Crafting web frights with Corman, Dante & Feldman
This Halloween, horror fans will find many more options than they did last year when seeking original entertainment on the web. Sure, over the last two years we’ve seen all manner of horror “webisodesâ make their debut, from FearNET’s 30 Days of Night series to Tom Holland’s 5 or Die pilot. Some flop, others last long enough to debut and wrap up their story up in a minimal number of installments. This year’s marketplace for online horror is particularly heavy as FearNET, IFC and Crackle compete for traffic with their fright fare. Meanwhile, the online movie rental hub Netflix is joining the melee with the sensationally titled Splatter.
Ah, but what does Netflix have over the competition? Seasoned vets. Roger Corman is shepherding the project, his first online production, with co-producer Julie Corman. And behind the camera, Joe Dante of Gremlins and The Howling. Splatter is an unusual twist on episodic horror in that it allows the viewers to decide where the next entry turns next. They’ll decide who lives and who dies. An unenviable task to navigate creatively, but in writer Richard Christian Matheson’s case, he took it all in stride.
Matheson, whose credits include Three O’Clock High, Full Eclipse and two Masters of Horror episodes, was approached to do the series by the Cormans. “You’re playing 3-D chess,” he explains of Splatter‘s choose-your-own-adventure nature. “Every outcome will set in motion a set of other outcomes. Part of our initial conversations were how we were going to do this. How were we going to make it work. None of us had done something like that before. Once we figured out the methodology of it, I just began to jump in with characters that Roger had already said would be the rock ân roll entourage of this guy.”
Said “guy” is musician Johnny Splatter, played by Corey Feldman. His death brings together a group of human leeches at a Hollywoood hills mansion to hear Splatter’s last will and testament. However, Splatter returns from beyond the grave for a bloody encore.
Planning began as far back as February and much of the plotting of the story, in some instances, had to be done multiple times, as Matheson reveals, to reflect the possible decisions viewers will make. That seemed to be the least of his worries. It was the actor who wielded the sharp banter of Johnny Splatter that mattered to him.
“I was up on the set and Corey was there doing all of this dialogue I had written,” Matheson recounts, “it is hopefully snarky and ironic, and he really nailed it. There’s a lot of interesting things he had to say and in the hands of the wrong actor, it might not come across very well. But he had it and he nailed it. Tony Todd was great. There’s a lot of interesting things going on given [the episodes] are only about ten minutes a piece.”
As for working with Dante, Matheson felt a certain kinship with the director. “We both are deeply meshed in comedy and horror. I’ve written a lot of comedy and he obviously has that in a lot of his work. We share a very quick sensibility. I think we understand comedy and horror can be bedfellows and not everybody gets that.”
“It’s a really fun, interesting script with a lot of switchbacks and surprises,” he adds. “Whatâs going to be interesting is to see who the audience likes and who the audience doesn’t like. I have my feelings, Roger does and Joe does in terms of who the audience will like and who they will loathe and who they’re going to want to see die. Who that will be, I have no idea. They’re all just really interesting characters.”
Splatter debuts on NetFlix.com/Splatter on Thursday, October 29 and is free for everyone. Subsequent episodes air on November 6 and November 13, offering only a small window of time for the audience votes to be gathered and the next chapter to be completed. Stressful? Perhaps, but Matheson believes it will pay off.
“It’s the first time Roger has given his fans the chance to weigh in on something. I think it’s special in a variety of different ways. I think if people see what we’re up to, they’re going to have fun with it. And if the thing really grabs on, I’ve talked to Roger about some other ones. Netflix might want to do another. Success is always an invitation to do more.”
Source: Ryan Rotten, Managing Editor
