Cold Spring are proud to announce the official release of the soundtrack to Lars Von Trier’s controversial film Antichrist, available on physical format for the first time.
We here at STARBURST are giving you the chance to win one of two of the black etched vinyl editions.
To be in with a chance of winning, just answer the question below and email [email protected] with the heading ‘Antichrist’. Entries must arrive before 11:59pm on September 10th, 2019.
In 2000 Lars Von Trier directed a musical (or as close to a musical as he is going to get) but what was it called?
A) Hedwig and the Angry Inch
B) Dancer in the Dark
C) The Toxic Avenger Musical
From the press release:
Ten years after the film’s initial release, the extreme, provocative performances from Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg in Antichrist still have the power to shock, repulse and divide audiences.
The sound design by Kristian Eidnes Andersen with Lars Von Trier, was composed using only natural sounds and samples (including internal body recordings). Each element was recorded specifically for the film and overseen
by Von Trier, including a brand new, sombre performance of Händel’s ‘Lascia Ch’io Pianga’, recorded in Kastelskirken church in Copenhagen, 2009.
Antichrist OST is pressed onto heavyweight 180 gram vinyl with an etched B-Side.
The vinyl is housed in a heavy 350gsm card full colour sleeve featuring the original theatrical release artwork.
About the film:
In Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist, a grieving couple retreat to their cabin in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage, but nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse. Nature Is Satan’s Church. When nature turns evil, true terror awaits and chaos reigns.
Cold Spring Records presents Antichrist OST on 12” Black Etched
Vinyl and 12” Limited Edition ‘Eden Olive’ Vinyl on September 6th
Cold Spring and STARBURST do not accept any responsibility for late or lost entries due to the Internet or email problems. Proof of sending is not proof of receipt. Entrants must supply full details as required on the competition page, and comply with all rules to be eligible for the prizes. No responsibility is accepted for ineligible entries or entries made fraudulently. Unless otherwise stated, the Competition is not open to employees of: (a) the Company; and (b) any third party appointed by the Company to organise and/or manage the Competition; and (c) the Competition sponsor(s). This competition is a game promoted STARBURST. STARBURST’s decision is final in every situation and no correspondence will be entered into. STARBURST reserves the right to cancel the competition at any stage, if deemed necessary in its opinion, and if circumstances arise outside of its control. Entrants must be UK residents and 18 or over. Entrants will be deemed to have accepted these rules and to agree to be bound by them when entering this competition. The winners will be drawn at random from all the correct entries, and only they will be contacted personally. Prize must be taken as stated and cannot be deferred. There will be no cash alternatives. STARBURST routinely adds the email addresses of competition entrants to the regular newsletter, in order to keep entrants informed of upcoming competition opportunities. Details of how to unsubscribe are contained within each newsletter. All information held by STARBURST will not be disclosed to any third parties
SCOTT J. RAMSEY’s debut feature X, an erotic thriller about a voyeur who hosts debauched masked balls, impressed us at the STARBURST International Film festival earlier this year. We spoke with Scott about becoming a filmmaker, the ideas behind the movie, and what’s next…
STARBURST: How did you get your start as a filmmaker?
Scott J. Ramsey: I’ve been a storyteller and an artist since I was four or five and could pick up a pen and write something down. I started making movies when I was in middle school and then went to study filmmaking at San Francisco State University. When I was there, I attempted to make a feature, and everybody told me that I was crazy – that I should start small and make a short first, but I didn’t listen to any of them. Inevitably, I didn’t finish it.
How important was that film school education?
What I got from film school that enabled me to make X and to be the filmmaker I am was all of the people I met – all the other filmmakers, actors, musicians, photographers. Even the ones I’ve worked with since then who I didn’t meet in school, I met because of someone I met at school. I really enjoyed the film program, but it was not necessarily any of the classes that helped, it was the network of people. I was in a co-ed cinema fraternity and that’s how I met a lot of the filmmakers who I ended up working with on X – that’s how I met Hannah [Katherine Jost, co-writer and producer], Kevin [De Nicolo], who’s one of the producers, and Hope [Raymond], the star of X.
For those who haven’t seen it, how would you pitch X?
The movie’s about a young woman named Christian who hosts monthly masked charity balls at her beachside estate that double as sex parties. Little do her guests know that she is a voyeur and has a hidden camera in the bathroom.
That’s quite an original concept, where did this idea come from?
The story came to me all in one burst, out of nowhere. I was working on that feature in college that wasn’t going anywhere. We had shot everything and I was in post, trying to finish it. The story of X was kind of a distraction from what I was supposed to be working on. I didn’t realise this when I first thought of the idea, but later when we had already shot it and I was reflecting on it, it occurred to me that as a queer person, you grow up with internalised shame and feeling like you are a pervert, so I think that is where the idea to have a main character who is a pervert – a voyeur – came from. To neither sympathise with her nor condemn her was important to us; we wanted to tell her story as honestly and thoroughly as we could.
The characters do have various queer sexual identities, though this isn’t the focus of the story. Would you define it as a queer film?
I would define it as a queer film, because more importantly than the characters being queer, it has a queer sensibility to it, and because the filmmakers are queer. But ultimately, it wasn’t about their sexualities, so it wasn’t necessary for us to make that the focus.
So what were your first steps with developing this idea?
I wrote an 80-page story treatment for the movie with the working title Rated X. Originally, Christian was male. I knew that I wanted to make it my next movie and I wanted it to be a feature. At first, I was going to write it myself, but then I realised I should have Hannah write it with me. She’s a much better writer of dialogue and I knew I was a little too close to it – it felt like I wasn’t able to see it from an outside perspective. So I brought it to Hannah and right before I brought it to her, I had the idea that Christian should be a woman. I gave her the treatment and said, this treatment has Christian as male, so let’s switch it. The first thing she said was: I like this, but I want to change the title, Rated X sounds like a middle school boy trying to be shocking. So I said, fine, how about just X? Christian signs the invitations to her parties with an X, because it means ‘kiss’ and because it’s a shortening of her name.
Are there any particular films, or artworks in other media, that inspired you?
I saw Mulholland Drive for the first time right before we started shooting X, so that was absolutely a stylistic influence. Obviously with the masked balls, we were looking at Eyes Wide Shut; I love that movie and we always get compared to it, so that was a reference. A Clockwork Orange was a reference, especially in constructing Christian’s voiceover. The films of Xavier Dolan; his movies are visually very rich and gorgeous but still have an indie movie sensibility, they don’t feel like they’re big budget, and we knew from the beginning that we weren’t gonna be big budget, so especially cinematographically his work was an influence. In terms of other media, when I brought it to Hannah, she had the idea to structure the movie like a Shakespearean play, so that’s why it’s in five-act structure, and we talked a lot about Shakespeare while writing it.
How did you raise your budget?
We brought the movie to Kevin, one of our close friends and a producer we’d worked with in school, and his parents had invested in other films by other students while we were in school. The three of us decided to pitch to his parents, hoping that they would get it and be into it. We put together an elaborate pitch and went to them with a PowerPoint presentation. They were extremely receptive and invested in us, so we’re eternally grateful and the movie would not have been made if it were not for them. The starting budget was $30,000, the number we asked for initially. After production was finished, the production budget had become $50,000, then post was $100,000. We were extraordinarily lucky that our investors were sympathetic, trusted in us, and were willing to fund until it was complete.
Even with that generous funding, no film ever has enough money, right? Did you have to make any compromises?
We wrote the movie and planned production knowing that we probably weren’t gonna have enough. The story is about kids our age throwing these balls, so the production design and cinematography reflect that. They’re just kids and they’re messy too, so that was built into the story because we knew we weren’t gonna have the budget for big elaborate sets.
What were the biggest challenges of shooting X?
The horror story we always tell is that, on the third day of shooting, we were in a garage, and we had brought all the expensive furniture and books from the homeowners into it. We had set up lights very near the ceiling, and one of the lights triggered the sprinklers. They came down on all the expensive furniture and on all our equipment. It was raining outside, so there was nowhere to go but out into the rain, and by some miracle we didn’t damage any of the equipment and damaged only very little of their property. The nice thing about that, which set the tone for the rest of production, is that the entire cast and crew stayed to help clean up – we were all in it together.
But then, from your budget troubles, it sounds like the real difficulty came in post?
Post-production was a big challenge, because we had to ADR [Automated Dialogue Replacement] the entire movie. We shot on a RED, which is a noisy camera, and we were shooting right by the beach. There was wind and cars, and every sound you can imagine. We had to re-record the whole movie and there was a challenge trying to get the texture of the sound to a place where it sounded natural, not like voiceover.
How did you handle directing the sexual content, and know where to draw the line with how much you could show?
There’s two different things at play – sexual stuff and nudity – and we kept those separate. In terms of the nudity, with the hidden camera stuff in the bathroom, it was necessary to have models or actors who were willing to show as much as they could to make it realistic. From the get-go, we set out to look for models who were comfortable with that, and made sure they understood what we were doing. For the actual sex, part of the story is that Christian doesn’t enjoy sex, she only enjoys watching. So sex itself is almost beside the point, there’s not a lot of sex in the movie – there’s the implication of sex, there’s nudity, and there’s certainly an erotic undertone. The one scene that you could categorise as a sex scene in a conventional way is when Christian is fantasising about Stella in the bathtub. For that, I told the actors Hope and Eliza that I wanted them to go as far as they were comfortable going, and I let them pretty much direct themselves. We let them watch playback and the first cut before we showed it to anyone and they liked it.
You made a couple of music videos alongside X – tell us about those.
Kevin – one of the producers of X and one of the composers of the score – and I have a music duo called The Major Arcana; we made three of the songs on the score. Those shorts are music videos that we shot to the songs and have used to promote the movie. We’ve promoted X as a transmedia project, storytelling on three different levels – the feature film, the album, and the three music videos. Two of them are already released, and a third is premiering at a festival this month and will be online two weeks after that. The music videos are surreal fever dreams that remix plot elements and visual elements from the movie and from the lyrics of the songs – not conventional short films, but more narrative than a montage music video.
And X itself is picking up a good number of festival screenings – how are you finding the process of self-distributing via festivals?
An interesting thing about film festivals that I did not know going in is that there are a lot that will accept your film but won’t screen it. We’ve gotten into many that haven’t screened X but have given us awards and made us an official selection, which has been strange. But people at festivals seem to like it and I’m glad that they do. I feel like the movie is suited for a theatrical experience more than an online experience, but the reality of the world now is that most people are going to see it on their computers. Festivals are incredibly necessary, but aren’t the only thing. I think that’s the biggest misconception that festivals are the end of the road, but at this part of the distribution process, it’s just the beginning. The other problem is, festivals are expensive!
So what’s the next stage of distribution?
We’re trying to secure distribution right now, and we have a few leads. We’re just letting things play out, and trying to show it to as many people as possible via festivals and other means. We are also considering some kind of self-distribution; theatrical on demand is appealing to us.
What’s your next project?
Hannah and I are writing another feature, we are shoulder deep in that. On top of that, The Major Arcana are recording more music and playing shows, and using that music to not only promote X but to tell stories moving beyond X.
What advice would you give to aspiring independent filmmakers?
Everything should be motivated by the characters. The characters are the core around which everything else rotates – where the story comes from, where every production design choice should come from, every cinematography choice, editing, music, etc. That’s my number one thing, my number two thing is to go with your gut and know when you’re wrong and when to listen to your collaborators.
With the beloved ‘80s family film FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR enjoying a brand new, fully restored Blu-ray release (read our 10/10 review here), it was the perfect time to spend some time with its director RANDAL KLEISER…
STARBURST: You’d enjoyed huge success in the past, with your first feature film Grease and then later The Blue Lagoon, but stepping forward to 1987 and Flight of the Navigator, what’s your overriding memory of working on that film?
Randal Kleiser: Well, I’d always enjoyed sci-fi and I think this was my first time doing sci-fi and visual effects. Visual effects and sci-fi were always two of my great loves, so I was very excited about it. There had been a lot of movies about space and flying saucers and all of that, that were shot in a typical fashion, and I wanted to figure out a way to do something different, something that hadn’t been seen before. That was my biggest interest in it, to enter the world of visual effects and try something new.
It was certainly something new. That great ‘80s era still dominates pop culture to this day and Flight of the Navigator is right up there. I noticed during our research that your brother Jeffrey Kleiser was involved with the visual effects.
That’s right, he has always been on the cutting edge of visual effects. He went to university and there were no visual effects or computer graphics professors or courses, so he found somebody and had them convince the university to start teaching it. He worked on the original TRON, so he’s been there since the very beginning, always doing new things, so I went to see him when I was starting Flight of the Navigator to see if there were any new things he could show me. He had this commercial of a Tide bottle, for laundry, that was changing shape and I said can we make a spaceship do that and he said sure. He also showed me some other stuff where they were doing reflectance mapping, which is taking the background and wrapping it onto a wireframe computer model and turning it into a mirrored surface, so that’s how it all came about.
It’s the sweetest story, especially looking back now. How did the project come to you? Did you seek it out, did it pass by your desk, or did people come to you?
I know that I didn’t seek it out, it came to me in some way at Disney. I worked with Jeff Katzenberg on Grease. He was at Paramount and he came over to Disney, so I think they called me in to see if I’d be interested and I jumped all over it because of my interest in sci-fi.
It’s a simple enough story: an alien spaceship and a boy lost in time, but with that comes a lot of special effects. There were effects elements in Grease, as there are in most films, but how did you adapt to that, given that this was your first true sci-fi film?
Because of my brother, because he was the one leading the way and showing me how to do all of this. He was doing it in commercials, so he knew how to do all of that stuff, he was the leader of that. We also had a guy called Peter Donan who had done a lot of visual effects movies, and some of them were done the standard way with opticals, and the digital spaceship was a first.
Disney didn’t seem to be making too many live-action fantasy films in the mid ‘80s, so what made them take a chance on something like Flight of the Navigator when it wasn’t their forte?
Well, I believe they were doing a lot of live-action films, they started a company called Hollywood Pictures and Disney Pictures as well as a third unit, so there was a lot of live-action stuff coming out but they were under different names, it wasn’t all under Disney. Hollywood Pictures was doing most of the live-action.
The film was perfectly cast, with Joey Cramer as David, Paul Reubens as the voice of Max, and Sarah Jessica Parker as Carolyn. Because it’s always key to get the right people in the right roles, how did that process come together?
Yeah, the casting was by Valorie Massalas. I always rely on the casting director to bring in the best people. In this case Veronica Cartwright was in Alien, I loved her in that movie, and the great part about it was to be able to have her look so young and beautiful in the first part and then age, the same with Cliff De Young, we did some tricks to make them look older and then younger.
Sarah Jessica Parker would notably go on to great success and you also worked with Paul Reubens…
I’d met Paul and I knew him, and I asked him if he wanted to do the voice and he did, but he didn’t want to have credit for some reason. He wanted to have it be mysterious and use the name Paul Mall instead of Paul Reubens [laughs]. He sort of stayed in the background on this project, didn’t do any publicity for it. He’s an unusual guy and he has quirks and I guess that was one of them.
Now it’s available once again on a remastered Blu-ray edition, how pleased are you with the new version of the film?
It’s great, I was able to go back and polish it up, take out dirt and the ageing process of film and make the colours brighter. The extras are quite nice, we went back into the archives and found screen tests and visual effects tests to see how we slowly moved towards this way of doing the spaceship. We have tests with silver paint and with mylar, trying to find ways to do it before we discovered the digital way. All those funny tests on there look really silly, they didn’t work.
FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR is out now on a limited edition Blu-ray release from Second Sight Films, available below.
Jason Mewes became a huge favourite amongst genre fans for his turns as Jay in Kevin Smith’s View Askewniverse movies. While many have been quick to stereotype Mewes as the loveable stoner sort, the actor himself has been looking to branch out into more varied roles over the years – and now Jason’s making his feature film directing debut with Madness in the Method.
Centred on an alternate universe version of Jason Mewes whose quest to become the ultimate method actor has dark and sinister consequences, we caught up with Jason to discuss the film, the experience of being a first-time director, having to deal with being stereotyped for so long, his dream projects, and a whole host more.
STARBURST: The last time we spoke a couple of years ago, you mentioned how you were in loose talks to direct your first feature – and here we are! So how did Madness in the Method come about?
Jason Mewes: I was out in London doing a movie called Devil’s Tower and I met an awesome dude, Dominic Burns. He was producing this movie. I shot for three or four days, but whenever I go to London or Australia or wherever I always try to leave a couple of days earlier and stay for a couple of days extra. I need to get there early to adjust to the time difference – it takes me two or three days to adapt to the big time-jump – and I always like to stay a couple of days after because I like to do some sight-seeing. So I stayed around after the movie was finished and Dominic took me round. We were in Nottingham, so we did the whole Robin Hood thing. I was just hanging out with Dominic and he was, “Hey man, I hope you don’t mind me asking but what else do you want to do besides getting offered these roles as this slapstick funny guy, this stoner guy? What do you really want to do?” I said, “Look man, I would love to play a Hannibal Lecter-type character or American Psycho. I really want to challenge myself and play that dark character – to see whether I could pull it off.” I always call it a rogue cop, but shows like The Shield, too. Not that I feel like I’m a tough guy, but again I want to play that dirty cop. I told him that and I said, “But I also really, really want to direct.” Since Clerks, I’ve noticed that I see stuff in a director’s viewpoint. When I’m doing a scene, I’ll have ideas. I had directed a music video at that point and I really enjoyed it, and I did a PSA for a company and really enjoyed that – but I really wanted to direct a feature.
So anyway, that happened and a couple of months go by. He and I kept in touch a little bit here, a little bit there, a little email here, a little text there. Two months into it, he wrote me a text saying, “Hey bro, I’m going to send you something. I hope you don’t mind, I took it upon myself to write a script for you from what we spoke about.” I really liked it, and I gave him some notes. He also had this young man, Chris Anastasi, who jumped on board and we started going back and forth with these ideas. We went back and forth, back and forth, and it got to the point where we all really liked it. He was like, “I’m going to try to get money for this.” Again, people say stuff all the time. Six months went by and I really just thought he got another job. He produces stuff and he directed a World War II movie, so I just thought he went back to work. I was working with [Jay & Silent Bob] Get Old so just forgot about it. About six months went by and then all of a sudden he emailed me and said, “Hey, are you around? Can we talk later?” He called me and was like, “Bro, you’ll never guess. Not only did I get money for the movie, they’re going to let you direct the movie!” I was shocked. It was really awesome because Dominic had faith in that I could direct. When we found that out, we also tweaked the movie.
The movie wasn’t what it is now. It was, but it wasn’t. When I found out I was going to direct, I really wanted to stick to some of my strengths which I already know that I can do – which is comedy – so I thought, “Let’s make it a Jay Mewes but an alternate universe Jaw Mewes and everyone will play themselves.” So we went back and forth a little more and we tweaked the script. That’s how it came about. I really appreciate Dom Burns. Dom Burns is the one who thought I could play a different character and that I could totally direct. And he found the investors – people he had dealt with before. It was really awesome of him, and he was like that throughout the whole film. When I was in front of the camera doing my acting, he would be behind the monitor. He was super, super helpful and amazing.
This movie was written solely for you and is a film that only you could star in. Without Jason Mewes in the lead, this movie simply doesn’t happen. That must be quite flattering and humbling, no?
Definitely. It’s awesome that someone took the time to write it and thought of me. It’s hard to look at something about yourself, especially the scene with Kevin when we were supposed to go and do Get Old and I confront him and say some nasty things. In my head I was just, “I know Kevin. He’s not going to care, he knows it’s an alternate universe Jay and Kevin and that I don’t mean anything by it, but will it upset him?” Again, all of that was taken into consideration. It was also nice because all the people that you see in there, most of them jumped straight on board. It was really nice for me and humbling and flattering because I didn’t think Dean Cain, Teri Hatcher, Stan Lee, a lot of the people who were a part of the movie, would’ve been in the movie because we didn’t have a lot of money to offer people. So it wasn’t like, “Hey, we know we can get this person because they only work one day and it’ll be easy for them. It’ll be an hour or less to the location for them and we’re going to give them $50,000.” We didn’t have a lot of money to offer people, and most people were like, “Oh wow, it’s Jay’s first movie? His first directing job? We want to be part of this and see what happens.” That was super, super awesome. For me, it was definitely an eye-opener that people are really nice and sweet. I didn’t even think Teri Hatcher knew who I was or cared, but she did and it was awesome.
Whatever, she’s totally got posters of Jason Mewes on her walls!
[Laughs] You know, it’s funny. Every once in a while I’ll be at a convention and I’ll meet someone. Like, I’m a huge fan of Warehouse 13 with Eddie McClintock. I’m a fan of Eddie’s and a big fan of the show and the other things he’s done. All of a sudden, I saw him at a Comic Con once and he was, “Oh my god, dude! I’m Eddie. I wanted to meet you and I love your stuff!” And I’m just, “No, I love you!” It’s so interesting. I remember this one time Kevin and I were at this awards in, I think, London. Quentin Tarantino saw Kevin, and Kevin knows him of course, so he said hey to Kevin but then he looked over to me and goes, “Jay, I loved you in R.S.V.P.!” R.S.V.P. is a little indie movie that I did, and who would have thunk that he’d have seen it. Stuff like that still catches me off guard and blows me away, man.
The movie has plenty of familiar faces dotted through it, but was there anyone you wanted for Madness in the Method but you just couldn’t make it happen for one reason or another?
Not that I can think of. I definitely know that we had tried to reach out to some people, but there was no one specifically hardcore that we wanted that we reached out to and that they couldn’t do it. For me, I feel like it worked in this sense because I’m hoping that if things go really smooth in the end maybe we can do a sequel.
When it come to finally directing your first feature film, were you nervous, excited, a bit of both?
I think nervous excitement, for sure. I was super excited. It was something that I’d really wanted to do for a while. For me to get to do it and get to make a movie just seems surreal. We got to do two screenings at the Universal CityWalk. For me to walk up and see on the board “10:30am and 4:30pm screenings of Madness in the Method”, it was just so surreal to see the movie that I directed playing in a theater. So I was super excited and super nervous. It was more about the nerves of trying to direct and act in the same movie. What if I can’t pull the two off? And also, I’d never directed any actors before.
Some of it was easy because I’ve worked with or am friends with a lot of the people in there. Then there are some people, like Teri Hatcher. Teri did some awesome things, but there was one take where I was like, “I just want you to be a little more excited and not so mad” – but I didn’t want to give her direction. I was just, “Oh my gosh, I don’t want to give her direction. Will she take it like an insult?” I’d never dealt with that, so I didn’t know how to go about it. I remember way back in the day, Kevin in the beginning of his career gave someone a line reading and the actor was, “You don’t give actors line readings. That’s a no-no.” We didn’t know that back then. Now I know just from experience of working with people and being on sets. For me, it was that same thing of like, “I’ve seen people direct and I know people give you direction and it’s okay, but how much direction and do I cross the line of directing and acting?” There were those types of questions that I had, and the nervousness of stepping over the line. But again, I got a lot of good feedback while we were shooting and people took me to one side to say how well I dealt with situations.
Coming out of the movie, what skills do you think you’ve learned ahead of potentially directing another film?
I think two things. Firstly, I definitely wouldn’t want to direct myself again. Not saying ever, but if I did a feature then I’d maybe just want to be in one or two scenes. It would be fun to direct a movie like Chasing Amy, where Kevin put us in one scene – even if it was maybe two scenes – but I wouldn’t want to direct a movie and have me be in the whole thing. I just feel that I couldn’t put my focus 100% on directing and really get the feel of directing and directing rather than directing and acting. My mind, it was 80% on the movie and 20% on acting and memorising my dialogue, or I had to get wardrobe and hair and make-up. So that’s one thing, and the second thing is I definitely think that I got a good feel of talking with the actors and stuff like that. I think I definitely feel more comfortable doing that for when I’m in that situation in the future. And I think I need to do more.
I realise that, for me, I learnt a lot from being around Kevin for so many years and being directed by Kevin – but Kevin edits his own movies. A lot of directors don’t necessarily do that. When he writes a script, he writes, he directs and he edits. So if we’re shooting and you’re running late, he’s able to go, “You know what? I wrote this in the script – ‘the guy pulls up in the car, gets out of the car, walks across the street, goes in the door’”. In his editing brain he’ll be, “Well, I wouldn’t even use that because I would cut from the car screeching to a halt, cutting to the guy at the door looking through the peephole and busting in, so we can lose that crossing the street, walking up the stairs bit.” But I realise when an editor is reading the script separately and you’re not editing, you need all those extra bits to help piece together what he’s editing. When I was shooting I was just, “We don’t need that.” In my head, we cut from me running up, opening the door and then it cuts right inside – instead of it cutting me walking down the hallway, looking at every door, seeing which door is the right door. That’s just an example. But I realised, when we were editing stuff it took a little bit longer because they had to tape together what I said. We wrote down notes on that, so when I wasn’t there they could say, “Well, it’s going to go from here to there.” But I dunno, I guess, yeah, I had to sort of remember that I don’t edit the movie myself. I’m not sitting behind the editing machine piecing it together. These are little titbits I feel like I would have to sort of adjust my thinking to.
You’ve said how Madness in the Method is an alternate universe Jason Mewes, but there are still some very real moments of your life laid bare here. Over the years, you’ve been very open through the podcasts and the live tours, but did it feel a little more personal to this time see elements of your real life in a movie?
No. I guess you could see where it could be me to 100%, but I feel it’s not me playing me. It doesn’t bother me or make me uncomfortable because a) people know a lot about me, and b) I do feel that it is alternate universe – Earth-12 Jason Mewes, Earth-12 Kevin Smith. Everyone is playing somewhat themselves but none of it is 100%. It’s not like we’re really baring our souls on the big screen.
I feel like in the beginning, when I was younger, when I first did Clerks, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, people did try to only offer me the parts of the stoner funny guy. They were the only roles I got. Over time, people gave me an opportunity to do stuff like R.S.V.P., which was a different character, then a horror movie, then a movie called Bitten where I play an EMT, then a movie Cell K-11 that was a dark drama set inside of a prison.
So there was that sort of strand to help the movie kick off from what it was, but I do feel like there’s definitely pieces of the movie which are similar to real life – but I do feel it wasn’t set in stone. So no, it wasn’t hard. For me, the hard thing is that no matter if I’m playing Jay or playing Jason Mewes or anything, it’s not so much people seeing me tell my stories or even stories that are a different universe version, just in general, I don’t know why, it’s so hard for me to watch myself acting. I just feel like I’m so judgemental of myself – and I’m sure most people are. There are definitely moments where I see myself do something and I’m, “Wow, that was pretty smooth – I liked that!” But overall I just get really uncomfortable watching myself. I don’t know why I haven’t gotten over that, because I have to watch myself. I had to watch myself in this movie, Jay & Silent Bob Reboot I gotta watch myself. Stuff’s going to be happening and I do have to watch myself, I’m just saying it’s kind of tough. It’s hard for me to immerse myself in that fake world, that fantasy world. That’s why people ask me all the time, “All these TV shows – Arrow, Supergirl, The Flash – who would you want to play if you have a chance to play anybody?” I wouldn’t turn a character down, don’t get me wrong. If they were like, “Jay Mewes, you’re perfect, you don’t even have to audition” I would never say no. I’d want to be in those shows as Security Guard #1, but I love watching them so much. I could sit down and watch Avengers: Endgame and love that world, but if I see myself coming on screen and being all, “Let’s get ‘em, Avengers!” then that just wouldn’t be the same for me. When I sit down to watch these shows and movies, I can really bring myself to be all “Oh man, I’m in Gotham City right now with frickin’ Bruce Wayne. It’s awesome!” When I watch myself, though, it’s just kinda hard.
For you, is it harder for you to watch yourself in a serious role, then, or is it harder to watch you as Jay or a more comedic role?
Honestly, it’s tough to do any of them. I find myself not knowing if I’ve pulled something off. I guess it would be more serious, I guess. Only because I’ve less experience in that. I do know that in comedy if I’m saying something funny it ain’t hard for me to watch myself say something funny – especially if I’m watching it with an audience and I hear them laugh. But again, sometimes there literally will be a weird facial tick or something that might happen. You’ve gotta think that people are watching your every move. Again, not always me if I’m not the main character, but when my parts come up or I’m saying something or I’m trying to be romantic. There’s been a few movies where I’m trying to be silly romantic and in my head I’m just, “What was that? Did it come off good? No?” People will tell me that it’s great but then I’m thinking “Are they just being nice…?” It’s tough to know.
If you could go back in time to speak with 10-year-old Jason Mewes, what would his reaction be if you told him not only would he be an actor one day but that he’d also become a director?
I think I would think I was crazy. Even when we shot Clerks, I had no plans or ambition to act or do movies or be in entertainment in any sense. I just literally was planning on – at 10-years-old especially – just playing around. 14 was when I started working and I literally felt like, “Oh, I’m gonna be doing construction.” Later I got a roofing job, so I started roofing and was, “Ooh, I wanna become the owner of a roofing company. I know what I’m doing and I’m pretty decent at it, and the guy who owns the roofing company I work for seems to be doing really well.” We used to go to his house once in a while to pick up material for a job, and he had this wife that was 15 years younger and pretty, he had the nice Mercedes, he had a two-storey house. In my eyes, at 17 or 18 years old, I thought this guy was doing really well. Literally, that was my goal until I was about 20 years old. It wasn’t until we went and did Dogma that I stopped working construction and roofing and delivering pizza. It was literally Dogma that I stopped that stuff. Even after that I only got lucky because I was able to work at the comic book store that we have in Red Bank, New Jersey. I would help out around ViewAskew with merchandise and stuff like that. I still was doing labour, but it was fun labour – it was comic book store stuff and stuff I love. So, I would tell myself that I was crazy – “What, no one here in Highlands, New Jersey makes movies or directs movies or does anything of the sort!”
As a director now, what would be the dream project for you? What sort of film does Jason Mewes want to direct?
I feel like I would love to direct something like The Thomas Crown Affair or a Murder, She Wrote movie marathon. I love Murder, She Wrote, and they did four movies of that. Again, not saying it wouldn’t be tough because a big part of it is that the writing has to be good, the clues have to be good – you always point someone in the direction of “Oh, it’s gotta be the sister!” – and besides the writing being great to steer people wrong, you want to be able to shoot it well and cool and different. That honestly would be a lot of fun for me. I’d be excited to do horror, comedy, I’m really into anything. If I was told, “You have to pick one, it’s going to be your second movie, you’ve really gotta knock it out the park if you want to do number three”, I would really have to steer towards comedy. I’ve done comedy for so many years and I know comedy’s about timing, and I just feel like I could totally shoot that. I don’t know, I could be wrong. Maybe I could shoot drama better or action. Actually, definitely not action. I definitely wouldn’t want to shoot an action sequence where people are in front of green screen. I honestly feel like that would be really tough. I really would like to do either a mystery or some kind of drama. I would love to do something cool like The Thomas Crown Affair…
MGM is making plans for another remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, with the Russos producing…
Look at that. Someone’s going to read this interview, bro, and they’re going to give it to me. Nootch [laughs]!
What about Jason Mewes the actor, then. What does he want to do?
I would still love to play one of those roles that I’ve been saying. I got to toy around a little bit in my movie. I definitely loved that we got to do Reboot and I’m stoked that that happened, but I just think that I really would love to get on a TV show or do a movie where I play at least something a little more serious, a little darker. I’d love to get on one of these TV shows in a guest spot. I would love to play the FBI agent on NCIS: Los Angeles, where maybe I’m an FBI agent coming to help them and then I get to be in three episodes – and then they’re like, “Hey man, we’re gonna bring you back for next season.” They do that a lot. Hawaii Five-0, man. I was hoping. It was a small part so maybe I didn’t give them enough reason to, but Hawaii Five-0 I got to have a cameo in. I was the guy who worked at the gun range in Hawaii. They went there to get me and they chased me, then it cuts to them with me in the interrogation room. But again, I know on Hawaii Five-0 it happens a lot that people come back all the time. Again, something like that I think would be so awesome – to just be on a show that you like, to get to be in it. Kev and I got to play the security guards on The Flash, and I think it would be dope if we could be those security guards at the same place in a different series – like a Supergirl episode of a crossover or something. Something like that would be awesome. Seriously, I would love to do that. Or again, to do a movie where I play something serious. It doesn’t have to be this super serial killer, but I just think something a little more smooth and serious. We’ll see, man, we’ll see. There was something I was waiting to hear from. I can’t say right now because nothing’s ever set in stone until it’s set in stone. But there was actually a cool role that I’ve been waiting to hear back on. They want me but it’s more of a matter of they’re trying to get everything in place and what the dates are going to be. I’m waiting to hear, but honestly I’m stoked because it’s actually a really cool, different character for me. So we’ll see.
One thing we have to ask about is that you again got to work with Stan Lee on Madness in the Method. As somebody who loves the world of comics as much as you do, how cool and surreal was it to work with Stan again?
It was amazing. It was super, super amazing and sweet. For him to just come down and spend a couple of hours with us was super amazing, honestly. It was a surreal moment. So much so, after he did a couple of takes we had to do a new setup and move the camera, put up a couple of lights, and I literally walked away and started tearing up. My buddy Dominic Burns was like, “Oh, I see you, bro. Right? I’ve got the same way, it’s crazy!” It just was so surreal. We met him on Mallrats when I was a kid, but he’s so amazing, he’s such a hero of mine. I feel like it’s literally what brought Kevin and I to become friends. I was four years younger than Kevin and he was just, “Oh, he’s a little kid? I’m not hanging out with him.” He gave me his comics to leave him alone, and he’d give me more comics when I was done. Then he started driving me to the comic book store once a week, and I went to my first Comic Con with Kevin, Bryan [Johnson] and Walter [Flanagan]. That’s kind of what brought us together – Stan Lee and comic books.
Before we wrap things up, this October sees Jay & Silent Bob Reboot hit the big screen. How was it to go back to the View Askewniverse once more?
It was a lot of fun, man. I’ve been wanting to do another movie with Kevin forever. These were so much fun and they used to be every two years because they were studio movies. Back then, we would spend two or three months with people and then we wouldn’t see them for two years. Then you spend two months with people again. Kevin would hire the same people – the same script supervisor, producer, DP, catering – and it literally was like camp and it was so much fun. Of course, Kevin and I got to hang out for two or three months making believe together. It was always a blast, and so I’ve been wanting to do it for years. Kevin just was sort of hesitant on it for a while, and then he wanted to do Clerks III, then Clerks III couldn’t happen. It was just really awesome and I’m really glad we got to do it. So far, so good, man. The people who have seen it, the few who have gotten to come over to Kevin’s and watch it, it’s been getting really good feedback – so I’m really hoping people enjoy it as much as I do.
Madness in the Method receives its European premiere on Saturday, August 24h at FrightFest, before getting a home release at a to-be-confirmed date.
THE GROGNARD FILES is a popular podcast that discusses RPG from back in the day – North West England in the 1980s, to be precise – as well as more recent games. We caught up with genial host DIRK THE DICE for a quick chat…
STARBURST: How did the podcast come into being?
Dirk The Dice: It was originally conceived as a written memoir of our experiences playing role-playing games in the ‘80s. Back then, we were living the life that has been popularised by Stranger Things – patrolling our neighbourhood on our bikes while playing Dungeons & Dragons in our den. STARBURST was actually responsible for us getting into the hobby as it was an article in your magazine that explained how to play Fantasy Roleplaying games! It was written by Steve Jackson, one of the founders of Games Workshop and a writer who would go on to create the Fighting Fantasy books. We had great fun recalling our lives in ‘80s Bolton, and the strangeness of thinking that you were the only people playing role-playing games, and having to search the small ads in White Dwarf magazine for other players. Blythy and I have been friends since we were twelve and thought it would be good to capture some of our chats; the podcast format felt more immediate, and I think the reason it’s popular is that we have one foot in the past and the other in what’s happening today.
So you cover the contemporary gaming scene too…
Yes, but through the prism of nostalgia. We’re discovering some of the developments in RPGs over the past 30 years since we last played, but we never give an opinion on a game we haven’t played; we’re not collectors, so we’re not going to obsess over different editions – play is the thing, so when we get a game, we want to understand how it fits within the context of gaming history. Night’s Black Agents, for example, is interesting as it’s a game that emulates cinematic spy-craft, but with vampires. Jason Bourne against Dracula! It’s fresh and new, but you can definitely trace elements of the James Bond RPG that came out in the mid-‘80s. Podcasts are an aural fanzine, so we format it in a similar way as a magazine with regular features: Open Box is where we reflect on a game from back in the day – our nostalgic memories of it compared with what we think about playing it today; Judge Blythy Rules, is where our Rules Lawyer does a deep delve into the system rules; Gamesmaster’s Screen is where we pick random topics to discuss; in Starburst Memories, we reflect on some of the influences back in the day. There are also interviews and sample play. The podcast has been compared to the late-night Mark and Lard show in the ‘90s, but with less Nick Cave and more Runequest. That’s the mood we want: taking the subject seriously, but not ourselves.
Things have changed so much since the 1980s, especially with the advent of the Internet…
It’s been a fantastic way to reconnect with some of the people who were engaged with the hobby back in the day – such as Paul Cockburn [editor of Imagine magazine] and Tim Olsen [manager of Games Workshop’s Hammersmith store], but the most rewarding element is making connections with people around the country, and the world, who had similar experiences to us with the world of gaming. There’s a community that has built around the podcast; people are rediscovering the hobby, sharing their experiences and, perhaps more importantly, playing the games again. I started talking about vintage gaming on Twitter around the same time that Daily Dwarf started posting images from when the magazine featured RPGs. We struck up a dialogue and he agreed to submit to the podcast. His wonderfully witty and detailed examinations of the coverage in the magazine are the highlight of the month when they land in the in-box. I like how the internet has diversified the hobby with games to satisfy all tastes, covering every genre and style you can imagine. I don’t understand the hostility I see sometimes on forums; who has the right to determine the ‘right way to play’? Be nice. Be inclusive. It’s meant to be fun for everyone.
What else has developed from the podcast?
Every November we have the GROGMEET in Manchester – a small convention kindly hosted by Fan Boy Three, with over twenty-five games on offer from the early days of role-playing right up until the present day. In April we run a similar event online; playing games this way has given our participation in the hobby a new lease of life. There’s also the blog at www.thegrognardfiles.com.
What can we expect this year from the podcast?
Along with Ed, we’re looking at some of the films and TV programmes that influenced us back in the day, against the background of political and popular culture changes. We’ve just released a GROGGLEBOX podcast about Robin of Sherwood and we have another coming soon about Blake’s Seven.
Listeners can contribute to Patreon – what are the rewards?
Having the crowd-sourced ‘tips’ from listeners has been a great help as it’s covered production costs and allowed us to fund other projects like GROGMEET. We produce an annual fanzine as a gift to Patreons around the world, in the style of the ‘zines we used to enjoy, which includes the Daily Dwarf essays and an exclusive cover produced by Russ Nicolson.
This feature was designed to highlight one of our favourite podcasts each issue, are there any shows that you’d like to recommend to the readers?
There’s a wonderful catalogue of podcasts from Mr Jim Moon under the Hypnogoria stable that are detailed examinations of the strange and wonderful. When it comes to gaming, the UK has some really great RPG podcasts, including What Would the Smart Party Do? which has conversation and interviews about major gaming topics. Good Friends of Jackson Elias is a great podcast about horror gaming and horror films.
THE GROGNARD FILES can be found on Spotify and iTunes. For more information on the show, visit WWW.THEGROGNARDFILES.COM
[This article was originally published in STARBURST #460, May 2019. For that back issue and others, visit www.starburstmagazine.com/store]
By the time Adam Green made Hatchet in 2006, we’d grown out of the backwoods killer subgenre. Films such as Just Before Dawn and Madman had given way to shockers like Wrong Turn. Green’s movie brought the flavour of Friday the 13th and the slasher film and mixed in the mutant murderer in the woods aspect of The Burning while laying the foundation for a franchise that would delight gorehounds for years to come.
The secret of Hatchet’s success is in its simplicity and familiarity. We’re presented with a whole host of genre tropes and even some familiar faces, but what it does so well is deliver on all its promises.
From the get-go, when we see a pair of fishermen trying to bag a big alligator in a remote New Orleans swamp in the dead of night. The father and son (the former played by genre legend Robert Englund) soon fall foul to something unseen and monstrous.
Meanwhile, it’s the Mardi Gras celebrations in the town, and all kinds of drunken merriment are taking place. Beads are being traded for flashes of boob, and the whole city is having fun. Except for Shaggy lookalike Ben (Joel Moore) that is. He’s still mourning his split with his girlfriend, and he wants to see the real side of the Big Easy; he wants to go on a trip through the haunted bayou. He manages to convince one of his friends, Marcus (Deon Richmond), to come along with him, albeit against his better judgement. They call on the local tour guide, the Reverend Zombie (played by the Candyman himself Tony Todd, and yes, the name is a nod to Rob), but unfortunately, because of some ‘incident’ (he was sued for a health and safety issue), he has stopped taking groups out into the swamp. The Rev suggests they try further across town to Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo, which turns out to be run by the less experienced but certainly flamboyant Shawn (Parry Shen). They’re in luck since he’s just about to leave with a motley group of tourists: an elderly couple, a porno filmmaker and his vacuous models (one played by Buffy’s Harmony, Mercedes McNab), and Marybeth (Amara Zaragoza, billed as the easier to pronounce Tamara Feldman). Marybeth has her reasons to take the tour, as she’s the daughter of the pair killed in the prologue.
As the group getting further into the swamp – ignore the shouted warnings of a local hick – they become stranded when the boat hits a rock, making it even more apparent that Shawn has little clue about what he’s doing or what he’s gotten his customers into. Walking through the woods, they come across an abandoned house; one that used to belong to the Crowley family. Marybeth knows all about the legend of Victor Crowley, the poor unfortunate child who lived there.
Suffering from a rare deforming disease, Victor was kept hidden away by his father (seen in flashback played by Kane Hodder, who also portrays the older Victor) but one night, a group of cruel kids threw fireworks at the house to scare the poor child. When his father Thomas returned to his burning home and hearing the screams of his son, he attempted to rescue him by chopping at the front door. Unfortunately, Victor was right on the other side of the wood and caught a hatchet to the bonce. Thomas died of a broken heart later, and since then people have been going missing, and the locals are convinced Victor haunts the area, still screaming for his daddy. The swamp area was sealed off and declared illegal to be in, which explains why there are no other boat trips!
As the group attempts to get to the main road and safety, they begin to meet some very gruesome ends, much to the delight of the audience, of course.
Although Hatchet is almost the definition of the slasher film, it wasn’t that genre that influenced writer-director Adam Green the most. “While I may have grown up on a healthy diet of all of the great slashers, my two biggest influences for Hatchet were actually not slasher films at all. John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London and Tom Holland’s Fright Night were the two films that influenced Hatchet the most,” he told us. “The fact that those movies contained so much comedy made them massively entertaining, far beyond what audiences had come to expect from those subgenres. There may be nothing funny about Victor Crowley himself, and the violence/gore may be turned up to eleven, but Hatchet has a comedic edge that very few slasher films that came before it (intentionally) had.”
It was a slasher that influenced the look of Victor Crowley, though. Green describes the makeup design as a cross between John Merrick (the real-life Elephant Man) and Rocky Dennison (whose life was depicted in the Cher film Mask). He wanted the audience to feel the same shock they felt when they first saw the unmasked Jason come crashing through the window at the end of Friday the 13th Part 2. It’s a repulsion at how he looks, but within the Crowley story, there’s the empathy we feel for both Merrick and Dennison, too.
Slasher films had fallen out of favour, and Green was met with some resistance when trying to get it made initially. “The trend was leaning towards no more slasher-in-the-woods-type stuff. My reps basically told me that Hatchet wasn’t going to happen,” he explained, “I then got Kane Hodder attached and the producers, and I made a mock trailer. We made that trailer for literally $4. That’s what we used to get the horror community talking about the film and then it was a little easier to get the money to make it. So, I went to my industry connections and told I got the money to make this now!”
What Hatchet had was some bloody effective gory kills – all done with prosthetics and in-camera ingenuity. Audiences saw people being torn in two, hacked in half lengthways, a head being ripped open from the mouth backwards not to mention one being twisted like a bottle top, arms ripped off and gallons of plasma thrown over nearby trees to emphasis the carnage. We lapped it up.
Hatchet wasn’t a commercial success initially. Horror fans got it; it was a hit at all the festivals, and while it took a little longer for the rest of the film-watching public to latch on to the movie, it found an appreciative audience on DVD. It was a perfect storm; horror fans had been chomping at the bit for a new bogeyman to slice up screens, and having the hulking Hodder under the horrific makeup was a masterstroke since he was already known to fans for his portrayal of Jason Voorhees in four of the Friday the 13th movies. The home release benefitted from being released in both theatrical and ‘unrated director’s cut’, the latter containing an extra minute of that all-important gore.
Now, after over a decade, the terror is hitting UK TV screens as Hatchet finally receives a TV premiere courtesy of Horror Channel. Considering the station’s close ties with FrightFest over the years, it’s only fitting. It’s surprising, however, since the sequels have already been screened. Green is ecstatic, though, “I’ve always said that even though Hatchet may have world premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in NYC, it was at FrightFest in London where Victor Crowley was truly born. FrightFest was ‘the screening heard around the world’, and the UK audience was so enthusiastic over Hatchet that every genre festival on the planet seemed to call asking to program the film the very next day. A decade and three sequels later, it’s about time that the film plays on Horror Channel, which feels like its natural home.”
And as we mentioned, sequels did indeed follow, much to the delight of fans. Hatchet II and III were released in 2010 and 2013, respectively. Scream Queen Danielle Harris replaced Zaragoza as final girl Marybeth and Parry Shen returned as an entirely different character. Green himself had already had these planned, however: “A major reason why the Hatchet sequels have succeeded is that they were planned out from the very start. In the first film, I actually showed some of the weapons that Victor wouldn’t actually use until the later films and I held back crucial elements of his mythology to be revealed later on down the road. Of course, it was also a risky move given that there was no way of knowing if I’d ever get to make the sequels.” The latter was only written by Green, however, but was still an entertaining gore-filled romp with his stamp all over it. The trilogy complete, everybody thought they’d seen the last of the hulking swamp monster.
Then in 2017, out of the blue, came a fourth instalment, merely entitled Victor Crowley. At that year’s FrightFest, Hatchet was originally listed as being screened in a special 10th-anniversary version with never before seen footage and extended death scenes that were cut from the film before it even hit the festival circuit. Just before the screening, however, it was revealed that it would be, in fact, a brand new Hatchet film getting its European premiere at the illustrious horror gathering (the world premiere happened a few nights before at Hollywood’s ArcLight Cinema at another event similarly advertised as an anniversary celebration.
The fourth film is set ten years after the trilogy with Shen’s character being the only survivor of the original carnage. The return to the swamp was in a way prompted by the sad passing of Wes Craven. It was another late legend, however, who initiated the process: “The reality that our idols are not going to be here forever was suddenly very real. You start asking yourself, ‘Well, what have we done that even matters?’ For months, I was really in a depression, thinking that nothing we’ve been doing really matters, that it can’t compare,” he explains, “Then, at Rock and Shock, which is a convention in Worcester, MA, I wound up being asked to moderate George Romero’s panel. After the panel, George said, ‘I know you’ve been going through a rough time, I know you’ve been taking Wes’ passing personally – you have to get over that, and get back on your feet.’ And as part of his pep talk, he had said, ‘So, where’s the next Crowley picture?’ And I said, ‘There isn’t going to be one, I’m done with that.’ And he pointed to this standing ovation in the audience, and he said, ‘You’ve got to understand, ’til they say it’s over, it isn’t.’ 48 hours later, I’m back in LA, and I’m sitting at my desk, and I’m typing ‘Ext. Honey Island Swamp. Night.’”
After over a decade, it’s hard to recall the impact Hatchet had on horror cinema. It took us back to the gory heyday of slashers while also driving forward with physical gore effects (Green’s no CGI rule is immensely rewarding) and giving us a new bad guy to be afraid of. The mix of scares and laughs is pitch-perfect and Victor Crowley, ever silent, is one of the most terrifying bogeymen of recent memory. Here’s to the next instalment!
HATCHET screens on Horror Channel on August 26th. Tune in on Sky 317, Virgin 149, Freeview 70, Freesat 138.
In the latest issue of STARBURST, we take a look at the most terrifying creature known to man – clowns! With the release of Joker, starring Joaquin Phoenix, and IT Chapter Two, featuring the return of Pennywise, we take a look at our favourites and preview the movies.
Stallone is back in Rambo: Last Blood, the Henson Company’s classic story The Dark Crystal returns to the small screen in Age of Resistance, and in anticipation of the release of Crawl, we look at the world of killer crocodile movies – not to mention chatting to the director and star about the film.
We also chat to director Danishka Esterhazy about the horror updating of beloved kids’ TV show in The Banana Splits Movie, and composer Kristian Eidnes Andersen talks about scoring Lars Von Tier’s Antichrist.
Plus Horror Obscura looks at another overlooked shocker and you can get the skinny on cool card game Keyforge.
Plus all your favourite COLUMNS, NEWS, REVIEWS and much MORE from the worlds of SCI-FI, HORROR and FANTASY.
Most ‘normal’ folk know him as that nice Paddy off of Emmerdale on the telly, but to us, Dominic Brunt is a director of fantastic films – quite literally. His debut Before Dawn was a relationship drama set among a zombie apocalypse, and his follow-up, Bait, was a gore-filled, hard-hitting story of desperation when faced with debt collectors. However, his latest cinematic outing – hitting the Horror Channel in January – is an outrageously grotesque slice of surreal horror. Imagine if John Waters directed an episode of The Outer Limits that was written by Roald Dahl’s more sadistic twin. It probably still couldn’t prepare you for what you’ll be faced with. Surprisingly, though, it was Brunt’s wife, Joanne Mitchell, who came up with the story.
While Brunt’s previous films have had a grounded social conscience among the horror, Attack of the Adult Babies takes a less cerebral approach to ethics, politics, and the world order. Taking a leaf out of Alex Chandon’s book (the pair have worked together several times, and Dominic was a memorable cast member in Chandon’s superb Inbred), there are plenty of outrageous visuals, and sickening situations as the story unravels before our disbelieving eyes.
We spoke to Dominic and Joanne as the film was due to be released in 2017, and they told us that although Joanne wrote the story, they trusted Paul Shrimpton with the script, largely due to his work on the aforementioned Inbred. “I really like Paul’s way of working, and I know he can deal with that side of things,” Dominic explained, “Jo broke it down scene-by-scene and then we passed it to Paul. He stuck rigidly to the storyline; he changed some of the ending and the dialogue, he put a few jokes in, and he brought a fantastic pace to it and a shape that was far better than it had been.”
It was a step-up for the pair filmmaking-wise, as Brunt told us: “There was a lot of pre-production because there’s a large cast in this one. It’s set in a massive manor house, and we found one about called Broughton Hall [in Skipton], so we managed to live there and eat there, and we could get up in the morning and start filming and stop when we dropped.” The convenience of shooting and staying in the same place made the production much easier than the previous film, “Bait was twenty-six locations – it was a nightmare dragging these massive lorries and seventy-three crew around,” he continued. All this with only a three-week shooting schedule!
The film begins rather sedately, albeit interspersed with a grotesque nappy-wearing man being pursued by a sexy young nurse, while others get into their uniforms. We’re introduced to a nice family playing a board game. George and Sandra (Andrew Dunn, best known for TV’s Dinnerladies and Kate Coogan) seem to be attempting to coax Sandra’s son Tim (Kurtis Lowe) to get into the spirit of it, while Tim’s daughter Kim (Mica Proctor) is more concerned that her would-be stepbrother has been having a dirty rummage with her underwear. Suddenly, a pair of Eastern European thugs burst in and demand the group hit the deck. Despite being absolutely inept, they tell Sandra and the two kids to go to retrieve some documents from a nearby mansion, or George will ‘get it’. Although they’re terrified, they set off, leaving George in their home. Except it turns out, it’s all his planning, and the pair are even more incompetent than one could possibly imagine.
Meanwhile, at the mansion, a strange gathering is taking place. A group of ageing, overweight gentlemen are assembled for a weekend refuge. They are not getting pampered, though. Well, not in the normal spa way. Clad only in towelling nappies, they are given oversized milk bottles and begin guzzling at the teats. The nurses, all attractive, stocking-clad young girls are given strict instructions from the dominatrix-like Margaret (Sally Dexter) and her sidekick Clinton (Joanne Mitchell). The collection of men includes bankers, ministers, and other dignitaries and are played by the best of the grotesque. Brunt has worked with some of the men before; Seamus O’Neill is another Inbred veteran along for the ride while wild-haired comedian Charlie Chuck (Woof! Bark! Donkey!) appeared in the director’s Bait, but new to the team is Laurence R. Harvey, versatile star of The Human Centipede sequels amongst other cult offerings. They may look unusual to start off with, but once they commence feeding on the milk, am even more outlandish physical change begins. They grow porcine-type snouts and, worst still, start to soil their nappies.
This is the reason they are there: their excrement feeds the machine that perpetuates their wealth. Literally. Only, rather than a nuts-and-bolts thing, it’s an ancient alien that lives deep underneath the house. It’s an interesting concept (and beautifully farfetched) and is just crazy enough to make the rest of the film appear normal.
What follows is a gloriously wild ride in which the family attempt to escape not only the marauding head nurse and her chainsaw-wielding colleague but the riled adult babies who are upset that their Masonic-type ritual has been interrupted.
By the time the movie reaches its climax, there’s enough gore to please any horror hound and more shite than Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom and The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence put together. If you can stomach that, you’re in for a treat. We’re also treated to several different styles of filmmaking: a vintage cartoon sequence, for example, illustrates the pig’s greed, Alex Chandon weaves his visual magic for a psychedelic trip into the creature’s mind, and a brilliantly over the top sequence animated by Claymation master Lee Hardcastle comes out of nowhere.
In today’s political climate, the gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ has increased exponentially. It actually makes the powerful, well-to-do occupants of the retreat rather believable. Some of the most influential figures in the world act like man-babies a lot of the time (there are a few, like a certain president, who seem to behave no other way), so it makes sense that they’d want some place where this can be indulged to the most grotesque degree. However, this is not a perverse fetish. They are there for a reason, and that reason perpetuates their wealth.
Dominic elaborated on what he wanted to do with the film: “I wanted to tell a wider story about the banking system and the people in charge and the corrupt politicians and MPs and people in authority who seemingly have the power to tell us and everybody else what to do,” he told us, “whereas they’re actually human beings, too and more often or not they are where the stories are.” The situation is so ridiculous that there had to element of humour in there, though, “It’s all to do with poking fun at that, not being too serious, trying to make a political point but putting it across satirically because nobody wants to listen to a political point any more, certainly not over an hour and a half in a film.” And although there’s a serious point behind it all and some wry comedy, it’s not played wholly for laughs. “It’s not a Shaun of the Dead-type thing,” Brunt said, “there’s humour in there, but it’s not presented as humour. Everyone plays it absolutely straight. In tone, it’s a bit like The Lobster, where everything’s very strange, and the funny things are ignored; it’s not played for laughs at all.”
Brunt peppers the film with horror film references and tropes – some obvious (quotes from Night of the Living Dead and a line lifted straight from anarchic eighties show The Young Ones) and some surprisingly subtle – but it’s the screenplay’s unique take on modern living that raises the biggest smiles. Some very low brow but on-the-pig-nose humour comes from the hideously deformed wheelchair-bound elder (whose name is bleeped out in a high-level Pythonesque show of surrealism), who’s meant to be keeping an eye on the security of the place but ends up watching call girl-type shows (you know, the ones that are on the lower reaches of the Sky channels) on his laptop. His desk is covered in tissues (he… err… must have had a cold…) and at one point he’s seen putting the phone down just as the girl on screen breaks down uncontrollably. We’d have loved to overhear that conversation! While we’re on that seedy subject, there’s an intermission midway through (a nod to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, perhaps?) in which we see two very bored-looking models awaiting their calls, shaking their mobiles eagerly at the camera. Superb attention to detail there, Mr Brunt!
Fans of Dominic’s TV acting career will be pleased to know that, despite the big man not appearing in front of the camera this time (we do hear him doing a rather fine Alan Bennett voice, though), several of his Emmerdale alumni make appearances, but they are not token cameos, they also prove their acting chops (as well as showing how game they are). Nicky Evans (Shane Maguire in Shameless) also returns to work with the director (he played a key role in Before Dawn) as one of the utterly clueless Russian thugs in the opening who ends up with more than just a headache. Fans of Cannibal Apocalypse and the 2003 version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre will enjoy his demise.
We’ll leave the last word on why you should see the film to the director himself: “The image of an adult baby is great; big fat men running around dressed in nappies chased by sexy nurses in suspenders. That would carry me through an hour-and-a-half of any movie, to be honest with you!” If that doesn’t convince you to watch, nothing will.
ATTACK OF THE ADULT BABIES screens on Horror Channel on January 5th. Sky 317, Virgin 149, Freeview 70, Freesat 138.
In 2010, Howard and Jonathan Ford wrote and directed a fresh take on the zombie film with The Dead. Set within the soaring heat of Africa, a survivor of an airplane crash attempts to find his family while the undead take grip of the country. It was a bold and exciting change of pace from what we were used to from the zombie subgenre at this point, debuting just before the behemoth TV series The Walking Dead hit screens in October, 2010. It was as bleak as a zombie movie should be and paved the way in 2013 for a sequel, this time set in India.
The Dead 2: India, like its predecessor, makes no attempt to explain the zombie outbreak, instead just puts us straight into the action. However, it’s a subdued affair, and like the first movie, involves a trek across barren land and dangerous clime as our hero, Nicholas (Joseph Millson), attempts to reach his pregnant girlfriend, Ishani (Meenu Mishra), 300 miles away in Mumbai. Nicholas is an engineer on the wind turbines, a job that comes in handy later on when he needs to get things working to aid him on his journey. Along the way, he meets a small orphan boy, Javed (Anand Krishna Goyal), who he saves from certain death when the boy’s village is overrun with the undead.
The film kicks off, however, with a stunningly evocative credit sequence that juxtaposes the bustling cities of India with the poor and litter-strewed slums; the camera floating past the locations creating an almost 3D effect. Our first taste that something’s wrong is when a passenger on ship from Somalia (a neat link with the first film) stumbles home feverishly after his journey, dazed having been ‘bitten by a mad woman’ before boarding. In such a densely populated city, it’s not long for his disease to spread, and soon the dead will be tearing the throats of the living and stumbling slowly across the continent.
Not only does The Dead 2: India masterfully play with tension and deliver some gory treats, it’s stunningly photographed by Jonathan Ford, on triple duties as well as co-writing and co-directing. The opening shots have a nightmarish quality and pays homage to the likes of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead beautifully. Effects-wise, the majority were done in-camera, with just a few CGI moments to smooth things over. Star Joseph Millson told reporters when interviewed at the film’s premiere at the Film 4 FrightFest in 2013 that he “had almost no idea what was coming on every bit of action,” revealing that despite the intricate script, the shock set-ups were as surprising to him as they are to the audience. The stunts were all him, too “I was black-and-blue; I have the scars and bumps and bruises to prove it – that was fun!” Millson had previously been best known for British TV series Holby City and The Sarah Jane Adventures but had actually worked with the Ford Brothers on his first acting role, La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats, directed by Jonathan Glendening. He actually got the role of Nicholas after contacting the brothers about a film he was helping produce. The director wanted to call the movie The Dead, but Millson had heard of another film of the same name. Realising he’d worked with the Ford Brothers earlier, he contacted them and asked if they’d change their name. Naturally, they refused, but it put the actor back on their radar.
According to Millson, the Ford Brothers shot the film over the course of a month guerrilla-style on location after the Indian authorities refused permission. Whatever the reality, the brothers managed to do so much that was thought undoable. It was big ask, especially considering the action scenes the brothers had set up in the script. Many of these were intended for the first film, but that was such a harsh shoot, they were shelved. Here, though, there are no such reservations as Nicholas uses a paraglider and a vintage motorcycle among other things to make his escape. The army were also involved, appearing in the film and allowing the use of guns. The big problem authorities would have is the showing of the complete offensive contrast of the situation in the towns – opulent living overlooking the poorest living conditions you could imagine. Co-director Howard Ford said of the situation: “We all had tourist visas but when we went under the radar alarm bells must have rung as people from the ministry would consistently turn up at the hotels and bed and breakfast places where we were staying. However, we always managed to stay one step ahead of them as we were travelling 300 miles every other day. On one occasion we could see the flashing lights of police cars in the distance coming for us, but we still managed to escape in the nick of time”.
Like the first movie, in between the flesh-eating carnage and boiling hot road trip, there’s a real heart and human story. Nicholas’ motivation is the love of his girlfriend and the hope that he can save his unborn child. His unlikely friendship with the orphan Javid also spurs him on to ensure he’s safe too. There are awful decisions to be made along the way, though. Particularly when Nicholas comes across a young mother and child trapped in a crashed car.
Although The Dead 2: India wasn’t as well received as its predecessor, it’s deserves much more of an audience. Everything about it: the cinematography (how could you go wrong with the stunning vistas and evocative surroundings?), the subtle and haunting score by Imran Ahmad complements the images perfectly, and has the most simply effective zombies since Romero’s corpses shuffled across the screen. It’s also chock-full of gore, with the undead tearing pieces off victims and open wounds aplenty.
You get the chance to catch The Dead 2: India when it gets a UK TV premiere on Horror Channel. The channel will also be screening another film written and directed by Jonathan Ford and featuring sibling Howard in a small role, Offensive (2016). Set in rural France, it follows a retired couple who move into a house inherited by the male’s father, who helped liberate the village from the Nazis. As outsiders, they are besieged by a bunch of local thugs who have been conducting a reign of terror in the area and could have been behind the death of the father. A cross between Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs and James Watkins’ Eden Lake in both tone and brutality, it’s another one not to miss. A sort of geeky side note: the lead character (Bernard, the son of the war hero) is played by Russell Floyd, who was DC Ken Drummond in the much-missed TV series The Bill for three years during its heyday. Now don’t tell us we don’t educate you…
The Dead 2: India and Offensive bookend Horror Channel’s FrightFest season in August, which highlights some of the best films from previous years’ festivals. Other titles include: Attack of the Adult Babies, A Lonely Place to Die, All Cheerleaders Die, Martyrs (2015 version), The Green Inferno, Ginger Snaps, and more.
You can tune into the Horror Channel on Sky 317, Virgin 149, Freeview 70, Freesat 138.
While we anxiously await the release of Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood, STARBURST ranks all of Quentin Tarantino’s movies in order of preference…
[Note: QT must have penned the screenplay and directed for the film to make the list – sorry True Romance fans – and while he might not count Kill Bill as two movies in his “ten and done”-career plan, we do.]
Come back soon to find out how Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood fares!
9. THE HATEFUL EIGHT (2015)
Having originally been conceived as a novel and sequel to Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight is what one could describe as more of a spiritual successor to Reservoir Dogs. With its claustrophobic atmosphere and ensemble cast, there’s a lingering dread that hangs heavy throughout. Thankfully we’re treated to some of Tarantino’s razor-sharp dialogue and enough twists and turns to leave most people’s jaws on the floor. The performances by the whole cast are stellar with Jennifer Jason Leigh hitting it out of the park as the devilish Daisy Domergue. Add to that an original score by legendary film composer Ennio Morricone and you’re left with one of the most quintessential Tarantino experiences. A western thriller which truly manages to succeed on all fronts. | James Evans
8. DEATH PROOF (2007)
Quentin Tarantino’s contribution to Grindhouse was by far the better feature of the package, as the director drew on a range of exploitation cinema to tell an entertaining story of a stuntman murderer who terrorises his female victims and leaves them mangled by staged car crashes. The gender themes that come in to play are satisfying to see play out as hunter becomes prey and the film is entertainingly fast and furious, as it thrillingly delivers on the promise of its concept. Tarantino once said Death Proof is probably his worst flick but this blast of muscle car murderous mayhem still kicks some serious ass. | Jack Bottomley
7. KILL BILL: VOL 2 (2004)
Where Volume 1 was heavily influenced by samurai movies, Volume 2 is a western, giving The Bride the opportunity to avenge the many injustices she had suffered and exact deeply satisfying revenge on the family who had turned against her. Tarantino is a directorial chameleon, replacing the tightly enclosed urban landscape of Volume 1 for wide-open vistas, and as Black Mamba hunts down Budd (aka Sidewinder) and Elle Driver (aka California Mountain Snake) before administering the legendary five finger death punch to the eponymous Bill, you can’t help but feel a deep satisfaction for her. | Mark Newbold
6. DJANGO UNCHAINED (2012)
Bringing together the very sensitive subject of America’s slave-trading past with what is primarily a hilarious buddy road movie, it must have been a bit of a surprise at the time that Django Unchained was Tarantino’s highest-grossing movie to date. On the other hand, it isn’t hard to see why it was so successful: the stellar cast range from the beautifully articulate and humanly brutal hero Dr Shultz (Waltz), to the purely hideous, rage-inducing Calvin Candie (DiCaprio). With an N-word count of over a 100 and some truly disgusting racially-fuelled violence it’s a tough watch, but one that unfortunately reflects America at the time while also serving as a warning to the Trump generation. Auf wiedersehen! | Phillip Perry
5. INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009)
Inglorious Basterds is a fine example of Tarantino firing on all cylinders as a filmmaker, whilst perfectly encapsulating what we love about his films: highly tense atmosphere, darkly comedic dialogue, incredibly visceral violence, as well as excellent use of the camera and an outstanding cast bringing their top performances. While controversial topics like the holocaust have been portrayed very well on screen, Tarantino manages to create a story, while clearly being fictional, his use of historic accuracy at times, makes it feel like a story that could very easily have happened, as well as being somewhat ridiculous – am elite force of American Jewish forces plot to end the war, one Nazi scalp at a time. It also has one of the tensest opening scenes of a film we’ve ever seen. Pure perfection. | Peter Beckett
4. JACKIE BROWN (1997)
Look on IMDB and Jackie Brown rests near the bottom of Tarantino’s portfolio, just above the opinion-splitting Death Proof. But this is one of Tarantino’s smartest and most accomplished films. A love letter to the blaxploitation flicks that inspired Q in the first place, this crime thriller boasts fantastic performances from veteran leads Pam Grier and Robert Forster. Which is no small feat in a film also starring Michael Keaton, Robert de Niro, and Samuel L Jackson. It’s a smoother, slower film than Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction but rewarding to those who sit back and appreciate its finer details, especially after a repeat viewing. And of course, it’s got a killer soundtrack. | Jonathan Anderson
3. KILL BILL: VOL 1 (2003)
We all know the tragic story of Beatrix “The Bride” Kiddo (Uma Thurman), former member of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, betrayed by her former colleagues, left for dead on her wedding day and woken from a coma. Kill Bill: Vol 1 unfolds as she travels to Japan to convince legendary retired swordsmith Hattori Hanzō to forge a katana for her, leading to The House of Blue Leaves, where she takes down The Crazy 88 and her nemesis O-Ren Ishii in a memorable battle. It’s the stuff of movie legend, one Quentin Tarantino matched with the Western-inspired second volume. | Mark Newbold
2. RESERVOIR DOGS (1992)
This is where QT came in, with all his hallmarks already in place. There is blood (so much blood…), there is inconsequential pop culture chat, posing with guns, humour, torture, cruelty, and an immaculately chosen soundtrack (the last three melding together in one memorable scene). It’s lean and mean and those of us turned off by the bloated cartoonishness of more recent films thank it for that. But it does leave you wondering how this brash young auteur managed to spend the next nearly three decades mostly not making films and certainly not much (with exceptions) to rival the lean, mean potential of Reservoir Dogs. | Spleeny Dotson
1. PULP FICTION (1994)
Reservoir Dogs was Quentin Tarantino’s calling call, a great big wake-up call to an increasingly self-indulgent and lazy Hollywood film industry. As appetisers go it hit the sweet spot but Pulp Fiction was the main course that really got audience’s taste buds racing. Pulp Fiction – the film that saved John Travolta from the career Hell of endless Look Who’sOinking sequels and sealed Samuel L Jackson’s enduring reputation as the King of Cool. It pops and crackles with wit and invention and oozes love for both cinema and for the potential of cinema. Its punchy plot plays fast and loose with the conventions of linear cinema narrative – characters weave in out of the scenarios in its vaguely-portmanteau structure – and we’re constantly second-guessing where we’re going and what QT has in store for us next. As endlessly quotable as it is rewatchable, Pulp Fiction remains perhaps Tarantino’s one inarguable masterpiece. | Paul Mount
