Welcome to Mask of Insanity, a recurring feature which will find the men and women behind some of the most indelible slashers and monsters in the genre chatting about the craziest times they’ve had behind latex or resin. These tales will allow readers insight into the wild world of horror filmmaking, while hopefully providing fans with a few laughs and shudders along the way.
This time around, actor Tom Fitzpatrick joins us to discuss his work as the terrifying Bride in Black in James Wan’s Insidious: Chapter 2 and Leigh Whannell’s Insidious: Chapter 3. During our talk, Mr. Fitzpatrick reveals how he came by the role (previously essayed by actor Philip Friedman in the first Insidious film), provides his thoughts on having portrayed such a frightening figure, and shares with us some fun stories involving the film’s making and marketing.
“I have a very good agent and manager,” Mr. Fitzpatrick begins, noting how he came by the role of Insidious’ Bride in Black. “In this case, it was my manager. She got me the audition, and I went in.
“I read a beautiful scene. It was interesting to me as an actor. It was about a page and a half long, which is kind of unusual. You know, usually you get not much dialogue to read. But it was a beautiful scene. I didn’t know the story. It was some guy in an elevator, talking to a lady, and she was apologizing for her little son being so nosy and upsetting me.” This character was Parker Crane, later revealed to be the Bride in Black.
“And I went off on how I envy the little boy, that he had such a nice life. I went into detail about the nice life the kid had. It ended up with my character saying, ‘I love his little bedroom, the beautiful finger paintings on the wall.’ And that’s kind of the end of the scene. It ends with the mother, with a look on her face like, ‘What the heck? How does that guy know about the finger paintings on my son’s wall?’ She’s mystified.
“That was the end of the scene. I’d presumed it would be in the picture. I don’t know if you remember, but there’s a scene where the mother is in the elevator. The young Barbara Hershey character [Lorraine Lambert, portrayed in flashbacks by House of the Devil star Jocelin Donahue], the mother/nurse, she’s in the elevator with Parker, he’s there in his bathrobe. She kind of apologizes to him in that scene, but he doesn’t say anything. He’s just there. When we hit the first floor, the doors open and Parker just kind of walks out and goes down the hall. Then she says to the charge nurse on the reception desk, ‘Why is Mr. Crane out of bed? He was comatose yesterday. He shouldn’t be wandering around.’ And the charge nurse says, ‘Honey, Mr. Crane died last night. He committed suicide. He jumped out the window.’ I imagine that would have followed the dialogue scene. And I learned that dialogue.”
Unfortunately, Fitzpatrick learned that the scene in question was ultimately cut from the film. “I went to work that first day, all prepared to shoot the dialogue scene, and they said, ‘Oh, we’re not going to do the dialogue scene. You’re just going to stand there. When the elevator doors open, you’re just going to get out and walk down the hospital hallway. So I was disappointed. ‘Damn, my chance to speak on screen!’ So I thought that was kind of interesting, that they read me with that speech which I wound up not doing.
“I think they had prepared the speech for the fellow that played the role in the first Insidious. Back then, the character was called ‘The Old Woman’. She was just in scenes, kind of walking through, suddenly materializing and stuff. She was always in her Black Bride dress, when she frequently carried a candle. So I think they wrote it for him, because the character’s name in the script I got was ‘Philip’, which was said actor’s name. I wound up getting the role, and the role became Parker Crane.
Mr. Fitzpatrick’s first day on ‘Insidious: Chapter 2’ – Photo provided by Tom Fitzpatrick
“A couple of weeks later, my manager Eileen calls up. She says, ‘Oh, honey! Honey, you got that part!’ ‘What part?’ ‘That part, that thing that you read for. That Insidious thing, or whatever it is!’ I said, ‘Oh, great!’ Little did I realize that I had gotten into a famous horror franchise and I was going to get two gigs out of it. And a lot of horror conventions, so that was kind of neat.
“I have had a lot of work from the folks at Insidious. I got a lot of work out of it. I did Chapter 2, and then they so kindly put me into Chapter 3. I got a chance to work with Leigh Whannell, who’s a very dear man. God, I loved working with him. You’d never know from seeing him in the pictures, but he’s Australian, with a nice Australian accent. Pretty loud and jovial, actually, and he seemed to like directing on Chapter 3.
“We had a whole studio. They had built the set for practically everything in the studio. Chapter 2, we shot some stuff on location. So Chapter 3, it turns out that Leigh likes to direct from what they call ‘video village’. He likes to be over in the room where he can see the images the camera’s getting. So you’d hear this LOUD AUSTRALIAN VOICE coming from video village, telling you what you needed to do.”
Fitzpatrick notes here that the spooky vibe the Insidious films are known for extended to the filming locations. “The fun thing with shooting Chapter 2, we shot that hospital scene in this really scary abandoned hospital. I guess it got turned into an old age home. It was kind of just sitting there, and people filmed in it. Everybody was scared of filming in it. People were apparently murdered there as patients in the 1950s and incinerated in furnaces down in the basement. Everybody said it was really a creepy building, and I never, ever left the group of people in the waiting area. I wasn’t going to go into any of those halls. I wasn’t going to go in any of those rooms. It was very dark, and dusty, and spooky.
“They had fixed up the room where Parker was lying comatose. They made that look just like it was in 1983, and beautifully painted everything. It was all clean, but around it was just this big, old, vast, crumbling, spooky ass former hospital. So that was kind of fun. That was the first day of work. On that first day, they put me in my costume and did a photo shoot. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I’m all done up in this costume. They said, ‘Okay, look scary!’ So I looked scary for them.” [That picture] is what I give people when they want to have a picture from me.
“We shot there the hospital. Then, we went Sunday night … I’m not sure the name of the area of town. It borders Hancock Park. It’s a very elegant neighborhood. We were in an old house that was right across the street from the house of Hattie McDaniel. You know who Hattie was?”
This writer admits that he doesn’t.
“Oh shit, you don’t know anything!” Fitzpatrick laughs.
Fair.
“I think she was the first Black person to win an Oscar. She won for playing Mammy in Gone With the Wind. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful actress. She played support in a lot of movies, she played Mammy, and she won the Oscar. So she was quite wealthy.
“We were right across the street from Hattie’s house, so every time we had a break, I would go out and just stand at the front gate and check out Hattie’s house. You couldn’t go in, there was a guard, but it was really nice to be across the street from Hattie. That’s where we shot the scene that I really loved in Insidious 2.”
The sequence in question concerns Parker Crane’s transformation into the Bride in Black. “They wrote it, I think, after they had pretty much the whole picture in the can, and then wanted to explain Parker Crane a little bit more. So they had me come over again, they put makeup on, except for my lipstick and my wig. I was in a wife beater T-Shirt and a pair of funky old man’s boxer shorts. We were in an old mansion. It was very crumbly and very dusty, and also very spooky.”
A big revelation made by Fitzpatrick is that this sequence wasn’t helmed by the film’s acclaimed director. “By then, James Wan had already left. It was interesting, with Mr. Wan. I met him for maybe … I mean, he shook my hand and said, ‘Hi, I’m James,’ and we went to work. He was on set for that scene, which took a couple of hours to set up and shoot – the thing where the little boy comes by the hospital bed. Parker, who’s comatose, sits up and screams, and grabs the little boy and has to be pulled off. Mr. Wan directed that. But then he was gone. There was no more James. He had gone to Europe to shoot Fast and Furious, which I thought was kind of interesting.
“So he was gone, and they ordered up this scene which they wrote. It was just Parker finishing his makeup, putting on his wig, and then putting on the gown. They filmed that whole process. It was directed, I think, by the 1st AD. He was a lovely man to work with. So it was neat. I’m looking in this ratty old mirror, and this decayed old dresser that they gave me.
“I got to put my own lipstick on, which was very funny because the makeup person, Eleanor Sabaduquia, was a brilliant artist. She would spend two hours on my makeup. It was a work of art, and her big vanity – she didn’t really have a vanity – but her big thing was my lipstick. It had to be just right. It had to look like some old fool who wasn’t good at putting on lipstick. It had to go up into the wrinkles around my lips, the way old ladies’ lipstick does when they put on too much. She would paint that mouth for minutes, getting the lipstick to go up into the wrinkles around my mouth.
“And I hated that, ‘cause I wanted it to be glamorous, but I let her do it because they were paying me. But when I got my turn, I put on a beautiful mouth, man. I looked like Joan Crawford! Just a gorgeous mouth. I put the whole costume on, and they filmed the whole thing.
“Then I turned around and picked up an old, beautiful chromium saw that was lying on a table, and I approached a poor young lady who was all trussed up with a bedsheet propped up in the corner. So that was a scene that had not been in the script, and that was kind of wonderful. Then, of course, they explained Parker’s backstory.
“I think they made a lot of that stuff up after they had written the picture. I’m not sure, but felt like it was kind of an addition later. I thought it was so beautifully written. Leigh of course wrote it. In ten minutes, it told the whole story of The Black Bride, this killing machine, who was really a little old man who had been tormented as a child by a horrible mother. So, that was fun.”
Having essayed a terrifying and iconic horror villain, one wonders if Mr. Fitzpatrick is a fan of scary movies. “No, I have to confess I’m not. I don’t know anything about horror movies. There are classic, black-and-white things that I’ve seen. I love Dracula. But I didn’t know anything about horror at all.”
Nevertheless, even for being relatively unfamiliar with the genre, Fitzpatrick notes that he’s come to appreciate those who do love fright films. “Since having played The Bride in Black, I’ve gotten on the horror convention circuit. We would go around and do horror conventions in hotel ballroom on weekends. It’s very sweet. I love horror fans. They are the nicest people. They’re not crazy, and they’re not fixated or anything like that, but it happens to be a genre that they really find stimulating and interesting, and love.
Mr. Fitzpatrick on the convention circuit – Photo provided by Tom Fitzpatrick
“They’re very intelligent, and baby they are informed. They know every damn horror picture ever made! They would come up to me and say, ‘I loved you in the picture. You reminded me of such-and-such, and such-and-such.’ They would reel off a bunch of other characters from other horror movies, which of course I had never heard of.
“I learned the technique of smiling politely, nodding, and saying, ‘Oh, yeah! Wow, yeah. Wow, yeah that’s right.’ And I’m afraid, my darling, it was false. I didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about. But, you know, give the people their money’s worth.
“But horror fans are lovely people. I love them. I never met one I didn’t like.”
“They were awfully nice to me,” Fitzpatrick notes, discussing the various people behind the Insidious films. “I mean, I did 2, and they wrote the character into 3. She sort of turns up and strangles Lin Shaye, but that’s about the only thing she does in the picture. She’s not really germane to the plot as much as she was in 2, which was really a payoff for Insidious 1. That’s kind of a complete story by itself.
“3, I turn up and I jump out of the dark and I attempt to throttle Lin, but that was about it. But they love me, and they had me back to make a virtual reality thing with Lin. She’s in a chair in a scary room, talking about their story or whatever. Then I turn up as The Bride in Black. They gave me the candle again, but I didn’t have any dialogue. I really just kind of spooked around a little bit and then blew out the candle, which was a mistake because it was a big candle with a lot of melted wax right up and around the flame. When I blew on it, the wax went all down the front of my costume and took a half an hour to clean up. I felt like such a damn fool. But that was really cool.”
Beyond this neat piece of marketing, Fitzpatrick was also on hand to help celebrate on the third film’s big night. “They called and asked me to come and work the red carpet, God bless them. They were going to have a premiere of Insidious Chapter 3 on the red carpet at the Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, which was a farm boy’s dream come true – which is what I am, a farm boy – to get to do a premiere at the historic Grauman’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard.
“They put me in a beautiful room at the hotel. I mean, I was all of a sudden in historic Hollywood, the place that I always wanted to be, in a room being made up. Eleanor Sabaduquia is lovingly doing my perfect makeup again.
“And I go down first to a room full of what they call ‘influencers’. Influencers, for God’s sake! Talk about a modern word. This was a whole bunch of people who, I guess, influence people. I don’t know what the hell. They were all over me like a cheap suit, all the young ladies. They wanted to hug me. They wanted selfies with me. It was like I was like the biggest movie star on the face of the Earth to these sweet people.
The Influencer in Black- Photo provided by Tom Fitzpatrick
“It was marvelous. They’re all there with their martinis, and came into the room, and they explode with excitement. So I did that, got my ego stroked, and then they took me across the street and they turned me loose on the red carpet. I walked it, and everybody applauded! They love the Black Bride character.
“Then I did a couple of television interviews, for the love of Pete. I’m nobody! I’m not anybody, I’m not a star. I’m just this working actor, but they interview me. Of course I’m all in my fabulous makeup.
“Then there was going to be an after party, and they were going to play that Cherry Glazerr cover of ‘Tip Toe Through the Tulips’, which features in 2, I think it is. They wanted me to make an entrance at the after party in fog and a blue spotlight to ‘Tip Toe Through the Tulips’ and mine. They gave me the CD to have overnight so I guess I could learn to walk to it, and I got just this brainstorm. I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be hilarious if I come in and I lip sync to ‘Tip Toe Through the Tulips’? So I asked permission of the folks who were organizing the after party, and I showed them how I would do it. Well, baby, I was a hit in the black light, the blue spotlight and a bunch of horror movie fog. It was very satisfying. After that, all of the people there wanted to hug me, of course, and wanted to have selfies with me. I probably gave like 150 or 200 hugs and selfies that night.
“It was really one of the high points of my forty years here in Hollywood. I never had a better time. So I thought that was kind of sweet.”
Wrapping up our chat, Fitzpatrick looks back on his time as The Bride in Black. “Well, in a short sentence, I never loved anything more. I had a wonderful time. I was still a newbie in a genre that I’m completely unfamiliar with. I was honored to be cast. I loved every minute on set and everybody that I worked with, and I want to do more.
“All actors want to do more, but particularly for Blumhouse, Leigh Whannell and Mr. Wan. And like I said, when I got out on the autograph and collectors convention circuit, I was struck by … what a place it fills in the minds and the hearts of horror fans. It was really wonderful to see how much these people, these fans, love these movies and how important they are to them. What entertainment it gives to them. That’s what we as actors are supposed to do. We’re supposed to give people entertainment, stuff to be excited about and dream about, and I was really glad for the opportunity to do it.
“I don’t think I could’ve started in a better place than with Blumhouse and the Insidious franchise. I mean, I could have been in some piece of schlock, but I wound up in something that is a total class act. So I’m very grateful. That’s a big deal. I’m very grateful for the opportunity and I loved every minute of it, and I hope they have me back!”
Very special thanks to Tom Fitzpatrick for his time and insights.
Tom Fitzpatrick as Parker Crane, The Bride in Black- Photo provided by Tom Fitzpatrick