PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Horror fans can rejoice as the fourth season of the fan favorite Shudder series, Creepshow, just dropped on the streaming service. Taking its cue from the beloved George A. Romero 1982 movie of the same name, the Creepshow series spins haunting tales and drops gallons of blood while hosting a bevy of different directors to scare and delight viewers.
To celebrate the new season, I chatted with director John Harrison (Tales from the Darkside: The Movie) about his two segments, Smile, and Baby Teeth, why he loves horror and anthologies, and more.
PopHorror: Hi John! I really enjoyed your segments of Creepshow, so I’m super excited to speak with you.
John Harrison: Oh, great! I had fun doing them.
PopHorror: What I’ve heard about this project is that you’re assigned the segments that you are to direct. Is that right? They assign them to you?
John Harrison: Yeah. Well, Greg Nicotero, the showrunner, the executive producer, is in charge, really, of curating all the stories that are in the season. I’ve done it since the beginning. So the past four seasons, he’s come to me and he has sent me stories, and he said, “I think you could do this,” or “How would you feel about doing this one?” In one case in the first season, I was in the middle of doing my first couple, and he just handed me two more and he said, “Hey, I think maybe you’d like to do these.” I was going, “Ah, gee, man, I haven’t even finished the first two.” But Greg is the one that basically chooses them, and he seems to know, instinctively, what stories go well with what director. And I’ve found that the ones that he’s handed me have given me some really interesting stuff to play with.
PopHorror: I agree. What was your initial reaction to Smile and Baby Teeth?
John Harrison: Well, I loved them immediately. In the past, I will say that there have been a couple where I’ve gone, “Ooh, how am I going to do this?” But these two, as soon as I read them, I thought, “Oh, yeah, I got some ideas.” Because they’re both very different. Smile is a very interesting psychological thriller, and Baby Teeth is much more a traditional Creepshow story with a very creepy little monster.
PopHorror: I agree. They are very different. I found Smile actually quite devastating. It’s really kind of heartbreaking.
John Harrison: Totally.
PopHorror: How did you convey your vision to your cast and crew?
John Harrison: Well, talking about it a lot; that’s one of the things that a director has to do in an anthology series like this. We’re not coming into a preexisting cast of characters and set of storylines. So each story is like its own little film. And I spent a lot of time with the cast, especially on Smile, because as you point out, it is emotionally pretty devastating. And the kind of horror that I happen to love, Tiffany, is the horror that’s character-driven. It doesn’t necessarily have to be an external threat, it’s often a threat of something that either has emanated from them or is a result of something they’ve done. And in this case, it’s a result of both the guilt for what he did back in the day and the effect of what’s going to happen about it, which is pretty devastating. I think that, rather than just simply scare the crap out of people with this, I really wanted them to feel. So we spent a lot of time with the actors in particular, and with Rob Draper, the cinematographer, creating a mood and an atmosphere that was all about emotion. Because you don’t really see anything. Nothing really happens until the very end, and there’s a big twist. But it’s all the suspense of what is this about and what is going to happen.
PopHorror: The build-up. The build-up is good.
John Harrison: Yeah, absolutely.
PopHorror: You have no idea what direction it’s going to take. And you are no stranger to the horror anthology. You’ve done episodes for Nightmare Cafe, Tales from the Crypt, Tales from the Darkside. What keeps drawing you back to the anthology?
John Harrison: I love the anthology format because you can do many different things in a single go. In the Creepshow movie and in my movie, Tales from the Darkside, Tales from the Crypt episodes – all of these things, as I said before, they are like individual films – so you have an opportunity to create moments, and several of them in one go. And that’s the beauty of an anthology for me.
PopHorror: Yeah. It lets you have a little bit of fun, doing something different every day. I can see what the allure is to being able to just keep creating and not have to go back to the same thing.
John Harrison: Yeah. Listen, I’ve had the experience of doing… I mean, I’ve done feature films and I’ve done miniseries. You talk about an anthology; I don’t want to say bite-sized but it’s kind of like a very direct “here’s the story.” And then you talk about a Dune miniseries, and it’s six hours long, and you’ve got to tell that story over six hours and remember where you are. It’s an entirely different experience.
PopHorror: Oh, I bet. And what keeps drawing you back to horror?
John Harrison: I think horror is a great way to delve into emotion. You can get away with stuff in horror that you probably couldn’t get away… The thing about horror is that it’s a very hyperbolized kind of storytelling. And because of that, you can get away with things and delve into things that you might not be able to in a naturalistic kind of storytelling. And you can put people’s emotions right at the surface. It’s very raw. And you can put people in situations that are going to bring out… As I said before, I think character-based horror is the best. And so, the situations you can create in horror really challenge the individual, and you can learn a lot about them.
PopHorror: Yes, I agree with that. And I have just one last question for you today. What is your favorite scary movie?
John Harrison: Well, I’ve been asked this before, and it’s a hard question to answer as a favorite scary movie. Obviously, working with George [A. Romero], his movies had a great impact on me. But I think probably the easiest answer is to say, when I was a kid growing up, I grew up in the old ’50s era of Hammer movies, Hammer horror, the Corman films, the drive-in movies, the Chiller Theatre on television late at night. So I’ve seen them all. And I’ve seen so many, I’m probably more conversant with old horror than I am with – because there’s been so much of it recently – some of the new horror. Val Lewton’s stuff creeped me out completely. But the one movie that sticks with me to this day is Robert Wise’s The Haunting. It was very impactful on me when I first saw it. And nothing extraordinarily violent or special effects actually happens. It’s all atmosphere and mood. But man, is it creepy.
PopHorror: You know it’s successful if they’re able to scare you using very little that it’s an effective horror movie.
John Harrison: Precisely. And that movie has had an enormous impact on me. It’s kind of a touchstone, as is the book, by the way. If people haven’t read the book, I highly recommend it, especially at this time of year.
Thank you so much to John for taking time to speak with us. Season four of Creepshow is currently on Shudder and AMC+.
