In the original script the Lawyer got killed in a group with some others and I wanted to single him out for his own humiliating death and suddenly envisioned exactly what it should be. However the most fun was the scene where Santa uses a pair of pruning shears on a slimy lawyer in a bathroom. I’m really proud of the convoy attack / tree felling scene as it was a lot to do in a short amount of time and looks fantastic. What scene do you enjoy directing the most? Operating a drone in sub zero temperatures is certainly challenging.
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But ultimately your discomfort is temporary and what you shoot is permanent so you crack on and get it. Also standing in snow up to your knees tends to make your shoes and trousers very wet, so that added to the fun. Thankfully we woke to two feet of pristine snow, but driving and filming in it was challenging. We’d been praying for snow all week as it was yet to land but we were booked in to shoot in anticipation of a big flurry. The usual things of tight schedule, tiny budget, but mainly the cold! Our first day was the ambulance convoy scene which was a logistical nightmare with six vehicles driving on snowy roads, aerial photography, several scenes with a lot of elaborate kills and Santa bring a tree down on one of the cars.
What was the biggest obstacle you face making this movie?
It’s a fine balance to walk with a larger than life horror character and he treads it perfectly, knowing when to nod and wink to the audience and when to go totally crazy.
Once he puts on the Santa suit, metal teeth and contact lens and picks up the axe, he transforms into that terrifying character. It helps that he’s pretty much the right shape but it’s not just that. Simon, for all his faults – and god knows I was hating him long before it was fashionable – is a great actor and fully commits to a role. Why does Simon Phillips make a great Santa Claus? You kind of find yourself rooting for the bad guys at times.
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Plus I think it’s got a great and unique set of antagonists with Santa and Mrs Claus who are a hell of a lot of fun to watch. It’s got the blood and kills of a gory slasher with the tension and mystery of Silence of The Lambs. It’s a merging of the horror genre with a police/FBI procedural thriller. What sets THE NIGHTS BEFORE CHRISTMAS apart from the rest? If you’re talking less mainstream then there’s the Finnish film Rare Exports that I thought did a great spin on the Santa story. Once Upon a Time at Christmas is a personal one for obvious reasons! But Gremlins has always been a favorite since I was a kid. What is your favorite Christmas horror film? Why? We’ve enjoyed Christmas horror films through the years – Christmas Evil – Silent Night, Deadly Night – Black Christmas – just to name a few. And Simon and Sayla are such great actors, bringing so much energy to the roles. It’s always fun bringing the pair to life on the page and then on the screen as they are such a fun, larger than life pair of antagonists. These get batted back and forth between us with notes, edits etc and eventually we end up with the shooting script. When it came to writing this one we plotted it all out on index cards on the wall, then split the scenes up between us to write. Eventually, this pair of criminally insane psychopathic killers who are also devotedly in love were born! Now they’re back in The Nights Before Christmas, which follows on the story from Once Upon a Time at Christmas – but in a way that you don’t need to have seen the first to watch it.
We wanted to bring our own spin to this wonderful sub-genre and talked about the kinds of things we liked and wanted to see. We first created them for Once Upon a Time at Christmas a couple of years ago and it came out of our love of Christmas horror movies. You and Simon Phillips crafted this story of a murderous Mr. Exclusive Interview: Director, Paul Tanter (The Nights Before Christmas)
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