James: My first influences in films were, in order of interest which changed with age-

-Walt Disney -Low Budget Westerns (I loved Roy Rogers) -Abbott and Costello Comedies (I laughed so long and loud, people in the audiences often complained to my parents.)Later in high school and college independent low budget films really caught my attention. Italian Sword and Sandal Epics or anything from American International Pictures had me racing to the theaters where I was talking back to the screen, making dumb jokes and attempting to improve the dialogue and story lines with my solo surreal commentaries. The Roger Corman Horror films were the best. That life changing paradigm shift came crashing down in a screening of 'The Terror' with the realization that Jack Nicholson was actually playing the character of an incredibly bad miscast actor with a terribly inappropriate accent in the middle of this Vincent Price Horror Film. This was art! "Bad" could be great. And so began my long search for the aesthetic of the "Bad." Jack N being goofy again in 'Easy Rider' seeming not to be acting, Val Lewton stretching his budget with affecting moments of what was not seen, and Orson Welles pulling us into that "other" world in Touch of Evil all helped put me on the road to 'Don't Go In The Woods'.

Brian: You directed your first film 'Inner Limits' in 1967. How did that production come about? What was your inspiration to write it?

James: At the UCLA Film School in 1967 the regular motion picture production classes were not available to beginning students until they had completed a number of required preliminary courses. As a group we were a very frustrated lot of young want-to-be filmmakers. The animation classes, on the other hand, were available to first year students and I was eager to start making movies as soon as possible so I yielded to that early Walt Disney influence and signed up. There was a popular and exciting paperback everyone was reading and talking about at that time, 'The Universe and Dr. Einstein.' The Unified Field Theory was suggesting to many of us an idea of planets and galaxies not being so different from atoms and particles. 'Inner Limits' was sort of my visual pun on that suggestion of the Theory. It was a big surprise when 'Inner Limits' found a spot on a national TV broadcast. There were two other animated short films that came out of my animation courses at UCLA- First- 'Dreamland,' a somber antique-like photo tour of the counterculture Mecca. Venice, California as narrated by Edgar Allen Poe's poem of the same title. Lastly- 'Ironclad,' a compressed lighthearted documentary look at those Civil War warships using clipped collage-like period photos and engravings all backed up by evocative songs of the day (the 1860s as well as the 1960s).

Brian: Do you have a favorite film of the four you made between your debut, 'Inner Limits' and the feature that many now consider a horror classic - 'Don't Go In the Woods?'

James: 'The Dirtiest Game In The World' (1970) would be my favorite film after 'Inner Limits' and before 'Don't Go In The Woods'- it was my first feature. At the time I wanted to make a film that would challenge and possibly shock an audience not unlike the French surrealist 'Un Chien Andalou.' A lot of 70s low budget movies used shock as entertainment value since the limited finances didn't allow the delivery of much else.
'Dirtiest Game,' at least for me, since it was made at the end of the 60s had to be X-rated - a nudie film with a political statement - "politicians are cynical." For me it was great fun but for many who saw it 'DG' was going way too far into the realm of the "grotesque." I played with aversion in my first film and many who saw it were extremely repulsed by the result. On at least one occasion repulsed to the point of being physically ill. I was pleased that none of those unhappy souls compelled to leave the screenings hesitated long enough to ask for their money back. A mark of success for a wonderfully "bad" movie. After 'Dirtiest Game' I was careful not to stray so far over that aversion line in my subsequent film efforts.

Brian: How did you, initially, become involved in 'Don't Go in the Woods' and since you didn't write it how did you allow your own vision to shine?

James: Where and how 'Woods' began- In Salt Lake City my postproduction work with Sunn Classic was drawing to a close, the NBC production contracts were coming to an end for Sunn Classic as Paul Klien, NBC president and chief supporter of Sunn Classic, was finishing his association with the network. Sunn Classics went up for sale but its stock and trade, the local Utah scenic beauty, was still available to all low budget filmmakers craving affordable production value. Inspiration was gushing forth all around the mountain community. In the bookstores an urban legend book by a Salt Lake writer had just come out, a wild man legend from my East Texas roots was gnawing away consistently at the back of my mind and the local Salt Lake stories of hikers sometimes murdered in the surrounding mountains started to play into the mix. I had just read a stripped down paperback thriller called 'Hunters Moon' and elements of a potential script started to come into a very soft focus. It was at this moment an old friend Peter Turner, a writer's agent from LA, called asking what I was up to. When I said I was thinking about developing a horror script, Peter snapped back, "Save yourself the trouble, I'm sending you one that's already perfect." That script was 'Sierra' by Garth Eliassen and it did happen to be almost perfect. I did a quick rewrite with Garth to fit the new location, the new budget (very low) and added more bloody killing scenes while dropping almost all the existing dialogue scenes. I had a plan. I would shoot outside for daylight avoiding having to light the set except for the few night scenes and use my unblimped 35 mm Arri recording only a scratch sound track. By limiting the sync dialogue to a minimum amount it would be simpler and cheaper to replace in a sound studio. As the seventies drew to a close, I was thinking lots of blood and gore in the Misumi Kenji 'Sword of Vengeance' style and a touch of humor would do the trick. So I took it to the woods and did it my way.

Brian: What was the mood on the set of 'Don't Go in the Woods' and how did you relate to the actors in the cast?

James: The mood on the set of 'Don't Go in the Woods' changed wildly from day to day. Just as the weather snapped from one extreme to another, one scene might go along like a summer picnic with old friends and then we'd find ourselves in something like a Werner Herzog-Klaus Kinski dogfight over creative differences. All our problems were ultimately resolved fairly quickly and we kept moving on our most sacred production schedule. Things happened at a fast clip so actors often seemed a little lost as to a scene's place in the story. The good actors quickly adapted to my manic vision and by the final days of the shoot we were reading each other's mind anticipating the blocking and bits of physical business. The theater scene in Salt Lake City was pretty well developed so as a director I was able to get really professional results with a few notable exceptions. You know the ones, we need not name names.

Brian: 'Don't Go in the Woods' has some pretty marvelously inventive kills. How did you go about establishing the tension and mood of the kills? The build-up to the death of a certain handicapped character is unbearably intense and well directed.

James: The inventive kills seemed necessary to keep interest levels high since I had so many killings early on in the film. This high speed of killings also allowed the later killings after a time to be more suspenseful as the pace of the story telling slowed. Sudden and violent attacks created the dramatic expectation for the audience that could be later manipulated to greater effect as the film began to focus on the main characters in the final chapters. By the time the handicapped guy stumbles or more aptly wheels into the woods, pretty much anything he does in the bloody context of the story plays into heavier suspense and maintains the ironic tone. In writing 'Woods' I looked carefully at the unwritten rules of horror and low budget films in general and made decisions at each point that propelled me along my individual path to the final resulting film. One of the first rules considered was the universal conceit that when a young couple is observed entering a sexual situation they will immediately become victims. My choice was to profile or label my victims as those who happened to be badly dressed fashion disasters as a way of telegraphing their approaching doom. My attempt at an amusing exception to prove my rule was the case of the honeymooning couple Dick and Cherry. Being out of fashion as a mark of the outcast was a Salt Lake "thing" being important in the light of a finely evolved peer pressure dynamic that was found there among the youth at that time. It was high powered stuff so I naturally want to make use of it.

Brian: At any point did you ever feel like you had gone too far with the gruesomeness? Also the sleeping bag kill has got to be one of my favorite of all time. Do you have any stories about the filming of that sequence?

James: I recognize the budget benefits that can be realized by using a story line where the action simply comes to the hero or heroes rather than having the story or the hero track down or search out the action. In the case of 'Woods' the action/killer gets to the victims as soon as the audience sees them enter the frame. The gruesomeness actually went over the entertainment line of my humor tinged world of 'Woods' in the original death scene for Joanie. During the editing stages I realized it was no longer a scene you could laugh at because it threw the viewer into the ugly world of intolerable 'Hostel/Saw' horror. I cut it back so the connection to the movie you could "laugh along with" survived the all too realistic horror situation as defined so well by 'Mark of the Devil'. That sleeping bag scene trades on that dream-like feeling of helplessness in the face of advancing or escalating terror. It was the first scene we shot and it bears the old low budget trademark of hiding most of the bloodletting inside the bag placing the burden on the imagination while still using the sack race-pratfall humor for the victims. While not precisely "off screen" in the usual low budget sense the violence is "under wraps" none the less. Our little known fact here is that we used old tires inside the hanging bags to give them that strange dead body shape.

Brian: It is rumored that comedian Sandra Bernhard is a fan of 'Don't Go in the Woods'. What kind of sequel would you envision with that funny lady at the helm?

James: Well, if Sandra Bernhard, early original 'Woods' fan, were to direct a sequel I think the fashion theme would be in order with a sort of outdoor pajama party-esque campout with maybe six girl campers wearing Baby Doll short nighties with fluffy slippers being chased pre-attack by the escaped convict mad killers. They all run into the night time woods scattering in all directions, screaming their heads off, bumping into one another in the dark.

Brian: You worked with Chris Mitchum on the revenge flick 'The Executioner, Part II'. It sounds like it is a fast paced, adventuresome flick. Do you have any particular memories about working on that project?

James: Working with Chris Mitchum on 'Executioner, Part II' was like a fever dream. I drove into LA with a pickup load of movie gear and met the crew Renee Harmon had assembled and was shocked to learn the crew had very limited and even in a few cases no experience at all. The first day was like film class. I demonstrated film production 101, acting out the jobs of every department unloading and setting up all the equipment and taking the light readings. I ended up carrying the light meter since the cameraman had only worked at a TV station studio where lighting and exposure were something the guys in the control booth worried about. This situation did impact one of the production assistants who after our filming had wrapped talked his way into a directing job on another feature. As director he demanded the production buy him a light meter and this bit of inappropriate mimicry ended his first job as director very abruptly. Recently when asked about the 'Executioner, Part II' experience Chris Mitchum could not remember if in fact the production had a director or not.

Brian: I think we have to hustle a DVD premiere of 'Lady Streetfighter' as soon as possible. It sounds outrageously fun and like it could do for action films what 'Don't Go Into the Woods' has done for horror films. Do you have any thoughts about 'Lady Streetfighter' and its adrenaline charged legacy?

James: Actually 'Lady Streetfighter's' post production was finished right before I started 'Don't Go in the Woods'. The humor that came out of the low budget action film found a focus in the outdoor horror film. The style of low budget production for both films was inspired by the technique honed to perfection by the economically driven Italian action films of the day.

Brian: Lastly, any words of wisdom (IE: Don't march into the woods, unarmed, where a machete wielding cave man resides), future projects you want to talk about or thoughts on the staying power and fan base/influence of 'Don't Go Into the Woods'? (Whew, even I'm out of breath with that one!) And thanks! It's been a joy!

James: When 'Don't Go in the Woods' first came out audience reaction was very limited. The movie sort of faded from the screen without much notice. While the Hollywood Reporter reviewed it as the worst film ever made even that questionable distinction was all too easily lost when the very next day another opening film replaced 'Woods' as "worst ever". In light of 'Woods' current new found interest and popularity, my feeling about the film is that it's like telling a joke where the audience just shrugs and walks out, then thirty years later they stop what they are doing and all start laughing. A long wait but the laughter lives. Was it something I did?