Elisha Cuthbert returns to the horror genre in brand new Shudder Original The Cellar, which is now available to stream exclusively on the Shudder streaming service right now.
Ahead of The Cellar‘s release, Bloody Disgusting’s The Boo Crew Podcast sat down with Elisha Cuthbert to reflect on some of her past roles inside the horror genre.
For starters, Cuthbert explained to The Boo Crew that her first experience with the horror genre was 1993’s Fire in the Sky, which made quite an impression on a young Cuthbert.
“I was thirteen and it was one of the first sleepovers I ever had as a kid… that film was Fire in the Sky. I mean, I thought I was going to be abducted by aliens for about five years. I thought that the light, that fire was going to come take my ass up into space. I thought I was going to get needles in my eyes. That movie was ridiculous. Anything that starts with “Based on a true story”… at 13 my imagination… that just blew my mind. I was traumatized for a while. So that was the first one that really got me. And then I was kind of afraid for a while to even venture into seeing any more horror movies for a really, really long time. But it also kind of sparked this curiosity with the whole sci-fi world. To this day, I love sci-fi films. The idea of what’s out there.”
A few years later, Elisha Cuthbert made her own mark on the horror genre…
Are You Afraid of the Dark?
“It was so much fun. It felt like kids camp. What we would do is, because we were in the intro and outro for all the stories, we were able to condense all the intros and outros into a two-week span. And we just hunkered down in this studio that was made to look like a forest… it was all artificial. And the fire itself was a little pyro thing that they could kind of raise and turn off, and on. So there was a lot of TV magic in there. As actors we really felt like we were those society kids. We were just as excited and obsessed with the stories we were about to tell. We were all laughing and having a great time. Probably working way more than we should’ve been [laughs]. Probably a lot of overtime for child actors. But we were having a blast. I have such great memories about it.”
“And then we made an Are You Afraid of the Dark? movie which was really cool too. We really felt like we were big time. Yeah. That was cool. I was a huge fan before I got on the show, so to be a part of the show after the fact was just a thrill. I just wanted to do a good job and not get fired. I loved it. I couldn’t believe I was there doing it. It was so fun.”
![Jaume Collet-Serra 'House of Wax' 2005 Wipes Its Bloody Oils on Vincent Price's Cape! [Revenge of the Remakes]](https://i0.wp.com/bloody-disgusting.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/House-of-Wax-theater.jpeg?ssl=1)
House of Wax
“Man, some intense days. Some really intense days. And we couldn’t figure out how to do the lip gluing without making it look ridiculous. I had to be strained and fighting for my life, but I had to somehow find a way to keep my mouth pried closed. So it just wasn’t working and I finally said to the prop guys, ‘Just get the glue. Just get the real glue.’ So we ended up really gluing my lips – not with crazy glue, but with something very similar. So I could not pry them apart. There was no real other way to do it, without it looking silly. So we went for it.”
“I’m telling you, this movie was so rock star. I gotta say, the budget and obviously that Joel Silver standard… it was so epic on so many levels. Every stage and set, the walls were really pliable and melting and we had fire… we were really running through the muck. I don’t know what it consisted of, but we were really in it and doing it. And that whole town was built out in Australia for I don’t even know how much money. But that was a real legit town that was built out of wax. The façade itself. I couldn’t believe it. It was some of the most incredible sets I’d ever seen. We had extras that were done up for hours in wax faces… just incredible art and talent that went into making that film. Like nothing I’ve ever done before. And since. It was epic.”
Captivity
“That was a tough one. I went into it with Roland [Joffé] and we really hit it off. We had such vision for the film. And it really went to an overhaul after we were finished filming. It was more of a psychological thriller to start… it wasn’t so gore crazy at the beginning, in its first form. And so, after the fact, around that time Saw had come out. It was a massive success. I think when ours sort of finished production and went into editing, Lionsgate took a look at it and went, ‘It may not hit the way we want it to hit. And I think we should up the ante a little bit. And bring it to that sort of Saw level.’ So we ended up getting a massive rewrite on the script. And we ended up getting back from Russia filming it and shooting 30 more pages in Los Angeles.”
“For me, there’s some great moments in the movie, but it felt really difficult because it was like two separate films smashed together. I think people can feel that there was a mashup there that maybe didn’t quite flow the way it should’ve. It was just sort of not what I had originally signed on to do. That was a tough one. But Roland is amazing. It was still an interesting experience for me.”
You can listen to The Boo Crew’s full chat with Elisha Cuthbert below.
The post Elisha Cuthbert Looks Back on Horror Roles Including ‘House of Wax’ [Exclusive] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.