Fortress Of Solitude: Exclusive Interview

The Curmudgeon talks to horror expert Calum Waddell.

With one award nominated book, (and another on the way), writing for the likes of SFX and Fangoria magazine, travelling to the Cannes festival, appearing on DVD commentaries and documentaries and breaking his acting duck as a priest in The Raven, it’s safe to say that horror aficionado and all round decent bloke Calum Waddell is one busy boy. But is he too busy for an EXCLUSIVE interview with Tbe Curmudgeon? Not a chance. So I invited Calum to The Fortress Of Solitude for a chat and he agreed.

The stupid peasant villagers warned him not to visit The Fortress, crossing themselves at the mere mention of it. I had to.. er, I mean, I had to get my driver to pick him up at the half way point, and then he was in the Fortress hallway, wide-eyed and shivering. We sat at the table and I poured him a drink. None for me, though. I never drink… wine. It gives me gas.

We talked for hours of many things; of movies, of books and interviews and movie stars and, oh yes, Calum revealed to me his deathly fear of…. rabbits.

Join us, won’t you?



What films and directors have made you so passionate about the horror genre?

Well the first horror director whose work I fell in love with was probably Wes Craven. As a child I loved A Nightmare on Elm Street and then Shocker and Deadly Friend - two films I'm sure Wes wishes he hadn't made, although I still think Shocker has its moments. I remember I had to turn off The Hills Have Eyes when I was 12 because it disturbed me so badly. At about 11 I think I became more aware of John Carpenter too - and then I got into George Romero and the special effects work of Tom Savini and Rick Baker, which was down to Fangoria magazine more than anything else. These are the guys that made me fall in love with what a good horror film could achieve. It wasn't until I was 16 or so that I really discovered Dario Argento, Tobe Hooper and Stuart Gordon, although I rate all three filmmakers highly.

So who was YOUR first interview with? And were you nervous?

It was with Jean Rollin, who is a fairly cult name and really obscure to those who don't follow Euro-shock so I wasn't really nervous at all. Although I do remember pouring over the questions at length because I didn't want to fuck up - hahaha! I've never been nervous interviewing anyone to date, I'd have to get a new job if I was!

In your first book, Minds Of Fear, you list 30 Cult Classics of horror. What was the 31st that just didn't make the cut?

Good question. It was actually Jack Hill's Spider Baby but as I'm eventually going to do a book dedicated to his work I decided not to bother putting it in there. I also flirted with Ulli Lommel's The Boogeyman which scared the crap out of me when I first saw it but, although he is now ironically one of my best friends in the industry, I didn't know how to get in touch with him when I was doing Minds of Fear. How times change eh?

You've met and interviewed some pretty big names in the past (a few being Grade-A Fortress Heroes), but if you could meet one icon of cinema, be it an actor, writer or director - who would it be?

I'd love to meet Lauren Bacall because she is the greatest star alive. Listen, she does this little "jig" at the very end of her first film To Have and Have Not. She's not wearing anything revealing, right? I mean this is 1944, okay? And yet she's walking out of this bar in Martinique - the bar that Humphrey Bogart stays in. So she's walking out and she does this little "jig" and I'm fucking telling you that this is the sexiest goddamn thing you've ever seen. Five years after one of the greatest screen debuts ever Bacall had made The Big Sleep and Key Largo - now you tell me someone, who is still with us, who can boast to a career like that? She wasn't even 30 and she had conquered the world man! I'd want to ask her why the hell she worked with Michael Winner though...

Your new book, Taboo Breakers, deals with movies that broke boundaries and caused jaws to drop. Do you think there can still be movies made that cause shock, outrage and controversy - or have we seen it all before?

Yeah there can - look at the fuss over Hostel!! I think that Hostel was a bit smarter than some people gave it credit for, you know? You got this story about these guys who are screwing hot girls and they are total assholes okay? But then half way through Eli Roth goes and has all the guys being tortured. Now answer me this - when Jay Hernandez is tied to that chair and he's puking and screaming and begging for his life - how often do you see that? Horror movies are so commonly about hacking up women, right? And Eli went and totally subverted that, which I thought was really cool because it was refreshing and put the first half of the movie in proper perspective. I saw Wolf Creek which I thought was misogynistic crap - I was outraged by how much that film seemed to be about an outright attack on screaming females whose characters are not fleshed out and exist only be chased and killed. I almost walked out when he snapped that girl's spine - that really offended me. I thought the same about The Lost and H6 - that stupid, pointless Spanish serial killer movie. So I still get shocked! But the movies I've mentioned just shock me because they are so devoid of heart or humanity and when a horror movie loses that you've got nothing left...

You've mentioned before that your next book will be about the works of Jack Hill, (director of the likes of Coffy and Foxy Brown). Did you intentionally choose a relatively less well-known director over the likes of Craven and Carpenter?

Well the definitive book on John Carpenter has been done. It's called The Prince of Darkness: John Carpenter and it's by Gilles Boulenger. I interviewed John when the book came out and my chat with him appeared in an old issue of Dreamwatch, which was pretty cool. I can also make you jealous by telling you that John, Irwin Yablans and the late Moustapha Akkad personally signed my copy too - hahaha! So, anyway, there's no point in anyone - ever - doing another book on Carpenter. I don't know Mr. Boulenger but it's the final word on hs movies and I have no issues at all for vouching for that book, it's really great. Craven has been done too - I'd tell anyone to seek out Screams and Nightmares by Brian Robb and I know that Brian is currently seeking to update it so why retread on old ground? I felt Jack has a legacy that is hugely underappreciated - he introduced African-American stuntmen to the business, he launched Pam Grier who was the first really successful black actress and his work has inspired guys like Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, Rob Zombie and Quentin Tarantino. Plus, Spider Baby was the first "backwoods" horror movie - before Texas ChainSaw and The Rocky Horror Show but all of this is widely ignored, yet here is this amazing legacy in cinema. So that was really my reason for picking Jack - I always wanted to read a book about his movies and no one had ever done one. I think that, outside of his best known work, there's also some great stories in there - Jack worked with Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney in the last days of their careers, apprenticed with Roger Corman, directed Jack Nicholson, discovered Grier, Sid Haig and Ellen Burstyn - how can you not love this story? That's why my book will be called THE MADDEST STORY EVER TOLD. You can expect it in 2007 and it has the full involvement of Jack and the great Sid Haig.

With plot leaks, spoilers and piracy - do you think the internet has damaged cinema?

Downloads HAVE damaged cinema and really piss me off. There is something special about having a DVD in your hands or watching a new movie in the cinema. I just don't get the appeal in downloading, and I have friends who are offenders of this. I almost always refuse to borrow the movies they download - and if it's a new blockbuster I refuse outright, as should anyone. I'm not crying crocodile tears for the rich buggers losing money - I just think film is a medium that should be appreciated properly and seeing a crappy copy of anything doesn't fill me with happiness...


Can you remember the first time a film frightened you?

It was actually Watership Down. I saw it when I was five at the same time my family thought I was ready for An American Werewolf in London, The Evil Dead, Creepshow and such video nasties as Bloody Moon and Night of the Demon - the bigfoot one where a guy is massacred while taking a wee! But none of them had the effect that Watership Down had, which scared me and left me in tears. It is a really harrowing movie and, to this day, I'd sooner put myself through I Spit on your Grave than Watership Down. That this is a PG rated movie which any unsuspecting parent can still give to their child beggars belief.

What decade do you think was the most important for horror films? The pioneering 30's, the shlocky 50's, the franchise inventing 70's or... what?

It was actually the 1960s because you had Psycho, which is the most important horror film ever made, and then you had Night of the Living Dead, which is the second most important horror film ever made. The vast legacy in Italian and Japanese horror really began too - with Mask of Satan (1960) and Onibaba (1964) respectively. On top of that you had the launch of the gore movie with Blood Feast in 1963 and the decade also launched Francis Ford Coppola and Peter Bogdanovich, who began their careers in horror and went on to make some of the most important films of the seventies (Coppola also made three of the greatest films ever in The Godfather 1 and 2 and Apocalypse Now). I also think the trend for modern special effects began with Planet of the Apes - not a horror movie per se but it has shades of the genre and it led to the Academy recognising makeup effects. I know that guys such as Rick Baker, Stan Winston and Phil Tippet admit that Planet of the Apes inspired them - they all personally told me that.

Freddy, Jason, Leatherface, Michael Myers.. once and for all - who is the greatest movie monster?

Freddy obviously - because he speaks and his story actually makes sense. Plus, there's only been a couple of really pisspoor Freddy sequels - the rest are fairly redeemable. The legacies of the other "monsters" don't make any logical sense because they change from sequel to sequel. I thought Jason Goes to Hell was a good attempt to sort the Friday the 13th schtick out but everyone else hated it so what the hell do I know? Of all the monsters, old or otherwise, I like the Karloff Frankenstein series.

Although the horror genre is still very popular, the majority of major hitters nowadays are either remakes of older movies or Westernised takes of Japanese films. Do you think there are any good, original ideas left in Hollywood?

Yeah, I do. I think the studios tend to know what they are doing most of the time but realise that putting out a film is an expensive risk. You can minimise that risk, obviously, with a franchise or a remake of a "name" film. Making movies is just too damn expensive now and with people's jobs on the line I guess the majors need to always tread carefully in regards to what is green lit. But in terms of original horror - Saw, The Devil's Rejects, Hostel, The Descent and The Exorcism of Emily Rose were all pretty big hits and original stories. Now, I didn't like ALL of these films - and each one was certainly derivative - but they were new stories with new characters (although Rejects was a sort-of sequel to House of 1000 Corpses I guess) and showed that there is an audience for new ideas... The reason so many Asian films are being (often badly) remade is because the majority of English speaking audiences still refuse to watch subtitled pictures. This is really baffling to me because the best horror pic of 2006 was The Host and the original Dark Water is umpteen times better than the Dreamworks version.


With remakes in mind, which movie do you think could do with a fresh spin and what beloved classic are you secretly hoping studios won't touch?

I'd like to see a new version of movies that weren't that great first time around but which have the potential to be very scary in the right hands. I think The Burning would be good (and the Weinsteins own it!) or Zombie Flesh Eaters (which could benefit from better acting, a jacked up pace and improved effects). I'd like to see a version of American Psycho which could maintain the books hilarity but stop short of turning Bateman into a complete goon (in the novel he's terrifying). It's tricky though because the book reads like the genuine thoughts of a misogynistic nutter so cutting down the gore might not have been a bad thing... but, yeah, another take would be interesting. I hope they never remake An American Werewolf in London.

Lastly, as this is the Irresponsible Hate Monger's website - the worst horror movie ever. Name it.

Oh man I can't do this! Ha ha ha! There are tons of really boring, badly made low budget titles in my head right now but, you know, making a movie on such a tight budget is really hard and I guess you gotta support that. I would say if someone wants to see how to do it right check out The Collingswood Story which magazines as esteemed as SFX and Empire gave rave reviews to. I'm not just saying that because I'm credited on it either! I can certainly think of one particular Brit horror film from recent years that almost sent me to sleep and is a total waste of tax payer's money - it's utterly AWFUL - but the guy who made it meant well. But I don't want to totally rip it to shreds, you know? However, I have no apologies for criticising when a horror film lapses into brutal, unapologetic misogyny - which I think is utterly offensive. I switched off a film called Nutbag because it was misogynistic trash. I saw bits, just bits, of the director's follow-up film Murder Set Pieces and it was more of the same - naked, pretty women being pointlessly, graphically killed. I don't have any time for that and I hope more fans show good taste by avoiding that sort of thing. Even if a horror movie really bores me or sucks it's when it starts to just go for the blood and boobs route - and portrays a really sickening, regressive attitude towards female sexuality - that I get fed up. It's surprising how the people who makes these movies cry about censorship when the morality behind them is as conservative as the viewpoints of any of the people calling for them to be burnt...

Suddenly – wolves howl. Lightning cracks in the cold night sky and Calum cowers in his seat. It is time for my guest to leave, he has been in my acursed company long enough and I can see him eyeing the door with some genuine urgency. This, however, is The Fortress Of Solitude and I am The Curmudgeon, and so we cannot let our guest leave JUST yet without inflicting some suitable form of torment. And as he is a horror expert, what better way than to subject him to the most mind-bending, horrific abomonation ever…? Cue the frightened bunnies!

“Briiiight Eyes….”


Minds Of Fear can be bought here

Taboo Breakers is released by Telos Publishing in mid 2007.

The Maddest Story Ever Told: The Films Of Jack Hill is released in 2007, date to be announced.

The Raven can be bought here

And you can also buy The Collingswood Story (Calum Waddell - Associate Producer) here