STEPHEN KING’S DIRECTOR COMING TO HORRORTHON
Horrorthon had a simple but effective motto when it launched as a blood drive in 2015: “Your blood is your ticket. We know you have it in you.”
The fourth installment of this horror film festival takes place Sunday at the Edwards Marq*E theater as a blood drive, a food drive and a toy drive. Though, it’s still about horror, too.
This year’s special guest is writer-directer Mick Garris, who wrote for Stephen Spielberg’s “Amazing Stories” series and helmed cult classic “Critters 2,” as well as a host of Stephen King adaptations, including the 1992 film “Sleepwalkers.”
The evening will begin with a 4 p.m. screening of three episodes from “Masters of Horror,” an anthology series Garris created for Showtime.
“The whole concept of ‘Masters of Horror’ was to get the greatest directors of horror from around the world,” Garris says in a phone interview.
The three one-hour episodes being screened include the Garrisdirected “Chocolate,” John Carpenter’s “Cigarette Burns” and the first U.S. theatrical screening of “Imprint,” the controversial episode from Japanese director Takashi Miike (“Ichi the Killer”).
“Showtime gave us five rules, none of which were violated by the episode, but just the overall intensity of ‘Imprint’ was enough that Showtime wouldn’t run it,” Garris says of the episode, which includes torture and aborted fetuses. “We thought it would be cool when the DVD came out to have the episode that Showtime wouldn’t run, but then Walmart, which at that time sold 40 percent of the DVDs sold in America, wouldn’t carry it.”
“Critters 2” will be the 7 p.m. feature, introduced by Garris and followed by a Q&A. The 9 p.m. slot is for a secret screening, the title only revealed when the lights go down and the projection begins.
“Basically, ‘Critters 2’ is a sequel to a low-budget rip-off of ‘Gremlins,’ ” Garris says. “I have a feeling New Line wanted to have a bit of my working with Spielberg to rub off on their franchise.
“Everything difficult about making movies was involved. There were visual effects, makeup effects, creature creation, animals, kids — all the things you worry about, and it was my first feature as a director. But it was also something I really embraced. I like evoking a small American town and doing what I call taking Norman Rockwell to hell and adding elements of Warner Brothers cartoons.”
Indeed, Garris would use similar beats in “Sleepwalkers,” based on an original screenplay by King. Garris would become the go-to director for King adaptations in the 1990s, most notably directing two TV miniseries — “The Stand” and “The Shining.”
“Even to this day, ‘The Stand’ had the biggest budget I’ve ever worked with in my life. It was $28 million. Four of that went to King,” says Garris.” It was a big gamble but became the biggest miniseries of that time. All four episodes had a viewership of 50-million plus, which in today’s cable climate rarely happens.”
Both of the televised King adaptations were divided into segments separated by commercials. “You have to build cliffhangers, and then you have to start from scratch after a Pampers commercial,” says Garris.
One of the best examples of sustained drama was a scene in “The Shining” between Steven Weber and Rebecca De Mornay where you see Weber’s character veering back and forth from being possessed to his natural self.
“The scene is an entire act. It goes from commercial break to commercial break. It’s what King felt was missing from the Kubrick version,” says Garris. “It’s an iconic, classic film, but Kubrick is cold where King is warm. That scene was one of the first things they read together when we’re in the casting session. You see the ghosts release their grip on Jack Torrance (Steven Weber) and see who the real Jack is. You see what Jack and Wendy have between them.”
King remains significant on the big screen to this day. Paramount is releasing a remake of his “Pet Sematary” in April, and Warner Brothers has announced plans to film King’s sequel to “The Shining.” Ewan McGregor is set to play Danny Torrance in King’s “Doctor Sleep.”