CraveOnline: Was the lipstick scene in the script?
Kevin S. Tenney: It was kind of in the script. In the script she coughed up bile which is acidic and burns a hole in her chest just between her breasts and then she just shoves the lipstick into it. Although I had not seen a lot of the low budget horror films, I had seen The Exorcist and I said that whole coughing up the bile has really been done and I don’t think we’re going to top it.
I thought the chest maybe isn’t as cool as someplace more sensitive, and I’d been reading a history of India and they were talking about way back when, red lipstick was originally worn by prostitutes, the red on the lips signified that they would give blow jobs. So red on their lips was supposed to mimic vaginal lips and then also they would put the lipstick or rouge on their nipples to make them pinker, make them pop. I thought what if we have her doing something like that, she’s drawing on the nipple, it’s sexy, it’s titillating and then she shoves it through and it’s suddenly creepy.
Did you take an actual body cast of Linnea’s chest?
I didn’t, but yeah, Steve, our makeup guy did. Then they ended up dating and I said, “You know, if a girl comes in and lets you rub goop all over her boobs, you kind of owe here dinner.”
Did you institute a mandatory mullet length in Witchboard?
[Laughs] No, it was just ‘80s. It was ’85 when it was shot so the mullet was in full spring.
It’s magnificent.
That’s what I say. Of the two, Witchboard appears to be more dated because Night of the Demons, they’re wearing costumes so costumes look the same no matter what era you’re in. It’s not as easily recognizable for ‘80s fashions the way Witchboard is.
Did everyone have to get manicures for the close-ups of their hands?
Well, no, but the guy playing Brandon did because he was rich so he had to look good. The only two people who’s hands you ever really see are his and Tawny’s, and Tawny being a woman would have really nice manicured nails, and Brandon being rich would have really nice manicured nails so it just happened that the only two people that had manicured hands were the ones that were using the Ouija board.
When it moves on its own, did you do that with magnets?
Yup, that’s exactly what we did. Nowadays they would just shoot a plate of the board by itself and then animate the planchette moving across in post later with CGI. Back then it was all done practical.
Had the Whitesnake videos happened when you cast Tawny Kitaen?
No. We were very lucky. Tawny wasn’t really known and neither was Stephen Nichols who was the second lead, the male lead. As the film was coming out, Tawny hit it big with the Whitesnake video. She was all over MTV and Stephen Nichols who had just started doing “Days of our Lives” when he did Witchboard was by that time the most popular male character in the history of soaps. So we got lucky.
Was she game for the shower scene?
Yes and no. She’d done nudity before and I think she’s probably done it since, but unlike Linnea Quigley who has no problem just taking her clothes off and being naked on camera, Tawny made sure it was a very closed set and was very worried about how she looked. So it took a little longer to shoot her shower scene than it did to shoot Linnea’s nude scene.
But it’s also a scary scene.
Right, well that was a thing too, was we debated whether or not to have a love scene earlier with her and Todd [Allen], and I thought no. I think if we’re going to see her naked, let’s do it just the one time in the shower because it’s already scary. You feel so vulnerable when you’re naked anyway, and then to be attacked while you’re naked just makes it even more scary and more creepy.
