Chicago Horror Film Festival director Jason Davis on chicken horror, gay horror, and scream queens
Viva ThanksKilling!
As the leaves change, so too does our tolerance increase for blood-boiling screams, fake blood made from non-dairy coffee creamer, and debates as to how many Nighmare On Elm Street movies there are now (correct answer: nine). With Halloween sorta around the corner, the Chicago Horror Film Festival kicks off this Friday at Portage Theater with a showing of El Monstro Del Mar!, the first of many opportunities in the next month to immerse oneself in slasher, splatter, and German underground films. That in mind, The A.V. Club asked Chicago Horror Film Festival founder and director Jason Davis to reveal his favorites in several specific horror categories for a few ideas on how to spend this Halloween freaked, amused, or perplexed at the thought of gay zombies.
Most Horrifically Believable Film
Jason Davis: One that kind of nails it in a sense would be Frailty, with Bill Paxton. With Frailty—and I’m trying to remember all the details—it was more so about this family. What makes it hard to find a truly believable film is that there’s always some separation into its own reality. I like this one because they set up as more of a family dynamic, that you could see how that dynamic could be true. And it’s really twisted in that way. You could actually see how this family could be that way.
The A.V. Club: Were the death scenes pretty real, though?
JD: Yeah, they’re not truly unbelievable deaths, people don’t die too easily. It’s not like you can hit somebody, and he’s dead, but the main hero gets almost chopped in half but he’s still coming after you.
Funniest Horror that Wasn’t Meant to Be Funny
JD: Well, I think everyone will agree that Evil Dead will always be the winner of that award. But most of the ones that I know of that are funny are meant to be funny. Even ones like Bonnie & Clyde Versus Dracula, that one was meant to be funny and corny in spots. Some of my favorites that we’ve shown a few at the horror festivals over the years—Gay By Dawn and Gay Zombie—they know they’re funny.
AVC: Can you explain Gay By Dawn?
JD: It’s this short 10-minute film. There’s four tough guys sitting around a campfire. They talk about how they’re not afraid of monsters, not afraid of the dark, not afraid of this and that. And then the gay bomb drops in, and one person says to another, “Well, you went off to the city, are you sure you didn’t come back gay?” And it becomes that they’re more afraid of one of them being gay then if one of them was a vampire or a werewolf. It gets so comical, where in the end, one guy goes to the bathroom, and the rest of them kill each other with their guns thinking the others have gone gay. The guy comes back, sees everybody dead, freaks out, and starts to run away. Then all of a sudden you hear this disco party music and this pink puffy lei comes out of the woods and grabs him.
Littlest Known Horror Sub-Genre
JD: As long as I’m on the subject, how about the gay horror films? I can’t really think of many films in that genre, but there’s so many horror films of every type that are already out. Unless you want to count those chicken horror films that have been coming out, Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead and the ThanksKilling films, which are about one big monster turkey. And there’s another ThanksKilling movie, but I’m not sure if that’s going to be released to festivals.
AVC: And the gay zombie films? What distinguishes a gay zombie from your down-home American straight zombie?
JD: Well, Gay Zombie really looks at zombies in the mainstream that blend in and try to live a normal life. And it’s about a zombie that’s in a relationship with a man, but is going out clubbing every night, and his boyfriend doesn’t like that he’s going out and eating people.
Film that turned you into a horror buff
JD: Nightmare On Elm Street was the film that made me love horror films, but Halloween is what kept my love for it when I went to film school. Nightmare On Elm Street, as a kid—that whole series scared the living bejeezus out of me, to the point that I didn’t like being afraid of it, so I actually forced myself to watch it repeatedly as a marathon to try to get myself over being afraid of it. And then once I went to film school at Columbia College—once you learn about film technique and you watch Nightmare On Elm Street, you see how the camera shots don’t cut well together and it gets really annoying actually. But then I started to enjoy Halloween, which is a great technical film.
AVC: Is horror a genre that a lot of film school students like?
JD: No, I would say you’re almost considered an outcast, because it’s one of the things where someone would say, “Oh, you’re going to film school for horror movies? If you wanna make films that bad, why don’t you just grab a camera?” You almost get that thrown at you, so I almost felt like I had to fight through a prejudice because I wanted to make horror films.
Most redeemable Saw or Final Destination film
JD: I did look down on the Saw films, but I’ve actually grown to like them more and more because I thought that would be a one-shot film only, I did not see how they could pull a sequel out of that. And the more sequels they come out with they’re actually able to come up with more of a story to it. I’m actually impressed by that. As for the Final Destination films, while I’m not a big fan of them and would never consider them saviors of the genre, I consider them guilty pleasures, because they’re bad because they’re fun to just enjoy a little bit. I’ve always loved how suspenseful the parts are between the deaths. When the deaths come, they’re almost comical. You have to laugh at how somebody dies. In between the death is where the tension builds.
AVC: And they’re coming out with new installments for both.
JD: Yeah, the seventh Saw film I feel is going to be very bad. Just because of the drama with the director before they even started making it.
Non-horror film with the several horror elements
JD: One would be—if you want a film that I thought was very realistic, that actually scared me more than almost any horror film at the time, it’s a strange pick—but I would choose The Sum Of All Fears with Ben Affleck. I can’t remember, but I think that film came out shortly after 9/11, and that’s probably why it struck that chord with me. But I felt that was the scariest movie I saw that year. That someone could just steal one bomb from a nuclear arsenal, or make just one bomb—it almost seems pretty easy. Another one that has a lot of horror elements is the latest in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince. It does use a lot of horror elements—it’s a very creepy film. It builds up that dark feel to it. There’s the dementors, which look like ghosts, and you have a lot of freaky moments. Even the trailer kind of sets itself as a horror film.
Worst scream queen
JD: Who’s that main girl in the Prom Night remake? She drove me nuts. I couldn’t even finish watching the film. Just terrible.
AVC: Brittany Snow?
JD: Yeah, that’d be her. I think I suffered all the way through the end, but for the life of me I can’t remember the end.
Most original way to die
JD: Has to be “death by stereo” in The Lost Boys. Corey Haim shoots a vampire with an arrow, and that doesn’t kill him cause it misses the heart, so he shoots him another time, and it knocks him back into the stereo, kicks on the stereo with a bunch of rock music, and electrocutes the vampire. And of course he comes back with the famous “death by stereo” line. The one liners sell it.
AVC: What’s the most clichéd way to die at this point?
JD: Hmm. Probably the head being chopped off. It’s been done so many times. Still a classic, I still enjoy it—but it’s overused.
