KEVIN Great questions, because it’s one of those movies that I think I’ve watched more than—there’s a few of them: The Exorcist, Taxi Driver, Apocalypse Now, these are movies that I’ve seen countless times, and The Exorcist is one of those movies that it’s always good. There’s never a point where I rewatch it and I go like, ‘plot hole…’ or you know, ‘they could have done that differently...’ or, you know, I really—and I’m not a snooty viewer. It’s just, it’s perfect—it’s a perfect movie. It’s a perfect story. It’s directed perfectly. The score is perfect. The casting—again, these are all my opinions, but, I mean, I know that it is a very famous film. It’s wild. Working with William Friedkin to release the soundtrack was a highlight of the past 170 releases that we’ve done over the past ten years. It’s shocking that, to me, that we even had that opportunity. I’m so grateful that we had that opportunity and that it led to us working with him on Cruising and it led to us working with him on Sorcerer, which we’ve released as well. But to go and release the full soundtrack to The Exorcist, from the original masters, you know, we had the option of using the digital transfers that were done back in the ’90s, I guess, for something. But I was like, “hey, are the master tapes available? Can we just revisit the original masters?” And sure enough, they were in an archive in the Midwest, where I guess Warner Brothers keeps all of their amazing things. And they were able to transfer it and that’s where we worked from—even another layer of how awesome it was to work on this project. But yeah, I’m getting way too much into the personal side of it. The Exorcist, it’s rad. It’s great. It’s a great movie.

SLIM I mean, those personal details are what we’re here for. [Kevin laughs] I mean, I can’t even imagine working with him, getting the masters to put this together. I mean, even the overall design too for your release is so gorgeous.

KEVIN Thank you.

SLIM I mean, it’s so hard because how do you top The Exorcist poster? And then you have that beautiful shot, which is—I mean, there’s so many all-time shots in this movie.

KEVIN How do you top it? How do you top that original poster? It’s part of like, it’s part of our culture, you know? That movie, it’s just, it’s so visually rich—all of the title treatment alone, you know, when it comes on to the screen, you see it, it grabs you—it’s scary, it’s terrifying. And they’re not even using any sort of scary font or letters, it’s just, you’re like, ‘holy shit, I’m in it. I’m in it.’ And when we were in the process of working on the artwork with Phantom City Creative—that’s Justin Erickson—we didn’t know what direction to go in, but he provided us with a lot of different options. And the first option that we went with was the one that you see on the actual record and on the whole layout of it, you know, the crazy shot of Regan in the bed with Pazuzu behind her and the light shining, she’s all backlit. And we went with that and we brought it to William Friedkin—and there’s a whole round of approvals that all of this needs to go through with the studio. And with William Friedkin, he paid us the craziest compliment ever and he said, “this is the best artwork that I’ve ever seen for The Exorcist since the original poster.”

GEMMA Whoa!

KEVIN And immediately, I was texting, you know, I’m texting Justin Erickson and I’m like, “dude, you will not believe what William Friedkin literally just told me.” [Slim laughs] It’s the hugest compliment! And you know, props to Justin for making that happen. I mean, the back-cover has the holy water, the jar of holy water spilled, the levitation of Regan when she’s being possessed, that crazy point of the movie for the inner gatefold. Yeah, it was amazing to hear that.

SLIM There needs to be a Waxwork Records podcast—

GEMMA Yeah!

SLIM Where you guys walk through the various releases and the process, maybe like a look-back on each release—that’d be pretty fun, maybe like a limited edition series.

KEVIN You know, it’s actually something that we’re exploring right now, because I would love to do that and bring on like, Rob Zombie and people that I work with all the time—Mike Flanagan, you know?

GEMMA Yeah!

SLIM Every time I rewatch The Exorcist, I think to myself, ‘how was this a mainstream movie in 1973?’ It might have been an X-rated film, every time I watch it. I just still can’t believe—I mean, I love it. It’s an almost perfect movie. But I always think back like, ‘man, I would have loved to have been in theaters to get the reaction of the everyman leaving that theater.’ They must have been just totally horrified.

KEVIN You know, I read the liner notes that William Friedkin did for us for this release, for the soundtrack release that we did back in 2017, to prepare for this podcast. And it was almost an X-rating—e was totally under the presumption that like, ‘this is going to get an X. There’s no way that this is gonna get anything but an X-rating.’ He’s so—I could listen to him speak forever, you know? So the liner notes are really informative of the trials and just the effort that was put forward to get just the soundtrack made, because it wasn’t going to be the soundtrack as we hear it in the movie, it was going to be scored by, I think Bernard Herrmann was originally tapped to make it happen and that fell through because think about those two strong personalities. I mean, Bernard Herrmann is known for being—well, he was known for being so abrasive and speaking his mind. Basically, you meet him for the first time and he would say the F-word like 30 times. [Slim laughs]

GEMMA He sounds like when Regan is, you know, being possessed.

KEVIN Yeah. [Kevin & Gemma laugh] Exactly. And then William Friedkin, who also was a very strong personality, and he walk-the-walk, talks-the-talk. I mean, he’s no bullshit. There’s very few people that I’ve met like that, that are just, 100 percent for real—sharp as a knife, always on, 100. It’s so cool when you meet people like that, and you speak to them, and you’re just like, ‘you’re real, you’re for real.’ You know? Like how many people can you say that about?

GEMMA I’ve got a question for both of you, gentlemen—would this film ever had been made or even work if it were about a solo-father and his son?

KEVIN Hm... I don’t know. I really don’t. I mean—

SLIM I mean, Ellen is so amazing in this movie. I mean, she captures the camera every time she’s on screen—ike when she’s talking with him in the park, she’s got the sunglasses on after she gets almost knocked to the ground—

GEMMA And also she’s a famous actress and she’s trying to—

SLIM Yes.

GEMMA Be low-key whilst having a bruised-up face. Yeah.

SLIM I mean, she’s wearing the biggest sunglasses on the planet and she’s still having trouble covering up that bruise on her face. [Slim & Kevin laugh] But when she asked him about an exorcism, I love his reaction, he’s like, “that’s junk. That’s nothing. We don’t even do that anymore, that’s a dying thing.” Those are some of my favorite parts of this movie. But in of a dad and a son, there’s no way that would have held up so many years as this has.

GEMMA No…

KEVIN Yeah, it’s just so effective, you know, the innocence of Regan and this mother dealing with it. I know a lot of mothers and their children, it’s the most precious, special, like ‘I would do anything for.’ Yeah, I just don’t think it would be as effective as a father and son.

GEMMA There’s a review from Matt Brown on Letterboxd that I was—it’s a four-star review by the way even though it doesn’t sound like it—that really spoke to what I was feeling as I was watching it for—confession, safe space—the first time this week...

SLIM Whoa!

GEMMA In my life... Yeah...

SLIM Okay! Holy cow…

GEMMA So here’s the thing—growing up, Linda Blair was such an icon. We had never seen the film—there was no way our parents would let us see the film—but we absolutely knew who she was. She was the girl who turned her head around. It’s sort of hard to explain how, you know, in the age before social media, why she was so imprinted on our brains. But you know, I guess something about it—and also growing up Catholic—I’ve sort of avoided this film so far. Loved it, but let me read Matt Brown’s review…

SLIM Uh oh, I heard a “but”, I heard a “but” as soon as she said “loved it”.

GEMMA Yeah... [Slim laughs] You heard that invisible “but”. So Matt Brown writes: “Almost no end to the list of beings this film others as a means of generating dread in its white Catholic audience: the entire population of Iraq, characters with disfigurements, mental illness, decrepit old age. The oldest and truest of them all, a twelve-year-old girl who might stop being so sweet if she gained something resembling bodily autonomy.” And this is—so you’ve got the coming-of-age of Regan, who also by the way, is sort of living—but happily so—in a broken family. The dad has gone somewhere else, he doesn’t call on her birthday, the mum is holding down a career—this is 1973. There are political messages in the film that’s being shot at the beginning that the priest is interested in, he’s questioning his faith, Father Karras, at a time sort of soon after Vatican II. So post-Vatican II, when the Church is trying to be a little bit more open and less latin, in order to continue asserting its authority over its, you know, populace, its parish. There’s a whole lot in the setup that suggests that the way that Chris MacNeil is living is potentially not correct, that she’s living as a solo-mum, that she’s living with a career, that she’s letting her daughter muck around in the basement and find Ouija boards in the cupboard and be looked after by household staff. And I think here’s the “but” for me—I saw Poltergeist a couple of weeks ago and what I absolutely loved about that film is that the mom is there from the start to the finish and she is the one who saves the child. In this one, the mom—she’s amazing, you’re 100 percent correct, Slim, Ellen is extraordinary. She’s going through all of these doctors, they’re giving her daughter spinal tap, multiple spinal taps. They want to—what do they say? “Exhaust all of the somatic possibilities before they move into this spiritual.” And eventually, she’s just pushed away and pushed away and pushed away until she’s not just outside the room but down the stairs, and sort of his no part in the denouement, and I think that for me was the one bum note…

SLIM Disconnect?

GEMMA Yeah, the one disconnect—where was she in that? And it’s because she swears, she blasphemes—that moment when she’s on the phone, she’s like, “I’ve been on this phone—Jesus Christ, I’ve been on this phone for twenty minutes!” You know, she’s just blaspheming throughout the film.

SLIM You could also say too that they’re very different income classes, those two families, you know? JoBeth and fam—love JoBeth Williams from Poltergeist, my queen—but you could say that, you know, they’re not affording any help. They’re regular ’80s family and they’re gonna do it themselves. I don’t know where you stand on that thought, Kevin.

KEVIN Yeah, that’s—so first off, Gemma, that’s a really great analysis and I totally see what you’re saying because again, I couldn’t imagine any mother being like, “yeah, that’s okay, I’ll go down there. I’ll be separated from this madness while my baby is being literally possessed.” You know? That’s a good point that you’re making, Slim, about the class-divide.

SLIM You could say that the main mistake that they made was using a Ouija board in your own home—hat’s step one. [Gemma laughs]

GEMMA Yeah, that’s step one.

SLIM You never use a Ouija board in your own home. You don’t know what you unlock! And you have to go to bed in that house.

GEMMA Another mistake they made—or maybe not a mistake—just judging by the number of Letterboxd reviews that mention it, is just how hot Father Damien Karras is... [Slim & Kevin laugh] The thirst is strong!

SLIM I saw so many strong hot priest reviews scrolling through—they were cracking me up!

GEMMA It’s the Vatican again. They’re like, “Okay, William, you gotta cast a hot guy. We got to make the Church relevant.” [Slim laughs]

KEVIN Gemma, I guess to backtrack for a second, but do you think—and look, this might not be my place to say—but do you think it’s kind of time and place? Like where were we at in the early ’70s?

GEMMA 100 percent, time and place—we’re talking Nixon, we’re talking, you know, economic change, we’re talking change in the households. And this is why I wanted to kind of pair it with Black Christmas, because I feel like, on the one hand, Black Christmas is kind of going, ‘yeah, do what you want. It’s really awesome.’ But also, ‘maybe look in the ceiling and get better cops.’ I don’t know. [Slim laughs] Ah, you know what? The other thing, and I know that much has been written about this, but it’s also the time of the rise in psychiatry in America—and this is very much a sort of anti-psychiatry film in a way, because they’re going through all of the steps to diagnose until eventually it’s like, Father Merrin arrives and he doesn’t need any evidence or any backstory or any spinal taps or the 88 doctors, he just needs his purple stole and his cassock and his holy water and he’s away.

KEVIN Maybe it’s a coincidence, I don’t know, but it’s just one of those weird situations where—so when you’re watching the scene of Regan going through all of the tests, and there’s a nurse, a male nurse, and you can spot him pretty easily because he’s wearing a leather wristband.

GEMMA Ah...

KEVIN Looks a little punk, maybe bondage wristband type deal. But in real life, William Friedkin said that, in real life, that guy was the serial killer from Cruising, that Cruising is based off of.

SLIM What?

GEMMA What?!

KEVIN That guy, that actual actor—he wasn’t even an actor, and that’s what’s so cool about Friedkin, is that he would cast people that they’re not—well, obviously, not everyone, but in several of his movies, there would be people in his movies that, you know, in the background that you’re totally not an actor, like that guy was actually a male nurse in real life. But Cruising was what? 1980? 1981?

GEMMA Whoa...

KEVIN Yeah, when he was doing research to make Cruising, he was like, ‘why does that guy’s name sound familiar? Or why is this guy—’

SLIM Oh my god.

KEVIN But he’s like, ‘oh, shit. The male nurse in that scene from The Exorcist, that’s the guy!’ That guy was going to, you know, gay clubs in the ’70s and cruising, picking up dudes, taking them back to his apartment and dismembering them. And he was taking the body parts and throwing them into the Eastern River and the way that he got caught is because of the bags that he was using to put the body parts in had—they were from the hospital that he was working at. They were screen-printed or they were stamped with the hospital’s either address or initials or whatever. And so they, the cops connected the dots and lead back to him. And he actually went back and interviewed that guy, before he made Cruising, and was asking him like, “why’d you do it? Why did you commit these crazy murders?” He’s like, “I didn’t know, I was on drugs and fucking—it was just a wild time. I don’t actually committing a lot of these murders. I was just so fucked up.”

SLIM Geeze.

GEMMA Wow... There’s some things I don’t , but I would certainly maybe committing murder...

KEVIN Yeah, one would think, one would think that.

SLIM You say that now, but you never know.

GEMMA Do you , Kevin, the day you walked into the new Waxwork building, when it was ready—finally ready to move into and stock? What were you feeling? What an achievement.

KEVIN So a lot of times, when we’re doing—we’re so married to it and it’s always go time. We’re always—everything is, you know, 100 miles per hour. So it isn’t until we look back and we’re like, ‘wow, we’ve been in this building for a year now. The company’s been around for a decade now.’ And definitely, there’s a sense of accomplishment and we feel proud of where we are now, because where we are now is a vastly different position than where Sue Ellen and I were back in 2012, 2013, when we were getting the company started. Everything that we do, it comes from—there’s no sort of like big, crazy planning. ‘Okay, what’s our five year plan?’ You know? It’s all predicated on, ‘what do we like? What are we fans of? What is it that we want to own? What is the kind of records or artwork, or whatever, that we want to have in our space?’ And that’s what we try to make. There’s never sort of like, ‘hey, this will sell 10,000 copies, let’s go do it.’ You know? That’s never—that discussion ever comes up. But I know now with where we are as a company, and with a lot of the titles that we put out and now that certain companies like Netflix and certain creators like Mike Flanagan or Rob Zombie or Jordan Peele, we’re their preferred label to release all of their work. Everything’s very big, everyone knows about it—everyone knows about Nope, everyone knows about, you know, Rob Zombie is a household name. But if you were to ask us—even if none of those titles were on the table, ‘what are your favorite movies that have come out in the past few years?’ I’d be like, “well, Us, Get Out, The Haunting of Hill House…” I just feel as if, we’re fans of this stuff, it’s a weird—this is a little like off-topic, but recently, Glenn Danzig came to Waxwork and we hung out with fucking Glenn Danzig. [Gemma & Slim laugh] I was the biggest—and still am, like The Misfits, probably The Misfits are the single most important band—Misfits, Black Flag, early-hardcore, but specifically The Misfits, because of the DIY-ethic, the horror of it all. I had a devil lock, you know? The bands that I was in, we tried emulating The Misfits—we wore engineer boots and everything. [Gemma laughs] And there was no sort of—we weren’t trying to bring Danzig into our orbit, it just happened by I guess, happenstance. Because I’m a firm believer that if you do these things and you come at them with a, I guess, truth, you find your tribe, like punk-rock, you find your tribe and they find you. Huge Rob Zombie fan, White Zombie*—*massive, massive—the very first cassette that I ever had stolen from me was White Zombie La Sexorcisto. [Gemma & Slim laugh] The very first thing that I ever stole was a White Zombie La Sexorcisto CD. Will took my cassette, so I had to get it back. So I upgraded, so I stole the CD. [Slim laughs]

GEMMA So question, when a young-punk comes into Waxwork and puts a vinyl up their jersey... [Kevin & Slim laugh] What are you gonna do? Are you gonna let them get away with it? Because it’s you? It’s little you? Are you gonna call the cops?

KEVIN I’d get the record back eventually. [Gemma & Slim laugh]

SLIM My earliest memory of Glenn Danzig is probably that photo of him holding the Wolverine comic book, I think I seeing that, because I grew up a comic book—I still am—and that’s one of my earliest memories Glenn Danzig ever.

GEMMA When Glenn Danzig comes to visit, do you make him a cup of tea or...?

SLIM He puts a record under his shirt and he weasels out, he probably is the one stealing those records.

KEVIN I actually gave him a bunch of stuff. I just went, “hey dude, whatever you want...” I was a nervous wreck, man. I had to go pick him up from his hotel, so the very first time that I’m hanging out with Glenn Danzig, it wasn’t just like, “hey, we’re meeting at a show or something backstage.” It’s like, I’m freaking out because I’m picking this dude up from his hotel and it’s like, ‘okay, now we’re in a car together for twenty minutes driving to Waxwork…’ [Slim & Gemma laughs] I was like, ‘what is my life? What is going on right now?’ Yeah, it feels like when we finally walked into this new building that we’re in now, it was a, ‘we have a lot of work to do.’ It really felt as if like—you know what it felt like? I was overcome with the same feelings that I had when we first started Waxwork Records back in 2013. I was like, ‘wow, this is it, we’re starting again.’ Because we’re opening up a pressing plant. We needed to move anyway, because we had totally outgrown the space that we were in prior. We just kept outgrowing spaces. This our fourth space that we’ve been in and I think that we’re gonna be here for a while, because it’s pretty big and sprawling. You know, we needed to move out, but we purchased this building because we’re building a record pressing plant.

GEMMA Ahhh, yeah!

KEVIN And it felt as if like, ‘okay, new chapter. Here we go. Let’s go.’

SLIM I mean, talk a bit about needing to make your own plant, because I feel like a lot of people are starting to have their eyes open to records—if they haven’t already started buying some of these releases—that it’s advantageous to you to just be like, ‘let’s just bring everything in house at this point because everything is maybe getting more expensive, is blowing up.’ Is that the case with this new location?

KEVIN Absolutely. You know, each year—when we started the label a decade ago, vinyl was making a big comeback. It was coming back. I already had experience releasing vinyl several years prior to that with various bands that I’ve been in. So it’s always something that I’ve done, but vinyl sales were increasing, increasing, increasing year after year, and then when Covid hit and everyone was home and there was nothing to do, it really shined a light on how crucial physical media is—whether that be Blu-rays or board games, puzzles, or vinyl records. And we have flirted with the idea of opening a pressing plant, as far back as 2017, but we just, it wasn’t the time—we didn’t have the money, we didn’t have the space for it, we were still fledgling, I guess and I guess in a way we still are, you know, we’re still a very small label. I know that the visuals of how we are presented on Instagram and the titles that we get look a certain way, but we’re still a very small company. There’s six of us here—and that fluctuates, sometimes we have ten people, people go, sometimes we have six people, sometimes we have four. It’s always been me and Sue Ellen running, you know, driving the bus.

SLIM You’ve got Danzig doing customer emails right now. [Gemma laughs] He’s typing away at that computer.

GEMMA Kevin’s face right now. [Slim laughs] As you were talking about your size, I was thinking about how you’re like nine-years-old, Letterboxd is eleven-years-old. You know, we’ve all come up around the same time along with a lot of other similar companies that are growing and developing and existing to serve fans of this art form, these art forms, we love. And just wanted to say what a beautiful, big old handshake, fist-bump moment this is. [Gemma & Slim laugh] Because we’re a tiny team too—and same thing, it may look from our socials, you know, from the New York Times articles on us, that we’re huge, but it’s basically just me and Slim... [Gemma & Slim laugh]

SLIM And a few others...

GEMMA And a few others, a few other amazing people—yeah, just tinkering away under the hood. But, you know, to the end-purpose being that people can, on Letterboxd for example, organize their physical Criterion Collection, you know, by using the ‘owned’ tag when they are adding films to their Letterboxd, and you’re doing the same thing, and it’s all—ah, here’s the big point—it’s all in service of finding a physical way to show our love for these ephemeral art forms that are film and music that exist through pulses from our eyes and our ears, into our brain.

KEVIN Absolutely, absolutely. You know, I love what you guys are doing. I know this is gonna become a big, cheesy, hug-fest now. [Gemma laugh] I did know about you guys that it was a small team, but the projection is huge. And what I love about Letterboxd is that it’s not just any one thing—it’s not snooty. People making reviews and critics and stuff, I never pay attention to that. But there’s such a truth and I guess it’s a civil conversation with—at least in my experience, I’m sure there’s crazy mean reviews on Letterboxd that I just haven’t found yet, but everything seems very civil and it’s just like, “hey, I like what I like. I don’t like what I don’t like and that’s that”’ And it’s a very honest place. That’s what I love about Letterboxd! It’s like this crazy, cool platform for people that just love movies—it’s so killer.

GEMMA Well speaking of killer, I was gonna say this is the cheese-fest—I mean, this is not the horror podcast we promised people, so should we talk about House, your fourth favorite?

SLIM That’s right. And don’t forget, everyone listening, don’t forget to watch, rewatch House, tag it ‘Waxwork’ to potentially win this gorgeous new release that’s coming towards the end of the year.

GEMMA Nobuhiko Obayashi, written by Chiho Katsura and Chigumi Obayashi, this is an amazing film that I saw for the first time earlier this year because I was just looking on the Criterion Channel on my Apple TV and went, ‘it’s that poster, I’m gonna have to watch that film because that poster keeps staring back at me.’ So in this film, I don’t know, there’s a synopsis... Like pretty much all of the films we’ve been discussing today, synopsis kind of doesn’t matter, just look at the poster and watch the film. But hoping to find a sense of connection to her late mother, Gorgeous takes a trip to the country to visit her aunt at their ancestral house. She invites her six friends: Prof, Melody, Mac, Fantasy, Kung Fu, and Sweet, to her. The girls soon discover that there is more to the old, titular house than meets the eye.

SLIM When did you first see House, Kevin? What was that like?

KEVIN Back in like 2011 was the first time that I saw it and it blew my mind—he movie blew my mind.

SLIM The first time I saw this was I think last year. This was on—this is one of those Letterboxd movies that I talk about, this one is really popular on Letterboxd, this is on so many lists. This is one of my favorite lists on Letterboxd, it’s talked about a lot, but it’s: “You’re not the same person once the film is finished” from Andre, where it’s just one of those movies where you kind of are in awe of your experience and you can’t say that about a lot of movies. So coming into this movie, I think I wrote in some of my notes like, “cinematic LSD” it feels like when you’re watching this movie. You’re like, ‘am I—I don’t taking drugs before I sat down to watch this, but it feels like I am on drugs.’ And there’s not many movies that can kind of put you in that space, but House is definitely one of them.

GEMMA Favorite scene, Slim? Favorite moment?

SLIM My god.

GEMMA Was it the teenage girl getting eaten by a piano? Was it the amazingly beautifully framed conversation with her father on the balcony of that gorgeous apartment?

SLIM Yes. I mean, there’s so many scenes like that, like when they’re standing in front of that one set-piece, you know, and then the camera shifts and it’s that bus-stop billboard type deal. [Gemma laughs]  There’s so many inventive things like that. And I compared it to, I think on my first viewing, I compared it to George Lucas—this is the same year, came out the same year as Star Wars. And it has some of those circle-wipe transitions, where I was like, ‘oh man, I wonder if they got this from Star Wars,’ like an idiot. [Gemma & Slim laugh] It came out the same year. I’m like, ‘oh, okay!’ But there’s just so much of that, where I’m not seeing this elsewhere—and I think [Tetsuo: The Iron Man] was the same thing, like I’m not seeing another [Tetsuo: The Iron Man] anywhere. It’s crazy that you can have those kinds of new experiences discovering movies like this, still today.

KEVIN That scene with the well and Mac’s severed head coming out of the well—oh my gosh. [Gemma laughs] That scene stuck with me when I first watched it and I immediately thought, ‘oh, Evil Dead II. That’s totally Evil Dead II.’ This movie has influenced so many filmmakers. It’s so crazy and outside the box.

GEMMA But speaking of influences, Ayo Edebiri, the actress who’s on Letterboxd writes, related to George Lucas, but she writes of Obayashi, the director: “My favorite part about this is that he saw Jaws and said “I would like to make a movie like Jaws” and then he made this movie.” [Slim laughs] So, I don’t know, did you guys spot the Spielberg references?

KEVIN I did not and I know exactly what you’re talking about. We did a lot of research when we were working on this, I guess, as one does when they work on something for almost a decade. And yeah, I just couldn’t see where the parallels are met between Jaws and Hausu... That’s just me, maybe it’s a cultural thing. I don’t know.

SLIM I mean, you talked about working on this for ten years and this is the first time the soundtrack will be out and about, outside of Japan, since ’77. So me—I think as of today, the release has been shared on Twitter, so you can see the beautiful artwork and I think our Letterboxd will have an unboxing. But what’s that process of you hunting down the right person to talk to? Like, ‘I want to release House on vinyl? Who the F do I talk to?’ Like in my head, I would just be totally lost. But now I was thinking earlier about Jordan Peele—it was cracking me up, I didn’t say anything earlier, but imagine hearing from some other director like, “oh yeah, I got your number from Jordan Peele.” What an amazing sentence that is. [Slim & Gemma laugh] So I mean, how do you start the process for something like this, and eventually, over the course of a decade, finally get it?

KEVIN You mentioned ‘hunting’, it’s a lot like that, it’s detective work. It didn’t hurt that we had a good relationship with Toho already, but that took years to get to—working with Toho and releasing the Godzilla stuff. But Toho, that was only a piece of the puzzle and it wasn’t even who we worked with to license the score. Back when we first started and House was one of those titles that was like, ‘we have to release that for various reasons. It’s an amazing movie, it’s an amazing soundtrack, it’s never been released outside of Japan. We just love this film. How do we make this happen and make it deluxe?’ And I straight up was waiting until wild hours of the early-morning to call Japan, just cold-calling people in Japan. I was like, ‘okay, well, if it’s 11pm here, it’s got to be this time in Japan. So I’m going to call them then because they’re in the office.’ I don’t know who the hell I’m calling, I’m just calling random people. [Slim & Gemma laugh] None of them spoke any English. I was like, ‘pkay, this is not the way. This is totally, this is a busted way of doing anything. Why am I doing this?’ But I mean, you got to try, you have to shoot your shot—sometimes that works, you know? But we have a really good relationship with some people over at Janus Films and they were like, “why don’t you just reach out to the composer?” And I was like, ‘why haven’t I thought about that? Just reach out to the composer!’ Which we’ve done a million times with Re-Animator, on the very first vinyl we ever did, we reached out to the composer. And I’m like, “Richard Band, I love your score, let’s make Re-Animator happen.” Boom, and we made it happen. So yeah, I’m painting a picture as if it was as easy as like, just reaching out to Mickie Yoshino and the other composers. But there was a lot of like red-tape, management, studio stuff, having to deal with the whole, you know, Columbia in Japan, like, ‘why would you want to release this? What are your intentions?’ There was a lot of of that. That one piece of the puzzle, ‘hey, make your life easier, you do this all the time, reach out to the composer and see what happens.’ And that really helped, having his blessing. And yeah, it really put us on a trajectory to like, okay now—I mean, it still took years to make it happen after that, but that was the kind of catalyst to really get things moving.

SLIM Also you show up for those meetings with Glenn Danzig in tow... [Gemma laughs] And they’re like, “listen, whatever you want to do, okay?”

KEVIN He’s a big fan of Japanese movies and music an food... So, didn’t hurt!

SLIM Also, I mean, this is also another iconic poster, where you would think it would be hard, like, ‘how do we top the House poster?’ I mean, not to—now it’s my turn to name drop—we were just at the Criterion Closet at the Criterion offices a couple of weeks ago.

KEVIN Nice.

SLIM And the poster right next to the closet is House, that’s the last poster you see as you get in there. I mean, that’s hard to top.

KEVIN Yeah, we thought about that too—and I think his name is Sam Smith, that poster that he created for the Criterion release is amazing. We were like, ‘how do we top this?’ Not that we’re trying to top it, but how do we make something that thousands of fans aren’t gonna go like, “you should have used the original artwork, man, or you should used the Criterion bit,” which we can’t do and it’s not what we do. Wenever go and release the key art. We’ve never done that—or if we have on newer titles, it’s because we were obligated to for reasons. But with Hausu, we were doing some research on artists and we work very often with The Jacky Winter Group and Jake Foreman, who I’m a massive fan of, his work is just, it’s so good. We were looking at his work and watching the movie and we’re like, ‘he’s perfect.’ He would be, he would create something totally original, totally unique, it wouldn’t be derivative of anything that’s come before and it wouldn’t be something derivative of—obviously, you want it to be married to the movie, but you want to have some sort of hook and make it unique enough where it’s kind of like, ‘this is totally new. Obviously, it’s Hausu, but it’s new and it’s original and it’s fresh and it feels good. It feels right.’ Yeah, Jake Foreman, I love the artwork that he created. I think this is one of my top releases artwork wise.

SLIM Hell yeah.

KEVIN Yeah, it’s so killer. I love it so much. And when you rewatch the movie and you look at the artwork again, you’re all like, ‘oh my god! I missed that!’ You know? There’s certain things that he got into the artwork that are just sort of not what you would immediately think of when you think of Hausu—obviously, you think of the cat and you think of the piano and stuff like that. The piano is not even—hold on, let me make sure I’m not—[Gemma & Slim laugh] The piano doesn’t make an appearance in the artwork. So certain things like that, I love that.

SLIM Yeah, it’s absolutely gorgeous. The one other one I was gonna call out earlier, the Goosebumps artwork...

GEMMA Ah!

SLIM I can’t believe you were able to get the OG artist—oh my god. That’s so cool. It’s gorgeous.

KEVIN And make it look like an actual Goosebumps book. There was a lot of like—we had to work with Scholastic, ‘can we do this? Can we just totally riff on what you’ve done?’ And do the embossing on the Goosebumps letters and make it feel like Goosebumps. That was really cool. We just reached out directly to Tim Jacobus and were like, “hey, do you want to do this?” And what was so cool about that, is that there was a certain character from the Goosebumps, I guess, universe, back in the ‘90s that never made an appearance on a book cover. And he was like, “I always wanted to do it, this is my chance to put him on the cover of something that’s official for Goosebumps.” And we did—the skeleton character, he’s the mascot of Goosebumps and he finally makes his appearance on the cover.

SLIM Unbelievable.

KEVIN We made him happy! That was really fulfilling. Making the creators happy is something that we strive to do—it’s crucial that people that not only wrote or directed or composed, people that worked on the movie, we want to make sure that people are totally thrilled and pleased with what we put out. It has to be real. It has to be honest. It can’t be some derivative shit that isn’t honest. It has to have weight to it and feel right. It has to get to that—I’m sorry that I’m going off on this tangent—but it has to feel a certain way. It has to smell a certain way. It’s really crucial, artists input and making sure that the creatives are happy is so—and that studios are happy—it’s so crucial to us.

GEMMA Waxwork Records #NoDerivativeShit. [Kevin & Slim laugh]

KEVIN #NoDerivativeShit—I’m going to use it.

[The Letterboxd Show theme music Vampiros Dancoteque by Moniker fades in, plays alone, fades down]

GEMMA Our guest today was Kevin Bergeron from on Letterboxd, so give them a follow—the link is in our notes along with links to all the reviews and lists and other things we’ve mentioned. And don’t forget to watch House and tag your Letterboxd review with ‘Waxwork’ before 30th of November 2022—that’s this year, like basically in the next sort of five weeks if you’re listening on release—to be in to win a copy of the film soundtrack on gorgeous vinyl.

SLIM Nobody worry if you see me rewatch House ten times, tag it ‘Waxwork’, I want this release on my bookshelf...

GEMMA We have and conditions... Employees and family—

SLIM I’ve never heard of that phrase before, that sounds made up. [Gemma laughs] That’s a New Zealand mumbo-jumbo. But we also have another podcast here at Letterboxd, Weekend Watchlist, that drops Thursdays. It’s our weekly show where Mitchell, me and Mia explore the latest releases in cinemas and on streaming every week. Thanks to our crew, Jack for the facts, Brian Formo for booking and looking after our guests, Sophie Shin for the episode transcript, Samm for the art and to Moniker for the theme music. You can always drop us a line at . The Letterboxd Show is a Tapedeck production.

GEMMA And I’m just gonna do one more shout out to Brian Formo, even though you mentioned him, for lining up such an impeccable, excellent spooky-season row of guests—what a month we’ve had, Slim. Ti West...

SLIM What a stud.

GEMMA Scott Derrickson, Ana Lily Amirpour, Kevin from Waxwork—what a stud. Did you just call him a stud?

SLIM I just called Brian a stud. [Gemma laughs] A booking stud. Don’t Google ‘booking stud’, I don’t know what you’ll get in that search result. But what a job by Brian—thank you Brian.

GEMMA One more question: who left the goddamn door open?

[clip from Black Christmas plays]

He expanded his act.

Could that be one person?

No, Claire. That’s the Mormon Tabernacle Choir during their annual obscene phone call.

[screaming]

[Tapedeck bumper plays] This is a Tapedeck podcast.