Interviews
‘Evil Dead In Concert’ – Composer Joe LoDuca on Bringing ‘Evil Dead’ to a Stage (and Screen) Near You [Halloweenies Podcast]
When whispers of the Evil Dead in Concert event first floated through Halloweenies HQ, we were intrigued. When we read the press release, we were sold. And most importantly, we knew we needed to go right to the source to get all the deets on what the 50-city Evil Dead in Concert tour entails. The source in question is, of course, none other than composer Joseph LoDuca.
LoDuca is a two-time Emmy–winning composer who has produced some of the genre’s most indelible scores. His first film score ever, the famously scrappy music for Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead, helped establish him as a go-to collaborator for directors who treat and value music as a critical part of the storytelling, not just wallpaper. Over the decades, LoDuca has lent that storytelling sensibility to fun, adventurous projects like Xena: Warrior Princess, Spartacus, Leverage, the Child’s Play franchise, and Brotherhood of the Wolf. And now, LoDuca’s knack for unsettling textures and evocative orchestral palettes can be experienced like never before, as odds are, this very special live Evil Dead experience will be coming soon to a town near you.
For Evil Dead In Concert, LoDuca has reimagined and reorchestrated the original score material for a lean, chamber-style ensemble. As he tells it on the episode, the project grew out of new, expanded suites and remasters, and a persistent belief that “intimacy can be scarier.” Paired with a newly restored print of Raimi’s 1981 classic, this synergistic combo ups the visceral, visual impact in a communal, live space.
During our interview, LoDuca traces the project from a remaster/remix impulse to a live-to-picture concept. He’d previously reworked material and played it at one-off shows. That, plus interest from promoters and his own love for the material, grew into the touring production. He explains that the original Evil Dead cues were tiny by design (the original relied on only a handful of players), and rather than pad the music into something bigger, he doubled down on the smallness.
“ I always had the idea that the score to Evil Dead, there was something really interesting about it in that it was only five string players. I always thought that intimate was even more scary. The way I mixed it, it was recorded in an attic, and I was thinking about the old Hammer films and how they just slathered everything in reverb. This is more in your face. And I think [this live experience] brings the music to the forefront.”
That “in your face” sensation is the throughline of our episode. Live instruments give the film an immediacy that the music bleeding from your speakers simply doesn’t. In this setting, the audience hears the scrape of bows on strings, sees the players working in the moment, and reacts collectively. The laughter, the screams, provide a vibe similar to a Rocky Horror screening, which is a vibe LoDuca makes a point to call out. He also notes that this kind of presentation can help younger listeners discover the power of ensemble performance.
“ There is magic in the music making. I think that the audiences feel that, and I’m happy to see that. In general, it’s harder to get younger audiences invested in classical music and orchestral performances, and this is one way of keeping the flame alive.”
Through our conversation, it quickly becomes evident that Evil Dead In Concert is more than nostalgia bait. This is restoration and reinterpretation and a way to bring people together. The decision to keep the ensemble lean not only honors the scrappy ingenuity of the original Evil Dead, it also re-frames the score as a theatrical, physical force where the listener feels as much as hears.
Of course, we couldn’t let LoDuca leave without chatting a little bit about our very special “friend ‘til the end” and his longtime relationship with Chucky and the world of Child’s Play. LoDuca scored Cult of Chucky, Curse of Chucky, and the entire run (so far) of the Chucky TV series. And, he made it clear he’s not ready to put Chucky back in the box for good. When asked if he’d ever return to the franchise in some way, LoDuca responded with zero hesitation saying, he’d be there “at the drop of a hat.” He also noted that he and creator Don Mancini share “a mutual admiration society” and a shared love of utilizing music as an active storytelling device.
To hear even more from LoDuca, and a few exclusive clips of music from Evil Dead in Concert, check out our full conversation below. Evil Dead In Concert launches a 50-city tour beginning September 22, 2025 (including a multi-night Halloween run in L.A.), so grab tickets now at evildeadinconcert.com and experience a familiar film like never before.
Interviews
‘Rubberhead’ Director Nick Taylor on FX Maverick Steve Johnson, Practical Effects, and Seven-Year Journey
Horror journalist, producer, and podcast host Nick Taylor moves into the director’s seat for his feature debut with illuminating documentary Rubberhead: The Life & Monsters of Steve Johnson.
It chronicles the wild life and career of SFX maverick Steve Johnson, based on the multi-volume book series Rubberhead: Sex, Drugs and Special FX, and those familiar likely already know Rubberhead isn’t your standard horror documentary.
Johnson is responsible for so many memorable movie monsters, having worked on Fright Night, Poltergeist II, An American Werewolf in London, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and Night of the Demons, to name a few. He’s also extremely candid in ways that feel atypical in this industry, open about his failures as much as his successes.
“It was a natural progression for sure,” Nick Taylor tells Bloody Disgusting of his transition into filmmaking ahead of Rubberhead‘s world premiere next week at the Fantasia Film Festival on July 23. “I think with my podcast, I got adept at interviewing people and pulling creative lessons out of them, which was the point of my podcast. I wanted this movie to be sort of a creativity pill for artists where if they’re starting a project or feel creatively stuck, they could watch this movie and be inspired and get actual practical creative lessons.”
Taylor’s background in PR and marketing also organically led him down this path.
He charts the course from book promo to documentary director: “But also Bloody Disgusting had a lot to do with this movie because in the very beginning when I first met Steve, I was helping him promote his book and I said, ‘Hey, I got a marketing background and a journalism background. Let me help you promote this book. I’ll just pitch stories from your life to the media, and we’ll see what happens.’ And John Squires wrote an article about Steve making Slimer under the influence of tons and tons of cocaine, and that went fairly viral.”
“For a week, it was story time with Steve,” Taylor continues. “He would tell me a story from his life, and every story was about a major movie, a major director, lots of drugs and alcohol and insanity. I would write them up, and I think John published about three or four of them. So huge shout out to John Squires because that was really great. So yeah, there were definitely a lot of outgrowths of my journalism background that definitely contributed to this movie.”
Rubberhead condenses the multi-book series into a cohesive feature film with a breezy runtime, sparking the obvious question as to how Taylor approached condensing Johnson’s life down to an under 2-hour documentary film.
“That was one of the more difficult parts of all of this, because we had enough for a series or an epically long six-hour fan documentary,” he answers. “But from day one, I did not want to make a fan documentary. I love them. They’re a lot of fun, but I did want the movie to stand on its own two feet as a character-driven portrait of an artist and a time period and a technology, that being practical effects. I did want to be objective. I didn’t want to make this too long. I wanted to make it re-watchable. So I think we just really had to focus on what the narratives were that we wanted to tell. So there were some basically almost cliché archetypical mythic narratives present in Steve’s life. We could have made this way longer, but we wanted to keep it short. But luckily that’s why you have special features.”
Johnson quickly proves to be an engaging subject thanks to his self-effacing wit and frank self-reflections; expect no shortage of stories about how drugs factored into the height of his career or the failures it wrought.
That rare quality was an asset for Rubberhead, Taylor confirms. “He does not shy away from anything about the drugs, the addiction, the bridges burned, the mistakes made, the lessons learned. He just is honest about all of it. He’s had a lot of time for reflection, and he’s done a lot of reflection, so he doesn’t shy away from any of it, which is huge because it’s very refreshing. I don’t think a lot of people are that way, at least in this industry from what I can see. So I think it was hugely beneficial. We wanted to lean into that, and we wanted to make this sort of a gonzo Hunter S. Thompson sort of wild tale through Steve’s overall life.“
Condensing his life into this doc was a slow and steady process for Taylor, too. “It’s been almost seven years. It’s been a labor of love. We’ve been as indie as it gets. We would shoot what we could when we could, and then we would edit when we could. Then after a while it all came together.”
In a way, making Rubberhead brings Taylor’s horror fandom full circle. It turns out that the very film that sparked his interest in the genre and practical effects also comes with an amusing Steve Johnson anecdote.
Taylor explains, “My gateway for sure was Beetlejuice. I saw that at a very young age; I think I was four or five. I felt somebody had shown me, my soul. I get a little emotional thinking about it. There was something about that movie that felt so strange and unusual, but also felt so familiar. It was spooky, but it was fun, and it was lighthearted, and it had humor, but it also had this macabre celebration to it that I just really got into as a kid. I felt somebody had shown me my own soul. And funny story, Steve got fired from Beetlejuice because Tim Burton gave him his hand-drawn designs and Steve’s like, ‘Oh my God, these look like kids did them. This is not what you want. I know what you want. I’m going to redesign these for you.’ And Tim Burton was like, ‘Yeah, no, you’re not.’ So yeah, funny story.”
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