Sid Haig: The Mr. Skin Interview

Your character, Captain Spaulding, is perhaps the most memorable character in a movie with many memorable characters, and you get to wear white face.
Which is a plague, a pox on my house.

How do you get into character to play that murderous minstrel?
I just have to find that space within that's indicated in the character. We all have happy places and we all have dark places. You have to be able to hook yourself up with something that's aligned with the character. And at the end of the day, when you take off the makeup, take off the character too.

It all came from me. I learned a long time ago not to try to emulate the characteristics of real people or fictitious characters. It's not you. You don't have a point of reference. I'm not living inside that person's body; it's difficult for me to make that association. I'd much rather go find the dark place or the happy place inside me.

There's a fantasy sequence in The Devil's Rejects involving you and porn legend Ginger Lynn Allen. How familiar with her screen work are you?
I was. I'm not a huge porn buff, but I was certainly aware of who Ginger Lynn Allen is. She was totally professional. She had a knee injury at the time and had just gotten out of surgery and basically had to be lifted into that position [riding Haig cowgirl-style]. She never complained once. We must have done it a half-a-dozen times. She's a real pro.

You've been a professional performer since age seven when you danced in vaudeville. Did you have any time as a youngster to be influenced by horror films, and if so which ones?
I was influenced by all of the old classics. Lugosi, Chaney, Karloff, I saw everything they ever did. One of my favorite classic films is The Black Cat, where they now were not playing Frankenstein or Dracula, they were playing totally different characters. It was still a great, great film.

As time went on, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The War of the Worlds, The Thing, Them!, all of that stuff. Until we got into the '80s, Friday the 13th, Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, the first ones of those I thought were really good. But why rehash the same story over and over again? You don't have a new story, fold up your tent and go home. What's the point?

The point is to make more money, the corporate thing. But art isn't always about money. Somebody once asked me if I felt I was capable of fighting Freddy and Jason. You know what, bring me that Freddy Kruger, Michael Meyers, Jason, I'll kick all of their asses before lunch, OK? Because I don't deal in that silly stuff; Captain Spaulding does not deal in silly stuff. The guy is dead-on serious.

Your first film was directed by the great Jack Hill, for whom you went on to do some of your most outrageous work in Spider Baby and Coffy. Do you stay in touch with him now, and what's he doing?
He's writing scripts still. He's green-lighted on a project he's going to be doing, I don't know if it's going to be done overseas or done here, I know it's British money. I don't remember the name, it's something station. He wants me to be involved and I want to be involved. It's his first movie is a long time.

He'd been in forced retirement. You know, you make one film that doesn't make a lot of money and all of a sudden you're a has-been. Forget about the fact that this guy was a creator of firsts. Spider Baby was the first film to deal with crazy families living out in the country killing and eating people. Everything after that in some way was either an homage or a copycat of Spider Baby. He was responsible really for the whole blaxploitation thing, women-in-jeopardy films. That was all him. He never really got the recognition.

There's a young filmmaker from Minnesota, living in Los Angeles now, who decided to make a Jack Hill documentary. He contacted me and I did some footage, and he's got Roger Corman on the thing, a few other people, and kind of ran into a stumbling block and asked me to help him out. Now I'm basically producing the documentary on Jack Hill.

Do you consider Lon Chaney Jr. your mentor from the work you did together in Spider Baby?
I was in complete awe the first couple of days. And then he just made me feel comfortable being in the same space with him. Great guy, great guy to work with. Great guy to hang out and talk with, get some of his early experience.

The work you did opposite Pam Grier ranks among the absolute high points of classic blaxploitation cinema. And you even got to throw a topless Lana Wood out the window in Diamonds Are Forever (Picture: 1 - 2). So who are your favorite sexy actresses?
Of course Pam Grier is a total sex symbol that everybody will agree with. But then I also have kind of weird twists on who I think are sexy. I think Lisa Kudrow is extremely sexy. She's tall, she's willowy, she's got a quirky sense of humor just as a person. But she's very smart, very creative. That's kind of a turn-on.

I've worked with some of the sexiest women in films. Ann-Margret, who is absolutely a sweet, sweet woman. Sheri Moon Zombie is a sweetheart, a wonderful, beautiful person. Not hard to look at.

Quentin Tarantino cast you as a judge in Jackie Brown. Was that the first time you saw Pam Grier since you worked with her in the '70s?
We had not seen each other in twenty-seven years, and as soon as I showed up on the set it was like we had lunch the day before, everything picked right back up where we left off.

Any plans to work with her again?
Probably not, unless we're thrown together again. I think Quentin cast me in that role just to see if people were paying attention.

Rob Zombie, like Tarantino, should be applauded for bringing cult figures like yourself back into the limelight.
When you look at the cast of Devil's Rejects, you know almost everybody in that cast list. Maybe not Kate Norby so much, she's young. Maybe not Lew Temple, as well as some of the others, but you know everybody else in this film. I mean, my God, Mary Woronov didn't have a line. She didn't have a line in the film, but so what. She wanted to do the film.

You've done varied work, from exploitation fare such as The Big Doll House, Black Mama, White Mama to the TV series Jason of Star Command and sci-fi classics such as THX 1138. Do you have a favorite?
I don't have any favorites. There are some things that are memorable and enjoyable and all for different reasons. THX 1138 was memorable for me because it was the first time that anything like that had been done. We rehearsed that scene in limbo for five days, took another five days to shoot it. It became incredibly difficult to piece together, and that's why only seven minutes of it end up on scene. But actually that scene was twenty-seven minutes long. If you watch THX 1138 and you're confused by the time frame and everything and how this whole deal got started, it's all because it's in that lost twenty minutes of film. That's where all the exposition took place, in that jail, that limbo.

I had a tremendous time with Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. It was great fun. Jason of Star Command, same thing. I have a lot of films behind me that have special meaning.

I read that you're a certified hypnotist.
Hypnotherapist.

Sorry, hypnotherapist. Did you know director Werner Herzog said he once hypnotized an audience before the screening of one of his films? Do you use this talent in your acting?
If you're looking back at the audience and they're all kind of slack-jawed and staring then I've done that [laughs]. But I have hypnotized a group of people.

You've also pounded the skins for the '50s rock combo T-Birds on the hit "Full House". Do you still get behind the drum kit today?
No, not so much anymore. First off, I don't have the time, and, secondly, I actually gave up the drums in favor of the conga. Because by the time I tore down my kit all the good-looking girls were taken. So I had to start traveling light [laughs].