Exclusives
Clive Barker on ‘Midnight Meat Train’ TRILOGY!
This past week B-D reporter Jeff Otto got on the phone with horror legend Clive Barker to talk about the DVD/Blu-ray release of The Midnight Meat Train, which is now available at retailers everywhere. During the chat Barker revealed to B-D that he’d like to turn Meat Train into a trilogy – and if all fails tell more of the story in book form. You can read all of his ideas by reading on. What did you guys think of Meat Train, write your own reviews here and tell all of B-D what you thought.
Despite strong praise from the horror community at large, MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN stumbled into theaters last fall with an inexplicable release strategy from Lionsgate that saw the release light up about 100 dollar (these days they might be two dollar) theaters across the nation.
A few months removed from the fiasco, MEAT TRAIN is finally got a proper release last month in the form of an unrated special edition DVD and Blu-ray. Now fans who don’t live near a bargain house finally have the chance to check it out in the proper gory version intended by Clive Barker and director Ryuhei Kitamura.
Although Barker quite vocally spoke out against the way Lionsgate handled the release of MEAT TRAIN last year, he seems willing to let bygones be bygones at this point. During this last part of our exclusive interview with Barker, we spoke about the MEAT TRAIN release, the DVD and his plans for continuing the story.
“The DVD seems to be finding its way out into the world, so fingers crossed,” Barker tells Bloody-Disgusting. “I think it’s a movie that would have played very well on the big screen. It’s frustrating as hell that we see less wonderful movies with 4,000 screen releases and we got 100 screens, most of them in those one dollar theaters.”
“The upside is that the DVD will be the defining version and its the version with all the blood [back] in. Ted Raimi loses both his eyes, not just one. All of that was MPAA cuts of course. Apparently it was fine for America to see Ted Raimi lose one eye, but not two.”
Barker has spoken in the past of the possibility of a MEAT TRAIN trilogy. The lack of a proper theatrical release probably makes it a long shot at this point, but the writer says he still has interest in returning to that world. “In terms of the trilogy idea, that’s always been in the back of my head,” Barker tells BD. “Even back when I wrote the original story, [I thought] there is a bigger mythology here. We’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg. At one point I even contemplated the idea of doing an entire novel which [would] talk about the underworld, the underbelly of America. So there’s always been that [feeling] that maybe this is one I could go back to. Most of the stories in the Books of Blood are self-contained.”
“[It is] one with left a lot of mythological questions unanswered. Who were these creatures? What real part did they have in the building of New York or New Amsterdam? There were so many interesting questions which I thought could be prequel and sequel questions. That had always been in my head, even when I first wrote the original story.”
If nothing else, Barker may return to MEAT TRAIN in book form, but for now the third book of ABARAT is consuming his writing time. “I certainly feel as though there is enough in my head to want to revisit it,” says Barker. “But I don’t want to do that until I’ve got more ABARAT done. I’m about five or six weeks from delivering ABARAT Three. This has been a motherfucker book, just because it’s the middle part of five and its the place where all the roads cross.”
Currently Barker is focusing on the ABARAT book, painting and guiding young filmmakers on adaptations of his work through his Seraphim Films production company. Barker says he does plan to direct again in the future, but he hasn’t yet decided what that project will be. One possibility is TORTURED SOULS, based on the author’s novelette and figure series. “I very much hope we can make that work somewhere down the line,” says Barker.
SOULS will be a much more costly project than Seraphim’s smaller BOOK OF BLOOD adaptations like MEAT TRAIN or DREAD. For now, it remains in the contemplative stages. “I think [TORTURED SOULS] is a ways off,” says Barker. “Where we’re having luck right now is with these cheaper movies. Nothing over $10 million.”
Barker is also working on some TV projects, but he is currently sworn to secrecy as to the details. “They are things we hope will go in the television arena,” says Barker. “Pretty much for cable, very intense horror stuff.”
To finish off our lengthy chat, I asked Barker about his introduction to the 1998 edition of BOOKS OF BLOOD when he said he said “[I] don’t think the man who wrote them is alive in me any more.” With MEAT TRAIN drawing praise as possibly the best Barker movie since HELLRAISER and countless BOOKS OF BLOOD in various stages of production at SERAPHIM, I asked him if he still felt that quote was true.
Barker offered clarification: “The Clive Barker who was innocent enough to get on the train and end up in Far Rockaway (the incident from which he drew the basis of MEAT TRAIN), that Clive is long since gone. But the Clive Barker that likes to scare the fuck out of people, that Clive Barker is WAY alive.”
Exclusives
‘Tarot’ Filmmakers Spenser Cohen & Anna Halberg on Practical Creature Effects and ‘Insidious’ Inspirations
An evil curse gets awakened in Screen Gems horror movie Tarot when a group of friends recklessly ignore a sacred rule: never use someone else’s deck. Writers/Directors Spenser Cohen & Anna Halberg unleash a variety of Tarot card-inspired entities on the group through practical effects, and create an unexpected connection to Insidious along the way.
The film comes exclusively to movie theaters on May 3, 2024.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with Cohen and Halberg ahead of Tarot‘s release, where the pair shared more about the film’s practical effects-driven horrors and revealed how Tarot drew from Insidious in a specific way.
To start, though, the filmmakers reveal just how closely their horror movie sticks to the source novel Horrorscope by Nicholas Adams. The short answer is, well, it doesn’t at all!
Cohen explains, “It’s so different. We never even read the book and took nothing from the book. The only thing, the studio had a title that they liked, and so that’s why there was an association. Then we changed the title. So, now there’s literally zero connection to the book.“
“Sony had come to us wanting to make a horror movie about astrology, but there’s nothing that’s inherently scary to us about Zodiac signs. So, we came up with the idea of combining tarot readings and tarot cards with astrology, and that’s what ended up becoming the movie. There’s such incredible iconography in these cards that we really had a plethora of amazing characters to choose from,” Halberg adds.
Adain Bradley ‘Grant’ and Jacob Batalon ‘Paxton’ in Screen Gems TAROT
With a group of seven friends, expect to see their fates sealed by a number of cards. In other words, expect to see a wide variety of Tarot-inspired creatures tormenting the protagonists. The filmmakers stressed the importance of practical effects for their creatures.
Cohen tells us, “From the get-go, we said every creature is going to be practical. We were thinking of [David] Cronenberg, of Alien and The Thing, and we want our actors responding to real things, not a tennis ball. It always just looks better. You get better performances. With the designs themselves, if you look at the tarot cards and these specific characters, there’s nothing inherently terrifying about them, even though we associate the cards with being supernatural and terrifying. And [it’s] why we partnered with Trevor [Henderson], who was the only designer we met with. We were like, this is our guy because he has this ability to make the familiar feel unnatural.
“His designs are really grounded. I am sure you’ve seen a lot of his stuff where it’s like a hallway, and there’s something there, and something’s off about it, but it really feels like it’s in the space. We knew that he has a special brain for creating unique creatures, and he hadn’t done a movie, which is just shocking to us. Then, we knew that in order to pull that off, we would need a design team with equal skill. That was Dan Martin and his amazing team who worked hand in hand with Trevor to bring those to life.”
Larsen Thompson ‘Elise’ in Screen Gems TAROT
Great designs and practical effects are one thing, but it also falls to the performers to infuse these monsters with personality to make them memorable. That was also at the forefront of the filmmakers’ minds.
“In order for the creatures to translate, underneath all the prosthetics, you have to have great actors,” Cohen confirms. “We met with a lot of people. We were looking for people who were talking to us about the psychology and the movement and how they could move in a way that we hadn’t seen before or incorporate dance. We were looking for those outliers, and basically, everyone we hired approached the part as if there were no makeup or prosthetics. It’s like, ‘I am the Magician, so this is what I want to do. I’m going to have a limp. My body’s going to do this. I feel like my head is hunched.’ And we would watch these actors just embody these roles. It was really just picking great people, honestly. It’s hard to act through prosthetics and create emotion and fear and other things. You have to have an incredible control to be able to do that.”
Halberg elaborates,” Even though we enhanced some of the creatures with visual effects, we didn’t want to rely on that. So we needed people, like Spenser said, who each brought their own unique feel to these characters. They were just as important as all of the other actors in the movie and are so crucial to making sure that these sequences are scary and believable.”
Humberly González ‘Madeline’ in Screen Gems TAROT
One of the many Tarot creatures in the film is the Magician, who comes with an original song by the film’s composer, Joseph Bishara. While Bishara has delivered no shortage of great contemporary horror scores, including The Conjuring and Malignant, horror fans are likely more familiar with Bishara as the Lipstick Demon in the Insidious franchise. Cohen and Halberg can be counted among Insidious fans, so much so that they wanted an original song from the Lipstick Demon himself.
They explain, “We actually, in prep, we called Joe, and we said, ‘Hey, we’re going to do some kind of an old-timey song there.’ We knew something creepy, very Shining-esque. Then we had the idea to do a song called ‘I Saw You’ to be a pun on that whole thing. And actually use saws as the instrument. We found these YouTube videos, and our DP, I think, Elie [Smolkin] had found these videos of someone playing a saw. We were like, that’s terrifying.
“So we called Joe, and we said, ‘You know Tiptoe through the Tulips, how that’s like in Insidious?’ That’s the thing you leave the theater thinking about, and it gets under your skin. We were like, ‘Can you do that for us with an original song?’ He said yes. What you hear in the movie is basically what he played for us the first time. He was just like, ‘I have an idea. I’ll talk to you guys in a week.’ And then that was what we heard, and it was amazing.”
With so many entities and horror sequences, Halberg can’t pick a favorite. Instead, she offers one last tease, “I hope people come away with the realization that each of the sequences is so unique and different, and that each of the creatures is so special because we took a lot of time trying to craft each of these kills or scares to be their own thing and to feel different.
“Hopefully everybody can choose their own favorite.”
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