Movies
Dee Wallace Reflects on Roles in ‘Cujo,’ ‘The Howling’ & More
She may not often pop up on lists of the top horror icons, but Dee Wallace has damn sure earned the right to be on every single one of them. With memorable roles in Cujo, The Howling, Critters, Popcorn, The Frighteners and Rob Zombie’s Halloween, Wallace is undoubtedly one of the top “scream queens” of all time.
In a lengthy chat with AV Club this week, Wallace reflected on a handful of her most noteworthy roles, including her work in all of the aforementioned horror films.
She shared many incredible stories during the career retrospective.
On Cujo…
“Cujo was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and it’s the film I’m proudest of. You know, how far can you break down? When do you break down? How do you break down? It was just relentless. At the end of it, they treated me for exhaustion for three weeks afterwards. I’m still on adrenal supplements, because I just blew out all my adrenals!”
On The Howling…
“That movie would not be half the movie it is if we hadn’t had Joe Dante. He paid for all the commercials that are in there himself. He was instrumental in bringing in the names of characters from a lot of the old werewolf movies. He just added so much in there for the true horror fan.”
On Critters…
“You know, I hadn’t watched it in awhile, and I watched it again with my daughter, and darn, it’s a good movie! And, darn, I’m really good in it! I was surprised!”
On Rob Zombie’s Halloween…
“I was supposed to die when I was going down the bookcase, but three weeks later the producers called me and said, ‘We need you to come back.’ I said, ‘But I’m already dead.’ They said, ‘Rob wants to kill you better!’ So I went back, and that’s when we shot me crawling through the floor and into the other room and going to the table and all that.”
Be sure to read the full chat on AV Club, which includes way more on each film.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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