"You want to know who Fred Krueger was? He was a filthy child murderer who killed at least 20 kids in the neighborhood. Kids we all knew. It drove us crazy when we didn't know who it was, but it was even worse after they caught him. The lawyers got fat and the judge got famous, but somebody forgot to sign the search warrant in the right place and Krueger was free, just like that. A bunch of us parents got together and tracked him down. We found him in old abandoned boiler room, where he used to take his kids. We took gasoline and poured it all around the place and made a trail of it out the door. We lit the whole thing up and watched it burn. He's dead now. He's dead because Mommy killed him."
Dec 8, 2013
ONE, TWO...
Dec 7, 2013
DVD REVIEW: SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT
Before Michael Myers ran rampant on Halloween night, and before Billy began picking off sorority sisters one Christmas weekend, there was another slasher film unleashed upon the world in which a mysterious killer wreaked havoc one dark Christmas Eve. Though Silent Night, Deadly Night gets all the (undue) love, it was the similarly titled Silent Night, Bloody Night (aka the oddly spelled Deathouse) that beat all these folks to the punch. It's a title that for one reason or another has eluded me for all the years of my horror-lovin' life. In my youth, the obscurity of the actors involved likely turned me off, and as I approached my "adult" years, bad word of mouth/reputation likely continued my disinterest.
So when I received this screener of Film Chest's upcoming restored edition of the film, I thought, "Yes, damn it - we're finally going to do this."
The film opens with a somewhat docudrama approach, complete with voice-over filling in the audience on the history of the Butler home. One Christmas Eve, an accidental (?) fire claims the life of Wilford Butler and the house is left silent and empty. Years later, the house is inherited by Wilford's grandson, Jeffrey, who is only interested in selling it. The townspeople aren't too keen with that, as they just know there's something not right about the old place, and they'd rather people just stay away. Jeffrey's lawyer takes up temporary residence in the house with his wife while he awaits the decision of the townspeople whether they want to outright buy the house to keep it unoccupied. And don't you know it? The house isn't as empty as everyone thought. And that's when the bodies start to drop.
Look out!
Though Silent Night, Bloody Night is, if we're being honest, rather poorly made from a technical standpoint, it does get points for endeavoring to create a creepy tone established on mood, the harsh wintry conditions, and a disturbing mythology. It's worth watching for that reason alone. And it's interesting to see infamous horror tropes show up in cinema history far earlier than expected. Halloween gets a lot of credit for showing the killer's point of view, though that was previously explored in Black Christmas...which created a lot of tension by utilizing mysterious made by a whispering caller...which earlier appeared in this, Silent Night, Blood Night.
But sadly the film falls victim to so many other low budget film-making pitfalls. This is the kind of film where the musical score cuts-out the same time that the scene ends; where the audio track doesn't always match the action on-screen; where the direction relies almost exclusively on point-and-shoot techniques; and whose own rickety and inconsistently colored picture suggests that this was a film that wasn't really worth treasuring.
Which is kind of a shame, because Silent Night, Deadly Night had potential. It satisfied my own personal requirements for a quality horror film: an isolated location, a moody atmosphere, an intriguing mythology, and a cast of (gasp) adults! There is a chilly Hammer-esque approach using darkness and shadow, and at times an unnerving feeling...there's just not enough of it.
As the ad above boasts, this version released by Film Chest was harvested from an original 35mm negative. I don't know the history of the different releases this film has seen, but being that I believe it's in the public domain, there have been dozens. This particular version, impressive picture or not (and it's merely okay), might be the first time ever the film is appearing in widescreen on a home video format. That, alone, should warrant a purchase from fans of the film.
This Film Chest restored edition of Silent Night, Bloody Night streets December 10. Give it a whirl and see if I'm wrong.
Dec 6, 2013
Dec 5, 2013
CLAP CLAP
One day, a young married couple went hiking in the mountains. As the sun began to set, they realized that they were lost. The wife was getting worried, but her husband tried to calm her down and assured her that they would eventually find their way back to their car. However, after walking for hours, they still had no idea where they were.
It was growing dark and the man and wife were getting desperate. They didn’t have a map or a compass with them and all of the trees looked the same. Just when they were about to give up hope, they came across an old cabin in a clearing.
The cabin looked as if it had seen better days. It was dilapidated and seemed like it hadn’t been used in a long time. Some of the windows were cracked and broken and a lot of the tiles had fallen off the roof. The husband knocked on the front door but there was no response. When he turned the handle, it slowly creaked open.
Inside, they found it was in a bad state of disrepair. There was very little furniture and the floor was covered in a thick layer of dust. As the couple cautiously looked around, they noticed a strange atmosphere and a peculiar musty smell.
The walls were covered from floor to ceiling with graffiti. Written in red paint, the words, “Death! Death! Death! Death! Death!” were repeated over and over again.
The man and woman were unnerved. With a shaking hand, the husband reached out to touch the wall. He was horrified to find that the paint was not yet dry.
The couple were very frightened, but they had nowhere else to go. They knew that the mountain was dangerous at night and there were lots of wild animals prowling the woods. Despite the creepy writing on the walls, they decided to stay the night.
Going upstairs, they found a moth-eaten mattress that was covered in stains. The husband and wife wrapped themselves in an old piece of carpet to keep warm and tried to make themselves as comfortable as possible under the circumstances. They lay down together on the mattress and eventually managed to fall asleep.
Sometime after midnight, the couple were awakened by a strange rustling noise. It sounded like someone or something was moving around outside the shack.
“Did you hear that?” asked his wife. “I think there’s somebody out there.”
Her husband listened for a while, but he didn’t hear anything. He got out of bed and walked over to the window. It was too dark outside to see anything. Opening the window, he stuck his head out.
“Who’s there?” he called nervously.
There was no answer.
He was about to go back to bed when his wife said, “Maybe it’s someone who can’t speak…”
The husband returned to the window and said, “Is there anybody out there? Clap once for YES and twice for NO.”
He strained his ears to listen. The stars twinkled in the night sky. The crickets were chirping loudly.
All of a sudden, he heard a loud CLAP!
The man turned to his wife and said in surprise, “You were right. There’s someone out there.”
He leaned out the window and his eyes scanned the darkness. he couldn’t make out anything in the pitch black.
“Are you the owner of this cabin?” he asked.
CLAP! CLAP!
“Are you a man?”
CLAP! CLAP!
“You’re a woman, then?”
CLAP! CLAP!
“Are you human?”
CLAP! CLAP!
A chill ran down his spine. He swallowed hard and croaked, “Did you come here alone?”
CLAP! CLAP!
“How many are with you? Clap once for each person…”
CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!…
Story source.
Dec 4, 2013
Dec 3, 2013
AN INTERVIEW WITH DAVID SCHMOELLER – PART 2: TOURIST TRAP
Tourist Trap (its Unsung Horrors entry here) is the most insane movie you likely haven't seen. I'd attempt to explain exactly what it's about, but I would become lost in the subplots and sub-sub-plots and I'd question if I were actually remembering everything significant to mention, and then I would likely wander away to satisfy my impulse to watch the film again. Simply, it is a 1979 oddity about a group of stranded kids, living mannequins, a man with telekinesis, and a lot of nightmarish imagery. It is terrifying and absurd and hilarious and disturbing somehow all at once. It is a mind-blowing film that offers dozens of questions with little answers. If there's one person who could shed light on this unheralded little beauty, it would be the film's director, David Schmoeller, returning again to The End of Summer for a frank discussion on the film's origins, a little about Puppetmaster, working with Charles Band, and the 1970s.
The End of Summer (TEOS): I think the best way to start off is for you to provide the genesis of Tourist Trap. This is a film that I saw for the first time several years ago and just did not know what to think. It was horrific and strange and alternately kind of hilarious. I've revisited it several times since then, and not only does it hold up, but it gets better – and I find more to appreciate about it – with each viewing. This isolated man's nightmarish house seems to exist in its own world and with its own rules, and nearly all of it defies explanation. How on earth did you come up with this concept?
David Schmoeller (DS): There is a “why” and a “how” aspect to this question. The “why” – why did I come up with this idea? The answer is a very practical one. I had just graduated from film school and was looking for a way to break into Hollywood as a feature director. When I was in grad school at the University of Texas at Austin shooting my thesis film, Tobe Hooper was in Austin shooting The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It was a low-budget hit that launched his career. So, I decided to do a horror film in the same vein.
The “how?” My thesis film – The Spider Will Kill You – was a "Twilight Zone" short about a blind man and mannequins. I thought the aspect of mannequins coming alive – and their ability to scare you (or creep you out, at least) – was a good ingredient. So, I used some of the basic structure of Chainsaw (van full of young victims) and the lone madman who appears to be okay (Psycho).
TEOS: Tourist Trap exists in a very surreal and nightmarish landscape – if I had to compare it to another film, I would cite Phantasm, due to its dreamy tone and its lack of explanation in regards to the film's more oddball offerings. It's this kind of dreamy tone that makes Tourist Trap stand out from its other late-1970s counterparts. At what point in the production phase did you realize you wanted to push this kind of surreal and unusual approach?
DS: I think that dreamy quality was in the script, and also in previous short films I had made. (The Spider Will Kill You* and Lora Lee's Bedroom* – those are just two of my shorts that had the same quality.) And the tone of those short films probably came in part from my literature studies from my days living and studying in Mexico – the influence of magic realism. And of course, the main influence of The Spider Will Kill You was this bizarre line of mannequins I found in J.C. Penney’s that was so perversely surreal, it makes me laugh to this day (this was the late 1960s). The infant mannequins had some facial features – eyes, nose, mouth, ears – but parts were starting to disappear. As you went up the age-representation of the mannequins – say, the three-year-olds – they started losing whole features – maybe just a single eye. It was just smoothed over. As the mannequins aged, they lost more and more features – until you got to the adults, and all their features were just gone…all smoothed over…so that they almost looked alien. They were so highly stylized; they just didn’t seem to belong in a place like J.C. Penney’s – very surreal and very bizarre. That was when I came up with the story for The Spider Will Kill You.
TEOS: There is a wonderful juxtaposition of legitimate terror and strange, almost absurd humor. I'll cite the "dinner scene" – when Slausen and his "brother" share a meal of soup, which ends with the brother's head falling off – as an example. Noticeably, the film doesn't inject any humor until the kids are already in peril. Because of this, the humor seems to come out of nowhere and feels unexpected. Was this a conscious choice?
DS: Well, I certainly hope the humor was intentional. Although, at the first cast and crew screening in L.A., there was some unexpected laughter in places that surprised me – I remember asking the person next to me, “Why are they laughing?” It could have been nervous laughter – or they could have been laughing at the absurdity of it all. Or, maybe they just thought something or other was just so awful that it was laughable. L.A. cast and crew screenings are full of people who are very cynical – not at all like the cast and crew screenings in Las Vegas, which are nice love-fest screenings. In L.A., they have seen and worked on everything and they tend to judge film work much more harshly. It’s like: “Show me what you got, sucker. I am not very easily impressed.” By the way, that is not the brother in that surreal dinner scene – because he is dead. It is a figment of Slausen’s imagination – it is not real; it doesn’t really happen; it is a dream…it is Eileen, in fact, as far as Slausen is concerned.
TEOS: In a movie like Tourist Trap, especially after a point, I feel like anything could happen, and I stop questioning what I'm seeing and I just kind of hold on for the ride. I guess that's the beauty of Tourist Trap. About that dinner scene, I need to know: How did you manage to concoct such a strange exchange between these characters? Were you channeling "Abbot and Costello" as you wrote that scene?
DS: This particular exchange just came out almost in whole – as is. Writing generally is very easy for me, but in this case, I think it can be explained this way: the scene is completely organic. Slausen is having a meal with Eileen, who is just a mannequin with Eileen’s face-mask, scarf, and clothes. Slausen has a conversation with her and she responds in Davey’s voice, which is just Slausen slipping deeper and deeper into the abyss of his madness. And at the very end, the lines get crossed (Eileen/Davey gets ahead of the question) and then her head snaps off. It was one of those scenes that came to me in its entirety, and I just had to type it out…the best kind of scene.
TEOS: The character of Slausen possesses incredible superpowers. He has the ability to move objects with his mind, and because of this can seemingly bring mannequins and dolls to life. Yet, there is absolutely no explanation for this. Why did you choose to leave his abilities vague and unexplained?
DS: The power of telekinesis was suggested by Charlie [Band, producer]. It was his only contribution to the script, which was complete when we submitted it to him. At first, I really didn’t like the idea, because the story was entirely psychological. Giving Slausen the power of telekinesis actually explained a lot of the occurrences – not directly, but just vaguely. The audience may assume that the mannequins move because Slausen is making them move with his T-powers. I thought I was already explaining too much, so I certainly didn’t want to explain how or why he had this power. The historical figures in his museum (Custer, Sitting Bull, et al.) are automatons; they are mechanical creations and move because of science. If [audiences] think they move because Slausen is making them move with his telekinetic powers, that’s okay with me.
TEOS: Tell me about the film's musical score.
DS: How Pino Donaggio became the composer was just a stroke of luck. I was asked to be an interpreter by Joe Dante, who had hired Pino Donaggio to score Piranha. Pino did not speak English, so Pino and I spoke Spanish. After we finished spotting the film I asked Pino if he would score Tourist Trap. We screened it for him and he agreed. Charlie Band had spent much of his childhood in Italy, so he was fluent in Italian and he and Pino hit it off immediately. Somehow Charlie came up with another $50,000 dollars for Pino’s fee and the entire orchestral score, which was recorded in Rome. The budget rose from $300,000 to $350,000. I learned so much about scoring a movie from Pino.
TEOS: Charles Band has a somewhat divisive reputation in the horror community. You collaborated with him on this and your 1989 film Puppetmaster. How would you describe your working relationship with him?
DS: For me, Charlie was a very good producer to work for, because he left you alone for the most part. And for most of my movies, we had enough money to make a reasonably good movie. He was not an on-set producer at all. He didn’t pay very much, and sometimes it was hard to get paid, but in my case, I always got paid – until I left his employment. He owes me money for Puppetmaster, and when I tried to collect it he took my name off the movie and put his name on it. (He took my "A Film By David Schmoeller" credit off, and put his name above the title: Charles Band’s Puppetmaster.) That’s a real shitty thing to do – and very petty and small-minded. He’s starting to get old and I think the business is more of a struggle for him, so he feels the need to crib credits. So be it.
TEOS: I don't suppose you're lucky enough to receive any royalties each time a new Puppetmaster film is made, are you? I believe the series is hovering somewhere around ten entries, now...
DS: Yes, that’s the money he owes me – Puppetmaster residuals.
TEOS: One could argue that the 1970s produced some of the best genre films to date, and Tourist Trap was released at the end of its run in 1979. What was it about this ten-year period that resulted in films like The Exorcist, Halloween, Phantasm, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and the many more?
DS: The '70s also produced some of the most original mainstream movies, too, so it wasn’t just genre films. I think it mostly has to do with the fact that filmmaking was considered more of a director’s domain, and the writers and directors were not interfered with as much as they were in later decades, when the cost of movies started to rise considerably. While The Exorcist was a big studio movie, William Friedkin was just coming off winning an Oscar for directing The French Connection, so he had almost complete control. There is a very funny story of how these three studio executives were assigned to The Exorcist and when Friedkin was way over schedule and way over budget, one of these executives finally had had enough. So he picked up the phone and called Friedkin on the set and said, “Billy, this has just got to stop, it has to stop. And if it doesn’t, well, I’m just going to have to pull the plug.” And Friedkin said, “Okay, go ahead – pull the plug.” And the executive quickly backtracked and said, “Well, Billy, I don’t mean I would REALLY pull the plug.” At which point, Friedkin hung up. Back at the executive’s office, when HE hung up, one of the other executives said, “That was the most expensive phone call you have ever made.”
Halloween was an auteur film, made by Carpenter with no interference from anyone. Same with Phantasm and Texas Chain Saw. The budget [of The Exorcist] greatly eclipsed the budgets of these other three films, but they were all directed by extremely talented filmmakers.
TEOS: Shout Factory is revisiting another of your earlier films, Crawlspace, for a special edition re-release. Has there been talk about seeing a similar release for Tourist Trap?
DS: Catacombs was released by Shout Factory in October with a new director commentary, and Crawlspace comes out on blu-ray in December with a director’s commentary. I was contacted by the person doing the new blu-ray of Tourist Trap to do a new commentary of the movie, but I haven’t heard back from him, so I suspect Charles Band killed the idea (even though I was perfectly happy to pay for the recording myself). It is supposed to come out in December.
TEOS: Now that Little Monsters*, your newest feature, is available on video, do you have anything next in the pipeline that fans can look forward to?
DS: Yes, I am writing a new horror film called Dead Angels (from the children’s refrain: “When angels fail, they go to hell.”) It’s about dead people whose souls are stuck in the netherworld until they can track down and kill the person who killed them in the first place. It deals with who is really the living dead among us and how many times do you have to kill someone before they stay dead. It’s horror film noir.
* David Schmoeller's new film, Little Monsters, is currently available on DVD here, and the director's early short films are available on DVD directly from his official website.
Follow David at his website and Facebook.
David Schmoeller (DS): There is a “why” and a “how” aspect to this question. The “why” – why did I come up with this idea? The answer is a very practical one. I had just graduated from film school and was looking for a way to break into Hollywood as a feature director. When I was in grad school at the University of Texas at Austin shooting my thesis film, Tobe Hooper was in Austin shooting The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It was a low-budget hit that launched his career. So, I decided to do a horror film in the same vein.
The “how?” My thesis film – The Spider Will Kill You – was a "Twilight Zone" short about a blind man and mannequins. I thought the aspect of mannequins coming alive – and their ability to scare you (or creep you out, at least) – was a good ingredient. So, I used some of the basic structure of Chainsaw (van full of young victims) and the lone madman who appears to be okay (Psycho).
TEOS: Tourist Trap exists in a very surreal and nightmarish landscape – if I had to compare it to another film, I would cite Phantasm, due to its dreamy tone and its lack of explanation in regards to the film's more oddball offerings. It's this kind of dreamy tone that makes Tourist Trap stand out from its other late-1970s counterparts. At what point in the production phase did you realize you wanted to push this kind of surreal and unusual approach?
DS: I think that dreamy quality was in the script, and also in previous short films I had made. (The Spider Will Kill You* and Lora Lee's Bedroom* – those are just two of my shorts that had the same quality.) And the tone of those short films probably came in part from my literature studies from my days living and studying in Mexico – the influence of magic realism. And of course, the main influence of The Spider Will Kill You was this bizarre line of mannequins I found in J.C. Penney’s that was so perversely surreal, it makes me laugh to this day (this was the late 1960s). The infant mannequins had some facial features – eyes, nose, mouth, ears – but parts were starting to disappear. As you went up the age-representation of the mannequins – say, the three-year-olds – they started losing whole features – maybe just a single eye. It was just smoothed over. As the mannequins aged, they lost more and more features – until you got to the adults, and all their features were just gone…all smoothed over…so that they almost looked alien. They were so highly stylized; they just didn’t seem to belong in a place like J.C. Penney’s – very surreal and very bizarre. That was when I came up with the story for The Spider Will Kill You.
TEOS: There is a wonderful juxtaposition of legitimate terror and strange, almost absurd humor. I'll cite the "dinner scene" – when Slausen and his "brother" share a meal of soup, which ends with the brother's head falling off – as an example. Noticeably, the film doesn't inject any humor until the kids are already in peril. Because of this, the humor seems to come out of nowhere and feels unexpected. Was this a conscious choice?
DS: Well, I certainly hope the humor was intentional. Although, at the first cast and crew screening in L.A., there was some unexpected laughter in places that surprised me – I remember asking the person next to me, “Why are they laughing?” It could have been nervous laughter – or they could have been laughing at the absurdity of it all. Or, maybe they just thought something or other was just so awful that it was laughable. L.A. cast and crew screenings are full of people who are very cynical – not at all like the cast and crew screenings in Las Vegas, which are nice love-fest screenings. In L.A., they have seen and worked on everything and they tend to judge film work much more harshly. It’s like: “Show me what you got, sucker. I am not very easily impressed.” By the way, that is not the brother in that surreal dinner scene – because he is dead. It is a figment of Slausen’s imagination – it is not real; it doesn’t really happen; it is a dream…it is Eileen, in fact, as far as Slausen is concerned.
TEOS: In a movie like Tourist Trap, especially after a point, I feel like anything could happen, and I stop questioning what I'm seeing and I just kind of hold on for the ride. I guess that's the beauty of Tourist Trap. About that dinner scene, I need to know: How did you manage to concoct such a strange exchange between these characters? Were you channeling "Abbot and Costello" as you wrote that scene?
DS: This particular exchange just came out almost in whole – as is. Writing generally is very easy for me, but in this case, I think it can be explained this way: the scene is completely organic. Slausen is having a meal with Eileen, who is just a mannequin with Eileen’s face-mask, scarf, and clothes. Slausen has a conversation with her and she responds in Davey’s voice, which is just Slausen slipping deeper and deeper into the abyss of his madness. And at the very end, the lines get crossed (Eileen/Davey gets ahead of the question) and then her head snaps off. It was one of those scenes that came to me in its entirety, and I just had to type it out…the best kind of scene.
TEOS: The character of Slausen possesses incredible superpowers. He has the ability to move objects with his mind, and because of this can seemingly bring mannequins and dolls to life. Yet, there is absolutely no explanation for this. Why did you choose to leave his abilities vague and unexplained?
DS: The power of telekinesis was suggested by Charlie [Band, producer]. It was his only contribution to the script, which was complete when we submitted it to him. At first, I really didn’t like the idea, because the story was entirely psychological. Giving Slausen the power of telekinesis actually explained a lot of the occurrences – not directly, but just vaguely. The audience may assume that the mannequins move because Slausen is making them move with his T-powers. I thought I was already explaining too much, so I certainly didn’t want to explain how or why he had this power. The historical figures in his museum (Custer, Sitting Bull, et al.) are automatons; they are mechanical creations and move because of science. If [audiences] think they move because Slausen is making them move with his telekinetic powers, that’s okay with me.
TEOS: Tell me about the film's musical score.
DS: How Pino Donaggio became the composer was just a stroke of luck. I was asked to be an interpreter by Joe Dante, who had hired Pino Donaggio to score Piranha. Pino did not speak English, so Pino and I spoke Spanish. After we finished spotting the film I asked Pino if he would score Tourist Trap. We screened it for him and he agreed. Charlie Band had spent much of his childhood in Italy, so he was fluent in Italian and he and Pino hit it off immediately. Somehow Charlie came up with another $50,000 dollars for Pino’s fee and the entire orchestral score, which was recorded in Rome. The budget rose from $300,000 to $350,000. I learned so much about scoring a movie from Pino.
TEOS: Charles Band has a somewhat divisive reputation in the horror community. You collaborated with him on this and your 1989 film Puppetmaster. How would you describe your working relationship with him?
DS: For me, Charlie was a very good producer to work for, because he left you alone for the most part. And for most of my movies, we had enough money to make a reasonably good movie. He was not an on-set producer at all. He didn’t pay very much, and sometimes it was hard to get paid, but in my case, I always got paid – until I left his employment. He owes me money for Puppetmaster, and when I tried to collect it he took my name off the movie and put his name on it. (He took my "A Film By David Schmoeller" credit off, and put his name above the title: Charles Band’s Puppetmaster.) That’s a real shitty thing to do – and very petty and small-minded. He’s starting to get old and I think the business is more of a struggle for him, so he feels the need to crib credits. So be it.
TEOS: I don't suppose you're lucky enough to receive any royalties each time a new Puppetmaster film is made, are you? I believe the series is hovering somewhere around ten entries, now...
DS: Yes, that’s the money he owes me – Puppetmaster residuals.
TEOS: One could argue that the 1970s produced some of the best genre films to date, and Tourist Trap was released at the end of its run in 1979. What was it about this ten-year period that resulted in films like The Exorcist, Halloween, Phantasm, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and the many more?
DS: The '70s also produced some of the most original mainstream movies, too, so it wasn’t just genre films. I think it mostly has to do with the fact that filmmaking was considered more of a director’s domain, and the writers and directors were not interfered with as much as they were in later decades, when the cost of movies started to rise considerably. While The Exorcist was a big studio movie, William Friedkin was just coming off winning an Oscar for directing The French Connection, so he had almost complete control. There is a very funny story of how these three studio executives were assigned to The Exorcist and when Friedkin was way over schedule and way over budget, one of these executives finally had had enough. So he picked up the phone and called Friedkin on the set and said, “Billy, this has just got to stop, it has to stop. And if it doesn’t, well, I’m just going to have to pull the plug.” And Friedkin said, “Okay, go ahead – pull the plug.” And the executive quickly backtracked and said, “Well, Billy, I don’t mean I would REALLY pull the plug.” At which point, Friedkin hung up. Back at the executive’s office, when HE hung up, one of the other executives said, “That was the most expensive phone call you have ever made.”
Halloween was an auteur film, made by Carpenter with no interference from anyone. Same with Phantasm and Texas Chain Saw. The budget [of The Exorcist] greatly eclipsed the budgets of these other three films, but they were all directed by extremely talented filmmakers.
TEOS: Shout Factory is revisiting another of your earlier films, Crawlspace, for a special edition re-release. Has there been talk about seeing a similar release for Tourist Trap?
DS: Catacombs was released by Shout Factory in October with a new director commentary, and Crawlspace comes out on blu-ray in December with a director’s commentary. I was contacted by the person doing the new blu-ray of Tourist Trap to do a new commentary of the movie, but I haven’t heard back from him, so I suspect Charles Band killed the idea (even though I was perfectly happy to pay for the recording myself). It is supposed to come out in December.
TEOS: Now that Little Monsters*, your newest feature, is available on video, do you have anything next in the pipeline that fans can look forward to?
DS: Yes, I am writing a new horror film called Dead Angels (from the children’s refrain: “When angels fail, they go to hell.”) It’s about dead people whose souls are stuck in the netherworld until they can track down and kill the person who killed them in the first place. It deals with who is really the living dead among us and how many times do you have to kill someone before they stay dead. It’s horror film noir.
* David Schmoeller's new film, Little Monsters, is currently available on DVD here, and the director's early short films are available on DVD directly from his official website.
Follow David at his website and Facebook.
Dec 2, 2013
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