Danielle Harris ('Halloween' 4 & 5, 'Rob Zombie's Halloween' 1 & 2)

Danielle Harris stars in the new Halloween sequel by Rob Zombie. It’s a crap movie, but Danielle Harris, who was brought back into the franchise last year by Zombie for his remake, actually starred in the original Halloween 4 and 5, in which she played Jamie Lloyd, the target of Michael Myer’s wrath. In Zombie’s Halloween II, she reprises her role as Annie Brackett, the ill-fated friend of Lori Strode who bravely takes on nudity in an un-Jamie Lloyd way.

But Danielle Harris is much more than funny anecdotes about how much Donald Pleasance scared her when she was a kid because he was always drunk on the set and wearing a gross fake scar; she’s a clever woman with filmmaking aspirations of her own. She tells Pretty/Scary about how the Halloween franchise is now a part of her life...

Despite what you may think, Harris’s Annie Brackett did not die in the end of Rob Zombie’s Halloween. Yes, you see her bleeding to death on the floor, but did you ever see her actually die?

“There was a scene where I was loaded into the ambulance that was cut out,” she explains. “I’m flailing and screaming and looking around at the end. I wasn’t dead yet, but I was definitely still… bleeding to death.”

Harris in 'Halloween II' by Rob Zombie

Harris is always anxious when she has a new movie, especially one as large as the Halloween films. They cause her a great deal of anxiety.

“It’s frustrating when everybody else in the theater is seeing it for the first time,” she says of premieres. “You're with your friends and people in the business, and you have no idea what you’re gonna look like, what it’s gonna look like, of how you’re gonna come across.” Danielle notices things about herself up on the screen that none of the rest of us ever would. “It’s gnarly,” she confesses. “I’ve got an eyebrow thing.”

Her anxiety can sometimes get a little out of control.

“I almost had a panic attacks the last time I sat through a first screening of the last Halloween,” she says. “I had a combo love scene, death scene, and I was taking my top off for the first time, and I was saying some pretty gnarly stuff… as soon as I cam on, I just started whispering to myself, ‘Oh God, there it is’, and my heart started beating, and I just felt like, ‘I’m gonna pass out, I’m gonna pass out’.”

About to be killed in Zombie's 'Halloween II'

Thankfully she didn’t. But she totally can’t hang with having makeup effects on her neck, like she had to for Halloween II, when her throat gets cut and she has to spurt ginormous amounts of fake blood from a pump attached to heavy latex on her throat.

“I am just gonna take some kind of anti anxiety pill, and deal with my neck makeup,” is her general attitude towards hours in the makeup chair. “I can’t deal with having anything on my neck. You can’t move, you can’t do anything. You can feel your Adam’s apple. Like, if you put your hand around your Adam’s apple, that’s how it feels. I have a hard time with that.”

The 4 hours of makeup also took 1.5 hours to take it off. “2 hours to get the stuff on my face when I’m in the hospital,” she sighs. “So, that to me was way more horrific than what it looks like onscreen.”

And what happens onscreen causes her to have reactions like, “Oh My God, I look like I just came out of the womb!"

Surprisingly, she’s not at all shy about her nudity in Halloween. Not even on set, during shooting did she feel uncomfortable.

“Once you place me on the ground, leave me alone. Don’t come over and try to cover me up. I’m not someone that’s modest. I trust them enough to tell me if something’s not looking right. I can’t see anything, so please, tell me.”

Young Danielle as 'Jamie lloyd' in the original 'Halloween' franchise.

Danielle has a kick-ass movie coming out sometime in the future called Prank, and she actually directs a segment in this horror anthology. The other female-driven segments will be directed by actresses like Ellie Cornell (Halloween 4 & 5, House of the Dead 1 & 2, Dead and Deader) and Heather Langenkamp (A Nightmare on Elm Street 1, 3, & 7, Shocker, Perversions of Science), marking the directorial debut for all three women.

“Mine is called 'Madison',” says Harris proudly. "Female genre actresses on the other side of the camera for the first time! There’s no female directors in this genre! And these movies are so female-based that I just think its time. And I think that I have done enough of them I’m tired of working for the man, in other words."

Harris has known she wanted to direct for a while now. “I had been in so many low budget horror films, and I though to myself, ‘Gosh, why aren’t I doing this? I know how to do this. I’m getting hired by these guys - I’m doing this on my own.’"

Prank, and 'Madison', fell into her lap when she had an interesting conversation with the producer, Anthony Masi.

“I asked him to help me find a script to option to make into a feature. He said, ‘I have this idea. It’s to do this anthology...’ I didn’t realize the spin on it – that it would be actresses directing. ‘Would you want to do one?’ I said, ‘Absolutely! Someone paying me, using someone else’s money for training wheels? To learn how it works and to see if I’m even good at it’?”

The plot of 'Madison' is described as, As Madison sits patiently waiting for her boyfriend to return home, she fears something terrible has happened to him... that she is being watched... and that her very life is in danger.

“It’s a lot like the plot of When a Stranger Calls,” describes Harris. “It should have been easier for me what with what Halloween is, everything being seen through Michael’s eyes and all that and shadows and shapes. It was definitely learning experience and I loved it and I’m dying to do it again.”

She definitely wasn’t good at appearing in her own movie.

“I had one little snippet in it as an actress. And I forgot my wardrobe. When I’m directing, I’m directing, and I can’t do both. I’m a bit of control freak, so it’s actually the perfect job for me. I’m gonna just do it all.”

The only segment of Prank shot so far has been 'Madison'.

“We shot it, and the economy has been really shitty for the last year and a half, and the money kind of just disappeared after we did ours,” explains Harris. “The others have not been shot. I think they’ve been trying to shop it around as maybe a series for Starz? Or they played with the idea of doing 9 of them and having there be 9 different shorts. Each is about 20 minutes to half an hour.

I think they jumped the gun a little bit on talking about it a lot, but it has been so long now that I’m worried that it won’t be what its hyped up to be.”

Working with a huge success like Rob has taught her about directing. Harris has taken away lots of directing cues from him from being on the set.

“I wish I had Rob’s creative ‘thing’ that he has. He’s a rock n roller. He’s an artist! He can really do everything. I’m not a writer. He does soundtracks. He’s really a one-stop shop. What I have learned from him is just: trust your actors. And that’s a huge thing, especially because you’re like, ‘I’m gonna direct things with female leads’, most likely, and how do you step out of that as an actor? And just trust?”

Check out Danielle on twitter.com/halloweengal