SR: I get very disturbed watching those films. They have a very deep effect on me.

JL: What about Mike Myers in Halloween[John Carpenter, 1978], or Freddie Krueger [in A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven, 1984], these unstoppable killing machines who are clearly not human?

SR: Mike Myers was sort of a combination of the two. He was a great movie monster—with the artificiality of that blank Captain Kirk mask that he had—but there was also something very real about him. He could be any one of us tipped over the edge, putting on a mask, and doing terrible things. Mike Myers was both a movie monster and real person for me.

JL: I see Mike Myers as a supernatural figure, because he’s unkillable. Even when he’s shot point-blank, he gets up and walks away.

SR: You’re right. That is how Carpenter presents him: as a ghost. In the beginning of the movie he’s just this unbalanced guy…

JL: He’s escaped from a lunatic asylum.

SR: And by the end he has supernatural powers. He’s everywhere.

JL: What are some of your favorite monster movies?

SR: I really like King Kong[Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933]; I think that’s a great monster movie. I love the fact that the monster has a soul, because it really makes it rich and emotional—very deep. I’m a big fan of your movie, An American Werewolf in London[1981]. It’s funny, it’s scary, and it has a great love story. I like it when movies have a few different elements and they all work. It’s hard to orchestrate that, but I like it when movies are rich and they have a lot of dimensions to them.

JL: In King Kongand American Werewolfboth the leads are victims. They’re sympathetic, even though they’re the monsters.

SR: They are, and both films have tragic endings. The monster had a soul and it dies. It scared you, but you felt for him.

JL: What about Frankenstein’s Monster?

SR: It’s the same exact thing. I love Karloff’s Frankenstein—James Whale’s Frankenstein[1931]— and I loved The Bride of Frankenstein[James Whale, 1935] even more.

JL: Yeah, Doctor Pretorius is my favorite mad scientist of all mad scientists. What about The Wolf Man[George Waggner, 1941]?

SR: I liked The Wolf Manvery much, and Lon Chaney, Jr. gave a great performance.

JL: Larry Talbot was another victim. What about Ray Harryhausen’s creatures?

SR: Those are some of my favorite monsters of all time! I was very influenced by Jason and the Argonauts[Don Chaffey, 1963]. Every Harryhausen set piece in that film was absolutely brilliant. I love the skeletons that attack Jason. To this day, my mind boggles that Harryhausen could control and plot the movements of seven skeletons.

JL: And without video playback.

SR: Yes! How did he keep track, three seconds into a shot, on frame number 85, where skeleton number six was swinging his blade, and how fast he should be moving?

JL: It took him months to animate those three minutes. And you paid homage to that sequence in Army of Darkness. What’s your favorite Harryhausen monster?

SR: Wow. I think Talos, (the bronze giant in Jason and the Argonauts). He might be the most frightening thing I’ve ever seen in the movies. I love (composer) Bernard Herrmann’s music and those horrible groans of metal when the monster turns his head.

JL: The sound effects are incredible.

SR: And the way that Harryhausen limited Talos’ ability to move. When he comes to life so slowly, it’s awful!

JL: It’s interesting that Talos has no expression. He’s a bronze statue. He never changes, but the emotion conveyed when Jason and his men pull that hatch out of his heel and his lifeblood pours out…

SR: Yeah, you feel almost sorry for the guy. Almost. One of my favorite monsters, in the vein of Talos, is Gort [the robot in The Day the Earth Stood Still, Robert Wise, 1951]. Another faceless creature.

JL: Did you see that movie on television, or in the theater?

SR: I saw it at Camp Tamakwa, in Algonquin Park, Canada. They would show old 16mm prints, and they got that for a Saturday night.

JL: How old were you?

SR: I was probably 15 years old. It was great because you’d see the reel changes. The projector would run out and you’d have to wait for the second reel to be put up. It really gave you an appreciation of this being a film. I don’t mind reel breaks because they give you time to think about what you just saw. It’s like: “Oh, that was just an illusion but it was so powerful! I wonder what they’re going to do next?”

JL: In your picture Evil Dead, isn’t there a witch, possessed by demons?

SR: That’s right. Evil spirits get inside the kids and possess them.

JL: Do you believe in God or the Devil?

SR: I don’t believe in the Devil, but I do believe in a form of God.

JL: Some kind of higher intelligence?

SR: Some cosmic intelligence, yeah.

JL: You do this great thing in Evil Dead II—which is one of my favorite movies—where you make the action completely insane, just ridiculous, and it totally works! Like that sequence with Ash and his hand; it’s a cartoon! It’s totally insane, but it also makes you believe that Bruce’s hand (Bruce Campbell, who plays Ash) has a complete will of its own.

SR: Thanks!

JL: You also did something in Drag Me to Hell[2009] that made me laugh so hard because it was so damn silly and out of left field.

SR: What?

JL: The anvil gag in the garage.

SR: Oh, that Roadrunner bit, yeah.

JL: It was like, “Who keeps an anvil suspended on ropes in their garage?” I thought, “Sam knows that’s nuts. He did it deliberately.”

SR: I did it for you!

JL: That was so funny. It really made me laugh.

SR: Thanks, man. That’s very kind of you. Making you laugh is a big, big deal to me. (Laughs.)

JL: There was also one jump scare really got me in that film.

SR: When the witch (played by Lorna Raver) is in the back seat of the car?

JL: No, when the scary old lady appeared on Alison Lohman’s cell phone. That really worked! I’m a good audience because I’m a sucker, but also, that gag was so very unexpected but completely plausible.

SR: I think one of the best scares I’ve ever seen was in American Werewolf. It was the dream within a dream; it was so powerful. I just shrieked and jumped out of my seat!

JL: I was inspired by Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie[1972]. That movie goes along for quite some time with this one character, and then he wakes up! So everything we just watched was a dream, but then someone else wakes up! And so on. Buñuel keeps surprising and confusing you. You think: “Wait a minute! His dream was in her dream. But who’s dream are we in now? And is this reality or still a dream?” The dream within a dream within a dream is such a great concept. I just borrowed that and created a jump scare out of it.

SR: I remember the collective shriek in the theater when I saw American Werewolf, and I remember great roars of laughter, back and forth, back and forth.

JL: Well you do exactly that, Sam. You’ve had great success with that, too! Okay, now I have another question: Why are zombies so popular right now?

SR: I love George A. Romero! Night of the Living Dead[1968] was a big influence on me. At the time, that was the scariest movie that I had ever seen and it freaked me out. Romero shows us how to take the walking dead and one little house, and make a whole movie for no money. He’s the one that gave me the formula for the Evil Deadmovie.

JL: Night of the Living Deadhad almost a documentary quality. Most fantasy films are set in a fantasy place. The Wolf Manwas made in 1941, at the height of World War II. It takes place in England during the war and there are horses and carriages and no mention of the Nazis or German bombings! It was filmed on the back lot of Universal—it’s like, where the fuck is this place?