By RICKY J. DUARTE
Winter may have just ended, but that doesn’t mean we can’t start getting excited for autumn. Now is the perfect time to start celebrating “Halfway to Halloween,” which, somehow, has actually become a thing on social media. You’ll find no complaints here, as any excuse to put on a costume, eat candy and watch scary movies will always be welcome.
Just in time for the medial fall festivities, filmmaker Douglas A. Plomatillo (Tiny’s October 31st, Talking to the Dead), has made his feature debut with HALLOWEEN CANDY, an anthology film centered around the spookiest time of the year in six tingling tales of terror. Starring Molly Gazay and Amber Rothberg, HALLOWEEN CANDY is certain to satisfy your sweet tooth and put you right into the Halloween spirit. In the film, Liza (Gazay), riddled with writer’s block, spends Halloween with bottles of pills and wine (her own brand of Halloween candy, perhaps) trying to meet her deadline before her editor kills her. Taking inspiration from the trick-or-treaters ringing her doorbell, she can’t help but be distracted by the man in a clown suit standing in her yard … and the sounds coming from her basement.
RUE MORGUE caught up with Douglas and Molly to discuss the film, the holiday and why anthology horror and Halloween work so well together.
Where did inspiration for HALLOWEEN CANDY begin?
Douglas A. Plomatillo: Every year, I would watch the anthology films that are streaming, like 10/31, Tales of Halloween or Trick ‘r Treat, and I have a history of short form. I’ve made over 80 short films for my YouTube channel. I said, “Well, that’s a great way of getting into it.” I wanted to tie my love of Halloween with my love of anthologies.
What is it about the Halloween holiday that lends itself so well to anthology horror?
DP: With Halloween, there’s so many different tropes and figures. You have witches and vampires, and it’s hard to put all those into one movie. With an anthology, you can do a segment on slashers, then one on witches and another on vampires, and they don’t have to live in each other’s worlds. You can have something based in reality with a serial killer. And you can do something that’s maybe based in reality with a ghost.
One thing that’s great about writing Halloween stories is sometimes the only answer you need for it to make sense is that it’s Halloween. Anything can happen, so people have more of an open mind while they’re watching a Halloween film. It’s fun to write stories based upon the best day of the year!
As Tim Curry tells us in that song from The Worst Witch, anything can happen on Halloween! Molly, what was your reaction when you first read this script?
Molly Gazay: It was awesome. I actually only got the piece that I was in; I didn’t see any of the anthology pieces. I just knew my piece, which is about 30 pages, so it’s about half of the movie. When Doug sent me the sides, I was like, “This woman is nuts!” And she is so calm about everything until the last part where we start to see she’s actually in a lot of pain and she’s unraveling. And then I think it’s fun because you look back at what she was doing and you’re like, “Oh, that makes sense why she would be like that.” I really loved it, and I felt sympathetic to Liza. She’s clearly going through some hard stuff and popping pills and drinking wine and she’s just not in her right head!
Liza undergoes serious emotional ups and downs. As an actor, how do you prepare to get to that point?
MG: I do a lot of character analysis. I want to know who the people are, what the relationships are to those people. As actors, we’re told not to play the ending. You’re trying to figure out if the audience is supposed to think that this is a person who’s maybe going to get killed in this film, because she’s being dumb. She’s that girl, the one that always gets murdered or whatever, but ends up flipping things on its head as the story goes. You don’t want to play that ending piece.
It’s about going through and seeing where you can find moments of genuine empathy, and also not just playing that you’re the victim and you’re not playing that you’re the villain. I think with Liza, you can go either way. You can either make her very much like a victim or you can make her a villain, and the way Doug wrote it, she really has to live in the middle. It was fun getting to play with all of the thoughts, colors and relationships you don’t see on screen that are affecting her.
Doug, you mentioned how much you love this holiday. How do you capture the spirit of Halloween on film and make it so present throughout?
DP: I always find that with Halloween, it’s two-fold. It’s a scary holiday, but it’s a fun holiday. I found it important to keep that balance in the movie. I never wanted to get too serious, but I never wanted to get too funny, either. I didn’t want to go too far in either direction or else it would lose what the movie is. I tried to make the movie an embodiment of the holiday because it’s scares mixed with laughter. And I think Molly did an amazing job of never going too far in one direction and by keeping it real with her character and with what she was doing.
This isn’t the first appearance of a character named Tiny in your work. Where did he come from? Where do you hope to take him?
DP: I first created Tiny back in 2009 and of all the movies I’ve made over the years, the one character that people keep going back to and resonating with is Tiny. I had five different short films with Tiny and he was everyone’s favorite. Everyone was like, “We love Tiny!” So, when it came time to make a feature, it was only natural to use him. That’s a no brainer; it’s time to introduce Tiny to a bigger audience.
Do you each have a favorite story in the film?
MG: I love the Ouija board one with the girls, that one’s always my favorite. That and the one with (the predator after the kid). It really hit me emotionally.
DP: I had the most fun I’ve ever had filming “Halloween House.” That was the one that took place in the haunt. It was a blast. We had full access to this haunted house here in Connecticut. But I think the best story was probably “Killer Date.” I think we were able to preserve that twist pretty well because I don’t think anyone was looking for a twist. It kind of catches people off guard. And so far, some of the feedback we’ve gotten, that’s a lot of people’s favorite short.
When writing a twist, what is your approach to keeping it hidden or unexpected?
DP: The way to preserve, or the way to make a twist, is you try to make a story that’s engaging and where people aren’t looking for something that’s not in front of them. They’re not looking for a twist. I also didn’t want every single one of these to have a twist. I think out of the six stories, two of them had a twist. That way it was more unexpected then if I had twists in every story. If you surprise someone every time, they’re not going to be surprised at all.
That goes back and ties to what Molly said about not playing to the ending. Let’s talk about working with special effects and makeup throughout the production.
DP: Being a low budget film, out of necessity, we did a lot of things practically. The night we had Molly lying in a puddle of blood, we did that at like three in the morning. It was definitely like old school practical effects, which I think are part of the charm of the ‘80s movies. I tried to infuse that into this movie. I feel like that’s a lost art – practical effects. I remember renting movies in the ‘80s, and it was like a magic show. I’d watch Scanners going frame by frame to see how the head exploded. I wanted to do that in this film and not have to rely on digital unless it’s a necessity. We didn’t have the budget to do a lot of special effects in post. Another thing, with any blood and gore, is that it’s very time consuming. We shot the entire wraparound story in three days. You’re involving the timing of the effects working out properly, filming from all different angles and then you have the cleanup.
Is there a moment in the film you’re most proud of?
DP: I love when we discover that Molly is not necessarily the victim in this story. I mentioned I watched a lot of anthology films, and a lot of times the weakest part of the movie is the wraparound. Sometimes I’m just trying to get through the wraparound story to get to the next short film segment. I wanted our film to have the wraparound story be just as compelling, if not more so, than the stories that are in it. And we have a great twist that happens throughout that I think people will be really surprised about and it shows another depth to the characters when the true story is unveiled.
Utilizing Liza as a writer lends itself perfectly to the other stories. Sometimes anthologies can feel clunky, but your film doesn’t at all. It moves so perfectly because she’s inspired by what’s happening around her to write these stories. Molly, do you have a moment that you’re most proud of?
MG: I’m just so happy I got to do it! I have my favorite moments, which are really just working with the kids. I know it’s polarizing for a lot of people, but I love working with kids. And the kids in this were so fun to talk and play with, so I absolutely loved that. And then, my proudest moment, I guess it’s the switch. It goes from feeling like this poor woman who’s been divorced, and she doesn’t get to be with her daughter, then shifting as she goes a little closer and closer to the razor’s edge, then she has this breakdown.
DP: When I wrote the character of Liza, I didn’t want, all of a sudden when the turn happens, for her to be fully evil. We see why she made this decision that she did, because everyone’s made a decision in their life out of anger that they almost immediately regret. Liza took it a step further. But the entire time we know that she’s conflicted. She knows what she shouldn’t be doing at the same time she’s doing it. She’s gotten in so far that she doesn’t know how to get out. She’s a very complex character, and Molly just went above my expectations in making this character real.
Can we expect more HALLOWEEN CANDY in the future?
DP: As a matter of fact, I have the script written for part two. I’m revising it. You know, writing is rewriting. I have the first draft done and I’m going to spend the next month or so fine tuning it. It’s way easier to rewrite once it’s already there, so I got the hard part done. Now comes the fun part – going in and fleshing it out!
