Editorials
Reflections on ‘The Conjuring’ – James Wan & Cast Look Back on Horror’s Biggest Franchise
“It’s good to remind us where all this started. It’s such a big universe now, but this is where we started.”
James Wan has been a fixture in the hororr community since making his auspicious debut with Saw, but it was 2013’s The Conjuring that cemented his place as a modern master of horror and launched his directing career into studio tentpole territory.
With The Conjuring: Last Rites bringing the franchise — or, at least, its first phase — to a close this weekend, the original film has been released on 4K UHD. Among the special features is “Reflections on The Conjuring,” a new feturette in which cast and crew reflect on their experiences making the movie.
“James Wan, he was our first choice to direct. We sent him the screenplay, and he came onboard and elevated the film to what it became,” says producer Peter Safran, who now serves as co-CEO of DC Studios alongside James Gunn as a direct result of his work with Wan.
“He came up with Annabelle as a prologue. He enhanced all the scares,” Safran continues. “He just had such a unique view on what would make a really special supernatural thriller.”
Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga star as husband-and-wife demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren, a real couple with a long history of high-profile paranormal investigations.
“The way that he pitched it, at the time it was called The Warren Files,” Wilson recalls. “Conjuring was not in there, and there’s never been a movie on these guys.”
“It was based on real-life people, so I wanted to be respectful to that aspect of it,” Wan explains. “It was important, because I think it did inform my filmmaking. It forced me to keep things as grounded and as realistic as possible.”
Although Ed passed away in 2006, Lorraine served as a consultant on The Conjuring and makes a cameo as an audience member during a lecture by the Warrens’ on-screen counterparts. (Lorraine, who also consulted on The Conjuring 2, passed away in 2019.)
“Lorraine spent a lot of time with us on set on that first movie. She was such a bright and wonderful and lively presence and had incredible stories for all of us,” Safran notes. “She was so happy that we were being so respectful in the telling of her and Ed’s story.”
“I kind of expected her to be quite dark, because of all the things that she’s dealt with, but there’s a bright light that came from her the whole time,” says Shannon Kook, who played the Warrens’ assistant Drew Thomas. “I was quite surprised, but then I thought, ‘That makes sense, because to have to confront all that darkness, you would have to have that light around you.'”
“We had so much fun, because there was children on the set, it was light-hearted, wonderful people,” remembers John Brotherton, who played police officer Brad Hamilton.
“James Wan was such a good leader that it trickled down,” Kook says. “There was great vibes on set with everybody.”
“There was an authenticity with the special effects,” says Lili Taylor, who played haunted matriarch Carolyn Perron.
“It felt right that we were making an old-school haunted house film that we wanted to keep it true to the old ways of how these films were made,” Wans adds.
“When I was making The Conjuring, I knew it was going to be scary,” says Taylor. “I could feel when we were making it that James was tapping into something.”
“I remember the first screening at New Line, sitting there going, ‘Holy shit, this is amazing,'” Brotherton chuckles.
“I remember [Wan] saying, ‘If we do it right, we can keep coming back,'” notes Wilson.
They did indeed do it right, scaring up $319.5 million at the global box office on a $20 million budget. With nine films spanning 12 years, The Conjuring Universe has grossed a combined $2.2 billion, making it the highest-grossing horror franchise of all time.
“It’s been pretty special to be able to ride the wave of these films,” says Kook. “It’s just been wonderful to be able to be a part of each of those stories.”
“I’m just full of gratitude, I really am,” Farmiga reflects. “This has been extraordinary, and I’m proud. I’m proud of us. I’m proud of what this thing has accomplished. It’s a good feeling.”
The Conjuring is available now on 4K UHD.
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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