‘The Fetus’ Star Bill Moseley Explains How Tobe Hooper Launched His Acting Career
According to IMDb, actor Bill Moseley has appeared in 139 films, with 12 more in various stages of production. He is a staple of the horror genre, appearing in cult classics from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 to his turn at Otis in Rob Zombie’s The House of 1000 Corpses, The Devil’s Rejects, and 3 From Hell. He isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty with indie horror projects, which reigns true with his latest venture: Joe Lam’s The Fetus.
The synopsis for The Fetus is simple: “A couple struggles to learn the truth about the origins of their unborn child—a demonic entity that emerges from the body.“
We spoke with Moseley over Zoom about his latest horror venture, how he got the role of Chop Top in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, and his early career as a science journalist.
Dread Central: What attracted you to being part of The Fetus?
Bill Moseley: Well, I mean, I was offered the job. I read the script. I thought it was really cool. So yeah, it was pretty easy to say yes to it.
DC: Hell yeah. You’re in so many incredible horror films and you’re in a lot of indie horror films. What do you love about working in the indie horror world? Is there something specifically that you love about it besides the fact that they keep asking you back to be in films?
BM: Well, that’s probably number one. [Laughs] That really helps.
But, a lot of actors as they progress in their careers get a little more particular about their trailer and the blue M&Ms and all that kind of stuff. But I don’t really worry about that stuff. I like to work, I like a good story, I love the genre, and I’m good with first-timers. If this is someone’s first time directing a film, I’m a good guy to have in the cast because I’m not a prima donna. And I think that helps a lot—I can bring a lot of experience, but also I bring a lot of understanding and compassion. So I’m pretty chill about working in a lot of different conditions that are not quite A-list conditions with huge trailers and a bunch of assistants and all that stuff. So I guess that really helps a lot.
DC: You’re used to the indie vibes, you know what that comes with.
BM: It’s really what it comes down to. And as I say, I’m good at it because I am tolerant and understanding to a point. I mean, don’t drag me behind the pickup truck because you couldn’t afford a stunt guy. [Laughs]
But with The Fetus, I like the script. I met Joe Lam, the writer/director, and liked him. What a great stroke of luck it was to be working with Lauren LaVera. Obviously, she’s now blown up quite a bit with the Terrifier movies. And I loved working with Julian Curtis, who was a really very solid actor and a lot of fun to work with, too.
DC: Yeah, because it’s really just the three of you for a lot of The Fetus. It must’ve been fun to work with two younger actors and really watch them develop, but then also bring your expertise to the mix. What was that experience like as the trio of the film?
BM: Well, I think we all have different ways of approaching the material, and I’m a little less, I guess I don’t know if it’s disciplined, but what it really comes down to is that whatever is on the page sometimes doesn’t quite get translated word for word to what you’re doing as an actor. So I tend to take a looser approach to things. If the scenes don’t really make sense, then you try to fix them or come up with new ideas in the moment.
I don’t know if everybody is that cavalier about it. I certainly try to stay true to the written word, but sometimes you really have to kind of figure it out for yourself, and that works with some actors, but not all. So I think I was kind of the loose canon on the film, but just trying to make sense out of what sometimes doesn’t make sense between the script and the actual shooting.
And as I like to say, I serve the production. And so it’s really good to remember that we’re all trying to make something happen, some magic.
DC: Yeah. Well, when was The Fetus filmed? Was this film before Lauren blew up in the Terrifier world?
BM: It was after Terrifier 2, so she was already on the map, but Terrifier 3 was still in post-production, I think.
DC: What was it like? You play her dad, correct, so what was that like developing that very interesting relationship between the two of you in The Fetus?
BM: It actually worked out great. I thought she was wonderful. She was really dedicated to the part. Yeah, I think we got along really well and the relationship was very believable.
DC: Are you a genre fan outside of work?
BM: Absolutely. I was punished as a child because I would get up at midnight after I’d been put to bed and I would sneak into the library where our black and white Zenith TV was and watch midnight horror movies. So I have suffered from my craft for a long time.
DC: That’s amazing. What was the horror movie that changed your life as a kid that either scared you or made you realize you wanted to be a part of the genre?
BM: Well, they all were. I certainly loved the original 13 Ghosts and The Mask.
And those were two 3D movies where you get the little green and red viewer to watch it. Our local theater was called the Catlow Theater in Barrington, Illinois So those were two, especially 13 ghosts, that stick out in my head because I remember just as the canopy bed was slowly lowering and smothering Dr. Zorba or whatever it was. I can’t quite remember exactly, but that really was a big part of it.
For some reason, I just remember as a kid getting up on the counter in our bathroom, looking in the mirror and just pretending to see something coming in the distance. As it got closer, having more and more fear and then finally screamed. So that was just as a boy and just really, that just was always my happy place. Also, I grew up with a Marine Corps father, and the only time he really lightened up, I would say, was during Halloween.
He was really into Halloween, and I had an older and a younger brother. My dad was big on taking us to certain places, like around town. One time, it was the local cemetery where we were supposed to do grave rubbings. And so we were out there, little boys rubbing on headstones, and he had arranged with the local police to show up and then spin their red light. We were freaking out because we were going to be arrested as 10-year-olds. Dad liked to do stuff like that. So I guess I did have a happy beginning in the horror genre.
DC: Wow, what a dad thing to do. Pranking your own kids.
BM: Yeah, yeah. Pranking your own kids. There was a hermit couple, a brother and sister, old, bearded, crazy scary, the Jacksons who lived out in the country. I remember Dad driving us, I was with my older brother and another kid, and he pulled down the road past the Jacksons and said, “I want you to go back and bring me a souvenir from the Jacksons’ porch.” And we were terrified. So we had it to sneak back up the road and there was the Jacksons. We went onto the porch to try to get a little piece of wood or something.
All of a sudden, I remember the door opening and Mrs. Jackson was there. They didn’t have electricity, so she had a lantern, and she said something about God abiding. It was terrifying. It was a weird, biblical phrase. So we started running back to Dad. And of course, Dad had moved the car. He had driven another 150, 200 yards down the road from where he had parked. So we were frightened that the Jacksons were coming after us.
DC: So you’re like, “I can be an actor because my dad put me through the actual fear, so I know how to do that. I’m well-wired to do this.”
BM: Yes, absolutely. Of course, the more recent movie that really changed my life was The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which I saw the year it came out.
DC: Did you see it in theaters?
BM: Yeah, I saw it in Boston. I saw it on a double bill with Enter the Dragon. And that was at the old Paramount Theater.
DC: What a weird double feature, but I love it.
BM: It was a Sunday afternoon, so it wasn’t like a scary nighttime thing. And of course, they played Bruce Lee first, and everybody was into it and yelling at the screen, “Kick his ass, Bruce!” This was the Times Square of Boston, so it was a raucous crowd. Then it came to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The opening scene, of course, is just this tortured violin string, and you see this slow strobe of this melted corpse, and it was like, “What the fuck is this?” And that was it. It had me in its grip. So that’s how I somehow, it’s a long story, but I ended up as a member of the Chainsaw family.
DC: Well, I was going to say, that’s incredible to go from being a massive fan to being in the second one.
BM: Well, because I was so affected by it, I went to see it a couple of more times thinking that if I could familiarize myself, then it would be easier to get over whatever it was that freaked me out about it.
And all that did was that that just drove the wedge deeper. And so finally, I made a short film called The Texas Chainsaw Manicure. I gave myself a cameo as the Hitchhiker. A friend of mine saw it who was a screenwriter in Hollywood already. He said, “Look, my partner and I have an office right across the hall from TobeHooper,” who at the time was working on Poltergeist. And he said, “If you want to give me a VHS copy of The Texas Chainsaw Manicure., I’ll walk it across the hall and show it to Tobe.” And I said, “Well, God, that would be a great idea. I would love to have him see it.” And that was as far as I could think. So he did that.
Tobe watched it and he loved it. Tobe called in his producing partner, Steven Spielberg, and said, “Check this out.” They both loved it. Tobe said, “Who was the guy that played the hitchhiker?” And I said, “Well, Tobe, that’s me.” And he said, “Well if I ever do a sequel, I’ll keep you in mind” during a phone call after he had seen it. And sure enough, two years later, was when I got a call from Kit Carson who wrote the screenplay for Chainsaw 2, saying, “Where should I send the screenplay?” And I thought that was the prank, but I gave him my address and he sent it in the mail. He said, “Look at the part of Chop Top.” So I did. And I thought, “Shit, man, that’s a big part!” So that’s how I got the job. Thank you. Thank you, Lords of Horror.
DC: That’s so cool! I love that they watched it and were like, “Hell yeah.”
BM: It was totally hitting the jackpot. It was a one-in-a-million chance, and I was a professional writer. I wrote for magazines in New York City. So I was not in the acting game, per se. I mean, I acted in college and I was always camera-ready, but to make the rent, I wrote for magazines.
DC: Wait, that’s amazing. Wow. I don’t think I realized that you started as a journalist. Where did you write?
BM: There was a magazine called Omni, which was a science science fiction magazine. It was a very big glossy magazine put out by Penthouse, actually. Yeah, I wrote for Soho Weekly News and National Lampoon and all kinds of different things. Rolling Stone, I did some stuff for them. So yeah, I mean, I was just, basically, that’s what I did. I was a freelance writer.
DC: So what was your beat? Was it entertainment? Or what did you cover?
BM: I like science, so I interviewed scientists.
DC: Oh, science writing is hard. People who are able to take science topics and make them easily understandable is such an important skill. That is not easy to take scientist speak and make it readable.
BM: And that’s what I would do. I would interview scientists, and if they started getting a little too scientific, I’d ask them to dial it down a little bit.
DC: What was your favorite story you got to cover for Science story? I’m getting away from movies now, but it’s such a cool thing.
BM: The interviews I did were actually really fascinating. There was one guy named Peter Hagelstein who was a professor and his thing was creating energy. He was into fusion back in the days when it was considered a little crackpot, but I loved interviewing him.
I loved interviewing Linus Pauling who won two unshared Nobel prizes. And to this day, I still use his vitamin regimen. [Laughs] So Linus Pauling was an amazing guy. I mean, every one of them was really a fascinating story.
I did also interview another Nobel Prize winner named Carlton Hick, and it took about six months to finally get an interview with him. And I remember going down to the outside of Washington, DC to the National Institutes of Health—which was surrounded by barbed wire—and interviewing him. He was talking about how even though smallpox was eradicated from the face of the earth, he had a little in a freezer, which he had kept because of course, if another country hit us with a bioweapon, he would then have that to come up with a vaccine. And just other crazy kooky stuff.
DC: What a wild, awesome career you’ve had.
BM: It’s a wild, awesome career, yeah.
DC: That’s amazing. So before we wrap up though, what’s an experience you’ve had on set that you really treasure?
BM: Yes. One of my go-to memories was on the set of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2. It was a radio station set where I was pounding on the poor guy’s head with a claw hammer. That was the late, great Lou Perryman. So Lou is lying on the ground. I am banging away on him with the claw hammer. Tom Savini is right off-camera pumping blood, which then goes through a little tube and then comes up through Lou’s hair and right to the top of his forehead. We had done maybe nine or 10 takes, and that was back in the days of film. So it was a close set. It was indoors, it was a small room. They had big lights, which were very hot. Everything was just kind of sticky and hot.
With each take, we would have to reset. We’d have to clean up Lou and Tom Savini would have to reload his pump with a bunch of blood. Some of the takes I flubbed because the claw hammer that I had looked very real, but it was basically foam rubber with a coat hanger wire in it just to kind of give it some shape. And when I was banging away, going “One and a two and a three” when I would hit, then Tobe would say, cut and I’d look and of course, the hammer would be bowed over.
But finally, we had done nine or 10 takes, and finally, we got a good one. I thought the hammer stayed like a hammer and everything. Tobe said, “OK, yeah, that was great. Let’s just try one more. And I was getting a little miffed, I suppose, and I said, “Tobe, am I doing something wrong?” And he looked at me and he said, “Oh hell no, Bill. I’m just having fun watching you.” That was, to me, the greatest compliment I’ve ever been paid on any set in my career.
The Fetus comes to theaters on March 7, 2025.
Categorized:Interviews
