The Sweetest Taboo: An Interview with Erica Schultz

If you watch enough movies and are curious what other people think about them, you’ll realize soon enough: taste really is subjective. One person’s trash is another’s transcendental cult classic. We should all agree that real-life pain and suffering are terrible. Yet what can we do but wear our collective mortality lightly and enjoy cinematic carnage as we see fit, preferably with popcorn and a soda? 

The contents of cult film writer Erica Schultz’s new book The Sweetest Taboo: An Unapologetic Guide to Child Kills in Film are firmly tongue-out-of-cheek. Schultz currently co-hosts the Unsung Horrors podcast and previously contributed DVD booklet and video essays for releases by Vinegar Syndrome, Terror Vision, and more.

The Sweetest Taboo started as a Letterboxd list, which Schultz was persuaded to expand into a book by author/programmer Zack Carlson, whose notorious Fantastic Fest clip show “The Sweetest Taboo: 100 Best Child Kills” discovered some of the book’s more obscure entries. (The title “The Sweetest Taboo” originates with Lars Nilsen, whose Weird Wednesday history Warped and Faded also influenced the book). Carlson also wrote the excellent introduction, which notes Jonathan Swift’s infamous essay “A Modest Proposal” (eat babies, y’all) and several youth-annihilating Bible stories as thematic bedfellows. 

 “I know this book isn’t for everyone,” Schultz explains cheerfully. “Anyone who’s reading this, either they get it and they think it’s funny too, or they think it’s horrific and can’t even believe I would dedicate this many years of my life to writing a book on this subject. I’m surprised I have this many people interested in my book!”

Funded by a wildly successful Indiegogo campaign, The Sweetest Taboo (with striking design work by Justin “Hauntlove” Miller) documents over 1,100 films, from summer blockbusters to the extremely-extreme of world cinema. Every film gets a zippy summary and separate ratings for the film overall and, well, the child kill.

It’s a reference book, y’all.

The Alamo Drafthouse’s long-running Weird Wednesday will host a special book release screening with Erica in attendance on April 17, 2024. We sat at her kitchen table one early April afternoon next to a massive shelf of DVDs to discuss the book, Haley Joel Osment, and flying cross-country to rent movies.

What makes icing a child on screen the “sweetest” taboo, as opposed to the “ultimate” or something like that? 

I think the “sweetest” is sort of playing off of how we view children—as innocents. It does seem to be, for most people, the ultimate taboo because children are supposed to be safe. People want them to be safe in films because they’re not safe in the real world. That’s why I appreciate these movies so much, because they’re willing to break that taboo and say, “No, we’re going to go there—we’re going to make you uncomfortable.” 

And you have classic, mainstream movies in there. I’m sure Jaws is in there.

Yep. Pay It Forward is in there! That one surprised me. I had to watch that dumbass movie with Haley Joel Osmont. Did you know there’s a Backdraft 2? Because it exists, and kids get blown up in it, so it’s in there. I feel like that’s the surprise for the genre film fans, where they’re expecting to read about all these exploitation and horror films. 

Haley Joel Osmet and Kevin Spacey in Pay it Forward.

The book actually started as a Letterboxd list. Your podcast Unsung Horrors [co-hosted with Lance Schibi] also uses Letterboxd to measure a film’s obscurity, reviewing movies with less than 1,000 views. What are your thoughts on Letterboxd and how it’s changed the film landscape, particularly for cult films?

I think Letterboxd is one of the greatest things to happen to cinephilia in years. I got on it in 2017, 2018, and my whole reason at first was because I have a shit memory and I needed a way to keep track of the stuff I’m watching. Then I was like, you can make lists—perfect. 

But what it’s really turned into is, you find people who share the same tastes. I don’t know a lot of people I follow on Letterboxd personally, but I feel like I know them, or their tastes. I trust strangers now with “Am I gonna watch this movie or not?” That’s not something we could say we had 10 years ago. I guess Letterboxd is 15 years old –

It's really taken off recently.

It’s so huge and I’m happy to see that success for it. Especially for physical media collectors, it’s a great way to keep track of what you own. Like if I’m at [Austin record stores] Waterloo Records or End of an Ear, I can say, “Gonna grab that—wait, do I have that?” And I can look at my Letterboxd list and see.

You are very active in the underground and exploitation film scene. How did you get involved professionally?

I think it’s just baby steps. You become a fan first. I got offered to do an essay for a Vinegar Syndrome box set that had a movie called The Demon’s Baby (1998). At that time, I think less than 200 people had it logged [on Letterboxd]. Another thing I love about Letterboxd is it allows me to find those things that are underseen, and use the podcast to bring them to light. And in a roundabout way it got my foot in the door for, like, “She can write about this because she’s seen it.” [Laughs.] Sometimes, these Blu-ray labels are releasing movies that nobody has seen. 

Were you influenced by any other film archive or reference books or publications that inspired you to take such a comprehensive approach?

Zack Carlson and Bryan Connolly’s book Destroy All Movies!!! The whole process for how they found all those movies was insane. They were like, “We’re gonna find every movie that has a punk in it, and we’re gonna write about it.” Who does that? That’s more insane than what I did, I think! [Laughs.]

Another book that I used, and one I told [book designer] Hauntlove, “I want my book to look like this, but your style,” was Lars Nilsen’s book Warped and Faded. That was all about Weird Wednesday and the history of AGFA [American Genre Film Archive]. It had all these little capsules for hundreds of films that told me everything I needed to know to decide whether I wanted to see it or not.

All the writing in the book is yours, for all 1,100 films?

There’s about 700 that actually have a write up, then another 400 or so in the appendix, and then there’s sidebars and things like that about films that are thematically connected.  

[But] yes, except for the introduction by Zack Carlson. And that was a no-brainer. He’s the whole reason the book exists, because I asked him one day for the names of some of the movies from that clip show he did at Fantastic Fest, and he said why, and I told him about the list, and he told me, “You need to make that a book! Everybody’s gonna want that book! You’ll get a publisher no problem!” And I was like… OK. And none of that came true. [Laughs.]

But you did have a very successful Indiegogo campaign.

I did, over 200%. I was just going to ask for enough to print a few hundred. Then I doubled my goal and was like, I guess I can print 1,000 of these now, and afford to pay someone to actually do the cover design and layout and have it be professional. 

Regarding the design, how did you hook up with Justin “Hauntlove” Miller?

I have been a huge fan of his work for a while. He does design work for Rough Cut Fan Club; they sell cinema t-shirts. He’s worked with a lot of boutique Blu-ray labels and he has a very distinct design.

So I reached out to him and asked if he would be interested in doing the cover design. I was a little hesitant because I knew he had kids. He replied right away, “Absolutely. Who Can Kill A Child? is one of my favorite films!” And then he actually offered to do the entire layout. Justin did such amazing work and I can’t recommend him enough. 

That’s the key to getting something like this done, having the right people in your corner. Samm Deighan was able to squeeze in the editing, and she’s very busy! But I know her, and I trust her, and she knows these films. 

Who Can Kill A Child? Bluray box art.

Will you have extra copies of the book available at the book release?

Yes. About 200 people were backers [on Indiegogo], so they’re all going to get their copy.  There are a few online retail sites that already have copies promised, but I’m going to bring some copies with me to the Weird Wednesday screening. I’ve also got another screening coming up in May with Bat City Cinema for a 16mm screening—the date isn’t finalized yet. 

How does it feel to come out on the other side of watching/curating 1,100 films?

As bad as it sounds, it doesn’t feel complete. I knew when I quote-unquote finished the book, “There’s no way I got every film that has a child kill in it.” That nagged me, even when I was like, “I’ve got to stop.” I had backers and I needed to give them a book!

The primary Letterboxd list is technically 1,190 films total. There’s a supplemental list I had to create after I’d already pulled the plug [on the book] called “Even More Child Kills,” and that one broke 100 this week! 

But once I have it [the book] in my hands, there will be a sense of completeness. I made this thing, and I put it into the world. I guess that’s maybe what people who have kids feel like?  I think my book could beat up your kid, but whatever.

Do you have any personal favorite films or discoveries from the book?

I could never choose. It’d be like asking a parent to pick their favorite kid, you know—“I can’t do that!” [Laughs.]

Do you ever feel like you’re running out of movies to watch?

We are kind of spoiled here in Austin—we have a lot of options to go out and see films. We have Alamo Drafthouse, Hyperreal Film Club, Bat City Cinema, Austin Film Society, Eastside Cinema which has Blue Starlite Drive-In and now they’ve got the new Millenium Complex theater open. We Luv Video. And people forget about the library. I use the library all the time.

Most of the films for this book were not found on major streaming platforms. There are a few from Netflix and HBO/Max and things like that. But I kept a tally of where I watched each film—I had multiple spreadsheets for this over the years—and less than 50 came from the major paid streaming platforms. There was a good chunk that were on free ones like Tubi or Youtube or Cave of Forgotten Films and other random full movie sites. 

But the majority of what I found were from either my own collection, from the library, or from renting videos. We had two video stores prior to 2020 [Vulcan Video and I Heart Video]. I even rented from Scarecrow Films in Seattle, because they have a rent-by-mail option. They actually had three films that I could not find anywhere. 

You went to Seattle to rent movies?

It was okay, I was going there anyway. I just tacked an extra day onto my trip. Scarecrow is mecca for anyone who loves movies. 

So yeah, even if I just go to the library, which has maybe 4–5 shelves worth of movies, I haven’t seen everything on there. I’m not even going to make a dent even in all the movies I want to see, let alone what I don’t know I want to see yet. It never ends. And it shouldn’t.

You can follow Erica on IG and Letterboxd at @hexmassacre and buy tickets now for the Weird Wednesday book release event.