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[film reel clicking]
[soft classical music]
[upbeat music]
- 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.
[eerie tense music]
[upbeat classical music]
- [Narrator] Meet Wesley.
- He's such a good boy.
- [Narrator] He's a model student.
- What's the matter, retard?
Can't you talk?
- [Narrator] But when it comes to girls.
- Have you even talked to her?
- [Narrator] He's got a lot to learn.
- Studies have shown that guys get much further with girls
after they talk.
- [Narrator] It's time he got his education.
- I'm Ms. Xenobia.
The new biology teacher.
- Holy mother of God!
- [Narrator] 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.
[mechanical whirring]
- 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.
[screaming]
[gunshots]
- [Narrator] 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.
[tense music]
- 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.
- [Narrator] 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.
- [Narrator] When Ricky Meyers tapped
into the secret of artificial life.
- It's the formula.
- [Narrator] He became the master
of Andre Toulon's puppets.
- The future is yours [mumbling].
Guard and protect it and keep it from evil.
- [Narrator] Now, his newfound power
will make him a pawn.
- And you say there are seven of these puppets
still at the hotel?
- [Narrator] Between a corporation.
- [Man] Now once we're inside,
what we're looking for is six string less puppets.
[glass shattering]
- [Narrator] 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.
- [Narrator] A cop from another world.
- What's the matter?
You never seen a cop before?
- [Narrator] And a nurse shrunk by aliens.
- Just the thing to drive G.I. Joe insane.
- [Narrator] Are teaming up with a big partner.
- She's a cop in trouble.
- [Narrator] 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.
[gunshots]
- Let's start up the entertainment, boys.
[screaming]
[laughing]
- [Narrator] And this time.
- This is [mumbles] ass kicking.
- Get away from me.
[laughing]
- [Narrator] They're picking on someone their own size.
- Gosh, guys.
This is the best bachelorparty a guy could ever ask for.
[laughing]
- 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.
- [Narrator] 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.
[dramatic music]
- Kabal is a demon who uses mortals to do his bidding.
[screaming]
[dramatic music]
- 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.
["Sacrifice" by Motorhead]
♪ Why do they not believe
♪ I have not lied even for this ♪
♪ Now no one can conceive
♪ The lie becomes the loving kiss ♪
♪ 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.
- [Announcer] 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.
[laughing]
[wet crunching]
[screaming]
- 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.
[screaming]
- 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.
[gunfire]
- 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.
[tense music]
- [Narrator] A house abandoned.
- We're gonna turn this
into the best sorority house in school.
- [Narrator] 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.
[eerie music]
- 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.
- [Narrator] A madman has sealed
off a Los Angeles high rise
trapping the occupants inside.
- Who's there?
[eerie music]
- Hey, the phones dead.
- [Narrator] 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.
- [Narrator] They broke into the mall
for the wildest all night party of their lives.
[tense music]
- They're dead meat.
[screaming]
- [Narrator] 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.
[laughing]
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.
- [Narrator] Servants of Twilight.
[phone ringing]
- Hello?
- [Woman] Joey Scavello?
- Grandma?
- [Woman] 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.
- [Narrator] Every step forward is a step backward.
- I've come to destroy you.
- [Narrator] 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.
- [Narrator] 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.
[wolf howling]
- [Narrator] A fairy tale born from a legend.
A truth more terrifying than the tale.
- Say a prayer for Daddy tonight, okay?
- [Narrator] 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.
- [Narrator] Evil has a new number.
[screaming]
- Welcome to my hell.
- [Narrator] And the devil has found a new way
to reach out and kill someone.
[screaming]
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.
[laughter]
[screaming]
- 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.
- [Narrator] 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.
- [Narrator] 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.
- [Narrator] Scientists have theorized
that it is possible to camouflage atoms within themselves
to achieve invisibility.
- Feast your eyes on a miracle.
- [Narrator] These theories have now become realities.
- Yeah, yeah!
- [Narrator] Everybody thinks Keven Dornwinkle is strange.
[laughing]
His mother thought so.
- You're grounded for a year.
- [Narrator] 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!
- [Narrator] But ask Kevin Dornwinkle
what he thinks is weird.
- With this injection begins my erection.
[eerie tense music]
Tis I.
Your friendly neighborhood invisible maniac.
[screaming]
- [Narrator] 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.
[laughing]
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.
- [Narrator] Larry and Bryan thought they planned
the perfect bachelor party.
They took care of the booze.
They took care of the boss.
- Yes.
- [Narrator] They took care of the girls.
- Women, women.
Women, women.
Women, women, women, women!
- [Narrator] They took care of the entertainment.
- We're here to party.
- [Narrator] 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?
- [Narrator] Now they've got an uninvited guest.
- [Man] 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.
- [Narrator] 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.
[gunshot] [screaming]
- 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.
[screaming]
You have the right to an attorney.
[screaming]
- Why aren't they dressed?
- They're dressed, they're just dressed scantily.
- So maybe I should just let you go with a warning.
[screaming]
- Let's get the hell out of here.
- Everything okay up here?
[screaming]
Suspect is blonde and considered extremely stupid.
You understand these rights?
[gunshot]
- [Narrator] 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?
- [Girl] May I have one, Daddy?
- [Narrator] From the moment they met.
- I'm gonna love her so much.
- [Narrator] It was a fairy tale come true.
- Good night, Dolly.
- [Woman] Sweet dreams, Dolly.
- [Narrator] 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.
[eerie music]
[screaming]
[tense eerie music]
[screaming]
- No, no!
- It's time to play.
- Play with this, bitch.
[explosion]
- [Narrator] 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...
[roaring scream]
- [Woman] Here we go.
- [Narrator] In this small town.
- [Woman] Check this guy out.
- [Narrator] On this quiet street.
- Now, we can talk to him one on one.
- [Narrator] 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.
- [Howdy] My badges are forever.
- My badge represents the law.
[siren wailing]
[gunshot]
[rock music]
- I'll kill him.
- Trust me.
[screaming]
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. [screaming]
- 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.
- [Narrator] 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.
- [Narrator] There is no need to fear.
- There's nothing out there.
- [Woman] That's where the rest of the chicken was.
- Yeah, no more dinner for me.
- That's insane.
- [Narrator] There's nothing out there.
[screaming]
- Did you hear something?
[screaming]
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.
[laughs]
They took a lot of abuse.
[screaming]
- It's as if his brain has been sucked dry.
[tense classical music]
- I say we set a trap.
The lights, hit it with your lights.
[tense classical music]
- [Narrator] 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.
[storm raging]
- Bolted doors and windows barred.
Guard dogs prowling in the yard.
Won't protect you in your bed.
[screams]
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.
[tense music]
- It was an accident,
what the hell else could it be?
- What if it wasn't an accident?
[gasps]
- 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.
- [Man] 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.
[tense dramatic music]
[explosion]
- 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.
- [Narrator] 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!
[eerie dramatic music]
- 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 [laughs] for it
for the closeup shot of the thing being done
and uh [laughing].
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.
[cheery bell music]
- [Narrator] One cold night,
science and evil collide.
[screaming] [cheery rock music]
- Oh yeah.
[screaming]
[roaring]
[muffled gunshots]
- [Narrator] 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.
- [Man] 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.
- [Narrator] 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.
[upbeat music] [cheering]
- 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
- [Narrator] 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.
- [Narrator] The wrong night.
- What the hell was that?
- [Narrator] The wrong road.
- That son of a bitch siphoned our tank.
- [Narrator] 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.
- [Narrator] And four teenagers are about to learn
that when you tell too many scary stories
you just might end up in one.
[Gimme Shelter by The Rolling Stones]
- I see you [mumbles]!
- 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?
- [Narrator] 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 [laughs].
[eerie music]
- [Narrator] Welcome to Hall House.
- According to the legend, it's not haunted.
It's possessed.
A gateway to hell.
- [Narrator] Where this Halloween,
Angela's planning one hell of a party.
- Come.
- [Narrator] A night filled with tricks
and deadly treats.
[screaming] [epic dramatic music]
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.
- [Narrator] Some secrets should never be learned.
Some borders should never be crossed.
Some games.
- Are you here?
- [Narrator] 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.
[eerie tense music]
[screaming]
[eerie tense music]
[screaming]
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.
- [Narrator] A bizarre event.
- This would make a great story.
- [Narrator] 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.
- [Narrator] But some questions.
- Get away from me, leave me alone.
- [Narrator] 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.
- [Narrator] It's the night you've been waiting for.
- Please help.
- Kill the man.
Became a whole woman.
[screaming]
- [Narrator] The night you've been screaming for.
- It's the final step.
- [Narrator] 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.
[screaming]
- Open wide, Gregory.
- [Narrator] 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?
[screaming]
- We got a missing kid.
- [Narrator] 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.
[screaming]
- [Interviewer] I know that you told me beforeon the phone you didn't believe
I actually watched [mumbles].
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.
[eerie music]
- [Narrator] Dr. Allen Feinstone is back in business.
- [Man] Just a small country practice.
- [Narrator] Doing what he does best.
- Want to open wide?
- [Narrator] 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.
- [Narrator] And he's given his patience.
- Smile.
- [Narrator] 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.
- [Narrator] Beyond the laws of nature.
- We've got something.
- They came back to life.
- [Narrator] Beyond the limits of love.
[screaming]
- Julie.
- [Narrator] Beyond the silence of death.
She has returned
to take you on a joy ride through hell.
[rock music]
- She's dead, isn't she?
[screaming]
[rock music]
- If she attacks him, he becomes like her.
[screaming]
- 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.
[eerie tense music]