Power is a State of Mind: For the Love of Horror '24 Part 3

The Halloween cast make way for Jenna Kanell (Tara) and Catherine Corcoran (Dawn) from Terrifier.

I haven’t seen this yet so it was a bit lost on me.

The stars of Sam Raimi’s 1981 horror comedy classic The Evil Dead. Theresa Tilly (Shelly), Besty Baker (Linda) and Hal Delrich (Scott) take to the stage. Delrich tells of his audition.

BB: When he drags me out of the cabin, you can see it’s me in the mask. I lost my eyelashes because of the mask. She was kind of a sweet girlfriend.

AQ: What’s your favourite scene in the movie?

HD: I was an action movie fan as a kid. My favourite scene was when I died.

TT: My fave was when I sing the song.

BB: Bruce Campbell gave me this necklace. He loved the fact that we did 20 takes of kissing, by the way. I had the honour of being the first person to kiss Bruce Campbell on camera. Bruce and Sam grew up together.

The cast, it seemed, were in no mood for a wrap party.

BB: We couldn’t get out of that state quickly enough.

TT: I thought, what are we in?! I never thought we’d be talking about it to this day.

HD: We had no idea the cast had a reunion 20 years later. I said, ‘what?!’

COMPARE: Were you aware of the controversy in the UK with video nasties?

HD: I had no idea.

COMPARE: The pencil in the ankle lingered too long for the censors.

TT: The 2013 remake was fun; we were invited to the premiere. It was fantastic. Ours was a comedy, though.

BB: Sam Raimi was 19, 20 at the time (of the original). You could see he was filming the car to make it look like it was going to tip over. I’m not surprised he went on to do Spiderman.

BB: I’m sure the cast were helping the process of laying wood for the camera to run across. He didn’t have the money to hire the crew.

COMPARE: Were you put through the ringer?

TT: I’m still experiencing PTSD! We lived in the same house.

HS: We found Sam sleeping on the table with the storyboard he’d done overnight.

BB: We could have walked off, and said, ‘this is crazy.’ But none of us had a car. So we all said, ‘Let’s do this.’

COMPARE: There was 18 months between the shoot and the release. Were you nervous?

TT: Yeah. I took my mom to the premiere. When we got to the tree scene, I said to my mom, ‘look over there!’ We went to a convention to see what it was like, but we wore trenchcoats so no one could recognise us.

Last to the main stage: a Carpenter Classics panel, featuring stars of several John Carpenter movies. Adrienne Barbeau (Stevie Wayne in The Fog, Maggie in Escape from New York, voiced computers in The Thing, Demolition Man and Judge Dredd, Wilma Northrup in Creepshow, Nina / Serski in Argo), Tommy Lee Wallace (director of IT, Halloween III, Fright Night Part II, played Michael Myer in the closet scene in the original Halloweeen), Tom Atkins (Nick Castle in The Fog, Cpt Rehme in Escape from New York, Stan in Creepshow, Dr Dan Challis in Halloween III, Michael Hunsaker in Lethal Weapon) and Stacey Nelkin (Ellie Grimbridge in Halloween III) gather to answer fan questions.

TLW: John Carpenter and I grew up in the same town. We knew music: The Beatles, The Hollies. At age 9, John decided he wanted to be a film director. We went to the same film school.

TA: I met John through a barbecue. My friends said, ‘this guy John Carpenter has just made a movie, come take a look! We go to see Halloween at the cinema. They spent most of the movie like this. (He puts his head in his hands.)

COMPARE: The Fog is one of my favourites.

TLW: You used the Fog Machine to make the effect.

AB: In the scene where we were surrounded by the Fog, it was kerosene.

TLW: We all have cancer now.

Presumably, this is in jest.

AB: John said we have to shoot the scene in reverse. We’ll take the scene and turn it upside down.

TLW: We needed the Fog to recede.

AB: I had to act in reverse. Something happens in the scene, then I had to act relieved first, then be scared.

TLW: We had machines called ‘foofers’ that made the fog with dry ice. It was most mysterious, That was my favourite.

TA: One of my favourite scenes in The Fog a guy is telling this story to kids. The camera goes up, and comes down on Antonio Bay. A gorgeous scene. I’ve been in 4 films with Adrienne, but we’ve never been on screen together.

The mic goes out to the audience. The most memorable question: a young man tells Barbeau she has the ‘sexiest voice.’ I’m inclined to agree. He asks for a demonstration. She reads out her character’s sign-off.

‘This is Stevie Wayne, coming to you from Antonio Bay.’

She’s still got it.

For the Love of Horror returns in 2025.