6 p.m.: Pieces (1982)
ER: The Vanishing would blow people's minds, so we need something to shake it up a bit. I would go for something straight-up fun, like Pieces. It's a Spanish horror film [1982's Mil Gritos Tiene La Noche] that was released as Pieces here. It was made in Spain, but except for Paul L. Smith, it's mostly Spanish actors with some really great bad dubbing. Pieces is one of my favorite early-'80s slasher films, in that it's a chainsaw movie that gives you absolutely everything you want. It's got amazingly cheesy acting, it's got fantastic kills, it starts off right away with a flashback with a kid killing his parents. It's just a fantastic, low-budget slasher movie with a terrific ending that makes no sense. And it's become a cult film, because there's a great line where the really hot undercover police agent—who's also posing as the tennis instructor—finds a girl who's been hacked up in the school bathroom. She just shakes her fist and goes [High-pitched female voice.] "Bastard! Bastard, bastard, bastard!" If you ever watch it with an audience, everyone always cheers along during that scene.
AVC: Wasn't the tagline something like "You don't have to go to Texas for a chainsaw massacre?"
ER: Yeah. And it's exactly what you think it is. In fact, on my MySpace page, someone edited a whole YouTube clip of the greatest kills from Pieces and put it up. You can watch the whole movie in five minutes.
8 p.m.: The Wicker Man (1973)
ER: After Pieces, I would show The Wicker Man.
AVC: Which version?
ER: The original. The other one doesn't exist as far as I'm concerned. The Wicker Man is such a weird movie. It's honestly a musical horror film, and it's one of those things where you're going, "What crack were these people on when they made it?" But it's brilliant, and it's got this slow, weird creepiness. And you can see where a lot of movies took… I mean, the first Hostel was very much inspired by The Wicker Man—the village, and the person being the outsider of the village, and everyone else is in on something—but it gets really creepy. There is some fantastic nudity in it. Britt Ekland does this amazing dance sequence. [It's a body double. —ed.] There's an updated cover of the song she dances to that the Sneaker Pimps have done, that I used in Hostel. But the original Wicker Man, it's such a bizarre movie. You wonder how anyone would ever make a film like that today. But it holds up as probably the greatest British horror film of all time.
AVC: And very British. Part of what confounded me when they did the remake was, "Would this make sense in any other setting?"
ER: It wouldn't.
10 p.m.: Who Can Kill A Child? (1976)
ER: After The Wicker Man, I would watch a Spanish film that's just out on DVD called Who Can Kill a Child? [¿Quién Puede Matar A Un Niño?] directed by [Narciso Ibáñez] Serrador, who's like the Spanish Hitchcock. It's similar to The Wicker Man in that it's someone going to an island where something's wrong. But it is a fantastic "killer-kid" movie.
I've always dreamed of making a killer-kid movie, and I actually had an outline for one, and I saw this, and my idea was frighteningly similar to Who Can Kill A Child? The film has this great premise of these kids running amok. But how do you kill them? Because they're kids! But you have to kill them or they'll kill you! [Laughs.] It's actually based on a book. And it's kind of a slow-burn movie. Like Wicker Man, it's slow, and it builds and builds and builds. But if you stick with it, it's so unbelievably tense. It's fantastic.
Midnight: Eraserhead (1977)
ER: A great midnight movie—the midnight movie—is Eraserhead. Eraserhead is a weird, horrible nightmare, and it doesn't narratively make sense. Stuff's happening, but you honestly feel like you're in a nightmare, and it has such disturbing imagery that it stays with you forever once you've seen it. So when people are watching Eraserhead, they can't expect to logically… Don't watch this film expecting a beginning, middle, and end, but everything is done for a purpose and a rhythm and a reason, and if you allow yourself to go with it… I mean, if you're sitting there watching movies for 24 hours, then you're the patient type. You're not an ADD type, anyway. But you can see that it's a brilliant, beautiful, wonderful, surreal film. You can see how many people take things from Eraserhead. And this is just David Lynch, who spent six years making this movie, and he'd just do two shots a night. And he had this in his head. And there's no precedent for it; there'd never been anything quite like it.
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