The Flop House - FH Mini 107 - A Talk with Tom Holland!

Episode Date: July 13, 2024

No, not Spider-Man. He's a menace! A menace, I say!Instead we got the amazing opportunity to talk with the REAL Tom Holland -- the one 80s kids will remember -- the writer, director, or writer-director of horror movies and thrillers including Child's Play, Fright Night, Thinner, Class of 1984, Cloak & Dagger, Scream For Help, and Psycho II. As three nerds who grew up with this stuff, you can imagine how excited we were to talk to Mr. Holland, and he was just a delight! We hope you enjoy it as much as we all did.

Hey, this is a Flophouse mini episode. Now here at the Flophouse, we normally watch a bad movie then we talk about it, but tonight we are not doing that at all. We are going to be interviewing and talking with a very special guest, but to introduce ourselves, I'm Stuart Wellington and joining me as always are. Dan McCoy.

And I'm Elliot Kalin, the third person who co-hosts this show. And we have a special guest today. We have writer, director, author, Tom Holland. You would know him from Fright Night. You would know him from Cloak and Dagger. You would know him from Child's Play. Psycho 2.

So many, Psycho 2, yeah. Class of 1984, one of the all-time great punk movies. Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, Elliot. So yeah, Tom, thank you so much for joining us. How are you doing today? Oh, you don't want to know. I'm recovering from last night where I introduced a Friends movie. I did it from LA in Naples, Florida, as a hurricane barrels towards Florida, you know?

Anyway. Did that add urgency to your introduction? Well, I was surprised they got that many people into the theater. You know, the theater was packed. But I mean, it's like 91 at night down there, I think right now. So maybe the theater's a good place to hide out.

Or maybe it's a sign of how enthusiastic they are for your friend's movie. Do you wanna drop a plug as to what the name of that movie is? Yeah, it's name's Peter O'Goochie. The movie is called, oh God. I'll think of it in a minute. Perfect. I'm turning into Joe Biden.

We all are. That's our curse. Yeah, I think we all are. Okay, so one of the big things, I already mentioned it, but we're really excited to talk about Fright Night today. I'm sure I speak for all three of the Flophouse We're really excited to talk about Fright Night today. I'm sure I speak for all three of the Flophouse and that Fright Night has been a really important movie

to us. It's a movie that has been a favorite of mine for a very long time. It's always fun to revisit. But some of our listeners might not be familiar with Fright Night. Tom, how would you describe Fright Night to somebody who has never seen it before?

Fright Night is my love letter to horror fans everywhere. And it came out in 1985, and it was the second biggest horror movie that year from Columbia Pictures. And it's really amazing. I mean, it is a, it's a once in a lifetime experience. It's done nothing but grow. I mean, you know, I mean, when I was doing all these movies,

you never expected anybody, well, you thought you did them. They came out in the theaters if you were lucky. And, you know, and then maybe they ended up on television and reruns for a year or two, and then they were gone, gone, gone. And what's happened with Frightened Night is it's become multi-generational. It's the movie that the grandparents showed of their grandchildren to introduce them to horror now.

I mean, it's just amazing. It has become much loved. I mean, it's got, it's got a, it's got a really avid fan base and I never expected it. And it is just, it's growing over the last, I guess I noticed it around the beginning of this, of this, of this millennial or whatever the hell it is. Sure, yeah. Yeah, 2000. It's just amazing. So, you know, and it's loved.

You know, I mean, I've got, all of it's been amazing. I'm going to sound like I'm bragging, but I mean. You're allowed to brag here on the floppers. Yeah, well, I went to a Blacklist dinner with all the big horror directors maybe 15, 17 years ago. And Psycho 2 was voted the best horror sequel ever. And you know, when Psycho 2 came out was an enormous hit. It was the biggest hit that year after the first sequel to Star Wars.

That's how big it was. And then everybody forgot about it. I thought, you know, and then I don't know about 15, 16 years ago, a guy named Rob Galuzzo showed up and all they could think about was the Psycho series. And that was the beginning of what was a critical discovery, rediscovery, reassessment, I don't know, of Psycho 2. And I plug for myself, I have a book that you can find on Amazon called Oh Mother, What

Have You Done? Which is about the making of Psycho 2. Because the fans were asking me about it. And then an amazing thing happened. Richard Franklin who directed it, who was an Australian who directed Road Games. Yeah. And a scholar of Alfred Hitchcock and Richard died of prostate cancer a long time ago, 2009. And then through a variety of different things, as well. Jennifer Haddon sent me his memoirs that he'd done just before he passed. And he went through all the movies that he'd made and what the experiences have

been like. But the one that was the most complete and also had an uplifting story was Psycho 2. And I read that and it was like stepping back into 1982 or three when I wrote it for him. And I did, I put it together and then I put in my comments and my memories and then I got the editor, Andrew London, he and I are the only two left of making the movie. Well Vera Miles is, she won't talk to anybody, she's in her 90s. So you read the book and it's like a round table, like everybody's still here talking about what it was like making it. And it was a blockbuster in the sense

that the audience is lined up around the block to see it. And it ends with Richard talking about what it was like on Times Square to go to the first night's release of Psycho 2. And what happened there was that nobody at Universal wanted to. This is before they did sequels, you know, and and everybody thought that it was the the kiss of death to remake Psycho 2 because Psycho, but that point

was realized as a seminal horror film that it was. I would call it the beginning of the slasher genre. Big tip of the hat to Alfred Hitchcock. But everybody told Richard and me that if we had the temerity to try to make a sequel, The Psycho, The Psycho, that the reviews would be so savage would never work again. The problem was that it had no, it had no, it didn't have any interest unless I could get Anthony Perkins to play Norman Bates again. And I had to write a script that was, that has such a terrific character arc

and was such an acting piece, that Tony would say yes. And Tony had, to put it mildly, an ambivalent relationship with Norman Bates. Tony had been a young lead. And then he did Psycho, which was like an afterthought. I think he worked like five or six days on it. And he flew back and forth to New York in between.

He had no idea of the effect it was going to have or his role as Norman Bates. And so he felt that the, you know, the old song Hollywood, be careful what you succeed at because you'll be doing it forever. Yeah. That's sort of how Tony felt. But he really loved the role, what I'd written for him. And he came in and he knocked it out of the park. They all did, they were all great. Jennifer Tilly, Vera Miles, God bless her, Robert Loja.

You know, a hell of a cast. And Richard Franklin, the director, was spot on in his direction. That was probably the height of his power coming off of Rogue Games and Patrick, I think is the name of it. And Anthony Perkins went on to direct Psycho 3. So in a way, you brought him back to that character

and him loving Norman Bates again, I guess. Well, that gave him the power to direct. Yeah. He had wanted to direct too. You know, but the universal wouldn't allow it. And then and then psycho to make something I forget something like 90 million worldwide back in the days when that was unheard of. And we did it for a smidge less than five million.

Wow. Yeah, I am shocked. I'm amazed to hear that though. The thing is like I'm a little too young to like have been aware of like the box office at the time. So I didn't know that it had been that huge because I do remember like critics being like hard on it because they were like, it's not psycho.

Like they like, it wasn't a time, you know, that sequels were as accepted. So they're like, oh, they're making a psycho two. And so I had no idea. And then I saw it years later. I, that's a movie that I have recommended on this podcast. I love I love psycho too. I I think it's I Don't know. It's so clever in the way it takes your knowledge of psycho and sort of uses it against you. I think

Like you you end up sympathizing with a serial murderer. Yeah Yeah, and I love I Richard Franklin You end up sympathizing with a serial murderer. Yeah. Yeah. And I love, Richard Franklin, you know, another one of your movies, Cloak and Dagger, I watched that so much as a kid, like when Dabney Coleman just passed, like I joked that like I'm one of the few people who probably thinks of Dabney Coleman primarily as an action star because I love Cloak and Dagger so much. Jack Flack, Jack Flack. Yeah.

Damn news, Jack. They're having a screening of it, matinee screening two Sundays in a row and a couple of weeks down at the New Beverly Theater here in LA. Wow, awesome. Which is Tarantino's theater. And my son and I are gonna go see it again

because I haven't seen it in a 35 mil print in gosh, decades. Yeah, I don't because I haven't seen it in a 35 mil print in gosh, decades, you know? Yeah, I don't think I've ever seen it in the theater. I've only, like, it was such a, like, an HBO staple, I think, for me. Yeah. Well, what happened was that they changed regimes, universal, and Frank Price's regime came in and they hadn't given the go ahead and they dumped it.

So it was a failure as a release, theatrical release, and then it came out on cable. And guys like you, who were at that age then, I'm probably talking the 90s, 1990s, if you saw it when you were 14, 15 or 16, it stayed with you forever. Because they make so few, they make no films now for adolescent boys. So it has a huge fan base. There was kind of an interesting like trope or connection I got from both Cloak and Dagger

and Fright Night and also a little bit in Child's Play, but like you have characters who you have fatherless heroes who are kind of like searching for a father figure a little bit and they're also, I feel like they came out to a, these movies were released to a generation of young men who were also like raised on television, like us. So like, I feel like there's some kind of,

was that intentional that you were trying to reach that specific audience with these movies? Like an audience of men raised by TV basically? I don't think so. I think that was me going into them. You know what I mean? I mean, finally, there is a truth in writers that a lot of themselves have to go into it. I don't think I have to go into it. I don't think I had any control over it.

Oh, you know, I mean, I think that, you know, if you if you if you're really if it's really good, I mean, if you're really living the life of your characters, you know, you go into it and it isn't it isn't a cold commercial calculation. I mean, you know, I mean, I certainly know when I'm spot on and I know when I'm desperately trying to get into it, you know, and I've had both experiences. You say that about people like brought up on television and you said Sir about the the

Frightland fright night being a love letter to horror fans like certainly in the case of you know having this horror host character which like I Also didn't really experience the local horror host, but something about that performance just works nonetheless. Like even if you don't understand the exact mechanics of it, you understand the idea. This is Roddy McDowell as the character Pete Vincent. And I don't know, like even as a kid, I found that character so compelling and charming.

Like, were you thinking of specific people when you were doing that character or sort of an amount of them? Oh yeah, I was thinking of Vincent Price. I wrote it for Vincent Price. And then I got to go ahead in the movie and I reached out and his health wasn't strong enough to be able to cast him. And I was blessed that I got Roddy and then then Roddy McDowell had had me to dinner at his house with Vincent Price and his wife, Carl Brown, which was an

amazing experience. I should have taken an autograph book with me back in those years. I should have taken an autograph book with me back in those years. All I wanted to talk about were the AIP and Roger Corman movies that Vincent had done. All he wanted to talk about was food and art. I feel like he really missed out. He should have had the opportunity to do a movie about someone who murders people with painting or with fine cooking.

Then I think he really would have gotten into it. Vincent Price was an incredibly sophisticated man. I mean, I'm from a small town, I'm from a small town in mid state New York called Highland. And, you know, it didn't have very many gourmets in that town. That's for sure. But it's similar like, we all, I think we all like

experience, at least when we were younger, experienced the world through movies and TV. Yeah, definitely. And that's how, that's our touchstones. Yeah, because there's a great lot, like there's a great bit where Peter Vincent is You know, he's expounding on the current state of the horror genre and how they all want, you know ski mask killers with machetes and so it like

Young versions exactly. I was I was I was wondering, was that you speaking through that character from your own opinions? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Friday Night is my love letter to horror fans everywhere. I came on the scene before horror was even a vaguely respectable genre. Certainly before it became self-referential, I feel. Oh, God, yeah. But I mean, it was, my memory is,

was me and three or four of the guys in high school. And everybody thought we were weird. And we read EC Comics. And this is when EC Comics were banned. They were banned like in 1955 or 56. And we'd hide them in notebooks or in our magazines and slip them to new editions to each other in high school. And everybody thought we were very weird.

And even when I did Friday night, which would be 1985, everybody that was in Hollywood told me I immediately had to get out of horror because horror was considered the redhead of stepchild in Hollywood. So there's been a prejudice against it and here we sit in 2024 and all it is is horror movies and remakes and sequels. Yeah. But the only originality is horror. Yeah. It feels like we've been, we've seen such a sea change in the way critically that horror movies are talked about because the fans of your generation and the generation after kind of have become the critics and academics.

And so now it's almost, horror is almost seen as like the, in many places as the purest of the film genres, the one that's most worth talking about, as opposed to back then when you look at the, like I'll occasionally go back and read old like New York Times reviews of horror movies from the, you know, 50s, 60s or 70s. And they're just so, they feel so insulted that they have to watch this movie and talk about it. Like how dare anyone make this and make them sit through it. And now it feels so different gladly. Yeah, if you look at it,

Roger Ebert's review of Fright Night, which is good, but you said it's not a distinguished horror movie but it has a lot of fun being undistinguished. Which is sort of a backhanded compliment, you know? The one, I'm sorry, go ahead. But also, I think the work you did with Fright Night and with Psycho 2, with making movies that play with, as I think Dan was saying earlier,

plays with the preconceived notions that the audience has from knowing previous movies. It feels like that's, I think you did such a big part in making the genre more acceptable, more respectable, in helping it to become more kind of self-reflective in that way, or showing that the previous horror movies have things about them that can be commented on and can be moved forward in a way. I think that the way you were using them in those movies, you really helped to push things forward in that way to make horror

more than just kind of straightforward scares, which allows more academic people to take it more seriously, even if they should have been taken seriously the whole time you know. Thank you Elliot. I mean thank you. All of this was only in the last 15, 17, 18 years. Yeah. I remember when Scream came out and people were like oh this horror movie is really there, it's a horror movie that deals with the tropes of horror movies and I was like it's called Fright Night like it exists Getting very frustrated with that. Yeah, well that that that's so that suffer referential nature the premise I want to say so I was rewatching Fright Night this morning and my wife who is less of Let's first in the horror will like was like, okay. Well, what's what's this about? You know, and I

was first in horror, was like, okay, well, what's this about? And I gave her the premise of like, okay, well, this vampire moves in next door to this boy. No one believes that there's a vampire over there, of course, because it's a vampire. And so he has to employ the closest thing to a vampire expert he has near him, which is this horror host character.

And she immediately was like, oh, that's a great premise. Like she was hooked by the premise. And I think anyone who hears it is like, oh, great. But I'm wondering, like, was the seed for you, where you're like, vampire moves in next door, was the seed like, what if a horror host has to like go up against an actual threat? You know, do you remember?

Yes, very well. It came off of Cloak and Dagger. Cloak and Dagger is supposedly a remake of The Window, which was Cornell Woolrich's juvenile version of Rear Window, but it's sort of the classic boy who cried wolf story. And I said, if you really want to do this in an interesting way, have it be a mad teenage horror fan who becomes convinced that the guy next door is a vampire and we went, it was Richard Franklin and I, we went into universal and pitched it there and they threw us out. And I said, well, I'm going to go was Richard Franklin and I, we went into Universal and pitched it there

and they threw us out. Because that was a moment in time when vampires were dead, dead, dead. You know, I mean- Of all the places to throw you out, Universal should be most excited to do a vampire movie. Vampires kept that studio alive for so long. Oh, that's frustrating to hear that.

You can never underestimate how blind major corporations are to their catalogs. You know, I mean, it always amazes me. But anyway, I had the idea in my head and I was in love with it because that was my teenage years. I mean, when I was a teenager, you know, the only place you would watch horror movies were

on Friday night and the Friday night frights at 11 o'clock on some independent TV channel. And they were uniformly god awful. There were a few early ones that were brilliant. I mean, the original thing was 1951 or two. Them is a terrific movie. I mean, anyway, there's some really good movies, but a lot of them were really god awful. But they had these horror hosts like Elvira and Stagger Lee

and Count Skowooly or whatever, you know, and they were all horrible ham actors, but great fun. And they would step out of a crypt of paper mache and it would, you could see it shake, you know? And they'd walk in a graveyard and you'd see the prop man coming in with a fogger and with a thing to blow the fog. It was really just god awful. But it was huge fun and I grew up with that

because it was the only place you could watch horror movies, you know. Otherwise, you were back in the day when you had to find them in a theater and nothing replayed after it first came out. I remember driving hours to watch a re-release of 20,000 Ligs Under the Sea, the James Mason Disney movie. I mean, now you have a plethora. Now there's so much out there, who the hell knows even what it is. But you know, I mean, back when I was growing up, it was held to find the movies you love.

But anyway, so Friday night, I couldn't sell it. I wrote Cloak and Dagger instead, which I'm also in love with and very proud of, but it never got, it never has grown to be as enormous. I think my most loved movie is Fright Night, but you know, the other all almost everything has as Phantom thinner is coming back now. Yeah. You know, and that was a failure when it came out. So, you know, I mean, I think one of the lessons is if you if you hang around long enough,

there are some pleasant surprises in store for you, maybe. You know, but here I am and I'm thrilled to be talking about these movies and I love Cloak and Dagger and I love all of them, even the terrible ones. But I especially love Fright Night. Let's not forget Child's Play. Child's Play is big. Yeah. I want to ask actually about that because there's like a coziness to like Fright Night and a coziness to a lot of your other horror movies that like I enjoy because it's...

I don't know. There's like this sort of warmth but like Child's Play, I'm not saying it doesn't warm but it's like meaner. It's a meaner movie. That doll is very mean, Dan. Yeah. Legitimately. Well, he's not a good guy. Yeah. Well, I was I deliberately set out to make the scariest movie I could.

But at the same time, I put some huge laughs in there. Yeah. You know, you know, to break it. But no, the it was it was the quintessential killer doll movie. I don't think there'd been a killer doll movie before that. So it was, you know, it was it was kicking, kicking down the you think it wants Stuart. I'm like, was there a Twilight Zone episode? I'm trying to remember. There's a movie.

Talking Tina. Talking Tina. Yeah, Elliot. And there's an old movie called Dead of Night. Dead of Night. Yeah, and Dead of Night had a, was it a doll or was it a ventriloquist dummy in Dead of Night? I can't remember.

It was a ventriloquist in Dead of Night. Yeah, yeah. And don't forget Magic. Yes. Magic, yeah, yeah. But in Magic, Magic frustrates me because they played ambiguous, whether it's him or whether it's the dummy or, and I didn't. Magic was a failure, yes. I was, this is something I think about frequently now is,

I heard somewhere, I forget where, that they wanted Gene Wilder to play that role originally instead of Anthony Hopkins. And I just kept thought about what a different movie that would have been with Gene Wilder. How much more believable the ventriloquist would be as someone that a woman would want to fall in love with than Anthony Hopkins version of the character who's,

and also the, I was like, oh, he might've been funny if Gene Wilder did it. That's one of the things the movie is missing is, he's not very funny, but anyway, you know, magic is not a movie we need to, we need to bother talking about here. We should talk about Child's Play. Oh, that's so funny.

Right. Right. Well, I mean, I came up with a premise. It was the original script by Dan Mancini, but it didn't present the opportunities that I wanted for visual set pieces. Visual set pieces are defined by Alfred Hitchcock. It's where the story moves forward, the minimal amount of dialogue. And I think I learned so much by making Psycho 2 because Richard Franklin had me study. We ran every Hitchcock movie, starting with the silence, Richard and I. And we pulled out those moments, the shots in those movies where Hitchcock scared to live in hell out of your, or raised a suspense. And what I did in Child's Play, if you think about it, the opening scene,

If you think about it, the opening scene, you see Brad Duraff and you see him die and put his evil soul into a doll. And then you never see Brad again. Okay. But that then you, the audience knows that that doll is murderous, but the characters in the movie, the mother and the little boy, they don't know. And that's the Hitchcockian definition of suspense for the audience. You wanted the audience to know that Chucky was a killer. You didn't want to play that game of, is it the doll or is it not the doll?

You want it to be the suspense of knowing that Chucky is dangerous and seeing the family deal. I think that's such the better way to do it. If you watch an evil doll movie, you wanna know the doll's evil. Yeah. It reminds me, you know, you talk about Hitchcock, it reminds me of that Hitchcock story about how he said,

like a bomb blowing up is surprised But if you know, there's a bomb that's Yeah, that's exactly it That's what that's the premise that I use. Yeah, the kid knows there's a bomb but no one else And the audience knows it's a bomb. Yeah Like you said if you buy a ticket to a killer doll movie, you don't want the movie to be like, but is it a killer doll? No, yeah, you don't want to see a killer doll running around.

Don't treat me like I'm an idiot. Yeah, you want to see a doll pick up a knife and stab people with it. You don't want to have it be a question. Yeah. Well, you did after Child's Play. Before Child's Play, I can't think of an example that ever did it. Yeah. You know?

So I mean, really, like the Chucky may be the last horror icon that was created in all of our generation, you know? He definitely- I mean, Scream Ghostface, maybe a little bit, but not- But Ghostface is kind of like a mask in search of a character to wear it, whereas Chucky fits

so well with like Jason and Freddie and Norman Bates of like these characters where you really are interested in the character and you want to see what they're going to do and what's going to happen to them as opposed to wondering who's behind the mask this time. You're like, what's Chucky going to do now? Like, where's he? what's he up to? And Dorff is still doing the voice and Don Mancini is still doing, so there's a consistency of character too there

that doesn't exist with- Is Dorff still doing it? Yeah, he's out for the show. I think because his, I think in large part because his daughter is on Chucky. Yeah, that is large part. He lives up in Woodstock, New York. And I mean, he's a brilliant actor.

And I'm thrilled that I've given him a career that's carried him into his dotage, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's a great way to retire. I mean, it's still an amazing voice performance, too. He's great. Also, credit to Dan Mancini's taking it in places that I never would have thought of. But he's kept it going for 40 years.

Or 38 years or whatever. Yeah. City Pop to me is like a feeling. City Pop is beautiful music. It's music that makes me emotional. There's so many different sounds that fall into the city pop category. It just feels very home to me. We're just about wrapped on our inaugural season of Primer.

If you didn't know, Primer is a new podcast that explores music from outside the English speaking world. And Vulture called us one of the best podcasts of the year. Our first season covered Japanese city pop, and you just heard a few of our past guests share what the genre means to them. Learn more about the world of city pop and listen to some cool tunes. And if you like what we're doing, you can make a one-time contribution and help us reach our goal to produce a second season about a new genre.

Support Primer over at maximumfun.org slash Primer. Throughout history, sirens have captured men's attention, enticed men with their feminine wiles, and fulfilled men's primal needs. The siren's allure persists. They have not. Unless the primal need is, I need to be smashed on the rocks.

Yeah, smash me. Smash me, mommy. Smash me, mama. Smash me, mommy. Smash me, mama. Smash me, mommy. The sirens are looking for some strength. Why do we do this to ourselves? Strand me, baby. Strand me, mom.

Strand me, baby. So yeah, this is my brother, my brother and me from Maximum Fun on Mondays. It's just like that. It's just like that, but more of it. There's more of it. There's just more of that. Hey, it's Dan here to tell you that yesterday, tickets went on sale for Three Men and a Halley, which is our next streaming show.

It's once again beautifully shot and edited by the good folks at StagePilot. And this is our first regular format streaming show featuring Hallie Haglund, your favorite and ours. Your first chance to see her in one of these live show tapings. The show debuts on Sunday, August 4th. And you can get tickets for that show by heading to Flophousepodcast.com slash events.

Now, I'm kind of dying to ask, but with, in Fright Night, especially near the end, there's a couple of special effects sequences, both the, like the werewolf, like evil's wolf transformation sequence, and then when the, what the familiar character melts, there are these really long kind of lingering sequences that are both like kind of ridiculous and over the top,

but they really take their time and they're both like beautiful and sad. How did those come about? Was that a thing that was planned or was that something that like came out of working with the special effects team? No, that was written. I mean, but I did make discoveries along the way.

Amy Sharkmouth, I came up with while we were shooting because I saw an opportunity to really scare the hell out of the audience. But Billy Cole's Melting, I had written, but I didn't know how to do any of that. The credit goes to Richard Edlin and Randy Cook and Steve Johnson, the effects people. I had a brilliant effects crew on Friday night. And Friday night was the throwaway movie that year for for for for Columbia.

They had it. I was so hot as a writer because of the success of Psycho 2 that they thought they'd take a chance of an original script that I wrote. And they had this slot and they didn't give me any money. I think if you did it for seven or eight million. And they wanted to keep the Ghostbusters crew on, employed, because they thought they were going to do an immediate sequel to Ghostbusters. And so I got the best effects crew in Hollywood, Richard Edlund, Steve

Johnson, and Randy Cook. And they did brilliantly. I wrote those things, but I didn't have a clue how to do them. I mean, I had no idea how to throw Jerry Dandridge off the balcony and have him turn into a bat on the way down. That was Richard Edwin. That's amazing that Ghostbusters 2's loss was your game. Yeah, yeah.

So do you have any other, like, are there any other particular stories from the Fright Night production that you haven't shared or you think fans would love to hear about? Well, I don't know. I handed it one that we were, I was blocking the scene in the basement on a Friday night where Amy comes down the stairway as Charlie and Roddy are looking for Jerry's coffin.

And he pulled out the cross and she turns away and says, oh, Charlie, you promised you wouldn't let this happen. And then we called it a night because we'd run out of time. And I said, wait a minute, wait a minute when she does the turn and the reveal, if she comes around with a horrible face, like a mouth full of tear to teeth, we're gonna scare the hell out of the audience. And I told Steve Johnson and he and Randy put together the shark's mouth over the weekend. Oh, wow.

Awesome. Yeah. And then because he thought that it was, he thought it wasn't up to the standard, Steve Johnstall promised me that, that except for a brief cut, we'll never see it again. And I said, that, that, that, that, that, that just for that, okay, it's over after that.

Yeah, I agree. And he got it to me on Monday and we shot the scene and I put it in the movie. And it was, it was the universal scream from the audience and we played it and then it ended up on the one sheet. So it's probably the most famous visual from Friday night and Steve Johnson still rips me about it. It's so funny.

Yeah, I feel like between that and the shot of like evil with the cross burned on his forehead, those are the two that really like pop, come to mind immediately. Now it was a fairly small budget, but it had a pretty big return. It was a big success for its budget, right? It was the, it was the second biggest horror movie that year after the first sequel to Nightmare on Elm Street. Wow. That's how big Fright Night was. And they were going to do a sequel, we're going to do a sequel too.

And, uh, uh, they fired Guy McElwain, who'd given the go ahead, had been head of Columbia and brought in an Englishman called David Putnam. And David Putnam was only did prestige movies like chariots of fire. And he threw me out Columbia. Yeah. Yeah. He didn't, he didn't want, he looked down on horror. He didn't want to be associated with horror. And he threw me out of, that's how I ended up doing Fatal Beauty. And you know, and so much of my career, there was some, there was such an anti-horror attitude in Hollywood in those years that it, that it affected me and influenced me and I was an idiot. I should have stayed and just done as many great horror scripts as I could.

I was offered one of the sequels to Nightmare on Elm Street and like an idiot I turned it down. Were there any other horror passion projects you wish you'd gotten to do during that time but just weren't able to get off the ground due to the climate? Boy, that's a good question. Yeah, I have one called The God Game, which I'm working on right now. Oh, awesome. It goes to show you that projects never die.

You may, but the projects never die. You may, but the projects never do. You know, I wrote that I wrote a, I wrote a a hundred page treatment in 1977 with Stuart Stern. Who was Stuart Stern? Stuart was one of the three or four biggest script writers in Hollywood. He wrote a little movie called Rebel Without a Cause. Okay. Okay. And he mentored me and was very, very kind to me. He passed, I think back around 2012.

But I mean, so I'm going back and I'm looking at those scripts that I never, that for one reason or another, I couldn't get done or I had development deals on that fell by the wayside. And that's sort of how I'm spending my time right now. And also, you know, I mean, I'm giving myself a plug, but we have the Fright Night podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How does the?

The second act just dropped today. Oh, so how did that come about? Can you talk a little bit about how the Fright Night podcast came to be? Yeah, the guys at Manifest Media who do table reads asked me to come in as a voice actor on a horror segment. I thought, well, yeah, I'll do that. But I was curious about podcasts. Movies right now, as you guys know, are in a very difficult transition period and transitioning

to what the, I don't know what the hell, you know, I go watch 70 millimeter movies and I saw Dune Two and I saw Furioso and every, every one of them had 25, 30 minutes of previews and every preview was a sequel. Okay. There wasn't one original story there on every, every time. So that that's where we are in Hollywood right now. And yet the, the area that seems to be growing and is, is interesting was is this dramatic podcasts, which I guess is the way it's saying it's radio coming on, but with much better sound

than Foley and sound effects. And so I was curious about the genre. So I went and I did this thing for your table read, Jack Levy and Martin L. And I thought it was, I think that it was an interesting experience. The studio where it took place was top grade. I said, well,

if you really want to do something, I happen to own the literary, dramatic, and audio rights to an original script I wrote called Fright Night. Let's do Fright Night as as as as a as a podcast. And they went for it. And we brought the original cast out. We flew them in from all over America. You know, a lot of them were.

Yeah, two of them were here, but five of them weren't. And then I went and I got some really terrific voice stars. I got Rosario Dawson to come in. Oh wow. And play a number of the different female parts. And I got Mark Hamill to come in to replace Roddy McDowell. That's Peter Vincent. Yeah, he's he's great.

He's I mean, so you have Chris Sarandon in there playing Jerry Dandridge. So you have a yeah, that's that's that's Nightmare Before Christmas. You know, yeah. Yeah. So you have a hell of a cast on this damn thing. And we came out with the first act last week, and we were in Spotify's top 100 podcasts. We were 91. Oh, awesome.

And then, yeah, then on Monday, we had gone to be number one on Apple podcasts, and Apple, and Act Two of Friday night, the original cast reading dropped today. Oh, that's great. And you got the third act a week from today. And the reception has been mind blowing. And also the, the, the, here's the, here's the, the power of, of using established IP, which I'm usually very critical of because it's, it's, it's chilled, you know,

originality and it's also killed the star system. But the one piece of original IP that I happen to own is mine. And so we came out with a press release on Friday night, original cast reading and then Mark Hamill and everything. The media, how deep the media picked it up was just amazing. And I mean, I don't know fellas, this isn't how many people read the press releases or listened to the podcasts about it. But I saw figures, it had the possibility

of reaching over 400 million people. Wow. Because so many outlets picked it up because of the brand names and because of the stars involved. And my mouth fell open. But it's gotta be satisfying that to see something that you put so much love into all those years ago

is still getting that kind of a reception. I am pinching myself, Stuart. I mean, no, I mean, totally unexpected. And it is the best feeling I've ever had, in terms of, I feel like I've really accomplished something. And for years I was totally unaware of all this and it was just growing. It was growing out there. like you talked about class of 84

You know the class of 84 is I Think it's just terrific, you know exploitation movie And that was the success when it came out, but it, you know, if you don't have the critics commenting on it, it doesn't get in the popular culture, you know? I mean, thinner was not a success. The thinner now seems to be growing in terms of at least audience awareness. And I am in love with Cloak and Dagger. Yeah. And I hope that Tarantino keeps running it. Yeah, yeah.

So, I mean, you know, so yeah, so in my semi-retirement here, it's been amazingly, amazingly gratifying. And I want to thank the audience out there and you guys too for talking to me. Yeah, no problem. Of course, you had, I'm going to say that it was all foresight and all planning, that you had foresight and planning too, that you made these movies that spoke so strongly and so viscerally to young people watching them. And as those people grew up, they couldn't forget them. I remember seeing Class of 1984, it was already a movie that had been out

for a little while, and I was seeing it on TV when I was a teenager, and it just kind of like, it was like being punched in the face by a movie, and I just couldn't forget it after that. And so that you made these movies that just hit young people so hard, and so in such exciting ways that it stuck with us, until we became old men that can force younger people

than us to watch the movies we liked when we were young. Well, a big thanks to Mark Lester who produced and directed it. I think it's his best movie, probably doesn't. But he did a great job. Dramatically that works. And there's a stunning performance in Class of 84 by Rodney McDowell as the teacher and that was one of the big reasons that I knew he could move you as well as dramatically involve you but I knew he could play that scene where Charlie Brewster, where

Charlie's begging him to come and save Amy. And Peter saying, I just can't, I'm too terrified. And Rodney moves you to tears. And Mark Hamill does the same thing and then the cast reading. Wonderful, wonderful. So for the Fright Night original cast reading, that's available on all podcast platforms, right? All of them. Yeah, the second one just dropped today, which will be a while ago from when this episode drops.

By the time this episode comes out, I think all the parts will be out by then, or part three will be about to come out. So that's a great time. That would be great if you can watch one, two, and three at the same time. That's perfect. Because the script as a reading just involves you more and more as it goes along, because the stakes keep rising.

And did you have to do much, did you tweak the script at all before the reading, or is it just straight from the page from when you wrote it years ago? No, what I did was I took out a lot of the narration. Okay. So I kept the drama moving along. That makes sense. Yeah.

And I wrote a very long piece called Fright Night Resurrection about all of them getting together 30 years later. and I'm hoping that I can get sponsorship for that so we can do that as a podcast off of the success of the original cast reading. I'd love to do that. I'd love to do that. Yeah. Well, it sounds like you have a good start. You have a good foot in the door for this kind of thing. Well, I may have found a different way to get out there. Yeah.

You know, other than, I shouldn't be saying this, but I am saying it. I'm not doing 12 to 14 hour days anymore. I don't recommend it now. Yeah, no, and turnarounds because so much of horror is night. You're always going from you're always ending up finishing work on Saturday morning at dawn and then starting out on dawn on Monday morning again doing days. And if you do that for 40 or 50 days,

they're going to need a stretcher to carry out. You know, so podcasts,. So podcasts are just wonderful if I can get it going at this time of my life and still be creative and get my voice out there. I'm in love with this stuff. Yeah, yeah. Like I think that's one of the things that I think hits, it's so true with your work is that you're clearly a fan.

And I feel like that comes through. I think it really comes through. And I think that's what people connect with. Well, that's what Fright Night is. It's the ultimate fan letter to horror. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Classical horror. So Tom, do you have anything else you would like to plug

before we wrap up? Let's see. Yeah, I have books up on Amazon. I think they're, because of the other Tom Holland, Tom Holland's become like Dick Smith, you know? Yeah, you've got two other Tom Hollands at least that you're competing with in the public square. Yeah. Yeah, now they're called, now I'm under Tom L. Holland. Congratulations on your relationship with Zendaya, by the way. Dan, no, Dan. I hate to break it.

Very funny, very funny. Oh, that's great. Anyway, anyway, you can find my books. You know, I mean, you can find, I've written a novel called The Notch. I have a collection of short stories called I'm a Man. I'm a Man. I'm a Man. I'm a Man.

I'm a Man. I'm a Man. I'm a Man. I'm a Man. I'm a Man. I'm can find, I've written a novel called The Notch. I have a collection of short stories called Untold Tales or Twisted Tales. You can find them all on Amazon. Anyway, please look. I have a website called terrortime.shop if you like items.

Look at like items. And this has been great fun. summertime.shop if you like items, look like items. And this has been great fun. Great fun, fellas. We'll put a link in the show notes to that. Yeah, please. Yeah, this is so much fun. It's so great that you were able to join us

and talk about some of our favorite movies and give us some insight into the making of them. For the Flophouse, I've been Stuart Wellington. I've been Dan McCoy and I'm Elliot Kalin and joining us was I'm Tom Holland. God bless you and thank you all Okay, bye Maximum fun a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.