Creator of Shudder’s new Christmas anthology about spooky holiday traditions

If you’ve been crawling around dither Are you looking for something to add a little spookiness to your seasonal viewing, you may have noticed this Haunted season– An all-new anthology series from showrunner Kier-La Janisse, Genre expert whose many works include a distinguished book on film theory House of psychotic women And the most recent documentary about folk horror Dark forests and enchanted days.

first entry, To shoot you have to come lastwritten and directed by Sean Hogan; It’s about a group of men carrying a coffin to bury themselves and are haunted (literally) by their past sins as they make the journey. To learn more about Haunted seasonwhich will bring a new entry to Shudder over the next several years, we spoke with Janisse via video chat.

Cheryl Eddy, io9: I read your book Christmas Terror: Christmas horror on film and televisionWhich gives a fascinating history of the genre and the traditions behind it. But for people who might not have read it, I’ll borrow one of the chapter titles and ask: “Why a Ghost Story at Christmas”?

Care la Janice: It’s interesting because Derek Johnston, who wrote this chapter, years ago wrote a book called Haunted seasonsfrom which my entire address was copied (laughs). When I did Christmas terror The book contains hundreds of films, but most of them are clearly related to Christmas in some way. It’s either about Christmas or set at Christmas, or there are visual Christmas trappings so you can justify it as a Christmas movie.

But a lot of BBC A Ghost Story for Christmas (Episodes) The 1970s have nothing to do with Christmas. And so when I included them in the book, I thought North American audiences wouldn’t understand why these movies were here because they’d say, “What do they have to do with Christmas?” I asked Derek if he would write a chapter talking about where this tradition comes from, about telling ghost stories about Christmas and the idea of ​​Christmas programming – not necessarily the programming itself, but the fact that it was chosen to be programmed at that time.

It dates back centuries, coming from the older tradition of telling winter tales. (When) people gather around the stove or around the fire, and come up with entertainment to pass the time while trying to keep warm. Winter tales were what they called them because they would be those scary tales they would tell (when) the days were very short and (the season) turned into a new year. There is the idea of ​​liminal boundaries between one existential state and another. They would tell these ghost stories, and over time, once we start writing literature, you’ll start to see references to them in (places like the works of) Shakespeare and Marlowe.

Then of course in the Victorian era, you have the Charles Dickens novel Christmas carolwhich was very important, not only to the idea of ​​a Christmas ghost story, but just to Christmas in general. It was part of Queen Victoria’s commission to repopularize Christmas. That Charles Dickens wrote that story when he did that was a big part of not only establishing the idea that Christmas is the time when we tell ghost stories, but that this is the time of year when we celebrate Christmas – because before Queen Victoria, he had sort of fallen As a popular holiday. Christmas carol It became important in creating a lot of these ideas and myths that we have about Christmas – the Christmas tree decorations and all these accoutrements that we associate with Christmas that came from that period.

The Christmas ghost story became closely associated with that period, and that was there too So a lot Victorian ghost story writers…there are tons and tons of them. So when radio came, they started doing radio adaptations of it Christmas carol And other types of ghost stories about the holiday. Then that turned into television.

So the BBC has always been active and providing Christmas ghost stories in one form or another. In the 1970s, Lawrence Gordon Clark, who was a director, suggested this idea, not expecting it to be a series. He has produced one film adaptation of Mr. James’ story Barchester Stalls. He used an earlier adaptation of Mr. James’s story as evidence that this could be very popular; Jonathan Miller made an adaptation called Whistle and I will come to you In the late 1960s, which is great. And it wasn’t made for Christmas. It was made for a different time of year, for a different program.

But Lawrence Gordon Clark took it to them and said, “Look how good it is, and imagine if we could do something like that at Christmas.” So he made Barchester Stalls. It was a huge success, so he got permission every year to continue making another film. And so it became a series; Throughout the 1970s, there would be a different episode.

This is what my series is about Haunted season It’s based on the idea of ​​an annual ghost story film that premieres every year. I know that for a North American audience, using the word “series” to describe something that only has one episode for a year is weird, but it builds on that tradition. It’s basically an ongoing Christmas special, with a new installment every year. This tradition still exists in the United Kingdom. So this series is just part of that larger tradition.

io9: How did you decide that? To shoot you have to come last As the first entry? How did writer-director Sean Hogan get involved?

Janice: Sean Hogan is a filmmaker, book writer, and playwright, and he does all kinds of things. He’s incredibly talented, and really great at period dialogue. So I suggested to him – and he can do a lot with a little, which is important because we have very low budgets for these things – if he would make a short film originally for Severin Films’ popular horror collection. We were making our new collection of boxes, All the Haunting Be Ours Volume Two. The first group contained my documentary (Dark forests and enchanted days) On it – It had a new movie on it. And we said, “We don’t have the equivalent of that for the second set of funds.” So we asked Sean if he would make a movie about it.

I gave him some prompts for it. The idea of ​​putting it on the path of corpses was something that came from one of the prompts I gave him.

But before he finished the film, I remembered this idea that Shudder’s Sam Zimmerman and I had more than a decade ago when we were working together at Fangoria magazine. At the time we were trying to convince Fangoria to do a Christmas ghost story that we could premiere on the website, and the publisher wouldn’t take it. But we wanted Sean Hogan to make this movie.

So when Sean was making this movie for me, before it was finished, I said to David Gregory (of Severin Films): “What if we could pitch this to Shudder about being part of an ongoing series of Christmas ghost stories?” And David was like, “Sure, do it.”

And so I had a conversation with Sam, and it was amazing because this idea that we had that hadn’t been approved for years and years. We were so excited about it, like, “Let’s do it now!” And that’s what really happened. In some ways it was a long-term project, but then it was like everything clicked, where it was like this could all actually work, you know? I’m so glad Sean Hogan made the first movie because he was the director we were talking about on Fangoria all those years ago.

I love the movie. It turned out well. He made it with a small crew in the UK, and you wouldn’t know it by watching the film, but it was freezing and raining while we were filming it. They were in very adverse circumstances, but I think it went really well.

io9: To shoot you have to come last Very traditional, very similar to the style of old movies. Is this something we’ll see as the series continues?

Janice: I don’t know that it’s going to be black and white, but it’s going to be all period. They won’t necessarily be in the same period, but they are supposed to deal with the past in some way. The guidelines I give to filmmakers are that nothing is definitely post-1960, for example. You can go back to the Middle Ages if you want, or you can go to the 1950s, you know, but it has to feel like it (like a period piece). This is what tradition has always been.

It is interesting, when A Ghost Story for Christmas The last two episodes premiered in the 1970s, and they made for modern stories, not adapted like old Victorian ghost stories. They created new stories, modern stories set in a modern setting. Audiences revolted at the time, many of whom received bad reviews. Now people love those episodes because now they’re old, now they’re old pieces. But at the time they were new, people were saying, “You’re ruining tradition!” So I decided I would keep the parameters. It’s (a very broad time frame), but they will still be time periods of some sort.

io9: Can you tease anything about any of the other entries?

Janice: The only thing I can impress is if I do one of them (as my first feature film). I’ve asked other people, they’re writing their scripts now, and I’ll tease them (more) when the time comes closer.

io9: I’m a big fan of Dark forests and enchanted daysa popular horror documentary. Are these Christmas ghost stories part of the folk horror tradition?

Janice: It definitely intersects because of the oral tradition aspect of it. Like a lot of the BBC’s Christmas ghost stories, you might call it more like gothic horror than folklore, but that depends on what’s going on. Something like this Warning for the curious and Whistle and I will come to you You can call up folklore because they are definitely excavating an artifact from the past that carries all this baggage with it. There are certainly folk horror elements in some of it, but some of it is definitely in the gothic world. But I think Christmas ghost stories, just because they’re connected to this oral tradition, make them more connected to folklore.

io9: I mentioned some titles, but for people who are watching the first episode of the series Haunted season And they want to see more in this context, what do you advise them to look for?

Janice: Well, Shader has licensed Jonathan Miller’s work Whistle and I will come to you. Start with just that. They licensed Lawrence Gordon Clark A Ghost Story for Christmas From the seventies. These are the ones my series refers to, so I recommend taking them all – there are nine different options for what they can watch. I don’t know if they have Stone bar on the tremor (Editor’s Note: They do!) but Stone bar It was broadcast for Christmas. It has nothing to do with Christmas, but was broadcast as part of Christmas programming, as A Christmas Ghost Story. This is great too.

He watches To shoot you have to come lastThe first episode of Haunted seasonon chills now.

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