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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
youre 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 movies 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 1980s, 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.
Thats 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 dont recall. Anyway, its
obvious I wasnt 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
shouldve 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 its buried so deep
that Ill never be able to dig it up. My
memory of the experience exists mostly as a
series of random snapshots in my head. Im 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 couldnt even remember what
television show he was on. This was before the
Internet. Otherwise I wouldve 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,
Lets 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
didnt 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 Collectors 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
Collectors 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
didnt 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
Ive never listened to.
I want to hear
all about 2008s 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, Im
alive! Now, we get together frequently and
were 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. Hes 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 Canters
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 cant remember. Ive
mostly lived in Dallas. Ive been married
for 22 years to Kay Bay. I have a 17-year-old
daughter. Ive been a commercial
photographer for twenty years. Im 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.
Its only been screened in a rough cut. I
have an Emmy Award. Lets see.
Ive done quite a bit of traveling for work
and play. Ive been to Europe. Ive
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?
Ive
never seen Mirror Mirror. I have a
vague recollection of working on it but I
dont 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. Im
guessing that the job also involved driving a
twenty-foot box truck and doing a lot of rigging.
I dont 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 Swansons 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 didnt 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 kids 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,
Im 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.
Theres 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, Im 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 Savinis
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 youre one
of the major players) getting a movie made is
like winning the lotto. Because of the state of
technology, everybodys got an HD camera and
thousands of regional micro-budget movies are
being made every year. But, theyre 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,
youre in for a rude awakening.
Vampires,
werewolves, zombies, witches, creatures, aliens,
telemarketers...what does it for you horrorwise
Glen and why?
Ive
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
Bakers innovative transformation scenes (he
also worked on House of Dark Shadows) but because
of its 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.
Romeros 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. Theyre still zombies to me.
Creatures/Aliens
Ridley Scotts
Alien. Also Pitch Dark.
Plus, I like anything with Kate Beckinsale or
Mila Jovavich just because theyre 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. Its 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 dont
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?
Ill 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
dont 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. Its
straight to DVD schlock and I can enjoy it for
what it is. But if its 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, Im sure Ive seen at least
a couple hundred movies at the drive-in.
Ill focus on the 70s because that was
an awesome horror movie decade and I was a
teenager so I couldve actually seen these
movies at the drive-in. Texas Chainsaw
Massacre, Romeros Dawn of the
Dead, and Carrie. Im 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,
Ill 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. Thats where I
first saw Evil Dead. I also had the
opportunity to see Lucio Fulcis
Zombie 2 and it was projected on a
huge screen. The scene where the zombie forces
the womans eye very slowly into the big
splinter of wood was definitely the most perverse
and unnerving thing I had seen at that time. I
wont 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. Ive
seen it recently and it looks totally bogus.
Im 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. Hes 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 womens 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. Thats the first time I ever made
myself up as a bloodsucker. Possibly the last.
What scares
you in real life?
Not much.
Im the guy who narrowly avoids a head-on
collision and doesnt even get a rapid
heartbeat. I dont 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 wasnt
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.
Im also afraid of being submerged in water.
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