mist " »