Barbara Crampton Talks Sun Choke and More
With The Stanley Film Festival in full swing right now, showcasing a truckload of classic and contemporary horror films for all lovers of fright, we here at Dread Central would be remiss if we didn’t snag at least one horror movie staple to speak with during the 4-day bash at the historic Stanley Hotel in Colorado, which inspired The Shining.
Lucky for us, the beautiful and talented Barbara Crampton was able to spare a little sit-down time with us to discuss the latest psychological-thriller she’s starring in: Sun Choke. A scream queen whose career has spanned some 32 years, her roots run deep in the horror genre, and she was all too inviting to field a few questions for us.
Dread Central – Can you tell us a little about the film and your character, Irma?
Barbara Crampton – She is a caretaker in charge of this woman who we actually never know what her illness is, but it’s something very dark – possibly schizophrenia – that’s what I assessed after reading the script. She has episodes of psychosis, and I’m in charge of her daily routine – her father is gone away out of the country on work, and the mother has passed away, so I’ve pretty much been with her since she was a baby. We live in isolation together in this big house, and it seems like neither of us have very many friends or outside contacts, so it’s an interesting dynamic to start a movie with the two women – one who really needs help, and the other who is the helper that really doesn’t have a life of her own, and throughout the movie you get the feeling like the illness is exacerbated by the woman who’s taking care of her, and throw in there another character that Sarah Lane plays, and she becomes the object of affection from Sarah Hagan’s character, and you see three sides of a total woman – each one forms the other, and they couldn’t exist without each other.
DC – Over the course of your horror career, you’ve gone both the gore-soaked route as well as the psychological with your roles – do you have a preference?
BC – That’s a really interesting question – always for me it starts with good characters and a good story. I’m not a person who is a gorehound or someone who goes into a slasher film purely for the effects – I really feel like you have to have good characters to be able to justify all the characters’ actions, and I would say something probably more psychologically dynamic is more interesting to me, because as an actor you have to understand why a character is doing what they do, and be able to justify them, all the while being believable. So something that delves into the mind of characters is quite interesting to me, and that’s why when I read the script for Sun Choke, I was blown away because there’s so much psychology in this movie, as well as visual beauty – dark beauty, actually, and a lot of machinations of the mind, so that interests me more than your typical torture-porn. When I did From Beyond, I felt like that had a lot of psychological implications and finding out a character’s motivations.
DC – What was the tipping point for you that made you follow the path of horror in your acting?
BC- You know, it wasn’t really me… it probably was when I did You’re Next! I don’t think there was ever really a moment when I said, “Wow, I really want to be in horror movies – I want to make my career in this genre.” It sort of found me, and I feel like early on in my career, having done a few horror movies, it led me to working in that genre, but I don’t think I actually realized the impact until someone told me the other day it had been 16 years since I’d done Castle Freak, which may have been my last movie – I think I’d done some TV stuff in the interim. I’d kind of given up acting for a while and moved up to San Francisco and was raising my children, thinking I was done, and all of a sudden I got a call from my agent, and he informed me that I’d gotten an offer to be in this horror movie called You’re Next. He said, “There’s no need to talk to anyone right now, but you need to be in Missouri in 10 days.” That was really shocking to me because I hadn’t expected that, and after I read the script, which was very interesting, I decided to do it, and I thought, “This will be a fun little movie,” and when I came back to acting after that film, I realized what an impact some of my earlier movies had on people. I wasn’t really communicating with anyone in the industry, I hadn’t talked to my agent in 6 years, and I met Ti West and Amy Seimetz, and of course Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett – all those guys who’d either been working behind or in front of the camera, they really excited me – it was like a gift working with them. After that film, I really embraced the fact that I’d been working in horror, so there’s no reason I can’t continue.
DC – Did you think back when you acted in Re-Animator that it would have the insane cult following that it does today?
BC – No, not at all. It was interesting because at the time it had gotten very good reviews from people like Roger Ebert and it didn’t seem to go mainstream until years later when things started to go to video and people discovered it, then it hit the internet and people were talking about it. I think it cultivated its audience over time as well, and it’s talked about as one of the top horror movies of all time, so that’s very gratifying to have been in movie like that. I love going to conventions and film festivals and people telling me that they grew up on this movie – it’s something that I hold close to me very much.
DC – Lastly, what can we expect to see from you in the future?
BC – Well, there’s a movie that I did last summer called Road Games that still has yet to come out to a film festival yet – I’m pretty proud of that one as I get to speak a little French in that one, and I just produced a movie that Jackson Stewart directed called Beyond the Gates. It’s my first producing gig, so I’ll be working on that with the editing process and everything that goes into post-production, so I’m really looking forward to that as well.
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