Bill Moseley is used to all kinds of scares. Forever synonymous with Austin’s film scene for his creepy and gruesome performance as Chop Top in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, he’s become a full-blown horror icon, on set for all kinds of mayhem, murder, and chaos. But has he ever seen anything really scary while making a movie – as in, a genuine supernatural experience?
That’s the story of his latest film, horror-comedy Scared to Death, which is now available to stream. In it, Moseley plays Felix, a realtor and amateur psychic who gets caught up in an all-too-real ghost story when he leases a seemingly cursed orphanage to an indie horror director.
So, has Moseley ever had the real creeps while filming? “I have not,” he said. “Looking back on my hundred thousand credits [the] worst experience I had was when DoubleTree was out of chocolate chip cookies.” The closest real-life scare he had was a couple of years ago when he was filming Night Talkers in Muncie, Indiana “and there was a killer tornado about 5 miles south of us. But that wasn’t really weird. That was just weather.”
His co-star, Lin Shaye, hasn’t had a supernatural experience on set either, but that’s not because there was definitely nothing there. “I definitely believe that there’s so much that we know nothing about that it’s impossible that there’s not entities.” She explained, “I think it happens on a regular basis, but not so much on set because it’s so technical and so much to process. … It takes a certain kind of quiet for me to access something I was not expecting.”
The two horror legends are both arguably playing against expectations. As dictatorial director Max, those that know Shaye best as demon hunter Elise Rainier in the Insidious films may not expect her to play such a monster – and that’s even before she lets the house’s evil forces get under her skin. “People think of me in real life as like Elise, but I’m nothing like her,” she said. “I’m probably more like the character in Scared to Death!”
Similarly, Moseley’s gentler turn as Felix is far removed from his extravagant performances in films like House of 1000 Corpses and Repo! The Genetic Opera. “It’s a lot of fun to play a part like Otis or Chop Top or Luigi, just because there’s a lot of meat on those bones and it’s a lot of fun to go hog wild. But it’s also a challenge to keep it a little more tightly wrapped and play an actual human being.”
There’s one actual human that Moseley sees as a challenge too far: playing the part of Bill Moseley. “I’ve been asked to do that a couple of times,” he said, “and that’s weird, because how do you play yourself?” He grinned that trademark goofy-scary grin. “I turn those parts down, by the way.”
Here’s the twist: writer/director Paul Boyd explained that when he originally approached Shaye for the film, “she was going to play Bill’s role, and she goes, ‘I don’t want to play the psychic. I always play the psychic. I want to play the mean, horrible boss,’ and I said ‘Great!’ Because this would allow us to lean into the comedy.” After all, while horror has always been a huge part of Shaye’s filmography, dating back to her role as a receptionist in 1982 slasher Alone in the Dark, she’s equally adept at laughs. “Kingpin, There’s Something About Mary, that’s where I know her from.” With her locked in to play the part of the director, “Then it became about Bill playing the psychic, and that’s a very different role for him too. But he’s so dry and so goofy that it worked.”
That potential for both comedy and complexity is part of what attracted Shaye to playing Max. She said, “She’s nasty but very egotistical. She thinks she’s kind of glamorous, but I wanted to make sure that she had a back story, so she wasn’t just a bitch.”
Scared to Death is available on streaming platforms now.
