Xtra Club’s Marshall Julius chats with the ever-enthusiastic and charmingly down-to-earth star of Infestation, Ray Wise.

A familiar face from scores of fan-favourite sci-fi and horror films and shows, actor Ray Wise professes a particular affinity for the fantasy genres. "It’s my natural bent," says the star of Swamp Thing (1982), RoboCop (1987), TV’s Reaper (2007-2009) and great, big bug flick Infestation (2009). "Ever since I was a child, I got lost in fantasy, in horror periodicals and Alfred Hitchcock’s mystery magazine. I was always just naturally inclined towards it, and still am.

"I still read Stephen King, Dean Koontz and lots of other horror authors," says Wise, 62, "and I’m always taken by a really great horror film, though I haven’t seen many lately. They may be few and far between, but when they come, they’re worth it. I like the anticipation of horror. I like the mood. I like the tension, leading up to the horrific event. I like those moments that don’t show you everything graphically. That’s what chills me."

Prime among Wise’s passions is Bram Stoker’s Dracula. "I have a first edition of Stoker’s novel that I got when I was about 11 years old," says Ray with due pride. "This girl who was in school with me, it was her book, and she agreed to sell it to me. I think I paid $3 for it, which was a lot of money back then, but still a great deal.

"I’m not so crazy about the newer, younger vampires, the Twilight vampires. I don’t feel that much for them. I love True Blood though," adds Wise of the hit HBO series. "It’s like Twilight for grown-ups. They’ve invented a whole new mythology for vampires and I think it’s very creative, very well written and very well done. My own personal favourite though is the old-time vampire, the Middle European living high in the Transylvanian mountains. That’s the scary one for me."

Half-Romanian, on his mother’s side, Wise spent some time exploring Transylvania in 2001. "I made a movie in Romania called Windfall. It was all about a gambling casino in North Carolina during a hurricane, so not even remotely vampiric! Still, while I was there I got to visit the Snagov Monastery, on an island near Bucharest, which is where Vlad Tepes is buried."

Better known to most as Vlad the Impaler, Tepes was the sadistic Southern Romanian crown prince who inspired Stoker to create Dracula. "I went to Snagov, to that little stone church surrounded by a lake," reminisces Ray. "There’s not much to it, but it’s very atmospheric. There are some elaborate paintings on the walls inside and a great stone slab at one end, with a small painting of Vlad on top. They say that’s where his body is buried, though his head is somewhere else. So I lay on top of that stone with the picture in my hands, and they took a photograph of me. It was the highlight of my trip!"

A lifelong collector, Ray admits to pinching something from the set of everything he’s ever worked on, including scraps of his henchman character’s clothing from his explosive death scene in RoboCop. "I have to take something, physically, from the set of everything I make, whether it’s a prop or a piece of costume, just something to remember it by. All I have to do is glance at them and they bring back a flood of memories. One of my favourite things is a railroad spike from underneath the train where Leland kills Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks."

Though we’ll always remember Wise best as the guy who kicked RoboCop in the family jewels, for many he’ll forever be linked with the role of Laura Palmer’s grieving dad Leland in David Lynch’s freaky cult hit Twin Peaks (1990-1991) and its concluding movie, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992). "Initially Leland was not a very extensive part," reflects Wise.

"In the pilot he mostly cried. His daughter had just been killed and he was obviously distraught. But I was able to do that well enough so that in succeeding episodes they wanted to show more instances of Leland’s grief and bereavement, and how he handled that. And it just kind of built and gathered momentum until that final reveal, which I’d known nothing about until a couple of days before we filmed it. David didn’t want anyone to know who the real killer was, and I was praying it wasn’t me, but..."

Wise says that fans of the show have kept him in work ever since. "I’m often hired for jobs by people who say they loved Twin Peaks. Or RoboCop. They both have a lot of loyal fans." As does Reaper (2007-2009), the recently, prematurely cancelled horror comedy in which Ray, irresistibly charming as The Devil, trains unwilling young apprentice Sam Oliver (Bret Harrison).

"It’s just a shame that the CW network didn’t like it as much as the fans," says Wise of Reaper. "Our ratings were as good as many of the shows they still have on, but for some reason it just didn’t work for them. For my part, I loved playing The Devil. He was evil, but there was a goodness coming out of that evil. He wanted to be a mentor for young Sam, a big brother. Of course he had his own evil agenda, but he had an interest in the kid and wanted to see him blossom as a human being. He rather enjoyed the interaction and the turmoil he caused, I think. I had a lot of fun making it."

Seeing as how Reaper’s second and final season concluded open-ended, fans of the show have held onto the hope that it may, in some shape or form, receive the resurrection treatment. "Sadly," says Ray to the contrary, "I’m pretty sure it’s dead in the water now. It’s a done deal. It’s over. There was the hope that we were going to go to another network, or that they were going to do it just for syndication, but it didn’t work out so we’ve been released from our contracts. I’d love to see it come back as a Reaper movie. That would be a grand idea. It would be very funny, very entertaining, and very interesting, I think. But don’t hold your breath for it."

Among his most recent screen outings, Ray spent five weeks in Bulgaria shooting apocalyptic horror comedy Infestation, now available, on Blu-ray and DVD from Blockbuster.co.uk, to add to your list. "It’s like a Fifties B-movie," says Wise with a grin, "what with all those killer insects running around. I always loved those kinds of movies, and still enjoy them when I watch them today. They’re what I had in mind while I was making it, too.

Though the buzzing, stinging, over-sized bugs were added in post-production through the miracle of computer graphics, Ray says the goo they spewed all over the cast "...was all too real. They slathered that slime all over us, but we took it. You have to expect that, when you make a movie like Infestation."

You also have to trust your director, adds Wise. "You have to trust him a great deal, and you also have to have a lot of faith in the director of special effects, that he’ll be able to produce the creatures that he says he’ll produce, so that you don’t look a fool on the screen, running away from god-knows-what while you’re shooting the movie.

"When I finally saw Infestation though, I was pleasantly surprised. I thought it all worked out pretty well. I thought the bugs looked good and I was very pleased. I always knew they’d get the most bang for their buck with the effects. They didn’t have a big budget but they did a very good job with what they had."

But then that’s the charm of movies like Infestation. Too much cash often ruins the fun. "That’s true," agrees Ray. "The cheaper it is, you have to work harder, and for some strange reason it becomes more cohesive. You have to have a stronger belief in it, and it seems to work better that way."

As for the future, Ray says he’ll be working hard as ever, "at least until our kids are out of college, my wife says! I’m just going to try to keep my career going on a steady keel, and make a living for my family."

Ray’s a bit of a novelty in Hollywood, having been married to the same woman for over 25 years. The secret of his success? "We live our lives like regular people," he concludes, "in a nice community outside of Hollywood called Glendale. We shared in the parenting of our kids and we’ve lived a good life. We don’t make too big a deal about what I do. It’s not at all what’s you’d think of as a Hollywood existence, and frankly, that’s why it works."