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Bloody Old Crypt

By David Hughes Fangoria Magazine - May 1996

On an old country estate situated in a rural part of South-West London looms an enormous mansion, still bearing some evidence of it's former magnificence, although the many years since it's heyday have hardly been kind to the elaborate facade or the impressive grounds. Having once played host to foppish gentlemen and delightful ladies, chattering servants and exquisite costume balls, Hanworth Park House today finds itself overrun by the most extraordinary company since it's foundations were laid several hundred years before, for on this damp and miserable day in February it is serving as a principal location for America's most popular anthology horror show, HBO's Tales from the Crypt.

It has to be said, however, that the drafty corridors have seen a few equally fearful intruders of late; indeed, an exorcism was performed at Hanworth Park House less than a year before the Tales team arrived, as film crews less accustomed to such frights were reluctant to venture inside while the house's ghost was still in residence. Today, there are no such apparitions evident in most of the 100-plus rooms, though one entire wing of the house is currently occupied by a number of grisley ghouls in crumbling make-up, a mad scientist with sleep-deprived eyes--and a camera crew that looks only marginally healthier.

It is the third day of a five-day shoot on "Report from the Grave," the ninth episode of the series' seventh season, and director Bill Malone is discussing the ferocity of a lightening storm with the director of photography, his only fellow countryman among the 30-strong crew. The episode was also written by Malone, who, having helmed last season's scariest episode, "Only Skin Deep," was invited to contribute a story of his own when Tales moved to England as a change of style for season seven.

"That episode was staight-ahead horror," Malone says of "Only Skin Deep." in which a man picks up a girl at a masquerade party, only to discover that her grotesque mask is actually her true face, "and that's what I really like to do." An avid reader of FANGORIA since it's very first issue, Malone has previously directed the feature films Scared to Death, "a drooling-monster-in-a-sewer picture," and Creature, "a drooling-monster-in-space picture," before catching the eye of Tales producer Gil Adler.

"Report from the Grave" stars British actor James Frain as a scientist who invents a device with which he can communicate with the dead, and later finds it extremely useful after he accidentally kills his girlfriend, played by young Welsh actress Siobhan Flynn. "It's really a wildly romantic tragedy rather than straight-up horror," Malone says. "I see it as a kind of Wuthering Heights-style story." Actor Frain agrees: "Oh yeah, it's got Emily Brontë written all over it," he says, tongue planted firmly in cheek in the best Crypt tradition. Frain is equally jovial about his recent role in the Ted Danson starrer Loch Ness, which he describes as "a romantic comedy with monsters --Local Hero meets Jurassic Park. It was a shame we did not have enough money to get a proper Loch Ness Monster, " he deadpans, "so we had to use the Cookie Monster with some seaweed over it's head. Actually, it looked quite good."

Frain admits that, like a lot of Brits, he wasn't familiar with HBO's highest-rated show, probably because British television channels tend to bury it, or screen it incomplete using Fox TV's butchered versions. "A friend of mine told me he'd enjoyed doing one earlier in the season," the actor says, "so I read the script and thought it would be fun. Yesterday, for instance, we did a shot where I was in a mental hospital, straitjacketed and strapped to a bed. All of a sudden, the bed comes flying out of the wall, and behind it are these three naked women in tubes, and my girlfriend strapped to an electric chair with electrodes all over her!" In other words, he laughs, "Standard soap opera stuff."

Flynn, as Frain's ill-fated love interest, was also unfamiliar with the show at first, and initially had some reservations about doing it. "I was a bit uncertain when I first saw the torture chamber where I am tormented by this demon," she admits. "I wasn't really sure I wanted to do that scene." Soon, however, the young actress was having the time of her life. "So far I've been in the graveyard, the crypt and the torture chamber, so it's a pretty average working day for me," she jokes. "The last film I did involved a lot of running around mountains in the freezing cold. This one's a lot of screaming and blood and running around graveyards--it's really good fun!"

Malone says that he deliberatedly tailored his story for the British locations, knowing in advance that the crew would be moving here for the new series. "I knew we were going to shoot in England very early on, so I really structured the locations and the characters to take advantage of that--there was no point in trying to fight it. It's very tough, though; this is probably the most elaborate show of the season and we're shooting it in five days. But, you know, you can get behind and then you catch up."

The two best things about working in England, Malone says, are the people and the locations. In the States, you really have to look for these old houses--here, there's one everywhere you turn the camera." As for his two leads, neither of whom are well-known even in Britian, he adds, "Personally, as a filmmaker, I'd much rather use an unknown than a name actor because they don't carry that baggage with them. When the audience sees them, they are these characters."

Tales from the Crypt has been in England since December of last year (1995), and so far has seen contributions from such directors as Freddie Francis, who helmed the original 1972 Crypt movie, Peter (Mo' Money) Macdonald, Russell (Highlander) Mulcahy and actor Bob Hoskins, who follows such performers as Tom Hanks, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Michael J. Fox in moving behind the Crypt camera. In front of it, a host of well-known British faces has appeared so far, including the The Kray's Martin Kemp, Shallow Grave co-stars Ewan McGregor and Kerry Fox, expatriate actress Elizabeth McGovern, and actresses Francesca Annis, Natasha Richardson, character actor Leslie Phillips, comedians Eddie Izzard and Steve Coogan and--in a minor role in his own episode--Hoskins.

Speaking from their offices at Ealing Studios, where such classic British comedies as The Man in the White Suit were made in it's heyday, Crypt producers A L Katz, and Adler reveal that the move to Britian was decided upon because, after six seasons, almost 90 episodes and two feature films--1995's horrific hit Demon Knight and the upcoming Bordello of Blood--they felt the show needed something different. "We'd done all these stories in Los Angeles," says Katz, "but we're always looking around for new approaches to the show, so we thought coming here would allow us to do something fresh and different."

"In addition," chimes in Adler, "we'd be able to take advantage of all these Gothic locations we'd have had to build in the States, and attract all the actors who'd been asked to do the show but, either due to unavailability or their inability to come to the States just for a four- or five-day show, had been unable to do. Now all of a sudden we were in their backyards knocking on the door saying, 'Hey, now you can do it, can't you?' And that's how we got [people like] Bob Hoskins and Natasha Richardson to do shows."

Despite their history-steeped surroundings, the producers stress that their casting choices arose directly from the stories themselves, rather than any desire to use British genre veterans such as those associated with the Hammer films of the '60's and '70's. "We did use Freddie Francis, though," says Adler. "Being here at Ealing Studios, we thought, 'What could be more delicious than having Freddie come back and do an episode?' We were really attracted to that because he'd done the first Tales from the Crypt movie and many other horror films. It became something we really wanted to make happen. And Freddie was delightful to work with."

In addition to Hanworth Park House, the production also visited such picturesque locations as Knebworth Park and Dover Castle, the latter made over to double for a British WWII prisoner-of-war camp. "When we did our first location scout at the castle," Katz recalls, "I remember thinking 'Wow, we're really gonna be shooting here!' It was incredibly exciting." Adler agrees, "It was really thrilling to be in those kinds of locations. I mean, we were walking through dungeons that were built in medievil times."

Still, both producers insist that the move to England will only bring about a stylistic change, while the stories themselves will remain as bizarre and grotesque as always. "We do what we do," says Katz. "The same old black comedy. There are some episodes that are a little more straight, some eerie or creepy. But it's the black comedy that appeals to us."

"They're all over the place," agrees Adler. "We always have a balance, so that in any season of 13 stories, we'll have some frightening ones, some that are funny, some with more special effects, some that are more character-based. The difference in being here is having English actors, setting them in English places. We're not pretending to be in Los Angeles--that would be silly. So we're really over here, giving it a very different, twisted look, with the actors, the locations, and some of the stories."

The production's move to the UK was proceeded by a brief visit by Joel Silver, one of the show's Planet Hollywood-style association of executive producers. "Joel came over to survey the situation, and he also did a bit of shooting for us," Adler says, adding that Richard Donner, another of the show's A-list exec producers and a well-known Anglophile, was delighted at the choice of venue for the seventh season. "Dick's done a lot of movies here at Pinewood Studios, so it was great for him to have another of his projects come here."

Silver's trip to the UK served another purpose--to procure some publicity coverage for the show, which is sadly not exactly a staple of British television schedules. "Familiarity wasn't as high as it is in the States," begins Katz, before Adler cuts in: "We're so well-known in the States--we've been on seven seasons [now], we've been nominated for seven CableAce awards and we're still the most watched show on HBO--a lot of the agents know of us and know of the show. So even though maybe some of the actors didn't know about us, their agents would know that people like Tom Hanks, Michael J. Fox, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Whoopi Goldberg had all done shows, so that wasn't really a problem."

In fact, the only difficulty so far has been the language barrier. "Getting used to the difference between 'sparks' and 'chippies' has been a little bit difficult," says Katz. "In LA we have electricians and carpenters; here you call them sparks and chippies." " In LA," Adler adds enlighteningly, "a chippie is an attractive-looking girl you see as you're driving down Sunset Boulevard." And, of course, in Britian "chips" are French fries, not potato chips, which are called "crisps." "Yeah," Adler jokes, "when they said they needed more chippies, we were all for it. We were expecting potato snacks, and instead a bunch of guys with spirit levels show up."

So with the seventh season--the first to go into production with a follow-up series already commissioned--adding to the list of well-known faces both before and behind the camera, it would seem that the producers have established a formula for success without resorting to formula stories. This, they suggest, is one of the things that attracts the big names. "The natue of feature films also has a lot to do with it," says Katz. "To get a feature film up and running, into shooting, into post, takes two to three years of your life. Whereas here, we're effectively making a feature film every week. You're in, you're out--boom!--you get a chance to have some fun."

With the seventh series due to debut on HBO this month, and the eighth season already in the early stages of preparation--beginning with the producers' perennial trawl through old EC Comics looking for inspiration in a story, a character, an effect or a grisly twist (or even "twisted grisle"!)--the only problem is whether or not they can continue to walk the line between genuine terror and black comedy--probably the most difficult themes to combine successfully. For his part, Katz believes that there will always be plenty of inspiration around for the series.

"The world is an amazingly sick place," he says, "and it just seems to get sicker and sicker. We're always just trying to catch up."

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