Neil Marshall Talks Tales of Halloween
A Halloween-centered sister short film to Jason Eisener’s Christmas classic “Treevenge,” “Bad Seed” comes from the mind of Neil Marshall (Dog Soldiers, The Descent) and shows what can happen when good pumpkins go bad. What was once an innocent October tradition of pumpkin carving is told from the perspective of the horribly victimized pumpkin, who has no choice but to retaliate in the most violent of ways.
Neil Marshall, himself a huge fan of Halloween, spoke with us about his short film and how it fits inside the larger anthology of Tales of Halloween (review), which is out today in theaters and on VOD.
DC: I’m not sure if you’re much of a drinker, but are you a fan of the pumpkin beers that come out this time of year, and are you still excited when Halloween season rolls around? I know your anniversary is in October, correct?
NM: Our anniversary is on Halloween, yeah; we got married on Halloween night. Am I big drinker? Definitely. And I love most things to do with pumpkin, but I haven’t quite gotten into pumpkin ale yet; that’s one thing that hasn’t quite clicked with me.
DC: They’re definitely an acquired taste. The beginning carving sequence in “Bad Seed” has some fantastic sound design that reminded me of Hitchcock stabbing watermelons until he found just the right one for Psycho. Did you go through a lot of sound choices before settling on the worst possible sound for the pumpkins being carved?
NM: Well, I wanted to ram home the analogy of pumpkins being slaughtered and brutalized on Halloween night, so I just picked the most fleshy sound effects I could get together for that. It was very deliberate, and we worked on a few things to make it just sound really punchy.
DC: How long did “Bad Seed” take to shoot, and did it feel more like shooting an episode of television or more like a feature?
NM: It was unlike anything I’ve ever shot before. We had two to two and a half days or nights to shoot each short. I had like two and a half nights or close to three nights for mine purely because there were more locations than anybody else. I think we had nine hours a night or something to do this stuff and it’s mostly outdoors, which is problematic. I had to stage this kind of mini riot, I had to stage physical effects sequences with the pumpkin ripping the guy’s head off, and they were all very time-consuming. We got there, but the speed we had to move at was just unbelievable. It was easily the most stressful shoot I’ve done.
DC: I know quite a few filmmakers came to the set to support the entire shoot including Joe Dante. Can you talk about some of the cameos in “Bad Seed?”
NM: Pretty much all the other directors of the anthology showed up at one point, and I drafted them all into my police station sequence where everybody in that scene, except for the main characters, is either one of the other directors or producers, my agent is in there, everybody just wanted to muck in and help out. If anybody was on set that wasn’t in front of the camera, then that was kind of a wasted time on the set. We were like, ‘Quick! Get them in front of the camera so they can do something.’ Greg McLean was in mine, Drew Struzan did a cameo in mine, Adam Green, Joe Dante, and people like that so it was just awesome.
DC: It was great seeing Drew Struzan so people could put a face with the artwork.
NM: It was obviously a good joke having him as the police sketch artist.
DC: Did you have a preference where your segment fit into Tales, and is there a benefit in being the last story?
NM: I didn’t write it to be specifically the last story. It just sort of naturally fell into place there, I think, maybe because of the ending. There’s a big cliffhanger ending of sorts. It felt like a natural fit there, and in some ways, it culminates with some other stories or tied in to some of those stories. So that made a lot of sense once I got the script together; it seemed like a natural fit for the last one. I was happy with that. I actually shot it first just because I wanted to get all of it and crack on. The two police characters I had with Adam Green and Graham Skipper playing those… they then got drafted into playing the same roles in a couple of the other films.
DC: All the Halloween references are great, and I’m guessing that Kristina Klebe, indirectly, is one as well. Is the Clover Company an homage to the Silver Shamrock company in Halloween III?
NM: Absolutely! Yeah, I think at some point I was going to call it Shamrock or something like that but decided not to copy it directly. I thought everybody will get the joke, and everybody does.
DC: In the world of horror, is there a dream project with a story you’re dying to tell that you’d like to eventually do?
NM: I’ve written my first horror script since The Descent, which, fingers crossed, I’m going to get to shoot next year; that’s the plan. I’ve been attached to this project, The Last Voyage of Demeter, for some time now, which I think is a great idea; and I’d still love to do that. I’ve got another couple of horror projects in the works and a lot of stories I want to tell.
DC: We would definitely love to see your spin on Dracula, for sure.
NM: Yeah, we have a pretty good draft of the script, but it’s a difficult thing because you can’t do something like that low-budget so that’s the problem there.
Tales of Halloween is in theaters and on VOD as of today, October 16th. Support it if you love anthology horror!
Related Story: A Jack-O-Lantern Full of New Tales of Halloween Images Come Haunting
The film is an anthology of 10 Halloween tales, directed by David Parker (The Hills Run Red), Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II, III and IV), Adam Gierasch (Night of the Demons), Axelle Carolyn (Soulmate), Lucky McKee (All Cheerleaders Die), Paul Solet (Grace), John Skipp (Stay at Home Dad) and Andrew Kasch (Never Sleep Again co-directing), Mike Mendez (Big Ass Spider!), Ryan Schifrin (Abominable), and Neil Marshall (The Descent).
Pat Healy, Barry Bostwick, Noah Segan, Booboo Stewart, Greg Grunberg, Clare Kramer, Alex Essoe, Lin Shaye, Dana Gould, James Duval, Elissa Dowling, Grace Phipps, Pollyanna McIntosh, Marc Senter, Tiffany Shepis, John F. Beach, Trent Haaga, Casey Ruggieri, Kristina Klebe, Cerina Vincent, John Savage, Keir Gilchrist, Nick Principe, Amanda Moyer, Jennifer Wenger, Sam Witwer, Jose Pablo Cantillo, Ben Woolf, Caroline Williams, Robert Rusler, Cameron Easton, Austin Falk, Madison Iseman, Daniel Dimaggio, Natalie Castillo, Ben Stillwell, and Hunter Smit star.
Synopsis:
Ten stories from horror’s top directors. Ghosts, ghouls, monsters, and the devil delight in terrorizing unsuspecting residents of a suburban neighborhood on Halloween night. This creepy anthology combines classic Halloween tales with the stuff of nightmares.
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