Horror films aren’t exactly having an easy time creating new horror icons for a new generation, but Syfy’s “Channel Zero” has been picking up some of that slack by bringing truly nightmarish monsters to the small screen for the past few years. Beginning with the “Tooth Child” in debut season “Candle Cove,” the Nick Antosca-created, Creepypasta-based series has worked its way into the nightmares of viewers time and time again, and the show may have just created its most unsettling villain to date in brand new season “Channel Zero: The Dream Door.“
The first episode of the anthology series’s fourth season introduced “Pretzel Jack,“ a childhood creation of main character Jillian Hope Hodgson (Maria Sten) that literally comes to life years later, emerging from the titular “Dream Door” in Jillian and her husband’s new home. We won’t say anything more than that, but Pretzel Jack, we will note, is damn sure CREEPY AF.
Unnatural movements are not uncommon when we’re talking about horror villains, but Pretzel Jack takes things to a whole new level by quite literally being, as he’s described at one point within the show itself, “a contortionist clown.” Pretzel Jack bends and twists in ways the human body simply cannot, leading many to believe that CGI was used to bring him to life.
True, most human bodies don’t bend like Pretzel Jack’s, but Troy James‘ body does.
No, CGI was *not* used to bring Pretzel Jack to life, but rather the character was played by the man who calls himself “Twisty Troy,“ a real-life contortionist whose highly unique talents aren’t being used in “Channel Zero” for the first time in the world of horror. Troy’s debut horror role, actually, was in The Void, wherein he played the role of a creature known as “Sleepwalker.” Troy also played a handful of “Mongrel” creatures featured throughout FX’s vampire series “The Strain,“ and he was the titular creature in last year’s horror film Neverknock.
But Twisty Troy is most known for playing, well, Twisty Troy. Over the last couple years, Troy’s videos highlighting his mind-blowing abilities have gone viral across the net, racking up views and creeping everyone right the hell out. Earlier this year, Troy even freaked out the judges of “America’s Got Talent” with his preternatural “human spider” act, leading Howie Mandel to comment that he should be in a horror film. Troy, at the time the episode was filmed, of course already had, but it’s “The Dream Door” that has truly made him something of a horror icon.
Creator/showrunner Nick Antosca explained to EW recently, “Troy James is a pretty extraordinary physical performer. We actually wrote the season around him after we saw what he could do in a small role in Butcher’s Block [the previous installment of the show]. None of it is CG. Pretzel Jack’s contortions and bizarre behavior are entirely the performance of Troy James. Basically, on set, the script would say, ‘He does a bizarre contortionist dance,’ and Troy would say, ‘Well, I’m going to try this,’ or ‘I’m going to try that,’ and he would do these incredible twisting things with his body. We’d all be standing there going, Oh my God!”
In an exclusive chat, “The Dream Door” director E.L. Katz (Cheap Thrills) told us, “I remember after reading the script just going into YouTube and typing in ‘best contortionist’ – and Troy James came up; watching his America’s Got Talent video made my head explode. I sent the video to Nick, and he said that they’d used him for a quick memorable scene in Butchers Block, and that yeah, of course they were thinking about him. We still went out with a casting call, just to see what would happen. Basically the only information we gave people auditioning was to do a dance to make somebody feel better or cheer them up after they’ve murdered somebody for them. We definitely got a wide range of submissions – lots of odd modern dance stuff, and just plain strange interpretations of the scene. There wasn’t anything that felt like a full on character, something that felt sustainable over six hours. And yeah, Troy auditioned…and beyond the amazing things that Troy can do with his body, there is this pure joy and innocence in him that registers when you see anything he does. There was no comparison, or question at all: he had to be Pretzel Jack.”
Katz added, “[Pretzel Jack] gave me the chance to create a slasher character and a Pixar character all in one.”
Like Doug Jones and Javier Botet, Twisty Troy is on his way to becoming a go-to creature performer for filmmakers looking to terrify horror fans with unnatural monsters, and we can’t wait to see the horrors he brings next. In the meantime, Pretzel Jack is one of this year’s most memorable horror characters, so we sure hope you’ve been watching “The Dream Door.”
To keep tabs on Twisty Troy, be sure to follow @TwistyTroy on Twitter!
