The Last Horror Movie reunites those wacky lovebirds Joe Spinell and Caroline Munro from Starcrash and Maniac and makes another appearance for Joe on the video nasty section 3 list.
Director David Winters was one of the few stage actors and dancers in West Side Story to be in the film version. He then became a choreographer and was the first to choreograph the Watusi as well as the originator of the Freddie and helped Elvis and Ann-Margaret dance in Viva Las Vegas. His first directorial effort was the Alice Cooper film Welcome to My Nightmare and he produced everything from Linda Lovelace for Presidentto Young Lady Chatterley, Killer Workoutand owned Action International Pictures. He also dated Lovelace after she divorced Chuck Traynor. She credited him for introducing her to culture. The guy did so much! He directed Racquet, did the choreography for Roller Boogie, made Mission Kill with Robert Ginty and oh yeah, also directed Thrashin’!
Anyways, both Spinell and Munro are two people who make me love life the moment I see them. The blonde highlights in her hair in this movie got me through the rest of a very hard week. This film is very 1982 and therefore, it is very good.
Spinell is Vinny, a cab driver who lives with his mother (Filomena Spagnuolo, Spinell’s real mother, who ends the movie by asking if she can take a hit off his joint; that’s also Spinell’s real apartment) but dreams of making a horror movie with scream queen Jana Bates (Munro), who is going to be at Cannes to promote her latest film Scream along with her manager and ex-husband Bret Bates (Glenn Jacobson) and producer and current boyfriend Alan Cunningham (Judd Hamilton). She gets a note that says, “You’ve made your last horror film. Goodbye.” and finds Bret murdered, but the body disappears when the police come to investigate. This turns into more of a whodunnit than a slasher, but I mean, Spinell still gets to chainsaw someone to death.
Just like the movie within this movie, this was shot with no permits at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival. If you think it’s not realistic for an actress in a horror movie to win an award, that very year Isabelle Adjani won the Best Actress award for Possession.
PS: In no way am I as obsession with Munro as Vinny was with Jana.
16. MAKING THE 3RD WALL: One where they’re filming a movie within the movie you’re watching.
Smarter minds and better writers have already written about the work of David Lynch, so let me write a lot about what this movie means to me at 3 AM. This may be the best way to do this.
“A love story in the city of dreams.”
Originally shot as a TV pilot that its ABC didn’t understand but come on. Do you expect them to? It was supposedly intended to be a series about Audrey Horne. What amazes me is that — according to David Lynch — the decision maker at ABC who saw it watched it at 6AM and was having coffee and standing up. That person is the reason this became a movie and not a TV show.
Naomi Watts is both Betty Elms and Diane Selwyn. Laura Harring is Rita and Camilla Rhodes. The film starts with a car crash and ends with a gunshot. In-between are moments like a man claiming that if he sees the evil man from his dreams, he’ll die. And then he does.
Sometimes this movie makes my head hurt. I guess some movies don’t need explained but this begs for you to understand what it’s about. Is Betty real? Diane? Both? Does the Hollywood experience match that of star Watts? Is the death of the Hollywood fantasy Lynch’s own anger at an industry that he still had to hustle for money? Are these parallel universes? Can everyone exist at the same time in the same place?
It’s also about Club Silencio, where everything is an illusion. A place where Rebekah Del Rio sings “Crying” in Spanish and passes out while her vocals keep singing. Lynch again using recorded vocals for live singers, lip synching so many time. Plus Lynch knows who to hire, like Ann Miller, James Karen, Dan Hedaya and Lee Grant.
What is it like to be an actor in one of Lynch’s movies, perhaps only understanding the most limited outline of the story? I think it’d be so interesting because there’s no way to ever know if you’re playing things the right way. Even you, the person reading this, will it in its own way. What other director can do that?
One of the best nights of my life was singing in a karaoke bar somewhere in Osaka. I mean, they had the entire Ramones catalog. Not just one song. Everything. Yes, in Japan you’re in a small room with friends, but we may have as well been on a huge stage singing, smoking cigars and drinking kiwi juice.
Premika comes from Thailand and it’s about — you probably figured this out — a haunted karaoke booth that kills those who can’t sing well. As each person is killed, they become part of the room, a place filled with bad singers and Premika herself, a girl killed before her time, one who attacks with axes and toilets that spray bloody showers of gore.
Everyone that sings ends up confessing their lives through the song picked for them. We learn Premika’s sad life through her song, which shifts this movie from a ludicrous slasher to true emotional territory. I kinda love this movie just for having the balls to try and pull that off. I totally love it because they succeed in doing exactly that.
Who knew a movie called Killer Karaoke would address human trafficking, homophobia and trans identity without preaching and also within the same movie that has heads rolling and a giant swan show up.
The seventh film in the Puppet Master series, this is a prequel to 1991’s Puppet Master III: Toulon’s Revenge. It’s written by Charles Band, Benjamin Carr and David Schmoeller with direction provided by David DeCoteau.And no, your eyes do not deceive you. Playing the young Toulon is Gregory Sestero, Mark from The Room.
This begins with Toulon and his puppets on the run, hiding an in an Inn near Switzerland. Blade finds the wooden head of an old puppet named Cyclops, which leads to Toulon telling the puppets about his past his love Elsa and first puppets, which all goes back to 1902 Egypt.
The puppets’ ability to become alive all are thanks to Afzel, a 3,000-year-old Egyptian sorcerer, who stole the secret from the Egyptian god Sutekh. Now, three mummies that follow the teachings of this god are following him around the world. Afzel comes into the lives of Toulon and Elsa, showing them the secret.
The retro puppets include Blade, Pinhead, Tunneler (called Drill Sergeant), Six-Shooter, Doctor Death and Cyclops. We also get to see the surviving puppets from the third film, who are Blade, Pinhead, Leech Woman, Jester, Tunneler and Six-Shooter.
An ironic twist to the casting of this film was that James Franco and Sestero were both up for the same role. Years later, Franco would make the book Sestero wrote, The Disaster Artist, into a movie.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jennifer Upton is an American (non-werewolf) writer/editor in London. She currently works as a freelance ghostwriter of personal memoirs and writes for several blogs on topics as diverse as film history, punk rock, women’s issues, and international politics. For links to her work, please visit https://www.jennuptonwriter.com or send her a Tweet @Jennxldn
November 13, 2022 marks the 30th anniversary of Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. In honor of the occasion, Park Circus has re-released the film into theatres in a 4k scan from the camera negative. Watching it after being a fan for so many years, brought me back to the night I first saw it.
On Friday November 13, 1992, following a disastrous game of pool with a friend, I departed The Ferris Wheel pub on Market Street in the small town of Oswego, NY and headed to the local movie theatre alone to catch the late showing of the latest adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Back then, I was a 20-year-old student working my way through a TV/Film and Radio program. Being a fan of horror films and vampires in particular, I had seen just about every version of the novel ever made. Most recently, in my “Intro to Cinema” class, I had studied the German expressionist film Nosferatu (1922) along with other historically important genre titles such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Un Chien Andalou (1929.) When I entered the lobby on that atypically warm autumn night, I carried an attitude of skepticism. How fresh could a new version of Dracula possibly be? A little over two hours later, I exited with mind blown. Not only had screenwriter James V. Hart and director Francis Ford Coppola managed to capture the most faithful version of the novel I’d ever seen, they had also incorporated the true history of the “real” Count, Vlad “The Impaler” Tepes and his struggle against invading Turks in the 1400s. Most impressively, Coppola had composed a visual love letter to the history of cinema, simultaneously incorporating actual clips of the earliest silent short reels and utilizing, almost exclusively, in-camera effects as the earliest masters did. It was and remains a film for film lovers and filmmakers, warts and all.
Let’s discuss the wart right away and move on. Yes, Keanu Reeves’ attempt at a British accent is terrible. But, the rest of the film is so damn great, that it didn’t matter in ‘92 and it doesn’t now. In fact, I’d wager that if Johnny Depp had played Jonathan Harker, in line with the studio’s desires, the love story between Prince Vlad and Mina wouldn’t have worked as well as it does. It is precisely Harker’s wooden demeanor that makes it possible for audiences to understand Mina’s attraction to the far more emotionally expressive lovelorn Dracula. With Depp in the role, Harker would have no doubt been more likeable, reframing the Prince as a lesser competitor. With an unlikeable Harker, we fully get why Mina strays from her fiancé. At the same time, we want to see Dracula find love again. He lost the one thing that mattered most to him in service to his god and feels betrayed. He’s sympathetic. A key component to any classic monster with staying power. Oldman is, as always, resplendent. Further contrasting with past adaptations, neither Harker nor the charismatic Van Helsing are the heroes in this film. It’s Mina’s show. Not only does this acknowledge and continue the rich history of strong female protagonists in the horror and sci-fi genres, but it makes for the most powerful ending of any Dracula film ever made. Mina will love her Prince forever but the means by which she delivers both Vlad and herself to spiritual salvation is brutal. Her one single act with the sword at the film’s conclusion blows the feeble attempts of Harker, Holmwood, Quincy and Dr. Seward out of the water in comparison.
Watching it again in the warm autumn of 2022 in a cinema in London, I relished in both its quiet modernity, and its embrace of old-school technology. I delighted in ever iris wipe and match dissolve all over again. The 4k negative scan is beautiful, bringing to light details in the costumes and sets I never noticed before. Every frame is gorgeous. If the 30th anniversary edition is playing anywhere near you, leave the bar early and see it. See the amazing cinematograph display its images in its most recent digital incarnation. Let it carry you back through a cinematic timeline not only to 1992, but to 1897. Movies like this one never die.
15. A Horror Film With Special Effects by Olaf Ittenbach.
Olaf Ittenbach is something else. I mean, if you thought Black Past or The Burning Moon was all he was going to do, this movie takes those movies and blows them away.
Premutos is the first of the fallen, predating Lucifer, and his son has been preparing the world for his rule since before time. Meanwhile, Mathias begins to have flashbacks of being the son of this dark god and remembers being crucified next to Jesus, the diseases of the dark ages and Russia in the time of war. Now, he’s found an ancient book and a potion that will mutate him into his true form, which means he’s about to ruin his human father’s birthday and usher in the dark age of Premutos.
Shot on 16mm and blown up to grainy and gory majesty, as the human body is destroyed in so many ways. Chainsawed, exploded, shot, stabbed, pierced, split, sliced and so many more ways to see how much blood is inside a person.
This movie makes it seem like Ittenbach had taken a personal mission in making Germany the gore and splatter leader. I mean, how much blood is enough? Obviously that answer is infinity if you follow this one, because everyone and everything is covered in it. It’s like he saw Raimi, saw Jackson and said, “Hold my Schneider Weisse Aventinus Eisbock.”
You know how people were throwing up — allegedly — during Terrifier 2? This movie has a scene where a man has metal rods appear out of his body, pushing their way out of his teeth and his body is pulled apart by wire as it shoots blood all over an apartment.
This movie almost has too much in it and I love it for that. It was like its creator was worried he’d never make another movie, so he made every movie he wanted to make for the rest of his existence all at once. We’re all the better for it, unless you try and eat during this. Actually, I had a whole bunch of Extreme Sour Warheads and just kept adding them to my mouth at the end as everything went crazy and I went into a sugar rush and started screaming at the TV.
One of the problems in today’s discourse — on anything, be it politics, pop culture or even what the best tasting fast food might be — is mired in the fact that not only does everyone have an opinion, but everyone now has a way to broadcast that opinion. So for the next few weeks, you’re going to see a wide variety of opinions on this movie, whether it’s from people who are assured that it’s the worst movie in the series — if not the worst movie ever, if you believe some people — to the best sequel to the series and a film that takes “big swings” to actually make a surprising entry in a series of films that has already hit 13 with this new release.
Watching this movie last night and then reading the social media discourse that resulted, I was left with several questions:
Has anyone working on this movie — with the obvious people like those who were in the actual movie — ever seen the first Halloween?
Have they ever seen a movie before?
Is it a Halloweenmovie when Michael Myers basically has a cameo and that’s it? I mean, the only movie in the series he’s in less of is Halloween 3: Season of the Witch.
Speaking of that movie, I am old enough to remember just how upset people were when it came out. Sure, it’s been critically reevaluated — something that others feel will happen someday with this movie — but at the time, it was beyond hated.
There are some that say that this movie will be much like the third installment, one that people will come around to liking, an acquired taste that eventually people will discover that they really do like.
The problem is that that takes us back to the argument that I started three hundred words ago: nobody changes their mind any longer. No one argues a position. That’s because positions are predetermined and no one debates. They just soapbox and refuse to listen to anyone from any other side.
It’s a movie made by five writers, all of whom came to the first story session with their own ideas of what the story would be about, then got into a fight and their mothers had to be called in, who told them that they were all special but they needed to learn an important lesson in working together by trying to get all of their ideas to work in one idea.
Here are the many movies that make up Halloween Ends:
The town of Haddonfield has been haunted by the murders that have happened there over the years and as a result, people have started killing one another and themselves. This idea stops after the montage that introduces it.
Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell) accidentally kills a kid he’s babysitting and stays within his small town, dealing with the anger and resentment of the people who live there. He finds love — doomed, tragic love — with someone who might understand his pain, Allyson Nelson (Andi Matichak), who survived the death of her parents at the hands of Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle).
After stating that the sequels were all horrible movies, a team of filmmakers take a whole bunch of Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myersand have Michael Myers/The Shape (James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle) hiding out in a storm sewer along with some homeless folks, not to mention the black convertible that comes directly from that movie. Despite never being related to Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), he still recovers and hunts her down, even though she has moved to a new house that is not his childhood home, nor is it near the magical window that was suggested to be why he killed in the last movie.
An evil radio tower has beamed the messages that has caused Michael Myers/The Shape (James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle) to be a killer for forty years begins to influence a teenager who hangs out at the radio station, Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell), and he takes on the powers and abilities of the killer. According to leaked scripts, this was actually where the movie really was going, as the radio tower was added to Halloween Kills via CGI and spoken about in the commentary track as integral to the mythology of Haddonfield. Supposedly, this movie was going to have Michael killed by being impaled on the tower twenty minutes into the movie and his powers going into Corey.
A confused young man named Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell) is unsure of his sexuality and expresses his uncertainty through violence. Despite a potential relationship with Allyson Nelson (Andi Matichak), he keeps heading to the cruise spot on town, bringing other men to watch Michael Myers/The Shape (James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle) have their way with them, then bringing him to the outside world where his impotence keeps him from having sex with a nurse (Michele Dawson), leaving him pawing at a glass window while The Shape easily penetrates her. Also at times it seems that through poor filmmaking that Michael is riding on the back of his motorcycle. Also also he lives with a mother (Joanne Baron) who belittles and slaps him when she isn’t kissing him full on the lips and works for his junkyard-owning father (Rick Moose) who just wants to watch Hard Target and is given to saying things like, “I hope you find love, son.” PS: When this line was said, I laughed like Max Cady for a full minute. A loud, joyous, braying laugh at one of the absolute worst lines in the history of movies that I have seen, one so poorly placed that it had to be satire if intended and sheer ineptitude if not.
A soap opera about the town of Haddonfield, a place that unlike any of the other versions of the story only has one convenience store, one bar and one restaurant. There, everyone will come into conflict with one another:
Mrs. Allen (Candice Rose), the mother of Jeremy, who accidentally died when Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell) kicked him off a stairwell while babysitting him. She has never changed her clothes for at least two years, still dressing in the same flapper costume she was wearing that same Halloween. Or worse, she still celebrates Halloween and still wears the same costume that she wore the night her son died and both ideas are both very dark and also very dumb.
Mr. Allen (Jack William Marshall) who is trying to forgive Corey for the death of his son and keeps trying to pick him up on the way from work and worries that he has no idea what to say.
Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards) — note not Lindsay Wallace as the initial credits misspelled — the survivor of the Michael Myers murders when she was a kid, which made her lifelong friends with Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) when she isn’t working her two jobs: door to door Tarot reader and owner of the only bar in town.
Allyson Nelson (Andi Matichak), the survivor of a series of murders that killed her parents, boyfriend and friends, but who now works at Haddonfield Memorial — man, is Fright Rags going to make a million bucks selling those scrubs or what? — and is vying for a promotion that instead goes to a nurse (Michele Dawson) who is sleeping with their boss Dr. Mathis (Michael O’Leary), who has his whole home wired for Alexa and plays “Tell Me with Your Eyes (Just Be You)” by Rob Galbraith before he does some horizontal mambo with the much younger redhead nurse. She also might be in love with Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell) despite meeting him once yet she shares that she has always had a psychic connection with him. She kind of wants to leave town but feels responsible for her grandmother.
Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is an older women who has finally moved on from the death of her friends forty years ago and the death of her daughter by embracing therapy, getting sober and working to become a positive influence in the life of her granddaughter Allyson Nelson (Andi Matichak), which includes setting her up with a young man named Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell). She also is in love with Deputy Frank Hawkins (Will Patton), a police officer who has also been impacted by the events of the past and now studies Japanese and yearns to see cherry blossoms. However, she’s haunted by people in the town who have not forgiven her, like Sondra (Diva Tyler), who was put in a wheelchair by Michael Myers/The Shape (James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle), who also killed her husband when they were just trying to eat cheese, drink wine and fly a drone inside their house.
A gang of miscreants led by Terry (Michael Barbieri), whose father does not love him. They are all members of the toughest kids in town, the Haddonfield Marching Band, as we have already learned through all of the now non-canon sequels that the children of Haddonfield are the absolute worst human beings who will remind you that your uncle was the boogeyman and smash your pumpkin. He is joined by Billy (Marteen), who looks like Ninja from Die Antwoord, Stacy (Destiny Mone) and Margo (Joey Harris).
WURQ The Verge, is the only radio station in town. It’s run by Willy the Kid (Keraun Harris), who not only owns the property but is mean to anyone who stands on its grounds and is given to incite paranoia in the town by talking loudly all day long. He enjoys eating Chinese food and has a secretary who looks like a mail lady.
Anyways.
All of those movies have been thrown into a film that has basically a Michael Myers cameo, strobing moments that nearly broke my brain, sleepovers in an abandoned house between a meet cute couple where one of them killed a kid, a decent scene in the junkyard between Corey and his tormentors, a supposed extended role for Kyle Richards that lasts as long as Michael is in this movie and a plot that’s more Christine than Halloween (Corey’s name comes directly from that movie, he works in a junkyard and he has the exact same outfit on as Arnie when you first see him in that film).
Jamie Lee Curtis claimed that this movie would be “shocking” and “make people very angry.”
I mean, that seems like a reason to make a movie. That said, I’ve always loved Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 because the audience expected more of the same and got exactly what Tobe Hooper and L. M. Kit Carson wanted to unleash upon filmgoers. The difference, again, is that that movie is actually well-made and has some things to say.
This is the third movie in a trilogy that has no right being a trilogy. The first tries to erase the sequels while having moments from all of them. The second turns Michael into Jason, starting with him killing an entire brigade of firefighters. And then there was this, which again, is a whole bunch of movies fighting to figure out what they want to be.
There are so many people saying this is brilliant because it subverts what should be expected. Now, for those that want Laurie Strode’s story to end on her own terms, this movie is a success. To me, the series is not about her, but about the darkness that exists within small town America exemplified by a masked killer that has no emotion and no reason for what it does.
The idea that one mistake sends Corey stumbling down the left hand path to evil is a good one. It’s an idea better given to another film and perhaps not one associated with this franchise. Actually, the John Carpenter and Debra Hill idea of ending the franchise with the second movie and having each new installment be self-contained was a very good one.
Green claimed he was done with horror and then Blumhouse asked if he wanted to remake The Exorcist, which is the real horror here.
Look, I get it. After making thirteen of these movies, what do you do? But this one — there’s no suspense. There’s no stalking. There’s no simplicity, as the first movie is a very basic thrill ride that keeps delivering watch after watch. This learns no lessons from that film.
Some other notes:
At the end of the movie, everyone in Haddonfield has a big procession with The Shape’s body tied to a car, then dumps him in an industrial grinder like one of those YouTube shredder videos. If you just moved to this town, wouldn’t you be like, “What is going on? Why are these people driving a body to a junkyard? Who said this was OK?”
The black sheriff and little mouthy kid from the first one all came back and only I clapped.
Laurie’s book has the worst title ever: Stalkers, Savior and Samhain. Except that, you know, that scene where Samhain is on the chalkboard is no longer canon.
Laurie is still learning how to use that microwave, huh?
This movie is seriously the most fan service sledgehammer BS ever. That awkward grocery store scene with the Muzak version of “Don’t Fear the Reaper” was embarrassing filmmaking.
That “Love lives today” graffiti on the bridge was dumb too.
You can stab an angry young man in the throat and he won’t die, but a seventy-year-old man can still kill him.
This movie flirts with the supernatural nature of the mask and never decides to explain it.
Seriously, why does everyone in town blame Laurie for Michael?
Activia mist give you superpowers because Laurie somehow survives a knitting needle in the neck.
In conclusion:
John Carpenter gets more money to buy weed and video games.
David Gordon Green gets to keep making movies.
Jason Blum confirmed there will be more films, because Malek Akkad has a clause prohibiting Michael Myers to be killed. You know, despite him getting shredded like documents not headed for Mur-A-Lago.
As for me, I have to write an apology letter to Rob Zombie and Busta Rhymes.
15. VIDEO STORE DAY: This is the big one. Watch something physically rented or bought from an actual video store. If you don’t have access to one of these sacred archival treasures then watch a movie with a video store scene in it at least. #vivaphysicalmedia
“I do not do animal acts. I do not do S&M or any variations of that particular bent, no water sports either. I will not shave my pussy, no fistfucking and absolutely no coming in my face. I get $2000 a day and I do not work without a contract.”
I’ve said it before. Everything I find attractive in the opposite sex is Melanie Griffith: the toughness of Edith Johnson in Cherry 2000, the smarts of Tess McGill in Working Girl, the dangerous edge of Audrey Hankel in Something Wild and, well, Holly Body in this movie wearing a fringed jacket, smoking with short blonde hair? Have you seen my wife?
Wikipedia states that this is a “homage to the 1950s films of Alfred Hitchcock, specifically Rear Window, Vertigo and Dial M for Murder,” but this is a giallo thanks to the main character being implicated in the murder, misdirection as to what the real crime is and who the killer may be, and the fact that murder and sex have come together most horrifyingly as a drill penetrates a woman and the floor beneath her, dripping hot blood all over the protagonist.
Jake Scully (Craig Wasson) has lost his home, his lover and his last role, all because of the childhood phobias that have made him claustrophobia — hey another giallo moment — yet after taking a method acting class, he’s found a place in the astounding home of actor Sam Bouchard (Gregg Henry), who before he leaves for Europe takes time to show him a woman — Gloria Revelle (Deborah Shelton, Miss USA 1970, who was also in Bloodtide) — who strips down every night for whoever watches her.
That home is the Chemosphere house which is also in Charlie’s Angels.
Obsessed by this woman, Jake starts following her and even watches her be attacked by a mystery man. That same “Indian” steals her purse as Jake follows her to a rendezvous at a hotel where she’s about to meet another man who stands her up. He gets her purse back before his phobia traps him in a tunnel. She helps him escape his fear. They embrace. They kiss. That night, the “Indian” returns and kills her with a gigantic drill as Jake fails to save her; a huge white dog has stopped him. When he calls the police, Detective Jim McLean (Guy Boyd) tells him that his need to watch and not involve the police earlier led to Gloria’s death.
Later that evening, unable to sleep, Jake notices a woman dancing on a cable channel whose movements are the same as his mystery woman. Those movies and those curves belong to Holly Body (Griffith), an adult star who he works his way into meeting and then frightens away, just in time for the “Indian,” who ends up being Alex Revelle, the husband of Gloria, but also Sam Bouchard, to knock out Holly, who he paid to dance for Jake so that he’d keep watching and see his wife get killed, giving him the alibi that he was in Europe and the “Indian” was the real killer.
That reveal is so giallo it should make the screen turn yellow.
Director Brian DePalma was recovering from dealing with the censors over Scarface and women’s groups after Dressed to Kill. Much like Argento, who made Tenebre his most violent film yet after similar criticism — they both also tend to answer yes to the question “Do you like Hitchcock?” — DePalma decided to go hard instead of giving up.
He told the Philadelphia Inquirer “If this one doesn’t get an X, nothing I ever do is going to. This is going to be the most erotic and surprising and thrilling movie I know how to make… I’m going to give them everything they hate and more of it than they’ve ever seen. They think Scarface was violent? They think my other movies were erotic? Wait until they see Body Double.”
Originally, DePalma was going to have Annette Haven play Holly, but the studio bristled at an actual hardcore actress being in their movie. She stayed on to consult and explain what the world of adult was like. DePalma also wanted Sylvia Kristel for the role of Gloria and man, if that happened, this movie would have been too much for 12 year old me.
DePalma ended up ending his three picture deal with Columbia after this movie, which nearly got an X rating, saying “The only people crazier than the people who criticize me for violence are the people at the studios. I can’t stand that sort of cowardice.” As for critics, Ebert loved it, Siskel hated it and said it was splatter and everyone kept saying he hated women. Years later, the director would explain to The Guardian, “Body Double was reviled when it came out. Reviled. It really hurt. I got slaughtered by the press right at the height of the women’s liberation movement… I thought it was completely unjustified. It was a suspense thriller, and I was always interested in finding new ways to kill people.”
So yeah. It bombed at the box office. But it has a great rental store scene, the twist from the coffin scene to the real fate that Jake finds himself in is astounding and even the way the credits come in is absolutely genius. Throw in the wild notion that this movie briefly becomes a Frankie Goes to Hollywood video — man, DePalma loves that spinning dance camera and that scene is such a wow, look, there’s Brink Stevens, Annette Haven, Cara Lott and Lindsay Freeman moment — and you have a movie that I’ve thought about since I first saw it as a teen. Watching it again as an old man, I see the sadness creep through the sin, the voyeur being when he starts watching and gets to actually making it.
Also: that same dance set was reused for Fright Night.
It’s funny because Argento and DePalma always get compared to one another. DePalma said in an interview “Actually the only film I’ve seen of Argento’s is The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. That is the only film of his I remember ever seeing. I know I get compared to him a lot, and people think I took this or that from there or here. But, I actually only remember ever seeing that one film of his. I’m not a student of giallo films at all. I know Martin Scorsese showed me some Mario Bava films back in like the 70s or something.”
Sure, alright. Maybe we should compare the shot for shot moments in Tenebre and Raising Cain.
I digress.
Both are extremely talented and have dealt with the same criticism. Both made poorly advised movies late in their career. Both even married actresses from their films. Both used Pino Donaggio to compose their movies, Argento with Trauma and DePalma more than once.
They should just get together and have some wine and be friends.
Looking back at Body Double, I am astounded by how much DePalma got away with and how much art he still worked into this. It’s sleazy and hard to defend, but that just makes me enjoy it beyond what I should.
This movie begins and ends with interviews with its director Charles E. Cullen who is either the director of movies like The Curse of the Mummy Cat and Killer Klowns from Kansas on Krack or the New Jersey nurse who was the most prolific serial killer ever.
Maybe both.
Anyways, Charles has people asking him questions about his art, which is making a shot on video slasher about the Boogieman, who is the kind of killer who sledgehammers a baby just to show how evil he is.
How do you stop a monster like that? How about a Vietnam vet bounty hunter? What if there was a witch doctor joining him?
This is also in black and white and man, it has a hell of a body count. People are set on ablaze, machetes, chainsaws, rifles and even a car is used. Meanwhile, the music pulses and winds howl and the drone overtakes your mind and you wonder what next level of strange madness is about to emerge from your screen.
According to The Last Exit, Cullen is “an ex-chicken farmer that mixes slow-paced country humor with rural drug-culture and a love for cult, bizarre, trash and horror b-movies. Like a freaky country carnival, he expresses this via many forms of entertainment, including movies, weird country music, puppet shows, homemade TV shows and so on.”
Callen also made Night of the Bums, a movie in which a bat attacks a baby and then bums rip the infant into little bloody chunks. Man, this dude does not seem like he’d be a good dad.
You aren’t raising a kid with him. You’re watching his weird slasher. Relax.
Todd Sheets (Dreaming Purple Neon, Clownado, Sorority Babes in the Dance-a-Thon of Death) has been making horror movies since 1985. He’s one of the directors that Visual Vengeance has decided to spotlight with their new line of shot on video craziness. The first release from Sheets on the label will be Moonchild, a mind-boggling, sprawling SOV horror/ sci-fi/ action/ martial arts epic.
This was a huge opportunity to speak to someone who has kept making his own unique take on horror movies for decades. I can’t tell you how excited I was to get to spend so much time speaking with Todd.
B&S About Movies: How did the Visual Vengeance releases happen?
Todd Sheets: I’ve known Rob for years and met him at Cinema Wasteland. We hit it off. And he really loves this stuff. You know, his office has posters from my movies in it — and other people’s too — and he collects things from this era. He loves it. He loves these movies. You can’t ask for a better deal than that. It’s not all about the money. It’s about doing a good job.
He’s just a laid back guy. He really cares about me. He cares about us as filmmakers. He cares about the people involved in the process and he cares about the movies.
You couldn’t ask for more because so many people today, when they look back on these things, they don’t like them very much. They’re cheap and grungy looking and were made for like forty-two cents. All of that is true.
I think we also got some pretty cool stuff coming out of that era. A lot of charm came out of that stuff and people were trying their hardest with no resources to make something good.
B&S: SOV is the last gasp of regional filmmaking where people that have no connection to Hollywood made whatever they wanted.
Todd: You’re absolutely right. The team I was working with — and still work with — in our hearts we want to entertain people. We have stories that we wanted to tell and we wanted to do the best we could on no money and no budget. We just were trying to give people a good time. That’s what it was all about.
B&S: Moonchild is really big for the budget. You’ve got a lot of locations. And a pretty huge story. There’s a lot happening in it.
Todd: We were a bit naive. You know, people nowadays would say you can’t do this and they would probably be discouraged because you know, we had like $300. We tried to tell an insane story for literally no money with all those costumes and locations and props. I don’t know what the heck we were thinking, but I’m kind of glad we pulled it off.
B&S: You didn’t know you couldn’t do it.
Todd: I think we were just too stubborn to say no. We were gonna make this movie whether you like it or not kind of thing. And we did and it was a real team effort. We all pulled together to do it and I know everybody really cared and put a lot of passion and heart into it. For me, I consider my first real movie Zombie Bloodbath, even though that was from 93. But we had made a ton of movies before that and those are pretty bad. Moonchild was my first attempt to really stand up and say, “Hey, man, we’re gonna do something different. Something original, and I’m gonna put everything I’ve learned to the test here.”
I think we did that. From me down to the crew, the cast and everybody gave 110% all of the time.
B&S: Were you influenced by post-apocalyptic movies or did you just do your own thing?
Todd: The weird thing is I was influenced by the Mad Max rip offs more than Mad Max. I like the Italain stuff better like Warriors of the Wasteland. A little bit of that was creeping in there because I’m all about trying to pay homage to my past, but also, you know, I have my heroes, and a lot of my heroes were European filmmakers. They made stuff to play to drive-ins and indoor grindhouses and that’s what I loved.
I also loved werewolves. So I was like, “Hey, man, I’m gonna put together this weird stuff with some of these martial arts influences and this weird samurai stuff and then put in the kitchen sink.”
When I wrote the script, I saw the whole movie in my mind. I had these ideas I could see like on a big drive-in screen. I think we did it to varying degrees of success. We did okay, especially considering we didn’t really know what we were doing. We were kids, you know.
B&S: I think the Italians were the best at post-apocalyptic movies because they were just making westerns with cars instead of horses.
Todd: There’s heart and soul in those movies and they may have been done quick to make a buck, but they were made by people who really did care about the craft. Like, Lucio Fulci, even his worse movies, I can sit and watch them over and over because he knew what he was doing and he cared.
B&S: I hate when people don’t understand Fulci. They laugh at how long people wait to be killed or how long it takes a spider to eat someone’s face. And then they say, “These movies don’t make sense!”
Todd: As get to know his aesthetic, he’s giving you all these answers just in his own weird way. He’s my favorite Italian director and I was lucky enough to meet him one time because my friend Sage Stallone introduced me. That was a wonderful time and you’ll never get that experience again. You know, I got to watch one of his movies with him. So fantastic. And the things he was yelling out were so funny. People were yelling back at him to shut up and they didn’t realize that it was Fulci! They thought it was just some crotchety old guy in the back who wouldn’t shut up.
B&S: They were right! (laughs)
Todd: I loved him. He was definitely one of a kind. When I made House of Secrets, I was made it as a tribute to him. I got to work with Fabio Frizzi who did so many of those great soundtracks. That turned out to be a fantastic time. I just wanted him to do the theme song and he said, “Send me the script and send me the rough cut.”
And then I didn’t hear anything back.
I’m like, “Oh, God, he hates that. He’s not gonna do it.”
All of a sudden I hear back. He says, “Okay, I’m gonna do the whole movie for that same cost.”
He said that Fulci would be so proud of this movie and well, it was my homage to the Maestro and my big comeback after my heart attack and everything.
I almost died and that was my comeback movie. And I wanted it to be special. So I wanted Fabio to do the theme song and it turned out to be one of the best experiences of my life. He was fantastic.
We did it on Skype at three in the morning. It was amazing.
B&S: What was it like to come back after being gone so long?
Todd: You have to be really dedicated and love the process and the story you’re trying to tell or you aren’t going to finish it because it’s an uphill battle. Sometimes a mountain depending on the project. Something like Moonchild was definitely a mountain but I had so many great people that we didn’t even realize we were climbing it. It was so much fun and so creative. I’m not saying it was easy but they made it seem easy because we were all pulling each other up that mountain.
Todd: Thank you. Final Caller was weird because like we were on the verge of the COVID thing. We were right on the line. Yeah, we started it and then we had to finish it during COVID. And basically it was us being bored because we hadn’t done anything since we were locked down and I really was itching to do something but I didn’t want to deal with the whole Indiegogo thing of trying to raise money. So we did it for like $500 bucks on a credit card, you know, tried to make this thing the best we could possibly make it and I really liked it the way it turned out. I thought the performances were good and I was really happy with the lighting.
For me, I was looking at it from the standpoint of performances first. I want to make sure that I’ve shot it well, the composition is good, the lighting is good and that it doesn’t distract. I really liked the music and so I was really happy with the outcome. I was like, “Wow, this movie kind of has a story. I kind of like it.”
B&S: There’s a lot in there. I wasn’t expecting all of the relationships.
Todd: It was just a couple of sets, too. We had about five sets and the killer’s apartment, but I liked keeping it contained and intimate. I wanted to get to know these people and then I wanted to throw some twists just to kind of mess with you.
B&S: There’s a character turn that totally surprised me.
Todd: That was a surprise to me because when I was writing it, I didn’t know I was gonna do it. And then I was like, You know what? I think she’s she’s gonna be about half-cracked. And we’re gonna do this! I had kind of a crazy ex-girlfriend at the time and I was like, “You know what, what would be the 10th power of that crazy?” I took it and just threw it in there and it was like, “Wow, I really like that.”
So I kept it.
B&S: Do you let the characters dictate where they go?
Todd: Sometimes. You have to let the characters take the story sometimes away from you only because otherwise it feels contrived. It feels like you’ve almost done this to manipulate the story for your own good and sometimes I think the story doesn’t need to be manipulated. Let it go where it’s gonna go. If you fight with what’s natural, you’re gonna come up with a story and that’s why sometimes you’ll watch a movie and you think, “They were pushing the wrong way and it feels weird.”
That was Final Caller. I just wanted it to kind of go, you know? I wanted it to be as natural as possible and organic and I kind of felt like this is how it would go.
B&S: Your movies are authentic. I have an issue with a lot of modern horror because they get you to a certain point and then have no idea how to end.
Todd: That’s really true. I’ve noticed that too. I always give everyone credit for finishing a film but there are some modern horror films lately that I really feel like even on the scripted page how could they not have seen this whole film is hinging on something and now it doesn’t work because they’ve let it fall apart?
B&S: I feel like I wasted 90 minutes of my life.
Todd: It’s weird because I’m weird. I don’t ever like to put down anyone’s art but at the same time as a horror fan, I feel like can we get rid of the pretentious bullshit? I just want to go back to like enjoying a horror film without all the pretentious political overtones and this and that and all this stuff and I just want to see a movie where someone’s you know, I saw X and I thought it was great. But then I didn’t enjoy Pearl. I don’t know why. It just didn’t work with me.I
I felt it was kind of overlong and really long-winded and I just didn’t love Pearl. But I loved X. And I love the filmmaker Ti West. I just don’t know why that one didn’t work for me. Maybe it was too pretentious. There’s just so much of that art for art’s sake going on that I’m not sure how I feel.
I like Mia Goth too. She produced it. She wrote part of it. She did all this and she’s a great actress and she’s fantastic. But that whole movie stops for like a twenty-minute monologue. I just didn’t feel it.
I mean, I’ve been yelled at by people who say I’ve got too much dialogue in the movie and I’m like, “Whoa, hold on. I never had any twenty-minute speeches!”
B&S: Maybe you need that for the next movie.
Todd: (laughs) Maybe that’s it.
B&S: What I love about your films is that they remind me of the movies I watched in the 80s. Isn’t it strange that a movie like Hell Night came out in 1981 and it wasn’t like a top tier slasher and you watch it today and it’s way better than anything new?
Todd: Terror Train is like that. Fantastic movie. And, you know, I think we took it for granted at the time. All these like slashers that no one really even talked about during that time, like The Prowler, which is now a classic.
I frickin love that movie. I saw the theater twice and I just loved it. But no one knows really. Until now, of course, people bring it up but at the time no one liked it. There were ten people in the theater! So many were coming out at the same time, so you had Happy Birthday to Me, My Bloody Valentine, all these great movies all at once. Or even Savage Weekend.
Those movies had so much going for them even though they were cheap slasher movies. They were made by people that knew how to make a movie. Well, not all of them. (laughs) Like Don’t Go In the Woods. It’s kind of rough, but at the same time, I love that movie.
There was so much in the 80s and not just slashers. I mean, you have my favorite American director John Carpenter. He and Dean Cundy were a team from hell. They could do no wrong.
B&S: Dean Cundy made those movies look way more expensive than they were.
Todd: Gary Graver is another guy who could do that. He worked with Fred Olen Ray and he made those movies look like a million bucks.
I recently worked with Fred finally. We’ve known each other for years and I finally was gifted enough that he and I got to work together. He produced a project that we’re doing as a TV series and it’s like a throwback action movie. I’ll be talking more about in the future when I can. Like an urban action thing, kind of a throwback to the 70s, Dolomite and Foxy Brown and all that stuff.
We had such a good time and it was such a grueling shoot because of COVID and because of bad weather. We got nine and a half weeks behind because of rain and it was just a terrible situation. But we still had a great time and I learned so much. You know, I thought I knew something and then I did this thing and now I’m like, “Well, I didn’t know anything compared to now.”
Because every day on a set — like I’ve told everybody — you have to learn something new or else it’s a wasted day of your life on the set. So every day I learned something. I learned a bunch of new things on Final Caller even. And Fred was kind of helping me behind the scenes with some ideas on that too with the lighting and stuff.
We started working together on this other thing and it’s coming out soon and it’s gorgeous. It’s breathtaking. I’m very proud of what we did on that with almost no money. We lost most of our budget and I figured, well, I own all of my own equipment. Let’s just do it.
I’ve never taken a salary for anything I’ve ever done. Because I just figure with our budgets. If I take a salary, I just lost my monster.
I give everything I’ve got to give to these things.
Todd: It’s weird because it was even on Entertainment Tonight. The thing was, we weren’t really trying to rip off anything. What happened with that was my co-worker and I were joking about titles for future movies. He and I just made Bone Hill Road.
He was like, you should make a clown movie because clowns are scary. Make a clown tornado. And I looked at him and said, “Holy shit. Clownado. That’s a cool title. I don’t know why I like it, but I do.”
I challenged myself to come up with a script for that title. We did an Indiegogo and wanted to see if we could get enough money to make it right. Well, we never did get enough money to do it right. (laughs)
We didn’t have the money for the miniatures because the miniatures were going to cost about $2,000. That was what killed us. We didn’t have enough money for the miniatures because it had to look real. You don’t want to look like a Play-Doh house. So I had to teach myself how to do visual effects and make a tornado.
I’ve never done anything like that. Filming and teaching myself how to use these programs to do all the tornado stuff and then when I got done, you know it’s not perfect, but I was kind of proud because it looks as good if not a little bit better than stuff I see on SyFy Channel.
B&S: And you got Linnea for it!
Todd: I’ve been friends with her for years. We did Bone Hill Road and had such a good time. I told her at the premiere that we’re going to work together. I’m gonna write a part that you’re really going to like.
I decided to write whatever happened to Spider (from Sorority Babes In the Slimeball Bowl-A-Rama) and she had the best time. We even shot stuff where she was on a Harley that didn’t get into the movie. We really enjoy working together. She’s a really good person. We have a mutual love for animals.
B&S: Jean Silver is there too!
Todd: Yeah! I met her at Cinema Wasteland and hung out all weekend with her and 42nd Street Pete. I was fascinated with her. I wanted to put in a scene where she takes off her leg and beats a guy with it.
She’s incredible. She’s been through a lot in her life and she’s got an amazing story and to have gone through all that and come out with such positive energy, I just really have nothing but praise for her. I think the world of her.
B&S: What’s next?
Todd: There’s more stuff coming out with Visual Vengeance. The thirtieth anniversary of the Zombie Bloodbath trilogy is next year. Violent New Breed, which is my personal favorite of my older movies because it has Rudy Ray Moore. That one has been meticulously recreated and re-edited.
Also, people are gonna love this: the original Goblin. I was able to go back and find the original master tapes. So that’s been restored. Probably about 90% of the film, because a couple of the tapes were so bad that they just were breaking apart. I couldn’t even use them. But that film has been completely restored to its original version that nobody’s ever seen. And it’s gorgeous. There are going to be like three versions of the movie on there. And Zombie Rampage, my first movie, we’ve got that in the can and that’s got like four different versions! The original version was called Blood of the Undead and I went back and meticulously was able to put that back together. You know, I had an old workprint and I could just go over that with the original footage and make it beautiful and fix it.
I also did a movie that no one has really seen called Whispers of the Gloom with Art Bell.
B&S: Woah! Really!
Todd: You know that famous Area 51 call? This was our take on that. If you like the old wild cat line calls, you’ll love the movie because it’s based all around what if that call was real. We created this crazy movie and were the first micro-budget group to do full creatures and CGI.
We had some really cool spaceships and creatures and stuff in the script. And some of them are models and some of them are CGI, but it looks pretty good.
Every one of these is going to have meticulous behind-the-scenes stuff we’ve been putting together. I’ve been pulling out footage I found, old news footage of Rudy Ray Moore when he was in town filming with us and just lots of cool stuff.
These things are as packed as Moonchild if not more and you know all the cool stuff that’s on the Moonchild disk, the documentaries and everything. We’ve got that on all of these and they’re all beautifully remastered.
That takes a lot of time when you go back to those cameras, because you have to match frame by frame all the cuts. And I just want it to look as good as possible on blu ray and really take advantage of that format. Because these may have been shot on beta cam or a three-quarter inch or hi-8. That doesn’t mean we can’t make them look as good as possible by taking that original first-generation camera master, matching that. It’s never going to look better ever.
I’m not a fan of Goblin at all. I just own it but I know there are people that do love it. And because of that I took the time to go in and reconstruct this original version of Goblin for everybody. And those are all coming out with Visual Vengeance. And then we’ve got a werewolf and space movie that we’re working on for the future. It’s going to start shooting pretty soon. And then this new series which as soon as I can, I’ll be letting the cat out of the bag. I’m under a little bit of a gag order because we’re doing it for a major streaming company. That is a big deal. I think people are going to be crazy when they find out what that is.
B&S: You’re still into making movies.
Todd: I’m excited. I love the fact that I’m telling a story that someone is enjoying because I’m giving something back. When I was a kid I’d have a bad day and you know you would go to the movie and watch Phantasm or Slithis or whatever and forget about it for a couple hours. At least I did and I hope to do that for someone else. That’s the whole reason I’m doing this and it’s really great to find out that some people get that escape from my movies.
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