Christmas Ghost Stories with Kier-la Janisse

This week, the boys are joined by the awesome multihyphenated Kier-La Janisse! We dive into her narrative film debut with this year's The Haunted Season, The Occupant of the Room, talking about the collaborative spirit of the film, the inspirations behind the series, and what the future hold for further installments. But of course, we first had to talk to her about one of our favorites, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror, as well as her books such as  Cockfight: A Fable of Failure, Satanic Panic, The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, producing with Severin, and more! 

But before bringing her in, the boys review Five Nights at Freddy's 2, Wake Up Dead Man, Die My Love, Zootopia 2 (and its many horror references), and Correia talks about the 90's Showtime Movie series Rebel Highway! It's all new on EYE ON HORROR!

Movies mentioned in this episode:

https://letterboxd.com/correianbbq/list/eye-on-horror-podcast-sn-8-ep-16/

Follow us on the socials: @EyeOnHorror or check out https://linktr.ee/EyeOnHorror
Get more horror movie news at: https://ihorror.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Intros
• 2:16 Jay Reviews Five Nights at Freddy's (in Theaters)
• 7:52 Jacob Reviews Wake Up Dead Man (In select Theaters and Netflix)
• 9:05 Jacob Reviews Zootopia 2 (In theaters)
• 12:09 Jay Reviews Die My Love (In Theaters and VOD)
• 13:58 Correia Reviews the Rebel High Anthology Series (On Internet Archives)
• 18:05 Introducing writer and filmmaker Kier-La Janisse!
• 21:55 The Legacy of Cockfighter
• 25:07 Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: History of Folk Horror
• 32:24 Origins of The Miskatonic Institute of horror studies
• 38:48 The Haunted Season: The Occupant of the Room
• 45:21 Where to keep up with Kier-La Janisse
• 45:53 Upcoming Killing for Culture Documentary
• 48:36 Outros
• 49:33 Restless Spirit Goes Hard ASF

Transcript

James Jay Edwards: 0:25

Welcome to eye on horror, the official podcast of ihorror.com this is episode 156 otherwise known as season eight. Episode 16. I am your host, James Jay Edwards, and with me, as always, is your other host, Jacob Davison, how you doing?

Jacob Davidson: 0:40

Jacob, doing all right, just back on the West Coast after my trip to New England

James Jay Edwards: 0:46

and and now your mom's on the West Coast, didn't she? Yeah, going to be visiting out here. Yeah. Also with us, as always, is your other other host, Jon Correia. How you doing?

Jonathan Correia: 0:59

Correia? Doing pretty good. We got a new cat, Priscilla.

James Jay Edwards: 1:06

Priscilla Presley, something, Queen of the Desert.

Jonathan Correia: 1:09

Okay, so her, so her name is Priscilla. Her full government name, though, is Priscilla Presley Chambers Queen of the Dessert. Queen of the Dessert. Okay, she's a stonky. She's stonking.

James Jay Edwards: 1:21

Loomis is full government. Name is Dr Samuel William Loomis. He's a doctor.

Jonathan Correia: 1:30

Yeah, we were, we were mascot of the show. And my old roommate, Black Phillip, passed in October. So, you know, there's, there's been a bit of a void, but it's, it's been cool because she's, she was really skittish at first, though it's been really fun seeing her personality come out in the last week. And it turns out she's 100% a goober. She's just, she's just dumb, and has ADHD worse than I so it's great. We get along.

Jacob Davidson: 1:58

Sounds like a match made in heaven.

James Jay Edwards: 2:01

I tell you, Loomis is going to be really upset to realize that he was not the mascot of the show, because for the past five years, he thought that he is no he is too. You can have multiple mascots, okay? Because Greta wants to be a mascot too.

Jonathan Correia: 2:14

All our pets are mascots.

James Jay Edwards: 2:16

What's been going on? The only new thing I think that's come out recently is Five Nights at Freddy's 2, have either you guys seen Five Nights at Freddy's 2?

Jacob Davidson: 2:26

I haven't seen the new one. I did see the original though.

James Jay Edwards: 2:28

Yeah, the new one. I wasn't as big of a fan that the first one. I actually did. I did like it was, it was fun. The new one is basically the gist is they the location of of Freddie fast bears that was from the first one. Was not the original location. It was a franchise. So the original location is even more haunted, and all of, all of the, all of the animatronics are controlled by a mysterious entity known as the marionette. And that's where it kind of like the marionette is not it's not as much fun as just having these crazy, you know, having them be controlled by a master entity is just not as much fun, I guess. But it is kind of cool because Matthew Lillard is in it, kind of in, like flashback scenes, and Skeet Ulrich is in it, and they don't share any, yeah, they don't share any screen time because skeet Ulrich plays the parent of one of these kids that went missing. But it is kind of fun to see, like a little mini scream reunion, even though they're never on screen the same time. But, you know, it's a pretty the it's a pretty seamless sequel. I mean, the whole band is back together. The the writer is the guy who created the video games. The director is the same woman who did the first one, and the cast, Josh Hudson and and I forget her name, but the little girl and the cop, they're McKenna Grace. No McKenna Grace plays, she plays, like the leader of like a kind of, kind of a, like a YouTube channel, kind of a thing that, like a specter detector, kind of a thing like urban explorers, yeah, well, kind of but, but there, but it's sort of like, what are they called in Shelby Oaks,

Jacob Davidson: 4:28

yeah, I think the specter detectors, yeah,

James Jay Edwards: 4:30

something like that, yeah. What paranormal?

Jacob Davidson: 4:34

What was it? Paranormal

Jonathan Correia: 4:37

paranoids. Paranormal paranoids, yes, yes. I remember it being like a really cheesy early YouTube name, like they really nailed that name.

James Jay Edwards: 4:45

Yeah, McKenna Grace plays like the leader of one of those, and they're investigating one of the things. So she has, it's a small but pivotal role in the movie. But yeah, the No, the little girl's name is Piper Rubio. Like, and then Elizabeth Lael is the the woman who plays the cop, and they're all back from the first one. So, I mean, it's pretty, you know that the continuity is there, but it's not as it's not as much fun as the, you know. And I mean, you, you've got these, they, I don't know, it opens up the world a little bit, because the Five Nights at Freddy, the animatronics go, like, tromping around the city, and it's, you know, it's not as much fun. It does have a lot of callbacks to the because it's basically an adaptation of the second game, right? Gotcha. So, so there are callbacks to that, like it like, at one point he's doing something on a computer, and one of the amateurs comes in the room, so he grabs, like a mask and puts it in front of his face. And, you know, because that's one of the things you do in the video game to avoid detection, is you wear masks. And you can tell, the screening I was at had a lot of influencers, you know, five nights at Freddy's, influencers there, and you could tell, and I didn't get them all, because whenever something like that happened, they would all cheer and clap, and they were, there's a lot of cheering and clapping that I didn't quite know what they were cheering and clapping for, like a character would show up or something, and I'd be like, Okay, this was made for fans of the video game. This is not, you know, this wasn't made for me, because I didn't quite get all the in jokes. So I think it's more if you're a fan of the video game, you'll be into it.

Jonathan Correia: 6:28

It's like when Lindsey and I were watching the Street Fighter trailer that just dropped for the new one, and at the end of the trailer, they show someone punching a car and, like, breaking and kicking. And I lost it. Lindsay's like, why are you flipping out over that one shot? I'm like, because that's the best part of Street Fighter. Of Street Fighter, and they did it in the movie.

Jacob Davidson: 6:47

Yeah, and I will say what I saw the first five nights at Freddy's movie, like there was a bunch of younger people there, and they were all talking on their phones before the movie, but when that movie started, they were locked in, like they're dead quiet, like they were focused on the screen. So, like, this is for their generation, yeah, yep.

James Jay Edwards: 7:07

And they, and, you know, they all showed up in cosplay, you know, this thing, you know? So it was, it was, it's definitely made for a specific audience. Other than that, there's not, I've been buried in a war trying to catch up for awards voting. So, I mean, you know, I've been seeing a bunch of stuff like, you know, Train Dreams and Jay Kelly and Marty Supreme was last night's viewing, none of which is even remotely horror. Although Marty supreme does have one horrific scene, it's, it's one of the safties. And there is one horrific scene where basically a dude's arm gets broken in half, and you're like, Jesus, yeah, you're like, okay, that came out of nowhere. But yeah, not a whole lot has happened. What about you guys?

Jacob Davidson: 7:52

Well, it's funny. I did see Jay Kelly back on the east coast with my dad. That was really good. But yeah, not horror, but yeah, not a lot of other big horror releases, although, although kind of, I guess, in that realm, since it's, you know, like a murder mystery movie, I did see the new knives out movie, wake up dead man back, back on the east coast of the Coolidge corner theater, And I really dug it is very interesting, kind of framing the death of the mystery around a church, which in some ways kind of gave me more giallo vibes too. On top of that, since, you know, like giallo was originally rooted in Agatha Christie and pulp murder mystery novels. Yeah, plus, yeah, I can't get enough of Daniel Craig and his amazing accent as Benoit Blanc.

James Jay Edwards: 8:50

Those knives out movies, they're all kind of Agatha Christie ish, you know, Oh, yeah. Like, very much.

Jacob Davidson: 8:57

I mean this one, they really lean into it, to the point where they discuss the books in the movie. And that is, and that aside, this is, this is kind of funny, just I saw Zootopia too, because I heard a lot of good things about it, and it has a surprising number of horror homages like, without spoiling too much, there is an extended Shining parody where, like, they're in a hedge maze with the snow. And this is interesting because the news came out after they have a small Silence of the Lambs parody at one point. And originally it was going to be a few minutes long, and like with direct dialog from sides of the Lambs, but they cut it down because they were afraid that people wouldn't understand the reference, which, honestly, I think, is a huge disappointment, because it would have involved Jenny Slate's character from the first film. So we did not get Jenny Slate doing a Hannibal Lector impression. And, you know, just again, missed opportunity.

Jonathan Correia: 10:03

I only saw the first Zootopia. I haven't seen the second one, but I, I just missed the days when Disney would make like animal movies, and it wasn't Cop-a-ganda, you know, like, remember Robin Hood, when, when we would use cool foxes to, like, promote, like, fighting the system, not, you know, being a part of it, yeah?

James Jay Edwards: 10:22

Zootopia two is Zootopia twos. It got nominated in the San Diego Film Critics Society for animated so I do need to watch it. But you know what else got nominated, Predator Killer of Killers. Yeah, thank God. I'm pretty sure that's where my vote is gonna go, although also nominated K Pop demon hunters. So I got, I did watch that, and that, I tell you, is just, that's just so much fun.

Jonathan Correia: 10:48

I still haven't seen it, but I worked. I worked a shift out of me, but we played the soundtrack, and it was really funny to be like, at the register, and all side of being like, is this k pop? I don't know. And then all sudden, Golden started going, I'm like, Oh, I know that song, okay, yeah, that's it.

James Jay Edwards: 11:02

It's funny because it's all k pop music. But then when you put it with the visuals of basically these hunters fighting these demons, it's a lot of fun.

Jacob Davidson: 11:14

You know, there's a bit of a horror element in there, because, you know, they're fighting demons. But it is just amazing how much of a smash success it is, like, I think I'd mentioned before, like, when I, when I was walking around the neighborhood, down Hall, we, like, there were dozens of kids dressed up as K Pop demon hunter characters. And I'm glad I was able to actually see it in theaters, because, yeah, I mean, I caught on Netflix, because, you know, Sony sold the movie to Netflix, and then it turned into this gigantic hit, to the point where they have put in theaters a couple times, and I think it's going to be back in theaters again at some point.

James Jay Edwards: 11:49

There's a sing along version on yes, that Yeah.

Jacob Davidson: 11:52

So it's it's catching and for the theater version, like I went there and a bunch of people were singing along with the movie. That's how much people are into this.

James Jay Edwards: 12:02

I hope that it was a sing along screening, because that, yeah, annoying if you're not, if you're not prepared for it. Another awards thing that's kind of horror adjacent is, have you guys heard of Die My Love, no, it's the new Lynn Ramsey movie with Jennifer Lawrence and Robin Robert Pattinson. It has a it has a lot of We Need to Talk About Kevin vibes, except, instead of Kevin being the one that's crazy, it's the Jennifer Lawrence character. She's like, you know this, this has been a year for postpartum, you know, and, you know, Kid related trauma movies, because, you know, there was, if I Had Legs, I's Kick You, which is Rose Byrne is amazing in it. And also Hamnet with Jesse Buckley is deals with a little bit of that too. But this one it, it's, um, it's kind of a dark movie, and it's total Lynn Ramsey style. It's real disjointed. And you're kind of wondering, okay, wait, is this a flashback, or is this happening? Now, you know that kind of thing. The performances, Robert Pattinson and Jennifer Lawrence are both amazing, but it's basically about this, this couple who had this kid, and the woman, which is Jennifer Lawrence, she kind of, she kind of goes crazy. And part of it is, part of it is gaslighting, where people are convincing her she's crazy, but part of it is she really is crazy, and that's where the line you're kind of like, wait now, is she legitimately, you know, does she legitimately need help, or is someone doing this to her? I don't know. It's, it's kind of crazy, but it's, it's a, it's a dark movie. It's, it's a really dark movie. It sounds dark, yep. I mean, it's Lynn Ramsey. I mean, yeah, that's what she does.

Jonathan Correia: 13:58

Well, have you guys ever heard of the series Rebel Highway? No, yeah, Correia back on his bullshit of obscure 90s anthologies. Oh boy. Rebel highway was this anthology film series on Showtime where they took, I think it was, I want to say it was corpsman drive ins, but it was these, like drive in movies that they had all the rights to, and they would remake them with modern filmmakers of the 90s. And it was they're all like greaser head car kid bopping ones. It's the only one that's gotten an official release. Is Robert Rodriguez's Roadracers, which is probably hands down the best made one. That one has David Arquette, Selma Hayek, Jon Hawkes, William Sadler, and it's, you know, typical greaser racer, you know. And it's Robert Rodriguez going nuts. And hes still in his like, super gorilla filmmaking style, with like, but with like, a premium cable episode budget. But they're a lot of fun because they some of them are straight up remakes of these movies, and some of them are just in name only. Ralph Bakshi did one as well called Cool and the Crazy talk about postpartum depression that one has Alicia Silverstone stepping out on her husband, played by Jared Leto. They're both like 19 year old couple that, like settled hard, had a kid, and then she steps out with this, like, gang guy, gang member, or real just bad guy played by Matthew Flint, but also Jon Hawks is in it, Jennifer Blanc. Like, the casts are really good and the directors, it's, it's cool stuff. Like, that's Ralph Bakshi's only, like, fully live action film. But, yeah, they're fun series. There's, there's like, 10 movies within it, and you can find it on like, Internet Archive. Oh, yeah, let's plug it. Yeah, you can find it on Internet Archive because it's not available anywhere else. But rebel Roadracers did get a Blu ray and DVD release at one point, and that's the best one. But there's titles like Girls in Prison, Shake, Rattle and Rock, Dragstrip Girl, Motorcycle Gang, Runaway Daughters, you know, Reform School Girls. So, like, they're all like, you know, classy titles, but it's definitely that 1950s 1960s teen drive in films, but like, made in the 90s. So they're fun to watch, especially Cool And The Crazy. That one Alicia Silverstone was just like, going so over the top, and there's some like, weird psychosexual stuff going on in there. And Jared Leto is, it's like, oh, this is before he got creepy and ruined franchises like Tron. Think about dude. They're a lot of fun. I'm having a lot of fun trying to hunt down all these, like, anthology series that were like tales from the crypt, or something like that, that came out in the 90s. I'm still trying to find a watchful copy of the Western one spin off from tales from the crypt, two, two fisted

Jacob Davidson: 17:12

two fisted tales.

Jonathan Correia: 17:13

Two fisted tales. Yeah, I'm trying to find that pilot. I know it got put into they it got split up and turned into episodes of tales.

Jacob Davidson: 17:20

But, yeah, no, it's out there somewhere. I've seen it with, like William Sadler being kind of the Crypt Keeper guy,

Jonathan Correia: 17:26

yeah, yeah. I gotta, yeah, I gotta hunt that one down.

James Jay Edwards: 17:30

Have you ever watched the hitchhiker from the old HBO day? This was like, pre tails from the crypt HBO, like, maybe 81

Jonathan Correia: 17:39

you know, I've had a DVD collection of that for the longest time, and it's in my need to watch to possibly sell pile right now.

James Jay Edwards: 17:46

So you should watch it. They're pretty good. Yeah, no, no,

Jonathan Correia: 17:50

I have, I have so many blu rays. I have stacks right next to me of just like stuff where it's like, you gotta watch this to clear, either clear space or give it a permanent space on the shelf. Just gotta.

Jacob Davidson: 18:01

I feel that never enough room.

James Jay Edwards: 18:05

And now let's bring in our special guest for this episode. And this is a really special guest. We have a true multi hyphenate. We've got film writer, producer, director, founder of the Miskatonic Institute, Kier-La Janisse, how you doing?

Kier-La Janisse: 18:22

Hi,igood morning.

James Jay Edwards: 18:23

Good morning. Thank you for joining us. We always like to kind of start with at the beginning. How did you get your start doing what you do? And when did you know that you wanted to work in horror like this?

Kier-La Janisse: 18:38

Well, I mean, I was a horror fan from being a small child, the it was my first you know thing that my parents or family members knew about me was that I loved monsters and ghosts and things like this, and so they would encourage it. We would watch horror films at home, and my dad would buy me any book he saw at a flea market about horror movies. So it was really kind of ingrained in me from a young age, but I didn't know that I would work in the field, because I didn't know because I didn't really want to make movies. And so I didn't know that there were all these other potential jobs that you could do if you work in horror, like these support jobs, that you could be a journalist, or you could be an archivist, or, you know, any of these things. And so I just went to school for normal things like medieval history also useless, but, you know, but it was when I was in university doing medieval history, I started like a little fanzine, like a horror fanzine out of the video store where I worked. And that was that fan scene was really what started me programming movies, because I would review movies like bootlegs and stuff that I had bought from, like European trash cinema or video vortex, or, you know, revick, or any of these, you know, organizations that sold bootlegs video search of Miami, and I would review the movies but they weren't available in. Canada for people to rent. So people would read the reviews and be like, well, this movie sounds really interesting, but how can we see the movie and in Canada, because of the way that our rating systems work, you can't just import any movie and put it on the shelf of a video store. Everything has to go through government channels. And so there isn't a lot of independent free movement of films the way there is in the States. But one thing you could do is you could put on a film festival, and you could get an exemption from film readings at a film festival. And so that was sort of how I started. I started programming these weird, you know, Italian horror films and stuff for a film festival locally and and this was like that. It was before DVD existed. And people like, I remember the first year I played like, you know, Deep Red Dario Argento like, I mean, it was all just kind of stuff that now we consider Greatest Hits, you know, it was like, Lizard in a woman's skin by Lucio Fulchi, Deep Red, Possession by Andre jawski. And people like, hated Possession back then. People did not like that movie the way that they do now. But, yeah, people didn't even know who Dario Argento was, you know, like, I mean, it was really, it was really only the people who collected that knew, you know, who a lot of these filmmakers were. And so because of doing that festival and doing the fanzine Tony Timpone at Fangoria offered me my first paid job doing anything for horror, which was doing set visits. I lived in Vancouver, and they were always shooting different horror franchises and stuff out there. So he asked if I would go out to visit some sets and do some coverage for them. And that was really how my career started, because that was the first thing that I got paid to do in horror, and so it just kind of went from there.

Jonathan Correia: 21:45

That's awesome. I mean, I know Jacob and I definitely have a lot of your books on our shelves, House of Psychotic women, Satanic Panic. That was my first introduction to your work. And God, I love that you keep encouraging such people to discover new films or that from the past, or films that, like people don't talk a whole lot about, like, you have an entire book dedicated to cockfight, which is incredible.

Kier-La Janisse: 22:11

Well, Cockfighter was, like the Yeah, that was, I mean, the book is called Cockfight, yeah? But just because I thought it, I mean, I should have given it a more original title, but I just thought it would be funny to be on a shelf with my name and it just says Cockfight. But anyways, that was, you know, an obsession with Monte Hellman's movie Cockfighter, which seems to many people very different from a lot of the other things that I've written about, like my book, my only solo book before that, or the one right before that was House of Psychotic Women. And it seems a million miles away from House of Psychotic Women in terms of content and taste and everything you know. But like any film fan, you know, if you're you know, your interest and your curiosity about films and your taste is not always following a straight line, you know? And, yeah, so Cockfighter was one of those things that to me, when I made the book, I didn't expect it to be as obscure as it was. Like I actually thought everybody seen Cockfighter. Turns out it's not the case, and a lot of people don't want to see cock fighters, as I found when I wanted to do like, book launch events, you know, it was like, hard to convince people to play the movie. So, yeah,

Jacob Davidson: 23:28

a bit of a hard sell on cockfighting. Yeah.

Jonathan Correia: 23:34

Well, it's a fictional movie about it. It's not like you're not promoting this the the illegal sport at all.

Kier-La Janisse: 23:40

So Well, I mean, I talk about the sport quite a bit in the book, and the movie does have real cock fighting in it. So, yeah, there's kind of no way around that, you know, because it's like chickens can't be trained the same way that other animals can't, you know. So it's like a lot of the fights, you know, like they made fake. They made fake like they're called gaffs, you know, which are like the hooks that they fight with. So they made rubber ones for the for the film, but they, but they are actually charging at each other. They are, you know, as far as the birds are concerned, they are actually fighting. You know, it's just that they can't kill each other because they've got rubber gaffs on. But the but the anger is still there, and that's part of the reason why in the UK, the film can't be played, because one of the sort of federal rules, and this has nothing to do with motion picture ratings, it's just one of the federal rules, is that you cannot show a film where an animal is goaded to fury. So you cannot show you can't show someone angering an animal to the point where they want to kill and so it's like a really specific law that was made because of things like cock fighting. You know, because cock fighting used to be a very popular sport in the UK.

Jonathan Correia: 24:56

So, wow, too bad they didn't have Werner Herzog on set to hypnotize them. You know that famous clip of him hypnotizing chickens.

Jacob Davidson: 25:07

And off of that, I also want to say I'm a big fan of your folk horror work, particularly the documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: History of Folk Horror, and your involvement in the folk horror box sets from Severin. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that. Yeah.

Kier-La Janisse: 25:25

I mean, the the box sets kind of came the idea for them came right as we were making the film, because my boss, when I was showing him rough cuts of the film, he was just sort of like, Oh, I haven't heard of these films. Are these films available to be licensed, you know. So the idea was already germinating, like in his head as I was making the film, and so he started licensing a lot of films for the first box set, like during that period, which is why the first box that came out the same year as the film, and so, but the film itself came about by accident, like when I was first, like many of Severin films, there aren't many documentaries we make that start off as feature documentaries. They usually start off as extras that just get out of control. And so, like, I'm making one now, that is, that is actually I'm making a documentary. Well, I'll get into it later, I guess. But, but, but most of them have started as extras. And in the case of the Folk horror one, we were going to be doing a release of Blood on Satan's claw, and we were going to be just basically replicating the UK disc, like porting over all the, you know, they had just made a whole bunch of new extras for the UK disc, and we were just going to do an American version of that disc. And I said, Oh, you're not going to add anything. Like, you're not even going to make one new extra. And David's like, Well, we've already interviewed everybody from the movie. And there's, you know, like, what else can we do? I said, we could just make something just about folk horror in general. And David was, like, folk horror, what's that? I said, Well, you know, it's like this and this and this. And then he was like, great. He's like, go make it and and I was like, at that time, I was just an editor at Severin. So my job at Severin at that point was literally just people would give me assignments to they to edit things, and I would edit them and return them. I had no creative say in what those things were or anything. So this was a suggestion of his that came totally out of the blue, where he was just like, Okay, go make this extra yourself. And luckily, I guess, you know, I didn't have any experience putting together a film shoot or anything. But I did have experience, you know, like I because I had done the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, I was always sort of keeping up on who was writing books about what, and whose specialty was what. And I was like, Well, I probably am best positioned to know who the people are, who are the experts that I would get to speak in a documentary about folk horror, you know? So I sort of started there and then relied on people that Severin worked with frequently in the UK to do the actual filming, because our, all of our first interviews were in the UK, because it was originally just going to be focused on the UK folk horror immediately surrounding Blood on Satan's Claws, like so all this, like the kind of unholy trinity films and everything, just immediately in that time period. But then, of course, as soon as I started interviewing people, I was just like, oh, this is such a way better, bigger topic, you know, because I was like, it include, you know, things like Children of the Corn, you know, like all these American folk horror films that would, you know, could be considered folk horror. And then when I interviewed people, there was also a real divide when people would give their definition of what folk horror was. There was a real divide between people from England and America. Would usually define folk horror as something where a stranger comes to a village and all the people in the village are weird, and they have some weird belief systems, you know. And it's kind of like this normal, civilized outsider who comes into this community of barbarians or something, you know. But then when you would interview people from Asia or Europe or other places like this, they would always say the folk horror is where you have a village of people who have this very strong belief system where they're fighting against the evil coming from outside their village. Yeah, you know. So it was like this alternate perspective on what folk horror was. And in the European and Asian stuff, there seemed to be much more focus on folkloric fairy tales, folkloric creatures, you know, stuff like this that you wouldn't see in like British folk horror. And after my movie came out, I saw online a lot of debate where a lot of British people were like, well, that other stuff isn't actually, isn't real folk horror. So there's like, a lot of territorialism about, like, just even the definition, or what should be included, and stuff. And so that was kind of what I was trying to do with my movies, just let people talk about what it is to them, because the. Of folk anything folk culture is that it often traverses through communities and changes as as it intersects with other communities and stuff. So the idea that people did not agree on the definition, to me, was an important part of the documentary, you know. And so anyway, that was how it started, was it was just supposed to be an extra, and then it just got bigger and bigger and bigger. And bigger and bigger. And then eventually, David said, Well, just instead of trying to cut it down, just keep going, Yeah, you know, just make it whatever you want. And because we knew it was going to eventually end up on Blu Ray, because that's severins primary business, he didn't care how long it was, you know, he was just like, well, if it's long, people will just pause it and then they'll watch the rest later, you know.

Jonathan Correia: 30:44

And then I can't imagine doing that, though, because it is, it is long and it is over three hours, but I mean, it flows really smoothly, and so it doesn't feel like it, you know.

Kier-La Janisse: 30:53

Thank you, I mean. But it also has the chapter headings, you know. So it does have really good kind of way stations, where you could pause it and come back to it the next day or something, if you wanted to. You know, yeah, but yeah so. And then I lucked out during lucked out during covid, one of the few people who lucked out during covid, where the festivals went online. And so basically, because festivals went online, they also didn't care how long the movies were, you know, because normally when you're playing a festival, if you have a three hour movie, they have to think of it, the fact that you're taking up two slots at the theater, you know, that like, oh, we could be playing another movie in this time period. So if we take this movie, we're losing another movie. Whereas when it was online, that was not an issue. You could play the movies could be as long as you want it. So I feel like I actually got a lot of festival play for that movie, because all the festivals were online that year,

Jacob Davidson: 31:49

and I actually saw that Chattanooga that year myself.

Kier-La Janisse: 31:53

Okay, well, was it online that year, or did it

Jacob Davidson: 31:56

go online on Chattanooga Film Festival, 2021 Yeah, yeah.

Kier-La Janisse: 32:01

So that was really interesting, because I feel like, because of the festivals, it got a lot more attention than it would have otherwise, you know, like, otherwise it just would have gone straight to blu ray. A lot of people wouldn't have heard about it unless they pay attention to Severin stuff. And so the fact that covid made everything online meant that the film got a lot more attention than it would have otherwise. Absolutely now

James Jay Edwards: 32:24

we're here to talk about The Haunted Season, but before we get that, you kind of touched on the Miskatonic Institute of horror studies. That fascinates me, because I I really wish that there was something like that when I was my degrees are in film production and also American media and popular culture. I wish there was a horror studies. How did that come about? The Miskatonic Institute?

Kier-La Janisse: 32:47

Well, basically part of it is like, just like you said, I always wished that there had been one and but it also started by accident, because it was something where I was doing a writers in residence in Winnipeg. And I was like, part of the graders in residence was you had to do some sort of public facing event, you know, you had to do a reading, or you had to do what, you know, some kind of activity. And the owner of the bookstore where I was doing the residency said, like, Oh, why don't you do something with your horror thing, like your horror interest, but do it for teenagers, because spring break is coming up and all the younger everything is focused on younger kids. There's a million activities of things for younger kids to do, but there's kind of nothing for those kids that are kind of between 12 and 15 or 12 and 16, you know? So I said, Oh, okay, so I did this week long workshop, and I'm really not trained to teach workshops to people. I'm, like, horrible at it, but so I did this week long workshop of, like, film critics, horror film criticism for teens. And I had to have some sort of name, or some, I don't know, some way to advertise it, and I just called it the Miskatonic Institute of horror studies, like as a joke,

James Jay Edwards: 34:00

because what else are you going to call it, right? But

Kier-La Janisse: 34:02

then, but then, I got asked, after that workshop, I got a call from somebody looking for the Miskatonic Institute of horror studies, because they wanted me to come and do a class at their organization for their teenagers. So I ended up doing a second class with like, a bunch of juvenile delinquents who were not into, you know, they wanted to watch the movies, but they didn't want to do any reading or learn anything, and but so Anyways, that was how it started, was that people just started asking me to do these classes. And so originally, it was very focused on teenagers. But then I moved to Montreal, and I just, and I had, I was running a little micro cinema there, and so I was like, Okay, now that I have my own venue, I'm just going to have these classes every week. So we started having them on Wednesdays. But we really weren't getting teenagers because we just didn't have the outreach, you know, to reach teenagers, and we didn't know enough. Parents of teenagers and stuff. So we started to get a lot of adults that were like, Well, can I come to the classes? And at first I was worried where he was like, Well, I don't know if I'm I mean, any adult is going to know the same amount about horror as me, so I don't know what they're going to learn from me, but they were really interested in coming. So we just said, Okay, we'll open it up to adults. And then after a while, I think after five classes or something like that, these, these scholars and college instructors, instructors that in Montreal that were very into horror, approached me about collaborating with me to try to help me get more teachers and stuff like that. And so they ended up becoming really important to Miskatonic, Montreal, growing they ended up branching off and starting their own organization called Monstrum. So they still have, like, a, I think, quarterly academic journal called The Monstrom Journal. And I don't know if they're doing classes anymore, but they were for a while, and I, in the meantime, moved again. I started the London branch, and then I started one in New York and one in LA and during covid, a lot of them, you know, didn't survive, but London still goes strong. And London was always the most popular one. There's so many horror scholars in the UK. Like, there, it's like, you know, you have this like bounty of of teachers to pick from, and you also have like, a ton of people there who are into really academic approaches to horror and stuff, you know, so the audiences have always been really full and enthusiastic and stuff. And then, so I ran it for 10 years, and I have, but I was always very reliant on volunteer help, because oftentimes I did not live in the cities where these schools were, and so it was like 100% reliant on whoever was my local person on the ground to actually run it. But then after a while, I realized that the way that I wanted to run the school was different from how most of the volunteers wanted to run it, you know, like a lot of the volunteers, were much more interested in an event structure where it's, like, one class, one night, you know, and you go and and that's it. Whereas I always had, I always wanted courses, you know, where you have, like, a long course with many classes. But when you do things that way, you have much smaller audiences. You know, you have like, just like that core group of people that want to take a six week course in something, whereas if you do an event structure, you can sell out every time. So of course, the people on the ground doing it wanted to sell out every time. It was much more appealing to them, and also just more for your morale, you know. It's just nicer having a full room of people, you know. And so it ended up just kind of going more in that event structure. And after 10 years, I realized that I couldn't do what I wanted with it, which was I wanted to it, to eventually have real academic accreditation and stuff like that. And I was like, this is just not going to happen without a major patron or something for it, you know. So I basically gave it over to the volunteers, you know. So Josh, Josh Saco, who had been running the London branch for a long time, he now owns it. He runs it. It's his baby to do with whatever he wants with. So I sort of retired from it, but I'm still proud of it, you know. So I still have it in my signature and everything like that. But yeah, Josh Saco runs it now, and he's, like, he used to run a thing called Cigarette Burns in the UK, which is, like, basically a 16 mil. He would do 16 millimeter repertory screenings at various different venues around town. So he's very experienced with not only horror, but also like doing live events and stuff,

James Jay Edwards: 38:48

all right, yeah, so let's move on to the haunted season, because that's what we're here to talk about. This is a series with Severin and shudder, and every year you guys put out a new episode, and this episode, this year's episode you actually directed. Is this your fiction directoral debut?

Kier-La Janisse: 39:09

It is okay, yeah. So it was like Severin, the series Haunted Season, is actually Severin. It's 100% Severin. So it has a deal with Shudder, where we premiere them on Shudder, you know, so, so it obviously has this very strong association with with shudder. But it's a Severin production, like the series as a whole and set, because I also work for Severin a lot, that was the context in which I pitched it. So I pitched it to David Gregory at Severin, and he was just like, well, if you want to do that, go ahead. But he's like, I'm not. You have to manage it yourself, you know. So then I pitched it to Sam at Shudder, and he and I had actually worked together years ago Fangoria. We worked together on the Fangoria website. We were kind of the web team back in like 2012 or 2013, something like that. And we had this idea back then where we were like, Wouldn't it be great if we could do like, an annual ghost story for Christmas and have it from here on the Fangoria website every year, like on Christmas Eve or something. And the publisher didn't want to go for it, but that idea just stayed on the back burner. And then when I pitched it to Sam, I was like, this is the idea, basically, that we wanted to do all those years ago, and we're both in positions now where we could potentially do it, you know? So, yeah, so we, we came up with a plan where we have a five year agreement. So it's so we have, like, the first season is five years. Every year, it's a different film. The films are supposed to be anywhere from 25 to 50 minutes. So it's a fairly wide range in terms of, like, how long the films have to be. But the idea is, it is they are supposed to be in the vein of the BBC ghost story for Christmas, you know. So they're supposed to have some element of tradition to them, some you know, they're supposed to be period, although, again, the period can be anything from like the Middle Ages up into the 1960s you and and they're and they are supposed to preserve kind of the downbeat tone of the BBC series, you know. So they're not supposed to be like funny or gory or spectacle driven or anything like that. They're supposed to be kind of, yeah, just, like, just less emphasis on, on, like, the big spectacle, you know, and trying, yeah, yeah, yeah, kind of bummers, yeah. But so we started it with Sean Hogan's To Fire You Come at Last, which I love. I think Sean is a brilliant writer and and then this year we were for the one this year there wasn't originally supposed to be me making one. It was supposed to be somebody else. And then they ended up getting one of their features projects, kind of green lit to the next stage of development, and they had to shift gears and focus on that. So I'm hoping they'll still come back, you know, to do their episode, because they had already written the script and everything. So it then was like, well, this series has no money, no time, you know. Like, usually if you're trying to get somebody to do something for a low budget, you have to at least give them time to do it right. And we didn't have either of those things. So, so I basically put myself in as a filler. It's supposed to be like, Well, I mean, I guess I'll just do one because, you know, I had this favorite ghost story that I would read every Christmas. I was like, Well, you know, I could kind of picture how I would do this, so maybe I should just do it myself, and I just made sure to surround myself with people who knew what they were doing. You know, it's like one of my oldest friends is Kareem Hussein, who's the DOP on the film, and I knew that if I had him with me, I would be okay, you know, like that he he pretty much acts as my buffer. You know, he's very experienced and very professional, and people have a lot of respect for him, so I knew that that would rub off on me, if I was working on a set with him, that everything would be okay, that he wouldn't let me fail miserably. And so Kareem was a big part of the confidence that I had, that I could even do this, you know. And then, yeah, so, but everything about it was new. It was the first time I, you know, wrote a script in a script writing program, and, you know, like, worked with actors. And just everything about it, you know, was new, and I had to, you know, rely on friends who are more experienced to, like, help me navigate, you know, like, how do I do some of these things? You know, my friend Jason Lapeer, who is a filmmaker, he's a director of, he makes all kinds of films. Actually, he's made kids films, he's made lots of true crime films and stuff like that. But he helped me a lot with, like, how do I deal with actors? How do I talk to actors, you know, how do I break down the scene so that I can answer any question they might have about it? So he was hugely helpful with that. But, yeah, I just feel and then I also have elements of the film where I actually got other artists, you know, other experimental filmmakers and animators and all these things to work with me on certain things that I wanted to do. And to me, it's like a lot of what people like about the film is their work, the animation, the music, you know, the exterior footage, you know, stuff like this was all things where I got other very experienced artists to to basically make that stuff for the movie so and

Jonathan Correia: 44:42

it comes together phenomenally. I mean, the music, the window scene, the acting, just, it's, it's such a beautiful and tight I'm a huge fan of the BBC ghost stories for Christmas. And when this was announced, I was like, Yes, finally we have new, new downers for Christmas. I love it. Okay?

James Jay Edwards: 45:00

Well, we thanks for joining us this morning. We are out of time. I know that we this is we could talk to you for another three episodes. So anytime you want to come back, please come back. Yeah, this seemed like it was a really short one, but we are on a crunch. But before we go, where can people are you on the socials or anything? Where can people follow you to find out what you've got coming up?

Kier-La Janisse: 45:21

Well, I have, so I have, I have socials, Instagram, blue sky, which I believe are just my name, you know, Kier-La Janisse. I have a Facebook that only exists to post things on spectacular. I have a, I have a publishing company called Spectacular Optical. And so I have a blue sky, also for that, and also for Facebook for that, but I barely ever look at the Facebook, but Instagram, I'm fairly frequently on and blue sky, it's just under my name.

James Jay Edwards: 45:53

And what is coming? Is there anything you could talk about that is coming up that we can push

Kier-La Janisse: 45:57

for you? Yeah, the only, I mean, I've mentioned a bit earlier, the I'm working on a documentary adaptation of the book Killing for Culture. And so that we licensed this is like a book that came out in the early 90s. It was very important to me and to a lot of other horror fans that focuses on the history of sort of Mondo films, snuff films, take trading death films, faces of death type things, you know, stuff like this. So all very, very grim subject matter, but it just sort of goes into this, the history of people trading this type of footage. And so we optioned it for a documentary. I was originally, you know, like I was saying some things, we start off as extras and become features. I was making a documentary for the Black Emmanuel box set about snuff films to go with Emmanuel in America. And I got like, I don't know very, just slightly into it, and then I pulled it I realized, David, this is a feature this. Let's just go into it from the beginning as though it's a feature, because that way we can actually film everything more uniformly. Because a lot of times when you start off as an extra, you're filming it with the budget of an extra, which means that, you know, the camera people are all different depending on where the interviewee is located, so everything kind of looks different. I was like, I think we should make a feature out of this. So let's just stop this right now, and then we'll do the interviews on in an actual set that looks uniform, you know. So killing for culture, I think, will probably be the first documentary severins made, where it's actually made for the purpose of being a feature with the budget in mind of a feature, you know, and stuff like that. So I'm going to be working on that through the next

Jonathan Correia: 47:42

year, is, is bum fights going to be brought up at all?

Kier-La Janisse: 47:46

They'll probably be brought up. But, yeah,

Jonathan Correia: 47:49

because that feels like my generation's like Faces of Death type video tape trading thing. I mean,

Kier-La Janisse: 47:55

yeah, it got very I mean, it got so, that's the thing. Like, as it went on, it just got so, just like humanity has failed,

Jonathan Correia: 48:04

yes, looking back, I was like, a rough subject. Looking back, I was like, why did we find that at all in today? But 14, you know?

Kier-La Janisse: 48:13

Yeah, the whole, basically, the whole movie is dealing with that kind of material. And a lot of people being interviewed will probably be people who, you know, like me, watched that kind of stuff as a teenager, and now that we're old, we're kind of like, why did we watch that?

Jacob Davidson: 48:31

Thoughts? Exactly? It'll be an interesting self reflection.

Kier-La Janisse: 48:34

Yeah, exactly.

James Jay Edwards: 48:36

Well, great. So so we can keep an eye on your socials to find out the progress of that project and and when that comes out, come on back. Because, like I said, we could, we could make full episodes out of out of interviews of you. So we'll come back anytime. And this is, this has been great. Thank you for joining us this morning. Yeah, our theme song is by restless spirits. So go check them out. And our artwork is by Chris Fisher, so go check him out. You can check us out on all the socials, under @eyeonhorror, or ihorror.com which is the website we all call home. And everybody go and check out The Haunted Season. The Occupant in the Room is the is this year's entry, and it's great. It's terrific. So go check it out on shudder, and we will see you in a couple of weeks. So for me, James Jay Edwards,

Jacob Davidson: 49:30

I'm Jacob Davison,

Jonathan Correia: 49:31

I'm Jonathan Correia,

Kier-La Janisse: 49:32

I'm Kier-La Janisse.

James Jay Edwards: 49:33

Keep your eye on horror.