Actor Nicholas Vince has made a career out of playing monsters. Best known to people as the man behind the Chatterer mask in Hellraiser, Vince has also starred in another Clive Barker project, Nightbreed as well as more recent films Book of Monsters and For We Are Many. Writing is another of his passions having written two collections of short stories, What Monsters Do and Other People’s Darkness, as well as a new origin of his famous Chatterer counterpart. He’s even had a go at directing, having shot three short films: The Night Whispered, Your Appraisal, and Necessary Evils.
Given all this work, primarily within the horror genre, Vince has amassed a wealth of experiences, experiences he is turning into a one man show called I Am Monsters!. The stage show will run for three nights 8th October – 10th October 2019 at the Pleasance Theatre Islington as part of this year’s London Horror Festival. The festival features a variety of horror-themed theatre shows and is timed perfectly to get you in the mood for Halloween. I Am Monsters! will see Vince recount tales of his time working with Clive Barker, and sharing his experiences living as a gay man in Thatcher’s Britain. In addition to offering plenty of insight into his body of work and the climate in which they were made, he’ll also be reading some extracts from his favourite horror literature.
In the midst of rehearsals and preparations, THN caught up with him to get a little more information about the show, his time working with Clive Barker, and conquering your fears.
It’s not long until I Am Monsters! debuts, how are you feeling, are you nervous, excited?
It moves from, ‘oh my God, I’m so looking forward to this’, to, ‘oh my God, why on Earth did I think I could do this?!’, on a daily, five-minute basis. We’ve started rehearsals, we’re now fine-tuning the script…I think I’m up to draft thirteen of the script now. It’s just rewording and shifting things around a little bit, thinking, ‘oh that bit might work better there.’ It is all the emotional things that you expect at this stage when I’m at less than a month before curtain up. I looked at the calendar yesterday and thought, ‘oh my God, it’s a month!’ But I’m really looking forward to it.
I’m looking forward to sharing some stories that I’ve not had a chance to tell before. I’m looking forward to sharing extracts from some of my favourite classic literature horror novels. Just putting it all together with a story of my life, how I met Clive [Barker], what it was like growing up being the weird kid who loved monsters.
It is just you on the stage; are you daunted by that, or are you looking forward to the intimacy that will bring because it’s just you and the audience?
I am looking forward to that. I love talking to people en-mass or individually. There is a huge joy in telling stories and listening to an audience reaction, and working with an audience. I’ve not been on ‘stage’ stage for a few years now, so that’s exciting. I’m really pleased to be back in the theatre properly. It’s a one man show, so it is just me on stage, so it’s not like being in a play. I was talking to my husband earlier and was saying it’s not like you have to do a monologue for an hour. I am just telling stories and sharing some readings, so if I don’t get something absolutely right, it’s not going to matter. It’s going to be fun.
There will be some more personal stories than you’ve not told before, what made you decide that now was the right time to share them?
I’ve been the patron of the London Horror Festival since 2016 and I’ve been involved for a couple of years before that. It started when I went to see a friend’s show, and I was very impressed by their stage show. I then dramatised two of my short stories from the book What Monsters Do as short plays at the start of an evening. Through my involvement, I’ve got to see a lot of horror shows, and I just love horror theatre. There’s something very remarkable about it.
This [I Am Monsters!] isn’t necessarily going to be a show that’s going to chill you to the bone – there are some slightly disturbing parts to it – but it’s not going to be really scary like The Woman in Black. I wanted to share some of the stories, share my enthusiasm for monsters, and just really celebrate them. That’s what the show is, as much as anything else – a celebration of monsters.
I just thought that now was the time because the older I get the less chance I’m going to have to do this. Having watched all these great shows, I just wanted to give it a go and see what happens.
You’re a very vocal member of the horror community, what is it about the genre and this community that you love so much?
I think this is the word you just used, it’s community. It really is a community. It’s tremendously supportive of each other. Frightfest is a great example. You have a tremendously responsive audience, who are not only responsive but supportive. They really encourage young filmmakers, those people trying stuff out. Sometimes those films don’t work as well as the filmmakers would hope, but people are just really supportive.
I think the other thing I love about the horror community, and I speak for myself as a member of the horror community, I know I’m weird. This is a given as far as I’m concerned, therefore I think it helps me not be judgemental. The horror community is really welcoming to people. There’s the Frightfest family I meet up with in August, Glasgow, and Halloween, there’s the London Horror Festival family that I’ve built-up through meeting performers that have come back year after year. I’ve got to see them grow and try different things. Grow as performers and writers and playwrights and so on.
I think that’s what I love about the horror community. I think horror as a genre has a big role to play in our society. When we made Hellraiser, we did not make this film for children, but I’ve met many people who have said, ‘this film terrified me as a kid’, – I’m not surprised, it’s not who we were making it for. But then they say that they watched it with their mother because she was really into horror and that was something that they did together.
I watched the BBC Ghost Story for Christmas with my family. I watched the Universal and Hammer Horror movies with my mum when they were on late at night. It was something you did as a family. I think it’s good to have these experiences because you need them. Especially as children, you need to learn how to deal with the fact that you’re scared. I think that’s really important. I do not believe in terrorising children for the sake of it, but if you do it in a supportive environment then it really helps. It helped me. That’s why I became really interested in monsters. I think for many young people, Nightbreed in particular for example, it’s dealing with your own ‘otherness’. For whatever the reason that is, however, you do not keep pace with your companions, however it is you’re out of pace with your schoolmates or the people around you. I think having horror literature to help explore those ideas and then finding a community who will support and accept you for who you are. I think that’s incredibly important.
We’ve spoken before about how out of everything in the horror world it’s The Chatterer that absolutely terrifies my mother. You must get that a lot.
Oh yes, I think I told you last time about meeting the lady in the pub and my friend introducing me as The Chatterer and her running from the pub for twenty minutes. These characters, really, really touch people deeply. I love the fact that someone contacted me on Facebook and said, ‘I like terrifying my mum by imitating the chattering of the teeth’. I said, ‘you’re not a very nice son’ and he said, ‘well she taught me how to do it’. I got a message the following day from his mum saying, ‘he’s right, I did teach him how to do it’. It’s something that families can share together.
Even the box triggers her.
The costume does still exist. The mask, I think it’s the one from the second movie, still exists. They’re too fragile to travel or be displayed anywhere other than the collector’s home, but they still exist. Does she know why it disturbs her deeply?
She’s never said, but she tends to prefer to not dig too deep into why she’s scared of things. She figures whatever the reason is, it must be quite bad and she’d rather not dredge it up.
It’s how one deals with these things, isn’t it? Good on your mum for being honest about this. I remember in my thirties I suddenly realised I was suffering from vertigo; I had become scared of heights. I was scared of heights as a kid, I remember not being able to walk up the stairs that didn’t have the risers at the back. I grew out of it and then in my thirties I realised I was uncomfortable with heights again, and so determining to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower because it was the closest really tall building.
Going and discovering I could only get to the top of the first stage, that wasn’t tall enough, so I went back three or four months later so I could get to the very top. It was absolutely terrifying. After half an hour I still wasn’t too comfortable about walking to the edge, but I got there. Afterward, I just felt like I’d overcome that fear now. I guess it comes back to the one man show in terms of why do I do the one man show? Well, one of the reasons for doing it is because yeah, it’s kind of scary. It’s a thing to attempt to do. It’s a big challenge, but I’m really looking forward to it because once I’ve done something, you can learn from it. You’ll just feel better. It’s a mountain I have to climb.
You have made your career out of playing monsters, what is it about these characters that have drawn you to play them?
To begin with, with Clive and Hellraiser, it was just the part I was offered, Hell, it was going to be my first movie, and it was Clive. I’d known Clive for at least three years, we’d been great friends for years when he asked me to do it, so I was really excited to work with him. I knew pretty early on that it was going to be a challenge and that there were going to be physical challenges. That was fine because that was the gig. Then it was meeting all the amazingly talented people around Clive. That to me was absolutely fascinating. Nigel Booth created The Chatterer from Clive’s design, but there was Geoff Portass who did Pinhead, John Cormican who did the female Cenobite, Paul Catling who did Butterball, and then Cliff Wallace who worked on Nightbreed. The people I was amongst are amazingly talented. It’s really fascinating to be around and listen to, and learn from them. At the time I wasn’t really aware of it, but over the years, I think from the tenth anniversary of Hellraiser onwards, I’ve realised that people are really enthusiastic about these films. They really have generated an awful lot of love. There’s all that side of it, but I think what I find really interesting about monsters is finding their humanity.
We’re all monsters in some respect. I think that’s part of the messaging of I Am Monsters! I feel that sometimes that I have been unfairly made out to be a monster, but I acknowledge the times where I’ve behaved monstrously. Kinski for example in Nightbreed, there’s so much more to him than the fact that he’s got a crescent moon head and he looks really weird. He’s such a wannabe bad guy. He’s not a bad guy, Peloquin is really dangerous and Kinski just hero-worships Peloquin. Kinski in my mind is a wannabe bad guy. He just hangs around Peloquin because he’s the strongest kid in class.
It’s about finding the depth to the characters. This is why I’ve written short stories about the origin of Chatterer. It’s why I’ve written short stories on monsters. It’s why I’ve written comics about Hellraiser and Nightbreed. My first volume of short stories is called What Monsters Do, and it has the tagline of, ‘it is not our flesh, but our acts which make us monsters’. I think that’s what interests me and what keeps drawing me back. Not just monsters, but horror as well, it’s people in extreme situations and how they behave. How it brings out the best in people you may not expect, and it brings out the worst in people that you may not expect. It’s all those things about exploring humanity. I think that’s what attracts me most about monsters.
Do you have a favourite monster?
The Abominable Doctor Phibes as played by Vincent Price. I love his make-up. I love the fact he has to plug a speaker into the back of his neck in order to be able to speak. I’m a huge Vincent Price fan. Just because he brings such humanity to all the characters he played, and that beautiful speaking voice.
You’ve worked with Clive Barker a lot; he’s written a lot of books. Are there any that maybe haven’t been adapted yet that you think could work?
That’s a tough question. I think the one that hasn’t been adapted yet and has been talked about, is probably the novel I’m immediately thinking of and is one of the ones I’d like to see adapted, is obviously Weaveworld. That one I think because I think these days you could do so much more. You only have to look at Game of Thrones. Much more is possible in terms of effects. The other one is In the Hills the Cities, a short story from the Books of Blood. It’s where these people have this celebration where they basically build themselves into these big giants and then they stride off and fight the opposing village. It was beautifully illustrated by John Bolton I think when they did a comic book version. Visually it’s such an entrancing idea. Again Clive deals with both the micro and the macro scales. You’ve got these huge great big giants, these monsters, but you’ve also got this gay couple who are obviously having relationship issues when they stumble across this.
So much of his stuff has been adapted well, stuff like Candyman and Midnight Meat Train. I’d love to see Weaveworld. There are some great parts and wonderful, wonderful characters. It would be a big undertaking. It’s big, it’s not a cheap project, but if you filmed it in the UK, filmed it around Liverpool and so on, you could save money. I’m sure it’s doable for a few million.
So how did you get to know Clive Barker?
I met him at a party. Simon Bamford who plays Butterball in Hellraiser… Simon and I were in the same year at drama school Mountview. A couple of years after I left Mountview, Simon invited me to a party and Clive was there. We hit it off and I ended up modeling for Clive. In fact, one of the pictures that I display during the show is the front cover to volume four of the Books of Blood, because it’s one of my favourite portraits of me. It’s obscene. I was looking at it earlier and thinking, ‘I cannot believe they allowed this to go on bookshelves’. If you look at it closely you go, ‘I’ve just realised what it is I’m looking at’, which is why I like it so much. I ended up modelling for Clive’s covers of the hardbacks of the hardback versions of the Books of Blood. I met Clive just as the paperbacks were just about to be published, and he knew he was going to be able to illustrate the covers for the hardback editions and he invited me in to do those. That’s how we got together and then, later on, he asked me to be in Hellraiser.
Clive’s work always deals with some taboo topics, recently It Chapter Two has come under some scrutiny for its inclusion of a homophobic attack. It’s in the original novel, though those moments are set in the eighties and people are saying that keeping it in and switching the time to the present it might be, in a way, glorifying the actions.
Funnily enough, this comes back to the one man show because one of the other things I wanted to do is to put a bit of social context to when we were making the films. What I felt at the time. I’m not saying that Clive necessarily felt this, or is reflecting this in his work, but when we made Hellbound, Margaret Thatcher’s government introduced Section 28. This is the law that made it illegal for a state-subsidised school to promote homosexuality as a pretended family relationship. Which is pretty horrible and had a lot of fall out. This is co-defying homophobia. This is legalising homophobia.
I haven’t seen the film. It’s always going to be a hard conversation and I think conversation is the keyword here. That this has happened has started a conversation and actually having a conversation is a lot about how we deal with this. When you portray something are you necessarily glorifying it? Funnily enough, I ordered the film Cruising the other day, I remember it being incredibly controversial at the time, because of its portrayal of men and the seedy underworld of gay life in those days.
I was listening to someone the other day complaining about that fact that it seemed to them that horror movies were becoming bland because they had to have a moral. They had to have a moral message, and that actual horror films shouldn’t have to do that. I think it depends on what the moral is your trying to teach, there are lots of other things that make people’s belief systems and encourage homophobia. I think that the fact that it’s portrayed in a film is less likely to encourage homophobia than someone making a statement, or a legislature passing laws about bathrooms or LGBTQI+ people being treated anything but equal. I think those are more damaging.
Art has a duty to reflect society and inevitably reflects society. I want to go and see the film now, I’d really like to see what they’ve done. I’m a gay man, I’ve been around a long time. I realised I was gay in the 1970’s and then you had Section 28, then you had Aids. I was doing research for the show and there’s one particular quote from a political that I’ve still not decided whether or not I’ll actually bring into the show. I think probably not, just because it is soooo horrific. I don’t need to rub people’s noses in it, to make a political statement. I’m here to talk about it because it’s part of my story, and it’s the background. My show is about entertaining people and let’s have fun with monsters.
Oscar Wilde said, ‘life imitates art, not the other way around’ Of course art does inspire things, but I think a single film is unlikely to make someone into a homophobe. Does it give them some semblance of permission? Not as much as politicians. It doesn’t take much, but I think it’s to do with the reiterating it. When I grew up, gay people were portrayed as either Nancy Boys or complete perverts, something so disgusting you couldn’t talk about, or they were simply killed off in the first reel. I said to Paddy Murphy when I saw his film The Perished at Frightfest, it was so nice to be able to have a gay character in the movie, who just happened to be gay. He’s the gay best friend of the lead woman, girls do have gay best friends and that’s great. I’m all for that, but what I found really cool was the fact that he fell in love with somebody and just left her, before the real shit happened.
But I think there it a whole lot of positive stuff these days. We had Croydon Pride and I was on the tram and this mother was talking to her six year old and she just said, ‘oh, it’s Pride today – do you want to go to the party?’ and the girl said yes, and I thought that was amazing. That’s how it should be. When we went, there were kids running around looking at the wonderful bearded gentlemen in dresses and high heels and just laughing and going up and talking to them.
It goes back to the conversation we were having earlier on about watching horror in what I’ve described as a safe environment i.e with your family. I do conventions in the States and I meet children who are way too young to have seen the film. In fact, they haven’t seen the film, but they know that daddy’s got models of monsters on the shelves and I talk to parents, and the ones where the kids have seen it, the parents are saying, ‘yeah but you know it’s not real, you know that these are actors.’ Parents are bringing the children to meet the actors behind the masks. I think it’s about context.
Not only have you got your one man show, but Nightbreed is finally to coming to Blu-ray in the UK, are you looking forward to getting your hands on a copy?
I am! Particularly as they interviewed me for the extras and I had really good fun talking about Nightbreed. I’m particularly pleased that it’s Arrow because they always do such a great job. They did amazing stuff with The Scarlet Boxset for Hellraiser. I love what they do. I’m really pleased that, not only are they doing it, but they’re doing the theatrical and the director’s cut version. I think it’s really interesting for people to be able to compare the theatrical cut and Clive’s director’s cut. Clive’s director’s cut is far more, as the name implies, what Clive had envisaged. I don’t think it’ll be absolutely complete because obviously some stuff wasn’t filmed at the time when there was a change of direction during filming. I’m remarkably excited by that.
It’s a very different film to Hellraiser. Again, it’s touched many people. Many people have come up to me over the years to talk about how it was part of their process of dealing with their own otherness. That they found it really encouraging, that there was somebody else out there that got it and was able to articulate something that they were struggling with.
The Cabal novella on which it is based is just so beautifully and economically written. I love the writing of it. I love all his writing. If you ever want to know how to write a short story, read the Books of Blood.
Catch Nicholas Vince live and in the flesh in I Am Monsters! from 8th – 10th October at The Pleasance Theatre Islington. Tickets are priced at £12, £10 for concessions, and are currently still available and can be purchased here.
