It's the most wonderful time of the year, and Shudder has gifted us our Christmas present early – the festive fifth episode of The Creep Tapes Season 2, and with it, Peachfuzz in a Santa outfit.
In Episode 5 of Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass' cult found footage series, actor Timm Sharp stars as the titular “Nick”, a troubled man seeking an emergency therapy session on Christmas Eve. Unbeknownst to him, his shrink has been replaced by a far less qualified intruder, one with more than a few skeletons in his own closet.
Despite the unavoidable grisly fates that await his victims, one can't help but think hanging out with Peachfuzz looks kind of fun, especially in this episode where Nick gets to don a pair of cozy Christmas jammies and join the killer for a glass of eggnog. Sharp clearly had the time of his life on set, and who could blame him? “To be a part of The Creep Tapes was genuinely one of the most fun experiences I’ve had on a shoot,” the actor recounts. “It reminded me of making movies with my friends back in high school. I love Mark and Patrick and have been wanting to work with them both for awhile. I can’t think of a better group of guys to spend a few days in a cabin with!”
The feeling is more than mutual. “Both Mark and I were such huge fans of Timm's work, especially his character in Enlightened,” says Brice, “He could not have been more game for what we had in store for him.”
When it comes to crafting a piece of Christmas horror, Brice recalls “trying not to be intimidated by the lineage of the Christmas horror subgenre”, citing Black Christmas and the Silent Night, Deadly Night series as the pinnacles of the genre. But there's another far film that serves as a big inspiration behind the festive frights of the episode. Peachfuzz may be a maniacal mass murderer, but he's a sentimental fellow, and one who certainly isn't immune to the charms of the season. Early on in “Nick”, the wolfy weirdo suggests an alternative form of therapy based on a Christmas classic horror movie that served as the inspiration for the episode.
“There’s this incredible moment in the first Gremlins film where Phoebe Cates tells a dark story of parental loss on Christmas morning,” Duplass recalls, “I saw it when I was 7 years old and it never left me. How can a Christmas tale be at once so full of familial love and dark, strange devastation? There was something about that Gremlins scene and the idea that both Peachfuzz and Santa are magical beings that only come out at night… and just like that, our Christmas episode was born.”
Of course, it wouldn't be an episode of The Creep Tapes without things getting weird. And get weird they do. Peachfuzz's experimental methods of psychology involve digging deep into incredibly disturbing memories that may or may not be his own. While we're never sure when/if Duplass' adorably awkward serial killer is telling the truth, “Nick” could be the closest episode we have (since last week's miniature animal breakdown, at least) to figuring out why Peachfuzz is the way he is. For Brice, this episode specifically provided the perfect landscape to explore that darkness.
“I've always been a fan of Christmas Evil and how it played in the psycho-sexual landscape of horror, playing with the idea of past trauma related to the holiday,” he explains. “Repressed memory and the fissures that exist in the fantasy of Christmas felt like a great jumping off point for a Christmas themed Creep Tapes episode.”
Things get dark, folks, despite what our exclusive behind the scenes photos (seen below) suggest. Might wanna grab your Peachfuzz plushie for emotional support. The Creep Tapes Season 2 is now streaming on Shudder with new episodes every Thursday.
