So, which of those characteristics specifically attracted you to Dolls?
Dee Wallace: Well I had worked with the cinematographer on a couple other movies. And I had worked with Jeff [Miller], the producer, in another movie. I knew that they knew what they were doing, and I knew it was going to look good. I read the script and I thought, “yeah, if it’s shot well and edited well, it could certainly land in the Chucky world.” And I just liked the character. I love playing characters. I know I do a lot of leading lady stuff, but I love playing weird characters. Psychos, you know, with something off. And this was a weird lady, a really weird lady. They let me play around with the look, and they’re very open to ideas. I felt comfortable going in because I knew they would be doing the best job they could do and it was going to look really good on a limited budget.
You’re absolutely right about the character thing. I thought it was really interesting, like I didn’t really see Margaret as a totally insane character. Yeah, she was a little batty, but she was right about her things. You really think she was batty?
Dee Wallace: Well, come on. [laughs] If you have dolls that have come to life and killed your son, don’t you think you’d be a little batty?
[laughs] Yeah, I guess that’s a good point.
Dee Wallace: And she’s certainly going to come off batty and out there to people who don’t think this is real. This is like The Exorcist: “yeah, sure, your head turned around.” But when [Margaret] got in me, first of all, she was very vulnerable because of her whole life with her son. And then filled with fear and knowing about what was really going on here. So to play her like, “hi, I’m the Avon lady, and I’ve got some interesting news” would not have been too interesting for that character.
You’d probably agree with me on this, given your experience and career in the genre, but I think one of the great characteristics of horror, and especially low-budget horror, are the experimental tricks it has to sort of play to keep things fresh and to keep audiences on their toes. Is that something you’d agree with?
Dee Wallace: Oh, absolutely. But I think you can say that about any film. If you look at Jaws, there’s so many innovative tricks with the camera and the editing. Because let’s face it, we don’t see the damn shark for a really long time, right?
Yeah.
Dee Wallace: Another film I love to reference about that is Don’t Look Now. Have you ever seen that?
No, I actually haven’t.
Dee Wallace: Okay dude, you’ve got to go watch this film. You see nothing, you see, like, maybe flashes of stuff. It’s all done with the acting and the directing and the editing and the camera work. It’s one of the most frightening films for me that I’ve ever seen.
I’ll definitely need to check that out. But with that idea in mind, what was your favorite experience working with a team to create a truly terrifying scene?
Dee Wallace: The first thing that comes to mind when you ask that question is The Howling. It was our last night on this ranch, and the generator went out. And so, everyone pulled their cars up and turned their headlights on. And it’s one of the most brilliantly eerie scenes I’ve ever shot, but it was – I mean, that’s the magic of movie-making. Especially when you don’t have a huge budget to go, “we’ll buy the thing for another week, right?”
For me, that’s really exciting to see in the moment, the creativity of what happened. And every single scene in Cujo was that way. I mean, Cujo was such a collaborative effort between the animal trainer, Jan de Bont (cinematographer), Lewis Teague (director), and myself, and Danny [Pintauro], who would come up with ideas. It was just an incredible joint effort of bringing in all of these creative ideas that escalated that film into what it was.
We’ve talked about it a little bit with E.T., ad keeping this idea of special effects in mind, you’ve had an incredible opportunity to work with some revolutionary special effects. Like not only in horror trying to come up with your own feel, but also like major blockbuster films [like E.T.]. I was wondering, what’s it like seeing a movie like E.T. for the first time after everything’s put in at the end. How magical of an experience is that?
Dee Wallace: Well, it’s a yin and yang experience for me. The first time you see a film, you’re remembering all the shit that went down in order to get that scene. [laughs] “Oh my god, it was raining, and we were freezing,” and all that stuff. Also, you’re usually sitting in that first cut with a bunch of suits from the studio and the producers. And everybody’s not reacting to anything because they, god forbid, don’t want to have a different reaction than their superior behind them. So, the first time I saw E.T. I thought, “oh my God, my career is over. It’s over!”
Really?!
Dee Wallace: Nobody was reacting! You know, it’s the first time you go, “oh my god, that scene that I loved isn’t in there. Why didn’t they keep that scene?” You have to understand it’s a whole process before you can actually sit there in an audience and just enjoy the film. And of course, by the time you can do that, you go, “my God, it’s brilliant. It’s a classic. It’s going to last forever.” But, you know, when I said to Blake Edwards, “this is going to be such a big hit,” he looked at me and he said, “honey, if we knew what made a hit, we’d have a lot more of them.”
So it’s a crapshoot. Everybody goes in and they do their best and they do their greatest creative work. And then the editing has to come together, and the timing has to come together, and, god forbid, the marketing has to come together. But mostly, the audience has to be ready. The soup has to be ready to eat. And with E.T., all of that came together.
