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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on

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Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and welcome back to Coast to Coast George

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Speaker 1: nor with you, Chris Alexander back with us? Who's on

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Speaker 1: with me? About three years ago? Canadian based in A

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Speaker 1: nationally published writer, editor, composer, filmmaker. He has served as

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Speaker 1: the editor in chief of the legendary horror film magazine Vangoria.

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Speaker 1: Is the current editor and co founder of Full Moon

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Speaker 1: Entertainment's cult film magazine Delirium. Filmmaker. He has directed such

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Speaker 1: horror films as as Blood for Arena, Queen of Blood,

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Speaker 1: Girl with a Straight Razor, Space Vampire in the Cropolis, Legion,

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Speaker 1: and Welcome back Chris, looking forward to this. We need

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Speaker 1: some fun tonight, Yes, And what is more fun than death, dismemberment,

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Speaker 1: sex and blood. Oh God, let's do a Georgia. It's

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Speaker 1: a pleasure and an honor to return. It's good. How

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Speaker 1: did you get involved in all of this, Chris? Well,

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Speaker 1: it's you know, I think for all of us, it's

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Speaker 1: a secret handshake, those of us who live and die

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Speaker 1: by the sort of horror I mean. But it comes

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Speaker 1: from some sort of primordial connection we have to this stuff,

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Speaker 1: and and for me it was I remember vividly the

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Speaker 1: first time I was exposed to what I would later

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Speaker 1: learn to be a nineteen sixty sixth movie called The

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Speaker 1: She Beast starring Barbarous Steel, but I didn't know that

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Speaker 1: at the time. I was three years old, and all

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Speaker 1: I saw on a mattin a I think coming out

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Speaker 1: of Buffalo, New York, a channel I got in Toronto

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Speaker 1: via the Rabbit Ears was a witch being dunked into

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Speaker 1: the water and screaming every time she emerged. And again

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Speaker 1: I couldn't articulate to how I felt about what I

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Speaker 1: was seeing. I felt it somewhere deep in my guts

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Speaker 1: and it terrified me. And from that moment on I

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Speaker 1: was kind of obsessed with the arcane, the ugly, the monstrous,

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Speaker 1: the freakish when it came to the arts. And then

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Speaker 1: later on I saw I remember when I was four

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Speaker 1: years old, I saw Philip Coffin's remake of Invasion of

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Speaker 1: the Body Snatchers, and I remember Donald Sutherland crushing his

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Speaker 1: own a classic Replications skull with you know, with the

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Speaker 1: featal heartbeat on the soundtrack, and again it just it

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Speaker 1: hits you in a kind of way that bypasses your

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Speaker 1: intellect and it hits you right in the kind of

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Speaker 1: Foudian it before you knew what a Foydian it was.

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Speaker 1: And from that moment on, I kind of made it

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Speaker 1: my life's mission to know and see all I could

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Speaker 1: see and know about the genre. I'm happy to say

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Speaker 1: I'm somewhat of an efficionado of it today and I

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Speaker 1: literally have made it my life's work. I feed my

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Speaker 1: family by knowing a lot about horror movies. So what

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Speaker 1: are the demographics of horror films? Is that skew younger

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Speaker 1: or all ages like it? It's you know, here's the

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Speaker 1: thing about horror, is that what is it? I mean

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Speaker 1: it taps, It's It's an entertainment that kind of safely

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Speaker 1: benign lee taps and zoom shared anxiety that we all

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Speaker 1: have and that knows no age and knows no nationality,

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Speaker 1: knows no demographic. I think. I think if we're talking

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Speaker 1: about your generic Friday night scare movie, I mean this

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Speaker 1: excused towards teenagers, obviously young people, because well, we're young.

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Speaker 1: We're kind of in a bubble. We're sheltered from the

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Speaker 1: fact that everything is finite and that we're going to die.

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Speaker 1: And when we discover these kind of movies, it's like

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Speaker 1: discovering rock and roll. It's something that mom and Dad

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Speaker 1: don't want you to know, don't want you to see,

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Speaker 1: and there's a little element of rebellion there, and it

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Speaker 1: is tied in, obviously with another base elements sex. So

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Speaker 1: where we kind of discover this stuff very young, and

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Speaker 1: I think as we age, what scares us changes And

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Speaker 1: I think I'd be willing to bet there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of horror fans out there that don't even know that

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Speaker 1: they're horror fans. They're responding differently to different kinds of

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Speaker 1: entertainments that do the exact same thing that you know,

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Speaker 1: Friday the thirteenth does to an eighteen year old on

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Speaker 1: a date on a Friday night. What is it about

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Speaker 1: horror films, Chris that people enjoy getting the living daylight

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Speaker 1: scared out of them? Well, that's again, that's it's it's

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Speaker 1: a complex question. But I think, as I mentioned that,

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Speaker 1: at the end of the day, you know, we're all

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Speaker 1: on the same path, and unfortunately that pass has an end,

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Speaker 1: and I think society does a great job in trying

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Speaker 1: to make us forget that we're going to die and

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Speaker 1: so we feel when we really start to think about

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Speaker 1: it and we stare off into the cosmos and we're like, yikes,

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Speaker 1: what's out there. I mean, that's why people listen to

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Speaker 1: this show. It's the same reason we want to know

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Speaker 1: what's beyond the pale, what's beyond the door, and what

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Speaker 1: horror films do in a very kind of again safely packaged,

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Speaker 1: benign way, is to give us a sense of kind

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Speaker 1: of control over mortality. We can leave that dark in

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Speaker 1: theater after seeing the most explicit atrocities, after having our

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Speaker 1: spines shaken, and when the lights come up, we're alive,

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Speaker 1: and there's a sense of empowerment and survival that we've

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Speaker 1: come through this stuff and if we can come through that,

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Speaker 1: then maybe we can come through anything, you know. So

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Speaker 1: there is that kind of attraction to mastering the unknown,

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Speaker 1: and I think it's been with us since Caveman could

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Speaker 1: scribble on walls and scare the little kids around the campfires.

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Speaker 1: My father used to bring me to see Japanese horror

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Speaker 1: films after World War Two. Of course, when the Japanese

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Speaker 1: were nuked during World War two. After the war, they

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Speaker 1: came up with you know, Godzilla, the mysterians, you know,

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Speaker 1: space movies and all these other strange movies. And I

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Speaker 1: think the nuclear bombing had a effect on the Japanese filmmakers,

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Speaker 1: didn't it. Well, Godzilla is I mean that's explicitly if

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Speaker 1: you especially if you watch the you know, Godzilla's actually

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Speaker 1: the real the Americans called him Godzilla. He's a mutation, right, Yeah.

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Speaker 1: But his name is Gojira. I mean that's the Japanese

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Speaker 1: movie Gojia, which means I think it translates directly to

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Speaker 1: terrible whale, which is very strange. That ain't no whale.

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Speaker 1: But anyways, he's woken up by nuclear testing. I mean,

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Speaker 1: that's that's what wakes Godzilla up. And so he was

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Speaker 1: a direct response to bombings in Hiroshima. I mean, that's

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Speaker 1: that's what Godzilla is, uh, and obviously hugely popular and gave,

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Speaker 1: as you say, gave birth to an entire wave of

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Speaker 1: of freakish Japanese mutant radiated monster movies. What since you've

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Speaker 1: been looking at horror films and things like that, what

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Speaker 1: is your opinion, Chris on Hollywood over the years, How

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Speaker 1: have they made this transition with horror films? Hollywood has

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Speaker 1: been I mean Hollywood has obviously watered down a lot

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Speaker 1: of you know, the horror comes from the underground, It

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Speaker 1: comes from the independent world, It comes from the fringe. Yes,

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Speaker 1: And anytime it locks there's any moderate success in the mainstream,

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Speaker 1: every suit and his brother is going to try and

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Speaker 1: jump on that and try to package it to the masses.

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Speaker 1: And so we can we can be cynical and rate

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Speaker 1: curl ore up a little bit as to what Hollywood

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Speaker 1: does to horror films. But I mean, there's there's no

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Speaker 1: crime in making things popular and getting you know, sugarcoating

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Speaker 1: the pill to get it out there and hook the

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Speaker 1: hook a new audience. You know, when I was a

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Speaker 1: kid and you you were wait what was served, and

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Speaker 1: what we got was whatever was playing in the theaters,

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Speaker 1: and that was okay, you know, and if we liked it,

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Speaker 1: then we would bend on Friday nights, so Saturday nights,

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Speaker 1: get our friends together and make the pilgrimage to the

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Speaker 1: video stores and start going a little deeper and darker

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Speaker 1: to find the stuff that wasn't easily available. And it

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Speaker 1: becomes almost like you know, I used to say, when

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Speaker 1: we were kids, we were like the Indiana Jones and

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Speaker 1: horror and then we would, we would do everything we

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Speaker 1: could to explore and search for the craziest stuff. And

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Speaker 1: it's like chasing the dragon. You know. Here I am

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Speaker 1: still in my mid forties. Charitably, actually I'm upper forties,

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Speaker 1: in the dark side of forties, but still doing the

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Speaker 1: exact same thing. You know, I'm trying to search, in

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Speaker 1: quest everywhere I can look to find some new kind

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Speaker 1: of kick when it comes to this stuff. What is

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Speaker 1: your definition, Chris, of horror? What's scary to one person,

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Speaker 1: maybe a comedy to somebody else. Agreed? I mean, but

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Speaker 1: again that comes to to what's subjective, what our life experiences.

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Speaker 1: None of us have the same life experiences, and none

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Speaker 1: of us have the same triggers, the same buttons that

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Speaker 1: that are pushed. So you know, that's the eternal question.

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Speaker 1: What's the scariest horror movie ever made? Chris? And I'll

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Speaker 1: tell you what the scariest is for me, but it's

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Speaker 1: not going to be the same for you. I can

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Speaker 1: tell you what some of the best horror films esthetically

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Speaker 1: ever made are, but as far as scary goes, that

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Speaker 1: is a completely personal question. So to me, just the

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Speaker 1: very definition of the term horror, you know, it's a

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Speaker 1: marketing term invented by publicists to easily package a film. Okay,

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Speaker 1: it's on one level, but it's just really just about

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Speaker 1: dread about tapping into something that's you know, you don't

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Speaker 1: want to look, you don't want to see it. It's hard,

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Speaker 1: it's hurts, but you do. It's it's maybe a bit

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Speaker 1: of self flagellation there too. I know at this level

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Speaker 1: in my life, I can't watch films where children are

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Speaker 1: put in jeopardy because I am a father. I agree,

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Speaker 1: I'm the same way, and you know, but that wasn't

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Speaker 1: the case when I was necessarely a younger guy. That

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Speaker 1: kind of just siplined right over my head. But now

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Speaker 1: I can't because it hits too close to home. So

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Speaker 1: it's whatever triggers us, whatever kind of personal lines in

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Speaker 1: the sand we have. Our definitions of horror are in flux.

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Speaker 1: Except I didn't like Chucky, that little kid, Chucky the doll.

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Speaker 1: I mean, hey, Chucky's great. Now I looked, and we

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Speaker 1: can really die with her franchises. Chuckie is one of

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Speaker 1: the few ones that actually I think is pretty good

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Speaker 1: and cheeky because it's been run by the same filmmaker

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Speaker 1: almost from day one, a guy named Don Mancini. But

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Speaker 1: I mean I love evil dolls. I mean my love

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Speaker 1: of evil dolls goes back to watching Twilight Zone reruns

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Speaker 1: with my dad and the episode The Dummy, you know,

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Speaker 1: with the Cliff robertson where is nan triloquist dummy comes

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Speaker 1: to life? I mean, that's that still gives me a

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Speaker 1: goose every time, or Magic with Anthony Hopkins and Margaret

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Speaker 1: I mean, evil dolls are They've been with us since

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Speaker 1: day one, and they're scared. The Dead of Night, which

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Speaker 1: is the first anthology's going from the forty says an

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Speaker 1: evil ventriloquist doll. I mean, dolls are creepy. I mean,

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Speaker 1: let's are right out there. There's a doll down in

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Speaker 1: Florida called a real one called Robert, the Haunted Doll.

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Speaker 1: Are you familiar at all with him? I've heard of Rob. Oh, yes,

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Speaker 1: of course I've heard of Rob. He's a doll dressed

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Speaker 1: up in a little navy outfit and he's hermitically sealed

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Speaker 1: in a glass case right now. But people freak out

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Speaker 1: when they see this thing. And it's the same reason

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Speaker 1: I freaked out. When I was a kid. My dad

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Speaker 1: took me to you know, Madam Twosseau's and even before

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Speaker 1: we got to the Chamber of Horrors, I was I

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Speaker 1: was quake in my bootsteam. Oh yeah, it's like looking

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Speaker 1: at something that's that's it's uncanny. It's human, but it's not.

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Speaker 1: It's it's recognizable, but it's alien, and it's like almost

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Speaker 1: like this embalmed thing in front of you. And that's

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Speaker 1: how we respond to those kind of like lifelike dolls.

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Speaker 1: I mean, they're just they're just eerie. Our horror films

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Speaker 1: generally cheaper to make, and they're pretty profitable. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: mean that's that's that's that's true because you know, I

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Speaker 1: mean I talked film history for many years and being

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Speaker 1: a scholar of this stuff and knowing historically that again,

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Speaker 1: what it doesn't cost much to throw buckets of blood

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Speaker 1: at the screen. It doesn't cost much to you know,

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Speaker 1: sex is a part of the genre because you know,

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Speaker 1: the sex and death the two most important, you know,

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Speaker 1: benchmarks of the living condition, and horror movies exploit that,

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Speaker 1: so they don't really cost much to deliver the goods.

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Speaker 1: They're not based necessarily on star systems, so Tom Cruise

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Speaker 1: doesn't need to open a horror movie to make it successful.

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Speaker 1: So they generally are fairly historically economical to produce. Absolutely.

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Speaker 1: I mean, look at films like The Blair Witch Project,

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Speaker 1: which literally costs next to nothing. It was a landmark

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Speaker 1: film that kind of invented an entire subgenre of what

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Speaker 1: they call found footage entertainment and really cost nothing. And

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Speaker 1: either every major movie from a racer head on back,

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Speaker 1: I mean, was the Saw franchise. Those movies were very

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Speaker 1: cheap to produce and always earned at least triple their

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Speaker 1: their budgets because you don't need big stars, you just

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Speaker 1: need shocks, and those are fairly under the you know,

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Speaker 1: the steerage of a of a qualified director and producer.

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Speaker 1: I mean, you can you can deliver those economically without

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Speaker 1: a lot of money. What's the creepy one where the

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Speaker 1: babysitter answers the phone and the guys in the house, Well,

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Speaker 1: there's a bunch of those. He knows you're alone or

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Speaker 1: don't answer the phone and I know what you did

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Speaker 1: last summer or something like that. There are always something

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Speaker 1: along those lines, but there's there's several of those. And

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Speaker 1: there also dates back to bat Black Christmas, which is

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Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies five Canadian horror film shot here in

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Speaker 1: my hometown of Toronto, directed by the late great Bob Clark.

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Speaker 1: The Calls or you know, there's this this evil murderer

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Speaker 1: calling these women in the sorority house, and no one

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Speaker 1: can locate the call until at the very end you

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Speaker 1: find out the call has been coming from the attic

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Speaker 1: the entire time Killer's been up there. I mean that's

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Speaker 1: just even just saying that still it gives you the

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Speaker 1: goose flesh. Well, and that there was a real lifetime story.

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Speaker 1: I think the guy was Richard Speck out of Chicago.

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Speaker 1: I think he broke into a sorority and killed a

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Speaker 1: whole bunch of girls. Yeah, and the Richard Speck killing

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Speaker 1: obviously kind of gave birth to that subgenre of young

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Speaker 1: new bil women in distress. Absolutely, there's another like a killer,

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Speaker 1: not a killer, but another creepy guy hiding in the attic.

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Speaker 1: Movie I gotta throw out there because not a lot

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Speaker 1: of people know about it, but if you can find it,

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Speaker 1: it's worth it. Scott Jacoby, it's a TV movie from

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Speaker 1: the nineteen seventy five or four, I want to say,

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Speaker 1: it's called Bad Ronald. So if you get a chance. People,

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Speaker 1: do your homework, try to find bad Ronald. It's very

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Speaker 1: very creepy. There was actually a real story of a

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Speaker 1: guy who lived in the attic above a family in

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Speaker 1: their house, and he lived there for about two or

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Speaker 1: three years, and he stayed in the attic. Apparently they

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Speaker 1: never went up there, and you know, he would stay

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Speaker 1: up there and then when they were either asleep or

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Speaker 1: they were all gone out of the high house, he'd

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Speaker 1: sneak down and you know, do what he had to do.

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Speaker 1: But he lived up there in the attic for about

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Speaker 1: three years before they cut the guy. This is a terrifying,

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Speaker 1: terrifying notion. I mean again, this is horror one oh one.

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Speaker 1: This is the blueprint. This is the you know what

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Speaker 1: goes bump in the night. No, it's just the house

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Speaker 1: that'd like. No, it's not. It's a dude in the attic.

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Speaker 1: I mean, and it's real y, very real, I mean

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Speaker 1: very scary. Yeah. I mean I don't like clowns. For example,

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Speaker 1: they freaked me out. They always have since I was

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Speaker 1: a kid. I never liked them. I hated the clown

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Speaker 1: that would you know, blow up balloons and bendam and

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Speaker 1: stuff like that. And I think when I saw Stephen

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Speaker 1: King's it that that pushes me over the edge. But

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Speaker 1: I don't. I don't for years. I don't like clowns.

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Speaker 1: And then that serial killer John Wayne Gacy would dress

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Speaker 1: up as a clown to capture people, and uh, you

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Speaker 1: know that just added more to it that I don't

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Speaker 1: like clowns. Clowns, But I mean you're not alone, George,

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Speaker 1: I mean clowns. It's one of the and absolutely he

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Speaker 1: mentioned Stephen King. It both the original Tommy Lee Wallace

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Speaker 1: to Curry miniseries from the early nineties and then obviously

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Speaker 1: the Juggernaut double shot remake that came out recently. Um,

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Speaker 1: you know, big, big horror business. But to me, scary

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Speaker 1: clowns with fangs and teeth and bat wings and everything else,

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Speaker 1: they're not so scary. It's as you say, it's that

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Speaker 1: innocuous circus clown, the party clown, the guy that's supposed

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Speaker 1: to be cuddly and Sweden, yet he's just dripping grease

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Speaker 1: paint with that painted on smile. That's the guy that

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Speaker 1: sends shivers down my spine too. With circus, with circus

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Speaker 1: movies and circus culture, primarily because I find it very

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Speaker 1: eerie and horrific when it comes to the clown component.

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Speaker 1: Are there some Hollywood writers who have just made a

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Speaker 1: legend being writers for horror films? Yeah, I mean writers absolutely.

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Speaker 1: I think my favorite, my favorite book, and it's a

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Speaker 1: novella of all time, is called I Am Legend by

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Speaker 1: a guy named Chard Matheson, who I'm lucky enough to

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Speaker 1: have known Richard before he passed. But you know, there's

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Speaker 1: a handful of those great fantasy writers and they all

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Speaker 1: knew each other, Ray Bradbury and Charles Beaumont, Richard Mathison

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Speaker 1: being one of them. But I Am Legend is still

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Speaker 1: the greatest story. And I read it once a year

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Speaker 1: at least, and a timely one at that. But a

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Speaker 1: plague of vampireism that encompasses the earth, and there's one

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Speaker 1: man left who becomes like obsessed with his mission being

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Speaker 1: because he has nothing else to do in his life.

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Speaker 1: Then hunt them during the day and then at night

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Speaker 1: board of this house with garlic and mirrors as they

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Speaker 1: come crawling and scratching to drink his blood. It's it's

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Speaker 1: just a magnificent, terrifying story, and an intelligent one. But

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Speaker 1: Mathison made his name. I mean he wrote key episodes

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Speaker 1: of the Twilight Zone and made his name in horror,

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Speaker 1: and then hooked up with American International Pictures in Roger

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Speaker 1: Corman and wrote those in Magnificent Big Bulk of those

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Speaker 1: magnificent Edgar Allan Poe horror films written or director or

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Speaker 1: starting visess Price in the early sixties, and then later

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Speaker 1: on moved on to television with Dan Curtis, who created

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Speaker 1: Dark Shadows for a series of them. Oh yeah, I

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Speaker 1: remember that. The sister used to run home and watch

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Speaker 1: that all the time every day when I was a kid.

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Speaker 1: My great grandmother introduced me to it and reruns on ABC.

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Speaker 1: That was our bonding thing. I didn't go to kindergarten.

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Speaker 1: I went to Granny Slows to watch Dark Shadows and

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Speaker 1: that was a big deal too for me. But but

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Speaker 1: Mathieson is to me, I mean, the greatest when it

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Speaker 1: comes to creating works or writer for novels, writer of stories,

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Speaker 1: but also found his footing really writing for film and television.

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Speaker 1: And you know, they'd get out there and discover the

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Speaker 1: work of Mathieson if you haven't already. And the Freddy

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Speaker 1: Kruegers episodes are pretty good too, aren't they. You know?

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Speaker 1: Jory I gotta be honest with you. I mean, I

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Speaker 1: respect The Nightmare ELM Street. I respect it's impact and

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Speaker 1: it's legacy on the genre. But I'm not particularly a

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Speaker 1: fan of those films. And I'll tell you why, because

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Speaker 1: maybe it's you know, your perspective on the ride depends

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Speaker 1: on when you I mean, they did well at the

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Speaker 1: box office, didn't they Well, that that's true, but a

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Speaker 1: box office barometer is no you know, it's no barometer

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Speaker 1: of how scary a movie is. When I was a kid,

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Speaker 1: those movies were incredibly popular and I was getting to

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Speaker 1: a point where I again, I was starting to become

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Speaker 1: that Indiana Jones and I was searching a little more

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Speaker 1: and it just wasn't anything scary about this, you know,

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Speaker 1: because Freddie in the first one, you know, he's a

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Speaker 1: child killer. He kills children, and I agree with it.

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Speaker 1: I don't like that. It's not particularly something you want

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Speaker 1: to see on a lunchbox. And that's what where what

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Speaker 1: happened to Freddie? He was big dude was everywhere there

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Speaker 1: was rock videos. I mean that he was. He was

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Speaker 1: on MTV, he was that, he was ubiquitous. He was

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Speaker 1: an eyesore. Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every

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Speaker 1: coast am dot com for more