Photos from ManiaFest Day Three - and the Masters of Horror speak!

By: Sue Schneider and Marcia Groft
Date: Thursday, September 25, 2003

Day three of ManiaFest started early with a Masters of Horror Panel, featuring emerging talent and established filmmakers. The panel consisted of Wes Craven, Stuart Gordon, Tobe Hooper, Rob Zombie and Eli Roth with the moderator being Cinescape's Editor-in-Chief Anthony Ferrante.

While it's not a complete transcript of what happened on the panel, here are some questions and the answers given by the Masters of Horror...

Question: What makes a scary movie?

Eli: Nudity, blood! No, resonating scare. Distributors now market horror movies as thrillers. They confront our fears, give us nightmares.

Rob: They leave us with something that makes us jump.

Stuart: Horror is slow, action is fast. You get a sense of dread, you know something bad happens, it's about the unknown. When you show the monster the movie is over. It's getting the audiences imagination engaged.

Wes: Key difference is frightening, intimate and personal. One personality against another that taps into weakness and thinks faster.

Tobe: Before we're born, with genetic DNA, we're born with fear what's under the bed, what's in the closet, don't step on the crack in the cement...it's a process of life. It erases initial fear taping into primal suggestions. Sense of impending doom, the grim reaper is a big monster, you want to avoid that dude. It reminds us in a safe way, that close brush with death, that we can walk away.


Question: Hollywood and the Horror System?

Tobe: CHAINSAW, as an independent was done for $60,000. It was done before they noticed. To do it in a studio now would be impossible. They mean well, but there are strings attached by the system when they try to make it better.

Wes: More money, now people are interested in money not film. It's too corporate, studios are a minor part of the money making corporations. New horror makers are under the radar. Your ego is the only right one.

Stuart: Studios don't like them, they're too slimy, like porno's. The studios tone them down, make franchises and clones. Re-animator was released with no rating, had no problems with television and print ads. They cut to our boundaries. It's art versus commerce.

Rob: Studios remove the sex and nudity! Horror notes conflict. It's the point of view of the killer and the victim. Referring to Universal and 1000 CORPSES, they wanted it shot different ways, which slows down the process. They wanted to re-shoot the ending. I hired people. It had no start date and then the money ran out.

Eli: CABIN FEVER cost $1.5 million. I wrote it in '95 and it took two years to get the money. Studios want films that may not succeed, but won't fail. They have test audiences so offensive scenes can be cut to play to a wide audience. They don't know the genre. My film was condemned by the Catholic Church and got an O rating for morally offensive.

Question: Stigma that is attached?

Tobe: You never shake the stigma. When I came here from Texas I didn't know what to think about the stigma rumor. It took a long time be taken seriously. I optioned a book about Vietnam entitled FIRST BLOOD, and mentioned it at a meeting and it vanished, and later became RAMBO. New filmmakers give legitimacy, they can't kill us.

Wes: If you live long enough you become a master. I was advised not to make more than one horror film, otherwise you become second class, gaining begrudging respect. Your daughter can't be married, your dangerous, everything you unleashed is all in you ...but just read the papers.

Stuart: At Disney I was referred to as the uncle in the attic! HONEY I SHRUNK THE KIDS is really a horror film, as is HONEY, I BLEW UP THE KID. You have to do it differently and not be stale. Horror and fantasy are the highest grossing movies in the Top 10. What's normal, what about Jeffrey Dahlmer?

Rob: The genre has a loyal following, even Stephen King got an award.

Wes: We teach humanity, great authors have not always been appreciated in their day.

Eli: Horror and sex comedies, in 18 days lots of people die...

Question: What resonates in horror films?

Eli: It starts with what scares me. It's internal, not external.

Rob: Unusual turn of a story.

Stuart: Simple, a serum bringing people back to life. A toxic fume that effects women, as in LADIES NIGHT (a new film project), where women become sexy and then start eating the men.

Wes: Newspapers and books. THE HILLS HAVE EYES came from a 16th Century book on a Scottish family. PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS came from a burglary story in Santa Monica, where they discovered the children. Every savage has a gentle streak and vice versa.

Tobe: Ideas float around, like radio waves, you can fall back on proven archetypes, pushing it.

Question: What are some of your lesser known films?

Stuart: WONDERFUL ICE CREAM SUIT by Ray Bradbury on Disney Video.

Wes: Some are obscure and deserve to be. DEADLY BLESSING is interesting with a young Sharon Stone and some of the TWILIGHT ZONE episodes.

Tobe: EGGSHELLS, a lost film about a commune house at the end of the Vietnam War...a hippie movie.

Eli: I like the 70's horror folk music versus the madness on screen. In the 70's horror was respected. In the 80's there were the slasher movies, death and effects. End of the 80's the jokes started. The 90's were the thrillers like SIXTH SENSE, SIGNS, the ALIEN movies.

Rob: My film with Universal had problems with the timing of release and the editing, etc., because of Columbine and the marketing of violence to children.

Wes: Horror and thriller and the comedy, SCREAM 1 got an R rating. In the third act the killers look like the victims. Censors wanted new ending, as Columbine was a watershed during the time that SCREAM showed.

Stuart: These movies are shown all over the world, they are not violent, they are a catharsis, getting feelings out. Does anyone really think in the Chuckie movies that the doll is a killer? Horror films make horror filmmakers, not audiences.

Tobe: I'd like to see the movie that Alex in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE saw. Liked THE RING, good source material, but sanitized.

Stuart: Liked 28 DAYS LATER.

Wes: I thought a good Horror film was GIGLI!

Rob: Audition.

Eli: CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST.

Tobe: New CHAINSAW, which I haven't seen yet. They are suppose to send it.

Question: What about the violence in horror films?

Eli: Horror films have a tone. CABIN FEVER was a weird film. Humor is a valve to release tension. You either love it or hate it.

Wes: Rape in films is a primal dark thing. It's humiliation, the beginning of the end for the killer?

Stuart: Violence in films refers to political correctness. In Victorian times it was a disease that transformed you. Horror is about your darkest fears, you have to be brave and put it up there.

Tobe: Watergate and gas, politicians towing the political line.

Wes: Politicians began managing the press during the Vietnam era. It was a regular guy who was forced to do horrible things. He can't process it because it so different from his supposed reality. People disconnect because violence is so ugly and protracted.

Eli: You don't remake, you reinvent. The 90's like Victorian time brought us ghost stories, in a repressed sexual society. Every generation creates its own monsters.

Question: What about dating and horror movies?

Eli: Horror movies always get you laid! In the theatre they hang on your arm and cuddle.

Stuart: A man told me he had taken a girl to see one on their first date. She thought he was crazy, but they've been married for 15 years!

Question: What are your next projects?

Tobe: I'm remaking a title Toolbox Murders, an independent with my long time producer Tony.

Wes: CURSED, an aptly named movie about a werewolf in Hollywood. Weinstein and Miramax pulled the plug and I had to go back and rewrite and re-shoot. I'm losing about 70% of previous material.

Stuart: I'm releasing KING OF THE ANTS on a limited basis and getting video distribution together.

Rob: I'm writing a sequel to HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES.

Eli: I'm working with Lions Gate and forming Ray Nerve and a new company to produce low budget horror films.

During the session Eli, who is most comedic, made the audience laugh and Wes even turned to Eli and stated "You are funny!" Some other points from the session: Eli praised Lions Gate for their support in the release of CABIN FEVER; and both Eli and Rob paid homage to Tobe, Stuart and Wes, as they feel they are Masters in training. Rob also stated that he finds filmmaking more fun than touring with his band.

In the afternoon the screenings continued: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and HALLOWEEN were shown. A horror fans delight!

Later still in the evening audiences were treated to a screening of THE HILLS HAVE EYES and the stars sat in the audience laughing at themselves on the screen. After the movie another Q&A session followed with Anthony Ferrante moderating. Wes Craven (writer and director) and cast members Susan Lanier, Virginia Vincent, Michael Berryman and Janus Blythe all participated.


Got a scoop? Know something that you need to tell us about? Send it to us!