MVPs of Horror: The 'Flatliners' Demon Kid Recalls Pummeling Kiefer Sutherland

Joshua Rudoy getting ready to beat up Kiefer Sutherland in Flatliners

If you’re looking for the missing link between the creepy kids of ’70s and ’80s horror — think The Omen's Damien and those freaky Shining twins — and millennials like The Ring's Samara and The Grudge's Toshiro, Billy Mahoney is an obvious candidate. In case you've been frightened into forgetting, he's the red-hoodied tyke who pummeled Kiefer Sutherland into submission in Joel Schumacher’s 1990 horror-thriller, Flatliners. A massive box-office hit in its day and a cable staple ever since, the movie featured an early ’90s dream team of Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, William Baldwin, and Oliver Platt as death-defying medical students, who journey into the afterlife only to return with their past sins in tow. In the case of Sutherland’s Nelson Wright, that sin happens to be little Billy, a sweet kid he once tormented. Now that he’s back from the Other Side, Billy wastes little time returning the favor, hitting Nelson with everything he’s got, up to and including a hockey stick.

Sutherland in Flatliners showing some battle scars from Billy

That intensive level of physical violence distinguishes Billy from a lot of his “creepy kid” brethren, whose job mainly consists of standing around looking spooky. And the actor who played him so convincingly, Joshua Rudoy, remembers that a willingness to lash out was a prerequisite for getting the part. “The first time I went in to interview for Flatliners, the casting director basically asked me to attack her,” the now 38-year-old former child actor tells Yahoo Movies. “I was a 14-year-old, short-statured kid and I kind of just pushed her a little bit, but she was like, ‘No, really start attacking me! So I went crazy and attacked her and within days, I was hired.”

Flatliners was Rudoy’s second major feature film — he made his big-screen debut in 1987’s family favorite Harry and the Hendersons as the youngest member of the sasquatch-encountering Henderson clan — and his first and only foray into horror movies, a genre he says he wasn’t a big fan of growing up. But shooting the film wasn’t an especially frightening experience. “When we were actually making the movie, it didn’t seem scary because everything was so piecemeal. I didn’t really understand the whole tone of it until it came together at the end, and I saw it at the cast and crew screening,” he says. “I was 15 when it came out in theaters and I had never really thought about what happens after death before. But after watching the movie, I remember thinking about what’s out there.”

Sutherland and Roberts prepare to bring Bacon back in Flatliners

Rudoy also remembers the multiple takes he spent whaling on a then 24-year-old Sutherland, doing all of the fighting himself without a stand-in and working closely with a stunt coordinator to avoid any actual injuries — although those inevitably happened anyway. While rehearsing Billy’s first attack on Nelson, for example, Rudoy threw a punch that wound up breaking his stunt instructor’s nose. “I can’t imagine a 14-year-old kid breaking a grown-up’s nose, but that’s what he said!” And for the sequence in Nelson’s apartment where Billy comes after his old tormenter with that aforementioned hockey stick, Rudoy missed his mark and wound up hitting Sutherland over the head rather than on his back, as instructed. “It was a breakaway stick, but I think it was quite painful nonetheless. Kiefer earned the bruises [he has in the movie],” he says.

Rudoy says that the future Jack Bauer took the punishment in stride, only losing his cool after one especially gross mishap when Billy flips Nelson on a bed after the hockey stick attack and starts foaming at the mouth. “They wanted me to do that thing kids do where you spit thick saliva out of your mouth and then suck it back up. So they asked me to drink a bunch of soda [before the take] to get that saliva and suck it back in,” Rudoy remembers. “But I didn’t suck it back in and a bunch of spit landed directly in Kiefer’s mouth as he was screaming! He was so pissed and rightfully so…. Years later, after he had been on 24, I ran into him at a random place and went up to him and said, ‘I’m sure you don’t remember, but I was Billy Mahoney in Flatliners,' and he was like, 'Oh yeah, I remember Billy Mahoney.' And then I said, 'You probably also don't remember the fact that I spit in your mouth.' He didn't remember that — he had blocked it out.” (Rudoy eventually finished the spitting scene without another errant loogie, getting the right consistency by knocking back an egg white-and-water mixture instead of soda.)

Rudoy spent roughly two months filming Flatliners, working exclusively with Sutherland, although he did meet Bacon and Roberts at different points. (Roberts and Sutherland had a famous romance around that time, and an even more famous break-up.) Little did he realize that his second feature film would also be his last. Following Flatliners and a stint on the one-season syndicated series What a Dummy starring Stephen Dorff, Rudoy left the film industry of his own accord. “I turned 16 and the work started slowing down a bit,” he says. “Then I got my driver’s license and started to get back into school life with friends and I just went, ‘I don’t need to do this.’”

Joshua Rudoy today

These days, the married father of two is the co-founder and portfolio manager of the California-based financial company Argyle Capital Partners. Though he doesn’t talk much about his movie star past at work or at home, he has shown one of his young kids Harry and the Hendersons and plans to do the same with Flatliners when they’re older. And while he says that he’s rarely recognized in public anymore, every now and then he’s approached by someone who remembers him as that terrifying kid in a red hoodie. “They go, ‘I was so scared of you — you gave me nightmares!” Rudoy says, laughing. “I’ve been shocked by the impact the role has had.” And casting directors take note: Should Flatliners ever be remade, he’s open to coming out of retirement for a cameo — with or without the hockey stick.

Watch Billy in action in the Flatliners trailer:

Photo credits: Screengrab/Columbia, Everett, LinkedIn