Interviews

Jennifer Thym is a Hong Kong filmmaker with a genre-bending web series she defines as ‘magical realism’. Lumina features a female lead in a strangely sci-fi modern world where mirrors lead to romance and corporate greed, and a supernatural force called The Mirrorati that are to be feared. Thym developed her web series with some immersive storylines, deep back stories, and a long-term plan that could include a feature film, graphic novelizations, and a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game.)

“In TV terms, I think it's closest to Lost,” says Thym about Lumina's genre, “a serial thriller interwoven with fantastical elements and real world conspiracies...”

Interview by Nic Brown

What can you say about someone whose list of interests include horror movies, anime, video games, guns and bows, serial killers, and kung fu movies? Well if you’re talking about Nikki Kruex, you can say that you’re just scratching the surface of this actress, model, musician, paranormal investigator and artistic Jill-of-all-trades...

Bobbie Weiner, AKA Bloody Mary, is an FX artist with her own line of specialty makeup for literally any kind of transformation. If you're wondering where you might have seen her work, try the Oscar-nominated romace-catastrophe flick Titanic; she was the special effects make-up artist who transformed hundreds of actors into blue-lipped, icicle covered corpses. She also was in charge of the makeup for the horror films Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings and Voodoo.

Bobbie's got a whole lineup of her own FX supplies and original makeup; scary stuff, of course, but also any kind of makeup anyone might need. And you can read the comic she created, Tales of Bloody Mary, in any comic book store. Bobbie shares her recent work with Pretty/Scary's staffer Andrew Shearer...

Jocelin Donahue is a thoughtful actress. Thoughtful films would be her genre: The former NYU Sociology-History undergrad has starred in period pieces like The Burrowers, a horror-western that was as much about settling the wilderness of the West as about what beasts lurk beneath that harsh terrain. She has been in abstracted short films like The Masquerade and Express 831. Sitting with me in a room at the Four Seasons, draped in the catalog-sharp attire that befits her past career as a model, Jocelin tells me she is drawn to acting because she is fascinated by the formation of identity.

We are here because of a film that radiates identity—Ti West’s The House of the Devil, which is storming the festival circuit from Sheffield, UK to Austin, Texas...

By Alan Kelly

Alexandra Sokoloff is a screen-writer well established in California writing novel adaptations (like the thriller Cold Kisses) for various Hollywood studios like Sony, Miramax and Disney. A graduate of UC Berkeley where she majored in theatre and minored in just about everything else. Sokoloff has had three extremely well-received novels published: The Harrowing, The Price and The Unseen and is collaborating on a vampire trilogy with Heather Graham and Deborah Leblanc, which is due out next year...

Elven-y, smart, and talented Brea Grant walked into geek’s lives everywhere as the sexy speedster Daphne on season 3 of the sci-fi TV series Heroes who violently died and broke everyone’s hearts. However, her own take on herself may be very different: "When I’m onscreen all I can think about are how big my nostrils are."

You can catch her in Halloween II right now as Mya, best friend to Scout Taylor-Compton's Lori Strode, and she’s been in the horror flicks Trance, Battle Planet, and Midnight Movie. She’s also (and this is awesome) a Pretty/Scary reader. Brea talks shop with us and lets us in on her genre film career...

Danielle Harris stars in the new Halloween sequel by Rob Zombie. It’s a crap movie, but Danielle Harris, who was brought back into the franchise last year by Zombie for his remake, actually starred in the original Halloween 4 and 5, in which she played Jamie Lloyd, the target of Michael Myer’s wrath. In Zombie’s Halloween II, she reprises her role as Annie Brackett, the ill-fated friend of Lori Strode who bravely takes on nudity in an un-Jamie Lloyd way.

But Danielle Harris is much more than funny anecdotes about how much Donald Pleasance scared her when she was a kid because he was always drunk on the set and wearing a gross fake scar; she’s a clever woman with filmmaking aspirations of her own. She tells Pretty/Scary about how the Halloween franchise is now a part of her life...

-Interview by Nic Brown-

Actress and model Melanie Robel is a self-described, modern day gypsy. Her affinity for travel has served her well, allowing her to take advantage of acting roles where ever the opportunity arises. What kind of roles? She’s played a post-apocalyptic assassin, a monster in a bikini, and an even worse kind of monster: a bitchy, wannabe model!

One thing Melanie doesn’t play at though is her career. She’s not afraid to try challenging new roles. That’s how this young actress has amassed an impressive list of credits in just a few short years! Melanie took a short break from her work to talk to B Movie Man Nic Brown about making movies, her secret vice, and why we might think she’s nerdy, but dedicated to the art of acting!

Juliet Landau is known for being the vile vampiress Drusilla on Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the spinoff Angel. But lately she’s been directing a horror-themed music video for Godhead called Hero, directing a documentary about Gary Oldman, and writing two issues of the Angel comic book for IDW that feature her character. Landau has appeared in all kinds of movies, from Tim Burton’s Ed Wood to her most recent appearance in a kid’s movie, but she’s a driving force behind the camera as well as has a very distinct creative vision. Juliet shares her latest projects with us...

Interview by Alan Kelly

Vaudeville, veiled hats, doppelgangers, clowns, macabre, destruction, deformities, ghosts, insane asylums, cut throat razors, creepy dolls, blood baths, Kathy Acker, Sartre, b/w crime photography, oddities, gas masks, medical curiosities, prosthetic limbs, existentialism, surrealism, Bataille, shiny sharp toys, tod browning, cannibalism, serial killers, philia; each word more or less sums up Rachel Kendall’s Sein und Werden (Being and Becoming). Rachel Kendall, the editor of Sein und Werden has agreed to sit down for a few words on the weirdest print/online magazine currently doing the rounds. A magazine that is going from strength to strength...