Warren's
memories:
Tim
Ferrante's 90 minute documentary on the history
of drive-in movies was a fun project. It was
nice to be working on something that so many
people I admire were guest appearing in, like
George Romero, John Russo, Tom Savini and
Forrest J. Ackerman.
It
was at the very beginning of Visual Experiences,
Inc, which was incorporated in 1984 and was
trying to do movies and shooting commercials.
As
I said earlier in my coverage of the making of
FLESH EATERS FROM OUTER SPACE, I met Sam Sherman
who knew Tim Ferrante who was a contributing
writer to a young start-up magazine called
FANGORIA and also worked for ABC-TV in New York
and Tim was making this documentary.
We
knew that Tim, like all of us, didn't have much
money, so we literally did the shoot for screen
credit, contacts and cheeseburger deluxes at a
local resturant!
We
had a contract for a two hour shoot. Kathy
Monks, Gene Reynolds, my father and Tony
Annunziata were the crew. I had done similar
camera work at CNN in NY, so I did the camera
but let Tony Annunziata do some too. Tim
directed.
The
shoot was pretty straightfoward, with Tim asking
Sam a bunch of questions. Sam didn't like the
lights, which bothered his eyes, and had to take a
break to give his eyes a rest, but we
still finished it exactly on time. Before the
second taping after Sam's break, Sam watched the
footage and got more enthusiastic because of what
he saw and started suggesting other areas he
could talk about, like the future of the whole
drive-in genre. Tim agreed and we started
shooting again.
We
finished taping and Sam went to freshen up and
when he returned to his office my crew had moved
all the equipment from his office and it was
just me and Sam in the room. Sam looked up at
the clock as the second hand just hit the two
hour mark. Everything had gone, literally, like
clock work, which impressed him.
Tim
then took us out to lunch as our pay. I told my
crew to be kind to Tim and not order the most
expensive items on the menu. When most, if not
all of us, ordered the classic inexpensive
cheeseburger delux, Tim looked relieved and knew
he was among friends.
A
few weeks later Tim came to my house with a
bunch of lobby cards and stills to get them
video taped onto 3/4 inch broadcast video to be
inserted into the show as graphics. He might
have left a few lobbies as payment, I'm not
sure. It's been 18 years now. I'm surprised at
how much I do still remember!
Tim
later appeared in FLESH EATERS FROM OUTER SPACE
for us and we shot his scenes at his home in
Keyport, NJ. Tim was friends of John Russo, who
was best friends with George Romero, so he got a
VHS of George's uncut DAWN OF THE DEAD
director's cut, and scenes from Romero's MARTIN,
which we watched, years before they were
commercially available to the public. (The only
Romero film I don't have in my VHS or DVD
collection is ALWAYS VANILLA, the feature they
made right after NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD in
1968. My understanding is it was never released.
Does anybody have a VHS or DVD copy I can get?)
The
basically "free" DRIVE-IN MADNESS
shoot paid off because Sam Sherman hired us to
shoot his Americanization of the German feature
film THE BLOODY DEAD for which we did get paid.
See how it works?
We
got screen credit on both versions of the show:
DRIVE-IN MADNESS (90 minutes) and the
shorter version re-released later called SCREEN
SCARIES(40 minutes).
Sadly,
there is no DVD re-release of DRIVE-IN
MADNESS as of June, 2005. You probably can still
find the VHS at Yahoo or on Ebay.
DRIVE-IN
MADNESS got distributed by two or three
distributors over its life and got some very
good reviews:
"..an
entertaining compilation" - Variety.
"..maintains
an atmosphere of zany fun" - Video Review.
"..A
very entertaining trip down horror lane" -
FANGORIA
"..
a shock show...packs a wallop" - Fort worth
Star Telegram.
