FLESH
EATERS FROM OUTER SPACE was the first feature
length film I ever wrote/ directed/
photographed/ edited myself. Yes, one person
can do all those jobs on a movie; George
Romero co-wrote/ directed/ photographed/
edited his fantastic NIGHT OF THE LIVING
DEAD(1968).
After
we finished shooting THE BLOODY DEAD with Sam
Sherman, that gave me alittle working capitol
to do something else. My whole plan since I
was a teenager was to make movies. I had
purchased all the equipment to shoot in the
Hollywood 35mm film format and the
professional independent film format of Super
16mm film (a high quality version of 16mm).
The only obsticle was money to buy film stock,
pay for all the lab work and pay for whatever
things that had to be made or purchased for
use in front of the camera telling the story.
Motion
picture film stock is very expensive. Though
we had shot THE BLOODY DEAD footage in Super
16 it was paid for by Sam and
Independent-International Pictures. It was
extremely frustrating that I knew how to run
all the film equipment, had made a bunch of
short movies in film, owned all the hardware
so no rental was involved, and I still
couldn't afford to make a 90 minute feature in
film.
I
hate video, but it is getting
progressively better over all these years and
will replace film someday. Right now film is
still the perfect mastering medium and all new
video formats - even digital formats - are
still judged against the quality of film. Film
has been around for at least 100 years
and is still the best. However, video is less
expensive and within reach of struggling
filmmakers.
A
new video format was introduced in the
1980s called Super VHS. I checked it out. It
wasn't film quality naturally, but it looked
sort of like film in its grain and had a
picture sharper than the professional 3/4 inch
Broadcast format. I believe the unions stepped
in and killed it as a home video format in the
name of job security (couldn't allow regular
people to shoot higher quality stuff than the
pros were) and it shifted to an industrial
video format for cheap TV commercials and
shows.
I
wanted to vomit, surrounded as I was with HQ
professional film equipment that could produce
movies as good as Hollywood if I could raise
the budgets, but instead being forced to
purchase a Super VHS camcorder and two old
used 3/4 inch decks to make my first feature.
Super
VHS proved to be a very good, affordable
format for low budget movies. I purchased one
of the first Super VHS camcorders available, a
Minolta Master, and to this day, 19 years
later, it still works!!! For the TROMA January
25th, 2005 DVD re-release of FLESH EATERS FROM
OUTER SPACE and INVASION FOR FLESH AND BLOOD
the audio commentary track was made using the
same Minolta Super VHS camcorder that the
movies had been shot with and the commentary
track sound for the TROMA DVD is HQ. In
fact two brand new reviews of the FLESH EATERS
/ INVASION DVD praise the very high
quality of their picture and sound.
FLESH
EATERS FROM OUTER SPACE wasn't my title. I
called it A TASTE FOR FLESH AND BLOOD, which
was changed by the distributor to FLESH
EATERS.
FLESH
EATERS was my version of WAR OF THE WORLDS.
(One critic even suggested that the huge
budgeted INDEPENDENCE DAY ripped off my
FLESH EATERS for ideas! Since my movie came
first, who knows?)
Even
though I was paying for everything and the
budget was very small, I really wanted to make
the best movie I could under the poor
conditions. It was a volunteer cast and crew.
I had to take the mostly inexperienced group
and teach them how to make a movie, or how to
do special effects, as we made the movie. This
is why I was forced to wear so many hats; I
was the only one who knew how to make a movie
on the set.
Gene
Reynolds, Kathy Monks, Tony Anunnziata,
Steve Mezo, makeup artist Desire'e Russo,
effects artist Cory Geryak, makeup effects
artist Anthony Voluo, Shawn Reich and my father
made up the workers making up props and sets
and generally crewing FLESH EATERS. Ruben
Santiago, Bob Gutosky and Al Vega from
THE BLOODY DEAD came onboard as actors again.
Tim Ferrante of FANGORIA magazine and DRIVE-IN
MADNESS played a psycho making a bomb for us
killed by the monster.
Gene
Reynolds was suppose to create the CREATURE
FROM THE BLACK LAGOON style full body suit
alien but about two weeks before we were to
start shooting he still hadn't made the suit.
He suggested we buy a halloween mask and dress
an actor in ratty clothes and use that for the
monster. I freaked. It was only the first
instance where people failed to deliver what
they promised; many more were to follow
unfortunately.
I
called Tony Annunziata and together we
sketched the monster we wanted to have in the
movie. Then Tony and I got a ton of clay and
started scuplting the huge head, arms, legs,
trunk, clawed hands and feet all seperate and
made plaster molds to pour the rubber in. We
purchased a skin diving suit and had someone
big wear it - I think it might have been Greg
Scott - while we glued the various rubber
sections on. Greg was originally going to play
the monster, not star in the movie as
Commander Riggs. Kathy knew Greg Scott and
brought him into the movie.
Kathy
originally didn't want to play Sandra Lynn
either but I kinda forced her into it. The
only times prior to this Kathy was onscreen in
something we shot was as a subject for a
series of makeup tapes we were shooting for
Gene Reynolds and in a TV commercial we
did for BOTTOM LINE AUTO CONSULTANTS.
I
wrote a script, inspired by WAR OF THE WORLDS,
but translated into something we could shoot
local and with little money. The "thrill kill"
killing spree of George A Romero's classic
DAWN OF THE DEAD was fun and I tried to dream
up as many monster kill scenes as I could. The
script was being re-written all during the
shoot to accomodate the lack of control forced
on me by a lack of money. All I knew is I had
to end up with enough material on video that
when I cut away all the stuff that didn't work
there would be enough left to have a
functional 90 minute movie.
I
used my father as one of the main characters,
Professor Hertz. He did as I asked and
approached his role seriously, as did Greg
Scott and Kathy Monks. FLESH EATERS is a more
serious movie than its sequel, INVASION FOR
FLESH AND BLOOD.
Shooting
was exciting and frustrating as we did our
best to get on video each scene that came up.
I
remember shooting some of the opening scene at
Brookdale Community College in Lincroft NJ.
They have a wonderful underground maze of
large walkways there. We shot the monster
smashing down a door and attacking several
security guards (Brookdale students). In the
monster suit was a very tall, very lean guy
named Damion. We had 4 1000 watt lights
blasting away and shot for awhile. When we
stopped shooting for the day, Damion removed
the Monster head and poured water out of it
into a trash can. He removed the feet and
claws and more body water literally poured
out. Crazed, he looked at our food table, said
"SALT!!!" and consumed water and
salty items. That was the last time I
ever saw Damion. From that shoot on, others
wore the monster suit.
While
shooting we didn't always get the cooperation
from local people and businesses we needed
here in Neptune, so we had to travel to other
towns. The Bayville Police Department helped
us alot and many of the officers acted in FLESH
EATERS. The local Neptune convience store
refused to cooperate so we found one in South
Jersey too, The Apple Deli. We needed a small
cottage for Riggs to stay in and again locally
got little cooperation, so we took the flats
used to make the asylum sets for THE BLOODY
DEAD and built our own cottage - we weren't
going to be roadblocked by
local Neptune jerks.
We
built sets out of scraps and we built the sets
anywhere there was a space we could use for
free. We didn't have money so we had to use
our creativity, our imaginations.
Before
I could edit I needed the music score. Tony
Annunziata, Lorenzo Conte and Paul Krautheim
gave me original music which I used not only
for FLESH EATERS but INVASION too, and on the
soundtrack of the two new soon-to-be- released
ones also, SCARLET MOON and DARK BEGINNINGS.
After
the movie was done shooting, everyone
left except my father. I was mostly by myself
with a bunch of Super VHS cassettes and the
editing decks. Out of all the scenes we shot
I had to rewrite, in the editing, a coherent
story almost from scratch. I knew how the
movie was to start and end, but the inbetween
scenes I organized in what I hoped would be
the most logical progression of events. This
is not how movies are normally made but
normally movies have the money to hire crews
and actors and shoot the original script as
written. I didn't have that. The original
script got rewritten out of existance as we
shot and all I could do was cross reference
everything as much as possible.
The
movie was transferred from Super VHS to
3/4 inch for the actual editing because Super
VHS degrades very fast when transferred. On
3/4 inch the video quality held up much
better.
Since
I was making up the story as I edited FLESH
EATERS, and it was analogue not digital, if I
wanted to make a change at any point I had to
re-start with a blank 3/4 tape and do
everything all over again from scratch. It was
a total nightmare.
I
edited FLESH EATERS four times from scratch.
And the old Sony decks broke down all the time
too, dragging the whole process out for many
months as I was forced to wait while repairs
were made. Tenacity was the only thing that
kept me sane and on track. I refused to be
defeated by people or machines.
When
it was finally finished, it was sold to Legacy
Home Video of CA. They got the masters and
all.I never saw a dime from Legacy. They kept
changing their address and kept all the money.
I even hired detectives to find them. At some
point I gave up. At least, I told myself, it
was being distributed and people were seeing
it.
Since
FLESH EATERS had sold, it was easy to convince
some of the people who worked on FLESH EATERS
that a sequel would sell too, so INVASION FOR
FLESH AND BLOOD started a few months
later. It was a direct sequel, starting where
FLESH EATERS had left off.
My
experiences making FLESH EATERS made me
cynical, so I no longer took people at their
word. I fully expected to do most of the work
myself from the very start. Again I had to
write/ direct/ photograph/ edited the whole
movie with the untrained cast and crew doing
whatever they could to support me. I also did
makeup, lit all the sets and handled audio
while running the camera and trying to direct
the actors. It can be done. I did it. But just
think how much better I could make these
movies if I had a fully trained crew and
a budget.
FLESH
EATERS was re-released by EI Entertainment on
VHS in the 1990s. Unfortunately by accident
they release my first 2 hour edit which was
awful. My superior director's cut went
unseen for 16 years until TROMA recently
released it.
May
25th, 2005 FLESH EATERS is re-issued on DVD
along with INVASION by TROMA, INC. Within the
first 6 days it broke even and went into
profit and suddenly its at one thousand forty
outlets almost instantly. Finally my
director's cut is being seen and even the New
York Times reviews it. It took TROMA to
finally market the movie correctly and get the
best version of both FLESH EATERS and INVASION
out to the buying public.
We
are now planning to do club and theater
showings of INVASION and FLESH EATERS, as well
as selling T-shirts, rubber masks, soundtrack
CDs, the works. TROMA are kindly supplying
copies of the FLESH EATERS FROM OUTER
SPACE/INVASION FOR FLESH AND BLOOD DVD for
sale at the showings too, so you can get cast
and crew member autographed copies.
Cling
to your dreams, they may eventually come
true....some decade :o) .
