Interviews
‘Suitable Flesh’ Director Joe Lynch on Honoring Stuart Gordon and Playing in the Lovecraft Universe [Interview]
Director Joe Lynch‘s (Wrong Turn 2, Mayhem, “Creepshow”) new movie Suitable Flesh, based on H.P. Lovecraft’s The Thing On The Doorstep, unleashed body-hopping madness last week at the Tribeca Film Festival, ahead of its theatrical release later this year from RLJE Films.
Barbara Crampton stars in Suitable Flesh, executive produced by Brian Yuzna (Re-Animator). Dennis Paoli, the writer of Re-Animator and From Beyond, wrote the script.
Joe Lynch and the late Stuart Gordon’s frequent collaborators seamlessly insert Suitable Flesh into Gordon’s Lovecraftian universe (our review). Bloody Disgusting spoke with the filmmaker at Tribeca, where he teased the Lovecraft connections for Gordon’s fans and the advice Brian Yuzna gave him when making the film.
Joe Lynch behind the scenes
Suitable Flesh exists within the same world of Re-Animator and From Beyond. Lynch breaks down horror’s original cinematic universe and how he kept his film accessible for those unfamiliar with Gordon’s films.
Lynch explains, “Lovecraft was one of the originators of an expanded universe. Being able to have different stories in the same hospital, so to speak. Like in Miskatonic or Arkham, and have all these tropes and all this different iconography that would jump from story to story, that made you feel like this was part of a bigger world. I always loved that idea. As a fan of Stuart’s work early on in Re-Animator, when From Beyond came out and characters are talking about Miskatonic, I’m like, ‘Wait a second, does that mean that Katherine from From Beyond was also in the same hospital as Herbert West? Were they crossing paths, in a way?’ I always thought that was really cool, and that was something that I always wanted to do in my own films, but in this one especially.”
“When I got the script for this when Barbara [Crampton] reached out and said, ‘Hey, would you be interested in something like this?’… When it said Dennis Paoli, I immediately said, ‘Wait a second, holy crap,’ and it was Lovecraft. All right, there is an opportunity here,” Lynch continues. “On the first page, when you open the page, it says Miskatonic University; I got really excited over the possibilities of being able to make those connections. You don’t have to be a fan of Re-Animator or From Beyond, or even of all the different little Lovecraftian things we would put in, like five knocks, three and two, or all the little tiny hints to his work. You don’t need to be in the know, but those who are in the know would appreciate that we were trying to connect things together.
“I’ve always been fascinated with the world that Dennis and Brian Yuzna and Barbara and Mac Ahlberg, the DP of the original films, what they had created in Re-Animator. I always thought, ‘Well, what happened to Miskatonic years later?'”
Producer Brian Yuzna is no stranger to the goopy, gory world of Gordon’s Lovecraft horror. When asked if Yuzna offered any advice on making a Lovecraft horror feature, Lynch revealed a core mantra that he carried with him throughout production.
Lynch tells us, “To be honest, the only advice that he gave me was, ‘Just keep asking yourself ‘What would Stuart do?’ I wish I had a shirt, WWSD, and I used that every day on set if there was something where I felt like I was holding back too much or if there was a moment that felt like, ‘Could we find levity in this beat,’ or on the flip side, ‘Where do we make it hurt? Where do we feel like we’re going to piss some people off?’ That was an edict that I had every day, and that was something that came from Brian when we were sharing nachos that day.
“He just kept saying, ‘Just keep asking yourself, what would Stuart do,’ because he knew this project was near and dear to Stuart before he passed. That’s how it was presented to me, and I wanted to do right by him. I felt a little bit like that position that Spielberg was in when he was doing AI when Kubrick passed that project on to him. Even if I get one person to feel like this might have been something that Stuart’s spirit was infused in us, then I feel like we did our jobs right.“
Expect to hear a lot more on Suitable Flesh as it gears up for release later this year.
Interviews
“Pretty Little Liars: Summer School” Series Creators on Bigger Slasher Season, Horror Influences, and Spooky Spaghetti
The slasher-themed relaunch of “Pretty Little Liars” from series creators/writers/executive producers Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (“Riverdale,” “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”) and Lindsay Calhoon Bring (“Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”) is back with the brand new season “Pretty Little Liars: Summer School,“ plunging the final girls into a summer of horror.
“Summer School“ begins TODAY (May 9), only on Max.
After surviving last season’s Millwood massacre and unmasking “A,“ Mouse (Malia Pyles), Noa (Maia Reficco), Faran (Zaria), Imogen (Bailee Madison) and Tabby (Chandler Kinney) are back to process their trauma and get on with their lives. Except they’ll be forced to take on summer school. When a mysterious new villain emerges, summer school won’t be the only thing derailing the girls’ plans for summer fun and romance (read our review).
Bloody Disgusting spoke with Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Lindsay Calhoon Bring about the second season, which continues the heavy emphasis on horror and packs in the references. That even includes an homage to Bloody Disgusting!
The pair also reveal more about this season’s threat, and what lies ahead.
“Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin“ saw the core five survive their violent confrontation with “A,“ presenting a unique scenario in creating a slasher centered around not one but five Final Girls. That presented a unique challenge for the writers this season.
Aguirre-Sacasa explains, “It’s funny, your first question literally cuts to the heart of basically every conversation we have in the writer’s room, which is most slasher movies or shows have one final girl. But the very essence, heart, and DNA of our show are that we have five final girls. Six, if you count Kelly [Mallory Bechtel]. One of the tropes of a final girl is that there’s always an amazing chaser test at the end of the movie. We landed, I think, pretty early on the idea that Bloody Rose would test each girl as though preparing them to be the final girl for the final test. So that was a very conscious decision early on, and that would be a cool way to create horror set pieces for each girl.“
“It was,“ Calhoon Bring adds. “In season one, our ultimate final girl ended up, story-wise, thematically, with our sins of the mothers being tied to the child, and the ultimate sinner being Imogen’s mother. Our ultimate final Final girl was Imogen. This season going in, we knew that we wanted to test each girl, as Roberto said, but we also did love this idea of one of our little liars being the final Final Girl. So without giving too much away, our finale does center on one of our liars as the ultimate Final Girl this season.“
There’s a distinct tonal shift this season, with “Summer School“ much lighter than the grim “Original Sin.“ While the setting contributes to that, Bloody Disgusting asked the showrunners whether the shift in horror – embracing everything from creepypastas to cult horror – informed that tone shift in any way.
Calhoon Bring answers, “We always approach every episode, every season with story first, character first, and what are our little liars going through? We knew that with season two, we didn’t want to forget the events of season one. We didn’t want them to jump past them. We wanted them to live in them and move through them. At the same time, per your tone question, we thought, ‘Gosh, season one was really heavy. The girls were grappling with really dark, grounded horrors and dramas, as well as the heightened horror of having a Michael Myers chase them with a knife.‘ We did want to infuse more fun into this. Summer, to us, did feel like the perfect backdrop for fun, slasher horror, a little more fun for the girls bringing in Dr. Sullivan [Annabeth Gish] to help them work through their traumas, but also give them permission to have summer flings, have summer jobs, have a good time. So we did consciously do a bit of a tonal shift as well.“
Creepypastas influence the horror in a huge way this season, both with the villain, Bloody Rose, and the mysterious “Spooky Spaghetti“ website. Aguirre-Sacasa breaks down the idea behind “Spooky Spaghetti“ and a surprising source of inspiration for its creation.
“Obviously, one of the inspirations for season two was the Slender Man,“ the showrunner says. “Lindsay and I love not the Slender Man fictional movie but the Slender Man documentary, and we are obsessed with the Slender Man true crime case. I think one of the things we think is so terrifying about the Slender Man is that you kind of don’t know if he’s real or not. You don’t know if it’s this supernatural figure that crossed over into the real world. So, we needed a website that held that legend, and thus Spooky Spaghetti was born. One of the really fun things about it that we liked was that it took one of our favorite Pretty Little Liars, Mouse, and put her at the heart of the mystery in a really organic, cool way. Sometimes, that can be the hardest thing to do. But I remember when we got the cut of the first episode, I think, Lindsay, you got to see it before me, and you called, and you were like, ‘Oh my God, here’s what really works. Spooky Spaghetti.‘ We agree.
“But for sure, listen, I think we all check Deadline and Bloody Disgusting ten times a day, so it’s an homage to Bloody Disgusting as well.“
The default aim for slasher sequels is to go bigger than before, and “Summer School“ takes that to heart with more elaborate, visually creative set pieces this season. Especially the more Bloody Rose tests the Liars.
“We have such an amazing team, and we love talking about them,“ Calhoon Bring says of this season’s sets. “Our production designer, Brett Tanzer, and his set decorator, Lauren [Crawford]. We also have an amazing locations manager, Dave Lieber, who has so much fun. Sometimes, the locations will inspire a story for us, too, because as he’s looking around the locations in the upstate New York towns that we’re seeing, he’ll send us photos and say, ‘Hey, I found this amazing roller rink.‘ Then we think, ‘Well, we have to use that amazing roller rink. We have to find a space for this.‘ ‘Hey, there’s this an abandoned campground. What could we do? Can we do an outdoor movie at an abandoned campground? That would be amazing.‘
“We worked very closely with our team to make sure that every episode was very special and had a special set piece. A big ongoing conversation for us that was a tricky thing to do actually was that we knew early on that we wanted Faran to be a lifeguard, and we knew that we wanted to have a pool as a summer set piece. Those conversations happen so early, and finding a pool isn’t as easy as it sounds. It’s like finding the right pool, making sure that it’s the right aesthetic, that it’s broken down, that there are woods nearby, that it feels scary, that it’s operational, that we can use it. So, those conversations happened even sometimes earlier than we were writing the episodes.”
Aguirre-Sacasa elaborates, “Just to piggyback off that, the day that Lindsay and I got emails from Dave, our locations manager, for the church where Redemption House, that storyline was set. When we toured it, it was like, ‘This is the creepiest.‘ Literally, it’s next to a cemetery, and across the street from it is another cemetery. It’s like, ‘Yeah, we’re going to be setting up shop here.‘ We just moved in for the season. It was really great.”
While the series creators won’t spoil all the horror fun ahead in “Pretty Little Liars: Summer School” – but definitely expect the new season to really embrace all of your summer horror favorites in a big way – the pair do offer some exciting teases for what’s ahead.
“We’re so happy that we have Annabeth Gish with us, reprising her role as Dr. Sullivan,“ Calhoon Bring tells us. “Roberto, you’ve mentioned this; one of our favorite things in horror movies is the amazing monologue that a harrowed, usually final girl gives talking about her trauma. Roberto invoked Phoebe Cates in Gremlins, talking about that ill-fated night. We love those. We think that Annabeth, as Dr. Sullivan, delivers a tour de force horror monologue and a horror sequence in our penultimate [episode] that we’re very, very excited for people to see.“
“Yeah, it is kind of like Jason’s mother’s monologue about Jason drowning,“ Aguirre-Sacasa added. “It’s about Dr. Loomis talking about Michael Myers and the devil’s eyes. We love that. I think we can also tease in our finale. It’s our favorite episode of the season, the finale, and knowing that we had done essentially a handful of final girl chases and tests throughout, we knew that our finale had to be pretty apocalyptic and pretty epic. So we looked at some of our favorite movies like Midsommar and Texas Chain Saw Massacre for those truly apocalyptic horror movie endings that are just so gonzo, and without spoiling much, we wanted to do our version of that.
“And it is pretty harrowing, pretty harrowing.”
Which Final Girl will become the ultimate Final Girl this season? “Pretty Little Liars: Summer School” debuts exclusively on Max on May 9 at 12:00 a.m. PT with two episodes, followed by one new episode airing weekly through June 20.
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