Heard from Tim in Oklahoma last night - they took care of some reshoots for the "Crazed" segment of TRULY DREADFUL TALES and plan on wrapping it up by the weekend. Yay! I hope to edit it all together over the Christmas break.
Have been working on fixing some of my older video shorts for compilation into a new anthology. Was uploading footage from a project I did just 6 years ago that had some sound issues - and now I know how to fix them! Kind of pain to drudge through stuff like this, but it'll be nice to have improved it and then be able to get them out for folks to see.
Took care of four BLOOD CREEK WOODSMAN pick-up shots the other night. Hope to do more this weekend. Y'know, doing blood splatters in the garage is better than doing them in the house, but even with trash bags laid out all over the place, blood still seems to get everywhere.
We held a screening/dvd release for UNDERBELLY last Friday at the Northern Lights Theater Pub in Salem, Oregon.
Yeah, that's the ticket!
Up in lights! Unrated, even!!!
Here's some of the crowd after the screening.
So a bunch of Robert J. Olin's friends came down from Portland to see the movie and brought their own Bob "fans" to show what big fans they were of him.
Now, this is scary!
A bunch of us hung out at the nearby bar after the show...
Where the Bob fan/masks continued to pop up...
In all sorts of places...nice one, Dara!
Even the bartender got into the act!
Thanks to everyone who came out for the show! Hoping to have many more screenings this next year! UNDERBELLY is available here.
It was five years ago today that Baltimore filmmaker Don Dohler passed away.
It was appropriate that my filmmaking friend John called me to pass along the sad news that Don Dohler had lost his battle with cancer at age 60.
John and I were both in middle school when we seperately caught Don's movie THE ALIEN FACTOR on the channel 12 afternoon movie. The movie was a huge inspiration for us both and got us interested in making our own movies. The picture above is Don inside an alien outfit from the movie.
Many years later, TBS aired THE ALIEN FACTOR and I got it recorded on tape. That VHS tape was gold to me for I'd never seen the movie any other time and had never seen it available in video stores where I lived. At the end of the movie, in the end credits crawl, there was an address for the company that made the movie. I wrote to them, telling them how cool the movie was. Unfortunately the address was no longer good and the letter was returned to me. Rats.
Even more years later, I was able to interview Don by mail for my zine Dr. Squid. Don not only wrote back but answered my questions with great detail. As time went on, I got into making movies and Don was always an inspiration. He and I corresponded by e-mail many times. He was always nice, supportive and seemed happy to share stories about his work.
It was those qualities that made him such an inspiration to many making movies today, from no-budget videomakers, to FX guys, even to J.J. Abrams, who was able to do some music for Don's movie Nightbeast back in the early 80s.
This is a shot of Don in his basement where they built a set for the Sheriff's office for THE ALIEN FACTOR.
Below is Don's inscription to me from his book, "B-Movie Horrors." Don made his mark on so many lives and he is truly missed.
DVD Release Premiere Screening of the sexy thriller UNDERBELLY, Friday, December 9 at 9 p.m. at the Northern Lights Theater Pub, 3893 Commercial Street Southeast, Salem, OR 97302.
Just $3 and they serve beer, wine and food! I'll have Underbelly DVDs for sale as well as Deadly Premonitions, Inbred Redneck Vampires and others and even some old VHS stuff!
The wife needs to stop by a fabric store after dinner tonight and says it'll only take a few minutes.
Many, many minutes later my son and I are going stir crazy waiting around.
Look what I found in the pattern area:
Jug Jacket! A jacket for your jugs!
Then we wandered over to the crafty area. My son saw this and said, "It's the evil nutcraker," and then made the guy's mouth move and voiced, "I'm going to crack your nuts!!!"
Needless to say, I was laughing pretty good, BUT THEN...
Oh my God, it's a Penguin Pooper...that comes packaged with a pile of poop balls! Then I saw THIS:
Look at the strained expression on his face!!! Then we saw the packaging:
Out-of-stock for many years, UNDERBELLY is available again with a snazzy new cover design to boot! Available in THE STORE!
In this twist-filled erotic thriller, a college student in search of a professor's missing niece becomes entangled with the small town's criminal underbelly including sexy prostitutes, vile gangsters and thuggish hitmen. Hot women appear at every turn, just not the one he's looking for. Even with the help of a sexy hooker, will he live long enough to find out what really going on?
Starring Tamra Redmond (The Seekers), Heather Storm (Velocity's Garage Squad, National Lampoon's Dorm Days 2, Epic Movie, Lost Treasure of the Maya) and Shannon (Bloodsucking Redneck Vampires, Evilmaker 2) with Tom Shaffer and Robert Olin, both from Deadly Premonitions. Opening credit sequence features Jenny Wallace (Planet of the Erotic Ape, Hookers in a Haunted House).
MicrocinemaScene.com's John Oak Dalton says: "..knowing "nerd-noir"...gives off a cool vibe, and is an overall solidly-produced outing with sharp scripting, witty performances, some nice twists and turns, and eye-popping women. Three stars."
Buried.com's The Mortician says: "Think of a Fred Olen Ray movie being morphed with the dark humor of something like Martin Scorsese's AFTER HOURS...Amidst the interesting story, there's plenty of nudity peppered throughout the movie in a homage to directors like Jim Wynorski and Fred Olen Ray. The story comes to a halt so that viewers can feast their eyes upon sex scenes and strip routines...boasts solid performances by the cast and technically, the movie is standout...I can't see fans of b-grade exploitation movies having any beefs with the contents that UNDERBELLY delivers... salutes the Roger Corman formula of the '80's"
B-independent.com's Allen Richards says: "a soft-boiled crime thriller where those nerd-qualities take the edge off the darker elements. Think Fred Olen Ray for the Dungeons and Dragon's crowd...and that's not a knock...a fish-out-of-water comedy...giddy, b-movie fun."
I wrote out a long-winded blog post about what is going on, but I just deleted it in favor of something brief:
I've got a whole mess of things on my plate right now: movies and pieces of movies in various stages of development; small projects that have turned into large ones; freelance illustration jobs; etc.
Plus more and more work from work being brought home on top of family commitments.
Stuff is happening, but at a slow pace.
The main thing, though, is that I am in more of a "wait until it's done" mode of posting, rather than a "this is happening right now" mode of posting.
The "glimpse behind the scenes as projects develop" approach is interesting to be sure, but also leads to disappointment when a project someone reads about takes a long time to finish, or gets pushed aside for another project or just doesn't end up going anywhere. At this point, so many of these projects are taking forever as my time is spread thinner and thinner, that I'd just rather wait until some things are wrapped up to blab about them here.
Of course I could change my mind tomorrow. That's the beauty of this blog thing. Another day, another post.
For now, those of you following this, stay tuned!!!
I decided to put this segment up online to share with folks. It was so much fun to make! It will still be a part of the TRULY DREADFUL TALES horror anthology. Enjoy the bigfooty goodness!
