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B.L.: I saw the WHEN A STRANGER CALLS remake and recognized your voice right away. However, when they showed The Stranger it was a different actor entirely. I found this to add to the creepiness of that character.

L.H.: I know (laughing). I had just finished shooting ALIEN VS. PREDATOR in Prague and the head of Fox came up to me and said, “Lance, we want to use your voice for the guy on the phone.” I agreed to do it. Believe it or not, he came to every recording session I did. There was something about this movie that he liked. Truthfully, I never saw the whole movie. I just saw a couple of scenes. They even had me sync my voice with the actor on screen, the bad guy. But it certainly wasn’t me (laughing). It was real fun to do. If they asked me to do a puppet show, I would try. That was as close to a puppet show as I’ve ever gone, do the voice of another actor. Now that “IS” creepy. I actually did it once before, this German company came to me and said, “Lance, we have a performance in this film that just doesn’t work. Would you please dub your voice over this guy’s performance?” So, I’m standing in a booth watching this really hammy, shitty acting going on and having to put my voice to this. Then, what really pissed me off, they put it out and advertised that I was in the movie. It was just horrible. I’ll never get roped into that situation again. It was one of those times, again, where I was not working and when you say yes to some things – things can happen that will benefit your career. Well, things did happen with that one, but it wasn’t the kind of things I wanted (laughing).

B.L.: Were you already an established actor at the time? Did they exploit the use of your name?

L.H.: Oh yeah, they stuck me on the box, big as life. You would hit the video store shelves and there’s my name in this horrible-ass movie. I don’t want to name the film, but what a complete piece of shit. It happens, you know. It’s like an old girlfriend showing up; one that you never got along with.

B.L.: You’ve worked with actor Jeffery Combs a number of times.

L.H.: Yes, I have. We actually have a new film that the two of us are going to be doing up in Canada. I actually have the script laying around here somewhere. I received it around eight months ago and I forget the title of it at the moment. It’s a really good movie and I just loved the script. They are currently re-writing it. It’s going to be a kind of science fiction thriller. I like Jeffery. We did a film together where I did a monologue about a guy who put crazy glue on the palms of his hands and slapped the rear end of a Rhino. It then proceeded to run off with him attached to it. I was suffering from an abscessed tooth through the whole shoot. It was a two-day shoot and I couldn’t get to a dentist because I had to work on this film. So, my face started swelling up and I had to use licorice to make it look like I was chewing tobacco, just to explain away my swollen face. I was dying from the pain and doing comedy on top of it.

B.L.: You’ve done two Sasquatch movies. Is that simply a coincidence?

L.H.: I’ve actually done three. That’s the end of the Sasquatch movies. If you’ve done three, there are no more expressions you could possibly have left towards a Sasquatch that would be new, unless he steps on me. I do have to say, all the Sasquatch films I did were completely different. An ex-tank driver in the Israeli army directed one up in Canada. The other two were done in California and New Mexico. All three films were different because, believe me, the Sasquatch aspect didn’t really turn me on very much (laughing). I managed to use the other actors involved in the movies as my world. But don’t even mention Sasquatch to me. If I get another script that says, “The Sasquatch looks around the tree,” I’m going to go, “No way, leave me alone, man.”

B.L.: You were in the best film Stan Winston has ever directed, for sure. How was that experience?

L.H.: Yeah, PUMPKINHEAD.

B.L.: Right. That turned into a kind of franchise for you also, didn’t it?

L.H.: Yes, but you know what though? Again, this is the alimony thing I was talking about earlier. Certain movies they say, “We’re going to pay you this amount of money. You should come get involved.” I immediately start thinking, “Okay, alimony film.” They turned out to be really bad sequels, sub-par. Stan Winston was a great director and PUMPKINHEAD was his first film. Stan is quite a guy – really talented. I love the story about him on the airplane. They were doing the film PREDATOR and they didn’t like the monster that the guy they originally hired came up with. So, they called Stan in and on the airplane, on the way to the meeting, he drew on a napkin the Predator. It was exactly the way you see it today. That’s how quick he is when he’s on fire. He’s really, really brilliant.

B.L.: I always liked an under appreciated film you did with director Don Coscarelli titled SURVIVAL QUEST.L.H.: I really loved doing that movie. In fact, that’s the only film I’ve done that I can show my kids. I don’t want them to know who they’re living with, until they get a little older. It was a fun film to shoot and there are a lot of people in that film that went on to have great careers. One of my favorite stories with Coscarelli is that he put us through so much physically during that production. We were in a raging river where we almost drowned. He had us dangling off the side of mountains and all this other stuff. I finally just had to get back at him. We got into this little town at a motel and I went to a local bait shop. I bought around five tubes of crickets and as soon as he put the lights out to go to bed, I poured some through his window. Suddenly, his room was full of crickets and they were jumping all over him and making their racket. He came out of his room and everybody knew I was going to do this, so we were all in the hallway asking him what the problem was. Don said, “Crickets! I don’t understand it; millions of crickets!” They get him booked into a different room and I did the same thing to him again (laughing). He went to sleep and I nailed him again. He never knew, to this day, where those crickets came from. I spent about fifty bucks on those crickets. That was a fun form of payback. Boy, that was a wonderful film to work on and we had no money to get that one made. It was a miracle it ever got completed. When you think about it, in your life or my life, if you spent a million dollars on anything – that’s not much money to the movie studios – but to us, that’s a lot of money. When you get into a budget like that and these people are risking their money, even in an alimony film, as far as I’m concerned, you’ve really got to give it your all. I know I don’t hold back. I don’t mock them or walk through it. I can’t do that; morally, I just can’t do it. That’s been my career all over the place. I’m playing everything you can imagine and to me that’s the fun of it all. If I stopped enjoying it, I would quit entirely and just make pottery.

B.L.: Can your fans purchase your pottery anywhere or are those just personal creations?

L.H.: Nah, I just make them here. I made pottery back in the sixties and I was making thousands of goblets and cups. I had to try to live on it. This was way before I was an actor and I finally stopped. I just said, “You know what, I’m not going to do this again until I no longer have to sell one single piece.” Now I make pottery simply because I love doing it.

B.L.: It’s kind of a way to wind down?

L.H.: Yeah and I also need labor. I’m a laborer. I can’t just live in my head. You wouldn’t want to be in this head.

B.L.: Anything you’d like to add that I might have neglected to touch upon?

L.H.: I wish they would stop using corn to make fuel for cars. I wish they would just give us the corn and use the stalks, like they should be, to make the fuel. The world is starving and they’re using our corn. Can you believe that? It’s just insane because you can use just about anything to make ethanol. You can use garbage. For them to be using corn because it’s quicker, they’ve got to stop it. When I look at my car, I’m pissed off at it now. I really am. It’s like a big, expensive, stupid-looking parasite.

B.L.: I’d like to thank you for allowing me to speak with you, Mr. Henriksen.

L.H.: You have a great day, buddy. I wish you well and you take care of Tennessee, will you?

B.L.: I’ll do my best. Thanks again.

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