Interview with Closet Space Director Mel House - Page 3

Why do you do it? Are you a masochist?

Definitely to some degree, yeah. More importantly - I believe in the genre. The fact that the term "horror" has become ghetto-ized and almost an insulting tag to place on a movie drives me to attempt to prove otherwise. Horror is important to me. My wife and I had a horror-themed wedding. She came down the aisle to "Tubular Bells" and I took off the garter with a Freddy glove. I've loved the genre since I was a kid, and they are the main reason that I make movies now. Sure, Battleship Potemkin is cool, but A Nightmare on Elm Street made me want to pick up a camera.

What post-productions activities have been challenging?

Right now, the edit is going pretty smoothly, and things are looking good, so I haven't hit any brick walls yet. I can tell that the ADR will be a little hairy when we get to it...there were a lot of windy moments when we were shooting outside at the location, and then back here at HouseWalker Ranch we're in the middle of Houston, so you can hear sirens, horns, and Spanish church services on some of the tracks. Not kidding about the Spanish church services.

Which directors and horror movies inspire you?

That's a long list. Horror movie wise, A Nightmare on Elm Street is number one for me. Coming in closely after that are: From Beyond, Halloween, Romero's Dawn Of The Dead, 28 Days Later, The Shining, Poltergeist, Ringu, The Thing, In The Mouth Of Madness, Cronenberg's The Fly, Psycho, Creature From The Black Lagoon, Dead/Alive, and Session 9.

Non-horror films I love include the entire Alien series, Requiem for A Dream, Oldboy, Donnie Darko, The Untouchables, Infernal Affairs, Burton's two Batman movies and Batman Begins, Hard Boiled, The Killer, and any Hitchcock, David Cronenberg, Guillermo Del Toro, Takashi Miike, Bryan Singer, or Orson Welles movie. Speaking of Welles, Transformers: The Movie is an integral part of my psyche.

These are not movies that I consciously try to rip-off or "borrow" from, but I watch them so much that I'm sure an influence seeps through organically here and there. I never try to pay homage to anything or steal shots - sometimes it's cool (The Untouchables Odessa Steps riff comes to mind), but more often than not that's a sign to me that you were too unimaginative to think of your own way to handle the material. To paraphrase Jim Rome: Have a take. It may suck, but at least it's your take.

Article Author: ILoz Zoc

Founder of the League of Tana Tea Drinkers (LOTT D), expiring writer of Zombos Closet of Horror Blog, and valet to Zombos, the noted B-movie horror actor (to his few remaining and decaying fans).

Visit ILoz Zoc's author page — ILoz Zoc's Blog