The 3rd annual Stanley Film Festival calls it a wrap today. The first year was a modest affair, but in the 2nd year the programmers brought their A-game and branched out to include the Historic Park Theatre and repertory programming that included importing two rare 35mms prints from Europe – one was of Who Can Kill a Child? (Narciso Ibanez Serrador, 1976) and the other was for Kubrick’s uncensored Eyes Wide Shut (1999). This year, attendance has tripled from last year, and the SFF repertory offerings included The Bride of Frankenstein, Diabolique, Repulsion, Shivers, Rocky Horror Picture Show, and a 35mm print of Re-Animator.
I had a chance to sit down and talk with Stuart Gordon, who was in Estes Park to receive the Master of Horror Award being presented by Mick Garris (who directed the made-for-TV versions of The Stand and The Shining, among many other credits). It turns out Stuart Gordon is a big TCM fan, and he specifically singled out for praise the recent guest programming on TCM by William Friedkin. Gordon also made it clear he would relish the opportunity to do some guest-programming for TCM. It was time to talk movies with the man who re-defined H.P. Lovecraft for so many viewers.
PK: What were the movies that you saw as a kid that got you into horror films?
SG: Well, it’s funny, but as a kid I was not allowed to see horror films. It was forbidden fruit, and I snuck out with my brother to see The Tingler, a William Castle movie. So that one will always hold a special place in my heart. That movie scared the crap out of me. I had nightmares for two years after I saw that film.
PK: When you saw it, did it come with any of the…
SG: Yeah, for sure, my seat started moving and I ran out of that movie theater. I never saw the end of it until a few years ago.
PK: What?!
SG: (Laughs) Yeah, and when I saw it, it was at a film festival and Quentin Tarantino was there and we’d gotten to be friends. He was sitting right in front of me, and when the scary stuff started happening I started shaking his chair to give him the full effect.
PK: Did it still move you?
SG: It did! It has sequences in there that are still really, really strong. It’s kind of like a David Cronenberg film before Cronenberg.
PK: Body Horror.
SG: Yeah, it really is. This idea that there’s this organ within your body that expands when you are afraid. And this guy trying to scare his wife, who is a mute and can’t scream – which is the only way to get rid of this thing – and he scares her to death. And that’s the sequence I happened to walk in on when I first saw the movie. In those days you’d simply come and go as you please.
PK: That’s interesting. I was just talking to a colleague who is about to retire who told me how movies for him used to be come-and-go-as-you please affairs, where you walk in whenever, maybe halfway in, an then simply stick around and watch it again from the beginning until the point where you remember walking in.
SG: That’s exactly how it used to be, which is why I happened to walk in during the scariest scene.
PK: How old were you when you first saw The Tingler?
SG: I must have been about 11 or 12.
PK: And where was this?
SG: In Chicago at a theater called the Portage Theater, which is still there. They do horror festivals there. That theater always seemed like a scary theater to me, whenever I walk into the Portage I automatically get scared just being there.
PK: What were some other films that got lodged in your mind?
SG: As I got older a movie that really made an impression on me was Rosemary’s Baby. As a matter of fact when I was getting ready to shoot Re-Animator I watched it again and really started picking up on how Polansky had shot that film. I watched it over and over again to learn how he did it. The thing about Rosemary’s Baby is that it’s an incredibly subjective movie, and you really feel like you are Rosemary.
PK: What were some of the tricks to that, would you say?
SG: What he does a lot is put the camera over the shoulder of Mia Farrow and it’s almost rare to see her (full) face, usually it’s just the side of the face, or right behind her, it’s almost like your looking over her shoulder during the whole movie. There also the famous scene where he kept telling the cameraman further over so that you can’t see the husband’s full body when he’s on the telephone and when the movie was shown the whole audience (at this point Stuart tilts in his chair as if to look around the corner – and laughs).
PK: Did you do some of that in the Re-Animator?
SG: I tried to. The over-the-shoulder shot became a favorite.
PK: So we have The Tingler, Rosemary’s Baby, could you add one more title to your “must-watch” list?
SG: Alien. A great film. That film is very Lovecraftian, I think. I know the writer, Dan O’Bannon, and he wrote it as a movie to be made on a very low-budget. It was originally going to be directed by John Carpenter… Carpenter had done Dark Star with Dan, and the decided they were going to do something a bit bigger… and it was Dan who discovered Giger.
PK: There was a connection there to Jodorowsky’s Dune.
SG: That’s right.
PK: Have you seen that doc (Jodorowsky’s Dune)?
SG: I did. A month ago. It’s great. It really makes you wish they’d made that film.
PK: In terms of films that influenced you I’m surprised you wouldn’t mention Frankenstein.
SG: Oh, Frankenstein is great. As is Bride of Frankenstein, which they’re showing up here. I love that movie. We named one of our characters, Dr. Pretorius, after that in From Beyond. Those were definitely an influence and I’ve always been a big fan. I was just complaining to a friend of mine that they’re (currently) making all these vampire films, why don’t they make a Frankenstein movie? Those were always my favorite, the mad scientist movies.
Big thanks to Stuart Gordon for his time to do this interview. Tune in for my next post when I interview the mad scientists (pictured below) who put together Beyond the Pale: Radio Plays for the Digital Age, where we talk about all the classic horror films that influenced their latest production, and more.
