NEW HORROR FILMS: An Interview with Courtney Solomon

Since the beginning of cinema, films have entertained and, sometimes educated us. It has also scared the beejeebees out of us. From Der Golem and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari to The Exorcist to the latest installment of Saw, people have gone into darkened auditoriums with the specific purpose to get scared.

Courtney Solomon is a devotee of the horror genre. He formed After Dark Films to make and get horror films shown. One way he is doing that is with his annual celebration of the thrills, suspense, gore and creeps with Horror Fest. Now in its third iteration, Horror Fest is hitting movie theaters this January and DVDs shortly thereafter.

Recently, Hollywood Breakdown chatted with him on the phone.

HB: What makes a good horror film?
CS:  Usually it is a film that scares you, gets the senses going and gets the goosebumps going on the back of your neck. It can be a film that’s very tense like Hitchcock-type horror movie which is really more of a suspense thriller. Then there is another extreme which is gore. There are a lot of fans out there for that,  the gorier the better, look at the success of The Saw franchise.

HB: I’m glad you brought that up. There seems to be a bar out there being raised higher and higher when it comes to gore. Is there an upper limit to the amount of blood and guts on screen?
CS: It depends on how broad you are going with your audience. If you are going to a the gore extreme, it is reserved for specific segment of the horror audience. So I don’t think there is any limit for that segment. If you are creating new boundaries and going beyond old ones, that segment will embrace that openly, but it may be too much for the other segments that want to more scared by a horror movie than grossed out.

HB: There is a lot of new talent in the films you are showing in Horrror Fest III. It seems to me horror films have always been breeding grounds for new, young talent. Roger Corman, Jack Nicholson, even John Sayles wrote Piranha and others. Are you seeing that happening now?
CS: Absolutely. It is interesting. American Haunting which was After Dark’s first film and in that film I had Sissy Spacek and Donald Sutherland. Where did Sissy Spacek come from? Carrie. Then obviously she graduated to multiple Oscar nominations. So yeah, it is a great venue, the horror movie, for new talent to actually get a part in a film because they will take a chance and try somebody new. That’s true on the film making side as well. The budgets are low enough for film makers to get a chance to do their first film.

HB: Courtney, what film warped your mind as a young child?
CS: I watched The Exorcist when I was like four or five, and The Omen too. Those two probably warped my mind more than anything. I wanted to be Damian.

There is more of this interview at the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival site. Horror Fest III us hitting movie theatre around the country starting on January 9. Check you local listings or go to HorrorFest.com for more info. Take you main squeeze, share a popcorn, sit back then get good and scared.

Garen has been sitting in the dark for more years than he cares to admit. He has been a film exhibitor, booking consultant and reviewer. You have seen him on NE Cable or some other Boston station.  More likely you heard him pontificating about films on FrugalYankee.com, NPR, New Hampshire Public Radio, WTKK, WRKO or any number of other stations he's been on, but one thing is certain, he loves, and knows, film.