New Feature - Fiendish Friday Interviews

How long have you been in the business?
Six years. The first year I just made props to offer for sale on E-Bay, and then in 2001 I filed the paperwork with the State of California, and became an official, honest to God business!

How did you start?
I basically started making props for myself and my home haunt. The people would come up to me and ask if I could make a corpse for them…
And then the business was born.

What’s the scariest Haunted House you ever attended? Do you still find time to attend Haunted Houses?
First off, I’m jaded when it comes to Haunted Houses. Because of what I do for a living, it’s very hard to scare me. Second, I run into the problem that “I’m” to scary for the haunted attraction actors. At 6’4, 240 lbs, a lot of the actors see me coming and just let me go on by. It’s really frustrating to me because I want them to scare me… it just doesn’t happen anymore. But I will say, the scariest Haunted House I’ve ever been to has to be New Orleans “House of Shock”. I do try to visit as many Haunted Houses as my schedule permits, every October.

What inspires you to create?
That’s a really hard question to answer because I gather inspiration from so many sources. Books, movies, comics, they all just percolate in my subconscious until I need something and then it manifests itself in my work.

Are you married? How is your wife involved in the business?
Yes, I’ve been married to a beautiful, redheaded spitfire for 13 years now, and have a beautiful daughter who’s the splitting image of her mother. And woe to any young man who wants to date my daughter! I plan on hanging a corpse from the front porch, with a sign stapled to its chest that says “This is what happened to the first boy who dated my daughter”. No, my wife has her own career and I think she still wonders when I am going to grow up and get a “real” job.

Do you ever get scared anymore? What does scare you?
Not really, but I still love Horror films. There just hasn’t been any lately that scared me. What does scare me? I would have to say Devil movies. I think it’s my Christian upbringing. Any Exorcist type movie scares the shit out of me! My wife teases me about it. Here I am, mister tough horror guy, and I totally cover my face when it comes to Devil movies… oh well.

Do you believe in real Haunted Houses? Ghosts? Etc.
Oh yes, I’ve had a couple of supernatural experiences in my life. We had some strange experiences in our house, before my daughter was born. The cats would suddenly get terrified and take off with their tails all puffed out, doors would close by themselves, and once I was in the shower and when I opened the bathroom door, there was a child’s trick or treat bucket sitting on the floor in front of the door. Later on we had some friends over to the house, and one of them was a psychic. As soon as she walked in the house, she sensed a presence. She told me it was a spirit of a child, and that he liked playing tricks, like scaring the cats. The phenomena lasted around a week and then stopped. I guess he moved on.

What is Fear?
I think we all have phobic pressure points, and when a book or a film, or a real life situation touches those pressure point- we feel fear. There are common fears that everyone feels- death, dismemberment, falling, being buried alive, the dark etc. Then you have the less common phobic pressure points- fear of spiders, fear of clowns… well you get the idea. In order for a person to feel fear in a haunted house setting, it has to strike a personal nerve with that particular person. That’s why most haunted attractions use darkness, someone chasing you with a chainsaw, creepy clowns, all those things add up to fear in 99.9 % of the human population.

Who’s your average customer?
I would say it’s a 50/50 split with Home Haunters and Haunted Attractions.

Who’s the main competition in your market and why?
You know, I really don’t look at other people or other companies as competitors. I think of us as artists, and I enjoy seeing what other people are creating. I try to run my business with an extremely high standard and I let my work speak for itself. If someone pays X amount of money for shipping and I ship out their product and the actual cost is less then what they paid me- I refund the difference. Do I have to do that? No, but to me it’s the right thing to do. I also make sure that I don’t copy an idea that someone else is doing. Again, there no law against that, I just don’t think that’s a very honorable way to run a business. You want to know what the secret of success is? Treat people the way you yourself would like to be treated. It’s that simple. I think Kevin Alvey of Gore Galore feels the same way. He seems to me to be a very stand up guy and I love his work. I’ve also enjoyed watching Jeremy D'alessandro’s work evolve in the last couple years. He has a business called Creepy Collection, and the more corpses he makes, the better they become. So yeah, to me it’s less about competition and more about the art form. A hell of a lot of hours go into making a corpse prop by hand, and none of us charge realistically for the amount of time it takes to make one. What is your time worth? $10/hr, $20/hr? None of us are getting rich off of this. We do it because we are passionate about haunting, and there’s no greater kick then seeing your work in a Haunted Attraction.

What are your 5 year goals?
I take it day by day. Every day I sell or rent something, that’s another day I’m working for myself and enjoying the creativity of what I do. When the orders stop… then I go back to working for the man. I have been very blessed with what I do, and I’ve worked with some really creative individuals. Five years from now I would like to be even more firmly established and hopefully get bigger and better challenges sent my way. So if you are a big haunted attraction or theme park…

Bring it on!

Check out even more on Kevin's Web Sites: http://www.edgeincollection.com/ and http://www.girlsandcorpses.com/.

Technorati Tags : Haunted House : Dark Attractions : Film : Corpses