PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Well, Spider One and Krsy Fox (read our other interview with them HERE) have done it again with their new film, Little Bites. I’ve been following their work together since the fantastic Allegoria came out a few years ago and I have to say, they just keep getting better and better. Little Bites, a unique and unsettling creature feature also starring Barbara Crampton and Bonnie Aarons, along with John Sklaroff as the monster, Agyar, and of course, Chaz Bono, who is a regular in their films, is their best one to date.
In a desperate attempt to protect her ten-year-old daughter, a young widow allows a nightmarish monster to slowly eat her alive.
To celebrate the release of the film, I chatted with Spider and Krsy about the inspiration behind the film and the creature, keeping horror in the family and more!
PopHorror: I loved Little Bites.
Spider One: Oh, thank you!
PopHorror: Spider, I’ve been a fan since 1999 back when Powerman 5000 was first coming out.
Spider One: Thank you!
PopHorror: Following your horror movie career, you just keep getting better and better so I’m super excited to talk to you about this one.
Spider One: Thank you, that’s so nice of you.
PopHorror: What inspired the story for Little Bites and how did the project come about?
Spider One: It is a very personal film, and it is based on our experience as parents. We have a child together and how every day is a battle to keep them alive and safe and happy, and that you fail miserably most of the times and it is an experience filled with many ups and downs. Like all great horror or science fiction, I think real life relatable subject matter is best suited to be represented by monsters or ghosts or robots or whatever. That was the idea, to hopefully present this concept that a lot of people – even if you’re not a parent – I think can relate to the idea of struggle in trying to protect your life or your family. But of course, we had to create a flesh-eating monster to make it really fun.
Krsy Fox: Oh yeah!
PopHorror: I don’t have kids, but I do have a lot of friends that do have children and seeing them struggle sometimes and the stuff they have to go through as a parent, kudos to everyone raising kids because I could never do it.
Spider One: You could do it!
PopHorror: Thanks, I appreciate your confidence! Can you tell us about the creature design?
Spider One: Yeah! Our monster Agyar. There is a very specific idea behind that because anyone who gets to see the movie, they’re going to see that this is a unique monster. It doesn’t fall into the category of the Michael Myers/Jason/silent killer, and there’s no sense of humor at all to this guy. At least I didn’t find it funny. There’s no wisecracks. He’s a very smart, very manipulative, and very, very mean monster, not only physically by eating her flesh but psychologically. That was a huge part of the design of this creature, as well as physically to keep him just human enough where the actor’s performance would really shine through, and coming up with that sort of pompous theater accent was another element of making him miserably unlikable. Krsy loved spending time in a dark room with him.
Krsy Fox: It was the best, for sure.
PopHorror: I was wondering about the accent. I was like, that’s an interesting choice.
Spider One: He stayed in the accent the entire time so most of our cast and crew had no idea that John was actually from New York. We tried a bunch of different ways. We tried Eastern European but that felt too much of the stereotypical vampire thing. We know we wanted him to feel arrogant, that he was always talking down to her, trying to demean her and we came up with this sort of… I have no other way to describe it but a theater, “I’m in the theater” accent. He did such a great job.
PopHorror: Krsy, was there anything that you were adamant about bringing to your character?
Krsy Fox: I just wanted it to feel really authentic. It’s scary as an actor to be willing to look that bad and to be that raw on camera. But once you can do that, it doesn’t matter. You don’t care if you look ugly anymore. It was important to me that the emotion was there, even in the scenes where she’s really trying to hold it back, it was still there. I wanted it to feel as real as possible. I connected so much to this character. We have a daughter but I think there’s so many different layers to this. We’ve all had times in our life where people don’t know what’s going on behind closed doors and they don’t know the struggles you’re going through, and they just pass judgment on you rather than extend their hand and ask if you’re okay or if you need help. I think that was the saddest part about this and she really is a good person and trying to be a good mother. Those things and we try to keep our sets very family. All of our crew we’ve worked with on every film. Our daughter came to set multiple times. She was in the movie for a brief moment. She was the little girl that Heather (Langenkamp) and I were watching. Those things were important because she not only kept me going when I’d get in a dark place but also reminded me why I was in the dark place and the reason for all of it.
PopHorror: I think that if the character had looked like you now, it wouldn’t have felt as real and as authentic. I’m glad that is where you went.
Krsy Fox: Thank you!
PopHorror: You both brought up your daughter and you mentioned that she was in the film, which I had read about. She’s also been in some of your other films that you’ve made. How did you introduce her to the horror genre?
Krsy Fox: She’s been kind of in it since she was, I think five months old. She was on set for our first short film that we made and then all of them to follow. She started getting this close relationship to our effects people and makeup people and our crew and she just found this deep passionate love for horror movies. Our daughter loves horror movies. Right now it’s all about Oddity. She loves Oddity. She’s five years old and she loves stuff like that.
PopHorror: I haven’t even seen that yet!
Krsy Fox: It’s really scary! She asks for it every night. Her third birthday was Freddy vs Jason themed and that was her decision. It’s been such a huge part of her life that it’s become really important that she’s a part of our sets and everybody knows her. There’s a coffee shop here in LA called Horror Vibes Coffee. Our daughter’s in the mural on the wall. They messaged me when they were painting it and were like, “Can we put her in here? Because she’s just one of our little horror people that we love to see.” So she’s kind of become her own little… The shorts that we’ve done, she came to me at one point when she was three and she’s like, “I want to be the star of a movie but I want it to be a monster movie.” I’m like, “Okay! Alright then I’m going to write that for you and we’re going to make a monster movie.” we did, and she was amazing. She’s one of those kids that you just get out of her way. You don’t have to push any ideas on her. She is her own person. She’s been like that since she could speak, which is amazing that we just all can share the love of horror together in our house.
PopHorror: I love that. That is so awesome. I have just one last question for you both. If you could program a double feature with any two movies, what would they be?
Spider One: Oh, my goodness. Horror movies I’m assuming, right?
PopHorror: Preferably, yes, but any two that you would like.
Spider One: Because you know that I’m always going to try and sneak in Napoleon Dynamite somewhere. The Shining is probably, gun to head, favorite horror movie of mine. I can watch it whenever, anytime, so that would probably be one. And then, selfishly I would probably include Little Bites in there just because we’re talking about it.
PopHorror: Good, solid choices.
Krsy Fox: I would probably go back to the couple films… I was a young kid in the 90s and so there’s some films that were so impactful for me and me wanting to be an actress and me loving movies and loving these types of movies. I’d probably say Scream and The Craft.
Thank you so much to Spider and Krsy for taking the time to chat with us. Little Bites is now available to rent and will be soon coming to Shudder!
