Nude for Satan Original Title: Nuda per Satana Directed by: Luigi Batzella Italy, 1974 Occult / Sexploitatiom, 90min Distributed by: Njuta Films
Dr Benson [Stelio Candelli] on his way to an emergency call to the Whitmore house get’s himself lost and instead comes upon a “crashed” car. Being the good doctor that he is, he stops, gets out and finds Susan [Rita Caleroni] amongst the wreck. Promising to return with help he takes off to the large mysterious castle he previously asked directions at. Roaming around the eerie mansion he comes across a woman who looks just like Susan, and she insists on calling him Peter. Peter, who she claims to have been waiting for, for so long… Somewhile later Susan arrives at the castle too only to meet a man who looks just like Benson. With them both in the castle and a sinister strange man, [James Harris], taunting and luring them on, a surreal erotic nightmare starts to unravel as the Benson and Susan wander the dark corridors in search for each other.
Luigi Batzella, native Sardinian and man of many pseudonyms, Nude for Satan as Paolo Solvay, may not have been a great filmmaker, but he certainly made movies that leave an impression. No matter which genre he tried his hands at, he came out making some trashy pieces of low budget sleazy exploitation cinema. With a mere fifteen movies as director and several more starring in minor acting parts, Batazella left a decent legacy of tainted and perverted movies, which more than often brought a heavy dose of sexploitation to the subgenre he was tinkering with.
Perhaps best remembered for his string of Nazisploitation flicks; Kaput lager – gli ultimo giorni delle SS (Achtung – the Desert Tigers) and La bestia in calore (The Beast in Heat) both 1977 it should be noted that Batzella directed movies in the customary Italian Director for hire spheres. Spaghetti Westerns, War flicks, Action adventures, the Nazisplotation flicks and he also co-directed Bruce Le’s Challenge of the Tiger (aka For Your Height Only) 1980. Many of Batzella’s movies saw him working with American B-movie actors Gordon Mitchell and Richard Harrison who found new fame in Italian low budget fares, and Batzella wasn’t directing genre names, he was stood amongst them in the many movies he held smaller acting parts in.
But the movies that possibly are amongst his best, the occult sexploitation pieces Il plenilunio delle vergini (The Devils Wedding Night) 1973 starring amongst others Mark Damon and Rosalba Neri and Nuda per Satana (Nude for Satan) 1974 with Rita Calderoni starring against Stelio Candelli who has some great movies on his resume. Both these films deal with the witchcraft and the devil having it off with some scantily clad lads and lasses and are quite heavy on the old satanic orgy material. Atmospheric pieces that certainly will have any one keen to Satanism, nudity and the corruption of mankind happy. Obviously exorcised by censors throughout the years, it’s quite entertaining to see Nude for Satan restored to it’s full gritty sleazy glory, complete with lesbian romps, satanic shagging and triple-X inserts, even if it is quite dully assembled at times, but I’ll get back to that.
There’s often a lot of flack given to the directors working within the low budget sphere. If it’s not the shabby camerawork or bogus sets, it’s poor plots, bad acting and the recycled footage that frequently returns in their movies. But in all honesty this should be praised instead of criticized, because this is a solid testament to how dedicated these guys where to completing their movies and giving them that little extra fluff. Instead of skipping an establishing shot or a mood image, they simply dug into their archives and pulled out some previous used stock footage and they had the shot they needed. Most likely staying within budget too. It’s much like Bruno Mattei’s stock footage in Hell of the Living Dead or Jess Franco’s constant zooming in his Artur Brauner produced movies during the early seventies, the quick fixes became trademarks and also allow the director to complete the movie within it’s own limitations.
Anyways, returning to Nude for Satan… What a bloody great title that is - it leaves nothing to the imagination, and it's precisely what this movie delivers, nudity and satanic orgies. Yeah it’s cheap and dirty, but it’s pretty entertaining too. It’s no understatement that Nude for Satan is amongst Batzella’s finest movies. Story-wise it’s an interesting piece as there’s a kind of art house narrative going on, where the house acts as some kind of parallel universe run by the Devil [James Harris]. Well inside the house, Dr Benson and Susan separately meet their doppelgangers Peter and Evelyn, seeing both Calderoni and Candelli in dual roles as they try to figure out what happened to each other. Benson wants to reunite with Susan instead of the doppelganger Evelyn and vice versa. At the same time there’s sort of a tragic ghost story going on where the Peter and Evelyn characters long to be reunited. It certainly is trippy, dreamlike and at times, in comprehensive, but that all makes sense at the end of the movie. After confronting the Devil, the screen dips to black, Dr Benson get’s out of his car, located at the spot he slammed his brakes on in the opening, and runs to the aid of the young woman in the crashed car at the side of the road… Susan, but this time holding the medallions from her dream. Yes folks, it’s all been a frightening, surreal erotic nightmare taking place in their heads… or has it? Well whatever Batzelli intended, the ending is kind of a question mark, but at the same time, I wouldn’t have wanted it to end in any other way. How boring would it have been if Benson saved Susan and beat the devil! Instead there’s a window into a world where Satan has corrupted innocence, as Susan obviously didn’t want anything to do with the saucy Satanism until that orgasmic finale complete with laughing Satan, naked dancers and a depraved Paul snogging Susan into eternal damnation.
Batzelli also edited the most of his movies himself, Nude for Satan was no exception, and perhaps this is where some of his greatest talent came into play as the movie is pretty effectively assembled. In all honesty it’s really only the sex scenes that linger on too long primarily due to the graphic inserts. Due to their obvious different actors, sets and sloppy editing, I can't help but asking the question if Batzelli himself actually inserted the scenes, or if it was under protest, driven by some greedy producer or distributor. These scene have obviously not been given the same attention as the rest of the movie. Whatever be the reason, the movie, strangely, failed miserably at the Italian box office at the time.
Starting with Calderoni running naked through the woods in slow motion, whilst thunder and lightning flash and rumble, accompanied by the crooning vocals set to Alberto Baldan Bembo’s score efectively set’s a tone and mood for the piece. It certainly has a great Italian EuroGoth vibe going on and the first fifteen minutes are really atmospheric with Benson exploring the large windy cobwebbed creepy mansion and eerie score until he opens a door, gasps in shock as he stares at the mixed doubles nocturnal activities going on and sexploitation traits take over… but that’s not necessarily a bad thing is it. Although to do the movie justice, it really is more a EuroGoth mystery with some fantastic sexploitation moments than anything else, despite the seemingly random inserts. And there’s a really freaky spider scene that you won’t want to miss.
Strategia per una missione di morte ( Black Gold Dossier) 1979 saw Batazella direct his last movie. Struggling with ill health he retired from the movie-making racket at the young age of 55 and later passed away in 2008 at the age of 83.A renegade filmmaker who churned out some very memorable movies in his mere fourteen years as a director, some of them shot in less than two weeks. But never the less amongst his fifteen movies there’s still a few classic seedy gems, Nude for Satan is a must see movie for fans of crazy genre movies, and The Beast in Heat is still to this day Banned in the UK and forever immortalised as one of the original Video Nasties.
Luigi Batazella’sNude for Satan in it's extended form is comming to Scandinavian DVD on the 1st of December, thanks to the team at Njutafilms.
Image: 16x 9 widescreen, Color.
Audio: English dub, with optional Swedish, Danish, Finnish and Norweigan subtitles.
Extras: Original Trailer, Slideshow and trailers for Sergio Greico’sThe Sinful Nuns of St. Valentine,Alfredo Rizzo’sThe Bloodsucker Leads the Dance, Enzo G. Castellari’sCold Eyes of Fear, Walerian Borowczyk’s The Beast and Renato Polselli’sBlack Magic Rites.
A probe returns to earth after NASA discover an alien life form in our solar system. But after the probe explodes during re-entry, crashing into Central America, a new life form starts to take hold of the jungle. Six years later, an “Infected Zone” separates America from Mexico. When the monsters in the zone start to attack outside the zone, freelance journalist Andrew [Scoot McNairy] is assigned to the task of getting his employers daughter, Samantha [Whitney Able], safely out of Mexico. Pretty soon they find that greed and corruption are at apparent even in times of crisis, and they are forced to take a route though the perilous Infected Zone to manage their return to American soil.
Comparing Monsters to District 9 would be wrong. There’s nothing that really connects them apart from the fact that aliens are part of our world. It wouldn’t be fair to compare it to something like Cloverfield either, as that movie kicks off hard from the start and just slows down as it goes along. The Mist isn’t too far off despite it’s piss poor characters and predictability. But somewhere in-between those three movies would be a good spot to place Monsters, even if I found this movie to be quite a lot better than all of them. Probably because District 9 uses is a comedic social metaphor grip, Cloverfield has thatstrong survival horror approach, and The Mist uses a really poor TV movie narrative and a social aspect with religion versus science angle. Monsters is neither, as it stands firmly on it's own.
Monsters is one of those skilfully crafted flicks that walks the stern path of realistic drama and uses a fair amount of horror genre traits to make some really effective moments. And there are some really creepy, suspenseful moments that certainly get the adrenaline pumping, especially whilst in the Infected Zone. But with that said it has to be pointed out that there are some really tender and delicate moments in the movie too. And that’s a vital ingredient to why this movie works.
Despite the title I wouldn’t say that Monsters is a horror genre piece. Instead, as mentioned above, this is first and foremost a drama. At times there’s a road movie quality to the film, at times it is horror tinted, and at others a tender romance, but never one determined genre. It’s a well-crafted mix of them all.
There’s a few effective ways that this movie manages to pull off it’s narrative. First and foremost, there’s the time taken to establish characters and their ordinary world. Second there’s the threat of the creatures, and then in the last act the deeper development of the characters. There are a lot of minor subplots and emotional arcs that come to a grand climax before the last minutes play out.
So in short, the movie plays out in three waves, the set up, the threat and the climax. It sounds pretty simple, but it’s all done in a really effective way. The handheld faux documentary style works for the movie, even though it’s never said once that this is a faux documentary, it just holds that tone, then the tone and mood shifts when in the Infected Zone. Rapid cuts, jumping over the axis and creating confusion as we isolate the characters from stern reference points… it’s all green and growling jungle. Finally the movie lands in the last act and the pace slows down giving time to those conclusions about to be made.
The ending may seem to be somewhat positively open when you first see it, but being that I always enjoy a movie that stimulates my mind, Monsters really stayed with me when the light went on and I connected the dots. Monsters does just that, it makes you think, because if you have been paying attention to the flick, the ending will give you a shattering rush of insight that puts the movie in a whole different light. This is a brilliant move by Edwards as he invites the audience to make the connection. A few edits made differently and the film would have had a completely altered tone. Instead it’s a piece that does crawl into your head and that all boils down to the characters and age-old emotions Life and Death, with love in between. Now don’t back away just yet. Monsters isn’t a love story, it’s not a romantic movie either, but it is a movie that plays hard with powerful tools like sympathy and empathy. Two of the most important ingredients no matter what genre you are working in. And we will always want a love story to work out, even in the most sinister and nihilistic world. We can fell the feeling and have an emotional recognition with the characters which makes us empathise with them, hence making us care about the characters.
Characters who are driven by the choices and actions they take. There’s a hefty does of common sense and logic in the narrative that otherwise easily over turned this movie, and the subplots come into action during these moments giving a subtle insight into what really is going on in their heads.I keep saying emotional movie, and that’s pretty true, because there’s a lot of that emotional recognition that helps it along. As a viewer I can totally understand the reactions Andrew and Samantha have in their interaction. I understand why they make the choices and go about the actions they take. It’s quite rare to see movies in this niche work this well. Remember in Cloverfield they decide to go look at the monster… dumbasses. You don’t do that, you run. There's a certain irrationality to their actions. But Andrew’s a freelance photographer and Samantha’s father pays well for shots of children killed by the alien life forms. See, there’s a logic reason to their actions and choices that make it all believable.
Finally we have to talk about the monsters. There’s a lot at stake when you call your movie Monsters, because if you don’t deliver, then you are screwed. Looking back at the movies I mentioned in the opening, District 9, Cloverfield, The Mist. Well they all kind of suffer from the same problem, once they show and reveal their creatures it never really manages to keep me interested. Sure, you could argue that the aliens in District 9 have character and personality. Yes they do, and at the end you have seen so much of them that they become acceptable characters themselves. But they don’t really intrigue me anymore. Cloverfield;, as soon as they showed that big bad monster, well, then the mystery is gone. It’s just a big bad monster. The Mist does manage to show monsters in various sizes and keeps it fresh, but at the end? It’s just a bid bad monster show too, and after those gigantic ones hit the screen it just looses it’s power because they are nothing but big bad monsters. But Monsters manages to present a rather interesting and intriguing monster that isn’t filled with the common big bad monster conventions. Sure, that’s the image we get in the early stages when we see them on the televised assaults, and when they attack during the movie – big bad monsters that wreck stuff and are more or less indestructible, but this all changes the further the movie goes. And the final question you ask yourself is, are they really monsters? The last minutes of the movie are easily amongst the most poetic and emotional monster scenes since Spielberg’s tear jerking finale to Close Encounters of the Third Kind... if you get the rush of insight that is.
Monsters is a brilliant debut feature. Engaging, creepy and moving. It's no secret that Edwards has a background working with C.G.I. on documentaries and stuff, and it shows. There’s not one spot where the computer-generated materials expose themselves. It all looks extremely authentic. Edwards has crafted an intelligent, beautiful and atmospherically movie that definitely deserves all the attention that it is getting and will have in the future. He can easily get in line with some of the leading new names of genre cinema spawning out of the UK as of now. It’s a great piece and the future seems to hold great things for Gareth Edwards. I’ll be looking forward to it.
Susanne Directed by Elsa & Kit Colfach Sweden 1959 Drama/Coming of Age, 88min Distributed by KlubbSuper8
Whack! What was that you ask, well that was the impact of the Elsa and Kit Colfach’s only feature length film ever – Susanne. A grim tale of youth gone wild that will move you in more than one way. A shocking piece of social realism that finally gets a deluxe treatment it deserves thanks to the guys at KlubSuper8 – back after a way too long hiatus, and it’s a welcome release, because this is one hell of a special trip.
Susanne [Susanne Ulfsäter] is a young woman who lives with her parents, parents that don’t really give a toss about her and spend more time entertaining guests and complaining about their fair daughter and her appearance. Agitated by her parents hassle and moaning during their chic dinner parties, Susanne takes off to a café where a lad she’s attracted to, Olle [Arnold Stackelberg], is hanging out with his greaser mates. He invites her on a date the following evening during which they make out and drive way to fast – despite Susanne’s objections.
Olle obviously tries to cop a feel, but Susanne rejects him. Instead they booze it up, cops arrive and after a swift chase at high speeds they laugh off the police as they evade them. On her way home from that one night of randy drinks and fast cars Susanne and Olle crash head on into an approaching car giving the Colfach’s an opportunity to gloat in the aftermath of the accident. But the dead bloke hanging out of the windscreen of the other car is only the beginning as this movie is just about to turn nasty on you. The young couple are taken to hospital after a lengthy sequence showing Olle writhing in pain with his moans and groans being the only soundtrack playing, the ambulance personnel pointing out that the other driver would have survived if he only had wore his seatbelt. In hospital their treatment of internal organs is shown in all it’s gory glory - with real O.R. footage, as doctors try their best to patch them both together again.
Susanne has some wonderful trippy, erotic, guilt dreams whilst in a coma, and it isn’t The Wizard of Oz dreams she’s having because when she comes out she’s a changed woman. Instead of the tender, frail teenager, she’s now a hardened girl with a bad mouth and filled with urges she can’t quite control. Stuff you mom and dad, I'm gonna drink, ride and screw! The now promiscuous Susanne takes to taunting her parents, partying with the gang, riding in fast cars again, and taking advantage of all the men she can set her claws into whilst driving Olle up the wall with jealousy.
Realising that she’s preggers she takes drastic means to loose the child, but Olle stops her and makes an honest women out of her in the eyes of God to keep her from having an abortion. But their relationship rapidly deteriorates after the wedding and before you know it, Susanne is in labour after battling some heavy suicidal thoughts. Again Susanne’s mental state is question as she can’t bond with her child or find happiness in her current situation. Olle broken by the way Susanne acts decides that he’s had enough and leaves her. But after fate plays an evil trick on her that almost costs her babies life she comes back to her senses and finally matures into the responsible young mother that is expected of her.
Written, directed and shot and by the married couple Elsa and Kit Colfach, who both obviously held a great passion for movies, Susanne is a superb movie. A long lost, great movie, best described as an odd mix of a genre’s blending a warning to youth, coming of age and exploitation in a magnificent oozing cocktail. Editing duties where given to Carl-Olov Skeppstedt who previously and later edited several of Arne Mattson’s movies (See all swedish cinema ties in with the majestic Mattsson) , Torgny Wickman’s epic Ur Kärlekens Språk (The Language of Love) 1969 and worked with Vilgot Sjöman on his Jag är Nyfiken – En film i blått (I am Curious - Blue) 1968. Needless to say the Colfach's where in good company.
Originally a surgeon, Danish born, but Swedish resident, Kit found that the increasing amount of motorbike related accidents he often ended up patching back together, where of growing concern. Armed with a camera he already owned, he decided to shift the focus from the usual family outings and make a movie that could act as a warning to the youth gone wild. Said and done the shot movie Blindbock was made. A uncompromisingly shocking movie that screened the aftermath of motorbike accidents. And it worked, according to the statistics – yes statistics, Swedes have always been anal for statistics – after the movie went theatrically, there was an increase in motorbike helmet sales.
Anyways Kit and Elsa screened their movie for colleagues at Kit’s resident hospital in Västervik and the ball was in motion. The national traffic safety board picked up the movies and put it up theatrically along with screenings in schools and youth centres. Kit’s light was lit and he followed Blindbock with a couple of documentaries and finally returned to his themes of the raised finger of warning – Susanne. Ulfsäter who never had any theatrical or movie experiene previously was simply the girl next door. True, she was literally the girl who lived next door to the Colfach’s and they couldn’t have made a better choice. So in a sentence you could say that Susanne is a testament to an amateur filmmaker who certainly left his imprint with this small masterpiece and finally has been presented in the best shape it’s ever looked.
If low budget, independent movie making at one time looked as good as this movie does, then I have to say that the simplicity of video has to be cast aside. Go back to celluloid even if it’s simple 8mm (if that even still exists) and learn the trade properly. – nah just kidding, but you really should watch this because if this is what two amateurs could pull off fifty years ago, there’s no reason why the shit that hits the scene today looks as poor as it does, there are tricks to be learned from old movies like this. And I’m still a sucker for grain, and hot, pregnant chicks chain-smoking...
The grain of the 16milimeter and that real footage of operations, the fully graphic childbirth scene (obviously not Ulfsäter, but some other woman’s strained soft lady-parts captured for eternity) along with Susanne telling her own story through voiceover adds to create an almost authentic documentary feeling. Even the amateur actors do a decent job of it, as they bring a fitting naïveté to the piece that suits it well. Technically the movie is somewhat of a small masterpiece. Completely different actors later added all the dialogue and there are very few spots where it shows. Kit was, as said a doctor, which gave him access to the operation theatre and delivery rooms, which is about as speculative as it can get. In the late fifties, real hardcore stuff like that wasn’t something you’d expect in your cinematic entertainment.
But Susanne isn’t all fun-fun-fun with fast cars, boozing, dancing and fucking, but also pretty harsh in the way it presents the heavy shit that can come in it’s wake – as said the main reason for Kit Colfach making the movies - and further more it has a lot of that great Scandinavian melancholy as it shows the way Susanne’s mindset deteriorates. But rest assure as soon as she picks up the baby from the hard tarmac, inches away from the screeching car tires, she breaks the circle and realises that she has the chance to give her child everything that she didn’t get from her parents in those opening scenes. Love, affection and attention, all good stuff that she’ll eventually get back as you reap what you sow here in life.
There’s a lot of American Driving Education scare tactics vibe to the movie, and that’s a conscious move on behalf of the Colfach’s as they wanted the movie to act as a stern warning to the youth of Sweden. Don’t Drink, Don’t Drive and definitely Don’t Fuck. Seems like their mission failed, as the Swedish Sin Boom would erupt just a few years later!
Enclosed on the disc as supplemental material you’ll actually find Blindbock – the forty minute short that was made before Susanne and if possible, Blindbock is even grimmer in it’s uncompromising warning to the dangers of racing motorbikes... and the consequences, portrayed once again through Colfach’s unique operating room footage. We may have a new contender in the epic question of who started the splatter niche here – or even the Mondo; because this is one sick puppy that hit the scene almost a decade before H.G. Lewis made his claim to fame or Jacopetti, Cavara and Prosperi unleashed the horrors of Mondo Cane.
The gimmicks that the yanks – especially the magnificent William Castle - used for exploitation movies – the old “nurses standing by, for patrons who may faint” tricks where a reality for Susanne, there where nurse’s where on standby to reassure patrons that there would be medical attention available if the movie proved to strong for them. During screenings of Blindbock a grand total of 25 people fainted during a screening of the movie in Örebro – a record undoubtedly unchallenged by anything that came after Susanne in any part of the world.
Image: Fullframe 4:3, colour.
Audio: Swedish dialogue, with optional English Subtitles. A long desired addition to KlubbSuper8’s releases.
Extras: This disc is so packed that it's almost a crime. There's a wonderful audio commentary track with the star of the piece, Susanne Ulfsäter and her daughter Lotten Sundgren, a Swedish Movie Journalist. The commentary which leads to some hilarious moments as Sundgren on more than one occasion taunts and pokes fun of her mother’s participation and partial nudity in the movie. All done with the most sincere love and respect of course, but it’s definitely a unique and informative commentary that ranks amongst the most entertaining ever put on disc. Top marks to the KlubSuper8 team for that one. There’s also Blindbock and a second short –Take it Easy, a kiddie’s safety flick that boasts a catchy song to sing along to during the finale. If you have knowledge of the Swedish lingo, stick the disc in your DVD-Rom because there are a lot of fun bonuses on the disc for you to mooch around in, and a neat booklet for Swedes who enjoyed the commentary track to dive into.
Halloween. One of those eve’s that’s quite special for me and most other fans of genre movies. It’s a special moment when for one weekend our passion for the odd and grotesque kinda' get’s accepted and the most unexpected people ask advice for horror movies to watch. If it’s someone you like you suggest some classic piece that you know will deliver, or if it’s someone you don’t like, you suggest some obnoxious piece of atrocity that you get a sadistic kick from knowing they suffered through. Because they would never enjoy it like you would.
But this year there was a special treat in store for Swedish fans of cinema as the splendid guys and gals at Njutafilms/SubDVD where hosting what they called HENENLOTTER HORROR HALLOWEEN a mini festival which also celebrated their release of Henenlotter's latest movie Bad Biology on DVD and BluRay.
A packed schedule offered up Brain Damage and Bad Biology on the big screen and a short Q&A with Frank. Frank, who slipped over to the Cinematheque theatre next door to watch Buster Keaton in Charles F. Reisner’sSteamboat Jr. (1928) whilst the rest of us enjoyed Brain Damage on a gritty 35mm print. Henenlotter would later during the Q&A explain that he’d gone to see Steamboat Jr. because he’s a huge Keaton fan, commented, that if you want understand movies, you have to see everything. You can’t judge good movies if you don’t know bad movies, you have to know it all. Henenlotter has a very vital point there, and something that we genre fans certainly can get behind. So a decent bunch of fans gathered at the Swedish Film Institute in Stockholm, home to some of the greatest movies ever made, to participate in the event. An even that took a prestigious place of culture and for one evening turned it into a 42nd Street Grindhouse Theatre.
Anyhow, seizing the moment, I came prepared to go face to face with Henenlotter all on my own. Being the great guy he is, Frank gave me more time than I ever dared ask for, and this is the result, the Cinezilla interview with the great Frank Henenlotter.
Jason: So Mr. Henenlotter, how would you describe you movies?
Henenlotter: They’re eccentric. I don’t think they’re Horror movies, I think of them as exploitation films. Well I think Brain Damage [1988] and Basket Case [1982] are horror, Frankenhooker [1990] is all out comedy. But even Brain Damage and Basket Case don’t behave properly, they aren’t mainstream, they are eccentric. But I don’t feel eccentric is a bad word, but they are just off kilter. Even I think they are off kilter. I don’t look at them and think “Oh that’s normal” I look at them and go “Oh Jesus!” As soon as I have a little distance on them I’m like “Hell! Oh well, alright!” They are not easy for me to evaluate.
J: What do you feel attracts audiences to horror and exploitation genres?
H: Well probably because they are usually dealing with subject matter that they wouldn’t normally find elsewhere. Also people like sex and violence, if they didn’t it wouldn’t be found in films. Horror films are rude, there not prim, there not proper, they’re not artsy fartsy, they are down and dirty and they go for the jugular and I think there’s a lot of room for that in the world.
J: So what’s Frank Henenlotter’s back-story? What got you started in movies and what influenced you?
H: Well I was influenced by movies period. I was a really lonely kid because I was so goddamned obnoxious and I spent most of my time watching movies, because I wasn’t lonely when I watched movies. So I watched tons of movies on television and eventually when I was fifteen I just started cutting high school, getting on a train and heading in to Manhattan to 42nd Street and Times Square. That’s where I started to devour exploitation films, and then on the other hand New York also had repertoire theatres so movies that I’d seen on TV I now had an access to theatres that would allow me to see the same movies on 35mm film. It was great to be in my twenties and see a beat-up big screen 35mm print of something like Kiss Me Deadly [Robert Aldrich 1955]; it had a hell of an impact on me. So I had a good diet, and it wasn’t like I favoured one over the other, it’s like food you know, you have an appetite for more than one flavour. I just loved them, and the mechanics of them and I liked playing with the same thing myself when I started making amateur movies. I never planned on this to be a career; I still don’t think it has been. I just made some movies on the side, and I’m kind of happy with that. Because I think that if I had made it a career, my concerns would have been making movies for the money. I love film so much that I don’t want to use it to pay the rent, and I’d rather not make movies, than make movies I don’t want to make. There was way too much of that in the early nineties, a producer would come to me and say “Boy, I really like your stuff, I have a script…” and it was some mediocre, boring slasher film no different than a hundred and fifty others that you have seen. So you know I’d read it, I didn’t like it and I’d ask if I could re-write it, and they’d say “Yeah sure that’s why we want you to do it. Re-write it, but just don’t change anything.” [Laughs] Well I don’t know how to do that, so that never happened.
J: So what can you tell me about the origins of Basket Case?
H: Well, I was shooting 16millimeter films for myself, and then I met Edgar Ievens, the producer of all the films except Bad Biology [2008], and he said “Why don’t we try to make a commercial film?” and I said Well why not! I thought it would be fun to do, and we decided to do a horror film, because you can do them cheap, and I also thought if I make a horror film and I really screw it up, they who care’s because it will still play on 42’nd Street. But I was caught off guard as it didn’t play 42’nd Street, but was released as a Midnight Movie and went another route, which really threw me. When we decided to do a commercial film I started thinking of titles and collecting titles that hadn’t been used yet, so I’m running titles though my head, titles, titles, titles, and at some point I thought of Basket Case. And when I did, I had this idiot image of something like a malignant jack in the box. A monster in a basket case, and when you open the lid… Blargh, it kills ya! That was it, and with that visual I started thinking of the plot.
J: And where did you go from that initial concept?
H: Well the first obstacle was - why would any idiot walk around with a monster in a basket? So you more or less ask yourself questions and see where you can go with it.
J: The next movie, Brain Damage saw you going into a more artistic area…
H: No, no… well yeah, maybe. It is artier than the others, but it was really Bad Biology where I made a deliberate attempt at making something that looks arty just to go against the grain of the subject matter. I thought that would create a nice friction, being a film that looks like an art film, but wasn’t behaving like one. I think Brain Damage looks arty by default as I was playing with colour. And not even arty, I was just throwing around a lot of blue.
J: So what lead up to you returning from your 18-year absence with Bad Biology?
H: The producer R.A. [Thorburn], the Rugged Man,and I had been friends for years ten years at least and always though wouldn’t it be fun if we could do a movie together. And at some point someone told him they would give him X amount of dollars for a film and he came to me and asked if that was enough to make a movie with. It wasn’t really but I thought, let’s not the opportunity go. So I started thinking. For such little money we couldn’t really make a horror film, because we can’t afford special effects, CGI or make up effects so what are we left with… so I go - well you know there’s sex. Because if we shoot a sex film… Shit, that doesn’t cost anything and sex still upsets people. It really doesn’t mater what you do. Hell, a naked guy upsets people. So we thought, Ok let’s do a sex film unlike any sex film anyone has ever seen… and it’s kinda' different.
J: It sure is, and it has one of the best opening lines in a long time, “I was born with seven clits!” That instantly makes it a movie I want to sit though.
H: Yeah it is. That’s the fun of it, that was our opening line and where can you go from there! [Laughs]
J: So what do you feel is different making films in the eighties compared to now?
H: Well in the eighties there was a market for them and you could sell them. You can’t sell them today, there’s no market for them. So in the eighties the interest was strong and you still had enough theatres left in America or even globally that would play the stuff, you know, the stuff that’s other than Hollywood product. And all that’s gone. All those theatres are all gone, those companies are gone and Hollywood owns something like 99 % of the theatres left. So a lot of things have changed with that. Also I think the prime audience who have always been a young audience, are so removed from say the eighties that they don’t have any awareness of the heritage or culture of exploitation cinema. So something like Bad Biology may look even more ridiculous, or more outrageous or more what the fuck is it than unusual, than it really does because it’s being watched by people without any references to that kind of film.
J: Yeah, that’s true. I feel that quite a lot when talking to people who don’t know their genre history. And it’s kind of a shame about 42nd Street being “cleaned up” by Giuliani and his gang. I would have loved to see it in its heyday.
H: Yeah unfortunately. But it was Disney actually, because Disney wanted to invest in Broadway. The best theatre on 42nd Street was the New Amsterdam, it was the most occulent, and of course it was covered in dirt and grime and debris and stuff. But even when you saw it at its lowest point you could tell that this was a great theatre. It was home to the Ziegfried Follies, it had a second storey theatre up on the rooftop. All the theatres on 42nd Street had a rich theatrical history. At the Harris Theatre, John Barrymore performed Hamlet, at the Sutherland Theatre W.C. Fields appeared in Poppy. You know, these where major Broadway shows, with major talent. But the street got seedy very quickly, in the thirties it was already showing movies as apposed to theatre, then it had burlesque and it had really a torrid history of crime and violence in the area… and porno stores. That was half the charm of growing up there, in between every theatre there was a porn store. Well in the sixties they weren’t really porn stores, they where adult book stores, and a lot of dirty magazines from Sweden where there. [Laughs] So when Disney said that they where interested in buying the New Amsterdam Theatre for themselves, what they said to the city was “We’ll stick X million dollars into this, but what we can’t have families being exposed to pornography and filth. So they said clean it up and yeah, Giuliani came up with a theory where they zoned the stores out. They waited for all the leases to run dry, some over ten years, and then just acquired the buildings and it’s heartbreaking to someone like me. Like I said, I went there as a kid but never encountered crime. Sure, I could see it, but if you weren’t buying drugs, or hookers, or male prostitutes, or gambling at three-card Monty or something, then nobody cared! Nobody mugged you or robbed you, it was a paradise. A sleazy paradise, but still a paradise.
J: That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
H: No not at all, I felt very comfortable with it. But there’s no trace of it anymore. None. None whatsoever, it’s like I’m describing an extinct dinosaur.
J: In Basket Case 2 & 3 [1990, 1992], you expanded the universe of the original movie. What made you want to go back to those characters?
H: First of all Basket Case is its own story, they died at the end and they’d killed the Doctors, the story was over. So where do you go, what do you do for part two? Well OK, they didn’t die – Yeah of course they died – but you have them taken to hospital, it wasn’t that big of a stretch. And who where the villains in this one? We’d already exhausted those in the first one. I also didn’t want to remake Basket Case because so many sequels retrace the same thing. I know that was an unpopular decision amongst some fans who don’t like part two, because it doesn’t have that seedy squalor of the first one. Well, I already made that one so let’s make something else, so I decided to expand it into a community of freaks and even then, set it inside a beautiful estate, a mansion that you wouldn’t expect things to be in. And I’ve always liked the film; I like the film very much. I saw it just the other night for the first time since it played theatrically – I don’t usually watch my own stuff – but I thought it held up really nice. I wish more people would see it.
J: Yeah, I enjoy it because of the expansion with all the fantastic freaks and stuff.
H: Yeah, Gabe Bartalos created this incredible army of mutants and it’s just wonderful. The most beautiful creepy sculptures you will ever see. The freaks are great stuff.
J: What’s the process when you create the creatures? Do you sketch them or is it all in the script and how do you actually get them out in reality?
H: In some cases I have no preconceived notes, and in some, like the main monster of the film, I have some kind of idea, just vague. Then I’ll explain them to Gabe and he’ll do sketches or may do a clay mock-up to see if that’s what I had in mind. And I’ll sometimes be like well that’s pretty damned close, what if we just try this or try that and you know, we go through a slow process until we’re both happy with it. We’ve never had a special effect that he liked and I didn’t, or vice versa. The penis baby in Bad Biology… Jesus, that took us a while because I always knew what the last shot was, I knew that you’d only see it from one angle, and that you have to get the joke right away – it’s only on camera for like less than forty seconds tops – you had to get the joke in a flash and it had to move, it’s my punch line and what can we do with it? And if we embellish it too much, you won’t see the penis. So you had to see the penis and realise that it’s a baby, and that took quite a bit of time to figure out. When Gabe sculpted it he only sculpted it from the viewpoint of what the camera was going to see. He knows I’m not going to change the angle, I’m not going to add a shot, I’m not going to move and see it in reverse. Especially with special effects you have to plan all that out carefully or else you are just throwing money right out the window. You know no makeup man is going to create a monster that can do everything, but you can create many monsters where each one has specific functions as long as you know what it has to do, where the angle is, how the scene is cut, it’s all magic tricks. It’s all misdirection.
J: There’s quite a lot of build and anticipation before you unleash, or reveal the “Monster” in your movies, like Basket Case where almost every second line of dialogue refers to “What’s in the case?”. Do you feel that it’s vital to keep it hidden from the audience as long as possible?
H: You’ve got to give it context. If you show it right at the beginning, what do you build off? I think that it’s just in the writing. It’s just the context of if, just keep them guessing and then deliver it, do a variation on it and get the hell out fast. [Laughs]
J: Where do you come up with the inspiration for these great characters?
H: I don’t know, you just do it, you just write. I have no idea really, you just write. If you’re doing Bad Biology and have a character with that defect, then where does he/she go, what was it like, what if that was you, and you’ll figure it out.
J: I feel that most of your movies all have quite empathetic characters.
H: Well that’s the way it should be in every film isn’t it. That’s all.
J: Yeah, but a terribly lot of genre films miss that vital part completely.
H: Well if you don’t have empathy for your characters, then why are you watching it, why should you care? You know, that’s like basic; and all the good movies I have seen have empathetic characters. But I know what you are saying, because every slasher film you see they are like cardboard, you don’t care if they get laid or if they get killed. It’s like; fine just kill ‘em.
J: Get it over with!
H: Yeah really, please kill them. [Laughs]
J: You’re very much, a hands on filmmaker. You write, you direct, and you’ve edited most of your movies. What’s your favourite part of the process?
H: Writing it. That’s the best part you know, because that’s when you have the full film in your head, and it’s like a jigsaw puzzle and you solved it, and if you did a good job you can believe it. Then I also love the editing, but the actual making it, the directing, it’s just horrible. It’s horrible, it’s just work. I never really said that I wish I was on a movie set right now working. You know, it’s just awful, it’s really difficult, everything that can go wrong will go wrong, you never have enough time, you never have enough money, everyone’s complaining… [Laughs] … and sometimes it’s pretty damned awful. I know when I did Frankenhooker, the whole crew hated me, the whole cast hated me, except for Patty Mullen, and it was terrible, terrible, it was like, oh god, no matter what the scene was I’d yell cut and I’d laugh and I could see people everywhere just rolling their eyes, shaking their heads going oh he doesn’t get it, he doesn’t understand how terrible this movie is. But that’s just something you have to deal with because that’s part of it, and there’s a lot of politics with crew and casts, and that’s why I’d rather keep it small. The less people, the less problems.
J: There’s an old storytelling phrase that goes something like, you never make one movie, you make three; the one you write, the one you shoot and the one you edit. Can you recognise that in your own work?
H: You’ll never make the movie you write. It’s impossible it’s like trying to paint a dream. It’s just impossible, it’s fluid in your head, and it’s a movie without the practical reality of life or the real dimensions of it you know. And editing it, well if you have done you job with the film and you shot it right, well then it will edit correctly. In my case, I don’t have the luxury of shooting footage. With 4700 feet of 35millimeter film to shoot Bad Biology, you have to do one to three shooting ratio. There’s no deleted scenes, there’s no extra scenes, and there’s only one shot we cut because we fucked up, that’s about it. And if you don’t get the performance, then you can’t keep working on it. You have to stop and figure out what’s wrong, change it or work with the actor right away on the spot or something or else you don’t have it. And when you edit you should only improve it, it shouldn’t change it.
J: How important do you feel that sex is to genre film?
H: Let’s put it like this, how important is it to life? It’s all everyone ever thinks about. Guys obsess over it every minute of the day, women think about it, not as much as guys do, but it’s all any guy I know thinks about. It’s all I ever think about. Have you ever spent a day in your life not thinking about fucking someone, ever? Have you ever walked down a street and not looked at people going I wonder what they look like naked or, I’d like that one… It’s impossible! So why shouldn’t films be sexual as well. Except for one exception, and that’s porn. Porn is so fucking boring, it’s just like, oh my god, now that you see it, its like, I might as well watch a real movie. I guess what you have to do is just tease with it.
J: I was watching Basket Case last night and there’s a great scene that shows how teasing can work in benefit to scare an audience. There’s that scene towards the end of the movie where Duane [Kevin Van Hentenryck] and Sharon [Terri Susan Smith] finally connect. She’s on the bed, he’s on top of her, they are both still clothed, and the movie really slows down into a very tender and delicate moment. You’re expecting to see some skin and Blam! Belial launches out of the basket shouting and screaming and it’s a really effective shock moment. It gets me ever damned time. The sex teases and the shock moment still delivers a sucker punch.
H: Well you know, you’re dealing with two males in a room arguing over who gets the girl. And that’s basic; it’s real. That happens every night in every bar. But that was back then. These days, well, I don’t know… You know a film like Halloween [John Carpenter 1978] kind of set the template. The good girl that lives as a virgin, the bad girl get killed first, which makes sense, as they are the ones that will be showing the nudity… But it’s become a formula that is absolutely stale. What is the point of going to a horror film if it’s going to be the same old thing? All this fantasy it’s all kept in a conventional box, you know, it’s not allowed to come out! It’s as if the joy of years of going to see horror movies is gone.You want see stuff that isn’t reality, you want to see breakthroughs, you want to see every convention turned on its head. You don’t want to be comfortable; you want to see the hero die, or something come out of the left field. You don’t want to be sitting there feeling oh now I can go and get more popcorn now because they just killed that one and I know there’s ten minutes to the next one, and you can almost guess in those films what the death order will be. It’s boring.
J:Yeah basically the generic slasher stuff goes that way; it’s too predictable to be bothered with really. Finally, if one of your movies ever got singled out for a big budget, all in remake, which one would it be, and why?
H: Well it’s going to be Basket Case. That’s the one they want. I’ve already had offers for it, but most of the offers where for low budget films as they obviously thought we can do this fast and cheap. Well I already did that version. I already did the low budget fast and cheap version, so I don’t really see any point in doing that version. This is a film that I own, it’s my first film, and I don’t just want to sell it and not know who’s making it. But, as we’re talking there is a serious offer out there and I like it. I like the people involved and I like the direction they want to take it. We’re still at the talking stage and I don’t know how real this is, but if it does it’s going to be like that. The direction they want to take with the story I really like. It makes sense as it’s simultaneously a remake and a thoughtful extension. Taking the premise and looking at it in a very different way. But I’ll tell you the one nobody will ever remake… they will never remake Bad Biology!
J: Oh, Never say never. Twenty years from now some one might just be looking through some past stuff and go, Hey that’s the one we got to remake, so never say never.
H: Yeah, well, you never know.
J: Ok, well, Mr. Henenlotter. Thanks for taking the time. Have a great stay in Stockholm and keep up the great work.
H: Sure, Thanks!
I’d like want to thank the NjutaFilms/SubDVD team for organising this event, a fist full of good mates who also attended the event, making it even more memorable, and most of all Frank Henenlotter who took the time to sit down and entertain one of the minions with his exhilarating tales of making low budget gems. After our session we continued talking about a whole load of stuff ranging from migraines and painkillers to movies like Sweden Heaven and Hell (Svezia, inferno e paradiso) 1968, the several edits of Reptillicus (1961), Invasion of the Animal People (Rymdinvasion in Lappland) 1959 and all the fan pressure that comes with releases like those titles, through contemporary horror I though he should check out – the stuff that isn’t generic and predictable, also Frank’s work with Something Weird Video, and the recently completed documentary on Hershell Gordon Lewis (H.G.L. – The Godfather of Gore) 2010 which Henenlotter shared editing duties on. Needless to say and to follow up the quote he left on facebook a few days previously “We’ll have a blast in Stockholm!” And we most certainly did.
