There’s nothing like a little stunt casting to get a movie going. You bring that special someone in for a day of filming and it boosts the recognition of the movie by an exponential amount. A quick cameo that audiences will talk about. An appearance by a popular non-actor in an acting role. Even better, a movie built around a non-actor. The possibilities are endless. As long as that one person shows up in the movie, the movie will be unstoppable.
Sunday “Bad” Movies has featured a bunch of movies that used the non-actor stunt casting to help find an audience. Gymkata took an Olympic gymnast in Kurt Thomas and built an action movie around merging his gymnastics with fighting. Cool as Ice took the persona that Vanilla Ice presented himself as and tried to play it off as the cool hero type. I recently saw Showdown, which placed Tae Bo master Billy Blanks in the Mr. Miyagi role of a Karate Kid-like. And let’s not forget Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever. That was a whole Hallmark Christmas movie made to star a popular cat from the internet.
The horror genre might be the one most associated with stunt casting because of the lengths they’ll go to for stunt casting to be a thing. Horror might be the only genre to retroactively stunt cast actors. Let me explain how. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation came out in 1995. It starred RenĂ©e Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey, who weren’t big stars when it was made. Nobody paid attention to it when it first came out. Those actors rose to popularity soon after, and it was re-released in 1997 to capitalize on their fame. As if they were stunt cast for their statuses. That might not be the best example. Here’s another one. Cutting Class was a 1989 direct-to-video horror flick featuring Brad Pitt. I can’t tell you much more about it, but it has only been sold using Brad Pitt’s giant face for the past 25 years in those multi-pack DVDs.
Stunt casting in horror has been a thing since at least the Abbott and Costello Meets movies. It has remained a major device to help push horror and amuse the filmmakers. 1978’s Halloween had stunt casting. Jamie Lee Curtis was cast in the lead role in part because she was the daughter of Janet Leigh, the star of Psycho. Janet Leigh would later show up in Halloween H20, a little bit of stunt casting because of her horror history and to be on screen with her daughter. The Scream franchise has done lots of stunt casting. The first film was promoted as a Drew Barrymore movie, only for her to die in the opening scene. The Stab movies shown in-universe featured many notable names as part of their casts. Jay and Silent Bob even showed up in Scream 3. There’s lots of this kind of stuff in horror.
Low budget horror is where stunt casting really shines, though. The entire cast might be a bunch of relatively unknown actors, except for one recognizable face in a small role. That one recognizable face will be who the filmmakers use to sell the movie to audiences. They will want to know what that person was like in the movie, even if their role was only a scene or two. What did they do with their screentime? Curiosity always wins out.
Take #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead, for example. On their way to a music festival, Sarah (Jade Pettyjohn) and her friends suffered a blown tire. They were forced to rent an Airbnb. The only problem? Someone knew the Airbnb they booked and started killing them, themed to the seven deadly sins, as revenge for the suicide of Collette (Jojo Siwa) a year earlier. They had to put aside their quarrels to work together if any of them wanted to make it out alive.
When I say low budget horror, I don’t mean micro. Micro-budget horror doesn’t typically have the means to stunt cast someone. I’m talking the $500k to $2 million range, something that #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead certainly fell into. It was part of a 10-film deal at $15 million. If I’m to understand that correctly, that would be about $1.5 million per movie. This is the exact low-budget horror realm I mean. It’s enough to pay for a notable name to make a small appearance, while paying the rest of the lesser-known cast and crew to do the more intensive work. The budget can’t be micro because that wouldn’t cover the person’s fee. But when it gets into low budget territory, that’s when a producer can stunt cast someone to be the face that a movie can be sold on.
There are a couple ways that low-budget horror flicks utilize stunt casting to promote themselves. They essentially come down to the same things. One is to use someone in promotional material prior to release. Trailers, posters, that sort of stuff. Drum up the hype by letting people know this person shows up. The other way is to use their image in thumbnails on streaming services. That’s what brought my attention to #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead. I was scrolling through Tubi and they smacked me in the face with Jojo Siwa in the thumbnail. I wondered what a Jojo Siwa horror movie would be like. They got me.
The thing about stunt casting is that it doesn’t typically have that recognizable face in a big role. Unless that performer has passed the peak of their fame, such as in The Asylum movies, or the performer is in one of their earliest roles, a la Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween. Most times, it would be too expensive to stunt cast for major roles. Smaller roles mean less money. It’s like paying for a shoutout on Cameo. That allows lower budget movies to get that recognizable face. Jojo Siwa was only in a couple scenes of #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead. The montage of her character, a flashback, and her death scene. The story being told took place a year after all that stuff. But her small appearance was enough to promote the movie with her name and image.
Stunt casting doesn’t mean that a movie is bad. The filmmakers aren’t trying to trick audiences. Not in a quality way, at least. There’s the trick of promoting a movie off someone who isn’t the star. But the overall quality of the movie might still be good. Scream was promoted with the star power of Drew Barrymore. Her character died twenty minutes in. That didn’t take away from the rest of the movie, which was also good. The stunt casting of Drew Barrymore got people to see the movie. The quality kept them interested.
Let’s go back to #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead one more time. It might have been a lower budget movie, but that didn’t mean it was a lower quality movie. It was fine. The performances were mostly decent, minus maybe the lazy guy, but I think that was the writing. The idea behind the movie was interesting enough, being a cross between I Know What You Did Last Summer and Se7en. The kills were fun enough. The digital mask of the villain was maybe the most interesting thing. It wasn’t a terrible movie. Could it have been better? Sure. Was it fitting of being in Sunday “Bad” Movies? Yes. The size of Jojo Siwa’s role wasn’t going to make or break the movie, though.
The most important part of stunt casting is getting eyes on a movie. It’s a tool to get an audience. The quality is a result of the hard work of everyone else. They should go hand in hand. Stunt cast to get the eyes. Good quality to keep the eyes. That’s not always the case. Take The Asylum, for example. They’ve made an endless number of bad movies, stunt casting people like Tiffany and Debbie Gibson, Reginald VelJohnson, Linda Hamilton, Jamie Kennedy, and Jaleel White. Hell, the Sharknado movies were nothing but cameo after cameo to get people to watch them. Stunt casting happens all the time.
The idea behind stunt casting is that it will bring eyes to a project from people who may not have checked it out otherwise. This, in turn, could get more people to invest in said movie. Dangle that carrot to get that money. That will never change. The business is built on money. Most societies are built on money. We live in a capitalistic society. Movies cater to that. But a little bit of stunt casting doesn’t mean you can’t have a good time. What else would you be looking for in a movie, if not a good time?
Let’s end this off with a few notes:
- I mentioned a few movies in this post that were part of Sunday “Bad” Movies. Gymkata, Cool as Ice, Showdown, Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. Oh, and the Sharknado franchise, which has been looked at twice.
- There were no actors in #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead from other Sunday “Bad” Movies.
- Have you seen #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead? What did you think? What do you think of stunt casting? Let me know your thoughts in the comments, or find me on Bluesky or Threads.
- Bluesky, Threads, and the comments are good places to suggest movies for me to watch for future posts. Hit me up. Let me know what I should be seeing.
- Now we’ve got a look forward. This month got away from me with a new job and some short film work, so my two planned horror posts were pushed back. This one will be out this week. Hopefully the Slashlorette Party post comes out next week. Then I’ve got a post planned for the Smokey and the Bandit made-for-TV movies that came out in the early 90s. That’ll be fun. I’ll see you soon for another post.
