Editorials
[Butcher Block] Extreme Horror ‘Inside’ Brings Out Primal Side of Christmas
Butcher Block is a weekly series celebrating horror’s most extreme films and the minds behind them. Dedicated to graphic gore and splatter, each week will explore the dark, the disturbed, and the depraved in horror, and the blood and guts involved. For the films that use special effects of gore as an art form, and the fans that revel in the carnage, this series is for you.
Very few filmmaker debuts evoke quite as visceral of a response as co-writer/directors Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo’s Inside. A brutal take on the home invasion sub-genre that masters the art of building suspense, Inside revolves around a fateful night on Christmas Eve, where a very pregnant Sarah (Alysson Paradis) is stalked and tormented in her own home by a woman dead set on stealing her unborn baby. The simple concept is anything but as Maury and Bustillo infuse the story with tragedy, deep grief, surprising revelations, and a shocking amount of bloodshed.
Long-time genre fans, Maury and Bustillo posed a simple question when penning the screenplay; what if the killer was a woman? In horror, it’s typically maniacal men chasing the women. With the major gender reversal of the antagonist, the writer/director duo then wondered what would motivate a woman to stalk and hunt another woman. That woman didn’t have a name; she was simply credited as “La Femme,” or the woman. And La Femme is one of modern horror’s most terrifying villains, in no small part due to having been played by the intense Béatrice Dalle. The actress had already demonstrated a knack for portraying unhinged yet fierce characters, like the ferocious cannibal Coré in Trouble Every Day. Dalle would reteam with Maury and Bustillo again in their films Livid and Among the Living.
La Femme doesn’t just torture Sarah, ruthless and unrelenting in getting what she wants, but she has zero qualms about slaughtering anyone else that might get in her way. This means that Inside gets extremely bloody. It flows, spurts, and gushes from the wounds inflicted. It really never stops flowing, only increasing to near geyser-like levels in the climax. Because the gore and blood effects were practical, Inside had to be shot in order. Cleaning up the sheer volume of fake blood would’ve proved far too tricky to film out of order.
The special makeup effects team had a lot of work cut out for them. The budget roughly around 2 million dollars, most of it went to the special effects. Knitting needles to the jugular, sewing shears to the groin, head explosions, a self-tracheotomy, and so much more. The team had to mold prosthetics and endless gallons and tubes of fake blood to be pumped through the open flesh wounds. The makeup effects supervisor was Jacques-Olivier Molon, who previously worked on genre films Horsehead and Orphan, and more recently on Mandy. Other notable names from the team include Nicolas Herlin (As Above, So Below, Livid, Leatherface), Sabine Fevre (Among the Living, Silent Hill: Revelation), Pierre-Olivier Thevenin (Jurassic Park, Blade II), and many more.
Christmas Eve doesn’t factor prominently in the plot; it’s another indicator of Sarah’s loneliness and profound grief after the startling opening scene. But there’s an emotional resonance there that connects with the holiday, and the blood red color consistently filling the screen also feels holiday appropriate in a very warped way. Maury and Bustillo unleashed primal rage on screen, and with it a torrent of violent bloodshed. Yet it’s balanced with emotional devastation that pulls it back from exploitation. For those that prefer their holiday viewings without cheer and merriment, Inside is among the very best in extreme French cinema.
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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