Exclusives
[Interview] Bill Moseley Talks First Time Director John Geddes And ‘Exit Humanity’, Gives An Update On ‘Manson Girls’
On DVD and VOD platforms June 19 from Bloody Disgusting Selects is John Geddes’ post-apocalyptic Exit Humanity, which portrays a young man’s struggle to survive in the aftermath of an undead outbreak during the American Civil War. The movie is heavily inspired by classic films such as Jeremiah Johnson and The Outlaw Josey Wales.
Horror icon Bill Moseley (Devil’s Rejects, House of 1000 Corpses) appears in the film as General Williams. I hopped on the phone with him yesterday to talk about what attracted him to the role and what it was like working with first-time director John Geddes. We wound up talking for a while and discussed a number of other projects, so I’ve decided to split this interview into two parts. Today’s installment will focus on Exit Humanity and touch on his role as Charles Manson in Manson Girls, while tomorrow’s portion of the interview will concern The Tortured and Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D.
Exit Humanity also stars Dee Wallace (E.T., Cujo), Stephen McHattie (Pontypool, The Watchmen, 300), and new horror hero Mark Gibson. Brian Cox provides narration. In the film, “How does a man deal with the loss of everything meaningful in his life, and the loss of mankind’s humanity amongst chaos and despair? Set in 1870’s Tennessee, Exit Humanity is the legend of Edward Young’s horrific and dramatic journey through an unexplainable outbreak of the walking dead to lay to rest the most important thing in his life, his son’s ashes. The bleak post-Civil War era backdrop highlights the severe divide that the United States was facing, and the true loss of hope that so many felt during this period in history.”
Head inside for the interview, and don’t forget to check back tomorrow for Part 2!
This is a period film that also deals with zombies, I wanted to talk about how you found your way into that dichotomy.
Well, first and foremost I read the script. It was written by the director John Geddes. And what was wonderful about it was that I loved the character of General Williams. A Civil War General who reminded me a lot of Marlon Brando’s character of Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. The war is over but it’s not over inside of him. Williams is still very much fighting the Civil War even though it is years behind him. Even though it’s a strange new world of zombies with very few people left, he’s walking around the backwoods of Tennessee maintaining a semblance of military order. And his great obsession is finding the cause of this disease, finding a cure for it, and harnessing the zombies into an army so the south can rise again.
Do you think that’s something in his nature or something that was triggered by what he’s been through?
I think the seeds are there. He’s a general in the 1860’s, so you’re kind of a god when you’re in that position. You have life and death power over a lot of people. There really are no checks and balances. Especially now, they’re all gone. There are no more people like Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. So the tones that I inhabit and the forest filled with zombies allow his character to continue making those life and death decisions, along with the humans I round up. I’m trying to find the person who can be bitten and be immune. I’m trying to control it and be the master of my world.
This is John Geddes’ first time directing a feature. What was he like to work with on set?
He was a lot of fun. He wrote a great script and sometimes with writer/directors there is more of a reluctance to change the words. He was very collaborative and flexible in terms of trying to get the best out of any given scene. He was very encouraging and enthusiastic. I think his enthusiasm for the project really carried over and, using a zombie metaphor, infected us all. We wanted to deliver the best movie we could.
There seem to be a lot of zombies in the film with fairly elaborate make-up. What was it like working around that?
Well, fortunately I didn’t have to go through the torturous prosthetics process like they did. But we were in northern Ontario, so the zombie volunteers were largely part of the local population. And I’m sure they probably had a different idea of what it would like to be in a movie versus the reality of sitting around waiting to go into makeup. And then going into makeup and sitting around for hours at a time waiting to work. These weren’t the best conditions. It was rainy, it was cold and we did a lot of night shoots. Put all that together and it would dampen the enthusiasm of the heartiest of souls. But everyone was impressively enthusiastic, which was another great quality that John brought to the movie.
You’ve got Manson Girls coming up in which you play Charles Manson. How’s that coming along?
Good. You know it’s got a long pre-production. We cut a trailer that I think is going to be more of a fundraising trailer. It’s about a minute and a half. I don’t know how you get ahold of that. I’ve done a little bit and the director Susanna Lo wanted me to do was to record a version of The Doors’ song “Five To One” so I did that with Guy Allison from the Doobie Brothers and I sang “Five To One” and that’s the soundtrack to the trailer. In terms of moving along and doing the movie, I can’t wait.
Check back in tomorrow to read Moseley’s thoughts on The Tortured and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D.
Exclusives
‘Tarot’ Filmmakers Spenser Cohen & Anna Halberg on Practical Creature Effects and ‘Insidious’ Inspirations
An evil curse gets awakened in Screen Gems horror movie Tarot when a group of friends recklessly ignore a sacred rule: never use someone else’s deck. Writers/Directors Spenser Cohen & Anna Halberg unleash a variety of Tarot card-inspired entities on the group through practical effects, and create an unexpected connection to Insidious along the way.
The film comes exclusively to movie theaters on May 3, 2024.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with Cohen and Halberg ahead of Tarot‘s release, where the pair shared more about the film’s practical effects-driven horrors and revealed how Tarot drew from Insidious in a specific way.
To start, though, the filmmakers reveal just how closely their horror movie sticks to the source novel Horrorscope by Nicholas Adams. The short answer is, well, it doesn’t at all!
Cohen explains, “It’s so different. We never even read the book and took nothing from the book. The only thing, the studio had a title that they liked, and so that’s why there was an association. Then we changed the title. So, now there’s literally zero connection to the book.“
“Sony had come to us wanting to make a horror movie about astrology, but there’s nothing that’s inherently scary to us about Zodiac signs. So, we came up with the idea of combining tarot readings and tarot cards with astrology, and that’s what ended up becoming the movie. There’s such incredible iconography in these cards that we really had a plethora of amazing characters to choose from,” Halberg adds.
Adain Bradley ‘Grant’ and Jacob Batalon ‘Paxton’ in Screen Gems TAROT
With a group of seven friends, expect to see their fates sealed by a number of cards. In other words, expect to see a wide variety of Tarot-inspired creatures tormenting the protagonists. The filmmakers stressed the importance of practical effects for their creatures.
Cohen tells us, “From the get-go, we said every creature is going to be practical. We were thinking of [David] Cronenberg, of Alien and The Thing, and we want our actors responding to real things, not a tennis ball. It always just looks better. You get better performances. With the designs themselves, if you look at the tarot cards and these specific characters, there’s nothing inherently terrifying about them, even though we associate the cards with being supernatural and terrifying. And [it’s] why we partnered with Trevor [Henderson], who was the only designer we met with. We were like, this is our guy because he has this ability to make the familiar feel unnatural.
“His designs are really grounded. I am sure you’ve seen a lot of his stuff where it’s like a hallway, and there’s something there, and something’s off about it, but it really feels like it’s in the space. We knew that he has a special brain for creating unique creatures, and he hadn’t done a movie, which is just shocking to us. Then, we knew that in order to pull that off, we would need a design team with equal skill. That was Dan Martin and his amazing team who worked hand in hand with Trevor to bring those to life.”
Larsen Thompson ‘Elise’ in Screen Gems TAROT
Great designs and practical effects are one thing, but it also falls to the performers to infuse these monsters with personality to make them memorable. That was also at the forefront of the filmmakers’ minds.
“In order for the creatures to translate, underneath all the prosthetics, you have to have great actors,” Cohen confirms. “We met with a lot of people. We were looking for people who were talking to us about the psychology and the movement and how they could move in a way that we hadn’t seen before or incorporate dance. We were looking for those outliers, and basically, everyone we hired approached the part as if there were no makeup or prosthetics. It’s like, ‘I am the Magician, so this is what I want to do. I’m going to have a limp. My body’s going to do this. I feel like my head is hunched.’ And we would watch these actors just embody these roles. It was really just picking great people, honestly. It’s hard to act through prosthetics and create emotion and fear and other things. You have to have an incredible control to be able to do that.”
Halberg elaborates,” Even though we enhanced some of the creatures with visual effects, we didn’t want to rely on that. So we needed people, like Spenser said, who each brought their own unique feel to these characters. They were just as important as all of the other actors in the movie and are so crucial to making sure that these sequences are scary and believable.”
Humberly González ‘Madeline’ in Screen Gems TAROT
One of the many Tarot creatures in the film is the Magician, who comes with an original song by the film’s composer, Joseph Bishara. While Bishara has delivered no shortage of great contemporary horror scores, including The Conjuring and Malignant, horror fans are likely more familiar with Bishara as the Lipstick Demon in the Insidious franchise. Cohen and Halberg can be counted among Insidious fans, so much so that they wanted an original song from the Lipstick Demon himself.
They explain, “We actually, in prep, we called Joe, and we said, ‘Hey, we’re going to do some kind of an old-timey song there.’ We knew something creepy, very Shining-esque. Then we had the idea to do a song called ‘I Saw You’ to be a pun on that whole thing. And actually use saws as the instrument. We found these YouTube videos, and our DP, I think, Elie [Smolkin] had found these videos of someone playing a saw. We were like, that’s terrifying.
“So we called Joe, and we said, ‘You know Tiptoe through the Tulips, how that’s like in Insidious?’ That’s the thing you leave the theater thinking about, and it gets under your skin. We were like, ‘Can you do that for us with an original song?’ He said yes. What you hear in the movie is basically what he played for us the first time. He was just like, ‘I have an idea. I’ll talk to you guys in a week.’ And then that was what we heard, and it was amazing.”
With so many entities and horror sequences, Halberg can’t pick a favorite. Instead, she offers one last tease, “I hope people come away with the realization that each of the sequences is so unique and different, and that each of the creatures is so special because we took a lot of time trying to craft each of these kills or scares to be their own thing and to feel different.
“Hopefully everybody can choose their own favorite.”
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