Direct to Video: Straight to Video Horror of the 90s (2019) Movie Script

- I was one of those
kids, who back in the 80s,
was always in the video
store, always renting.
When I wasn't at school,
I was in the video store
and I never realized in
the 1990s I got my chance
to be the movie geek who
worked behind the counter.
I was the guy who people
came to for recommendations.
Because the 1990s gave
way to the straight to video star.
Like your Don "The
Dragon' Wilson,
your Gary Daniels.
Jean-Claude Van Damme,
well he was a continuation of,
and for me the
1990s represented,
the straight to
video side of things,
a chance to just forget
about everything.
Just sit back, relax, enjoy,
take your mind off
your cares of the world
and rent a movie.
Meet Wesley.
- He's such a good boy.
He's a model student.
- What's the matter, retard?
Can't you talk?
But when it comes to girls.
- Have you even talked to her?
He's got a lot to learn.
- Studies have shown that
guys get much further with girls
after they talk.
It's time he got his education.
- I'm Ms. Xenobia.
The new biology teacher.
- Holy mother of God!
Dr. Alien.
- It was Dr. Alien that Charles
Band took to Paramount
and said, "We spent one point
two million making this film."
I think it actually
cost about 350,000
but it was, that's what he said
because they were a huge
studio with huge overhead,
they were still blown away.
We can't do anything
of this quality
for that amount of money.
So that's what basically
started the deal
for Full Moon Pictures
with Paramount.
- Full Moon movies
were like huge to me.
Those were some of
my favorite movies
and still are.
I mean, what set those apart
is you'd go to the video
store, you'd rent those,
and it was your first
glimpse into the idea
of special features
on those VHS movies.
I mean Subspecies,
Puppet Master,
all of those, Trancers.
You'd watch them and
at the end of the VHS
after the credits, they'd have
behind the scenes footage
or a mail order catalog
to get like replicas.
I mean, that blew my mind
and Full Moon was
always that studio
that was like off their rocker.
You had no idea what
you were getting into.
You know, growing up, I
was really into skateboarding
and punk rock because I just,
I wasn't one of the cool kids.
Horror movies and that kind
of stuff was the
only thing I had.
I didn't have many friends.
So, in a lot of ways
Blade, Torch, Jack Death,
those were my friends.
I'd go home from school and
I'd hang out with those guys
every time I put in, you
know, a Full Moon movie.
- I'd written the first draft
of the original Puppet
Master for Charlie.
What happened was they
brought David Schmoeller
in to direct the film
and while they were not
gonna go Director's Guild,
they were willing to
go Writer's Guild,
which apparently
Schmoeller was a member of.
So he rewrote the script
and he did a fairly
major rewrite on it.
There's still some
similarities to my script,
including the fact that
there's puppets in it.
- Charlie, what he wanted
to do with Puppet Master III
is he wanted a prequel
to the first movie
and going back to whether it
was gonna be a period piece
to World War II.
Of course, the first film
is, starts with a period,
you know, kind of the
bookends and all that stuff
with William Hickey
and everything.
So, I was like, okay.
So I sat down and
started really thinking
about this whole thing
as if we did a World War II
and that's when I came
up with a whole thing
and David just
embraced it like crazy
and said, Let's
make this, you know,
Where Eagles Dare and
Night of the Generals
and all those great pinewood
Nazi movies of the 1960s.
David would come
over to my place,
we'd sit there and we
would watch these films,
or I'd be, load him
up with cassettes.
He got completely
totally into it.
Got in the attitude
and everything else
but the big stumbling block was
is I was writing the script,
is we were supposed
to shoot in Romania
and it was gonna be one
of the very first ones
to be done over there.
There was some
sort of a problem.
So, suddenly that was
no longer an option
and we're like going, well
what are we going to do?
Because of course to do
a World War II film there
and what have you, is a
whole different bag of beans
than doing it here and
it was John Schoweiler
and DeCoteau who got together
and they were the ones who
not only convinced Charlie
but made the deal for us to
make the movie at Universal
which was just sensational.
So, we all, you know, we
moved into the Universal back lot.
Had more visitors, probably,
than any other Full
Moon production
just 'cause everybody
wanted to go
'cause we shooting in
Frankenstein village.
So everybody wanted
to be there and every,
it was great.
We had a ball and
of course the film
has this tremendous look.
With David and his
collaborationwith Adolfo Bartoli
because here we have, you know,
a true studio back
lot and a back lot
with this history
that related directly
to the movie we were making.
So, yeah that was really cool.
- You said you
could devise a drug
so it would give a
dead soldier movement.
But Andre
Toulon didn't need wires.
To make death move.
- This is exactly what we
foundin the marionette theater.
- And this will solve all
your problems, doctor?
- If I can get to Toulon
I know we can prolong
the soldiers new life
but I must get to him.
- Herr Toulon has
escaped your custody.
- We are very close
to finding him.
- Nothing will stop me
from seeking you out
and making each one
of you to your knees
for what you have done
and you will cry me mercy.
Puppet Master III.
- Completely and totally
and it is the best one.
No, it's not a fan favorite.
- No, it is.
- Let's, let's.
No, I know it is, but
let's really cut chop
the rest of the heads off.
Come on, it's the best one.
- Some years later they
were doing four and five
and my friend, Mike
Deak, was running a shop
for Charlie called
Alchemy and Wayne Toth
came up with the cool idea
of making this demon puppet.
It was a like a walk
around Bunraku puppet.
I thought it was a cool idea.
Basically, the
operator was concealed
inside a double layered
cape behind the person.
There was a linkage so
the puppet was taller
than a person.
So there was a linkage
from the operator's head
to the neck and head
of the character
I think he had some
medallion on his chest
that the performer could
actually see out of.
The arms had rods
coming out of the elbows
and of course there was
drapey fabric on there
so you didn't see
the puppeteer's arms.
There was something
mounting it to the body
to hold over all weight
and then the performer's
feet fit behind the thing
so it could actually walk
and this thing, of course,
had this impossible anatomy,
very skeletal looking,
very sinewy things,
it couldn't possibly
be a guy in a suit.
- I got involved with Full Moon
on Puppet Master VI and V.
When Ricky Meyers tapped
into the secret of
artificial life.
- It's the formula.
He became the master
of Andre Toulon's puppets.
The future is yours.
Guard and protect it
and keep it from evil.
Now, his newfound power
will make him a pawn.
- And you say there are
seven of these puppets
still at the hotel?
Between a corporation.
Now once we're inside,
what we're looking for
is six string less puppets.
And a demon from hell.
Puppet Master 5.
- It was gonna be one
movie for Paramount
and then they decided
no, we're gonna,
it's not gonna be a
theatrical for Paramount.
We're gonna pare
the budgets down
and do them kinda split
the script in half
and do two movies.
So he got kind of two
movies for the price of none
and those, because they were
Paramount negative pickups,
I guess, or they were
under a Paramount deal,
they got very good distribution,
video wise, around the world.
They were a hoot to make
and it was, the script
had already existed
for the theatrical movie
but it had been changed
a lot through the,
I think there are five credited,
six counting Charlie, credited
writers on the two movies
and we all threw our hand in
and the scripts, both
scripts were incoherent mess.
So the only way you can
have any fun with them
is just to go nuts
as much as you could
within the context
of the production.
- When Charlie asked
me if I would come back
and start writing movies again.
I said look, I really
would want to direct again,
or direct period, I should say.
I had been asking him about
this back in the Empire days
and in fact, I had come up with,
believe it or not, with an idea
to remake Not of this Earth
and this was, of course I
didn't know Jim Wynorski
was doing it with Traci
Lords and all that stuff.
So that was kinda happening.
So that ended that, plus it was,
you know, owned by
a different company.
But, when Empire shut
its door and then Full Moon,
so I was like, okay,
let's try this again.
Trancers Three happened
for me as a director
for really only two reasons.
Albert Band and Tim Thomerson.
Of course, it was
Charlie's ultimate decisions
but his dad completely backed
me on directing the movie
and then Tim just
was, he was amazing.
He, 'cause he had been in
moviethat I had written already.
So we knew each other,
we liked each other,
but boy he just came in there
like the flaming
sword of Siegfried
and he was the series.
A cop from another world.
- What's the matter?
You never seen a cop before?
And a nurse shrunk by aliens.
- Just the thing to
drive G.I. Joe insane.
Are teaming
up with a big partner.
- She's a cop in trouble.
For some deadly fun and games.
- Toys that come to
life and kill people
to help a demon from hell?
You can go where those toys go.
You're the perfect size
to help me kick their butts.
- Let's start up the
entertainment, boys.
And this time.
This is ass kicking.
- Get away from me.
They're picking
on someone their own size.
- Gosh, guys.
This is the best bachelorparty
a guy could ever ask for.
- Pop goes the weasel.
- That was, I think we had
the original Buechler puppets.
I made Baby Oopsy-Daisy
and I made the Jack in the Box.
Baby Oopsy-Daisy I
wasn't terribly happy
with the way that turned out
but I basically had a
week to make each one
of these things.
So there was no stopping
and then I also made
a new character,
which was supposed to be
sort of like a G.I. Joe
action man thing
which was a suit
that was worn by Ted Haines.
- I really like Dr. Mordrid.
I think it's just got
some great stuff in it.
Even though we were, again,
working very limited funds.
There was so much
in that worked well.
I really liked Yvette Nipar,
I thought she was terrific
and we had obviously
a terrific bad guy
in Brian Thompson.
Dr. M. Tom Mordrid
has stood guard
between our world
and the dark dimensions.
Now, after centuries of waiting,
evil's ultimate
warrior has arrived.
- Kabal is a demon who
uses mortals to do his bidding.
- What difference does it make
if I want this dying planet?
- A sorcerer is not a god.
- Full Moon movies, you can
tell every single department
put everything into that.
You know?
The art department, special
effects, practical effects.
I mean, Jesus Christ,
what a glorious time
to be alive in the 80s and
90s watching those movies.
- Parting is such sweet sorrow.
- Totally sucks.
Why do they not believe
I have not lied
even for this
Now no one can conceive
The lie becomes
the loving kiss
Sacrifice
Sacrifice
Sacrifice
Sacrifice
Sacrifice
Pay the price
- I was a huge horror
nerd growing up.
You know, watching things
like Night of the Demons
and Sorority Babes in
the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama
and like the original
Toxic Avenger.
I would, you know, just kind
of watch these crazy movies
on the weekend, never in
a million years was I like,
oh I can make these films.
Because in my head these
are Hollywood movies
and you needed to know
Hollywoodpeople to do that, right?
But where I went to
school in Manhattan,
there were a lot of
actor kids that like would,
you know, Broadway
actors and what not
and they would read this
paper called Backstage
and I was like,
oh let me see that
and there happened to be
an ad for Troma Studios.
They were looking for
extras for their movie
Tromeo and Juliet
and I was like, that's Troma.
Like oh my god.
Surf Nazis Must Die.
Like I have to go
and so I cut school
and I went down to the audition
and I told them
all these stories
about what a great actor I was
and they were like,
what special skills
do you have?
I'm like, man, I'm a
black belt in jiu-jitsu.
I think I was like maybe
a green belt in jiu-jitsu
and I was probably like
a triple black belt
in street fighting but I
certainly didn't have like,
you know, I wasn't Bruce Lee.
But they I think
liked my bullshit
or my excitement for the genre
and James Gunn, it was James
Gunn first movie with Troma
and Lloyd Kaufman were like,
well you know, you're pretty
good, funny or whatever
and they gave me
the part of Peter
the bodyguard to
the Capulet family.
Which I was, like
you don't understand.
Like I would have
walked in the background
of that movie and I
could have been happy
and just kinda of went
on with the rest of my life
but the fact that I had
like a speaking part in it
and I got to fight in it
and you know, have
stunts go wrong, obviously,
because I really
didn't know jiu-jitsu
but it was a dream.
It kinda of, it's the only
reason I'm still in the genre.
- Well, we began Troma in 1974.
So by the 90s, were considered
a major independent
movie studio with movies like
The Toxic Avenger and
I think the 90s for us
was the time that we moved
from the Toxic Avenger
and Class of Nuke Em
High and Troma's War,
we moved into Shakespeare
with Tromeo and Juliet
and we added more
and more genres
to our distinct Troma touch.
Troma movies are not
really genre movies.
If anything they're a
Cuisinart of genres.
They combine horror,
science fiction, comedy, politics,
Shakespeare in the case of
the movie we just finished also,
Shakespeare Shit Storm,
which we just finished shooting.
These are movies
that combine genres
and Troma has kinda
of its own brand,
shall we say, which may be
why we're here for so many years.
- Don't give up the fight for
truly independent cinema!
- By the 90s came along,
the VHS was going away
and so was all the
independent video stores.
Again, I'm a little hazy on it
but it seems that an evil
empire called Blockbuster
put everybody out of business
and they in turn went bankrupt.
What a difference
The two elements that
make us successful
is our movies are
good and they last
and they're still here.
Terror Firmer is literally
a movie that came out
in 1999 that nobody understood
and it is a crazy movie.
Terror Firmer.
- What we got here is
a basic cereal killer.
- You know your killer's
choices of victims
indicates some sort
of personal animosity
against you and your company.
- Family values must be saved!
- Yeah, right.
- Where's the blood?
Where's the blood? God
damn it, where's the blood?
- We're dead.
No!
This is a Troma movie.
- That guy is really dead.
- These movie people
are disgusting.
- Oh, so you're asking
me about Terror Firmer,
my huge big part
in Terror Firmer.
I mean it is like I was the
star of that movie, naturally.
My part consisted, I
think of this, like.
That's it.
That was it.
I think that was it.
I think I came on to the set
to give a really
dumb shocked reaction
to somebody's head
getting like chopped off,
I think, maybe, if I
remember correctly.
I think I was there maybe
amatter of 10 minutes on the set,
if I'm remembering right.
So yes, you're welcome
for Terror Firmer,
it was all me.
Thank you, thank you.
- Yabba dabba do.
- What did I tell ya?
- You know, Jim
and I were friends.
Just he's a fan
and he was friends with Mark
McGee and people like that
and I met him at some
different parties and stuff
but mostly through Bill
Warren and Mark McGee.
Jim and I got to
know each other.
We really weren't
friends but for a few years
and then, you know, we
just started hanging out.
We lived near each other
and eventually we thought of
doing a few projects together.
Which we did and
we've had some fun.
- Dinosaur Island we
decided to co-direct.
Which was wonderful
because were surrounded
by a horde of hot
chicks for two weeks.
Okay and this is
beyond Michelle Bauer,
or Griffin Drew,
and Antonia Dorian,
and Toni Naples, who
was also in that movie.
There were a number of
other, you know, fun girls.
That's where we met
Nikki Fritz for the first time
and we had hired this
girl to do a dance
and she was awful.
We started shooting it and
she just didn't know how to move
and I said, and
Fred was directing.
I said, Fred let's
do this tomorrow.
Call it a night.
I'll get somebody knew
and I had met this Nikki Fritz
who was a stripper from Florida
and she came in the next
day and just nailed it
and I'm so glad we waited.
A house abandoned.
- We're gonna turn this
into the best sorority
house in school.
That holds a secret.
- A Ouija board.
Let's shake up the spirit world.
- There were sets left over
from Slumber Party
Massacre Three
and they were trashed.
They had blood all over
and paint spilled on em
and all the furniture
had been removed
and I called Julie Corman
and said, you know I
could shoot a horror movie
here in about six days,
if you gave me the money
and she said, "Well
those sets are trashed."
And I said, I'll make it work
and so I came up with the idea
that five girls are
moving into a house
that has been trashed
and the villain is Hokstedter
which by, you know, coincidence
was the name of my
Directory of Photography
for the last couple of movies
and it was Clive Hokstedter
and I needed somebody to
play the other villain
and the other villain was
played by Orville Ketchum,
who really wasn't
a villain at all.
That name popped into my head
as I was writing the script.
I had to write the
script in like four days
just to get, make sure
it got read and approved
before everybody
left for Europe.
Rodger and his wife
were just taking off.
So I had to write
it in four days
and I was sitting
there at New Horizons,
in one of the spare
rooms, typing away
and that name just
came into my head.
A few days after they
approved they script,
I was casting, and
he just walked in.
He was the only
guy who walked in
and when he came in I
said, that's my guy.
That's Orville Ketchum, okay,
and he sat down and
he read the script
and he turned on
Orville Ketchum.
He just did it.
Right there in
the casting office
and it was wonderful.
I said, this the guy.
This is a sign from God
that I should make this movie.
- We were reinventing
something there.
We were doing a parody
ofsomething that was very popular
at the time and in Jim
inventing that character
destroyed all the
other movies before it,
in my opinion, because
I just love Orville.
Orville Ketchum is
my favorite character
of all the Jim Wynorski films
and working with Peter
Spellos on those things
was amazing, too.
A madman has sealed
off a Los Angeles high rise
trapping the occupants inside.
- Who's there?
- Hey, the phones dead.
Now, five young
women are joining forces
and fighting for their lives.
- Look, it's three against one,
the odds are in our favor.
- Maybe I can
increase those odds.
- I love that character
and when Rodger Corman
said make another one,
which was Hard to Die,
because he had just
finished this thing
called Corporate Assets
and it's a movie that
everybody's forgotten, everybody.
I don't think it's even
available on DVD or VHS
and he had all these
office building pieces
and I just said I'm gonna
do hard, you know Die Hard
with chicks in a, in
a great, on great sets
and we did.
We had a great time doing that.
Deborah Dutch was
in that one, too.
- We were working in theoriginal
Rodger Corman studios,
Santa Rosa Avenue of Venice
and the turn around,
sometimes, was barely eight hours
but he always made
sure it was eight hours
but driving from West
Hollywood to Venice
and then staying real late.
So the hours, you
know, kind of grueling
because we have a
budget, you know,
in low budget movie making
of maybe two weeks top,
if you have that,
usually 10 days
and I had a lead
role, co-star role.
So it just was boom
boom boom boom boom.
So as long as you
showed up early
before your call time to make
sure you were completely
set ready, camera
ready, knew your lines,
hit your marks, and weren't
a problem, Jim loved you.
We had squibs on us because
I get killed by a machine gun
and we were in the warehouse
where the guns are
and Jim goes, and it's
towards the end of the movie,
so we had to stay on budget
and with the special
effects of squibs back then,
you know, this was a big deal,
'cause blood would
splatter allover
and everything like that.
So you can't mess up.
You just can't do it.
So, Jim goes, "Okay Debbie,
there's gonna be one
shot there, one shot there,
one shot there" with the AK47,
"One shot there, one shotthere,
one shot there, one shot,
and while the shots
there, it hits you in the chest
and you fall back."
And I said, okay.
He says, "Okay, camera rolling."
Boom, boom, boom,
boom and I went
and I made a mistake.
I did not do it on time
and he's like, "Cut, cut, cut.
No, Debbie.
When the AK47", it's a six
shot or something like that,
"That's when you do it."
I said, okay, okay I got it.
So I'm sitting there, you know,
making sure I got
this, with a squib
because they're
gonna explode it.
The bloods gonna go.
So, you go boom boom.
I messed up the second time.
The third time I just
said, I said like,
oh no, this is it, third
one, it's gonna be it.
So boom boom boom boom boom.
I went bam, fall
back on my back,
my feet go straight up in
the air, I scream of course,
and Jim goes, "Cut"
and the whole place cracked up.
When you see that scene,
I literally bounce,
my feet go straight up in
the air and then I go dead.
- What would happen is that
he kind of threw me in there
and, you know, actors are
alwayslooking to pay their rent.
So he would call and
he'd go, "Are you free,
do you want to come
down, and you know,
so you can make a
little bit of money?"
and he'd always have these
weird things for me to do.
I just remember, I think
it was Monique and I,
Monique Gabrielle and I.
- Cut, cut, cut, cut.
For Christ sake, cut.
- What's the matter
with that, Mel?
- Yeah, I thought we
had a real moment there.
- Me, too.
- Look at your feet.
How many times I have told
youto go to bed with your shoes on?
- Well, nobody goes to
bed with spiked heels on.
That's ridiculous.
- Yeah, well some people
think they're sexy,
- It's stupid.
- I agree.
- I've never been to bed with
a girl who keeps her shoes on.
- Yeah and lay you odds
you've never been to bed with
two women at the same time, either.
Neither have the slobs
that rent these movies.
That's why we're making em.
- You know, any movie
with that many machine guns
and that much real pyro
and you can see the
wires coming from Peters.
You know, they had him
wired up with so many squibs
and so many, it was
just, I loved it.
I loved working on
those kind of films.
They broke into the mall
for the wildest all
night party of their lives.
- They're dead meat.
But you're never alone
in the Chopping Mall.
- I met him because he
called me in for a meeting
for, it was called
Robot at the time,
then it was called Killbot
and you all know it
as Chopping Mall.
Much to our chagrin at the time.
However, little did I know
I'd be sitting here in 2019
talking about Chopping Mall.
So, thank you.
I went in and auditioned and
I was doing The Zero Boys
which it was a night shoot,
so we would break at
the crack of dawn.
We did it at Jason's cabin.
So it was kind of a far
drive and everything else
and so I went pretty
much right from the set.
I was exhausted.
So I was super relaxed.
And he thought, okay
this girls gonna be great
to work with because she's got,
hasn't got a nerve in her body
and there's nothing
I can do that's going
to upset her, probably
is what he thought,
and then I had to read for Julie
and I kind of got nervous.
He said, "What's
the matter with you?
You were so relaxed before."
And I said, well
I was tired then
and now I'm auditing
for the Cormans
but you know, I calmed down
and fortunately for
me I got the part
and then from there
on, like I said,
I will reiterate,
you're always happy
to go in and do something for a day or so
because you're always, you know.
It's a freelance
type of gig, acting.
So I was very grateful that,
to anybody that continues to, calls you up
and says do you want to
come and do something,
because it means that,
you know it's that no
like and trust factor
and that's a lot of this
business is all about.
One day I got a
call from Andy Lane
and he said, "Do you want
to be in Servants of Twilight?"
And I looked at
it, and I thought,
this is a great part because
in the book everyone,
I don't know if it
reads in the movie
'cause I don't, I haven't
seen it in a long time
but in the book it reads
like she could be the person,
she could be the
leak in that office
and I thought, that's very,
that's great, I'd love to.
And so, and I didn't really,
at the time I don't think I was
aware of Bruce Greenwood
but I was afterwards, you know,
and I thought, wow,
thank you, Andy.
Servants of Twilight.
- Hello?
Joey Scavello?
- Grandma?
I told you
couldn't hide from me.
I can see you wherever you go.
I'm going to bring
judgment down on you
and cut your vile
little heart out.
- It was so looked down upon.
I remember in the 90s you'd say,
well that's direct to video,
like it was bad thing.
- Well, it was just one
of those old dark house
kind of movies, with a
bunch of girls running around.
I liked working with Dick Miller
and I liked having
Arte Johnson in there
and David Carradine
was friend of mine.
So, you know, it was
pretty entertaining.
Bob Quarry, you know,
who played Count Yorga, Vampire,
he came in and did
some of the voiceovers
for the creature and
then I did some of them
and it was fun.
I mean it was a
quick, quick movie
but it was one of those films
where you were putting
up your own money
and there was no one to tell you
that you couldn't do something.
So just about anything
we wanted to do would fly.
Every step
forward is a step backward.
- I've come to destroy you.
And every room
is a room with a view.
- Doing the animation plates
is something that I had
some experience with already
and we worked with a company
called Streamline in New York
and we did it with an
aerial image of photography
and we were doing a lot
of rotoscoping anyway
with Bret Mixon for movies
like Beverly Hill's Vamp
and stuff like that.
So we knew we had
to have a Mitchell Twin
Pin registered camera
'cause every frame had
to be locked in position
or they'd be gate weave andthat
would throw off everything.
So we did storyboards.
So where we knew we
wanted the monster
to come up and look over a chair
and we would shoot,
you know, the chair
and then, sort of this stuff,
is like where the girl fell down
and then we had to pull
her top off with fishing line.
We pulled the little
wire so it would pop off
and then, and then Bret
would rotoscope it.
He would do a cartoon
animation paper cell,
which drew the girl.
So that then when her
hand would come up,
her hand would pass in
front of the creature
which was actually an
animationcell on top of the footage.
So they would roto out
the shape of her hand
as it passed in front of them.
So it was pretty complicated
and these were
hand painted cells.
You know, there were
thousands and thousands of them
and then would project
the film one frame
at a time onto the
aerial image lens
and hang the animation
cell in front
and then re-photograph it.
So it would then
combine the two things.
It was pretty
complicated for a movie
with $140,000 budget and 35mm,
Screen Actors Guild, and
some of the actors picked
up $20,000 for their parts.
So it was quite a feat
for the amount of
money we spent.
- Fred is a very
efficient filmmaker.
He doesn't give a lot
of personal direction
and unless you would have
like a heart attack on set,
you got one take because
they were shooting on 35mm.
Victoria is
a very frightened woman.
- I'm having dreams.
Dreams that won't let me sleep.
Nightmares.
Most of the time I'm
being buried alive.
- One of my favorite
movies was Haunting Fear
in the probably around
1991, I think it was.
It was the biggest
part I had to date
and when Fred
handed me a script,
I thought it was for the
role of the secretary
but he's like, no I want
you to play the lead.
So I worked with
Jan Michael Vincent,
and Karen Black,
and Robert Quarry.
I was in practically every scene
and it was one of the
first movies where
I go from being a victim
to kind of being a villain
and I didn't die in the end.
That was something
unique and different.
I am very very
fond of that movie.
I wish it would come out on DVD
because it never has.
- Haunting Fear was a movie
that was made in the samehouse
as Evil Toons, same sets.
You see them go into thecellar
where Dick Miller's dead
and you find Dick Miller dead.
That's the same cellar where
the guys body was buried
in Spirits and I don't know
why we made that film
but when we did,
we went and watched
Legend of Hell House and
The Haunting and The Evil,
we watched all these things,
and somebody wanted
to make this.
So we did and it
obviously it seemed perfect
for her to be a
psychic in there.
Well, you know,
we've always tired
at Retro Media, to
produce original content
and I've over the years,
I've invested, of course,
and financed other
people's films.
A fairy tale born from a legend.
A truth more terrifying
than the tale.
- Say a prayer for
Daddy tonight, okay?
Only one man had the courage
to stand against the
forces of darkness.
- In 1994 Fred had a
scream queen contest
with the Phil Donahue Show.
He and some celebrity
guests were on board
and they had people
auditioningto be a scream queen
and whoever did the best
audition got the part
and would come down in
February to meet with us
in Orlando to make the film.
So, he had a concept
and a storyline
that he worked out
and he sent that to us
and we started hurriedly
writing the script.
Because this was
now October of 1994
and he wanted it in video stores
in time for Halloween 1995.
In those days, it was still a
four to six month turn around
after you finished the film just
to get all the
promotional stuff ready.
To get the deals set
up and everything else,
get the release scheduled.
So we were literally
on a time clock
and our first weekend
we had the actress
that won the contest came
down and we did her scene,
she gets to get killed in
the opening of the film.
She's with three
teenagers that inadvertently
resurrect Jack-O and they
get killed for their troubles
and we shot all of that
on the first weekend.
There was a crew from
the Donahue show there
and they shot background
footage for a documentary
and then when the show
aired a few months later
they had that material
as well as the contest
and so forth.
But that's how Jack-O started.
It was the Phil Donahue show.
We're doing a movie that's
supposed to take place
at Halloween in a sort
of Midwestern suburb
and we're in Florida
and we're shooting
in February, March, and April.
What do you need if you're
doing a Halloween film?
Pumpkins.
Okay, so we're going
around in November,
we're going after Halloween
and after Thanksgiving.
We're bugging
everybody, you know,
can we take your pumpkins?
Everybody's like yeah, take 'em.
And I'm storing
them in my garage,
which is also the
neighborhood we filmed in.
My house was at 1764
WaterbeachCourt Apopka, Florida.
We shot all around my house,
all around the neighborhood.
Infuriated the neighbors
when we shot night scenes
because we're
keeping everybody up
but I'm keeping all of these
pumpkins in my garage
and I was warned that
pumpkins rot from the inside
and if they get to that point
where'll they seem solid
but if you just bump it lightly
the whole things gonna collapse
and the smell is horrific.
So we're taking
all these pumpkins
and we're shellacking them
so that hopefully
they'll keep for two,
three, four months while
we shoot that film.
So that was tough.
The shoot itself
went reasonably well.
It was just, it was just
a logistical nightmare.
We had a sequence,
we did it one entire day
we lost all of the
footage because
an inexperienced camera loader
had loaded the
magazines backwards.
So we had to re shoot that.
We had a bunch of pick
up days that we had to do
because it, when
I turned in my cut
it was just missing some
elements that it needed.
So it took a lot more
pickups to get it finished
and get it to where it was.
- In the movie, Jack-O,
I think I only appear on
the television screen.
They're watching a movie.
What they're watching,
Fred and I shot in
Salem, Massachusetts.
I had bought this costume
that looked like it was colonial.
He brought his Bolex
camera on the plane
and we shot in graveyards
and in old buildings
in and around Salem.
Because he was planning to
make a movie called The Coven
and have it be like a
girlschool that is into witchcraft.
Well, I don't think
he ever made the movie
but we shot all this
experimental footage
and so he ended up putting
it on the screen in Jack-O.
- My son's character in
the film is a horror fan
and he's constantly in frontof
the TV watching horror films
and so one of the films
he's watching is The Coven
with Brinke Stevens
and Brinke kindly also
did some dialogue looping
so that it seemed like more of
a movie that he was watching
where a character is talking.
Evil has a new number.
- Welcome to my hell.
And the
devil has found a new way
to reach out and kill someone.
976-Evil II.
- I was going out with
Monique Gabrielle at the time
and she said, "You
can't find a spot for me
in 976-Evil II?"
I said, well you
know the producers
want this certain type.
She said, "You can't
find a spot for me?"
So I went to the producers
and I said, please let
her play the lawyer
who gets killed in the car
and they said, okay,
and if you watch that movie,
that car is not in front
of a process screen.
It's out there getting
hit by other cars.
So she did her little
dialogue scene with the villain
and then the next few nights
she was out doing this car scene
and this car scene
was, as you know,
it was full of bangs and
booms and zips and zangs
and everything else.
She came home the first
night and she said,
"I hate you, I hate you,
I hate you, I hate you."
Her whole body was not contorted
but it was like,
and not bruised,
but had been banged
around in these cars all night
'cause they were hitting
the cars back and forth
back and forth.
Now, that sequence
was so popular
that I used it again
in Ghoulie's Four.
- I'll go back in time to
the actual physical things
that used to happen
when I got a score.
I'd get a phone call.
I have another score
for you, Chuck.
Okay, when's the
work print ready?
It will be ready Tuesday.
Okay, fine.
It would come over
as a VHS tape,
or a three quarter inch tape,
and I would take a look at it
and then the director
would come over,
we would sit down
and look at it,
I would take notes.
The notes, down through
as I've done a lot of scores,
the notes got lesser and
lesser through scores.
It was like, we don't even
use a notepad anymore,
at least Jim and I don't.
Jim and I don't even
spot the movie anymore.
He just hands it to me or
he finishes it and I start it.
I've done almost all
my films in order.
You start at the beginning,
you do a main title,
you use your themes from
the main title throughout the film
and then you end the
movie with either a song
that someone else supplies
or you do a version of the
opening title for the end.
Now, sometimes Jim
asked me not to do that.
Like with, it was
a Tower of Terror
or Sorority House Massacre.
One of them he said, "Do
a spaghetti western."
Of course that's, whenever
Jim gets bored with a score,
he says, "Do a
spaghetti western."
And I would always do
a spaghetti western
because I love them, too.
So I would always love
it when Jim would say,
"Make this a spaghetti western."
So that was the
process back then.
Come in, cassette,
look at the cassette.
The cassette gets synchronized
via time code with the box
and each time you
started the movie
to write a piece of music,
you had like a five
second pre roll
'cause you had to wait
for it all to sync up
and then once it's all sync up,
you can play it against picture
and you had a few
seconds to do that
and then you go back and you'd
start that whole process again.
I like working on set.
I like making the
pictures happen.
I love the process
of making movies
but there's nothing
better than sitting
three in the morning in your
underwear smoking a joint
scoring a film.
- Ghoulies IV was
an interesting film
because I had just thought
about the Ghoulies franchise
and suddenly Paul
Hertzberg, at Cinetel,
said, you now, "They
want another Ghoulies.
Would you like to do it?"
I said, yes but I don't want
to do it with those
little models.
I want to do it with two
little people in costume
and but I do want Peter Liapis
who was in the first one
so that my mine is a
direct sequel to number one.
'Cause I liked number one
and if I had Peter, I could
do a sequel, a true sequel
and so we got Peter
and Stacie Randall
who played the villainess.
It was a lot of fun to make.
They let me do odd stuff.
A lot of stuff
that normal people,
producers wouldn't
let anybody do
but they said ago ahead
and do it, it's a comedy.
So I did it and it
was a lot of fun.
In the time of the witches
in a place of evil.
Morella Lock was put to death.
Now, she's come back.
- Call me mad if you will
but my wife has returned
to take possession
of my daughter.
Morella.
Edgar Allen Poe's
The Haunting of Morella.
- When I was in
Haunting of Morella
you know, I had
just done Playboy.
So I had come from
New York on Broadway,
I was like a little actress.
I'm not gonna take my top off.
I'm not, you know, I'm
not gonna show my boobs.
You know for anything,
I'm a real actress.
I don't want my,
and I bumped into,
well Jim actually
and I had socially,
you know knew each other
and he said, "Well Debbie,
you know I'd love to
use you in my films."
He said, "But let me
know when you're ready
to pop your top."
I said, pop my top?
Okay, Jim I don't want
to get involved with all that
and so then I got into Playboy
and so I called up, Jim.
I said, Jim, I'm
ready to pop my top.
- Oh I loved working
on Evil Spirits.
It was amazing working
with Karen Black.
She is a very very
special person.
I saw is even though
she's gone now
because she still is just,
her energy, she, there's
something very spiritual about her
and I don't know
what her thing is.
Like if she was really
into very spiritual or not
but she had this
beautiful aura about her
and she was so gracious
and she was so kind to me
and it's a spoiler alert
but I do play her daughter.
So she was very loving
and motherly on that set
and I play a mute who ends
up doing some bad things.
Scientists have theorized
that it is possible to camouflage
atoms within themselves
to achieve invisibility.
- Feast your eyes on a miracle.
These theories
have now become realities.
- Yeah, yeah!
Everybody thinks
Keven Dornwinkle is strange.
His mother thought so.
- You're grounded for a year.
So do his students.
- Is this guy for real?
- I'd be willing to
do anything for an A.
- Even his colleagues
think he's wacky.
- And they laughed at me, at me!
But ask Kevin Dornwinkle
what he thinks is weird.
- With this injection
begins my erection.
Tis I.
Your friendly neighborhood
invisible maniac.
The Invisible Maniac.
- One of my all-time
favorite films,
from back in the 80s, 90s era
was The Invisible Maniac.
Okay, directed by Riff
Coogan AKA Adam Rifkin
or vice a versa.
Now he is known as Adam Rifkin.
So I remember I was
waiting to go into my audition
at this nice office building
and I was again,
playing a teenager
even though I think I
was maybe like almost 30,
if not 30 already.
So I just for some
reason, and it had nothing
to do with anything, I
was sitting there reading
my sides to audition
and I just decided,
eh, I'll put my glasses
on for this one.
You know, just to do
something different.
So because I was reading for,
at least I'm not sure,
I'm not sure if I
was actually reading
for the character that
I was cast as, as Betty,
or if I was reading
for another part
I can't remember that.
So I had my glasses on,
I did the audition
with my glasses on
and then I really wasn't
expecting to get cast.
So just because I thought,
oh you know, there's a
million people auditioning
for this thing.
But lo and behold, they
called me up and said,
we would like you for
the role of Betty, the nerd.
And I was like, yay
the glasses was a good,
you know, a good choice.
So that was really fun.
I enjoyed that one.
- Riff Coogan.
First of all, that's
a phony name, okay.
His real name is Adam Rifkin
and when I met him,
I mean were both sort
of territorial about the movie.
You know, I felt
like it was mine
because I was making a sequel
and of course he was
going to put his imprint on it
and we really worked
well together.
I mean we were really,
you're so busy doing the thing
that you don't really have
time for a lot of discussion.
You know.
He would say, "I'm
gonna do this."
I'd be like, fine
that looks good to me.
You know, so we weren't,
there was never any
conflict at all.
Larry and
Bryan thought they planned
the perfect bachelor party.
They took care of the booze.
They took care of the boss.
- Yes.
They took care of the girls.
- Women, women.
Women, women.
Women, women, women, women!
They took
care of the entertainment.
- We're here to party.
They even took
care of the nightwatchmen.
The only thing they
didn't take care of was him.
- You boys wouldn't be
planning anything illegal?
Now they've
got an uninvited guest.
They're just having some fun.
- Fun, fun?
Until someone loses an eye.
- Very wildly creative,
wildly creative
and it shows as you
watch the film now,
you see how he's
Dutching his angles,
and he's moving the camera
and there's a lot of
inventive camera work
by Adam Kane who is a
great cinematographer,
was the shooter on that.
So our thing was always I
would come up to him and say,
is it spooky?
And he would go,
"It's very spooky."
And so then we would
shoot the scene.
Psycho Cop II.
- You know, I'm beginning
to suspect foreplay.
- It's not what it looks like.
- You're drunk and disorderly.
- Well hello there, officer.
- You're under arrest.
You have the right
to remain dead.
- There's something
really wrong.
- Anything you say can
and will be considered
extremely strange
because you're dead.
You have the right
to an attorney.
- Why aren't they dressed?
- They're dressed, they're
just dressed scantily.
- So maybe I should just
let you go with a warning.
- Let's get the
hell out of here.
- Everything okay up here?
Suspect is blonde and
considered extremely stupid.
You understand these rights?
Miles David Dougal
as the hapless yuppie nerd.
Roderick Darin as the
life of the party.
1993 Penthouse Pet of
the year, Julie Strain,
as the bombshell in
bikini leather chaps.
Barbara Alexander as ace
accountant Sharon Wells,
and Bobby Ray Shafer as
mister law enforcement himself.
- Police officer Joe Vickers.
- Adam recruited all
of these local alcohol,
you know drunks, I mean
street people to be in the movie
and so we were filming
the clubbing scene
and there was one guy.
I could smell him.
You know he smelled like
alcohol and vomit and thrash
and he's not
pulling the punches.
He's just wailing away with
his plastic whiffle ball bat.
I mean, really really
hitting me hard.
You know, finally
I grabbed the bat,
I'm like, Adam, who is this?
And he goes, "He
looks great, Bobby."
So I was like, get him
the hell out of here.
He doesn't know what he's doing.
He's hitting me.
So we had to film it again.
I don't know why that
footage didn't work
but then later we shot
it outside of a strip club
in the valley and you know
it's a pretty famous scene
because of the
Rodney King parallel.
That was what
happening right then
and really Adam Rifkin
does his cameo there
where he shows up as the
neighbor with the video camera
and realizes, it's
gold, it's gold,
and starts filming
the beat down, right.
So I think that scene
was really constructed
and re shot again so Adam
could get his cameo in there.
But I can't be sure about that.
- So back at that time my
shop was in North Hollywood
on Lankershim Boulevard
and that area was kind of right
in the center of the
makeup effects area.
Right across the street,
like literally
across the street,
was Don Post Studios.
Maybe a mile down the
road was Makeup Effects Lab
and John Buechler.
Who else was around there?
Rick Baker's shop
wasn't too far away.
There was a lot of stuff
going on right in that area
and right next
door to me was the,
a studio that they used,
a stage that they used
to film IMAX stuff on.
So I met a lot of guys.
It was mostly
cameramen and stuff.
They used it for setting uptheir
cameras and testing things
and I met a cameraman
who was getting ready
to do this movie.
He was going to kinda
produce the effects.
All the effects for this
movie called Dolly Dearest
and we were working on
some different puppets
for a TV show called
Monsters and a few other things
and he'd come over and
take a look at we were doing
and he asked me if I'd
be interested in doing that.
Which of course, I was.
That was, Chuckie was
a real big thing then.
I think maybe one
or two had come out
and so this was gonna be
kinda like Chuckie's girlfriend.
Lower budget version but
still sounded like it
was gonna be a lot of fun.
- This is the doll your
daddy's gonna make in Mexico
and this is factory
we're gonna make her
and sew her little dresses.
Isn't she beautiful?
May I have one, Daddy?
From the moment they met.
- I'm gonna love her so much.
It was a fairy tale come true.
- Good night, Dolly.
Sweet dreams, Dolly.
But this is
where the fairy tale ends
and the nightmare begins.
- Dolly?
- There were makeup
effects, creature effects,
puppet effects, we had a
whole bunch of different things,
working in that movie.
We actually shot,
and I kinda
unofficially got to be
do some second unit directing
because of the puppets
and how we had to shoot it
and one thing that
was really fun
is they called me up,
we were already in the
process of building the dolls.
We built several dolls.
We had a full one
hero puppet doll
that had a rig that so
puppeteers could ride with her
so she could walk.
She had a radio controlled head.
Articulated arms,
legs, the whole deal,
and that was our
main hero puppet.
Then we had several, you
know we had a multitude
of other puppets
because she starts at as a
really like pretty, nice doll,
that any little girl
would like to have
and then morphs into
this evil creature.
So, we had pretty doll,
we had like the
normal looking dolls
that eyes could turn
and heads could turn
and do little things
and insert hands
for grabbing things
and you know a whole
bunch of stuff like that.
So and a lot of
that stuff we did
we shot in second unit.
So I got a call saying,
hey you know we got our stage
where we're gonna be filming
and I said, okay where is it?
And they gave me the address
and it was on Lankershim,
and I went, oh that
numbers really close
and I looked, literally
looked out the window
and they were across
the street from us.
So it couldn't have
been any better.
That was just kind of
random happenstance.
So we just, we could
literally walk across the street
and take stuff back
and forth from the shop
and it was really convenient
and we shot a lot of
the insert stuff there.
We shot a lot of
stuff in the location.
There was a house in
Covina, I believe it was,
that we shot at
but a lot of the stuff
where it was gonna
be more intricate and
we had some sets built
in this soundstage
across the street.
It was really a warehouse,
converted into a soundstage
and we shot quite a lot of stuff
and then at the end of the movie
I mean after we wrapped,
while we were getting into post,
the guys that hired me,
who were the producers
of the effects,
got into, I guess
a bit of an issue
about additional funds
and they thought
they did more work
than they got paid for
and it kinda got all
into a legal thing
and a lot of the
stuff that we filmed
ultimately didn't
make it into the movie
because it was tied up
into this legal thing
and which never got,
I don't know whatever
happened with it, to
be honest with you
but it certainly,
it wasn't resolved
before they had
released the movie.
So there was quite
a bit of stuff
that never even made
it into the film,
which was pretty sad for us.
We did all that work
but it was a lot of fun.
Denise Crosby was in the film.
Sam Bottoms who was her husband
and Rip Torn who was this,
kinda, he was an archeologist.
He was the guy that
released the demon soul
that inhabited the doll.
- No, no!
- It's time to play.
- Play with this, bitch.
Dolly Dearest.
- Yeah, you know it's
been like 30 years
since I did Dolly Dearest
and I just constantly feel like,
you know, that she's around.
She's lurking
around all the time.
It's weird, weird feeling.
Huh?
She's behind me now, isn't she?
I bet you she's...
Here we go.
In this small town.
Check this guy out.
On this quiet street.
- Now, we can talk
to him one on one.
An unspeakable evil
is stalking the net.
- What kind of name
is Captain Howdy?
- Strangeland was a cool
and fun project to work on.
I had been, I actually was
in a Twisted Sister video
several years earlier called
Be Cruel to your School.
So when I got called in,
I don't think I knew it
was a Dee Snider film.
I don't remember knowing that
but coming in and seeing Dee
and I think he remembered
me from Be Cruel to your School
and so we had a good
rapport already, right off the bat.
I really liked the concept
of what he was doing.
It was pretty new at the time
because the internet
was kind of new
and that kind of
messaging and stuff,
which is now, everybody
does on their phone,
that was kind of new.
So it was a pretty
cool, innovative concept
and it was a, to do those
kind of prosthetics on him
to make all those piercings
and tattoos and everything
was challenging
because it had to,
it was very thin and had
to look real on his skin
and then a really cool effect
we got to sew peoples mouth.
I got to work with
Robert Englund.
I had worked with him
a few times before
but I think that
was the first time
I actually applied
makeup to him.
So that was fun, I got
to sew his mouth shut
and overall it was
a really fun film
and Dee's a really cool guy.
I've stayed friends
with him since.
Would love to see a
sequel one of these days.
- Pain is a uniquely
personal experience.
- Oh god, please don't
let this be happening.
My badges are forever.
- My badge represents the law.
- I'll kill him.
- Trust me.
That's better.
- You always remember
your first film.
I'd done, before the
film, in high school
I'd done two shot
on video, you know,
straight to video,
never released,
until actually now.
The Vinegar Syndrome
released Murder Winter
which I did as a
senior in the 80s.
But it was my first
professional film.
In a way it was very easy
because I actually had a crew
and a cast that wanted
to make the film
versus just friends
fooling around
and I was doing everything
on those little movies
so I finally had
support on the film.
I was, I think, the
youngest person on the set
and the lead actor, who I
went to high school with,
Craig Peck, we were both
like 20 at the time.
Everybody else was older.
But I planned it out.
I did a shot list,
I was prepared
and everybody, you
know, understood
that I knew what I was doing
'cause my father was
producing the film
but they could see that
I was making the movie
and I had a very strong vision
on what the film should be.
- This place is great.
- Where's the bedrooms?
- Why don't I take a nice stroll
down that dirt path into
the woods late tonight,
all by myself?
Oh, I think I stepped
on something.
- And afterwards I can go
skinny dipping in the pond.
- I don't see anything.
It was probably nothing.
- There is something out there.
Don't forget, I've rented out
every single horror
film on videotape.
- He's driving me crazy.
There's no need to worry.
- What are we
talking about here?
Those things pop
out of your stomach
when you least expect it?
- Yes, that's it.
You've seen some movies, too.
There is no need to fear.
- There's nothing out there.
That's where
the rest of the chicken was.
- Yeah, no more dinner for me.
- That's insane.
There's nothing out there.
- Did you hear something?
Now, I know I heard something.
- In the opening of the movie
there's a stunt where the girl,
there's a scene
in the video store
which, that was actually added, that was
not in the original version of the script.
The video store opening.
I had seen Lethal Weapon Two
and I loved the fact
that they began the film
in the middle of a car chase
and I thought it
would be really fun
to start the film in
the middle of something.
So we start in the video store
and we found a real video store
and we shot in Pacific
Palisades, New York
and there was a real store
that the guy let us use
and those were all the
video boxes in there
and I though it be
great to have kind
of this nightmare sequence
where she's being stalked
by somebody, something and
all the video boxes are there
and don't show the titles,
so everyone who's
a fan can be like,
I know that movie, that movie,
you recognize all the titles
and then she wakes up in her car
and then drives off the
road with a big stunt
and then gets attacked
by the creature.
So it had like a double opening.
The car jump,
we had a stunt
driver who did that.
We built the ramp
and everything.
It was like a park, I think,
and there was a
bet about how far
the car was gonna go
and of course the
winner was the driver
who wound up hitting the ramp
going like 45 miles
an hour versus 30
and landed on the camera.
Pulled the plug just before
but you can see the
shot of it coming in.
So that was like, oh that
was an expensive little stunt
but looks great on the film.
This is one of the original,
I think they only did two
or three of these creatures.
We destroyed most of
them in the movie.
One had a little animatronics,
so it breathed a
little bit and the eyes
kind of blinked a little bit.
But this was pretty much
our creature that we,
in the movie, in the finale
of the film, especially,
when it's roaming
through the house,
we put it on a
remote control truck
and drove it around with
the camera on the Steadicam
following it from
in front and behind
and that's how we got it
moving through the floors.
There was a little bit of
puppeteering work being done
with the creature
for some of that,
when it's kind of doing
this and moving around.
But the tentacles, green slime,
and yeah this was all
created by Scott Hart
of Imageffects Studio back in 89
and it's made a few
appearance on tape
but hasn't been seen too often
and it's amazing that
it still holds up
as well as it does.
There was a longer tail. I
do have the tail end of the part
but the tail did eventually
fall off 'cause it's, you know.
But this was kind of one
of our stunt creatures
that was sort of
salvaged in the movie
'cause we burnt one up
in the stove at the end.
They took a lot of abuse.
- It's as if his brain
has been sucked dry.
- I say we set a trap.
The lights, hit it
with your lights.
The Killer Eye.
- David DeCoteau I
had known for awhile.
Very nice guy, really friendly,
gave me a lot of advice
on certain things,
when I was shooting
some of these quickie,
six day erotic movies.
'Cause he's the master of speed.
It's amazing what he can do.
Nobody can do what Dave does.
So he was gonna do this
movie called The Killer Eye
which was written
by Benjamin Carr,
AKA, you know who
he is probably.
DeCoteau really didn't
want to do the movie
and he didn't like the script.
So what he wanted to do
was bring me in to do
a rewrite on the script
and then hopefully
convince Charlie Band
to let me direct the film.
So I read the script
and I was actually
the only one who didn't hate it.
I was like, okay it's
about a giant eyeball
that's trying to
have sex with women.
That's different, you know,
so I thought it could
be a lot of fun.
So I wrote an ambitious
little script.
As I said, if I had directed it,
the only thing that would have made it
like even perfect was if it was a musical.
Was about a singing, killer
eyeball would have been,
I said it should be like
Tremors meets Re-animator,
or whatever it is.
I mean that was what the
vibe should have been.
So I wrote the script,
DeCoteau thought it was great
but he couldn't convince
Charlieto let me direct the film
at the point.
So he brought in
Matthew Jason Walsh
to do a toned down
version of my script
and make it doable that
he could shoot in four days
and that's what he wound
up shooting on the film there.
- Bolted doors and
windows barred.
Guard dogs prowling in the yard.
Won't protect you in your bed.
Nothing will from Pumpkinhead.
- And in Pumpkinhead
II when I was hired
to do it was not necessarily
a direct to video movie
even though that
was the ultimate,
probably the ultimate
probable destination
but I remember they were
talking when I first,
the first letter they
sent me with the script
with like oh, MGM, who
had some involvement
in the first movie, might
want to put this out theatrically
so we're hoping for
a theatrical release
but the production
situations were such
that it pretty much
damned the movie
to direct to video no
matter how, how it turned out
and that's one of the things
with direct to video
in the 80s and 90s,
there certainly was
a budgetary component
primarily to it.
There were some
bigger budget movies
that went direct to video
but those were certainly
deemed failures
but in the under a
million dollar range movies
they were almost
all, genre movies,
they were almost invariably
going direct to video.
So Pumpkinhead II ended
up direct to video in America.
Night of the Scarecrow, a
movie I did fairly soon after,
that was, it was a
very strange project
because it wasn't, it
was right at that cusp,
it was right pre
Scream where horror
had really hit a low.
Certainly theatrically
and it was designed to,
originally the
script was written
to be a knockoff of
TheNightmare on Elm Street series,
so the scarecrow was
making wisecracks
all through it and really being
kinda a surrogate
Freddy Krueger figure
and would be able to conjure up
anything and
everything in his power
and was written
to be like a five
or six million dollar movie
and when Steve White
and Barry Bernardi
two experienced television,
primarily at that
time, television
or direct to video producers,
got ahold of the project
they bought it in turn
around from Corsair Pictures,
which was a short lived
theatrical company
run by Frank Perry,
a very good director
who did The Swimmer,
they made a few movie,
Shock to the System,
a few others, that didn't
do anything theatrically
and then kind of folded
and then Barry and
Steve bought the script.
So, I guess they had
attempts to get it made
and they finally
decided, you know,
we'll make it at a
much lower budget
than originally intended
and they got Republic
Pictures involved
to help fiance it.
- It was an accident,
what the hell else could it be?
- What if it wasn't an accident?
- Geeze, you look like
you just saw a ghost.
- It's like they're protecting
some nasty little secret
but nobody knows what it is.
This is hysteria
running out of control.
- Two, maybe three
murders in the last two nights,
it's not being done
by a man at all.
- Hey!
- If we don't guard him
they're all gonna be dead.
- He has come back.
- Dad?
- He will become human again.
- Dad?
- No one can stop his power.
- Republic Pictures
was owned by Spelling
and it was kind of
this weird entity
where they had done some direct
to video Amityville
horror movies, sequels,
and kind of like
reviving the brand
'cause Republic was a very,
in the 40s, you know,
30s and 40s and 50s
a well known studio
that did primarily
kinda cinema fodder
for the masses.
Out of the darkness of our past.
Out of the visions
of our childhood.
Comes the one fear we
thought we left behind.
The one nightmare we
hoped had gone away.
But the evil we once invited in
has found its way back home.
The Amityville Horror
has a new address.
- No!
- It's payback time.
- I think there's a
scene in that movie
where someone gets
stung on their butt
by a wasp or something like that
and it was a girl in the film
but they made a mold of
my butt for it
for the closeup shot
of the thing being done
and uh.
I remember that very well.
Someone made a mold of
my butt in the phone booth
and alginate real quick like,
and I think there's a
giant rat in that movie, too.
We made a giant rat tail
out of hot pour vinyl
and it was attached to a chain,
which is basically
the same material
that dildoes are made out of.
But the movie's
pretty inventive.
It has a lot of really
cool creative ways
that they came up with to
make the haunting new and fresh
and I think there's
even like a father,
like a corpse of a father
that keeps coming back
and he decays like more
and more throughout the film
that my boss at the time,
had built all these
different foam prosthetics
to show the degradation
of his cadaver
throughout the film.
One cold night,
science and evil collide.
- Oh yeah.
Now, a
serial killer is on the loose.
- We haven't tested
the acid on an amoeba
let alone a human cell.
This is a disaster.
Look, I just
something that doesn't belong
in this world and it's out
there killing my friends.
Now tell me what it is.
- Jack Frost.
- Screaming Mad
George had been hired
to do all the makeup effects
and the snowman costumes
for that film, which
was a low budget film,
and his foam
fabricator, I heard,
he refused to make a snowman.
He didn't want to
make a snowman.
That's what I heard.
I don't think the guy just
quit for no good reason.
His good reason was, I don't
want to make a snowman.
So Mike Deak called
me and he said,
"Hey, man, can you
help us out on this?"
and I said, sure.
You know, so we made at
least two complete full suits.
We made upper bodies.
I think we made puppet heads,
including ones with
big icicle fangs on it.
We made a thing for the
end where it was supposed
to be melting but melted
back into a human face
so it was, and for some
reason they didn't use that.
I thought it looked
kind of cool.
But you know, arms and
gags and so forth like that.
I never went, I went up,
I think I went to the
Lincoln Heights Jail
or one of the places they
were shooting the prison scenes
but I never went up to Big Bear,
wherever they were shooting
and apparently
they were shooting
in the most snowless
winter of California history,
at least recent
California history.
So if you look, you know,
there's little patches of
snow which are actually,
cotton ground cover things
that they would move around
from shot to shot.
So, I love the fact
that there's almost
a completely snowless,
ice free parking lot
and this is where they're having
their snowman
building contest, so.
But anyway, it was an
absolutely silly film
and it was made for a
great first Total Fabrication
Christmas card, because we
had a snowman for god sake
and also it was also because,
I remember had
just gotten DirecTV
and apparently their
listings constantly confused
the Michael Keaton
family film by the same title
with this and I
would switch it on.
I said, no that's
not the G-rated film.
Some parents are probably
gonna be a bit upset by this.
It's Christmas
time again in Snowmonton
and they want to get
away from it away.
- It was exactly a year
ago that it happened.
- And that's why we should be
somewhere else for Christmas.
- Another beauteous
day in heaven, eh?
- Welcome to The Tropicana.
Your last resort
in whole paradise.
- This is a job for Captain Fun!
Jingle bells jingle bells
But there's trouble in paradise.
- Everybody's dead!
- Oh no, not the scary dude.
- Scary dude's already here.
- Let's see, Jack Frost 2
I worked on set for
a couple of days.
It was shot here in
the San Fernando Valley
in the middle of summer
and the whole thing
takes place in the winter
and it was shot at a,
like a ranch up in,
I want to say Nordhoff,
Northridge, Northridge maybe?
And uh, the entire, all the,
most people don't know
but all the snow in that movie
was soap and they
had these machines
that they would make
like all this sudsy soap
allover the place and it was
shot in the middle of summer.
So it was hot.
There was soap
allover the ground
and everybody was walking around
and literally like the
soap was like moldy,
it was moldy after a week or so
on the ground with the heat
and the water and the moist
and you know, but it
was pretty inventive.
It looked amazing on camera.
You would have never known that.
I just remember coming
in for some of the kills,
helping my boss, at the
time, build this giant icicle
that like impales a
lover, two lovers,
or something like that
and puppeteering some of the,
I think there will killer
snowballs, I think.
Little like gremlin like
killer snowball puppets
and helping the stunt
performer get into the costume
for the main killer snowman
and I do remember that
they had a giant carrot nose
that they used to drop
on a miniature ship,
a miniature boat at
the end of the movie,
like he was melted,
right, he was snow
and then a giant carrot
smashes the boat.
So there was some pretty
and innovative things
they did for that film.
The wrong night.
- What the hell was that?
The wrong road.
- That son of a bitch
siphoned our tank.
One wrong turn.
- Guys, maybe we should
go back up to the road.
That way if a car comes
then they can call for help.
- Yeah, right
before they kill us.
And four
teenagers are about to learn
that when you tell
too many scary stories
you just might end up in one.
I see you!
- Mom, Mom, Mom!
There's a man under my bed!
Alive today
If I don't get no shelter
Oh yeah I'm gonna fade away
- No!
Oh children
- Get away from me!
He's just a shot away
- If they stop me,
you lock your doors
and wait for sun up.
He's just a shot away
- How bizarre was that?
Campfire Tales.
- Lets see, I was brought
in on Campfire Tales
by my special effects
peer, Mark Villalobos
a that the time, and he's like,
"Joe, come on with me to set.
We're gonna do this, we're
gonna do this bloody scene,
bloody sequence" and
I came in for one day
and it was a scene in
a cabin, I believe,
that is completely destroyed.
It looked like a massacre
had been taken place inside
and at the time, the
set was custom built
by the art department
and it was shot on location
but I believe the
set was built inside
of another room on location.
So someone had come in
and literally put a wall
over another wall and
walls over these walls
and brought in furniture
to make it look like a cabin
and what not.
I don't know if the
pieces were rented
or they were built by hand
but there was this iron stove
and there was all
kinds of stuff in there
and the director was like,
"Okay this scene, I want
to be the bloodiest,
bloodiest scene ever."
He's like, put some
blood on the wall.
So we looked over
at the art director,
who had built this beautiful set
and we're like, we're
gonna put some blood
over here on the wall
and she's like, "Okay
but we have to clean it,
we have to keep it clean,
I mean I have to shoot
it clean tomorrow."
And I'm like, okay so we go
put some blood on the wall
and the director's like,
"No, no, no.
I need more blood than that.
I need some blood over here
and then I need
blood over there."
So, we literally went,
I remember we went
back to the car
to get like another
two gallons of blood
and we emptied it on the walls
and the director came
back and he goes,
"I still see blank spots.
I need it to be blood
all over the walls."
And I looked over
at the art director
and she just like,
like in the nicest
possible voice,
all she said was, "But it
has to be clean for tomorrow."
And we went in and
filled in the rest of the wall
and I have a picture.
It's like my memory from that,
just a picture we destroyed
this beautiful set with blood.
I have no, I didn't
go back the next day.
I don't know how they
were able to clean that up
or what happened or
how they shot that.
So.
Welcome to Hall House.
- According to the
legend, it's not haunted.
It's possessed.
A gateway to hell.
Where this Halloween,
Angela's planning
one hell of a party.
- Come.
A night filled with tricks
and deadly treats.
Night of the Demons 3.
- I remember there
was like a giant long
like serpent tongue
that comes out
of Angela's mouth at one point
and goes through the back
of someone's head, I believe.
The front part of it
is an actual prosthetic
that the actress
wore in her mouth
but then the actual tongue,
the long big tongue was
fabricated out of foam
and I put it on
the end of a pole
so it could be shoved
out the fake out
and through the back
of the guy's head.
- I do remember when I wrote it
and then talking to
the director by phone,
who had not seen the first two,
and I could tell he had
no feel for the material,
he hadn't seen the first two.
He was gonna take this script,
which was a Night of
the Demons script,
which I went back and
read Joe's first two scripts,
Night of the Demons one
and copied the feeling
and the dialog and
the characters.
So it was like a
high school romp
with a lot of blood
and gore and nudity
and this guy was trying
to make The Exorcist
and it's like.
Some secrets
should never be learned.
Some borders should
never be crossed.
Some games.
- Are you here?
Should never be played.
Witchboard 2.
- What happened was
Republic Pictures
picked up to the rights
to the original Witchboard
and Night of the Demons
for video distribution
and they were both
such big hits for them
that they commissioned
that some company
to make two sequels
to Witchboard
and two sequels to
Night of the Demons.
So this was the first
time they didn't have
to go out and raise
the money themselves,
Republic gave them the money
and basically they
became producers for hire.
So they made two
Witchboard sequels
and two Night of
the Demon sequels
and Witchboard 2 was the first.
So they did come out
in some theaters,
like in very niche markets
but it never had
the wide release
that the original Witchboard
had had, obviously.
Limited to my hometown, I think.
No, that's the one
place it didn't play.
The guys who made Witchboard
and Night of the
Demons got hired.
Now that they were
producers for hire,
they were getting hired
by other companies.
Trimark, because of their
success with Leprechaun,
wanted to do a Pinocchio film
and they had found a script
and they were gonna make it
and they were gonna make
it for like 1.5 million
but the guy who wrote the script
was a first time
writer slash director
and he was convinced
this thing was
the next Gone with the Wind
and he wouldn't agree to do it
if the budget was less
than three million.
So I think it was
called Bad Pinocchio.
I don't remember
who the writer was,
I read it and, not a fan.
It was pretty silly
but I wasn't a big fan of
the Leprechaun films either.
I know that's sacrilege
to all you Leprechaun fans
out there and my brother did
do the score for two of them
but I'm not a big fan
of the Leprechaun films
and Trimark had asked me,
tried to get me to do part
two and then part three
and I turned them down.
So I think this was their way.
So when that fell through.
When the Bad Pinocchio
fell through,
these guys at Paragon were kind
of gonna be out of work now.
So they really quickly
said to Mark Amin,
"Well you know, this guy
doesn't own the rights
to Pinocchio, we
can't do his script
but we can still do a
killer Pinocchio film"
and Mark said,
"yeah but who would"
and they said, "what
if we get Kevin?"
and he was like,
"You'll never get Kevin
'cause he keeps turning
down the Leprechaun films."
So they came to me and I
said I would agree to do it
if it could be more like magic
and less like Child's Play.
'Cause I really didn't
want to do a Child's Play.
I'm not a big fan
of the big puppets.
As a matter of fact,
I would never had written
and directed Pinocchio
as a spec ever.
It was because it
was a work for hire.
But I said, I would
beinterested if I could do it more
it's a psychological thriller
and at the end you
don't really know
and they were like, oh,
they weren't crazy about that
and I said, Here's
what we'll do.
In the final scene she
gets hit in the head
and she sees the Pinocchio doll attack her
but then at the end, she
say well she had been hit
in the head, maybe
she imagined it
and it was really her
daughter attacking her.
That way, you still get
the attacking Pinocchio
for your trailer, but I still
get my ambiguous ending
and they wanted a killer puppet.
So that was the
compromise we made.
- I'm back.
- I barely remember
working in Leprechaun 2
and you know what, I've seen
Warwick Davis a few times,
and first of all,
it's wonderful, Ron
knew him from Willow
but the fact that he got
this horror franchise
as a little person,
limited casting options,
he cashed in.
That whole character
was a complete re shoot,
that character didn't
exist in the first draft
of the script and I actually
auditioned for the movie
and didn't get a role.
The director, Tony Randel,
I never really
talked to him about,
but I never got the call
and Dad worked on it
and then I got a call from Tony
saying that they just
felt like they needed
some more horror, some more,
you know, what they needed.
It was too much standing
around and talking
and they invented my character,
which is hard for me to imagine
because it's such a central
character in the story,
but the idea is you
never really saw the ticks,
how they got steroid-ed up,
you know and so you meet me
and we shot all night
and it had to been 32
degrees out in Malibu,
'cause we were out
in Malibu canyon
and it was sure nice
to have that makeup on,
'cause it makes you a lot warmer
and I remember I'm infested,
because finally it was
kind of so late at night
and it was so crazy
that when it was time
to really go for it.
I'm infected!
Silent Night Deadly
Night Part Four was,
I thought was a really
good experience.
Brian Yuzna was an
old friend of mine
and we had worked together
partially in a few things
but he directs and he
was the guy that did
the Bride of Re-Animator,
the Re-Animator movies,
he produced them.
He was making this Silent
Night Deadly Night Part Four,
and it had nothing
to do with Christmas,
it had nothing to do with
Silent Night Deadly Night
Part Three, Brian didn't care
and there was a guy named
Screaming Mad George,
who did the special effects,
they were just a lot of gooey,
kind of slimy creatures
and I played, I
played a homeless guy
that was sort of the
henchman of these witches.
I went and got a 12-pack
and was drinking it.
I was playing a homeless guy.
I could afford to
have a little buzz
and I remember the
production manager
took away my 12-pack
after I had three or four
and that really pissed me off
and I went and bought
another 12-pack
the first break I had.
A bizarre event.
- This would make a great story.
For her, it was
the chance of a lifetime.
- I work for the LA Eye,
I'm an investigative reporter.
There's got to be some logical
explanation for the burning.
But some questions.
- Get away from
me, leave me alone.
Are better left unanswered.
- What happened,
are you all right?
The woman who jumped.
- She was my daughter.
But now you've come
to take her place.
- Make your fear real.
Get it out.
It's the night
you've been waiting for.
- Please help.
- Kill the man.
Became a whole woman.
The night
you've been screaming for.
- It's the final step.
Silent Night Deadly Night 4.
Initiation.
- Clint was great.
He's really a good actor
and very easy going on the set.
So when the first Silent Night
Deadly Night movie came out
Santa Claus was the killer.
That's not right.
There are lines
that you don't cross
and that's one of them.
You don't make Santa
Clause a killer
and I vowed, you know,
all of like 29 years old,
well I'm never gonna do
a Santa Claus killer movie,
'cause that's not okay.
That is not okay.
You can't cross that line.
So, fast forward, you
know, a year later,
two, three years later.
I'm going in on this audition
and I've already done
a couple horror films
and I go in for this
movie called The Initiation.
Now very often, you
don't get to see the script,
you just get like three scenes.
So I do my scenes,
they call me back,
it goes well, I'm feeling great.
Go back again, get the part.
I'm meeting a buddy,
I'm on my way home,
my buddy's gonna
meet me at my house,
we're gonna head to a
party or something afterwards.
He's in the driveway.
He's like, "Hey,
Tommy how'd it go?
I go, I got the part.
He goes, "What was that again?"
I go, it's a movie
called The Initiation.
He's like, "Oh, right.
Silent Night Deadly
Night Part Four."
I go, no, no.
It's called The Initiation.
He's like, "No, Silent Night
Deadly Night Part Four,
The Initiation.
I'm like, no!
I said I would never do one.
When I read the script finally,
when they finally gave
me a script to read,
like the first page,
I am, my character
is having sex with this
woman up against the wall
in a seedy hotel
shot from behind
and I'm like, oh, oh.
Okay, wow.
My butt is gonna be
on film for eternity.
I'm gonna have the best
looking butt in the business
and so for the next, you
know, whatever it was.
I was already in
pretty good shape
but for the next few
weeks I'm just like,
doing butt exercises,
doing butt exercises
'cause my butts
gonna look awesome.
See the movie, they
didn't use that part.
I'm like, come on!
My butt looked great
and I didn't even
realize back that
that it had such a like
Hitchcockian thing about it
and it is really cool
and I found myself just
riveted just watching
Neith and what so goes through
and what's going on in her mind.
She always had stuff going on.
I mean there's not
like a lot of moments
on the screen where you
don't see the wheels just turning.
- There are no bad days
here at Wishing Well.
Only happy days.
- Open wide, Gregory.
It is a happy day,
now he's out, rehabilitated
with a brand new job.
- Here you go.
- I'd like to buy a
gallon of your hard pack.
- Next.
You didn't say please.
- Did you see little
Rodger Smith today?
- He was that park, why?
- We got a missing kid.
His ice cream
has a secret ingredient.
- What the hell is
that ice cream dork
doing out this late?
- What's your favorite flavor?
- Wow.
- Oh, he's so kind to
the little children.
- I brought you
something special.
- Oh, sounds yummy.
I know that you told me
beforeon the phone you didn't believe
I actually watched.
Is that your internal
attitude on it?
- Well, yeah.
I would have $50,
a $50 bounty, a prize,
if anybody can prove
to me that they just
would sit and watch it
just straight through,
like waste two hours of
their life watching the movie.
I'll give you $50.
I've never really had
anybody step up and do it.
They've talked about and
they say they've seen it
but to actually say,
no I'm gonna watch it
and you know I'll put it
on tape that I'm watching it,
you get $50.
I had a blast making it
and Norman and I are
really close friends,
the fellow that directed it
and it was an important part,
an important time in my life
and getting to play the lead
was something that, you know,
actors that's what
we strive for.
I mean all actors dream
of being the matinee idol,
and I wasn't gonna
be the matinee idol
but I, you know,
I want my sirloin.
Dr. Allen
Feinstone is back in business.
Just a small country practice.
Doing what he does best.
- Want to open wide?
He's practicing
under a new name.
- Jamie Devers,
Dr. Lawrence Caine.
- Hi.
- Larry's just moved
here to Paradise.
- I think I'm
gonna like it here.
And he's given his patience.
- Smile.
The care they deserve.
- I got a feeling he's gonna
be real good for this town.
- Whats wrong?
- A little toothache.
- May I look at it?
- Is it gonna hurt.
- Shouldn't.
- Dentist 2 is one of those ones
I'm really proud I got
that notch in my gun belt.
Corbin Bernsen,
Brian Yuzna again
and the wonderful
thing about working
for Brian back in the day
is, of course, you
get a little neurotic
when nobody gives you any notes.
It's like, how was I?
Did it work?
Does the scene work,
too intense or whatever?
And Brian, very early on said,
"You know, I'm not an actor.
You're a lot better
actor than I am.
I'm gonna leave the
acting choices to you
and let me just do
the, handle the shots."
So, by the time
we did Dentist 2,
I mean listen, Corbin
and I just were chewing
on the scenery, we
had fun, we staged it.
The fake needle in the ear
and I still, if I
had a product really,
it would be on it.
It, 'cause I just feel like
that that's one of those ones,
yeah, listen, look at the
way Corbin was playing it
and the way, you
know Mr. Toothache
was my character's name
and that insert shot
of the pus was just
so ridiculously grotesquely bad, it's good.
It just summarizes that
movie, that era, that time.
- 90s horror is great
and a lot of that came from
the direct to video movies.
I mean, Dr. Giggles.
- Return of the Living
Dead III, Mindy Clarke.
- Let's proceed.
- Don't worry,
they can't see us.
Beyond the laws of nature.
- We've got something.
- They came back to life.
Beyond the limits of love.
- Julie.
Beyond the silence of death.
She has returned
to take you on a joy
ride through hell.
- She's dead, isn't she?
- If she attacks him,
he becomes like her.
- No!
- She was the most bad ass cool,
like she kind of
reminded me of a bit
of a Angela in
Night of the Demons,
Amelia Kinkade, kind
of just cool and sexy
and badass and then its like,
when she had to start
shoving glass into her face
and needles into her fingers,
you're like holy shit!
This chick is crazy
and she's cool
and she's still sexy.
I think kind of with
like the death of DVD
and like video store movies
may have been like the
death of the scream queen.
Just because like the
genres much bigger now
but you don't have that thing.
Like you're not going to Netflix
just to search for a
Tiffany movie anymore,
or so and so.
Like where you used to go to
Blockbuster and you'd like go, oh
oh my god, look at
this, she's in this one
and she's in this one
and she's in this one
and like those were the things
that you had much
smaller pool to chose from.
So obviously people like
me you get elevated more.
Now there's like billions
of movies on Netflix
and billions of movies on Hulu
and it's like you don't haveenough
time to watch everything
so I don't know if the term
really still exists as much.
- All those years when
I was making the films
in the 80s and 90s.
I had no idea the, the breadth,
I don't know the word,
of where these films
were going of the people
seeing the films.
I had no idea that these
films were being seen
across the country and
there was all these people
who love these films.
- I have to tell
my fans, thank you
thank you for everything
for all these years
of honoring me as a scream queen
and watching me as
a horror actress,
I couldn't have
done it without you.
- I love talking to you
guys on social media
and I look forward to seeing you
at the conventions
and stuff like that
and I wouldn't do anything,
couldn't be able to do anything
that I love to do without you.
So thank you very
much, I love you.
- That was my childhood
and that was some of the
best years of my life,
discovering all those movies.