Joe Dante over Nightmare Cinema en de geschiendenis van Horror Anthology

RDJ134 31 juli 2018 om 17:13 uur

Joe Dante is altijd één van mijn favoriete regisseurs geweest, omdat zijn films en TV werk altijd een hele uniek en soms warme (maar ook verdomd creepy) sfeer hebben. Nu is hij de man achter de nieuwe horror anthology serie Nightmare Cinema, en dat was voor de website Collider een mooie gelegenheid om met deze legendarische man een interview te houden, en daar van kan je hier onder alvast een stukje lezen.


You are someone who knows a thing or two about anthologies. I'm curious, in your opinion, what are the elements that make for a successful horror anthology?

DANTE:
Well you know, they do go back quite a ways. There have been some silent film horror anthologies as well, but the best-known horror anthology is Dead of Night, which was a '45 British movie. Which has the best framing story, in that the guy ... it's a dream that the lead character is having. It's a very famous movie, and it made a lot of money even in America where it was heavily cut. But then they sort of fell out of favor, except for Somerset Maugham kind of movies.

Then the Italians in the late '50s, early '60s kept doing a whole lot of pictures like Stromboli, different stories about men and women. And it didn't really take off until Amicus did Dr. Terror's House of Horrors which was a big hit and solidified their formula of being able to supply a lot of big name stars for very little money because they all worked for only a couple of days. So, when that picture hit it off it lead to Tales from the Crypt and Torture Garden and The House that Dripped Blood and a whole bunch of other films in that genre. There must have been ten or twelve of those pictures and they lasted over a decade or so and it became quite popular.

The knock on anthology shows always is that they're uneven because not all of the stories are of the same interest to different audiences. So you want to have a funny one, you want to have a scary one. Some people like funny, they don't like scary, and vice versa. So, it's a little tricky in that regard. The difficult part is having a frightening story that justifies telling the story. In this case I thought the idea of a haunted movies theater was pretty good peg to hang the stories on.

A lot of times when I talk to directors about anthologies they say that they feel less pressure because there's not a whole budget on their back and...

DANTE
: Also they don't have to carry and entire movie.

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