Dr. Squid's Year In Review

It may be a tad premature for a Dr. Squid 2005 wrap-up, but it's already mid-November and soon Thanksgiving will be over and before you know it, it's Christmas and New Year's time with all of the family and friend obligations and then it's 2006. While I'm sure to fall short of my hope to "get everything shot that I have on my plate by the end of the year," I didn't do too badly.

DR. PUDDING'S MONSTER FILES: With my son's help, I made the Underbug and TreeSpirit creatures: UnderBug is shot and Tom Shaffer has everything to shoot the TreeSpirit segment but time. Laura Giglio sent me all of the footage for the "Nurse/Ghost" segment. I still haven't finished the "swimming pool creature" for a segment I'd hoped to have Kimberly Lyn Cole shoot for me. My current plan is to write up a different short for her to do and I have a lead on someone else to shoot a segment for me as well.

TWISTED FATES: Shot the last bits for this anthology's wraparound at the beginning of the year. Came close to casting for the VideoDrone segment in the spring, but things fell through. The wraparound and one segment is shot.

BLOODSUCKING REDNECK VAMPIRES: the wacked-out comedy horror flick is out on DVD from Sub Rosa Studios and it was so cool to be able to add it to my Netflix list this year!

UNDERBELLY: This started streaming on VistaStreetVOD.com.

DEADLY PREMONITIONS: This backburner project came to the forefront for a number of reasons: back in February I was faced with having split the bus & hotel costs with another moviemaker to bring an actress to town (we would shoot for one day each with her) and having my project fall through at the last moment. I pulled this partially-written script up, fleshed out a few scenes and shot some stuff for it. Later, when Tom Stedham offered to fly out to be in a project, the only thing I had anywhere close to being shootable was this. I finished up the script in a few weeks and shot mostly in August and September with only a few scenes remaining to be shot right now.

PREHISTORICUS: I reprised my role as Frank the Astronaut in more shoots for my friend Tom Shaffer's "dinosaur planet" flick, having donned the orange jumpsuit for many weekend shoots over the last several years. Unfortunately Tom had some major computer problems and this project's current status is: needs to be edited...again.

HOUSEBOUND 2: John Bowker and I collaborated on this project which we'd hoped to shoot in June with John directing. The script was done, the major casting was in place and I had a fair amount of preproduction done (shooting schedule, creature designs, etc.) but for a number of reasons, the project had to be cancelled.

SEXY HORROR SCRIPT: I sold a sexy horror script along the lines of WITCHHOUSE 3 and the later WITCHCRAFT sequels to a midwest production company. Hoping it gets made!

ZOMBIE LOVE SLAVE: After a few years of waiting for Tim Davis to shoot an opening sequence I finally told him to forget it and moved ahead with editing. Finally got it wrapped up and now just have to figure out what to do with it (27 minutes long).

TRAILER PARK DOUBLE WIDE TRILOGY OF TERROR: With a lot of post-production and DVD authoring help from Mike Hegg, this comedic horror project shot way back in 1997-1999-or-so finally saw it's way to a DVD-R release in June.

TAINTED BLOOD: Even though I was in the midst of trying to wrap up several projects, I accepted an invitation to contribute a short to a vampire anthology. John Bowker wrote the script and I shot it over a weekend in August. Finally finished it up and sent it off a few weeks ago. Expect it to be a part of ALWAYS MIDNIGHT from Falcon Video.

As I mentioned, the holidays tend to get hectic so it's hard to say if much movement will happen on anything until next year. If anything this blog makes it easy for me to take a look back at what a crazy and busy year it's been.

Old Friends

Mike Hegg, my partner on BLOODSUCKING REDNECK VAMPIRES plans to come down for a visit this weekend and John Bowker, all of whose movies I've worked on, is going to be in town for a couple of days next week. John's anxious to see TAINTED BLOOD, which he wrote for me. I hope he likes it!

Have recently had two orders for DIMENSION OF BLOOD/MONSTER IN THE GARAGE double feature video, even though I've been out of copies for years! Managed to output a few more sleeves today and have one copies dubbed out from the master - plan to do another over the weekend.

Noticed that it was way back on June 8 that I gave Tom Shaffer the script, contract and some funding for the TreeSpirit short for DR. PUDDING'S MONSTER FILES. The contract said he had 6 months to do it, but I haven't progressed much on what will be the other parts of the movie, though, so in the end it's probably not a big deal.

As it's almost mid-November, my plan to have everything shot for all of the projects on my plate doesn't seem like it will pan out, but if I can get the remaining tidbits for DEADLY PREMONITIONS shot, I'll still feel pretty good about how much I was able to get done this year.

More soon...

Dr. Squid's California Adventure

Three big scary mouths!


One of these guys is made from legos!


It's Mickey!


Leaving Disneyland at midnight, waiting for the shuttle. Note Son of Squid wearing the infamous red shirt as the poor lad was cold


LOOK AT THIS!!! It's the HANNIBAL 8 - Professor Fate's awesome car from "The Great Race!" This and many other supercool cars were at the Peterson Auto Museum. Holy moley it was cool seeing this in person!

Finally got a dub of TAINTED BLOOD mailed off to Falcon Video this week.

More soon...

The Happiest Place on Earth

I've been out of touch for a bit as I've been out of town on a week-long trip to Disneyland! I'll post a few photos when I get a chance. Have been scrambling to catch up on some work and home stuff ever since. Need to get the TAINTED BLOOD tape mailed off and see if I can schedule the last remaining bits of DEADLY PREMONITIONS sometime over the next few weeks.

More soon...