The violent history of ‘Charlie’s Farm’ is brought brutally to life when four, horror-seeking youths stumble across a legend that refuses to die.
Starring Tara Reid (‘American Pie’, ‘Sharknado’) and Nathan Jones (‘Troy’), ‘Charlie’s Farm’ is currently screening nationally. With Tara Reid in the country doing promo for the Australian film set in Queensland, we decided to have a chat.
What’s your favourite scary movie Tara?
I like different kinds of scary movies; you have different scary movies – you can have ‘The Shining' and then different types, like scary movies as a child like ‘The Poltergeist’; and you have ‘Hannibal Lecter’. Chris [Sun, director] likes slasher films more than me, but I like movies that are sick in the head. Chris is more sick than anyone I've ever met. He is amazing. He really knows his horror and everything that he shoots down to detail. He knows what he's making. To shoot with someone like that, it takes half my work back and I don't have to work as hard. He knows what he wants and you give him what he wants. There’s no negotiations.
Would you say his horror-movie style is more jump scare or mess-with-your-head scare?
I think he’s a bit of both. He likes slasher. You gotta remember everything that he does is from the gore he creates. With creating Nathan Jones, he had to go through an hour of prosthetics everyday. He knew exactly what he wanted it to look like. He’s unbelievable and multi-talented. When you watched the movie did you get scared? Honestly, once you start shooting in the outback, I really did. it gets so dark here in Australia at night. In America there’s some light at night. It gets black at night here. When we were in the outback you couldn't see anything. We just finished dinner, and our days are different, we start shooting at four in the afternoon till five in the morning. It’s always pretty much dark. I remember one time we finished eating, and I wanted to go back to my trailer but I didn't ask the security guard or anyone to come with me – I was so terrified I can’t even tell you, I was so scared. In the movie we are shooting one scene we were around a fire, and we all told ghost stories, and in that scene I thought to myself 'are you joking right now? I won’t do this if you pay me 50 million dollars.' It was the dumbest thing any one has ever done. We started talking about Charlie’s farm and who Charlie is and the urban legend behind it. And I remember when he said that speech I was terrified. Like why are we doing this?
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So the story itself comes from a myth?
It is. Imagine you both say: ‘Look at that house right here, it looks really haunted, but let’s go see’. What people don’t wanna go see, everyone else of course wants to go see, it’s scary so it’s gonna be fun. Us, well we go to see Charlie’s farm, its gonna be fun and scary, but my character knows it’s a really bad idea!
So you're the smart one?
She doesn't want to be the wimpy one who says ‘no let’s not do this’, but she keeps saying ‘I have a bad feeling’, ‘I don’t like this!’. Sure enough we should of never gone there.
What would be your most memorable onscreen horror death?Probably in ‘Urban Legends’, the first one I did. The killer came around and ran off with me, and I was literally in a harness, and he throws me off the building and obviously I die. I was terrified. I was like ‘What the hell was I thinking!’ I was so scared. It had to be maybe 40-50 stories high. I fell off of it, I had a harness, but I still fell. It was like bungee jumping. It wasn't just ‘Okay let’s jump now’, they just pushed me!
