Beyond Bloodsuckers From Outer Space: Glen Coburn Talks About the Cult Horror Hit and More by Owen Keehnen

Glen Coburn was 23 years old when he wrote (in 3 days) and directed the cult horror classic 'Bloodsuckers from Outer Space'.  That was 26 years ago.  Now older and wiser it was fun to catch up with Glen, discuss what he's been up to, his 'Bloodsuckers Reunion' project, the Special Collector's Edition DVD, horror conventions, horror flicks, and the lasting love so many fans have of his classic 80s movie.   It's all here in this exclusive racksandrazors.com interview. 


  Glen, so tell me did you ever expect your writing/directing tour de force ‘Bloodsuckers from Outer Space’ (1984) to develop a cult following?

First of all, I hope you’re using the expression, “tour de force” with a sense of irony. I actually refer to BFOS as my disasterpiece. When the title first came to me in 1980, I thought it was interesting because of its ambiguity. It could serve as the title of a spoof or a legitimate horror/sci-fi movie. Whereas, a title like, “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” leaves no doubt about the movie’s identity. When I eventually made the movie, I fully expected it to be a cult film. For me it was as if that was a genre unto itself. In fact, it was considered a cult film shortly after its release. Market saturation was a big factor in that. Karl Lorimar Home Video delivered tens of thousands of units. It was available in practically every video store in the country. Many rental stores had multiple copies. It was also licensed in many foreign markets. It was dubbed in French, Italian, and Spanish. Then when Warner Brothers absorbed Lorimar in the late 1980’s, Warners ended up with the home video library. They re-issued BFOS on Warner Home Video in ’93 and ’96. A lot of people saw it or at least heard of it. So the ubiquitous nature of the film contributed to the so-called cult following. It is definitely a fun, party movie, and it is one-of-a-kind. That’s why the cult following continues and why the kids today like it as much as the people who first came across it in the ‘80s.

What was your initial intent when you set about making it?

I was twenty-three years old when I made the movie and I wrote the script in three days. I think the short turn-around was the result of a dare but I really don’t recall. Anyway, it’s obvious I wasn’t taking the process very seriously from the get go. My intention was to put my stamp on it and that the idiosyncratic nature of the movie would garner some attention and that I would be able to make more movies. The truth is that I did not have the talent or experience to pull it off. The compositions are good and the coverage is such that it cut together well. And there is a fair amount of cerebral dialog and sophomoric humor. But mostly the movie is sluggish and boring. I should’ve spent at least a few months rewriting and fine-tuning the script and I should have been more of a hands-on director. In retrospect, I set myself up for a fall that I was too clueless to anticipate. In the case of BFOS, a friend of mine raised the money but the profit all went to the sales agent and the distributor. There was no easy money out there to make another movie and the embarrassing quality of Bloodsuckers did not encourage anyone to put money into any project that I had a hand in.

Do you have a favorite “time capsule” memory from making the movie?

If there is a “time capsule” it’s buried so deep that I’ll never be able to dig it up. My memory of the experience exists mostly as a series of random snapshots in my head. I’m a photographer so that may be the reason why my recollections are cataloged in that fashion. I do remember that when I met Pat Paulsen I told him that I thought he was really funny on “Laugh-In.” He told me that he was never on “Laugh-In.” He was on “The Smothers Brothers’ Comedy Hour.” He was “the name” in my movie and I couldn’t even remember what television show he was on. This was before the Internet. Otherwise I would’ve looked him up on imdb or Wikipedia so I could discuss his career highlights with him. I remember that when Chris and Samantha were naked in the shower, throwing up blood that Chris had a hard-on. That was awkward. Thom Meyers told me a story a couple of months ago that I vaguely remember. He said that we pulled a prank with Laura Ellis. When she finished her last line on one take, I said, “Let’s just pick it up from there. Go on Laura.” She was totally perplexed. I told her to go on with her next line. Of course she didn’t really have another line. She became more distressed and Thom said, “You know. The line about the books.” Laura started crying and Chad (the D.P.) called us a couple of sadists.

‘Bloodsuckers from Outer Space’ has also been reissued in a Special Collector’s DVD Edition. What sort of stuff can someone expect from this deluxe edition?

At the end of 2007, I got an itch to release Bloodsuckers on DVD. Warner Home Video was listed as the distributor on imdb but the title was not listed in their catalog. I called up the legal department and found out that they had not renewed the license. I had a new transfer done from a 35mm print that had never been projected. Then I released it myself. When I designed the artwork, I stuck that “Special Collector’s Edition” banner on there to make it seem more significant. It was a beautiful new transfer and the DVD included, “Bloodsucker Reunion” so I guess it was special.

The reason that anything happened at all at that point is that I launched a major marketing campaign. I didn’t spend a lot of money but I did spend a significant amount of time. My skills as a photographer, writer, graphic designer, video editor, and my marketing expertise got the movie a lot of attention. There were countless posts, reviews, interviews on horror websites, etc. I went to Texas Frightmare Weekend and had a terrible screening at 10am on a Sunday. It was a downer. I was a total “fish out of water” at that convention. It was freak show, jam-packed, elbow to elbow with hardcore gore and torture porn fanatics. But, Loyd Cryer is an awesome guy and he really knows how to put on a successful convention. He gets top-notch guests. Then I went to Cinema Wasteland in Cleveland. My meals and hotel room were paid for. I got a free table back with the “celebs.” Ken gave me a Friday night 9:30 screening. It was an awesome experience. I had a lot of fun and made many friends. Bloodsuckers was a hit there. I sold a bunch of DVDs, t-shirts and posters, signed autographs. A few people brought old VHS copies of “Tabloid” for me to sign. Art Ettinger interviewed me and wrote an excellent multi-page article that was published with lots of pics in “Ultra Violent” magazine. After that I got a call from Media Blasters. They ended up releasing the movie on their Shriek Show label and I got a very nice check. They used my master but their encryption is better than mine and their version has my audio commentary, which I’ve never listened to.

I want to hear all about 2008’s ‘Bloodsucker Reunion’ which you wrote, directed, produced, edited, etc.

When I decided to release BFOS on DVD, I was immediately determined to make “Bloodsucker Reunion.” I thought it was essential. The movie was twenty-four years old and the idea of getting people who worked on the movie all those years ago to share their stories was priceless. Tracking everybody down was a challenge but I was able to get many of the original cast and crewmembers to show up. They all had fond memories of working on the movie and recollections of specific moments of their own experiences on the shoot. I was disappointed that I could not track down Thom Meyers. Two people who knew him said that he fell on hard times in New York City and ended up committing suicide. I felt horrible. Last year, Thom found me on facebook and sent me the message, “I’m alive!” Now, we get together frequently and we’re great friends. The most significant part of the process was that I set up an interview with Dennis Letts who played General Sanders in the movie. He was on Broadway performing the twenty-minute opening monolog in August: Osage County, which won the Tony for Best Play. When I talked to Dennis in December he mentioned nonchalantly that he had health problems. When I inquired further, he told me that he had lung cancer. He was so low key about it. It was like, “I stubbed my toe.” Anyway, I had videographer in NYC shoot the interview in January and Dennis passed away six weeks later. He’s very funny in the interview. Dennis was in over forty movies and television shows. He was the classic character actor. Bloodsuckers was his first movie.

After ‘Bloodsuckers from Outer Space’ you made ‘Tabloid’ in 1985 and then nothing until ‘Hollywood Deadbeat’ in 2005. What was keeping you busy in the interim?

I lived in Los Angeles for a while. We lived in the Hollywood Fairfax district, right behind Canter’s Delicatessen, a block and a half from CBS. While I was there, I worked on a number of movies, television commercials, music videos, and maybe television. I can’t remember. I’ve mostly lived in Dallas. I’ve been married for 22 years to Kay Bay. I have a 17-year-old daughter. I’ve been a commercial photographer for twenty years. I’m a journalist, and copywriter. I wrote seven screenplays when I was in my twenties. The only ones that were produced were BFOS and Hollywood Deadbeat, which is actually still not completed. It’s only been screened in a rough cut. I have an Emmy Award.  Let’s see. I’ve done quite a bit of traveling for work and play. I’ve been to Europe. I’ve been to NYC many times.

Glen, you also were an art department production assistant on one of my favorite cheesy horror flicks ‘Mirror Mirror’ (1990). Any tales from the other side of the looking glass you would care to share?

I’ve never seen “Mirror Mirror.” I have a vague recollection of working on it but I don’t think I worked on the whole movie. I remember that my wife worked on it too. I think that job was sort of wedged in between some music videos I was working on for Propaganda Films. Those were usually twenty-hour shoot days so I was sleeping about three hours a night. On Mirror Mirror, I remember shooting some scenes in a big old craftsman style house near downtown. I still see it in commercials all the time. There was girl in the movie named Rainbow Harvest. She came from a hippie family. I cleaned a bunch of windowpanes with wadded up newspaper. I’m guessing that the job also involved driving a twenty-foot box truck and doing a lot of rigging. I don’t remember Karen Black but I saw her about a year later at Skywalker Sound and she was a total knockout. Some jobs had a big impact on me. That was not one of them. I have tons of memories and stories about working on “Pacific Heights”: chatting with John Schlesinger while driving him around the Culver Studios lot on a golf cart, our production office was once Gloria Swanson’s bungalow, and I took coffee to Tippi Hedren during an earthquake while she was in a wardrobe fitting. I worked on that movie for almost six months. It was the most fun job I had in L.A. Also, I shot stills and played a bit part in movie called Fatal Skies and on that one I got to hang out with Tim Leary! That was awesome. The horror movie stuff didn’t really mean anything to me back then. I was just taking any art-department or production job I could get. I did work on a horror movie called the Willies. It was sort of a kid’s show. My wife did wardrobe and I was Production Associate. The producers were friends of mine. I worked with Shawn Astin and I played his shadow double in a nighttime tent scene. The terrific character actor Jim Karen (Poltergeist, Return of the Living Dead) was in it and he was the nicest man, totally cool. We shot that show on the notoriously haunted Stage 9 on the back end of the Culver lot. My wife and I had a major supernatural encounter there. The writer-director, Brian Peck played Scuz, the Mohawk kid in “Return of the Living Dead.” He was also in Part 2 and 3.

Do you have any other projects lined up you would like to let the racksandrazors.com readers know about?

For sure, I’m finishing the re-edit on my Neo-Noir Psychodrama, “Hollywood Deadbeat.” I shot it on 16mm black and white film and it looks awesome. Very good performances, somewhat disturbing film. I will do a marketing blitz and get it screened wherever I can. Distribution will be problematic. I mostly want to get it done and get it seen because of the excellent performance by the lead actor, Craig Dupree. He did quite a bit of theater work but this was his only film. He took his own life last June. Very sad. There’s a scene in H-Deadbeat where he gets out of bed in the middle of the night, walks into the living room and sees a dead man hanging with a noose around his neck. Considering that Craig ended up in the noose himself is very eerie. His character also dies a very violent death at the end of the film. Also, I’m working on DVD releases for a couple of ‘80s gore films made by my friend Matt Devlen: “Ozone Attack of the Redneck Mutants,” and “The Abomination.” When the whole BFOS resurgence was in full swing, I planned on doing a sort of remake only the new one would be fast-paced, action-packed with lots of gore. I also got seriously into prepro for “Rescue Girls on Cannibal Island.” It was going to be a very cheap movie but some guys from Tom Savini’s SFX school got on board for free! They were going to provide their services and all the supplies. So, I felt compelled to upscale the whole movie. The budget got out of control. The economy went south and I lost my investors. A couple of months ago I had to sell my (brand new) Sony V1U HDV camera to help pay the bills. So, movie-making is off my plate. The only way to really make it happen is to live in L.A. and play the game everyday. And even then (unless you’re one of the major players) getting a movie made is like winning the lotto. Because of the state of technology, everybody’s got an HD camera and thousands of regional micro-budget movies are being made every year. But, they’re mostly pieces of shit. And the DVD business has totally tanked. So, if you love the idea of getting together your friends and family and putting on a show in the barn, go for it. But if you expect it to be anymore than a hobby or vanity effort, you’re in for a rude awakening.

Vampires, werewolves, zombies, witches, creatures, aliens, telemarketers...what does it for you horrorwise Glen and why?

I’ve always been partial to vampires but I got really sick of the genre when vampires had to transform into monsters and also that they walk around in the daylight. I think vampires should be seductive, magnetic, luring their prey through a sort of hypnosis. “Interview with the Vampire” is an example of a good vampire movie. Also, at least once a year I watch, “House of Dark Shadows (1970).” Dan Curtis did and excellent job on that one. Pretty scary and a nice amount of blood and gore. New vampires: “30 Days of Night.” As far as werewolves, “The Howling” was ground-breaking, not only because of Rick Baker’s innovative transformation scenes (he also worked on House of Dark Shadows) but because of it’s clever script and wonderful cast. Kevin McCarthy, Slim Pickens, John Carradine, Patrick Macnee, Dick Miller, Kenneth Tobey, and a cameo by Roger Corman. One of a kind. My favorite contemporary werewolf film is “Dog Soldiers.” Of course I like zombies. Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” is the best. But, I like the remake of “Dawn of the Dead.” “28 Days (28 Weeks) Later” are very good even though the creatures are technically victims of the rage virus. They’re still zombies to me. Creatures/Aliens…Ridley Scott’s “Alien.” Also “Pitch Dark.” Plus, I like anything with Kate Beckinsale or Mila Jovavich just because they’re sexy even if the movie sucks.

What was the first movie to scare the shit out of you?

The answer to this of course has to be taken in context. The kids who read this have stacks of VHS tapes and DVDs that they collect and they see everything in sort of a vacuum. It’s all at once in the present moment, in the current state of popular culture. I have to go back to 1978. I took my girlfriend to a sneak preview screening a new movie called, “Halloween.” It was a 500-seat theater and there was an ass in every seat. Everyone was screaming, grabbing onto the person next to them. People were practically jumping out of their seats. That movie scared the hell out of me. When I watch it now, I don’t even flinch. That movie was a real turning point. John Carpenter invented a genre that would forever change the shape of horror movies.

And what was the last horror movie you saw that seriously annoyed you?

I’ll have to admit that I watch many more shitty horror movies than I do good ones. This is mainly because I like to watch a lot of horror movies and most horror movies are shit. But, I don’t judge all movies by the same standards. For instance, I can watch really horrible SyFy Original movies and enjoy them even though they suck. Something like “S.S. Doomtrooper” is no masterpiece. It’s straight to DVD schlock and I can enjoy it for what it is. But if it’s a huge budget Hollywood horror film and it sucks, that does annoy me. The 2002 television DocuHorror “A Haunting in Connecticut” was really scary. When I watched it, I believed it was completely plausible and it was creepy. I loved it. Last year when the big budget, fictionalized version of the same story was released theatrically as “The Haunting in Connecticut,” my wife and I went to see it. We both thought it was a bogus, unscary, implausible, boring piece of dog shit. That movie really annoyed me because somehow, the “creative” powers that be in Hollywood were able to take a perfectly good demonic ghost story and make it a total snooze. I wanted my money back.

Okay, we're pulling into the Glen Coburn Drive In. What three horror flicks are on the triple bill for tonight and what goodies are they going to be serving up at the concession stand?

My parents were teenagers in the ‘50s so they were the original drive-in generation. When I was a kid, we went every weekend. At that time, there were easily 20 drive-in screens in the Dallas area and probably 4 within a ten-minute drive of our house. So, I’m sure I’ve seen at least a couple hundred movies at the drive-in. I’ll focus on the ‘70s because that was an awesome horror movie decade and I was a teenager so I could’ve actually seen these movies at the drive-in. “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead,” and “Carrie.” I’m a purist and very nostalgic so the concession stand will be serving popcorn, hotdogs, Junior Mints, Raisonettes, Dots, Milk Duds, and Sweet Tarts. Soft drinks of course but since this is Texas, I’ll be having Dr. Pepper.

And your favorite horror flick death scene?

There are so many gruesome horror movie death scenes that it would be difficult to choose one unless taken in the context of when and where you saw it. At The Joe Bob Briggs Drive-In Movie Festival in 1984 (where BFOS premiered), there was a “too gory for cable” day. That’s where I first saw “Evil Dead.” I also had the opportunity to see Lucio Fulci’s “Zombie 2” and it was projected on a huge screen. The scene where the zombie forces the woman’s eye very slowly into the big splinter of wood was definitely the most perverse and unnerving thing I had seen at that time. I won’t forget that one. Also, when I was 16 years old, I went to see “The Omen” in its initial theatrical run. The scene where David Warner gets his head cut off by the sheet of glass that flies off the back of a truck was really shocking to me at that time. I’ve seen it recently and it looks totally bogus. I’m a fan of “Day of the Dead.” And I love the scene at the end where zombies surround Rhodes and they literally tear him in half. He’s still conscious and giving them shit. I love that scene. A death scene that cracks me up is in “Sleepaway Camp III” when Angela buries the camp counselor with only the women’s head sticking out of the ground. And then Angela runs over the head with a lawn mower.

What's the best Halloween costume you ever had?

Last Halloween was the 25th Anniversary of the premiere of BFOS at the Joe Bob Briggs Drive-In Movie Festival. So, my costume was the Bloodsucker farmer in the opening scene of the movie. That’s the first time I ever made myself up as a bloodsucker. Possibly the last.

What scares you in real life?

Not much. I’m the guy who narrowly avoids a head-on collision and doesn’t even get a rapid heartbeat. I don’t like snakes. We had a cottonmouth water moccasin outside our kitchen window recently. It was about six feet long. My wife and daughter were screaming. I wasn’t really so much scared as creeped-out. I went outside and tossed a cinder block and hit it right on the head. It was dazed and tried to climb up the brick wall under the kitchen window. Then it shot off into the backyard. I spent an hour walking around with a shovel searching for it. Never found it. My neighbor cut one in half and the half with the head kept coming after him. I’m also afraid of being submerged in water.