Interviews
Kevin Bacon on Psychological Horror, the “Tremors” Pilot and That Whole Freddy Krueger Idea [Interview]
Horror never seems very far away from Kevin Bacon… in a good way. The actor has over four decades of experience in film and television – co-starring in classic films like Animal House, Footloose, Apollo 13 and A Few Good Men – but he keeps coming back to scary movies.
One of his earliest performances was in the original slasher hit Friday the 13th, and in the years that followed he’s turned up in horror movies like Tremors, Flatliners, Hollow Man and Stir of Echoes. His latest horror film, You Should Have Left, now On Demand, reunites him with writer/director David Koepp.
In a new interview with Bloody-Disgusting, the actor mused on his relationship with the genre.
“I love well-made films in all genres, horror being one of them,” Kevin Bacon says. “I’m really more drawn to horror films like You Should Have Left and films like Midsommar or The Shining or Rosemary’s Baby.”
“Don’t Look Now is one of my favorites. [Films] that are really emotional and character-driven,” Bacon explains. “That’s the stuff that I… mostly because it’s great stuff to act, you know?”
“But the reason that I found myself in these horror films is for one thing, I’m not afraid of them,” Bacon adds, before clarifying. “I’m not afraid to do them. I like them. But also because they require a lot of acting challenges. They’re intense, you’re dealing with life or death situations, and these are all great acting challenges.”
And yet, although Kevin Bacon prefers the acting challenges involved in psychological horror, one of his most popular movies is the subterranean monster horror-comedy Tremors. It’s also the only horror movie franchise that the actor ever returned to, after filming a pilot for a new Tremors television series in 2018.
“Well, Tremors is an interesting thing because as a subgenre within horror, another piece of the subgenre that I really like are scary-funny, which is a very difficult balance to make,” Bacon says. “I think Tremors was very successful in it, but movies like Shaun of the Dead for instance are able to meet that kind of balance. Even Get Out, which added a whole other level, which was social commentary, as well as the humor, as well as being scary. Which is really hard to do.”
“You know, with Tremors it wasn’t so much that I was like, ‘I want to go back to horror,’ as it was this seems like a character that… it’s the only character that I played in the course of my career that I really thought about revisiting after 25 years. I thought it would be interesting to see who he had become, because he was a really ordinary guy who had really extraordinary circumstances thrown at him,” Bacon explains.
“It was a great process, a really fun process. In my opinion we made a fantastic pilot that I think really, with writer Andrew Miller and a great director [Vincenzo Natali], I think we really nailed it. I still have no explanation for why they didn’t want to move forward,” Bacon says.
The pilot for the second Tremors television series – following a short-lived 2003 SyFy series featuring series regular Michael Gross and future Breaking Bad co-star Dean Norris – wasn’t picked up, but it was completed and lots of fans would love to see it.
Unfortunately, Bacon doesn’t have any good news about the possibility of screening it any time soon.
“We tried. We tried to show it at, I guess it was ATX, and we were not allowed to,” Bacon explains. “So we put some clips together [instead].”
While people keep hoping Bacon’s Tremors follow-up will get released someday – “Yeah, me too,” Bacon adds – there’s another idea floating around that has many horror fans excited. Robert Englund recently floated the idea that Bacon should eventually replace him in the role of Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.
Does that idea interest Kevin Bacon?
“Sure,” the actor laughs. “It would take a lot of makeup…”
Only one episode remains in Season 3 of “Chucky,” and what a bloody road it’s been so far, especially for actor Devon Sawa. The actor has now officially died twice on screen this season, pulling double duty as President James Collins and body double Randall Jenkins.
If you thought Chucky’s ruthless eye-gouging of the President was bloody, this week’s Episode 7 traps Randall Jenkins in an elevator that feels straight out of an iconic horror classic.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with series creator Don Mancini and actor Devon Sawa about that ultra-bloody death sequence and how the actor inspires Mancini’s writing on the series.
Mancini explains, “Devon’s a bit of a muse. Idle Hands and Final Destination is where my Devon Sawa fandom started, like a lot of people; although yours may have started with Casper. I was a bit too old for that. But it’s really just about how I love writing for actors that I respect and then know. So, it’s like having worked with Devon for three years now, I’m just always thinking, ‘Oh, what would be a fun thing to throw his way that would be unexpected and different that he hasn’t done?’ That’s really what motivates me.”
For Sawa, “Chucky“ is an actor’s dream in that the series gives him not one but multiple roles to sink his teeth into, often within the same season. But the actor is also a huge horror fan, and Season 3: Part 2 gives him the opportunity to pay homage to a classic: Kubrick’s The Shining.
CHUCKY — “There Will Be Blood” Episode 307 — Pictured in this screengrab: (l-r) Devon Sawa as President James Collins, K.C. Collins as Coop — (Photo by: SYFY)
“Collectively, it’s just amazing to put on the different outfits, to do the hair differently, to get different types of dialogue,“ Sawa says of working on the series. “The elevator scene, it’s like being a kid again. I was up to my eyeballs in blood, and it felt very Kubrick. Everybody there was having such a good time, and we were all doing this cool horror stuff, and it felt amazing. It really was a good day.”
Sawa elaborates on being submerged in so much blood, “It was uncomfortable, cold, and sticky, and it got in my ears and my nose. But it was well worth it. I didn’t complain once. I was like, ‘This is why I do what I do, to do scenes like this,‘ the scenes that I grew up watching on VHS cassette, and now we’re doing it in HD, and it’s all so cool.“
It’s always the characters and the actors behind them that matter most to Mancini, even when he delights in coming up with inventive kills and incorporating horror references. And he’s killed Devon Sawa’s characters often. Could future seasons top the record of on-screen Sawa deaths?
“Well, I guess we did it twice in season one and once in season two,“ Mancini counts. “So yeah, I guess I would have to up the ante next season. I’ll really be juggling a lot of falls. But I think it’s hopefully as much about quality as quantity. I want to give him a good role that he’s going to enjoy sinking his teeth into as an actor. It’s not just about the deaths.”
Sawa adds, “Don’s never really talked about how many times could we kill you. He’s always talking about, ‘How can I make this death better,’ and that’s what I think excites him is how he can top each death. The electricity, to me blowing up to, obviously in this season, the eyes and with the elevator, which was my favorite one to shoot. So if it goes on, we’ll see if he could top the deaths.”
CHUCKY — “Death Becomes Her” Episode 305 — Pictured in this screengrab: Devon Sawa as James Collins — (Photo by: SYFY)
The actor has played a handful of distinctly different characters since the series launch, each one meeting a grisly end thanks to Chucky. And Season 3 gave Sawa his favorite characters yet.
“I would say the second one was a lot of fun to shoot,“ the actor says of Randall Jenkins. “The President was great. I liked playing the President. He was the most grounded, I hope, of all the characters. I did like playing him a lot.” Mancini adds, “He’s grounded, but he’s also really traumatized, and I thought you did that really well, too.”
The series creator also reveals a surprise correlation between President James Collins’ character arc and a ’90s horror favorite.
“I saw Devon’s role as the president in Season 3; he’s very Kennedy-esque,“ Mancini explains. “But then given the supernatural plot turns that happen, to me, the analogy is Michelle Pfeiffer in What Lies Beneath, the character that is seeing these weird little things happening around the house that is starting to screw with his sanity and he starts to insist, ‘I’m seeing a ghost,‘ and his spouse thinks he’s nuts. So I always like that. That’s Michelle Pfeiffer in What Lies Beneath, which is a movie I love.”
The finale of “Chucky” Season 3: Part 2 airs Wednesday, May 1 on USA & SYFY.
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