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Celebrate “HALFWAY TO HALLOWEEN” With The Boulet Brothers

Friday, April 21, 2023 | Interviews

By LINDY RYAN

If you’re someone who believes that Halloween should be celebrated all year long, you’re in good company here at RUE MORGUE. With our favorite day only coming once a year, the wait until October 31 can seem to take forever. But have no fear (or rather, have all the fear) because the Boulet Brothers are serving up THE BOULET BROTHERS’ HALFWAY TO HALLOWEEN, a delicious, horrifying buffet of entertainment in a new variety show special coming to Shudder and AMC+ on April 25. 

Reminiscent of classic retro holiday shows, HALFWAY TO HALLOWEEN is a scripted variety program as only the “queens of darkness” could imagine, featuring skits, musical performances, and guest appearances from such stars as David Dastmalchian (Dune, Suicide Squad) who co-produced the special, Kevin Smith (Clerks, Tusk), Emily Hampshire (Schitt’s Creek), Taran Killam (SNL), Matthew Lillard (Scream), Jorge Garcia (Lost), Steve Agee (Peacemaker), Barbara Crampton (Re-Animator, Chopping Mall), Felissa Rose (Sleepaway Camp), Katya (RuPaul’s Drag Race), Derek Mears (Friday the 13th, Swamp Thing), Satanic doo-wop band Twin Temple, and Kendra Onixx, Koco Caine and Melissa Befierce (The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula).

The Boulet Brothers are your puppet masters!

RUE MORGUE had the opportunity to sit down with Drac and Swan and talk about all the spooktacular things viewers will experience in HALFWAY TO HALLOWEEN on April 25!

Congratulations on HALFWAY TO HALLOWEEN, and thank you both for taking the time to speak today. We’re such massive fans of all things Boulet Brothers, and this is so exciting! First off, let’s talk about timing. Halloween is still (sadly) six months away. Why a “halfway” special?

So many people have such a strong love for everything Halloween, and we feel like we need to give them a little something to get them through the next half of the year. And that’s exactly what HALFWAY TO HALLOWEEN is, classic Halloween right when we need it the most. It serves audiences everything they need. Ghosts, hauntings, witches. Everything.

The variety is all in the name, right? It’s sort of like digging into a trick-or-treat candy bag. Every handful has something to enjoy. It’s retro, it’s classic, and it’s totally reimagined by the Boulet Brothers. I’d love to hear more about why you decided to go with the variety show format for this mid-year Halloween special.

We’ve always been inspired to do our own Halloween special for a long time. Now, the stars have aligned, the right opportunity opened itself up – and we snatched it up with our claws. We love variety and the variety format, from old classic Christmas specials to Saturday Night Live. Those old holiday specials were so weird, and the marketing so enticing. It was such an exciting benchmark in time, and we wanted to recreate that same magic with this TV special. The skit format is particularly special to us; We used to perform a lot of theatrical skits at nightclubs back in the day. So it’s a format that we really enjoy, and since we get to host and do what we do best, a variety show format seemed like the perfect vehicle to serve up the ideas we have for this special.

Kevin Smith drops by for some halfway-to-Halloween hijinx

And I have no doubts it’s going to be fantastic. I’m already excited by the tremendous line-up of guests coming to the show. It must have been so much fun to stitch together so many ideas and so much talent.

Honestly, it was sort of magical the way it came together! Like you said, Halloween fans don’t like waiting to celebrate only once a year. As soon as word began to spread among the talent that we were doing HALFWAY TO HALLOWEEN, people started reaching out and asking to be a part of it. “I love Halloween!” or “I love variety shows!” they’d say. “I’m usually typecast as a killer, but I want to be a comedian.” So we started taking meetings with different actors and creating a space to allow them to do what they wanted and melding ideas together. It made for a lot of magical moments.

I definitely think viewers will be able to feel that enthusiasm and creativity when they watch the special, which is just one date, one special, on April 25th, correct?

Well, let’s just say it’s the first special. We’re giving audiences and executives alike a taste of something they didn’t know they need but will be dying for more once they see. We’ve been so inspired by the concept and feel that’s the most significant ingredient in any project. It carries through when other people are attracted, and that energy creates momentum. We absolutely love it and hope that fans love it as much as we do.

There’s no doubt about that! And while you’re in the midst of HALFWAY TO HALLOWEEN, you’ll also kick off the world tour for Dragula: Titans. How do you juggle so many incredible things at once?

Oh, we’re on the edge of panic and insanity on a daily basis. But that drives us even harder. No matter what we have to sacrifice, we know we have to pull a hit across the finish line. People say we always deliver, and they depend on us for quality entertainment, and that pushes us every day. We know our fans are spending money and coming out to experience the brand that we’ve created. We never take that for granted. 

That’s such a generous answer, but I think the authenticity you bring to your work really shows through, and fans appreciate that. It builds a sense of community between yourselves and your audience that doesn’t always exist, and we love you for it.

We never want to look back and say, “Oh, we should have worked less or not as hard,” and that mindset lives in our heads. We want to apply ourselves to the max and deliver the best thing we can every time. We try to approach every opportunity with appreciation and humility like it’s the last project we might do. You never know what might happen, and we think it’s important to enjoy each project, be present, and deliver quality every time.

Speaking of “every project,” what’s next for the Boulet Brothers?

Well, we’re hard at work on season five of The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula and a few still under-wraps projects. We can’t say too much about that yet, but we can say that we’re working on projects that really satiate a hunger in us for scripted shows and other creative interests (like horror movies and directing and writing). So without being terribly specific, more of that.

Amazing! I can’t wait for every bit of it, and I’m so excited about all the incredible things you’re doing. Good luck and break a leg!

The Boulet Brothers’ HALFWAY TO HALLOWEEN variety show special airs exclusively on Shudder on April 25th. You can also see the Boulet Brothers on The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula: Titans world tour, which kicks off April 8th in Orlando, Florida. Dates, tickets, and more information are available here.

 

Lindy Ryan
An award-winning author, editor, professor, and short-film director, Lindy Ryan was recently named one of horror’s six most masterful anthology curators, alongside Ellen Datlow and Christopher Golden, for her work in UNDER HER SKIN, a women-in-horror poetry showcase, and INTO THE FOREST: TALES OF THE BABA YAGA, a forthcoming women-in-horror anthology from Black Spot Books and Blackstone Audio. A 2020 Publishers Weekly Star Watch Honoree and previous board member for the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA), Lindy is a long-time advocate for women-in-horror and an active member of the HWA and ITW. She is the current chair of the Horror Writers Association’s Women in Horror Month. The author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, Lindy’s work has been adapted for film. Her debut horror-thriller novel, BLESS YOUR HEART, is forthcoming from St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books.