The Anatomy of Fear

By Chris Vander Kaay and Kathleen Fernandez- Vander Kaay

During in-depth conversations with 21 horror and science-fiction film writers and directors, filmmakers Chris and Kathleen Vander Kaay uncover a surprisingly honest appraisal of the human psyche, along with the inside story on the inspiration, creation, and behind-the-scenes experiences of box office blockbusters. Horror movies have a shady reputation because of their flaws and eccentricities. Horror wants us to laugh when we’re uncomfortable, keep looking when we want to turn away, and live with a total lack of happy endings. Perhaps that’s why we respect these films as a subculture. And because no one expects horror films to toe the line, they get to flirt with madness and imperfection while making the most interesting, controversial observations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NorLights Press
• Release date: Aug 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781935254980

Chris Vander Kaay

Chris Vander Kaay & Kathleen Fernandez-Vander Kaay are a husband and wife writing team who agree on almost everything except whether or not 28 Days Later should be considered a zombie movie. They’ve written television pilots and award-winning short films, and their first feature film premiered on cable television in 2014. Though their career has been focused primarily on nonfiction work with the Deseret News and the website Bloody Good Horror, they have also been recognized for their fiction and poetry. After years devoted to interviews, podcasts, and articles in which they championed the idea that the horror film genre should be taken seriously, they hope the idea is finally catching on. You can follow them at their blog, inthemargin.net.

Book preview

The Anatomy of Fear

Conversations with Cult Horror and Science Fiction Film Creators

Chris Vander Kaay & Kathleen Fernandez-Vander Kaay

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The Anatomy of Fear

Chris Vander Kaay & Kathleen Fernandez-Vander Kaay

Published by NorLightsPress at Smashwords

Copyright 2014 Chris Vander Kaay & Kathleen Fernandez-Vander Kaay

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Featuring Interviews with . . .

John Bruno - Jeff Burr - Stephen Chiodo - Thom Eberhardt - Larry Fessenden - Alec Gillis - Tom Holland - Eric Luke - William Malone - Jim Mickle - Glen Morgan - Lance Mungia - William F. Nolan - J.T. Petty - Eric Red - Eduardo Sanchez - Jack Sholder - George Sluizer - Ethan Wiley - S. S. Wilson - William Wisher

Filmmakers of . . .

Virus - Bear - House - Tremors - Terminator - Altered - The Blair Witch Project - The Hidden - Alone in the Dark - A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge - Six-String Samurai - Logan’s Run - S&Man - Soft for Digging - Near Dark - The Burrowers - Mulberry Street - Willard - House on Haunted Hill - Leatherface: the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3- Black Christmas - Killer Klowns from Outer Space - Night of the Comet - Stakeland - The Vanishing - Trilogy of Terror - Explorers - Final Destination - Habit - Wendigo - No Telling - The Last Winter - Fright Night - Psycho 2 - Child’s Play

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Endorsements

A fascinating and compelling look at the creative process of the filmmakers who are pioneering the horror genre into new and uncharted territory.

—Wade Major, Film Critic KPCC-FM (NPR) and producer/host, IGN DigiGods

Far from presenting a dry and academic study of horror cinema, The Anatomy of Fear instead comes across like an ongoing conversation with all the horror and thriller writers and directors you’d most love to meet. It’s fascinating to read the back-and-forth, to follow the journey of thought between interviewers and interviewees both, to watch as ideas are explored and teased out (often revealing, in the process, the true inspirations for certain movies, as well as alternate scenes that were never filmed, or different directions that classic films could have gone), to see the filmmakers pause and linger on some aspect of terror they might never before have noticed, even in their own work. The breadth of this collection of interviews, too, is impressive, certain to satisfy fans of Alien and Killer Klowns From Outer Space alike, Fright Night and Stakeland, The Blair Witch Project and the Explorers, Hitchcock and Craven, Robert Englund and Bela Lugosi. Most important, this is a book that will make you feel part of the conversation, that will beg you to participate and ask your own questions.

—Nathan Holic, author of

The Things I Don’t See (Main Street Rag Publishing)

The Anatomy of Fear is essential reading for every horror movie buff. It has the inside scoop from the brainy authors behind the best cult flicks from the last forty years. Most importantly it asks: What are we afraid of, and why?"

—Sarah Langan

Three-time Bram Stoker Award-winning horror novelist

Social critics and analysts of borderline personality disorder who read The Anatomy of Fear may rethink their assumptions that we of the Horror Fraternity are weird, maladjusted folks who dine only on fast food and marry our cousins.

Everyone who reads this compendium will learn that horror films are made by incredibly creative artists who, just like us, looked under their beds every night until they were thirteen. There is great relief to be found hiding under a movie seat in the dark with 200 other fans.

Enjoy The Anatomy of Fear, and then walk tall. Be grateful your life is at least better than the victims in these pages.

—Victor Miller, Author of Friday the 13th original screenplay

Winner of three Emmys and four Writers’ Guild of America Awards

Author of eleven published books, plus nine Kojak novelizations

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Dedicated to

William and Darlene Fernandez

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Acknowledgements

The Authors Wish To Express Their Gratitude To:

Glen Morgan, for getting it started;

Sammie and Dee Justesen, for getting it finished;

Wade Major, for showing us how to navigate this industry with dignity;

Kelly and Bill Cline, Kim and Phil Lutes, Kris Cernuto, Lisa and Bill Fernandez, and Aunt Sue, for all of their love and encouragement;

Sarah Hultgreen and Renee Meyers, for their support; and

James Huber and Brett Jepsen, for their faith, which helped strengthen ours.

We love you all.

A Special Thanks to all the filmmakers featured in this book; you trusted us with your stories and images, and we’re grateful for the time you devoted to helping us make this a reality.

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Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter 1. Formative Film Memories

Chapter 2. Real-Life Fears

Chapter 3. Vampires

Chapter 4. Not of This World

Chapter 5. Monsters

Chapter 6. Visions of the Future

Chapter 7. Adaptations

Chapter 8. Science and Technology Gone Wrong

Chapter 9. Fighting for Dominance: Man versus Nature

Chapter 10. Genre Hybrids

Chapter 11. Remakes and Sequels

Chapter 12. Strange but True: Found Footage Horror

Chapter 13. Ghosts, Demons, and the Supernatural

Chapter 14. The Philosophy of Effects

Chapter 15. Nightmares on the Set

About the Authors

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Interview Index

John Bruno

Chapter Eight: Science and Technology Gone Wrong (Virus)

Chapter Fourteen: The Philosophy of Effects

Chapter Fifteen: Nightmares on the Set

Jeff burr

Chapter Eleven: Remakes and Sequels (Leatherface: the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3)

Chapter Fifteen: Nightmares on the Set

stephen chiodo

Chapter Four: Not of This World (Killer Klowns from Outer Space)

thom eberhardt

Chapter Ten: Genre Hybrids (Night of the Comet)

larry Fessenden

Chapter Two: Real-Life Fears

Chapter Three: Vampires (Habit)

Chapter Five: Monsters (Wendigo)

Chapter Eight: Science and Technology Gone Wrong (No Telling)

Chapter Nine: Fighting for Dominance: Man versus Nature (The Last Winter)

alec Gillis

Chapter Fourteen: The Philosophy of Effects

tom holland

Chapter Three: Vampires (Fright Night)

Chapter Eleven: Remakes and Sequels (Psycho 2)

Chapter Thirteen: Ghosts Demons and the Supernatural (Child’s Play)

eric luke

Chapter One: Formative Film Memories

Chapter Four: Not of This World (Explorers)

william malone

Chapter Eleven: Remakes and Sequels (House on Haunted Hill)

jim mickle

Chapter Three: Vampires (Stakeland)

Chapter Five: Monsters (Mulberry Street)

Chapter Fifteen: Nightmares on the Set

glen morgan

Chapter One: Formative Film Memories

Chapter Nine: Fighting for Dominance: Man versus Nature (Willard)

Chapter Eleven: Remakes and Sequels (Black Christmas)

Chapter Thirteen: Ghosts Demons and the Supernatural (Final Destination 1 & 3)

lance mungia

Chapter One: Formative Film Memories

Chapter Six: Visions of the Future (Six-String Samurai)

william f. nolan

Chapter Six: Visions of the Future (Logan’s Run)

Chapter Seven: Adaptations (Trilogy of Terror 1 & 2)

Chapter Fifteen: Nightmares on the Set

j.t. petty

Chapter Ten: Genre Hybrids (The Burrowers)

Chapter Twelve: Strange but True: Found Footage Horror (S&Man)

Chapter Thirteen: Ghosts Demons and the Supernatural (Soft for Digging)

eric red

Chapter One: Formative Film Memories

Chapter Three: Vampires (Near Dark)

Chapter Ten: Genre Hybrids (The Hitcher)

Eduardo sanchez

Chapter One: Formative Film Memories

Chapter Four: Not of This World (Altered)

Chapter Twelve: Strange but True: Found Footage Horror (The Blair Witch Project)

Chapter Fifteen: Nightmares on the Set

jack sholder

Chapter Two: Real-Life Fears

Chapter Four: Not of This World (The Hidden)

Chapter Eight: Science and Technology Gone Wrong (Alone in the Dark)

Chapter Eleven: Remakes and Sequels (A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge)

george sluizer

Chapter Seven: Adaptations (The Vanishing)

ethan wiley

Chapter Two: Real-Life Fears

Chapter Nine: Fighting for Dominance: Man versus Nature (Bear)

Chapter Thirteen: Ghosts Demons and the Supernatural (House & House 2: the Second Story)

Chapter Fifteen: Nightmares on the Set

s.s. wilson

Chapter One: Formative Film Memories

Chapter Five: Monsters (Tremors)

Chapter Fifteen: Nightmares on the Set

Willam wisher

Chapter Six: Visions of the Future (Terminator 1 & 2)

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Foreword

What on earth made you pick up this book and decide it’s worth your time and effort?

Are you a dyed in the wool (perhaps splatter-brained might be a better description) fan of all things horror? Perhaps you’re a Goth rock fan—a grown up child whose first Halloween or Day of the Dead costume was a pillowcase with two eyeholes. Are you thrilled to join an audience of like-minded people who could barely stand it when the dead husband in the original Diabolique rose up in the tub full of water? Is adrenaline your favorite drug of choice?

Or perhaps you’re a thoughtful student of human behavior who wonders why our collective unconscious leads otherwise compassionate audiences to adore Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolfman, Dr. Caligari, Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, or Jason Voorhees and his tragic mother. You wonder what people are thinking when they pay good money to cringe at horrific films like Funny Games.

Do horror films make sane people insane, or do they make us feel safer and saner because we haven’t had a hunting arrow come up through our mattresses—ever? Perhaps some of you get off on cheering for the completely misunderstood villain, taking a breather from the socially enforced roles of nice guy and nice girl.

Whether you’re a student of cultural norms, a film critic whose guilty pleasure after a diet of Luis Bunuel, Italian Neo-realism, and Grapes of Wrath is the original Evil Dead, or a grown up kid whose introduction to dark cinema was Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, this is the book for you.

If you consider yourself an aficionado of gore, then The Anatomy of Fear is your hunting guide. Just as the best chefs in the world love reading about food, your hunger for this genre will be made sharper, your horror taste buds will be educated, and your Netflix Queue will stretch from here to Transylvania. You will never again have to feel guilty for loving these films.

Social critics and analysts of borderline personality disorder who read The Anatomy of Fear may rethink their assumptions that we of the Horror Fraternity are weird, maladjusted folks who dine only on fast food and marry our cousins.

Everyone who reads this compendium will learn that horror films are made by incredibly creative artists who, just like us, looked under their beds every night until they were thirteen. There is great relief to be found hiding under a movie seat in the dark with 200 other fans.

Enjoy The Anatomy of Fear, and then walk tall. Be grateful your life is at least better than the victims in these pages.

Victor Miller

Author of Friday the 13th original screenplay

Winner of three Emmys and four Writers’ Guild of America Awards

Author of eleven published books, plus nine Kojak novelizations

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Introduction

Marilyn Monroe said, Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius, and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring. Perhaps that’s why people love horror movies–they delight us with a little madness, a touch of genius, and plenty of imperfection.

These films have a shady reputation because of their flaws and eccentricities; in the neighborhood of film, horror lives in the rundown apartment complex everyone thinks is a crack house. Horror wants us to laugh when we’re uncomfortable, keep looking when we want to turn away, and live with a total lack of happy endings. And perhaps that’s why we respect them as a subculture. Like the disciplinarian parent who makes you eat vegetables, horror makes us think about important things that make us uncomfortable. And because no one expects horror films to toe the line, they get to flirt with madness and imperfection while making the most interesting, controversial observations.

That’s why this book exists. Part of the subject matter in horror film is blunt and graphic and doesn’t need further illumination; other parts are brave, transgressive, explorative, and restless. In examining them, a surprisingly honest appraisal of the human psyche begins to emerge.

The films discussed in this book were not chosen because of their box-office success, cult popularity, or the number of critics who sing their praises. They made the cut for this book because, quite simply, they’re worth talking about. All the films, and the discussions with films’ makers, have something to say about society, religion, sex, death, and the universal fears that connect us to each other in a fundamental way that no language or common interest ever could.

This book is not about the films, exactly; it’s about the conversations those films create. Anyone who loves cinema in any form or genre knows the feeling of excitement that comes with experiencing a great film; the anticipation of discussing it with other like-minded people, of adding to a great conversation started by a talented filmmaker.

Our hope for this book is that it will continue that conversation with new generations of film fans, well past the time when the movie played on theater screens; and that it will influence people’s opinions of why films are made, what they’re saying, and why they’re such an important medium in modern society. And, because we wouldn’t want you to get bored with fancy speeches and artistic intent, we discuss the blood and guts as well. After all, that’s probably why you’re holding this book.

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Chapter One

Formative Film Memories

In 1952, film director Vincente Minnelli, hot off of his directing work on the multiple Academy Award-winning musical An American in Paris, began making a movie about an insider’s view of Hollywood called The Bad and the Beautiful. A dark and cynical look at a manipulative producer who used a director, a writer, and a young actress to make his own way in the movie business, the film was itself the recipient of five Academy Awards and another nomination for the stunningly charismatic performance of the heartless producer Jonathan Shields, by Kirk Douglas.

In the opening passages chronicling his early career, producer Jonathan Shields and his director are working in a poverty row studio attempting to make a decent film out of a terrible exploitation concept called Doom of the Cat Men. In order to avoid having to use men in big, musty, threadbare costumes, Shields and his director envision a film where the monster is unseen, hinting at them only in shadow and sound. As a result of this innovation, the film is a success, and launches the career of Jonathan Shields.

If the creation of Doom of the Cat Men sounds familiar, that’s because it is essentially the story of the real-life film Cat People, directed by Jacques Tourneur and produced by famed horror producer Val Lewton, known for such horror classics as I Walked with a Zombie and The Body Snatcher. So why would a big-budget, Academy Award winning prestige picture with huge marquee names and one of Hollywood’s most celebrated directors, spend much of its first act discussing how low-budget horror films are made?

In an early interview for this book with Glen Morgan, a writer from The X-Files who went on with his writing partner James Wong to create Final Destination and direct the remakes of Willard and Black Christmas, he discussed his early film memories. That tiny bit of conversation was the driving force behind creating this chapter.

GLEN MORGAN: I grew up in Syracuse, New York, and on Saturdays they had a thing there called Monster Movie Matinee. That’s where I had my introduction to all the Universal horror movies. I still love them; I push them on my kids. You know, that whole Saturday morning host thing, where he had dry ice foaming out of some big goblet in the middle of the set, and he would introduce the movies. Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolf Man; even the Abbott and Costello meet the monsters movies.

AOF: It’s interesting you mention Abbott and Costello meeting the monsters, because I’ve noticed in a lot of your work there’s a thread of dark humor along with the horror. I wonder if maybe that was the formative place where it began in your mind.

GLEN MORGAN: I don’t know, I never connected that. I know with some things you’re conscious that you’re doing it, and other things you just do without realizing it. My brother (Darin Morgan, The X-Files writer and producer) does that, too. So maybe there’s something in the family.

AOF: That’s the reason I like talking to the filmmakers themselves, because I get tired of reading books where people intuit things into a filmmaker’s work, and don’t ever actually ask the creators it if it was their intent. I’m always interested in finding out what was conscious and what was subconscious. Speaking of subconscious, I also wonder if the creators working in horror film have real-life fears. And if they do, are those fears (heights, enclosed spaces, etc.) as scary in films as in real life?

GLEN MORGAN: I can only speak for me, but yes. Whatever scares me, I’m trying to put that on paper and get it to film. I worked on the television show The River, and we were in the writer’s room, and I said, Here’s what bothers me about a snake. Because I’m not interested in talking about myself, but I do think your experiences and feelings about something can make it scarier. If you can include what scares you, instead of trying to figure out what might be scary, it seems to connect with other people. I’m always amazed when I hear people say that about a particular episode of The X-Files or something, because I always assume it’s just my own thing.

AOF: Well, I think it was Hitchcock who said The best way to be universal is to be incredibly specific.

GLEN MORGAN: Right. And I don’t know if Hitchcock is making up stories or whatever, but that story he used to tell about being locked in a prison cell? His dad took him down to the police station when he was misbehaving, and had a policeman scold him and lock him in a cell. I don’t know if Hitchcock made that up or blew it out of proportion, but when you look at his films you can see that little boy who was locked up coming through, still scared of being accused of something.

AOF: It’s telling that he made that statement, because I think he’s one of those filmmakers who didn’t consciously recognize how he revisited themes over and over. He definitely had a few key psychological beats he often hit.

GLEN MORGAN: Absolutely.

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ERIC RED

Eric Red is a writer and director whose work is known for dark subject matter and gritty realism. His first feature screenplay, The Hitcher, was a brilliant horror-suspense film with a frightening lead performance by Rutger Hauer. He quickly followed it up with Near Dark, a western vampire tale co-written with Kathryn Bigelow. He continued to work in the genre, with notable entries ranging from Body Parts to Bad Moon, and he even reworked the ghost story for a new technological age in 100 Feet.

ERIC RED: There were two primary films of influence to me, both of which I saw at a young age. Psycho and The Exorcist were the two pictures that scared me badly, but in that good way. They were the most frightening experiences of my life. My mother and grandmother took me to Psycho when I was nine years old. I don’t think they knew what kind of picture it was, but that movie, with the shower scene and the scene where they turned Mrs. Bates around, they made a strong impression on me. I saw The Exorcist when I was a teenager, and it is still the scariest movie I’ve ever seen. With that one, it was the sense of reality to the whole thing, even though it was about possession. The characters, the setting, and the editing, were so effective. This was the most influential film of any on my work, because of the great suspension of disbelief. I try to make my work seem as grounded and realistic as possible, and I think The Exorcist is a great example of realism. I can’t imagine a movie like that even being made today, with stuff like the crucifix scene. The fact that entire scene played in broad daylight makes it even more terrifying, because of the boldness of the transgression.

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Eduardo Sanchez

Eduardo Sanchez was a film student two years out of his UCF film degree when he and his filmmaker friend Daniel Myrick decided to make a low-budget fake documentary called The Blair Witch Project. The film went on to make over $140 million in the U.S. alone, and was the most successful independent film for years to come. He followed The Blair Witch Project with a dark science-fiction siege film called Altered, and an Asian-inspired ghost story in Seventh Moon.

EDUARDO SANCHEZ: Dan Myrick and I have always said we were never big fans of horror film. I mean, I like horror films, but I don’t have any particular favorite genre. I pretty much like anything good, from documentaries to romantic comedies. But The Blair Witch Project was the easiest thing to make; it made the most sense and that’s why we did it. That’s funny, because we weren’t horror guys before, and now we definitely are. If you asked anyone who went to film school with us, they wouldn’t say we were horror aficionados. But the first horror film that made a real impact on me was The Exorcist. It really scared the crap out of me. To me, it’s the scariest narrative film ever made, for sure.

Other things really scared me when I was a kid, TV shows like In Search Of. It still creeps me out when I see the old ones. Really, any of those old Bigfoot documentaries they used to play on TV. The Patterson footage of the Bigfoot walking; that single shot, to me, is what terror is made of, it’s the scariest thing in my life.

There are other movies as well: The Shining, The Amityville Horror, Jaws; but The Exorcist was a film that scared me so much it wasn’t even fun. I saw the anniversary version in the theater and found myself wondering why the hell I went to see it again, because it still terrifies me. There’s something inherently wrong about that movie.

The thing that led to The Blair Witch Project more directly, though, would have been films like In Search Of, and documentaries like Chariots of the Gods or Looking for Noah’s Ark, fake documentaries set up as reality. I remember as a kid, probably younger than seven or eight years old, just knowing a Bigfoot documentary was on channel 9 (in the days when there were like six channels), and it was up against Battle of the Network Stars on another channel, and I had to switch back to Battle of the Network Stars every once in a while to calm myself because the documentary freaked me out so much. For months, when I went into the shower I was scared to wash my face because I didn’t want to close my eyes. I was sure Bigfoot would be staring in the tiny window of the shower while I couldn’t see. I think that kind of visceral fear is what truly led to The Blair Witch Project and the idea that we could create something that touches on the primal fear we had when we were kids.

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Eric Luke

Eric Luke is known for his television writing work, from the Not Quite Human TV movies to the five-part premiere of the Disney series Gargoyles, as well as comic writing work on Wonder Woman and Ghost, and his fascinating meta-audiobook experiment Interference. But the work for which he will probably be most well-remembered is scripting the classic 1980s children’s science-fiction adventure film Explorers.

ERIC LUKE: The first movie I ever saw was The Red Balloon, the short French film. There’s basically no dialogue in this film, and the one twist of reality is a balloon that becomes intelligent. Based on that one simple concept, the movie turns into a wonderful fantasy. That was powerful for me and is one of the first images I can remember. The Red Balloon opened my mind to what film can do, and how powerful it can be. At the end of that film, the balloon dies, and all the balloons from all over Paris come to console the little boy, and they lift him up into the air, so he flies away at the end. It’s a wonderful, classic film.

AOF: I wouldn’t say there’s necessarily a direct story influence from this to Explorers, but it seems to me certain thematic elements in Explorers were also in The Red Balloon.

ERIC LUKE: Absolutely. Leaving the Earth and escaping, being taken out of your everyday life, and some kind of wish fulfillment. I never thought about this, but thanks for pointing that out. Of course, they never showed what happened when the boy left the Earth; they left it up to the imagination.

The other early memory I had was Wizard of OZ, and being scared to death by the witch. So much that I couldn’t continue watching. I was so little that I had to leave the room because I couldn’t deal with a concept I didn’t understand: that she was omniscient. Even in OZ, she was showing Dorothy images from Kansas. So she transcended the reality of Dorothy’s fantasy, and was aware of the movie, in a meta way. In kind of a post-modern way. It’s a weird moment for her to show her Aunt Em in her fantasy. That was powerful to a child, absolutely.

AOF: That’s another interesting connection between the Wizard of OZ and Explorers: the element of the dream world being incredibly important to where and how the characters move forward.

ERIC LUKE: True. When my characters meet the aliens, the aliens show them images they considered mundane in their own world, but these images become exciting and important in the world outside their everyday reality.

AOF: Sometimes disparate concepts that don’t seem to be connected actually are, subconsciously; you find some filmmakers unknowingly revisit themes that were present in the films that influenced them when they were growing up

ERIC LUKE: Yeah. It’s always nice to see that continuity and become aware of it. It’s kind of exciting. In the moment, you just explore what seems vital to you in some creative sense, and you don’t always know why things are speaking to you. You can intellectually convince yourself of reasons a concept should be exciting, but sometimes you don’t feel it in your gut, and sometimes you do. It hadn’t occurred to me before where those came from, but these childhood themes are usually the best ideas to explore.

Often, a young filmmaker’s first experience with film is the discovery of horror and science fiction film as a giant playground where grown-ups create endless fantasy and escape. Though all filmmakers find their own subject matter to explore in their own personal way, most would confess to first falling in love with the idea that a film, when completed and projected, is the only place where we can externally experience a fantastical world. Stage plays contain so much artifice, with clearly fake sets and costumes, that an audience invests more in the emotion than the locale. Books place the burden of actual creation on the readers themselves, and each reader’s fantasy world is different. But horror and science-fiction (including fantasy) films are places where everyone can access a shared fantasy world, to the same degree. That amazing discovery is often the most important revelation for a young creator.

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S.S. Wilson

S.S. Wilson worked his way up from creating educational films to co-writing the script for the classic 1980’s science-fiction comedy Short Circuit. He and his writing partner Brent Maddock also worked on *batteries not included, and are one of the only writing teams to work on every single installment of a film franchise, the Tremors films and subsequent television series.

S.S. WILSON: The first movie I ever remember seeing, which I called The Monster That Ate the Roller Coaster as a kid, was actually The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, a Ray Harryhausen picture. It combined two of my favorite things: dinosaurs and roller coasters, and you can’t get better than that. I was five or six when it came out, but my dad was good about taking me to stuff, and that is the first movie I remember. It stayed with me, and Harryhausen films in particular stood out because of the unusual nature of the creatures. They were completely inexplicable back when I was growing up in the late 50s and early 60s. Other people were obviously filming regular lizards with fins glued on them or something like that, but Ray’s stuff was unfathomable. And then later, my uncle told me how it was done. He was a projectionist in a theater in Oklahoma and knew a fair amount about film. He said Here’s how animation works, and explained it to me. I was blown away. That led to me getting involved with animation, and my career in animation led to screenwriting.

Occasionally, a precocious young viewer recognizes the potential of horror and science-fiction films to speak about things other genres cannot directly embrace. Even as a child, we can feel sympathy for E.T., but only a few observant children discern that Elliot’s struggle against the faceless government organization can be read as an indictment of American military overreach, or that E.T.’s death and resurrection can be seen as a spiritual allegory for the story of Jesus. When the hidden world of subtext and symbolism meets the limitless imagination of a child, the result can be an exhilarating experience, and a riveting story.

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Lance Mungia

Lance Mungia broke into cult recognition when his science-fiction action-comedy-musical Six-String Samurai debuted at the Sundance Film Festival. A high-energy, high-concept movie with enough wild elements to put a David Lynch film to shame, Six-String Samurai thrust Lance into the business as a music video director, and won him the directing job on the fourth film in the martial-arts action franchise The Crow.

LANCE MUNGIA: When I was a kid, Star Wars was just coming out, but I wasn’t allowed to see it because my parents didn’t know what it was, and they were afraid it would give me nightmares. But the simple clips I saw on commercials and ads led me to become fascinated with the concept of science fiction, space, and movies. This was unlike anything I’d ever seen before.

The first time I actually saw Star Wars, I was standing in a Macy’s or something, back when Beta tapes first came out. They were playing the Beta of Star Wars, and I stood and watched an hour of it, totally enthralled. I didn’t see it in the theater, so The Empire Strikes Back was the first full Star Wars movie I viewed. Those first moments when stars filled the screen and gave you that immense feeling of space opened up a whole new world of imagination for me as a kid. That, combined with a love of things like Twilight Zone and The Wizard of Oz, was a big influence for Six-String Samurai. I was always enamored with The Twilight Zone in particular, both from a horror and science fiction perspective, because the series took simple situations and stories and made them metaphors for something much bigger. Even as a kid, I understood that. I could watch something like Monsters Are Due on Maple Street (a classic episode of Twilight Zone), and see something that addressed racism and communism and things in our culture as much as it addressed space aliens. As with Star Wars, it was about deep human things as well as grandiose sci-fi ideas. The message was balanced, plus it had a griminess and realness to it as well. That type of science fiction is what I always responded to: something that had a core and a soul.

AOF: Star Wars was a paradigm shift in the kind of films you’re talking about, in that before Star Wars, movies like 2001: A Space