Horror Channel Interview – Adam Green (Victor Crowley)
This Friday (15th May) on the Horror Channel, will be UK TV Premiere of Victor Crowley.We had a chat recently with the film’s director Adam Green , sharing his personal tragedies, George Romeroโs inspirational words. Also the importance of genre comedy and hinting that the Bayou Butcher may rise againโฆ
Q.Adam, youโre back on the UKโs Horror Channel this Friday night with your latest โHatchetโ instalment VICTOR CROWLEY. Excited?
Iโm always thrilled to hear that another one of my films will be playing on the UKโs Horror Channel! Itโs crazy to think that the US hasnโt had a horror specific television channel in 6 years now, only horror themed subscription platforms like SHUDDER. Then again- look at the real life horror weโre dealing with here as far as our current President goes. Clearly our country has made far worse decisions than doing away with our horror television network.
Q.You’ve called VICTOR CROWLEY your most personal movie ever. Why?
I truly intended to be finished with HATCHET after the original trilogy. When HATCHET 3 was released in 2013 I had absolutely no desire to ever step foot back in Victor Crowleyโs swamp ever again. However, life had other plans for me and in 2014 I underwent a series of personal tragedies that changed everything. Within a span of just thirteen days I endured a heart shattering divorce, the tragic death of Dave Brockie, one of my best friends and co-stars on my TV series HOLLISTON and the dissolving of HOLLISTONโs home network FEARnet, in a corporate merger which left my show trapped in television purgatory for six years. Iโll spare you the details of the dark year or so that followed but my health deteriorated down into a truly frightening state.
Then in October of 2015 George Romero asked if I would host his panel at a horror convention in my hometown of Boston, Masachusetts. There was no way I was going to say โnoโ to George. At the end of the panel he pointed out to me just how many in the crowd were wearing HATCHET or HOLLISTON or โAdam Greenโ T-shirts and then he turned me away from the crowd and gave me a short but extremely blunt pep talk about what my work means to โthese kidsโ and that I have to get back on my feet and back to doing what I do best. The long story short is that 
George snapped me out of it and made me see the light, in particularly what HATCHET had come to mean to the genre.
However, if I was going to bring back Victor Crowley I only wanted to do it if it could be a surprise for the fans, we set out to make the film in secret. I still canโt believe we pulled it off! The end result was a much more personal and honest film than I ever would have had the courage to make otherwise. I worked out a lot of the pain I was going through during that dark point in my life. Several critics have called VICTOR CROWLEY โthe best HATCHET film yetโ but I am still far too close to the process of making the movie to be able to rank it against the other three films with any kind of clarity.
Q.VC is more comical than ever, do โHatchetโ fans expect that fun side of the franchise to be upped every single time?
HATCHETโs sense of humor is precisely what sets it apart from other slashers of its kind. The series may proudly wear all of the expected slasher movie tropes on its sleeves but it is the comedic tone of the films that make them a more entertaining experience overall than the slashers that came before it. Rarely were the 80โs slashers intentionally funny and as Kane Hodder always points out, with the sequels in the big franchises the audience merely tolerated the time they had to spend with the characters while they waited to see them die. If you look at the first three films as one long movie the humor actually gets toned down slightly with each entry as the story works its way to its action packed final act. So with VICTOR CROWLEY I got to hit the re-set button and really amp up the comical side of things once again.
This time around the filmโs theme also holds a mirror up to an audience that has become shamefully numb to murder and obsessed with the next great true crime docu-series. Think about it, just twenty years ago major network sit-coms like FRIENDS and SEINFELD were โmust see TVโ not only in the US but around the world. Now itโs real life tragedies like MAKING A MURDERER, DONโT F*CK WITH CATS, and TIGER KING that have become our passionate water cooler conversations at the office and a major force in modern day pop culture. The sheer fact that more people are talking about Joe
Exoticโs mullet than the mistreatment of the actual tigers in TIGER KING sickens me. I mean, our Presidentโs own dim-witted son was asked what he thought of the Netflix phenomenon and his take away from the series was that he โdidnโt realize a tiger was so affordable!โ The characters in VICTOR CROWLEY are all looking to cash in on a massacre that left at least forty innocent people dead and they have absolutely no regard for the human lives lost. Sadly, thatโs exactly what would happen if the events of HATCHET were real.
Q.Many have called the film your โScream 3โ, do you agree with that assessment?
Any time someone mentions one of my films in the same breath as a Wes Craven film my heart grows another size bigger. I would agree with that assessment in that overall the HATCHET series is more akin to Cravenโs SCREAM series than the 80โs slashers it is often compared to. When the first HATCHET came out nothing made me happier than hearing seasoned horror fans draw comparisons to AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON and FRIGHT NIGHT – the two films that influenced HATCHET the most. John Landis and Tom Holland had both taken tired sub-genres that had grown out of fashion and updated them by infusing comedy into their charactersโ dialogue. With HATCHET I tried to take the same approach with the slasher sub-genre that they had taken with the werewolf and vampire sub-genres so itโs always a huge compliment to hear that others recognize it.
Q.What did star Kane Hodder add to VC this time that you weren’t expecting?
Kane has always approached each film as if Victor Crowley is actually starting to enjoy killing the more that he does it. So after ten years at peace without ripping a single head from a body, I think that Victor Crowley revelled in the over the top kills more this time than ever before. For Kane personally, he had always thought that HATCHET 3 was the last time he was ever going to play Victor Crowley so when I told him I had written a fourth film that we were going to make in secret and then surprise the fans with on the 10th anniversary of the original film, I swear I saw tears of joy in his eyes. Of course, the tears were actually a mixture of gasoline and dead baby juice as we all know Kane Hodder doesnโt cryโฆ
Q.The inevitable questionโฆcan we expect the beast from the bayou to rise again?
Given the success of VICTOR CROWLEY itโs a safe bet that weโll be seeing the Bayou Butcher paint the screen red again. One of the aspects of the original trilogy that I am most proud of is that the films fit together as one cohesive story, always starting on the very frame that the previous entry ended on. So just like how I had the original trilogy plotted out before we ever shot a frame of the first film, I had several films plotted out before I started shooting VICTOR CROWLEY as well. The biggest reason that the HATCHET series has remained so strong over the years is that the same key people have been involved with the making of each film. That is incredibly rare in this genre. We also donโt rush out sequels like they are being mass produced on a conveyor belt and my crew and I only come back to the series when we are all truly ready to do so. The secret to how weโve been able to fall back in love with Victor Crowley all over again each time is that weโve always put a few years of working on other projects in between making HATCHET sequels.
Q.Youโre a master at injecting the slasher genre with great killer comedy. And of course, humour runs through the veins of all your TV/Radio/Podcast ventures. Has humour always played a vital part of your creative life?
Yes, always. Comedy was where I originally started out and it is a major aspect of my story telling voice. I did stand-up comedy for a few years when I was first coming up, not because I ever had any interest in being a stand-up comic but because I knew that the experience would help me become a stronger comedy writer. While my films like FROZEN and SPIRAL may have had no room for humor in them given the tone of the stories being told, those are rare exceptions for me. Overall my goal is to always entertain my audience, not to punish them with ugly, mean spirited, or depraved stories. We have real life for that.
Q.Youโve written, directed, produced, acted, been a musician, author, marketerโฆis there an ambition left still lying dormant?
I still believe thereโs time for me to become a professional basketball player. All I need is another growth spurt and to develop some athletic ability.
Q.How are you coping with the lockdown?
When the United States started going into lockdown, my first instinct was of course to want to try and help in some way. Unfortunately, Iโm just a filmmaker, Iโm not smart enough to assist our incredible doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel on the front lines. However, the one thing I could do was entertain and give folk somewhere to โgoโ every day for a few hours, so I put on โAdam Greenโs CORONAPOCALYPSE Live Stream Seriesโ where every single day I hosted live streams of my films, TV shows, and other projects for FREE on my ArieScope Pictures’ YouTube channel. I literally gave away every single thing Iโve made over the course of my twenty-two year career so far.
Starting with the very first stream (a live reading of my novel I SURVIVOR) various cast and crew members from my films started to turn up in the chat thread without me even having asked them to. Not only would they chat with fans and answer their questions during each dayโs show but a few of us would even check in with fans throughout the night and at odd hours just to say hello and see how everyone was holding up. Itโs very hard to explain to someone who wasnโt there taking part in it but the experience became something truly special that helped a lot of people (myself included) get through that first very difficult month. I didnโt know what to expect but by the end of the month the series had amassed over 50,000 views โ and counting.
The whole experience is one that I will never forget as it brought out the โgoodโ in so many people.
I must admit Iโve been slightly lost since the daily streams ended but, thankfully, Iโve been able to distract myself by working on finishing the new upcoming episode of my SCARY SLEEPOVER series, producing the weekly MOVIE CRYPT podcast I do with Joe Lynch, and writing-writing-writing since keeping busy is the only way I can stay sane during this awful time.
Q.Finally, whatโs in the pipeline for you? Is โKiller Pizzaโ still on the menu?
Iโd tell you but then Iโd have to kill you. I have several exciting things coming and originally expected to be letting the cat out of the bag on at least two of the things Iโve been working on by the start of summer. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has put a stop to everything for now. For the moment my only job is praying for all of us.
VICTOR CROWLEY is broadcast on Friday 15 May @ 21:00
Discover more from
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
About the Author
