Pay to Die blends slasher horror, dark comedy and crowdfunding chaos in a film featuring one of Robert Carradine’s final performances.
(The Hollywood Times) 10/7/26 – Pay to Die is a horror-comedy spoof. A struggling independent filmmaker (SNL’s Jeff Richards) puts together a crowd-funded slasher film starring a bevy of amateurs paying and risking death to be in it.
Charles, Richards’s character, needs an A-List actor to give his film gravitas. He recruits Harrison Bronco, played by Robert Carradine, who agrees to come out of retirement. Bronco, wearing a fedora and looking gaunt, arrives on set holding a cigar. He is not a happy camper: the makeup, he says, “makes me look a lot like the bride of Frankenstein.”
A ghost-like character has a nasty habit of sneaking up behind people and slashing their throats. Near the end, he sprays a group of actors with a red gluey substance that melts their faces. When an actor complains about cue cards, the slasher does his thing.
Among random scenes is one where a man and woman are making love as she massages his chest. A cowboy bouncer, slated to be slashed, is stationed near the entrance to refuse anyone not in the fast-growing cast. Bronco sniffs a pile of drugs, so deep it turns the brim of his hat white.
FilmMagic
Those who like the genre probably will enjoy Pay to Die.
It was one of Carradine’s last films, however, and does nothing to burnish his reputation as a member of the storied John Carradine family of actors. He will be best remembered as Disney’s popular 65-episode Lizzy McGuire’s dad and as Lewis Skolnick in the cult favorite Revenge of the Nerds. His daughter, Ever, of A Handmaid’s Tale fame is now carrying the acting baton for the family dynasty.
Like his brother David of Kung Fu fame, Robert also died by his own hand. His death was in February 2026, five months before Play to Die was released in August. His brother David died in a Thai Hotel in 2009.
Pay to Die comes from directors Shawn C. Phillips and Lauren Francesca, the duo behind the holiday horror film Mistletoe Massacre, also currently out.
