Editorials
Lin Shaye Thought Elise’s Childhood Was Totally Different Before ‘Insidious: The Last Key’
Elise has always been the one to help other families with their spiritual problems in the Insidious films. When the latest prequel, Insidious: The Last Key, centered on Elise’s own childhood, it altered actor Lin Shaye’s previous backstory she created.
“I had a whole different idea of who she was as a child,” Shaye said. “What Leigh [Whannell] created was far more powerful. Having come out of that kind of duress as a child with an abusive family even makes her a stronger adult.”
With the film available on DVD, Blu-ray, and Digital, Shaye shared with Bloody Disgusting how she originally saw Elise’s childhood.
“I had always seen her as a loner, thinking she maybe was an only child and her abilities appeared because she spent time in quiet and alone,” Shaye said.
“I think what Leigh created is a real arrow pointing to the fact that no matter what your beginnings are, you can endure them and become a strong wonderful person, which she does become as an adult. When I read it, I was flabbergasted, to be honest. I never thought I had a family like that, let alone the issues I had to face as a child.”
Insidious: The Last Key shows how Elise developed her powers to commune with spirits while growing up in an abusive household. The final cut did not reveal everything, however.
“There’s one deleted scene where I talk about my father and my past where I had a boyfriend,” Shaye said.
“My father wouldn’t let me bathe and he wouldn’t let me go to school until finally, I was so dirty in school that they started calling me Smelise instead of Elise because I smelled so bad. It was a digression from the storyline so it was deleted. It’s this rich idea which I kept with me even though it wasn’t in the movie of what my father had done to me as a child. He made me work and made my life hell. There are children who live with families like that and don’t discuss it, so I think it opens up doors for young people to also acknowledge that if they’ve had a bad beginning, they can still come out of it and be givers.”
The Last Key also showed a new side of Specs (Whannell) and Tucker (Angus Sampson). Since the new clients have young, beautiful daughters, Specs and Tuckers awkwardly hit on the girls while trying to free their family of the evil spirits.
“I think she has great regard for the way they behave, sometimes even if it’s not the way she would behave,” Shaye said. “I think they needed to be their way. I think she finds it somewhat bemusing. They’re her sons in a way. They’re goofballs and she knows they’ve got their weak points, but I think she finds it sort of endearing in a way. She’s quiet and lets them carry on. Who knows, there could be a romantic section in the next Insidious between Specs and Melissa. Who knows? It’s opening the door to a new part of their personality too which I think is endearing and of value.”
The end of Insidious: The Last Key catches up with Insidious 1 when the Lamberts call for her help. If Insidious 5 moves forward in the story, Elise would only be a friendly spirit in The Further.
“I have no idea if there is a next one, where that one will go because we have wrapped up Elise’s living story anyway,” Shaye said.
“I’m hoping there will be. If he brings up the subject I’ll just be extremely happy to be involved obviously, and hope I will be involved.”
They could always slot a new story between Chapter 3 and The Last Key.
“People have been asking Leigh,” Shaye said. “None of us really know and I don’t think he’s even thought about it. They could have her teenage years but then I wouldn’t be in it probably.”
Until then, Shaye will appear in another horror franchise, although not the Herbert West: Re-Animator remake listed on IMDB. “No, The Re-Animator I don’t know anything about,” she said.
However, Shaye is preparing to film The Grudge with director Nicolas Pesce. She did not want to spoil the new Grudge’s take on the mythology but was ready to get started with Pesce.
“I haven’t had a chance to meet him yet,” Shaye said. “I was invited into the project and I’m really looking forward to it because the people that do know him say that he’s a wonderfully talented guy. I think it’s going to be a really fun project. I don’t want to give away any secrets though because it’s a very rich story, a lot of twists and turns people won’t expect.”
Fans of Shaye from her Farrelly Brothers movies will be happy to know she’s going to do more comedy soon.
“I think I’m going to do some work on a little comedy that a friend is doing, playing kind of a very broad almost costumed character which will be really fun, taking me back to some of my early roots like Kingpin,” Shaye said.
She’ll never leave horror behind though, and thanks the fans who have supported her in Insidious and other movies.
“I’m filled with gratitude to all of you, including Bloody-Disgusting.com who’s been a great supporter of me and the work I’ve done,” Shaye said. “So thank you so much for all of that as well and I hope we go into The Further further and further.”
The penultimate season of Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) aired its first three episodes on October 31, so it’s understandable that at least one of those three stories is set on Halloween.
Sandwiched between “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime” (Russell Mulcahy, Ron Finley) and “Whirlpool” (Mick Garris, A. L. Katz & Gilbert Adler) is the most severe episode of the bunch. Maybe the entire series? William Malone and Dick Beebe’s “Only Skin Deep” traded the show’s typical sense of fun for startling amounts of bleakness and kink.
“Only Skin Deep” is, apart from the Crypt Keeper’s intro and outro, noticeably unfunny. There are no considerable attempts at making the viewer laugh. Come to think of it, if those bookends had been replaced, and there was more of a sci-fi element in the story, HBO could have easily squeezed this tale into that successor anthology, Perversions of Science (1997). In Crypt, though, “Only Skin Deep” is much too grim for an audience that had become accustomed to campiness and levity.
What makes “Only Skin Deep” feel dark, among other things, is its protagonist. Showing up to a Halloween party where he’s not welcome, and where his former girlfriend (Diane DiLasco) is attending, Carl Schlag (Peter Onorati) first comes across as your standard bitter ex. You soon realize it’s much worse than that, once Carl threatens Linda (“You know, silly me, thinking I gave you what you deserved. If I’d have done that, I’d have killed you”). Now, I haven’t forgotten that Tales from the Crypt was teeming with vile men who did women harm. Yet Carl’s brand of misogynistic menace hits differently—it borders on being too realistic for this kind of series.
Mike Vosburg’s EC-style comic cover for “Only Skin Deep”, as seen in the Tales from the Crypt episode.
Despite donning a party mask for much of the episode, Carl can’t ever mask his true nature. The invitation did say “come as you are”, after all. That inability to change and be better, however, is why Carl ends up in such a karmic predicament. His outburst of anger at the party attracts the attention of one loner partygoer named Molly (Sherrie Rose, who was also in Season Four’s “On a Deadman’s Chest”). Her bone-white, featureless “mask” and body-bag costume don’t initially register as too strange, especially on a night like this. But at a party chock-full of colorful, cartoonish, and lighthearted ensembles, it does look out of place.
Darkness attracts darkness as Carl ditches the party and accompanies the mysterious Molly to her place. Which, by the way, should have been an immediate red flag. But perhaps she’s so hot, he doesn’t seem to mind the serial killer aesthetic. Resembling a warehouse that has been converted into living spaces, but never then decorated to remove the cold, industrial look, Molly’s home (or lair) is as gloomy as this whole episode feels. It’s like the set of a grungy music video, albeit a tad cleaner. The environments in a typical Crypt episode tend to be small, overfilled, and broken-in. Warm, regardless of any weird goings-on. All that empty space in Molly’s hovel, on the other hand, elicits a creepy feeling that Carl was unwise to ignore.
Tales from the Crypt featured more sex than it didn’t, but hands down, “Only Skin Deep” boasts the steamiest scene in the show’s history. Pushing it over the line, in addition to Onorati showing bare buns and the camera never turning down one of his pelvic thrusts, is the twisted dirty talk. Carl stays in the moment, whereas Molly unleashes charged lines like “the hurt, the anger, give it to me” and “take it out on my flesh like you want to”. It’s all quite kinky, as well as tied into the story’s theme of pain.
How else “Only Skin Deep” differs from other episodes is its twists. Or rather, its lack thereof. Nothing comes as a great surprise here, particularly because the deuteragonist’s ulterior motives are so obvious. By no means is Molly a wolf in sheep’s clothing; her face is a fright mask, she practically reeks of death, and she lives in what can best be described as a serial killer’s hideout. That last-act revelation of Molly’s mask really being her face is also nothing shocking. Cleverness is certainly not this episode’s strength.
A page from “…Only Skin Deep!”, as seen in EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt.
While “Only Skin Deep” isn’t the most universally loved episode of Tales from the Crypt, it’s an interesting preview of William Malone’s future as a director. Most notably, he went on to helm House on Haunted Hill (1999) and FeardotCom (2002), the former of which was co-written by Dick Beebe, this episode’s writer. Dark Castle Entertainment, that genre house founded by Crypt producers Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler, was instrumental in bringing out Malone’s gruesome, over-the-top vision in House on Haunted Hill. However, FeardotCom and Malone’s Masters of Horror episode, “Fair-Haired Child”, are the most stylistically compatible with “Only Skin Deep”.
As one might guess, this episode is nothing like its source material. The “…Only Skin Deep!” found in the pages of EC Comics is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and save for its last couple of pages, is pretty sweet in nature. There, a man named Herbert is enamored with a woman he met five years prior to the present-day story. Every year, he has come down to Mardi Gras to see Suzanne, who’s always dressed as a hag-faced witch. Well, this time, Herbert plans on popping the question and marrying someone who is, for the most part, a total stranger. Suzanne accepts his proposal, but with one condition: they stay in costume until they’re officially hitched. You can probably see where this is going…
Once they are married, Suzanne remains incognito, even when she and Herbert have consummated their vows. A semi-predictive nightmare then rattles Herbert; he dreamt that Suzanne’s real face was as wizened as her mask. Finally, in his haste to find out the truth, Herbert winds up killing his new wife. Faceless and well on her way to bleeding out, the dying Suzanne manages to say she never wore a mask.
For more traditional EC-style ghastliness, your best bet is reading the comic. It’s wickedly sad. For something less conventional, as far as Tales from the Crypt goes, the role-reversing adaptation is worth watching. It’s not the best this show had to offer, although Malone’s visual style, plus the sexual abandon, does set the episode apart. If nothing else, “Only Skin Deep” leaves an impression that, even years later, shows no signs of fading.
Season Six of Tales from the Crypt can be streamed on Shudder, starting on June 5.
Tales from Tales from the Crypt celebrates the show’s Shudder premiere by singling out one episode from each season. So don’t even think about changing that dial, boys and ghouls. More spot-“frights” are to come.
Carl discovers Molly’s collection of human ‘masks’ in the Tales from the Crypt episode, “Only Skin Deep”.
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