By WILLIAM J. WRIGHT
Best known for her role as radio DJ Vanita “Stretch” Brock in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, the darkly comedic (and much beloved) sequel to Tobe Hooper’s groundbreaking 1974 horror classic, Caroline Williams continues to delight horror fans with her ongoing devotion to the genre that she credits with giving her a long career. In her latest film, HE SEES YOU WHEN YOU’RE SLEEPING, a Yuletide slasher that combines mystery and gore with a wicked sense of humor, Williams gets the welcome opportunity to gleefully chew the scenery as the conniving Aunt Marion.
Directed by upcoming indie filmmaker Charlie Steeds (Night Harvest, Lord of the Wolves) from a script by David Lenik, HE SEES YOU WHEN YOU’RE SLEEPING tells the harrowing story of Chester Van Buren, who’s institutionalized after witnessing the slaughter of his parents at hands of a deranged Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. Flash forward 17 years later, and a grown and (seemingly) fully recovered Chester has returned to his childhood home, now occupied by Marion and her boorish son, Burke (Cedric Gegel). However, Marion’s warm welcome belies her true intent. She and Burke have designs on Chester’s property, complete with a plot to send the troubled young man back to the asylum. Those sinister plans fall apart when an axe-wielding St. Nick returns to ply his bloody trade – and everyone is on his naughty list.
Amid this busy holiday season, Caroline Williams gave RUE MORGUE the gift of some of her time to talk about this scary seasonal offering.
There have been hundreds of killer Santa movies. What attracted you to this story and the role of Aunt Marion?
[It was] the team of Charlie Steeds and David Lenik. One of my friends is a producer and an executive at the Asylum here in LA. I’ve worked for him extensively. And the Asylum is fun. The Asylum has an avid following because they make fun films. My friend called me up and said, “You’ve got to read this script. It’s so fun! You will have the time of your life on this.” I trusted him immediately, and I just said yes. I said yes before I even read the script because not every movie is going to be, you know, a film festival fave or a top ten box office movie.
Charlie Steeds has a rapidly growing reputation. He is a really uniquely talented filmmaker, and he gets a lot out of what have essentially been low budgets. And that will change because I think he has shown an incredible amount of creativity, imagination and skill – just the basic directorial technical skills that you’ve got to have to make a good film. He proves that hands down with this one. I greatly enjoyed watching this movie. I had some friends over, and we had pizza, and we watched the film. They absolutely loved it. It’s a lot of fun.
One of the things that struck me about HE SEES YOU WHEN YOU’RE SLEEPING was, yes, it is a horror movie, but it’s really a mystery movie, too. I thought that was a very interesting and fun twist.
It’s not as slashy and gory – because you can’t follow the Terrifier series – but [Charlie Steeds] made it more suspenseful and smart. You’ve got to be keeping up with the storyline to know who the players are and where they are in the various machinations that govern the action, and because Aunt Marion is sort of at the center of the plot of some of this, that’s also a thing that made it really attractive to me … And I like that suspenseful, scary atmosphere – the lighting and the camera movement. I think Charlie turned it into the kind of movie that the whole family can sit down together and watch, and your little kids won’t run screaming into the night. It’ll freak them out a little bit when the ax first falls, but you don’t have to cover their eyes and get all crazy about it, right?
Without giving too much away, Aunt Marion is a bit of a villain. Do you enjoy playing the bad guy?
Always, always, always, always. Plus, the humor in the script was so terrific. I had so many opportunities to be funny. [That’s] one of the things that’s so great about David and Charlie. I’m acting opposite David. He’s also the writer of the script, but he wasn’t precious about it. If I decided to go off on some crazy tangent, he let me, and Charlie indulged me a lot as well. It was mostly just including a lot of Southernisms. I didn’t change anything about the plot or scenes or the foundations of the scenes. He just let me throw in some typical Southern phrases and words. And quite frankly, I was working from my grandmother and my aunties and the women that I grew up with in my family. It came really effortlessly in that respect.
You play her pretty broadly with quite a bit of humor, which is exactly what the tone of the film demands. How did you find that balance without going too far into simmering evil or lapsing into caricature? What was the key to getting her just right?
It was written to be a little broader, a little bigger. It was written to be a romp and a fun little sleigh ride through the bloody Christmas trees. That’s very, very fun to play. You can take the breaks off a little bit. You don’t have to be self-conscious about where your portrayal is going because the script supports it, and David and Charlie supported it. We all got to twirl our mustaches a little bit.
Horror movies come with some specific challenges for actors, and adding Christmas to the mix seems like it would add another layer of complication. What were some of the challenges of shooting this film?
Honestly, the biggest problem for me, and I’m sure one of the biggest problems for Charlie and [producer] Tom Malloy, was that I had flown in from a convention. I think it was Idaho or Iowa, you know, in a cold place. I had missed my flight and arrived late. We had to drive an hour and a half to the location they had wanted to shoot with me that day. Upon my arrival, I ended up being awake for probably more than 24 hours, and by the next morning, I had a fever. I was out of it. I was out cold. They tested me for COVID twice. I was absolutely decommissioned for about 48 hours. And everybody was in a panic. They were trying to shoot around me, but the film comes together so flawlessly. That shows you what skilled filmmakers these guys are, and they managed to pull it off. By the third day, I just got my ass out of bed and went to work, and I was enthusiastic about it. I didn’t want to fly to a location only to be replaced or only to bring a sluggish, dragging performance because every player in the movie bounces off of Auntie Marion, who’s plotting and planning all along the way.
Are you a Christmas person?
[Laughs] Well, I’m Jewish – which means I’m really a Christmas person!
You gave us The Guy, right? [Laughs]
Exactly! But I love Christmas. I love the Christmas season. A couple of my friends who are Catholic have invited me to midnight mass before. It’s such a wondrous thing, and the music and the children, the lights and the people. I cherish Christmas just not because it’s not my religious thing. It is a very strong cultural thing that, in a way, the world kind of centers itself around. I love the food, I love the trees. I love Christmas, and I love Hanukkah. Ironically, this year, Hanukkah and Christmas fall on the same night, the 25th, which I think is kind of poetic.
I’m wonderfully excited to have this movie in circulation at this time of year. The reviews I’ve read basically have been pretty favorable. People have enjoyed it. They understand what it’s about. You don’t go to the turkey and ham table; you go to the treats table with this movie.
I can tell you have a whole lot of respect for these upcoming filmmakers. This movie finds you working with some relatively new actors and crew. Having worked with everyone from Louis Malle and Tony Scott to Dennis Hopper and Tobe Hooper, do you ever find yourself taking on a mentor role on set?
Nearly never. I find from the players that I am working opposite, I gained so much from their methods and their enthusiasm, the things they are doing, the books they have read, the music that they love, and the energy that they project. And no group of players was tasked with a heavier load than this cast because I was coming in freshly ill, and I think they were all kind of, oh, shit, what’s going to happen now? They brought such verve, such energy, professionalism and authenticity to their roles. I just loved every single actor that I got to play opposite, and I got to have so many distinctive moments with each one just by bouncing off of them.
You know, I almost never think of myself in that way because you never know who you’re gonna meet on the set. I like absorbing the energy and sending it back out because it always brings something to my performance that wouldn’t be there if I took kind of a “superior” tone. Each movie is a fingerprint, an utterly unique experience.
I’m from Tennessee, and you’re from Arkansas, so it’s refreshing and rare to speak to someone who sounds “normal”! Being from here comes with some cultural baggage, and people tend to approach you differently. Has your Southern background and accent ever been a hindrance to your career? Have you ever felt the need to hide it or lose it?
It’s very curious. When I first came to town in ’86 with a very distinctive Texas-based film, my agents encouraged me to get rid of my dialect. You need to sound Mid-American, Mid-Atlantic and so forth. And I did that. And I can do minor variations in dialect. I can do a decent Eastern European/Russian dialect. I can do a decent British dialect. I can lose the Southern and sound very Mid-American, but now, where we are now in the culture especially, I’m finding the Southern dialect is incredibly attractive to filmmakers. Look at Matthew McConaughey, Billy Bob Thornton and one of my all-time favorites Diane Ladd. There are so many players from the South who have just simply gone ahead and embraced who they are.
I find the Southernness is like being from South Boston or Chicago. It has such a distinction. The South does have its baggage, but it also has a romance and a mysticism. There are things only Southern people really understand, right? Octavia Spencer and I had a chance to talk about that on Halloween II. The South has literature and food and music and just that rich rich mixture of cultures from all over the world. I think people are finding it very attractive now.
I just did two films this year with a distinctive Southern slant, and the filmmakers wanted that specifically. They brought me in for that, and I got to play different variations – a different plane on the prism of that. So I’m rolling with it, man, I’m rolling with it! And my agents are selling it and that’s where I’m going right now. This is my Geraldine Page moment.
Over the years, you’ve been in many films from big studio blockbusters to tiny indies across many genres. What keeps you coming back to the horror genre, especially indie horror?
I have an established audience. I feel the warm embrace whenever I’m on the convention circuit. The convention circuit is a wonderful place to meet new writers, new filmmakers, musicians, composers, actors and art directors. It’s very much its own culture, you know, and it’s a wonderful place to make the acquaintance of new filmmakers and see all of your friends that you that you’ve been on the circuit with for however long, and reestablish old relationships, sonI will always probably have that.
It’s much harder to get hired on mainstream television or mainstream films. But, you know, it can happen. The thing is, Ryan Murphy loves Southerners. The Coen Brothers love Southerners. Taylor Sheridan is a Southerner.
What’s next?
I’ve got two as of yet. both unnamed. We have working titles for these two films. One was directed by Joshua Lou Friedman, who has been a career-long first assistant director. He’s always wanted to make his first feature, and he finally has done it. Me and Daniel Robuck are at the center of the story. Danny is a brilliant actor. He is so much fun. He’s just a big panda bear. And once again, you’ve got the South represented in that story. It’s a wonderful horror comedy. It’s kind of absurd at times, but incredibly fun.
The second one is a much more serious Neo-noir thriller that I shot in Austin. I got to return to my beloved Austin and shoot with Steven Romano, who’s very talented. He’s been noted mostly for writing films that other people direct – once again, a first-time filmmaker. He invited me to kind of have a very key role in this movie called What Did You Do? That is strictly a working title, but we’re looking at, hopefully, some festival action. He’s editing now, and we’re going to find out. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. But that was a brilliant experience because that’s a serious actor piece. Once again, I’m playing a Texas woman caught in the middle of a sort of very Tarantino-esque Pulp Fiction kind of story. I’m very excited about it. Steven is doing every single thing on this movie. He wrote it, directed it, produced it and edited it. The only thing he didn’t do was make my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It was a brilliant experience.
Also, there is upcoming through the brilliant Heather Buckley, who wrote, produced and partially directed a documentary about Al Adamson called The Secret Life and Scary Death of Al Adamson, the definitive documentary about the making of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Two and the Austin film community. I put myself in her service. I said you don’t even have to pay me. Whatever it is you require of me on camera, behind the scenes, information, interviews, anything you need from me, I want you to have it. You can just bury me in DVDs and Blu-rays later, but I want to give you everything that you need, and I might be in Austin for New Year to shoot some stuff with her. She’s a brilliant documentarian. She’s been trying to get this going for seven years, and at long last, she has got the budgeting, she’s got the backing, she’s got what she needs to bring it to life. I weep happy tears because Tobe [Hooper] deserves it, and the Austin film community and the Texas film community deserve it.
As a kid, that movie meant so much to me and my friends. To this day, people kind of come out to me and say, “I like the second one better than the first.”
It provided my foundation. You know, Tobe gave me everything I have – everything I have. My gratitude to him is eternal. And to Kim Henkel and the original cast. They built the house I live in. I’ll always be grateful.
Stretch is forever in our hearts.
You know, there was a time when I wanted to escape her, but I’m firmly in her boots, and I will stay there.
