Welcome to Fright Night

Quoted from dogglebe

What's the capital of South Dakota?

Will the upcoming CP movie use the same FX? Or will Chuckie be CGI?

Phil

Phil,

Don Mancini, the writer/director of Seed of Chucky, is handling the reboot.
Tom Holland has nothing to do with Child's Play or Fright Night 2011 reboots.

And, Pierre. =p

E.D.

Hey ED, sounds like fun.

Tom did alot (well, not alot, but definitely some cool shit) back in the day, so my first question would be...

1)  Where the Hell has he been lately?  Why isn't he writing and directing lately?

You'd think when you write and direct 2 popular movies in a 3 years span (Fright Night - 1985, and then Child's Play in 1988), you'd be set.  What went wrong?

2)  How was it working on Hatchet II?

Enjoy!

Quoted from Dreamscale

1) Where the Hell has he been lately? Why isn't he writing and directing lately?

You'd think when you write and direct 2 popular movies in a 3 years span (Fright Night - 1985, and then Child's Play in 1988), you'd be set. What went wrong?

Is Child's Play really that popular? To this day, it seems like everyone thinks Chucky is the worst horror villain of all time. Seriously. Can't count on my fingers how many times I've heard people call the whole series a joke.

Fright Night seems more like a cult favorite than anything. But then I didn't grow up in the 80s. I wouldn't know what it was like back then.

To answer your question though, he did direct one of the Masters of Horror episodes a few years back. It was about a killer clown who drove an ice cream truck. Not bad. Kinda fun. Kinda goofy. He directed Stephen King's Thinner as well. But you're right. His filmography from the 90s and 2000s is rather slim.

The better question would be what ever happened to Stephen Geoffreys, Fright Night's "Evil" Ed. Head over to IMDB and find out.

Quoted from James McClung

he did direct one of the Masters of Horror episodes a few years back. It was about a killer clown who drove an ice cream truck. Not bad. Kinda fun. Kinda goofy.

It was awful, Forsythe or no Forsythe, I thought. Then again, with the exception of The Black Cat, all of season 2 was terrible.

Sorry.

I was never a fan of Child's Play as a series, although 2 was cute in a retarded way. Never saw Fright Night. And, I have no questions. =(

Quoted from Dreamscale

Tom did alot (well, not alot, but definitely some cool shit) back in the day, so my first question would be...

1)  Where the Hell has he been lately?  Why isn't he writing and directing lately?

You'd think when you write and direct 2 popular movies in a 3 years span (Fright Night - 1985, and then Child's Play in 1988), you'd be set.  What went wrong?

2)  How was it working on Hatchet II?

Enjoy!

1) Tom Holland's been in the business since the 60s.
He started as an actor then moved into writing in the late 70s.
He was red hot after the "success" of Psycho II.
So he reteamed with that director for his next project, Cloak & Dagger.
What happened was, Fatal Beauty, The Temp and Thinner, all bombs.
He has nothing to do with the Child's Play and Fright Night reboots in production.
He says no one asked my opinion, they offered me a check and I took it. =p

2) Hatchet II is partially financed by Tom's new production company, Dead Rabbit.
He was promoting its theatrical release and attended our Cloak & Dagger screening.

Thanks for the questions! He was a nie guy, signed lots of stuff and chatted.

Regards,
E.D.

Quoted from James McClung

I always preferred Fright Night and Cloak & Dagger to Child's Play.

Stephen Geoffreys became a ghey porn star. =p

E.D.

James, I am aware of Holland's career.  I was not aware of Mr. Geoffries gay pron career, but I will tell you he always seemed gay to me.  Bodybuilding?  He was a stick back in the day.

As to Child's Play being a joke or whatever, I don't know.  But I do know this...pretty much anyone knows who Chucky is, and it birthed a total of 4 sequels, and a new Childs Play in the works now.

Fright Night was a surprisingly good flick.  The sequel was also quite good, IMO, but bombed.  And there is also a new Fright Night in the works.

So, IMO, both films were successful and memorable.

Child's Play became infamous in the UK and Eire when Tory MPs claimed it was guilty and somehow the cause of a young child being abducted then murdered by two older children. Naturally the tabloid papers and TV had a field day. They have to write something.

That idea is as stupid as blaming bottle and can manufacturers for alcoholism. Note they never blame books.

It was notorious prior to this as a video nasty. Bundled in with I Spit On Your Grave, Last House On The Left and Suspira etc. One good reason to watch it, us kids thought, back in the day.

I enjoyed it. Parts of it are silly, nevertheless it's a good idea well executed.

Ask him to make more films.

R ox

Chucky rules! I actually feel like watching them all again (for the 100th time). I can't wait for the reboot.

Fright Night is good.  I just watched it again, not even 3 days ago.  Pretty damn good.  Not the best Vampire flick out there, but close.

Vamp
Salem's Lot
Lost Boys
Dance Of The Damned -- Very different Vampire Flick.  It's all story and little gore or killing but it's effective.  Cyril O'Reilly is also in it.  Which I felt he never had enough roles.  Such a talented actor.
Fright Night

Those are my top 5 vampire flicks.  If I had asked a question I'd ask him why he's consistently sucked at everything he's done since, though.  And I've enver liked the (Child's Play) franchise. It's just unappealing to me.  It's about on par with Pumpkinhead and Raw Head Rex.

The original Pumpkinhead ROCKS!!!!  C'mon, now!

Rawhead Rex could have been pretty sweet, but they didn't have any money, and the costume just looked pathetic in so many scenes.  But, you gotta admit it took some major sized balls to have old Rawhead pissing all over a priest in a graveyard.  Can't say I've seen that before, or since.

Salem's Lot still needs to have a big budget, theatrical release.  The made for TV movie with Hutch wasn't half bad, but the novel is so good...it deserves so much more.

They did a Salem's Lot remake on TNT a few years ago with Rob Lowe. Literally one of the worst things I have ever seen. More proof that a big budget and CGI can't overcome crapp writing. I really like the old Salem's Lot, with the scenes of the floating kids at the window, the female vampire awakening at the morgue and James Mason as the vampire's right hand man. Barlow the vampire was maybe the most badazz vampire I've ever seen, even though he is completely different in the novel. Very effective for an old tv movie from the 70s.

Quoted from Baltis

If I had asked a question I'd ask him why he's consistently sucked at everything he's done since, though.

I was chatting with a friend recently on the subject of horror directors and came to the conclusion that almost none of them have a consistent track record, even the big ones. Most of them have just popped out one or two classics (at best, three or four) or at least a few decent films then release a string of duds for the rest of their careers. Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper have especially pathetic filmographies for being called horror legends. Most of the better directors branched out to other genres or were never really horror directors to begin with (as is the case with Hitchcock and Polanski).

I believed this more to be the case once I started thinking about the films of my favorite non-horror directors vs. my favorite horror directors. Don't know why this is the case but for some reason, most horror directors can't maintain quality for the life of them... Wow! Five years ago, those would've been the last words out of my mouth.

Anyway, horror director-itus. Seems to be the same for Holland. He hasn't even made that many movies.

Howdy, ED

Ask him to ballpark a percentage of original script gets through the studio approval process, that doesn't get re-written on the set, delivered in three or four variants by the actors before the editor picks one.

EXAMPLE:
100% - Original
80% - Studio
50% - Director
40% - Actor
30% - Editor

TIA!

Quoted from RayW

Hello Ray.

Thanks for the question, apologies for the late answer.
Tom Holland was there for a showing of Cloak & Dagger.
So, he phrased his answer in reference to that particular film.
He was not too interested in talking about the soon to be rebooted franchises.

Psycho II was a commercial successs for Universal.
He reteamed with that director, Richard Franklin, for Cloak & Dagger.
Universal was very pleased with Psycho II (cost: $6m made: $30+m).
So there was virtually no studio interference on Cloak & Dagger.
However, due to a CEO change, the film received poor marketing and release.

Tom Holland got into writing through contacts he made as an actor in the 60s and 70s.
I know it doesn't directly answer your question, but it is what he said to me.

Regards,
E.D.

Quoted from Electric Dreamer

Tom Holland got into writing through contacts he made as an actor in the 60s and 70s.
I know it doesn't directly answer your question, but it is what he said to me.

LOL!
Fantastic!
Lovely, ellucidating answer.
Thank you simply for asking the question, E.D.

Sounds like a variant of the PC answer Ed Pagan gave, but upon more consideration it's more like a political answer: reporter asks question A, polotico smiles while redirecting the question towards agenda answer B.
LOL! Love it.

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