Halloween is a magical holiday that combines the childish joy of free candy and dressing up in fun costumes with the trappings of terror and macabre motifs. It takes the idea of being haunted, hunted, or otherwise being scared, and makes it fun for all ages. With that in mind, Shudder's The Mortuary Collection is destined to be a seasonal classic for all time, like an R-rated alternative to Hocus Pocus, peddling in gore and terror while still feeling accessible to budding genre fans of all ages.
Directed by Ryan Spindell, The Mortuary Collection is an anthology film centered around Montgomery Dark, a mysterious mortician looking for an assistant (Caitlin Fisher) who pries him for stories about the various dead bodies he's worked on over the years. Dark is played by Clancy Brown, who imbues the role with a combination of a showman's gravitas and lumbering foreboding, and the framing device involving him and his would-be apprentice is just as engaging and exciting as any of the short stories that make up the main meat of the film.
While promoting the release of The Mortuary Collection, writer/director Ryan Spindell and star Clancy Brown spoke to Screen Rant about the making of their film, a seven-year process that saw much adversity on its long road to completion. They discuss the legacy of horror anthology films and the challenge of making Brown's mortician as instantly iconic as genre greats like The Cryptkeeper or any of the late night horror hosts who presented films during the heyday of cable television. They also discuss the devilish joy that comes with creating a film that is firmly R-rated, but nonetheless feels welcoming to the adventurous children who can handle a little bit of blood and gore.
The Mortuary Collection releases October 15 on Shudder.
Your movie is fantastic, I just have to open with that.
Clancy Brown: Isn't it good? He's very good, that Ryan Spindell!
He knows what he's doing!
Ryan Spindell: Oh, go on!
To start, tell me about your relationship with horror, when did you decide, "I want to make scary movies?"
Ryan Spindell: First off, thank you, it's very kind of you that you liked the film. That makes both Clancy and I very happy.
Clancy Brown: Yes it does.
Ryan Spindell: My relationship with horror... It's funny, I used to think it was a unique experience, but I've found that it's actually not so unique. I was a big wimp as a kid. I avoided horror movies like the plague. I wouldn't watch them at all. I was scared, and my mom had convinced me that horror movies would ruin my life and I would denigrate to a life of horrible nightmares that would plague my every moment. So I would avoid them at all costs. My one "in" to the genre was the original Twilight Zone series. My dad had all of them on VHS and it was one of his favorite shows as a kid, and it was one of the few things we would bond over, so I would watch that, and it felt safe and knowable. That was my "in." Then, when I was in high school, right at the beginning of high school, I found a bootleg copy of Evil Dead 2. I reluctantly was sort of forced into watching it with some friends, because I couldn't admit I was a wimp. So I sat down and I watched it, and just... The amount of sheer creativity that was crammed into every frame of that movie was like nothing I had ever seen before. I think, in my mind, I had this idea where it had to be one thing, like people being butchered in the woods by a man in a pig mask. And then I saw what Sam Raimi was doing, and I saw how much fun he was having while doing it. For the first time, I was not only thinking about the people behind the camera, making these things and bringing them to life, but I also thought, this seems like something I should be doing.
Oh yeah, one of the greats, for sure.
Ryan Spindell: And then I watched Peter Jackson's Dead Alive, just a couple of days after seeing Evil Dead 2. So that was the one-two punch I needed to show that horror could be different from what I thought it was. And different to what a lot of people who don't like horror are aware of. I love horror, I love the genre, I love the freedom it gives you to play as an artist. I just love scary stories and the catharsis they provide. And my trajectory has been living in the space more akin to a Steven Spielberg or a Tim Burton than a Tobe Hooper, necessarily. Although, if you can get Hooper and Spielberg together for something like Poltergeist, that's the best of both worlds!
That kinda leads us to this movie, The Mortuary Collection. It has a unique tone that I feel you don't get that much anymore. It's genuinely scary and has some truly shocking and gross and gory moments, but I still wanna show it to my nieces and nephews.
Ryan Spindell: (Laughs) That's great! That's a huge compliment. That was sort of the goal. Again, Twilight Zone was sort of my "in." Not that Twilight Zone wasn't legit, but there was a safeness about it, being a period show and the restrictions from CBS. But another formative movie for me, not to go back on what I just said, but a movie I would watch as a kid that was in the horror space was the original Creepshow. I think the reason I would allow that one in was that it started with this Saturday Morning-style animation, and it's got a feeling of whimsy and a fun factor that would always trick me as a kid. I would start watching it with my siblings, like we were watching a cartoon and thinking, "Oh, this must be for kids! It's animated!" And then, before we knew it, we were knee-deep in the horror.
That's how they get you!
Ryan Spindell: I think there was something really special about that movie, in particular, being a gateway horror for me, that allowed me to start looking at some of these things, and thinking about them. When I sat down to write The Mortuary Collection, the thing that was in my head, as well, was that I wanted to embrace that fun and that whimsy, and create something that's definitely for fans of horror, I wanted to pay those bills, but I also wanted to make something that could potentially bring new fans into the fold.
So you have this idea for an anthology film with all these short stories anchored around this one guy. How does that one guy end up being Clancy?
Clancy Brown: Lot of makeup. (Laughs) Some creepy old wardrobe, and good lighting.
Ryan Spindell: This has been an ongoing theme with this movie. Every component of the movie started with, "What do we love the most from the genre?" What are the classics? What do you think about from the original anthology films? You think of Cryptkeeper-type character, gothic horror and the house on the hill. We started with the obvious, and as we developed it, we had the fundamentals that would get people in the seats, and then it was about, "How do we do something different?" What's a unique spin we can put on it? Something I kept thinking about with, specifically, the Cryptkeeper from Tales from the Crypt, was, what is he doing when we're not hearing a story? What happens when the audience walks out of the door and he's waiting in his subterranean chamber until someone else shows up? It brought up some interesting things with Clancy's character. Like, "What does Montgomery Dark do, when he's not doing funerals?" Is he lonely? Is he happy? Is he trapped? What else is going on there? I think that's where the conversation started. As far as getting Clancy on board, it was just, "Who are my favorite actors?" I'm really drawn to these shape-shifter guys who you see in different movies playing all types of different characters. I love the versatility. And Clancy is one of the best! That was an easy decision to go to. The surprise was when he said "yes."
Clancy Brown: (Laughs) You weren't expecting me to say "yes," is that right?
Ryan Spindell: Clancy, I don't know if I ever told you this, either, but our first meeting, they were like, "Clancy's read the script, he likes it, he likes the short, and he wants to meet." I was like, "Oh, is he interested in doing it?" And they were like, "He doesn't know. He's gonna meet you first and see." And I was like, oh, I've never gotten into a meeting with one of my heroes and had to prove myself as a person! So that was such a nerve-wracking experience.
Clancy Brown: Really?
Ryan Spindell: It was! Yeah! But, you know... I felt like it was within three sentences that we clicked, so it wasn't difficult after that.
Clancy Brown: Really? I was the one who was nervous! I thought I had to prove myself to you.
Ryan Spindell: Seriously? Get out of here! Such a liar.
Have you seen Pet Sematary 2? That's an underrated classic. I got to talk to the director of that, Mary Lambert, and she talked about how much fun it was to work with you on that.
Clancy Brown: You talked to Mary? She's a doll. And she was pregnant during that whole thing.
And speaking of tone, it's a thing where she was completely let off the chain, so to speak, and had a lot more creative freedom, which is why it's so unhinged and awesome and different from, well, anything!
Clancy Brown: The first movie is definitely a tone piece. It's sort of classic horror. I think it's the first Stephen King that actually did the books justice, know what I mean? There was a period of time where where people could not figure out how to do his books right. There's so much interior monologue. And then she did that, and it really worked. And it's a creepy story. I think Stephen said it was the story that bothered him the most. And then she got let off the chain (for part two). My question to her when I met her was, like, "Why are you doing this? You're such a good director, why are you doing this crazy version of this?" Because it was silly from the beginning. And she said, "This is the only thing I'm getting offered." Which was a total bummer, because she's an auteur.
Totally. Not unlike our guy Ryan, here!
Clancy Brown: Meeting Ryan was such a treat. The one thing he said when... I've never told you this, Ryan, but when you told me the story of how the script was rejected over and over again, and how you were just, "F*** that, I know it's a good movie," that's when I was convinced. I was just, like, yeah, let's go, let's make this into something people will never forget. You just decided to thumb your nose at the powers-that-be who always get in our f****** way.
Ryan Spindell: It's funny you say that, too. I remember, as I was telling you the story about the script being rejected, the inner monologue in my head was saying, "Don't f****** tell him that nobody wants to make this script, that's a bad idea!"
Clancy Brown: But that was exactly the moment that I decided I wanted to do it.
Ryan Spindell: That's why you work with artists. This is what you get!
In that case, how do you deal with, you know, guys in suits with slicked-back hair who are like, "I don't want an exploding penis on camera," how do you convince them to let you do what you've already decided you're gonna do?
Clancy Brown: Yeah, how do you?
Ryan Spindell: The thing is, anthology movies don't get made on a real level because nobody knows how to market them and sell them. Nobody's figured out the secret to making them a hit. In all of my travels, I met with a lot of people who read the script and loved it, but they said their boss would never let them do it, or they wouldn't even read the script to begin with, because an anthology is just a hard pass. What ended up happening was, I went to meetings all over town because we made a short proof-of-concept and people really loved that short. Everybody was sort of, like, saying "no way" to the feature. But I went to one company, and there was an executive there, named Allison Friedman, and she was, like, "My boss would never make this movie... But I love it, so can I try to raise money on the side?" I was like, "Sure, go with God, that sounds amazing!" Then I didn't hear from her in six months. I assumed nothing was going to happen, which is what happens with 99% of these meetings, but then I was talking with my producing partner, Justin Ross, and we were talking about how we were gonna put the short online and move on, and then Allison called us out of the blue and said, "I have a little bit of money. Do you want to make this independently?" Of course, we said yes, and we went right into making it on our accord, which meant I could have as many exploding dicks as I wanted! I got to make the final call. I wrote it, I directed it, and I produced it. Other than a few things along the way, obviously you have to have some compromises, we got to make the movie we wanted to make. We definitely didn't have the money we needed to make this movie proper, and because of that, we made it piece-by-piece over the course of two years. Because of that, we were able to focus on each element and make it the best we could, until we had a feature-length movie on our hands.
Tell me about the short, The Babysitter Murders, which plays into the final film. Was your script already done at that point, when you made the short?
Ryan Spindell: Yes. I wrote the feature first. Then, when I found out that nobody was going to make it, I thought to myself, "Well, I know how to make shorts, so if I'm going to make another short, I'd might as well make a short that's a piece of this feature, so I could potentially use it as a proof-of-concept. Or, at the very least, it will just be a really cool short. So I looked at the script and I picked the short that was the most contained, with the least amount of actors, the most shootable. We did a little Kickstarter campaign and raised money to make that movie of peanuts, basically. The movie we made several years ago is the movie that's in the feature. We literally just dropped it in. I guess it's a pretty unique thing. I'm not sure, but I guess it's a unique way to go about it!
Clancy, when you're transformed into this character, the mortician, you have a deadly serious Herman Munster vibe. I'm not sure if that's the best way to describe it...
Clancy Brown: Like in Pet Sematary! But that kind of iconic character... You've got to be deadly serious. At the same time, and this is all in Ryan's script, too, but the camp of it is obvious, as well. But that's kind of the style that he was writing in, and what he was demanding. The whole look... It was an homage, and it was also campy, but also original. Audiences have a pretty sophisticated vocabulary when it comes to anthology and horror and these kinds of characters. It was Angus Scrimm, and the Crypt Keeper, and Vincent Price, all of these characters, these kinds of weird things that have been going on forever. "The omniscient narrator," but he's also a character. Ryan said it earlier, "What do these people do when they're not putting on the show for you?" They have work to do! Paperwork, accounting, and records to keep, (Laughs) there's care to take, bodies to embalm. There's stuff to do!
We've all gotta work for a living!
Clancy Brown: There's a great weight to everything. He was a terrific character. He's immediately original, and absolutely derivative. He's both things, and it's really fun to play. It's not hard to play, because you know the derivative, and it's so fun to play because Ryan made him so original and made the whole thing so original. I was lucky because I had Caitlin (Fisher) there, and Caitlin had been with the show from the beginning. She was in the original Babysitter Murders, so it was just, "put your trust in Ryan and Caitlin, and everything will be okay!" Everybody loved the originality of it, and everybody kicked ass. Every was kicking out their A-game, even though they were making it with nothing!
That's so interesting that you say that, because I watched the movie completely blind, I knew nothing about it going in, and I was like, "Woah, Shudder is really spending big on their originals now!" But then I learned it was an independent acquisition and you didn't have a lot to spend. But just watching the movie, it looks like it's got ten times the budget you actually had.
Ryan Spindell: That's a really nice compliment!
So, the movie premiered at Fantastic Fest 2019. Did you have the Shudder deal locked in when the pandemic kinda shut down the 2020 festival season? Did it already have its current trajectory, or did things get shaken up by Coronavirus?
Ryan Spindell: We sold to Shudder not long after Fantastic Fest. The deal was, they were like, look, we want to do something really cool for Halloween. We really want this to be one of our signature Halloween movies. Are you cool with basically waiting a year to put this movie out? And I was like, "Yeah, because we have all these amazing festivals on the horizon!" As a filmmaker, when you're sort of living in a hole for several years, making something, you dream about the day when you're gonna go to Switzerland and watch the movie with genre fans and celebrate and have drinks and remember why it is you make movies. So we had a festival schedule of 23 or 24 international festivals. I think I went to one of the first ones in Scotland, and while I was there, the pandemic hit. Within a matter of weeks, all of the festivals were cancelled, for obvious reasons. It's been tough, from that angle. It's a blessing to have gotten a screening in general. I have other friends whose other friends didn't even have screenings. It's exciting to be on Shudder, and I think me and my crew and my family are alive and well, and that's the most important thing.
The inverse of that would be... As an actor and a director, you have to get used to the idea of making something and then sitting on it for a year or more, depending on the project. Is this a real victory lap that you get to take right now? Or are you over it, are you on to the next thing already?
Ryan Spindell: For me, I don't think I'll ever be over it. In total, this has been about seven years in the making. It's my first film, and I put everything into it. I don't think I'll ever be onto the next thing completely. I joke that I'll be making this movie for the rest of my life, that's how it feels. But I think there is also a feeling of, "Let's get it out already! It's made, it's done! I want to make more things!" That delay has been the toughest part for me. I bet Clancy, the most famous voice actor in the world, he's probably worked on a ton of things since then.
Clancy Brown: Well, I hate to be mercenary about it, but these things, you give your best effort when you're needed, but then it's not up to you after that. Over the years, you learn to let things go and let them land where they land. Sometimes it's fine, and sometimes it's not. When you do something like this, and it's as good as it is, you get a little anxious about where it is gonna land. There's a whole lot of other concerns. It's not like a big studio movie, where it's about figuring out when to release it so it won't be opposite something that will destroy it. You've gotta release it at all! You've gotta pay back your investors, and there's another clock working when it's independent like this and it has to do with real things like paying your rent, you know? Those are things that are specific to every lower-budget movie. They're, for real, the priority. When something is as good as this, and I think this is one of the best things I've ever made, you want it to get the attention you feel it deserves. But you also have no control over that. At least I don't, and I have to move on. I care very much about how it's received, because I think it's really good. I think Ryan is along the lines of a Spielberg or a J.J. Abrams or one of those guys. Ryan, you can't be making this movie for the rest of your life. You have too many stories.
Ryan Spindell: (Laughs)
Clancy Brown: For example, when I first read this thing, the first story in the anthology was not the bathroom adventure one with Christine Kilmer. That wasn't part of it. It was a weird Glengarry Glen Ross kind of spoof where the salesman ends up getting eaten by a shark in a phone booth. It was an insane, crazy thing that couldn't be done. So now I want Ryan to be able to completely indulge is wacky imagination so that he can actually have Shark Week in a phone booth. I think that would be very cool. Ryan, you've gotta move on. We've gotta release this and you've gotta say, "This is what I'm doing next: I'm killing a guy in a phone booth."
With a shark!
Ryan Spindell: That was a really fun script. You know, if you look closely at the newspapers in the beginning of The Mortuary Collection, you'll see some headlines involving that story.
Clancy Brown: There's all sorts of little touches like that. That's why I love Ryan so much, he's so smart that way!
Ryan Spindell: I don't deserve it, but I'll take it!
Clancy Brown: No! It's fun! It's so fun! You understand the medium! You understand what you could possibly do with it, and you're not afraid of being told "no," which I love. You're like, "f*** it!"
It's right there in the beginning. This story exists in the realm of storytelling. And there's always more stories to tell. Is the world of The Mortuary Collection something you'd like to return to, or am I getting ahead of myself?
Ryan Spindell: Of course, it absolutely is! I think the initial... Way in the early days, the intention was that I wanted to make a film that would establish a new framing device for an ongoing series. I have probably 30 or 40 of these stories mostly written on my laptop right now. Unfortunately, if we don't get to turn it into a series, I don't really know where those live. That's the sad part about writing shorts and being in love with that format: there's not really a home for them, currently. But ideally, someday, I'll do it.
Well, when you do it, I'll be here to chat you up about it!
Ryan Spindell: We're talking about Montgomery's origin story. Where did he come from? How did he end up at the mortuary? It will jump through time. We'll have a WWI segment, we want to really get into it.
One of my favorite nieces is 13, and I'm trying to nurture and direct her budding obsession with horror, and I'm 100% going to show her this.
Clancy Brown: What do you think the age cut-off is for this?
Ryan Spindell: You konw, it's funny, because when we were working on it, we were thinking, "This is a good PG-13." Then, when I watched it with an audience, I was like, "Nah, it's an R." Because of a few key scenes, it pushes the R territory, which is unfortunate, because it's so close to being more open. But then again, I guess we're not going to be in theaters, so I guess it doesn't really matter.
Yeah, I always say, "Kids can handle it." They're not that delicate!
Ryan Spindell: One of my dreams would be to make a legit scary movie for kids of that tween age range, and actually be allowed to lead into the scares, make something that significantly works in the way that movies used to in the old days before everything became so soft.
Clancy Brown: I think you're there, I think you're in the wheelhouse.
I agree!
Clancy Brown: I was watching Lovecraft Country. I go back and forth with it. They have all these sex scenes that they completely ruin, they have these people with such gorgeous bodies, and then they completely ruin it by, you know, ripping them to pieces with foxtails! It's just, like, "Oh man, why do they do this?" To me, it's almost gratuitous. We've got to earn this R. I don't want you to go that far with it. You know, let's just keep the suggestion there and let the imagination wander!
Ryan Spindell: Same. I'm prudish about sex in my horror. I kind of don't like it. It's not old-fashioned enough for me. The sex scene in the "unprotected" segment was, like, the only reason I did it was because I had the visual idea of seeing all the different positions in a quick time-lapse. But for the first moment when they start having traditional sex, I was like, "Let's get through this, let's get through this!" Like a school marm.
Clancy Brown: That was a hilarious sex scene.
And when kids see the sex scene in this, even if they don't know what's going on, they get that adult stuff is happening, there's a particular exchange, and they move on!
Clancy Brown: And if they don't get the idea, then their parents should explain it to them.
We're all a bunch of prudes who love exploding dicks. Ryan, I have no doubt there are incredible things in your very near future, once the world, ya know, clears up. And Clancy, you're one of the greats. I was a Crash Bandicoot kid, so you kinda narrated my childhood in that way.
Clancy Brown: There you go! The guy who took over that is a good friend of that.
Lex Lang?
Clancy Brown: Yeah, I like Lex, he's a good man. He always gets pissed off, he says, "I've done more Doctor Cortex than you have, but you're the definitive one?!"
Heh, I like both of you in those roles! I don't want to distract from this, but if I may, was there ever a thought to having you return for Crash 4, or have you officially passed the torch to Lex?
Clancy Brown: I think Lex has taken it over. When I stopped doing it, it was because nobody wanted to pay actors anything to do these things. I was like, "F*** it, I don't do this just for fun; I do it to get paid." There's still no good contracts for video games. In the beginning, it was interesting, it was kind of a fun thing to do. But now it's a multi-billion dollar industry and they're just being cheap, so f*** 'em.
Ryan Spindell: It's so crazy. I can't get over that. Writing for video games is insane.
It's an industry that really needs to catch up, I think.
Clancy Brown: I don't know why they don't want to pay people and share the profits with them and all that stuff. They're just greedy.
The Mortuary Collection releases October 15 on Shudder.
