AMC Networks and Shudder’s FearFest programming is something we look forward to every year at FANGORIA, and this year’s lineup may be more stacked than it’s ever been: a new entry in the V/H/S franchise; brand-new seasons of Creepshow, The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula, and The Last Drive-In With Joe Bob Briggs; Terrified director Demiรกn Rugna’s latest film (which may well be the horror movie of the year, depending on who you ask); and so much more.
The lineup is so gigantic, in fact, that we felt compelled to sit down with Shudder’s VP of Programming, Sam Zimmerman, to make sure we didn’t miss anything. What follows is our conversation with the always-enthusiastic Zimmerman, edited for length and clarity.
FANGORIA: You’ve packed a lot of original programming into the FearFest lineup this year. Let’s start with the thing you are most personally excited about.
SAM ZIMMERMAN: It’s a very difficult to single out something, because I think all of the Shudder original programming this year is stupendous. There’s a shared excitement across our films, our series, our filmmakers. And I’ll work backwards from what’s premiering toward the end of the month, because there’s sort of different nuances to what I’m so excited about. I think there’s a shared excitement around Hell House LLC Origins and The Puppetman, because The Puppetman is our fourth film with Brandon Christensen, and Hell House LLC is our fourth time bringing a Hell House film to the service and our third time premiering one exclusively. Both sets of filmmakers have built up this incredible audience that are so excited of the pure horror thrills of what Brandon and what Stephen [Cognetti] are able to do with both of those.
In terms of what Shudder hopes to do, if you look at Puppetman, if you look at Hell House, if you look at When Evil Lurks (which is our second film with Demiรกn Rugna, after Terrified), if you look at Perpetrator (which is our third time working with Jennifer Reeder), we feel incredibly privileged to just be working with these kind of singular and wild voices that can do something completely artful or completely devastating and provocative or just purely scary, which I think is maybe sometimes taken for granted when you’re talking about horror films.
Right on.
So there’s all those nuances to it. And then there’s V/H/S/85, which is our third V/H/S film. We’re so proud of this one. That’s another one where everyone has brought their own perspective to what they’re doing while making this kind of cohesive and unexpected and kind of dangerous whole. Just look at what Natasha Kermani did with her performance art “Techno God” piece, or the surprising structure of what Mike Nelson did with “No Wake” and “Ambrosia.”
And then you have Night of the Hunted, which … it’s just so cool to be working with Franck Khalfoun, y’know? P2 is such an underrated Christmas horror movie, and Maniac is such a strong re-imagining of the [original]; He’s like a no-holding-back filmmaker. I think we’ve just worked with a lot of people who aren’t afraid to [pull punches on] what they want to do with the genre. So I think it’s a general excitement, which I realize is a complete rebuke of the way you phrased the question (laughs).
Well, I didn’t think you were actually going to single out one thing and be like, “Oh, this one.” They’re all your babies!
Right. And then there’s also Creepshow, season four. We’ve gotten to do four seasons of Creepshow with Greg Nicotero. That shit is legendary.
Speaking of which, it’s clear Shudder is very anthology-friendly, and this is kind of a personal bugaboo of mine: that we aren’t seeing major Hollywood studios play around in the feature film/anthology sandbox more often. Why do you think that is?
It’s a good question. I think we’re lucky, because we’re living in a moment where there’s so many modes of distribution between the highest end of wide theatrical to playing with windows like we are (with When Evil Lurks going theatrical and then to Shudder, to something premiering on the service), that we’re just able to find what the right path for the right medium is. And I think historically, studios have maybe found that, for whatever reason, it’s very hard to get anthologies out in a really wide sense, theatrically.
Maybe it’s because if you think about some of the beginnings of anthologies, whether it’s literary or whether it’s radio play, or even Twilight Zone and Night Gallery, so much of it has been small screen-based that people are inherently geared toward thinking of anthologies as something of a television experience. That’s pure conjecture, but whatever lack of success that major studios have found in anthologies, or historically believe that to be the case, we found a lot of success in bringing to Shudder. V/H/S has played wonderfully. Each of the three films have kind of been the biggest films of their respective years on Shudder. Creepshow has been one of our hugest series. The Mortuary Collection is something people still discover on the service.
Oh, that one’s a real banger.
I love that movie. And I also think that Shudder is speaking directly to people who love the genre, and I think if you love the genre, you find surprise, delight and comfort in anthologies based on the history of what anthologies have done. They’ve brought you to unexpected places. They’ve also brought you to that kind of beautiful comfort/Halloween space, like Creepshow. So, I think we are simply the right mode of distribution for them with the right audience, which puts us in a great place to keep delivering these showcases of incredible voices and incredible perspectives.
The anthology is also just a great place for, if you’re working with a bunch of different filmmakers, to get these voices who can come in and do something bite-sized and just go wild. Look at what Scott Derrickson did with V/H/S/85, he and Cargill just looked at that as a way to say, “Here’s all the stuff we don’t think we could get away with in a classical studio style movie, so let’s go nuts!” And they did. They made one of the bloodiest things I think they’ve ever collaborated on!
I think another thing that anthology programming speaks to, and that I never hear anyone mention, is the diminished attention spans of the modern audience.
I think that could be playing a role, but I also think there’s an interesting hybrid of speaking to shorter attention spans, but in a more traditional format that people love. People still appreciate the thoughtfulness and connectivity and cohesion that goes into this. If you see what they did with V/H/S/85, where things really play in and out of each other or return to kind of fire that part of your brain and go, “Oh, I get what this is doing now. I know how this connects to something else.” Or the way Greg and team pair segments on Creepshow. I think even if it does owe to short attention spans, people still appreciate the thoughtfulness of the experience and then the [fact that the] format it comes within is recognizable.
So I’m purely speaking in the moment, but I think it might be a hybrid of experience. What’s so cool about anthologies is it’s such an umbrella in some ways, because the aesthetic and the provocation of V/H/S is so much different than the sort of monster kid energy of Creepshow. And then Mortuary Collection had its own thing going on in that way, with like an Edward Gorey-style blend of Amicus.
Totally. Very gothic.
Yeah. So I think that’s the other kind of wonderful thing is you can say the word anthology, but it can mean so many different things and so many different explorations of what the horror within is.
You’ve also got a few new specials coming our way. Let’s start with The Last Drive-In.
I can tell you that Joe Bob and the team are always really enthused and excited about what they’re going to show, and I think are always doing a really incredible mix of thinking both what’s right on target for this season and the special, and what’s completely out of the box. And I think both with Halloween and the upcoming Christmas special, you’re going to get a blend of both.
The season itself is being expanded in other ways. Tell us about that.
Well, we realized as wonderful as the double features were, they were extending to a point where we don’t think everyone was keeping up. They weren’t staying up entirely through. Meanwhile, the Joe Bob audience, the Mutant fan, which are so loyal, were also demanding more. So we figured out – well, Joe Bob figured out, because really this was his proposal – was: what if he did single features every other week? So he was on longer throughout the year, the audience was as engaged as they were every Friday night without drop-off, and he could kind of really feel freer in what he wanted to show and how he wanted to present it. It’s just a big expansion of Joe Bob and his presence on the service.
Let’s talk about When Evil Lurks for a bit. How’d you react the first time you saw this movie?
I’ve had multiple reactions to the script, from the first cut through its final iteration. All of them have been the same level of intensity and incredible delight at how menacing this movie is. I mean, I think it’s the horror experience of the year, like full-on.
I agree.
I don’t know how you top what Demiรกn’s doing in this movie, how hard he’s willing to go, but not in a way that you feel like you can’t recommend it to people. It’s kind of that beautiful experience of … well, think back to the first time you saw the original Evil Dead poster and what it was promising you, right? The ultimate experience in grueling terror, the type of thing you have to see and you have to recommend to people.
Because there are things we’ve seen that go really hard or they go really disturbing, and you’re like, “Oh, this is only for some kind of people,” which I kind of don’t believe in general. But the beauty of what he’s achieved with When Evil Lurks is basically not only making the unsettling frightening, but [making the audience think] “They won’t go there,” and then they do. Every time I see it, I wince and I shout and I clap. And I love it.
When is that dropping on Shudder exactly? What’s the exact date?
October 27th. When Evil Lurks is in theaters right now, and then we’ll be dropping right in time for kind of the ultimate Halloween weekend watching.
You’ve also got the fifth season of The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula en route.
Unreal. It’s going to be peak, peak Dragula, peak Boulet.
We love the Boulets here at FANGORIA.
We adore the Boulets, and we adore not only that they do these wonderful seasons of Dragula, but also came to us with the Halfway to Halloween special earlier this year. We’re able to bring a variety show to the service, which is something I’ve always wanted to see.
What else is on the docket?
Let’s see. As always, complimenting our original programming, we have a ton of great library stuff. Films that I believe kind of are perfect for the Halloween season, stuff you want to watch during the season. And that’s everything from undisputed classics like Evil Dead II to new school favorites, like Autopsy of Jane Doe, or…
I see you’ve got Lake Mungo on here.
Yeah, that was my next mention! I think Lake Mungo is the best and scariest movie since probably the year 2000, a movie I’ll always evangelize for and don’t fail to mention any time I can. I think it’s a great, great movie, and maybe one of the last movies I remember turning all the lights on after.
What’s your elevator pitch on that movie for someone who’s never seen it?
(without hesitation) “A scary and devastating faux documentary that will leave you shattered and haunted.”
I can tell you’ve answered that one before.
I don’t know how else to describe that film, other than actually haunting.
Last week it was announced that the next V/H/S, which has yet to be titled, would be going sci-fi. How excited are y’all to put that one together?
We’re very excited. I think while we were doing 94, 99, 85, it felt like, “Oh, here was this really cool phase of VHS, this era. What is the next evolution of it?” And to think of it in terms of a sub-genre or a medium or a mode, I think there isn’t enough really scary sci-fi horror out in the world. We always use the same touch points, like Event Horizon. That one messed all of us up in so many ways … or maybe “all of us” is too broad, but a lot of us really love that movie. And we love how menacing it is and how scary it is. But you can go all the way back to Alien, or Fire in the Sky, just these movies that take those elements and really unsettle you. Or even Timecrimes. That’s a menacing movie.
For sure.
How do we inject that sensibility into a feeling or a mode of sci-fi? And I think trying to explore that with V/H/S, which has always been a really cool consideration of aesthetic and technology and things like that, I think it’s going to really present an interesting experience to the franchise.
Anything you’d like to touch on that we didn’t get to?
No, I’m just thrilled for everyone to discover everything that’s on Shudder this very scary season! And I hope they stick around after the very scary season, because there’s even more coming, including the Shudder premiere of Birth/Rebirth, and Christmas Horror films like It’s a Wonderful Knife and The Sacrifice Game. And also, it’s really fun to be interviewed by FANGORIA, my once home.
