Stephen Sommers Quotations

There are four movies that got me into wanting to make movies: Journey to the Center of the Earth, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Swiss Family Robinson, and Jason and the Argonauts. Those are the movies that took me to different places when I was a kid. I fell in love with movies by watching those movies.

No one is going to think going into this movie that they are going to come out loving Frankenstein, and not in a cheap of cheesy way at all - he's really an angry, vicious guy - a beast. But when you think of the originals, they were scary melodramas. The characters were so deep. I always felt as badly for Frankenstein as I did for his victims because, like Lenny in Steinbeck's 'Mice and Men,' he's a man-child. I've always found that fascinating.

Frankenstein's monster is so iconographic, so my creature designers spent many, many months designing him. I said, 'OK, he has to have a flat head, blots on his neck and Doc Martens on his feet, but other that - we can play with him'.

The key to humor in a horror film is that it has to be organic. It has to be organic to the situation.... if you know you're doing anything to get a laugh, or anything to scare people - that's great. But to try to get people to do both - to try to get people to scream in horror, and a moment later burst out laughing - I think that's a neater trick.

I hope in my career I get to do every kind of movie. When I did Huck Finn, I got all those Disney kid scripts. When I did Jungle Book, then I got all the animal scripts. Now I do a couple Mummy movies and it's like, 'Oh, he does monsters.

I wanted to make a small movie about a guy and a girl on the beach, but then I thought, wouldn't it be cool if a werewolf was there?

I never want to write something until I know every scene in the movie. I don't want someone hiring me and then me not being able to write it. Which is always a fear. So I like to figure it out, know all the characters, and know almost every scene in the movie before I start writing.

I love all of mythology and rules pertaining to all of the monsters, but I like to go the extra step.

I went in right up front and said, This can't be about some guy in bandages. I didn't even want to do a horror movie. I took the concept and made a romantic adventure film. I like action heroes who don't take themselves too seriously. I wanted to make everyone take the mummy seriously, but it couldn't just be a guy in bandages. But the main thing was to build in surprises. That's one of the great things you can do with special effects.

The best scary movies have great humor in them and a great story.