When I spoke to her mom the next day, she said, “I don’t know exactly what it was, but obviously it was something related to what happened with the Ouija board. This energy or ghost or specter, whatever you want to call it, somehow attached itself to your energy and left with you. For whatever reason, it had a need to connect.” She said, “There’s so many different theories…” She continued trying to explain paranormal phenomena to a sixteen-year-old kid.
At the time I did not put a whole lot of stock in what she said…but I certainly didn’t forget what happened to me. It’s a story that I have related to people for years, because it was the first time that something like that happened to me. I wasn’t necessarily a believer, but it created in me a desire to believe in something more — something beyond the news, weather and sports of the everyday world. That’s what it took. My own true, surreal, paranormal experience.
8. The Incredible Machine was nominated for “Best Documentary Feature” at the 1975 Academy Awards.
9. The film earned its status among younger generations in the 1970s and 1980s, when it became a staple on network television during the Christmas season.
10. The “Church” of Scientology was established in 1954 in Los Angeles by science-fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard.
11. Erhard Seminars Training offered intense two-weekend seminars utilizing “the technology of transformation,” from 1971 to 1984.
12. In the state called theta, brain waves have a frequency rate between 5 and 8 cycles per second. This state is commonly associated with daydreaming and repetitive tasks such as long-distance running and freeway driving.
13. The Kirlian technique is a form of contact photography in which the subject of the photograph is placed in direct contact with a film on a metal plate that is charged with high voltage, high frequency electricity. Resulting images show electrical discharges emanating from the subject of the photograph.
Tom and Mitchel Young-Evans of the L.A. Mime Company.
Tom as Harold Lloyd.
Nancy as Mary Pickford.
Woody Allen’s Sleeper (United Artists, 1973).
The L.A. Mime Company with Dick Van Dyke.
L.A. Mime Company members Katee McClure, Tom McLoughlin, Tina Lenert, Albert Ash and Mitchel Young-Evans.
L.A. Mime Company as “Visitors from Outer Space.”
Tom and Frank Capra.
Famous Monsters of Filmland, July 1980.
Tom and Natalie Gregory on the set of Alice in Wonderland.
Nancy McLoughlin.
Tom as Captain S.T.A.R. in The Black Hole (Disney, 1979).
Entrance to the Catacombs of Paris. Was that the inspiration for One Dark Night?
Mike Hawes on the set of One Dark Night.
Early concept art for One Dark Night.
Raymar concept art by Tom Burman.
One Dark Night storyboard art.
One Dark Night storyboard art.
One Dark Night storyboard art.
One Dark Night storyboard art.
Part III: Myths & Monsters
The first director’s cut / Resurrecting Jason Voorhees / The dying man and his angel / Mysteries from a magic pawn shop / Frank Capra meets Freddy Krueger / Stephen King’s greatest hits / Life, death and Indian burial grounds
FILMOGRAPHY
ONE DARK NIGHT (COMWORLD, 1983)
DIRECTED BY TOM MCLOUGHLIN
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY BY TOM MCLOUGHLIN & MICHAEL HAWES
STARRING MEG TILLY, ROBIN EVANS, ELIZABETH DAILY, LESLIE SPEIGHTS
Julie spends the night alone in a mausoleum haunted by a psychic vampire.
FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VI: JASON LIVES! (PARAMOUNT, 1986)
DIRECTED BY TOM MCLOUGHLIN
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY BY TOM MCLOUGHLIN.
STARRING THOM MATTHEWS, JENNIFER COOKE, C.J. GRAHAM
Tommy accidentally resurrects his old nemesis, serial killer Jason Voorhees, and the maggot-eaten madman continues his killing spree at Camp Crystal Lake.
“AMAZING STORIES” — “GO TO THE HEAD OF THE CLASS” (NBC, 1986)
DIRECTED BY ROBERT ZEMECKIS
TELEPLAY BY MICK GARRIS, TOM MCLOUGHLIN & BOB GALE
A teenager uses black magic on his English teacher, only to be terrorized by the results.
“AMAZING STORIES” — “SUCH INTERESTING NEIGHBORS” (NBC, 1987)
DIRECTED BY GRAHAM BAKER
TELEPLAY BY MICK GARRIS & TOM MCLOUGHLIN.
BASED ON A SHORT STORY BY JACK FINNEY
A family is tormented by their new neighbors, who seem to have supernatural powers.
DATE WITH AN ANGEL (DELAURENTIIS ENTERTAINMENT GROUP, 1987)
DIRECTED BY TOM MCLOUGHLIN
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY BY TOM MCLOUGHLIN
STARRING MICHAEL E. KNIGHT, EMMANUELLE BEART, PHOEBE CATES
A week before his wedding, Jim falls in love with a wounded angel.
“FREDDY’S NIGHTMARES” — “IT’SA MISERABLE LIFE” (NEW LINE, 1988)
DIRECTED BY TOM MCLOUGHLIN
TELEPLAY BY MICHAEL DELUCA & PAUL ROSSELLI
STARRING ROBERT ENGLUND, JOHN CAMERON MITCHELL, LAR PARK LINCOLN
Bryan is feeling suffocated by his dead-end job in a dead-end town. Things get even worse when a drive-by shooting plunges him into the dreamworld of Freddy Krueger.
“FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE SERIES” — “MASTER OF DISGUISE” (PARAMOUNT, 1988)
DIRECTED BY TOM MCLOUGHLIN
TELEPLAY BY BRUCE MARTIN
STARRING JOHN D. LEMAY, LOUISE ROBEY, CHRIS WIGGINS, JOHN BOLGER
Micki falls for a coldhearted actor who owes his success to a cursed antique makeup case.
“FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE SERIES” — “THE PLAYHOUSE” (PARAMOUNT, 1988)
DIRECTED BY TOM MCLOUGHLIN
TELEPLAY BY TOM MCLOUGHLIN
STARRING JOHN D. LEMAY, LOUISE ROBEY, CHRIS WIGGINS, ROBERT OLIVERI, LISA JAKUB
A toy playhouse from a cursed pawnshop offers sanctuary and revenge to a pair of children from an abusive home.
“FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE SERIES” — “THE PROPHECY” (PARAMOUNT, 1989)
DIRECTED BY TOM MCLOUGHLIN
TELEPLAY BY TOM MCLOUGHLIN
STARRING JOHN D. LEMAY, LOUISE ROBEY, CHRIS WIGGINS, MARIE-FRANCE LAMBERT, FRITZ WEAVER
Micki and Ryan travel to rural France to investigate a nun’s prophecy about the second coming.
STEVEN BANKS: HOME ENTERTAINMENT CENTER (HBO, 1989)
DIRECTED BY TOM MCLOUGHLIN
TELEPLAY BY STEVEN BANKS
STARRING STEVEN BANKS
One-man comedy show about a twenty-something musician in arrested development.
“THEY CAME FROM OUTER SPACE” — PILOT (MCA TELEVISION, 1990)
DIRECTED BY SIDNEY HAYERS
TELEPLAY BY TOM MCLOUGHLIN, PETER BALOFF & DAVE WOLLERT
STARRING DEAN CAMERON, STUART FRATKIN
Two horny teenage aliens travel to Malibu, California, to pick up earth girls.
“SHE-WOLF OF LONDON” — PILOT (MCA TELEVISION, 1990)
DIRECTED BY DENNIS ABEY
TELEPLAY BY TOM MCLOUGHLIN & MICK GARRIS
STARRING NEIL DICKSON, KATE HODGE, SCOTT FULTS
American college student Randi gets bitten by a British werewolf. Her anthropology professor comes to her aid.
STEPHEN KING’S SOMETIMES THEY COME BACK (DINO DELAURENTIIS COMMUNICATIONS, 1991)
DIRECTED BY TOM MCLOUGHLIN
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY BY LAWRENCE KONNER, MARK ROSENTHAL AND TIM KRING (UNCREDITED)
STARRING TIM MATHESON, BROOKE ADAMS, ROBERT RUSLER
Jim returns to his hometown, where he must confront memories of his brother’s murder, and save his family from his brother’s undead killers.
Were your investors creatively involved in the making of One Dark Night? I understand they had final cut…
One Dark Night was a wonderful yet incredibly painful experience at the end. It was my first time in the director’s chair. I was finally getting
a chance to do what I wanted to do, after all these years. There were some rules. ComWorld didn’t want any profanity or any sex in the film. But that was the only creative interference, in the beginning. Then they added an executive producer who was a child psychologist. That became a running joke with us, because he would intellectualize every scene. He would say [in a deep, ultra-serious voice], “Okay, this is good because the kids are going to see that Julie really represents…” And we’d say, “Yeah yeah yeah.” Just to keep him happy…And he was a doctor, so he had to be addressed as such. [laughs]
But basically we had a set amount of money, a set amount of time, and we had to make it work. While we were shooting the movie, the editor Charlie Tetoni was putting together master shots and a very rough assembly as fast as he could, because as soon as we wrapped the film had to be screened in the Bahamas to qualify as a tax shelter for the investors. There was no time to do additional sound recording or mixing, so about half of the movie didn’t have sound. They screened the edited master…That’s been called my “director’s cut.” Of course, it wasn’t my director’s cut; it was the editor’s cut. When they screened that version, they added text to the bottom of the screen that said: Due to technical difficulties, the audio in this portion of the film is missing. That was how they covered for showing an unfinished film.
After that, they handed the film back to me and I had two or three weeks to cut it. During that period, a guy named Charles Sellier, who we’d heard was a low-budget filmmaking icon in Utah, took over the company. It sounded like a really good thing, because he had done a few movies and he knew something about the industry. He had produced a low-budget horror movie called The Boogens. Later he directed Silent Night, Deadly Night, which was about a killer Santa Claus. He came down from Utah to meet us, and he was like [very understated], “So this is your first film? Hmmmm…” He sat down and watched the entire film. At the end, he said, “Nice job.” That was on a Friday and he said, “Let me think about it over the weekend and then we’ll talk…”
On Monday morning, I went to the editing room and it was gutted. The film was gone, the equipment was gone, everything…Holy shit! I started calling people, and couldn’t get hold of anybody. I finally got hold of Sellier and he said, “We just felt that it was in our best interest to bring the film up here. We’re going to take care of it. We appreciate your director’s cut. Thank you so much.” I said, “Wait a minute, you can’t do this.” And he said, “Yes we can.” I was devastated. I didn’t know what was going to happen. Eventually somebody called and said they were going to preview the movie in Colorado Springs to see how it played. So Mike Hawes and I bought cheap plane tickets and went to see it.
We were shocked to see that the beginning was totally different. They took the title sequence and made it into one long Steadicam scene for no good reason. They got actress Melissa Newman to do an additional scene where she wakes up out of a dream. There were all these things in the film that we had not planned. Then there were other sections that were left completely intact. The opening of the crypts sequence was exactly the way we wanted it to be…Then we got to the ending. The Meg Tilly character just walks away and they roll credits. And you could hear the audience going, “Huh? What? That’s it?”
During production we used the contact lenses that Tom Burman designed for Nastassja Kinski to wear in Cat People. We put them into Meg Tilly’s eyes so that when she turns and looks at the camera, you see these dark eyes — suggesting that Raymar had possessed her. It was corny and might not have been exactly right for the movie, but at least it was something. At the screening, we realized that it just wasn’t enough. So we opted instead for the old Carrie ending that so many people were doing. And that only happened because I got on the phone with somebody at ComWorld and convinced them I could give them a new ending that wouldn’t cost a thing.
I had two set pieces left over from the crypts that Craig Stearns had built for the photo sessions to help sell the movie. Somehow we convinced Panavision to loan us a camera for free. We only paid for the film stock, which wasn’t much because it was such a short sequence. We got the actresses back and did this silly jump scene ending. You’re supposed to think it’s all over, and then we hit you one more time. I’m sick of this technique — it’s such a cliché. Everybody sees it coming, but it really did work. It wasn’t great, but it was better than what was there before.
Let’s talk about casting the picture, since you’ve said that the first secret of good directing is good casting.
I have always believed very strongly in what Capra said — that this is a people-to-people medium. If you get the audience to love the characters, you can tell any story any way you want and they’ll be right there with you. If they’re invested in the characters and you do something surprising, they’ll go with it. If they’re not invested in the characters and you throw a curve ball, they’ll just say, “That’s stupid. That would never happen.” It’s the character that makes you believe something is really happening or not happening.
Meg Tilly was the polar opposite of what I was looking for. I was looking for a blonde, blue-eyed, sweet California girl — but Meg was the one who blew me away as an actress. Thank God for Elza Bergeron, my casting director, who convinced me to be open-minded about this young girl from Canada. The casting of that film really was a combination of discovery and bullheadedness. And using friends. My ex-wife is in there — she’s one of the reporters. My brother is in there. My best friend Steven Banks is in there…And my soon-to-be wife Nancy has a great scene.
The most unusual casting decision was Adam West. [14] My casting director said to me, “I don’t know if you should cast him, because people perceive him as Batman.” I immediately thought: Just because an actor does something that everybody loves him for now, it’s hard for him to get other jobs? I cast him purely for that reason. Then, when we were shooting, I realized that Adam had done the Batman voice for so long that it had become part of his acting persona. I worked so hard to get that out of him. Of course, when the film was taken away from me and the producers looped him, I wasn’t in the looping session and the Batman-style readings came back in.
How was the film received by critics and audiences at the time?
I remember Allen Daviau, who was friends with our cinematographer Hal Trussel, came in one day while we were editing. Allen had just finished shooting E.T. He saw some of our corpse footage and he asked us when the film was coming out. We said January and he said, “Good…because I just saw some footage from Steven [Spielberg]’s movie Poltergeist and there are a lot of similarities here.” Well, as it turned out, our release was delayed. There was a change of leadership at the distribution company and we came out after Poltergeist. Thus all of the reviews said, “Obviously the filmmakers saw Poltergeist.” I was very impressed with Poltergeist — I thought it did all the things that a modern-day gothic horror movie should do — but it wasn’t an influence on One Dark Night at all.
That’s the risk you run when you do these things. It’s all about who gets there first. You can look back through movie history and see that filmmakers in France, in Germany, in America…All seemed to be doing the same things around the same time. I’ve always wondered if that is a coincidence, or if there some giant radio signal that beams ideas out for creative people to pick up on. I don’t know. Maybe it is just somebody seeing something in France or wherever, and coming back to the U.S. and saying, “What would be good is to do something we just saw in France. Nobody knows about it yet.”
One Dark Night is a very traditional horror movie, which made it stand out during a time when most horror movies were slasher movies. How did you go from One Dark Night to one of the biggest slasher franchises of all time?
Frank Mancuso Jr. offered me a Friday the 13th sequel based on One Dark Night, and I said, “I’m not really interested in doing that because I don’t know what I could do that would make it any different from the previous films in the series.” But he was determined to get
me to do the job — for some reason. I came up with this notion that if I could put humor in it, and I could make the characters likeable enough that the audience wouldn’t want to see them get killed, it would be worth doing. So I eventually said, “Okay I’ll write and direct this.”
Then I had to sit down and watch all the Friday the 13th movies in a row, in a screening room at Paramount. I had seen the original Friday the 13th but I hadn’t seen any of the sequels…Talk about déjà vu. Each movie was a variation on the exact same thing. After that I had a sense of what the mythology needed to be, so I decided to craft a scene where one of the characters presented the legend so far. Then I set up my own rules. There were going to be thirteen kills in my movie and it was actually going to take place on Friday the 13th. And Jason was going to come back to life in a completely Gothic way — like Frankenstein’s Monster when he’s struck by lightning. Then, on a three million dollar budget, I tried to put as much action into the story as I could. There’s a car chase, there’s an underwater fight sequence…It was all incredibly ambitious, but that was the challenge and the fun of it.
A Strange Idea of Entertainment: Conversations with Tom McLoughlin Page 7