CraveOnline: Beyond the voices, I’m curious about the fact that the shorts are all taking place in the same town on presumably the same night. Is there a distinctive inciting incident or basis for the horror, is the idea that fucked up shit just happens every Halloween?
Mike Mendez: No, this happens every Halloween. It could happen next Halloween, it could happen the Halloween after that depending on how much the audiences like it. [Laughs.] So not exactly. It’s sort of the idea this this is your town, and every Halloween shit goes a little nutty in this town, and things get a little out of hand. But no, it is specific to a town and could happen every year should we choose to go through with it.
What can you tell me about your segment? What can we expect?
On my segment you can expect of gore is what you can expect. [Laughs.] I felt that rarely does one really have the opportunity to have so much freedom and have final cut, and really try to do something, so I wanted to see something I haven’t seen on the big screen in a long time, and that was copious amounts of blood spray. I really wanted to go back to the things that I loved as a kid, which is early Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi, and I wanted to hit those levels. I’m happy to say I think we did. So I think the MPAA might have some issues, but I think fright fans everywhere are in for a treat on mine, I hope.
“I wanted to see something I haven’t seen on the big screen in a long time, and that was copious amounts of blood spray.”
Tell me how you want to structure a short. It seems like most shorts are structured almost like a joke. There’s a set-up, and then there’s just a big reversal at the end. “Haha, that was fun.”
Right.
Are you going for something a little different or do you think that structure is awesome?
No, I mean I think it all depends on what the filmmaker’s trying to do. That structure you just described? I’m like, “No, that kind of nails my short.” [Laughs.] Mine is a little bit of every, what you see is not what you get, or everything has a structure to it. But I think that we’re all different. Paul Solet, who made a movie called Grace and Dark Summer, he has something in line more with Sergio Leone and spaghetti westerns. Axelle Carolyn, she’s going more for the spooky, creepy one.
While others… you give horror movie filmmakers a free license, and for whatever reason a lot of them go for laughs, myself included. I don’t know why that is. It’s very gory laughs. Very bloody, macabre laughs. Dark laughs, but there’s a fair amount of humor in this movie. But again, and a fair amount of decapitations. We try to balance it out for everybody.
There should be a fair amount of decapitation in everything as far as I’m concerned.
Yes, exactly.
