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Your new movie The Monster Mash - in a few words, what is it
about?
The
Monster Mash is hosted by a bumbling Ex-Nazi scientist Dr. Freudstein (named after
House by the
Cemetery's killer and
my love for Lucio Fulci films [Lucio
Fulci bio - click here] and played by the great Michael Gentile)
and his sidekick/pet Ludwig as they fumble to create the perfect
bio-mechanical super-men, all while hosting The Monster Mash Triple
Feature Show. It features 3 gruesome mini horror films: Whispering
Hollow Road, The House and Homebound Horror. Each story contains a
different monster. I wanted each story/film to look like a product of
the 1970s and early 1980s, and that the characters are fully realized
with good acting and substance as the stories are played straightforward along
with the over the top campiness with the horror host Dr. Freudstein and
Ludwig in between segments. Just like the good ol' times of television
days of creature features.
What inspired you to use a horror host-style skit
as your framing device, and any particular horror hosts that served as
inspiration here? The
Monster Mash is a throwback of a bygone era of creature features and
horror movie hosts (usually a mad scientist) that host the nightly
horror movies around commercial breaks. I grew up in the late 1970s and
1980s watching these classic low budget B-movies through Chiller
Theatre and Morgus the Magnificent. The Monster Mash is my love
letter to that era of creature features and monster movies! I've always
loved monster movies and still do, especially Godzilla,
and always wanted
to make something that celebrated the monsters in a fashion of these
creature features that I grew up watching since I was 4 years old. With The Monster Mash being a
horror movie, is that a genre at all dear to you, and some of your genre
favourites? Yes,
I love monsters and I love horror films! I'm also a huge Godzilla fan
and love Japanese films! But I also appreciate all other genres.
Besides horror, I also appreciate comedies, westerns, dramas. (Other) sources of inspiration when writing The
Monster Mash?
Obviously
like I mentioned before, the creature features I grew up watching as a
kid on Saturday afternoon or late-night.
Also the old EC horror comics and I love anthology films. My favorite
one is Tales From The Crypt (1972), and the best of all,
Creepshow, and also the fact that I always wanted to make a movie
with monsters in it.
Were all segments actually made
particularly for the movie, or did they enjoy a former life as shorts? Yes,
the script for The Monster Mash was always intended to be an anthology
feature film. I wrote the first draft of the script in late 2016, and the
movie that me and co-producer/co-director Kevin Losani filmed is almost
identical to the script that I wrote. Kevin did some revisions to
Homebound Horror, which the original title was "Coming Home".
But Homebound Horror remains the same template that I first wrote.
Actually the script had 4 gruesome tales,
but for budgetary reasons I decided to scrap the fourth story. That
story entailed a man and his family witnessing his
neighbors being viciously attacked outside his house by the victims' own
family members. He barricades himself
and his family in the house from the violent unrest that is occurring outside.
Later, his wife and daughter also begin to go after him to attack and we
later learn that random people are being possessed by
supernatural entities/demons. The lead male continues fending off his
possessed family to survive. The news on the TV later shows that this
supernatural happening is widespread throughout the world (perhaps a precursor to
the unrest and pandemic we just had?). Maybe this story can be
added to The Monster Mash 2? Who knows?? Lol! What
can you tell us about The Monster Mash's approach to horror? It's to give viewers the nostalgic feel of those
creature feature days when watching The Monster Mash as if they were
watching it on television. With the three stories, I really wanted to
make it look like it is a product of that time, but with some modern
elements to it.
A
few words about your directorial approach to your stories at hand? I
wanted each story to be totally different from one another and not make
feel like it's all in the same movie. I wanted all three stories to have
a unique style of their own, whether it's the setting, lighting, camera
shots and color pallet. I
hope we succeeded. What
can you tell us about your co-writer and -director Kevin Losani, and what
was your collaboration like? I
first met Kevin back in 2011, and at that time he was a manager of a
historic movie theater that was built in the 1920's called The Pelham
Picture House in Pelham, NY. At that time, I was screening my feature
film The Festival, which is loosely based
off of H.P. Lovecraft's short story of the same title. He and I kept in
touch after knowing he too was a filmmaker/actor. In 2014, I started
production on my 3rd feature film Dark Side of the Moon and cast Kevin in the lead role. From there on, we became good friends, and
I ended up pitching him the idea of collaborating with
him on my next feature titled "Hollows Eve" that later would ultimately end
up being The Monster Mash. At the time, he had a very busy
schedule working on other projects, so I pitched to him that we would
produce the picture together and he would direct one of the stories from
the script of his choice and have creative control. Kevin chose
"Coming Home" a.k.a. Homebound Horror. Kevin
was a huge asset to the film! He got for us many of the locations that
you see in the film and did a bang up job directing it. For the most
part, me and Kevin had a lot of fun making this film. There were times
we butted heads and clashed over creative differences, but overall it
was minor and never took away the fun we had, and we both learned a lot
and I think we grew more mutual respect for each other as friends and as
filmmakers. We
also have a lot in common and we can relate to similar things. Don't
get me wrong, despite having fun making this film, it was a long, rough
grueling three years of filming very long hours in grueling conditions
and dodging obstacles from
the weather.
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Do talk about The
Monster Mash's key cast, and why exactly these people?
Everyone
involved in the film had a key role, so I have a lot of good things to
say about my cast. Everyone I think gave a good performance. But the
star of the film that I will talk about the most is the late great
Michael Gentile. Michael played 3 characters in this film: Dr.
Freudstein, Andrew Lakewood (Whispering Hollow Road) and The Boss in the
wheelchair (Homebound Horror). Michael was a true professional that took
his craft seriously. He was always well prepared, always brought in some
fresh ideas to make his characters more interesting, and we also became
good friends. Michael was also in my film Dark Side of the Moon, where he also portrayed two
different characters without telling them apart. Michael was a great all-around character
actor. Sadly we lost Michael last year to cancer and he never got to see
the finished product that he worked so hard on. I am fortunate to have
known him and to have him in two of my films.
William
Kozy is another talented actor
whom I've worked with already on 3 of my films. We built a good
working relationship in where he (most of the times) knows what I want
out of him. William gave what I think is one of his finest performances
as Creighton Reed (The House).
Monica
Sharma also a very talented
actress which Michael Gentile recommended me for her part as Sara (The
House), and she was excellent for the part.
Cherry Fu I cast through an
ad I placed through Backstage and had her come for an audition at the
great Shetler Studios in NYC, where I had her do a table read with
Michael Gentile. Cherry was perfectly cast for the role of Sky (Whispering Hollow
Road) where she played the character exactly how I
envisioned it in the script.
Kevin Losani was cast as Paul (The
House) simply because I know Kevin's acting ability and I knew he
would pull it off and I think he did an excellent job and probably his
best performance yet. A
few word about the shoot(s) as such, and the on-set atmosphere? First
off, The Monster Mash was shot entirely on film except Homebound
Horror.
Film stock costs a lot money, so I limited my actors on the amount of
takes they can do. So to better help the circumstance,
I had my actors rehearse a couple of times a week for like a month
straight before the actual shoot. That helped tremendously and got
through it without eating up so much film. I
think it better prepared the actors to go in this shoot focused and
knowing their lines, and having that stress about the limited takes made
them better prepared. Homebound Horror was shot digitally so it was more
flexible for the actors to do take after take after take. I had a
pleasure working with all the actors involved on the film. Everyone for
the most part were very professional
and were very well prepared.
The
$64-question of course, where can The Monster Mash be seen? The Monster Mash currently has official
selections in a handful of film festivals around the world and hopefully
will continue to gain more. But to answer your question, I'll keep my
fingers crossed if it can get a good distribution deal where everyone
all over the world can watch it and appreciate this love letter I
created. For now only through film festivals. Anything
you can tell us about audience and critical reception of The Monster
Mash yet? Well,
I think it's fairly good being that it's gaining some traction in the film
festival circuit.
I'll have a better assessment
once I watch it with a crowd of viewers at some of these festivals. Any future projects you'd like to share?
Absolutely!
I have many projects I'd like to do, but it all boils down to $$$.
Hopefully, if I can get some investors interested, I love to do a brutal
werewolf movie with all practical FX and full transformation scene not
scene since the days of Rick Baker and Rob Bottin! I wrote a story back
in the early 1990s when I was in high school titled Full
Moon about a group of hunters and their encounter with a werewolf
which attacks one of their own and survives and
becomes a werewolf later on. The group of men now have to fend off
two of these creatures and try to survive the night.
Another
is a dream project I wrote back in 2007 titled Dog Day
Sunrise, a love letter to spaghetti westerns. A stylistic and
brutally violent film.
Also,
possibly, The Monster Mash 2 with a bigger production and
more bloody monsters? And possibly, a comedy/horror spinoff of The
Monster Mash with a Dr. Freudstein movie?... I think The Monster Mash
has the potential to be a franchise thing! Who knows?? Maybe I'm just
talking out of my ass, lol What
got you into filmmaking in the first place, and did you receive any formal
training on the subject?
My
love for movies! The cinema! I've been fascinated with
movies and their magic since I was 4 years old. Originally I wanted to
be a special effects artist because of my idols like Rick Baker, Rob
Bottin, Stan Winston, Tom Savini and so many more... But it wasn't until
I was 12 years old when I rented Sam Raimi's The
Evil Dead on VHS, and that changed everything! After viewing that movie I knew that's what I wanted
to do! Make movies!! The plot had nothing different but It was so
visually stunning and creative how they shot the film, and to learn that
a bunch of college dropouts made it, I was amazed! I wanted to know more
about the film and its filmmakers.
I
took some filmmaking courses when I was younger but I'm mostly self-taught, and the special features on DVD discs
were the free filmmaking
courses that I received.
What can you tell us about your
filmwork prior to The Monster Mash? My
first venture into filmmaking was is 1999 when I made my first
(incomplete) feature film titled Nowhere Man. A comedy that
I shot on 16mm film and was never completed because I went over my
budget and didn't know what the hell I was doing, lol. After that I made
a few short horror films, The Hole and Necromancy. It wasn't until 2005 and after my
divorce
that I finally made my first complete feature film Am I
Evil, which in 2007 ended up winning Best Director Award at
The
Rhode Island International Horror Film Festival. After that, I jumped
right into making another feature film The Festival based on
Lovecraft's short story, and that was completed 2010. My next feature film was
a sci-fi/thriller titled Dark Side of the Moon, which was completed
and screened in 2016. How would you
describe yourself as a director? I
just want to get that vision out of my head and frame it. Once I have
something in mind, that's how I want it and will do my best to get it
the way I envision it. I usually have scenes already mapped out in my
head, like I already have the story edited in my mind, and I direct the
actors the way I see things. Every now and then I'll take some
suggestions from the actor or crewmembers to make a shot work. But
pretty much it's what I envision is what I want to see burned on film. But
like with most film directors, you're never quite satisfied with
what you end up with at the end but hope it's pretty damn close.
Filmmakers who inspire
you? Definitely
Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick,
Martin Scorsese, Federico Fellini, Akira Kurosawa, Francis Ford Coppola,
Sergio Leone, David Lynch, David Cronenberg, Brian De Palma, John
Carpenter, Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci [Lucio
Fulci bio - click here], so many more to list... Your favourite movies?
Nosferatu
(1922), Nosferatu (1979), The
Evil Dead, The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The
Shining, An
American Werewolf In London, The
Howling, The
Thing from Another World (1951), The
Thing (1982), The
Fly (1958), The Fly (1986),
Alien,
Godzilla/Gojira
(1954), Hitchcock
films, The Godfather & The Godfather ll ... so
many to list. I have in my library over 2000 Blu-rays/DVDs, so I
am a huge film buff as you can see, lol. I also have a guilty
pleasure of appreciating the low grade it's-so-bad-it's-great
type of films, lol! ... and of
course, films you really deplore?
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I
truly dislike a
lot of today's movies, especially horror movies. Only very few nowadays
are worthy. The ones worthy of mentioning are: The
Irishman, Parasite,
The Lighthouse, Color Out Of Space, The Cursed and even
Terrifier, which
surprised me. After the 1990s there are very few movies that I would go
back to and watch over and over like the films I listed up above this
question and many more. Yes today's films look clean (too clean) and polished.
There is something that looks artificial and generic about them and they
seem to treat the audience who
go see these movies as dumb and unintelligent. There is no substance or
solid story structure in these films. Also, I can't stand all these
superhero movies of grown men and women running around in pajamas
and capes. Enough
already, lol! These superhero films
that Hollywood is pumping out is a cash cow for them until it starts to
lose money. What's sad is you won't see Hollywood producing
movies like they used to like the Hitchcock films, Kubrick films, Lynch
films, Coppola films, etc. It's also sad to see fewer and fewer movies
being shot on film. Nothing gives a movie that cinematic look of 24fps
like film. The best digital cameras can mimic it
but can never be like film. It just looks cheap to me. Enough of my
ranting, it's just my opinion :) Your/your movie's
website, social media, whatever else?
www.darkvisionfilms.com
www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063568781495
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mao7iYqA9mQ
Anything else
you're dying to mention and I have merely forgotten to ask? I hope one can appreciate and understand the
level of this film was made on with a very very limited budget,
creativity over big money and lots of heart and passion because everyone
involved believed in the film and just to make good ol' fashioned art. I
just say, keep making art because the world needs it, and don't give up
because anything is possible. Thanks
for the interview!
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