All About Flip, Scare Tactics' Spooky Host Inspired by the Crypt Keeper, Elvira & More

In between each prank on Scare Tactics, viewers will spend time with Flip, the series' spooky host.

Flip, per his official description is a spectral pre-teen obsessed with horror movies and fascinated by human fear. Harnessing a twisted sort of glee, Flip creates horrific cinematic scenarios and drops real people into the leading roles. This results in our pranks on Scare Tactics, a show that takes ordinary people and drops them into the middle of a horror movie for our sheer enjoyment.

RELATED: From Comedic Genius to Horror Master: Retracing Scare Tactics EP Jordan Peele’s Career

But we wanted a bit more insight into the kid, the myth, the legend that is Flip. So when USA Insider spoke with Monkeypaw Productions President and series Executive Producer Win Rosenfeld, we made sure to get the 4-1-1 on our new host.

What inspired Scare Tactics' new host Flip?

“If I’m being candid, it kind of came back to the Crypt Keeper. And to Elvira,” Rosenfeld explained of Flip’s origin. “To this idea that there’s actually a long, rich history of original monsters as hosts and there’s a level of satire [to it] that we felt was kind of a love letter to [this] form of short-form storytelling.”

The reboot’s host is a bit of a divergence from the original Scare Tactics on SYFY, which ran for a total of 114 episodes from 2003-2013 and was hosted at separate times by Shannen Doherty, Stephen Baldwin, and Tracy Morgan.

Those hosts' very human enthusiasm brought a specific vibe to the table. Flip is something different. His presence, Rosenfeld explained, allowed them “to be a little weird.”

“He’s [a] pretty mysterious figure and this balance of, ‘How much do we explain what the heck is going on here?’ we spent a lot of time doing,” Rosenfeld said. “Flip has, on screen, really not all that much [time], but when he’s there, we’re trying to convey … we still felt the need to connect to this faceless character and without a lot of words to do it. 

“And I gotta say, that’s been a really fun, engaging challenge for everybody at Monkeypaw to get that across,” he continued.

USA Network's Scare Tactics. Photo: USA Network

Ultimately, he said, Flip’s job is to “mirror the enthusiasm of what we wanted an audience to feel,” going back to the “Crypt Keepers and Elviras” who took so much pleasure in their own shows (Tales From the Crypt and Elvira's Movie Macabre, respectively).

“So he’s a prankster, but he’s a joyful, merry one,” Rosenfeld said. “We talked a lot about Loki: somebody who just likes being a fly in the ointment. He enjoys this thing. He’s sort of detached from humanity, so he kind of looks at humans as a little odd, a little bit worried about the wrong things. So I think ‘glee’ was really important for us to have.

“And, by the way, I think there are still secrets we don’t want to talk about [with] Flip yet,” he added. “He’s not really a person. He’s something else. And that, I think, is key because he’s sort of living outside the human experience in a show that’s very much about human emotion and reaction.”

Scare Tactics premieres on USA Network on Friday, October 4 at 10 p.m. ET. The debut episode will simultaneously air on Bravo, SYFY, and E!.