When describing the career of actor Clancy Brown, the best word to use is prolific. At the time of this writing, Brown has 298 acting credits to his name. As a voice actor, he’s provided his dulcet tones to a collection of iconic characters, from Mr. Krabs to Lex Luthor and everything in between (including Gargoyles, Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series, Rick and Morty, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, and The Venture Bros). You’ll recognize Brown from The Shawshank Redemption, Starship Troopers, ER, and Billions, but for his role in The Mortuary Collection, it may take a moment to register his stoic face through all the prosthetic makeup. 

In The Mortuary Collection, Brown stars as Montgomery Dark, a mysterious and time-worn mortician who collects the stories of the recently deceased as they pass through his halls. When a young woman comes to his mortuary in search of a job, he accepts her challenge to tell a tale that will shock and awe, and what follows is a fabulous collection of storytelling shorts that come together as one cohesive anthology film. 

After reviewing the film for Fantasia Fest and interviewing writer/director Ryan Spindell, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to briefly speak with Brown about The Mortuary Collection and his epic career. 

Kelly McNeely: I understand you’ve been quoted saying, if it’s something that reaches out and grabs me, I want to do it. What grabbed you with The Mortuary Collection? What made you want to take on this project?

Clancy Brown: Oh, well, Ryan’s script, and then The Babysitter Murders. I got this script, and thought it was very good and very clever. And all the segments were strong, and the wraparound was really cool. And then I got to The Babysitter Murders segment and nothing was written, it just said, The Babysitter Murders and then went on to the conclusion of the framing story.

So I had to, you know, I liked it, but I had to find out what the joke of The Babysitter Murders was. And so I got the link for [the short film], and I watched The Babysitter Murders and just thoroughly enjoyed it. Clearly Ryan knew how to write, and after watching The Babysitter Murders, he had a really distinctive voice and a very clever sense of humor and storytelling techniques, and could obviously direct, edit, do all the things that he needs to do to be a filmmaker. And so at that point, it was like, as long as he’s not a jerk, and he doesn’t think I’m a jerk, let’s go do this. 

So we sat down, we met and talked and I really dug him from the get-go. And so we went and did it. And he’s a good man, he’s a real talent, and a great storyteller. And that’s the important thing in telling the story.

Kelly McNeely: Now, I was gonna ask as well, and you may have already answered this now with your previous comments, but you have a favorite segment in The Mortuary Collection?

Clancy Brown: I like them all. I think the one that I liked the most is Til Death Do You Part. I just think that it’s so sad. It was such a kind of a nightmare situation. There’s no winning that situation. And I thought Barak [Hardley] did such a great job acting it, and it was filmed so beautifully. And for goodness sake, it took place in an elevator. And it was funny, and it was horrific, and it was romantic, and it was heartbreaking, and it was sad, and it was — did I say funny? [laughs]. It had everything. Everything from A to Z was really good. 

Kelly McNeely: I love the visuals in the elevator, it’s just so beautifully shot. Now I understand that you were hospitalized after a reaction to prosthetics that you wore as Victor in The Bride, and you were sort of reluctant to wear them again for Highlander. Now, I’m guessing there was quite a bit of prosthetics or makeup that was involved for The Mortuary Collection, was there any sort of anxiety or hesitancy towards wearing those with what had happened previously?

Clancy Brown: Well, you know, back in The Bride and the Highlander days, that was a while ago, so they didn’t quite know everything they know now [laughs]. What happened on The Bride was that it wasn’t so much a skin reaction — I mean, I guess it’s the skin reaction anybody would have — but the glue that they used had ammonia in it that nobody knew about. So they would put in ammonia as an additive to latex when they take it out of the tree, I guess it keeps it from solidifying or something. And so they had ammonia in there, and they put it on my face and after too long, it just eats away at your skin like a diaper rash. 

But that was 25 years ago or something, and since then they’ve figured out how to do it much, much better, much quicker and much more efficiently and much safer, so it’s not a big deal now. It still takes too much time, but I didn’t really have any anxiety about it. I just had to do it. It had to be a good script, for me to do it [laughs].

Kelly McNeely: How long did the makeup take for that? 

Clancy Brown: That took about two hours to put on, and maybe an hour to take off. It gets a little quicker the more you do it, but not that much. I think probably the quickest we did it was two hours. And then it always takes too long to take off. But you got to do a lot. There’s a lot of cleanup you had to do before you got to go home.

But the makeup artist Mo Meinhart was just terrific. She did great work and took really good care of me, I can’t tell you how grateful I was to have somebody that conscientious and talented to do the makeup.

Kelly McNeely: And did you keep the teeth that you use in the film?

Clancy Brown: I did. I kept them. I snuck them out. They’re really creepy and weird, and my wife just think I’m not the man she married when I put those teeth in. She doesn’t understand why I hang on to stuff like that.

Kelly McNeely: Now you’ve had a very prolific career as a voice actor as well. And I understand some characters like Lex Luthor and Mr. Krabs you’ve obviously played for quite some time. Do you have a favorite character that you’ve returned to, that you just really really love doing the voice for?

Clancy Brown: I love doing both of those. I like doing Mr. Krabs and I like doing Lex very much. There was a thing called Heavy Gear. I think it was something like that? And the character I played in that, I can’t remember the name. It was a Sony project, there was some reason it didn’t air. I can’t remember why it didn’t air, too violent or something. 

Kelly McNeely: Now again, within voice acting, I understand you’ve done some for DC as well as for Marvel. Do you have — this is maybe a very loaded question — but do you have a preference between DC and Marvel?

Clancy Brown: When I was a kid, I preferred the Marvel characters. Mostly because I didn’t really appreciate the DC characters as much. As I’ve grown up, I like the DC characters a lot because they’re just so iconic. Marvel characters are more complex, I think, and there’s too many of them [laughs] there’s just too many of them. But I think there’s too many DC characters too. I don’t really think I have a preference of the worlds. I like both worlds. Marvel is more grounded in reality. And recently, there was Return to the Spider-Verse, I thought that was terrific. I thought that was just a wonderful realization of a new kind of Spider Man, a new kind of superhero. But then, I’m also getting a kick out of Pennyworth. I mean, that’s a cool sort of weird alternate universe DC mythology. I mean, they’re all cool, I’m not an expert enough to actually talk about it, but I enjoy them.

Kelly McNeely: Now you’ve had a very versatile career doing films like John Dies At the End — which by the way is my favorite book, so I was so happy that it got made into a movie…

Clancy Brown: What did you think of the movie?

Kelly McNeely: You know what, I love the movie, but the one thing that did disappoint me is they changed the name of the dog. I named my dog after the dog in the book, Molly, so when they changed it to Barklee I was like, agh, how could they? But I love what Don Coscarelli did with it. 

But, anyways, with films like John Dies at the End, Starship Troopers, Highlander, is there a role that will always stand out in your memory, or a role that you’ll always think back on with great fondness?

Clancy Brown: Oh, well, I mean, Montgomery Dark [The Mortuary Collection] for sure. You know, the first one that I did, Bad Boys, because that’s the first one. Buckaroo Banzai was a lot of fun. That kind of stands out, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai… certainly Shawshank stands out… you know, it’s probably much easier to ask me what roles have I forgotten, but then I couldn’t answer that question because I’ve forgotten them. But I’m sure there are ones that I’ve completely erased from my mind [laughs].

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The Mortuary Collection is streaming now on Shudder. But if you collect physical media the way Montgomery Dark collects anecdotes from the afterlife, you’ll be happy to know that the film is seeing a Blu-ray release as of April 20th, 2021. You can read our review of the Blu-ray release here!