March 26, 2011 a panel of five slasher villains of the 1980s met in Indianapolis to talk about killing people on-screen. They were Ted White (Friday the 13th Part IV), Derek MacKinnon (Terror Train), Wayne Doba (Funhouse), Bob Elmore (Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2), and Peter Giuliano (The Prowler).
Highlights were:
* Ted White was asked to read 3 pages of dialogue for his audition. He was then offered the part of Jason, who has no dialogue. He turned it down. Shortly thereafter, he was approached by the FX guy, who happened to live nearby. The FX guy then talked White into taking the part informing him of union rules that he must be paid as long as he is on hold. Due to the makeup process, body casting and more, he would likely get paid 6 weeks for only a few days of work.
* Wayne Doba claims to have been discovered in Miami while he was doing a mime disco mechanical man tap-dancing routine.
* Bob Elmore was Leatherface for much of TCM2. Bill Johnson is usually given credit, but Elmore says he didn’t do many scenes because he was unable to lift the 70-pound chainsaw. He also says Bill Moseley’s Chop Top makeup took 4-5 hours to put on and another 2-3 hours to get back off.
* Ted White blasted Tom Savini, saying the man is a “thief”. Savini filmed the makeup process of White without his knowledge, and then later sold the video. He also blasted director Joe Zito, saying he was “not one of his favorite people” and that his methods were “unorthodox”.
* Bob Elmore said that Tobe Hooper had a temper and would purposely crash rental cars. He would also bring guns to the set and shoot off blanks, and referred to the original TCM as a comedy.
* Wayne Doba agrees that Hooper had a temper, and his directions would include such things as “hump her like a mad dog”.
* Derek MacKinnon says that “Terror Train” was actually dialogue director Caryl Wickman’s film, but she handed it over to Roger Spottiswoode because they were lovers at the time. On set, Caryl and cinematographer John Alcott would repeatedly tell Derek to ignore the directions that Roger would give.
* MacKinnon further says that Jamie Lee Curtis was not helpful on set and to his knowledge has not done signings at a convention. He sees this as a “shame” because her entire career is founded on her early work in horror films.
* Wayne Doba says Sylvia Miles, who played Madame Zena, was a sweetheart. After filming their scene together — where she masturbates him and then he kills her — they went back to her trailer and ate Chinese.
* In the scene where Leatherface is standing in the back of the pickup truck with a chainsaw, Bob Elmore actually fractured his wrist.
* Ted White has been in Hollywood since the 1950s and has done many big projects. He told a story where he arrived at a hotel and they took him up a private elevator to his room and there was fruit and a full liquor supply. He invited other cast members up and they had a party. The next day, the fruit and liquor was back, so he invited them up again. He was eventually confronted by a man in a suit who wanted to kick his ass. The man was ED White, an important man who was denied his hotel suite! (On this same set, Ted tells of meeting Lana Turner in her dressing room and how lax she was, not even noticing him while she changed.)