INTERVIEW: Bill Moseley on ‘3 From Hell,’ Chop Top, earning $5K to shave his head
Photo: Bill Moseley, center, returns to the horror world of Rob Zombie in the director’s latest movie, 3 From Hell. Photo courtesy of Lionsgate / Saban Films / Provided by KWPR with permission.
Bill Moseley intends to scare you.
The genre actor has developed an impressive career in the realm of horror, and he shows no sign of getting killed off just yet. His latest film, 3 From Hell, returns him to one of his most iconic characters, Otis.
3 From Hell is the third part of Rob Zombie’s blood-soaked horror tale about homicidal maniacs who play games with their victims. It will be released Sept. 16, 17 and 18 as part of Fathom Events.
The first two movies — House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects — are modern cult classics, and Moseley is happy to once again be along for the wild ride.
“I, like most of the world, thought that [The Devil’s Rejects] was the end,” Moseley said about 3 From Hell’s origins. “Rob and Sheri [Moon Zombie] convened a lunch at a vegan restaurant on La Cienega called Real Food, and the guests were Sid Haig and me. And that’s when they said we’re getting the band back together. It was very exciting.”
Haig appears in all three movies as the character Captain Spaulding, and Moon Zombie has appeared in several of her husband’s flicks, including The Lords of Salem, Halloween, Halloween II and 3 From Hell’s two predecessors.
For Moseley, the draw to work again with Zombie, who is also a heavy metal artist, was the character of Otis. The actor simply loves playing this crazed, villainous man.
“It’s a great character to play,” he said with a laugh. “What I love about Otis is Otis does not back down. It’s not even bravado. If Otis doesn’t like it, he’ll probably kill you without any remorse, so Otis is I guess a remorseless character. Otis doesn’t really have a gear where he sits back and thinks, well, I’ll let that one slide. He is confrontational. He’s always in the moment, and he always speaks his mind, which is certainly something that a lot of us probably would like to do. Also Otis is a killer, and me as a citizen, that’s nothing I’ve done before. So there’s a lot about playing the character that is really a lot of fun and very exciting.”
Moseley has worked with Zombie several times, not just on House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects. He also appeared in both Halloween films helmed by Zombie, and he has a cameo in Werewolf Women of the SS, the fake trailer that appeared in Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse film.
“Rob is always very cool,” Moseley said. “He’s incredibly knowledgeable on the technical side, so he really knows what he wants. Also by being the writer-director, he’s not interpreting someone else’s work. He knows what he wants. He’s the one that figured it out and thought it out, but he’s also very collaborative. So if you come up with a good idea — either a piece of dialogue or a suggestion within a scene — he’s more than happy to entertain it. And if it works, go for it; if it doesn’t, let’s try something else.”
Zombie and Moseley made the connection with each other at the Igor Awards, run by Universal Studios back in the late 1990s. Moseley was emceeing the evening as his most famous character, Chop Top from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, and Zombie was receiving an award.
“So I came made up as Chop Top in a ratty tuxedo and emceed the show,” Moseley remembers. “And when Rob came out, it freaked him out. He told me later, he was backstage listening to me, and he said, ‘That guy is doing a decent Chop Top.’ Then he came out on stage and saw me and went, ‘Holy shit, there’s Chop Top.’ So that freaked him out as I handed him his little demon statue because he won one of the Igor Awards, and maybe a month later his then manager, Andy Gould, called me up at home and said, ‘Rob, just got this screenplay, House of 1,000 Corpses, green-lit by Universal. He’d like to know if you want to be in it.’ I said, ‘Yes,’ and so they sent me a copy of the script. Over the next couple months, Otis was born. It was very exciting. I at first thought that Rob wanted his version of Chop Top, but he slowly but surely pried my fingers off my character and led me to Otis, which really I’m glad he saw it in me because it took me a while to see Otis in me myself.”
Moseley, whose credits also include Repo! The Genetic Opera and Texas Chainsaw 3D, is a genre staple. He often works on multiple horror movies a year. In 2016, he had eight movies and video shorts — all with wicked-sounding titles like Alleluia! The Devil’s Carnival, Smothered and Child Bite: Vermin Mentality. He not only acts the parts; he’s also a big fan of the genre, and this love goes back to when he was a child growing up in Barrington, Illinois, northwest of Chicago.
“At midnight on Saturday nights we had something called Shock Theatre, and I would risk my parents’ wrath,” he said. “They had put me to bed much earlier than midnight on Saturdays, and I would walk down the creaky wooden hall and try not to step on those really loud boards and watch Shock Theatre at midnight on the old black-and-white Zenith. My parents were tough. My mom was religious, my dad was a Marine, tough combo, but they both loved Halloween. That was always a happy time in the house.”
His horror and sci-fi movies of choice were from the 1950s, with a particular appreciation for atomic mutation films like The Deadly Mantis and Beginning of the End.
“I’ve always loved horror movies, and in college actually I ran a film series, part of the Yale Film Society, called Things That Go Bump in the Night,” Moseley said. “I showed horror movies there, so I’ve always been into it. Getting cast as Chop Top in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 by Tobe Hooper back in 1986 really was a dream come true. I had always wanted to be an actor, but coming from the Midwest and from a Republican railroad family, being an actor just was never presented as a career choice. So getting the job of Chop Top … that actually was a dream come true. Plus, it was more than I’d ever made before in terms of a salary. I had never been in a union before, etc., etc. That just showed me that you can run away and join the circus.”
The story of how Moseley became Chop Top is a legendary one for horror buffs. It includes Tobe Hooper, Steven Spielberg, the hitchhiker in the original Chainsaw and even a manicure. Here’s how the actor remembers it:
“I was working on a ranch one summer in Wyoming, summer of ’84, and a kid that I was working next to under the hot sun doing some kind of manual labor would go into what I call sugar deliriums,” he said. “He would eat a bunch of Frosted Flakes, and then he would start speaking tongues and singing snippets of commercials and Top 40 tunes and doing character voices. One day he was blathering along. He was going, ‘Cap’n Crunch. Cap’n Crunch,’ and then all of a sudden out of this blather he said, ‘The Texas Chainsaw Manicure’ and then blathered on. But I heard that, and I was a big fan of the original Chainsaw. And that freaked me out to hear that. I went back to the bunkhouse. I wrote out a five-minute scenario about a woman who goes to a beauty parlor, gets her hair done, sits under the dryer, wants to get a manicure, and out from the back of the shop comes Leatherface with a blazing chainsaw and starts sawing on her fingers.”
Fast forward to New York City, where Moseley was living when he wasn’t ranching in Wyoming. He gathered some of his closest friends and rented out Sonia’s Hair Fashions on Staten Island one Sunday afternoon. They took a few hours and shot a five-minute video that became known as The Texas Chainsaw Manicure.
Little did he know that this short satirical piece would land him the role of a lifetime.
“A friend of mine from high school was a young, budding, successful screenwriter in L.A.,” he said. “I used to work as a journalist for Omni magazine, and I came out to L.A. to cover the making of 2010, the Space Odyssey sequel. And I brought my buddy a VHS copy of The Texas Chainsaw Manicure, all five minutes of it, and he liked it so much. He said, ‘You know, my partner and I have an office across the hall at Paramount from Tobe Hooper.’ That was when he was working on Poltergeist, so I gave my VHS copy to my buddy. … I had given myself about a 20-second cameo at the end of the Chainsaw Manicure as the hitchhiker from the original Chainsaw, and Tobe loved the Manicure. [He] brought in his producing partner, Steven Spielberg, and they both loved the Manicure. They loved my cameo as the hitchhiker, and I was given Tobe’s number. I called him up, and he told me how much he liked my performance. He said, ‘If I ever do a sequel, I’ll keep you in mind.’ I didn’t hear from him for two years.”
Then, one night in 1986, the phone rang. On the phone was Kit Carson, the screenwriter for the Chainsaw 2 project. The team wanted Moseley to take a look at the script, in particular the character of Chop Top.
“I loved the character,” Moseley said about his first reading. “I called him back, and I told him that. He said, ‘We’ll be in touch.’ The next call was from Canon Films’ legal department saying, ‘Do you want to negotiate your contract?’ I said, ‘Well, let me get back to you.’ I had met a theatrical agent at a Christmas party a couple months earlier. I called her up at William Morris. She was more than happy to negotiate the contract, and she called back. She said, ‘Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is they want you to play this character Chop Top.’ I said, ‘What’s the bad news?’ ‘Well, they’re only going to pay you scale.’ And as a freelance writer I was probably averaging $250 a week, if that, and she said, ‘Well, I think it’s like $1,700 a week.’ I was like, ‘That’s not really bad news.’ Then she said, ‘Well, there’s more. Because there’s a plate in your head, they want you to shave your head.’ I said, ‘Yeah, OK, that’s not a problem.’ She said, ‘So, I told them that you wouldn’t get acting work for six months while it grew back, so they’ve agreed to pay you $5,000 to shave your head.’ I was like, ‘Wow, that’s insane.’ That really began my journey.”
He added: “It’s been a lot of fun. I look forward to more work. The nice thing about the horror genre is the older and uglier you are, the more work you get.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
3 From Hell, featuring Bill Moseley, will play Sept. 16, 17 and 18 as part of Fathom Events. Click here for more information and tickets.
