I have been very curious recently about the whole thing of child actors in horror movies. This is in case you hadn’t guessed this from the title
I realise that most child actors presumably don’t get to watch their films until a looong time after they acted in them, I am thinking specifically of the actor who played Gage in Pet Semetary here. I believe I read somewhere that he didn’t get to watch that until he was in his teens.
What I was wondering about is what people think about free-choice and parental responsibility etc in these cases. As I have understood it the actors play their scenes “blind” in many cases, for example they may have said to the actor playing Gage “Just make a scary face now honey!” and then clipped it together to the final chilling result.
Anyone read anything or have opinions on how these kids feel, years later seeing “themselves” commit on-scene atrocities? I know I for one would be severely fucked up if I were the kid who played Regan in The Exorcist, seeing later in life what they had me depict when I was a kid…
I just got the DVD of The Shining and it has a behind-the-scenes documentary included. According to it, the boy who played Danny (Danny Lloyd) wasn’t told what kind of movie he was making until long after the shooting was done. Kubrick insisted on this as to not cause psychological damage to the kid.
Well, I know from reading interviews that Linda Blair was cognizant of what was going on in The Exorcist.
One bizarre case is Nicoletta Elmi, who was in some of the most extreme Euro-horror films of the seventies, she was in Flesh for Frankenstein and Profondo Rosso, she was still appearing in those films into the eighties-Demons. At least one of those was rated X in the US; I don’t know what the ratings are/were like in Italy but I’d assume she didn’t see some of those movies until she was older.
Well, Linda Blair has built her whole career off of The Exorcist, so she’s probably not too upset. Although it must suck being so profoundly typecast by one of your earliest movies. I just checked on the IMDB, and it says she was 13 when the movie was made.
Maybe it’s just because I’m an American, but it bothers me a lot more to see kids put into sexual situations in movies. Putting on monster make up, screaming, and throwing up pea soup is one thing, but shoving a crucifix up your hoo-ha is something else entirely. (I haven’t seen the movie in a while; is it edited so that she could’ve been off the set when those shots were filmed?) Kids play monsters and gross-out all the time, and I imagine child actors would be even better able to separate the fiction from the reality than a kid who was just watching the movie. But letting a kid take part in sexual scenes, especially in horror movies where it’s usually sex == violent grisly death, just seems like bad parenting.
This isn’t exactly a horror movie (although some would insist it was ), but I can’t help but wonder about the little girl who played Caligula’s daughter (Julia Drusilla) at the end of Caligula (she was only in it for a few minutes before Caligula, Caesonia, and she get killed). Imagine your parents pulling that movie out to embarass you in front of your Prom date.
“And this was Sally when she was four!”
Or the kid who played Gemellus.
SolGrundy that is of course exactly the scene I am talking about. 13 sounds (to me) old enough to understand that the scary stuff is just playing, but I am not sure how I would feel later about that scene, even if they filmed it in such a way that “I” didn’t do it…
That’s what I heard about that scene, too, Walloon.
Plus from everything I’ve heard, (some special on her on E!), she appears normal, well-adjusted, etc. At least, no more weird than any other person.
It’s so weird to think of the kids being filmed. Like that an actual child doing those things in real life. When we see them on film, it’s just another scene, but when you think that someone actually had to do that…it does get bizarre. Do they still resort to the “your dog died, kid, now make with the water works”? Hm. In “The Shining,” I’ve always sort of wondered how they made Danny Lloyd do the imaginary friend thing…it seems uncanny that a little child could act so demonic. Oh! And the little girls, the ghosts of the ones who died before, can you imagine having to do that?
), but I can’t help but wonder about the little girl who played Caligula’s daughter (Julia Drusilla) at the end of Caligula (she was only in it for a few minutes before Caligula, Caesonia, and she get killed). Imagine your parents pulling that movie out to embarass you in front of your Prom date.