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Hysteria! Creator on That Surprise Re-Animator Reunion in Peacock's Satanic Panic Series
You can't make a horror show set in the 1980s and not include the actors who made the decade so iconic.
It's an unspoken rule in Hollywood that if you're going to play around in a certain genre or time period, you need to pay homage to the trailblazers who came before in some way. Such implicit reverence for the past often takes the form of casting actors who are inextricably linked to certain characters and eras of filmmaking. Peacock's new Satanic Panic TV series, Hysteria! (all eight episodes are now streaming), is a great example of this, with Ash Williams himself, Bruce Campbell, recalling the seminal comedy-horror stylings of the original Evil Dead movies in the role of Police Chief Dandridge.
"I’m from Michigan [so] Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi were the North Star for me in terms of someone who wanted to go out into the world and be a filmmaker," series co-creator, showrunner, and executive producer Matthew Scott Kane tells USA Insider over Zoom. "[If] they did it, that means I can do it. So to have Bruce involved with this, I’m so incredibly grateful."
But Kane didn't stop at Campbell. Wanting to further express his love for the classic '80s horror that Hysteria! was most influenced by, the showrunner also reunited a pair of genre icons: Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton.
Who do Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton play in Hysteria?
Combs and Crampton — who are, of course, most famous for starring in director Stuart Gordon's cult favorite adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft stories, Re-Animator (1985) and From Beyond (1986) — enjoy brief cameo roles in Episode 5 of Hysteria!, "Mother," as the concerned parents of a young Tracy Whitehead (Anna Lore). Worried about their daughter's descent into the drug and sex-laden counterculture rebellion of the 1960s, the parents turn to The Reverend (Garret Dillahunt) for help in getting Tracy to re-embrace religion.
"To have Barbara and Jeffrey involved made my life," Kane admits. "I feel like if Evil Dead II is the best-directed horror film ever made, [then] Re-Animator is one of the best-written ones. So the fact that I can have those two come in here and play a part in this… I’ve since become close friends with both of them. They’re the most lovely people you’ll ever meet in the world. I loved having them."
"And they’re enormously talented actors," chimes in co-creator and executive producer David A. Goodman. "That sometimes gets lost when you talk about genre. They become ‘genre actors.’ No, they’re actors! They’re brilliant."
While Kane is very much an enthusiastic fanboy of the highest caliber, he never wanted these celebrated actors to feel like they were only hired to recreate their iconic roles. "We didn’t hire Bruce to be Ash Williams. We didn’t hire Julie [Bowen] to be Claire Dunphy," he insists. "Everyone that came onto the show, we used against type, including Barbara and Jeffrey. They’re very conservatively dressed parents in this show, as opposed to what they’ve been in literally every other [project] they’ve ever been in. They were incredible, they totally got the assignment [and] I loved working with all of them."
How to watch Hysteria!
All eight episodes of Hysteria! are now streaming exclusively on Peacock. Episodes will also air weekly, every Thursday night at 10:30 p.m. ET on USA Network.
Jordan Vogt-Roberts (The Kings of Summer, Kong: Skull Island) directed Episodes 1 and 8. He also serves as an executive producer alongside co-creators Matthew Scott Kane and David A. Goodman; Chris Bender (The Last Voyage of The Demeter); Jake Weiner (Mulan); and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves co-directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein.
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