The Scream King
SAM NEILL ON HOW HE BECAME AN ACCIDENTAL HORROR HERO
WORDS CHRIS HEWITT
Clockwise from main: A bloodied Dr William Weir in Event Horizon (1997); Alongside Julie Carmen in In The Mouth Of Madness (1994); As Antichrist Damien Thorn in Omen III: The Final Conflict (1981); Monster success with Jurassic Park (1993); With Isabelle Adjani in Possession (1981).
SAM NEILL IS many things — actor, wine expert, national treasure in at least three different countries — but he never considered that he’s something of a horror icon; a Scream King, if you will. “I’ve been in work for 50-something years,” he reflects. “Someone said I’ve made 90 movies. The odds are there’ll be some horror amongst it.”
And yet, the Kiwi actor’s impact on horror, and vice versa, is undeniable. This Halloween, you could do a lot worse than programme a Neillathon of the third Omen film, The Final Conflict (1981), Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession (1981), Paul W.S. Anderson’s Event Horizon (1997), and John Carpenter’s In The Mouth Of Madness (1994), which this month gets the 4K treatment and is ostensibly the reason why Empire is Zooming with the actor from his Australian home. It stars Neill as John Trent, an insurance man who finds reality fracturing as he investigates the disappearance of a missing horror author. “It’s not for me to say, but I’ve read that it was the last great Carpenter film,” says Neill, who had worked with the director on Memoirs Of An Invisible Man in 1992. “When he offered me this, I jumped at it. He’s eccentric, in a very endearing way. And I liked the story, and I like the opportunity to go nuts.”