DIABOLICAL is a serious departure for me. It requires
a big budget to shoot. I want it to look slick like SILENCE OF THE LAMBS did. This one I will not attempt without investor
dollars so I can do the movie on a level much higher than I've been forced to work at up till now.
Another thing is it's not a comedy. It has zero humor. Its stark, grim, deadly
serious and my goal is to scare the shit out of an audience. It will be my first time attempting a truly frightening movie
and I really, really want to be able to film it the right way.
It deals with demons and Christianity in a more Biblically accurate way than
most horror movies. It goes into THE EXORCIST territory laced with PASSION OF THE CHRIST and its my attempt to be more faithful
to the Bible while doing something honestly disturbing.
Bottom line though is it is a horror movie, not a religious movie in the classical
sense.
I want to shoot it in 35mm with a full seasoned crew and actors. I understand
having name stars attached helps with distribution deals and that may be forced on me as part of getting a budget, but I'd
rather have really excellent unknowns in the main parts so face recognition doesn't detract from the audiences's being sucked
into believing what they are seeing.
The screenplay is written, except the very last 10 pages. I
want to do another re-write before saying this is it, the script is finished. Some things
in the script I feel work, other things need improvement. The basic story is good and original, and set in New Jersey.
I wrote it in "shooting script" format, which means I went into great detail
about sets, camera angles, lighting, editing, in the script itself. Anybody reading the script who has the ability to visualize
in their mind's eye written description should have a pretty good idea of how the completed feature will look after I
shoot it just from reading the detailed script.
Hollywood, it seems, has a problem with Christianity and the Bible. Even
when they make Biblical movies they rarely get the facts right and its mostly fabrications with spiritual music and melodramatic
fluff acting.
Sometimes fake religious movies can be nice. I love KING OF KINGS (1962) even
when more than half of it is Hollywood BS. The music is great, Jeffrey Hunter makes the perfect Catholic style traditional
blonde haired blue eyed Jesus (which isn't accurate), and the authoritative narration of Orson Wells has a good feel
to it. I prefer it to Mel Gibson's awful PASSION OF CHRIST.
THE PASSION OF CHRIST had more ugliness, more violence, more inhumanity, more
graphic gore effects than most horror movies and still is considered a Christian movie. Unbeleivable. Its over two hours of
murdering Christ with very little of anything else. Satan would watch it as a loop like a snuff film.
THE PASSION OF CHRIST failed to show all the wonderful things Jesus did in his
life prior to being arrested and killed. It opens with him being arrested and tortured and that's all the movie is about.
After Christ rose from the dead he again did wonderful things not shown in this movie. Instead Mel Gibson ends the movie with
Jesus sitting up and a brief special effect of a hole through one of Jesus's hands. That fast little throw away ending
doesn't counterbalance all the sadistic bloodshed that we witnessed for the previous 2 hours.
Mel, it seems, is clueless as to the point of what Jesus died for. Jesus's
life before and after his death has superior meaning than to simply watch his gruesome murder. Jesus Christ died to pay
for our sins so that whoever believes in him and accepts his sacrifice will be forgiven and allowed in Heaven. Almost no Hollywood
product includes that message which is the whole point! Mel dropped the ball big time too, in my opinion, as did KING OF KINGS,
the one I like.
Anyhow, DIABOLICAL is my attempt at dealing with demons closer to what is written
in the scriptures. Biblically THE EXORCIST wasn't accurate either. What would stop the demon from going right back up those
steep stone steps, through the window and into the body of Linda Blair again after it killed the Priest? I'll tell
you, NOTHING. And, from my research, alot of Priests die like the one in THE EXORCIST because they make the mistake
of thinking they can beat the demon "personally" without God's help. They do ask the demon to come into them instead,
like the young Priest in THE EXORCIST. That's like crawling into the mouth of a Great White Shark!
As I was working on the script late at night by myself weird stuff actually began
to happen. Doors slammed shut, windows slammed open, stuff got pushed off shelves and tables. What I was writing was pissing
something off and I'm pretty sure it wasn't God and His Angels! The only time this crazy stuff happens is when I am
researching and writing the DIABOLICAL script. Any other time all things are normal.
Of course nobody believes me when I tell them what is happening. "The wind opened
the window/closed the door/knocked things off surfaces" they say. Yeah, right...
The first time the door slammed shut very loudly I jumped, startled. But I came
to expect the temper tantrums of my invisible unwanted guest and as I worked on the script asked myself, OK, what's going
to happen tonight?
(to be continued)
