Artwork by Douglas Dij Duerring

TWO screenings of …And Then I Helped will be hitting the Great White North! February 3rd will be with Horror in the Hammer. Through their monthly Fright Night screenings held at The Staircase Cafe Theatre… The short film Day Zero will also be shown! Thine magGots will be attending both…

Remy is a very talent FX artist who has become, as one officer put it “A victim of his own talent”. I will save the space and allow you to read about it here http://supportremy.com/en/index.html In the meanwhile I’ve had the chance to ask Remy not only about the case, but also about his craft. So sit back my Children and embrace the Inner Depravity!

Like many great stories, let us start at the beginning my Son. What started your interest in fx?
I’m gonna be honest with you. I remember watching the making of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video as a kid, and it really felt like a punch in the face.  Later as a young adult, what first gave me a lot of inspiration was the main character of the series Hellraiser, the Cenobites.  Creepy.

Did you have any formal training or were you mainly self taught?
I always had a knack for airbrush painting since my teens. I had to find a way to pay for my beer and partying at the time, so I used to paint my friend’s leather coats, motorcycle helmets, hockey goalie masks, cd covers and huge flags for heavy metal bands. Those were the days.
Later i started FX effects, and my first project was a photo shoot in my apartment, with a bunch of friends and I decided to transform her into a corpse.  I posted that pic on the web on some corny geocity website I created, and my friends made me notice that a lot of people went to see that picture. I gained confidence and here I am, still working on new stuff, trying out new stuff, always working on projects as diverse as web series, photo shoots, a few short movies, indie movies, etc.  I’m usually busy.

What was the first project you worked on?
It was my set of photo shoots for Innerdepravity back in 2005. Time flies.

Do you have a “Dream Project” you would like to work on someday if you have not already?
I used to dream to be able to work on Hellraiser set. Someday I wish to be able to work as the creative director on huge projects such as Saw, or anything that will push to a very high level of ultra-violent. Maybe working on the complete set of war movies would be interesting, such as WW2.  I love history, especially the thematic around both world wars, so that would combine both my intellectual interest and my art together in one project.

You are well known for the realism in some of your fx, do you prefer going for realism or going for over the top fantasy make ups?
As much I can work on the fantasy makeups about aliens and such, I prefer to work on realistic FX because what makes it really work is when the audience is wondering if it is reality or not. I like to make people think when watching my art.

How would you do my make up? You know… for those times I don’t want my mistress to beat me to a pulp before I leave the house.
Hmm… funny question. I would totally work on your wrists, sweet Jesus. Last time I saw you Jesus, your wrists were not bleeding and rotting enough, and I also noticed that you did not have enough whip marks, just like what they did to you in Passion of Christ.  I also think that the crown of thorns is so yesterday, I think we should style it to barbwire.  After that, you should be smokin’.

Do you ever or have you ever taught fx classes? And if so will you continue to do so?
My first experience teaching an FX class was at the FANEXPO 2011 – under the invitation of my dear friend Rodrigo Godino, who totally gave me a great opportunity for me to teach my art to the public. To my surprise the workshop was jam-packed with students of all trades, from different cities. That was a great experience to see people interested in learning in my techniques because i never went to school for what i do.  I am planning to continue to give workshops as well, after my court case is over, when I will be able to start working on a program, and teach to the new generation.

OK time to get serious… now before we get into the charges brought against you, would you please give our readers a little background on what innerdepravity.com was all about?
INNERDEPRAVITY.COM was a web-based multimedia project I produced and created back in 2005.  The content, a series of short movies along with photo shoots, were displayed by thematics. I am also a special FX makeup artist, and my goal was to put in practice the various special FX techniques I acquired throughout the past years. Access to my website was strictly allowed to a mature audience(18 years old and up), due to the graphic content of my art.

In 2006, I decided to make a DVD version of my work. INNERDEPRAVITY 1 and INNERDEPRAVITY 2 were born. INNERDEPRAVITY 1 was premiered at the SPASM Festival in 2007, and won the award of ‘the most deranged movie of the year’.  An unexpected reaction. Innerdepravity perpetrates the terrible mindset of a serial killer. A tattooed masked man performs many of his killings in many different settings, and every killing is accompanied with a photographic journal of his deviance’s.

You are up on charges of “Corruption of Morals” http://www.supportremy.com/en/case-remy-couture/case-remy-couture.html Do you feel they have any sort of case at all? Or is it all just an effort for them not to look like total dip shits after they realized the error they had made arresting you in the first place?
I feel that this is a complete waste of time and money for anyone involved. They arrested me thinking that there was an actual case, No actual murders, but after they realized and verified that there was absolutely nothing but latex and paint in my home, they probably felt like a bunch of idiots.  Seriously, they ARE a bunch of idiots(pardon my French)! I guess to save their faces now they are trying to say that my work has no artistic value. I mean, come on, all they need to do is to admit they made a HUGE mistake.

How has this effected your personal freedoms in this country? For example can you leave the country? And also they seized a lot of your personal property, have you or will you ever get it back?
Of course I can still travel as long as my trial has not started and that I’m not found guilty. However, all my equipment was seized since 2009 (computer, laptop, my credit cards, my passport,all my bills) and they still have not yet returned anything to me yet. The prosecutor of the Crown, Sophie Lamarre, has worked very hard for them to keep my equipment, hoping that it would stop me from spreading my art. I guess she didn’t know about the internet much, because there are so many fans around the world who have fanpages and are still spreading my work today. Just google Innerdepravity and see for yourself.

As we all know going to court is expensive. Last I heard the bill was over $25,000. Is this still rising?
Well I can’t give you the exact full amount, but it is for certain over 30 000. It can rise even higher depending on how long the trial will take, which can last up to a month.

So your new court date is set for Jan 9th 2012. Are you worried this is just going to be delayed by the prosecution again? It seems to me as if they are trying to wear you down because it’s the only way they can win is if you quit.
Of course it is the oldest trick in the book to try to wear me down, but I will always stand up and fight in the name of freedom of expression. I feel like OJ Simpson, except I didn’t do it, and that I’m not a millionaire.

Anything you would like to add?
Please visit Www.supportremy.com!  Please spread the word and help me battle justice’s injustices! All donations are dearly needed, they will be paying up my lawyers for this huge case. Also, if you would like to help in any way,  don’t hesitate to write to me: remyfx@hotmail.com All suggestions are welcome! Thanks for your support!

You can also check out the facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/#!/CrimeArt

And here is also a link to a trailer for a  doc, detailing the events surrounding His arrest called “Art/ Crime”.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The cast is interesting.  It’s not dynamite like the original with Kurt Russell, Keith David, and Wilford Brimley, but it had me peeking out of the corners of my eyes.  It had the dude from °Beerfest°, Eric
Christian Olsen, the one who plays Gunter.  I cannot take this guy’s face seriously since I saw that flick, but he was good in this one. Also, obscurely enough it had Paul Braunstein, whom I know as °Johnny, the only brilliant thing about that awful, awful Canadian subway soap opera ‘Train 48′ (RIP)° He dies early, but hey, I’m pretty stoked that a talent like his wasn’t buried by his own country’s shitty programming. Well cast.

The movie is fundamentally different than the Carpenter film in the casting of a female in the lead. This is Mary Elisabeth Winstead (a distant cousin of Ava Gardner whom our very own Mr. Ben Tatar gave sweet sweet coitus to, back in the waywaywayback!).  She is excellent as Kate, the American scientist enlisted to help a bunch of Norwegian yokels at an arctic outpost to dissect a newly discovered alien trapped in a block of ice.  There is a calm and underdone gravitas of everyone’s performance that really anchors this prequel to the original. Not trying to outdo the cool parts of the original with more firepower and a hip young cast.  This one is as bleak and frustrating as the original, with a slightly less claustrophobic feel.  Oh, and if you’re worried about a happy ending, not to worry, my dark-souled friends.

Another Canadian, Kim Bubbs, is one of the film’s two females in thefilm. She was there at the the screening and she explained that there was a concentrated effort to use some puppetry and practical F/X mixed into the current digital stuff to absolutely honour the Carpenter original’s tone and magic, and I’m ecstatic to say it did. I did feel they cannibalized °Alien/Aliens° with the design of the um, alien at first, and there were some face-sucking er, uh aliens and such, but at this point it would be like being mad that Iced Earth’s new album copies Judas Priest AND Black Sabbath.  FOR SHAME!!

I hate digital effects, buuuut they are needed for new sci-fi, fantasy, horror projects, so get used to it. I think they waited long enough to make this prequel, in order for some of the higher ups at Universal to truly appreciate what made the Carpenter version so bloody spectacular. If  they made it back then McReady would have returned as the Thing-Overlord and spouted sly alien one-liners, maybe even rapped!

If you go in with a clean palette and are willing to overlook some minor modern F/X chicanery you will be thrilled with this remake/prequel/clone/alien/pizza/thing.

Skeeter

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’ve heard the term “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.” all my life. While I’ve always figured they were specifically talking about New York City, after seeing this, I now fully believe they were referring to SLIME City.

Slime City is the debut feature of independent filmmaker-turned author Gregory Lamberson, and it was made near the end of what I feel is one of the greatest periods for independent genre film making, the eighties. This was an era that birthed such bat-shit crazy classics as Basket Case, Combat Shock, From Beyond, Street Trash, etc. This was a period of rampant disregard for conventional film making, rivaled only by the seventies. Slime City marked the end of an era. It was an unbelievably satisfying end, but an end nonetheless.

The story involves young Art student Alex (Robert Sabin) who has just moved into his first apartment, hoping that living on his own, rather than in a dorm would convince his virgin girlfriend Lori (Mary Huner) to move in with him, and thus, have sex with him. Things go awry pretty  quickly when one of his neighbors, aspiring poet Roman (Dennis Embry) gives him some mysterious elixir and “Himilayan Yogurt” made by the long-dis ceased father of their landlady, Zachary, notorious alchemist and occultist. He’s seduced by his sexy next door neighbor Nicole (Ironically, also played by Mary Huner) and so begins his downward spiral as the spirit of Zachary (Played in a dream sequence by Daniel Frye) slowly takes over his body, turning him into a deformed, slime-covered monster who needs to kill to maintain his normal appearance. Much splatter ensues, with blood and gore showing up left, right and center, but would you have it any other way?

Slime City comes off as a movie that takes place in some kind of parallel universe where cops befriend prostitutes, mysterious mediums offer information of grave danger for only a dollar, and your average hobo is actually quite well read, and a bit of a snazzy talker. In short,this movie rules! The film’s shoestring budget never becomes too apparent, as the effects, cinematography and music all work very well. In particular, the last fifteen minutes or so will surely be etched into your brain for years to come. The performances by all are quite believable, and fun to watch.

All in all, you really can’t go wrong with Slime City. It’s original, fast paced, and as I mentioned earlier, bat-shit insane. It’s crazy plot is never boring, and despite it’s insanity comes off as oddly believable.

Why?…………………………..

…………………..Fuck you, that’s why.

Click here to view the embedded video.

-Justin

It costs money to make movies and it doesn’t cost money to write books.  Also, I could never make a living making low budget horror films, and I’m finding I can survive writing novels. I don’t want to tell stories set in one apartment just because that’s all I can afford; I want to tell big, action packed stories with a lot of characters, violence, gore, and nudity. And monsters.  I want the freedom to create the wildest monsters I can imagine, not just those I can afford. I’ve written eight books since 2004, versus four features since 1986.

What got you back into films?

Once the filmmaking bug infects you, it never really goes away.  For me, my three early features – SLIME CITY, UNDYING LOVE, and NAKED FEAR – were the equivalent of film school.  I knew I could use everything I’ve learned to make something decent, maybe even good.  The result was SLIME CITY MASSACRE, which is the first film I’ve made that I’m happy with.

What are some of the challenges/ differences of writing a screenplay as opposed to writing a novel?

For me, there are very few challenges in writing a screenplay, unless I’m writing one for someone else and I have to convince them that my way is the right way.  I’ve written four scripts for other people, quick jobs when I needed cash to pay my mortgage.  Each one took me about three weeks, and that was while being a full time, stay at home parent.  Movie pacing comes naturally to me, so I can whip them out pretty quickly, and I have yet to say, “Boy, does this suck!”  I also have a very improvisational style which allows me to create story points as I go along.  If I had a hook up in the TV industry I could probably make a fortune.  But at what cost, Jesus?  At what cost?

Slime City is now considered by many to be a cult classic. What brought about doing a sequel with Slime City Massacre?

I had 20 years to read and re-read the reviews for the first film, and I thought, “I’ll show them!”  WI started thinking about a sequel when I did 20th anniversary screenings of SLIME CITY at film festivals and horror cons in 2008.  The ideas came fast, even though I didn’t want them to, and I knew that if I wrote the script I would have to make the movie.  And I wrote the script…

Is there a chance of making it a trilogy?

It’s inevitable, isn’t it?  I have to make a third one so I can bullshit like every other franchise filmmaker: “I always intended it to be a trilogy!” and then I can come up with some lame excuse if I do a fourth one.  I’m pretty confident there will be a third one, I know what the story is and I’ve started the script, and it will be even more outlandish than the second one.  I have no idea when I’m going to make it; I have several books to write before then, and eve another movie I want to make, and the economy is in the toilet.  It’s not like this is a big franchise like FRIDAY THE 13TH or A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, where fans said, “We need our Jason and Freddy fix every year!”  SCM needs time to find an audience, just like SLIME CITY did.  I won’t wait 20 years this time, though.

Jake Helman (‘Personal Demons’, ‘Desperate Souls’, and ‘Cosmic Forces’) has become one of my new favorite characters. What was the inspiration behind him?

My first three novels – Personal Demons, Johnny Gruesome, and The Frenzy Way – were all based on unproduced screenplays of mine.  I wrote the Johnny Gruesome script around the same time I wrote Slime City, so it has similar sensibilities.  Personal Demons was my attempt to write a much bigger budgeted story, for the adult horror fans in the room.  I love crime dramas and harboiled noir as much as I do horror, and I wanted to mix all of those elements together. I also wanted to create a hero who would piss his pants in terror from time to time and really get his ass kicked.  I really punish Jake, which forces the reader to sympathize with him.  After three books, people say, “Oh, my God, what are you going to do to him this time?”

What made you decide to treat him as more than a one off character?

When I wrote the script, I plotted out a trilogy.  If the films had been made, I really could have said, “I always envisioned it as a trilogy!”  When I started writing the novels, I figured I would write 6 – 10 books.  Right now, I think it will be two different series of 6 novels, so 12 in total.  Jake Helman is my favorite character to write, I think he’s a real badass, so I’ll keep putting him through hell for as long as Medallion Press wants to publish his adventures.

Where did your fascination with fantasy/ horror elements come in to play?

Dunkirk, New York, where I lived alone with my mother, who bought me comic books when we walked home from our single screen theater.  In those comics were ads for the Aurora monster model kits, which led to me collecting the models and then seeing the movies that inspired them.  I’ve loved monsters as long as I can remember, and I’m excited in that Cosmic Forces, I’ve created one that I know is really cool, my take on Cthulhu, although with a completely different and surprising origin.

When did you begin writing?

Like all kids, I told stories at a very early age.  I cut out those Aurora monster model ads and moved them around our black and white TV screen.  My mother was an English teacher and an artists, so she encouraged all of my interests, even when I had teachers who tried to beat them down.

What came first, wanting to write novels or to make films?

I don’t really vie them as separate interests.  I always knew I wanted to be a story teller, and the method of storytelling went through different permutations: “I want to be a comic book artist, I want to be a stop motion animator…”  I knew I wanted to make films when STAR WARS came out, but I wanted to write books, too.

The internet seems like a double edged sword for independent film makers. Your thoughts?

The internet is a great place for people to give their films away for free, or for people to pirate films and download them illegally.  It’s also a great place for people to act like assholes, especially indie horror filmmakers who are more concerned with stirring up trouble than making good films.  It’s ugly out there, with a lot of white trash egomaniacs thumping their chests and stomping their feet because the internet provides them with a forum to act like bullies.  Slime City Massacre is available on the PlayStation Network, and it will also be available on iTunes, and I think that’s really cool.  But those downloads don’t have all the extras the 2-disc DVD has, and they cost just as much.

On your live journal you mention that you have 5 different projects on the go (hmm… sounds like magGot Films) how do you cope with balancing so many projects at once?

I really only work on one at a time, but it feels like I’m juggling because I’m also promoting them.  This month I’m writing a zombie novella for a small press, and then I’m starting a big book project for Medallion that could take me a year.  In October, Cosmic Forces is being published (it’s actually in a lot of bookstores now), and Slime City Massacre is getting a theatrical release from IFN, “indieFilmNet.”  I also help run the Buffalo Screams Horror Film Festival at the end of October, so I’m watching a lot of great indie films now.  I’ve honestly got more going on right now than I’ve ever had happening in my life before, and I actually have had to look at some of the distractions and say, “You’ve got to go.”

Describe yourself or your work with a Haiku

Do I look like I read or write poetry?  “There once was a girl from Nantucket…”

www.slimeguy.com

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you’re not eaten in the first 30 minutes… your heart will not beat for the final act.

Enter the abyss beneath 17th Street, in the Strip District. Pittsburgh’s brand new haunted attraction, spewing 30,000 square feet of madness!

TERROR TOWN!!!

Right off the bat I love this neo-slasher because the first thing you see is our very own Mr. Ben Tatar on the menu screen. “Don’t be afraid…Touch it!” he says, gesturing to a cadaver. Chromeskull:
Laid to Rest 2 is a sequel that starts exactly where the first left off, ala Halloween 2 (the good one).  Since the first installment director Rob Hall has grown tenfold in the chair. Where the first was
more spastic and tonally uneven, Chromeskull is a solid, well-paced and pondered slashbanger, with the dramatic tension of a Terminator film (makes sense since Hall was involved in the Terminator TV series).

Brian Austin Green whips out his acting junk, absolutely squashing his David Silver reputation, playing the loatheful, almost hulking, overachieving assistant in Chromeskull’s underground thrill kill cult. He’s bent on becoming the next great media murder artist, thinking he could surpass the level of sadism and efficiency benchmarked by Chromey.

This is where the theme of it kinda skews from the old school hack’n'slash formula. Chromeskull is apparently a rich motherscratcher who kills out of pure sensationalism, he won’t even waste a kill when the camera’s not rolling! This is different from the usual modus opperan-DIE (forgive me) of say Michael Myers or Jason Vorhees, who kill out of revenge and mental illness. That puts a little neo-spin on it. Not necessary but….cool!

Other than the killer and the killers assistant, there are also good performances from the victims, ahem, heroes. Danielle Harris and a returning Thomas Dekkar round out the cast in fine fashion.

So let’s get to the killer.  Ex-hardcore screamer Nick Principe goes eerily mute again, returning as the titular character, a graceful, lumbering menace. Not since Kane Hodder have we had such an amazing physical presence in a baddy.  I can’t wait to see this big bastard in a more substantial speaking role. I’ve met him, believe me, he has personality to spare! Somebody cast him NOW.

The FX are the true star of the show as bodies are splayed left and right, up and down, and around and around…”BARRF!” This is some of the greatest mix of practical effects with just a touch of digitals to clean up the seams. This is truly an FX masterpiece for the ages!

There you have it boys and girls. Waited for it, tracked it, even helped out in a teeny tiny way, bought it, watched it…. LOVED IT! Go out and buy this one. It’s made just for us, by folks just like
us.

Skeeter

Click here to view the embedded video.

Without a doubt in my mind, I am a dirty person. I enjoy dirty jokes, and things that some may find offensive, crude, and even indecent. So it occurred to me upon first viewing this film that it seemed to be tailor-made for me, the grimiest movie ever made. Everything I love in a movie is here: Vulgarity, Gore, Nudity, Gore, Violence, Toilet Humour, Gore, Sleazy Sexual Content, did I mention that it’s gory? Street Trash is without a doubt one of the most original, imaginative, and unabashedly offensive horror films of the eighties.

The plot, aside from being filled with gratuitous gore, is actually rather multi-layered, consisting of several different stories interacting with one another. The core of the film involves a greedy liquor store proprietor (M.D’Jango Krunch) who finds a hidden batch of liquor called Tenafly Viper, which is over sixty years old. Ever the eternal salesman, Ed (The Store Owner) decides to sell the bottles at a buck a piece. The majority of his customers are bums and derelicts, so he doesn’t have much of a problem selling the ancient booze. However, a dark and horrifying truth awaits all who drink the booze, because whoever does……..melts. Crazy, right?

As the acidic hooch makes its way through the New York underground, hobos and winos are melting left and right. Two runaways, Fred (Mike Lackey) and Kevin (Mark Sfrezza) run afoul of Bronson (Vic Noto), a shell-shocked (Insane from Nam), murderous psychopath who is the proclaimed “King of the Winos”. And to top it all off, a rough, slightly unorthodox cop is investigating the murder and rape of a Manhattan woman. A couple of melting winos and exploding fat guys later; you have what I have no problem calling the best independent horror films of the 1980’s. Troma fans will definatley enjoy the presence of R.L (Pat) Ryan, star of such Troma classics as The Toxic Avenger and Class of Nuke’Em High. The cinematography is fantastic, with director Muro operating the steadicam and David Sperling serving as main director of photography, the camerawork adds, believe it or not, a touch of class to an otherwise abrasive film.

The effects are wonderful, just the right level of professionalism with plenty of cheesiness. The scene when a heavyset wino drinks the booze, and then respectively explodes, is definitely something that has to be seen to be believed. The main signature special effect, the one that is remembered above all the other visions of grue and gore, is definitely the castration, which then leads to an impromptu game of penis-football. The only down point for me is the number of scenes between Tony, the (possibly) Mafia-employed restaurant owner (Tony Darrow) and his smart-ass, wise-cracking doorman (James Lorinz). They have such wonderful chemistry, and it’s a shame that they don’t share more screen time, they’re hilarious!

Despite the complete lack of moral fibre in the film, I also do believe that it has something to say about the dehumanization of the homeless. Too often we as a society look down and mock them, not realizing that they are indeed people too. These characters are winos, hobos and derelicts, this is true. However, they also display a lot of character and emotions, making us all remember that we’re really not all that different. I also believe that this film was made, harbouring more than a little anger towards the Viet Nam war, or perhaps war in general, as it turns an otherwise normal man into a human-femur- bone-knife-wielding psychopath, as well as the banter between brothers Fred and Kevin about their shell-shocked father (In an early cut of the film, cut footage revealed Bronson to be Fred and Kevin’s father). It also has something to say about the rotting of New York, with a plethora of badly cracked city streets, and horribly crumbled and decomposing buildings. All social and Economic commentary aside, the artistic merit of the film is immense, rich with different colours of melting human manner, and unique and creative graffiti covers damn-near every wall in every shot. Along with the thick layer of dirt that covers nearly everything and everyone, this movie looks dirty and grimy, but has a technical brilliance that also makes the film beautiful, It’s ugly and beautiful, all at once.

After Street Trash, director Jim Muro never directed another film. Instead he became one of the world’s most sought-after steadicam operators, working on such prestigious films as Paul Haggis’s Crash, Flicka, Field of Dreams and Dances With Wolves, among others.

All in all, Street Trash is a film I hold very dear to my heart, and will for some time. It has its point to make, but does not bog the viewer down with pretentiousness and boredom, and it shamelessly splashes blood and guts all over the place with such a huge sense of child-like innocence, that you can’t help but smile. I could not recommend this movie enough. So turn down your lights, grab your Tenafly Viper, and prepare to be melted out of your seat, you’ll be glad you did.

- Justin “Lecherous” Tunny

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If you are a fan of the horror genre, then chances are I don’t need to inform you of who Doug Bradley is. Most widely known as Pinhead from the Hellraiser series, Bradley has become an iconic and integral part of the genre. So it’s no surprise that his latest venture into horror is what I guess you could call the ultimate tribute to the pioneers of the genre.

The names are the stuff of legends: Dickens, Poe, Bierce, Lovecraft and Doyle to name a few. With the help of Renegade Arts Entertainment, Bradley has brought the magGot infested corpses of these authors back to life with “Doug Bradley’s Spinechillers”. A series of audio books and dvds in which Bradley and guests lay forth some of these author’s greatest tales.

Throughout the interview via skype I talked to Bradley about his new series, along with his future projects and his… shall we say… distaste for the recent flood of remakes.

Recently you’ve been working on Spinechillers, what can you tell us about it?

It goes back to a prior company Renga Media, which was really when I was working with Tony Luke who is based in Brighton England. And I’d been working with him for several years. We had made an animated movie called Dominator. We were working on the second Dominator movie, and we were having trouble securing financing. That was the point in which Alexander Finbow, who was already known to Tony and I came into the picture and came on board and Renegade was born.

So this process of getting Alex involved in the birth of renegade happened during 2007 and the early part of 2008. It was clear at the same time that the money for the second Dominator film was not going to be forthcoming, the usual tale of promises and half promises and so forth. Alex brought some inward investment into the company with him, but not enough money to first fund the whole movie. So now we were in a slightly odd position of being ready to move forward with the second Dominator movie without having to completely tread water and having this fledgling company to get off the ground and get busy. Alex was very keen that we didn’t just focus on Dominator and that everyone brought their own ideas to the table. And he had a number of comics projects that he wanted to get going which has happened, which is the other branch of Renegades work at the moment.

We also produced a childrens book written in England, which is Illustrated by Liz Dodsworth who is also a part of the Renegade team. And I have had half an idea during the summer of 2007 recording the audio book for Clive Barker’s last novel “Mr B Gone”. I was recording the audio book and I was kind of vaguely thinking how the audio book had not really advanced from the days of the cassette tape, and in a way because of my work with Tony I was imagining what could be done with the full map of an audio book in relation to the work that he and I had been doing together. And I put that idea, well no more than half an idea really out on the table and Tony was keen on it as well as Alex.

Tony and I had talked about always wanting to do something with HP Lovecraft. Both Tony and I were huge fans of Lovecraft’s work and always have been, and we talked about that but never got around to it. So it seemed like now is the right time to pursue that as well, so the 2 ideas kind of came together. I went home and I assumed I was going to engage in a pretty long process of sitting down and wading through HP’s entire output to find the right story. As it happened the first story that I picked up and read was ‘The Outsider’. I just thought if we could commission HP to write the perfect story for us it would have been this. It was absolutely perfect. It’s a first person narrative, it’s a great story and I’ve always loved it. It’s ambiguous, it’s upsetting, it’s the only story that had everything going for it. So I went back to everyone and said look I think The Outsider is perfect. It’s exactly the right length as well.

So The Outsider it was and this was the idea for a kind of audio/ visual audio book, and we set about doing it and I was directing. So I learnt the entire story which damn well almost killed me, but I did. And I was narrating the story in front of a green screen and that was taken as an element and mixed with illustration of a small amount of animation. I worked very closely with Tony to get it all together and we got it completed and I was really pleased with the outcome. We screened it at a HP Lovecraft film festival in Oregon in October of 2008 and we won an award. So we then set about doing the second of that series, which by then had been given the name of “Doug Bradley’s Spinechillers”.

So everyone looked at me and said “OK, what do we do next?” And I said ‘The Tell Tale Heart’ by Edgar Allen Poe which we set about doing, and that is now complete and hopefully will become available on dvd very soon. Again I’m really pleased with the idea. But they’re complicated things to produce and they take time and they take money and somewhere I guess probably after we completed “The Outsider” Alex came to me with a suggestion that we proceed with doing a series of straight audio books also under the Spinechillers banner. We talked about it and it seemed like a sensible idea and we set about doing it. And low and behold it has now grown to a 13 volume set which as we speak the first 6 volumes are now available on cd. So that’s the history of the Spinechillers series to date.

I never thought of Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle as ‘Horror’ writers, how did you stumble upon them and think to include them in the series?

Dickens, no you don’t think of him as a horror writer. But as we approach the Christmas season, arguably his most famous, most read and most loved story is “A Christmas Carol” which is a straight forward ghost story, and it’s fairly scary in places I think. I have always been a huge fan of Dickens so I knew that he had written a number of other ghost stories, and I was aware of “The Signalman”. I went back to “The Signalman” and chose that straight away. The second Dickens story that was included in the series was “Trail by Jury”. I didn’t know, but again it’s a ghost story and it’s an interesting story and the third we recorded.. the title of which escapes me which is another ghost story, actually Alex discovered that one.

Conan Doyle, again it was Alex who brought the Conan Doyle stories along. I was vaguely aware of some of his fantasy stories, obviously everyone associates Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes and I guess after that maybe people know the Professor Challenger stories.

I knew that Conan Doyle had always been very interested in spiritualism and the table rappers and the seance holders and such. But it was just a case of Alex bringing the stories along and we read them and we picked them out. Some of them were, to be honest a revelation to me and I had no hesitation to including them in the Spinechiller series.

Are some of these stories what originally got you into the horror genre?

Absolutely yes, it would be movies probably first, no, am I right in saying that? Probably not, I remember as a kid I was really terrified by ghosts and they really did scare me, and I couldn’t get enough of them at the same time. It would probably be movies that got me into the horror genre. I think for a lot of people of my generation there was a period in… it must have been in the very early 70s or just at the turn of the decade, that Grenada television in the north west of England were I was growing up in Liverpool, every Monday night they ran a Hammer film. And although I had earlier encounters with genre movies, in particular I think the first genre movie if I can include it in the genre is Jack Clayton’s “The Innocents” which remains one of my favorite horror movies, absolutely scared me stupid when I was much much younger.

So I now discovered the wonderful world of Hammer, and it was just a case of tuning in around 10:30 every Monday night and there would be Peter (Cushing) and Christopher (Lee) waiting to lead me gently by the hand into the world of Dracula and Frankenstein. And of course I was also going to the movies and there were also some people who tend to delegrate quickly the work that Hammer was doing around that time, and there were some turkeys. But there were some really smart movies that Hammer were producing around that time.

I have to take a pause at this point because just in the last couple of hours I’ve received messages that Ingred Pitt has died. “Countess Dracula”, “The Vampire Lovers”, “The House that Dripped Blood” ect… I got to know Ingred quite well over the last several years and I feel pretty sad to know that She’s gone.

But sorry I’m talking about movies and you want to know about stories. Yes, would be the short answer but in particular the two authors who really are forming the backbone of the Spinechillers series are Edgar Allen Poe and HP Lovecraft.

I discovered Poe at a young age, I know my Father had Tales of Mystery and Imagination. I can remember kind of dipping in to those and being rather alarmed and very fascinated by what I was seeing, but that would have been at a very young age. And then re-discovering Poe and Lovecraft when I was around 15 or 16. Of the authors that we’ve included in the Spinechillers series they would be the Godfathers of the genre without question and they were certainly the two authors I was reading often as a teenager and right up to the present day, so I was very familiar with their work.

You go into this in the jacket of ‘The Outsider’, but for our readers will you please give us your description of the term ‘Lovecraftian’?

Well what I actually said on the jacket of ‘The Outsider’ was that it is a word that people use all the time. “It’s very Lovecraftian”. The trouble with describing things as Lovecraftian is that Lovecraft himself, part of the thing that is Lovecraftian about Lovecraft’s writing is that he tended not to go into real detail, He tends to give hints and suggestions, or he will use the old authors excuse to get a writer off the hook to describe something, it’s the ultimate in horror as something they couldn’t possibly describe, And Lovecraft tends to use words like unnameable and unknowable and unimaginable and whatnot. And in the hands of the wrong writer that can become simply frustrating, in the hands of someone like Lovecraft it just sets every nerve a tingle because you’re desperate to know what the unknowable is, you’re desperate to have names put to the unnameable. Beyond that Lovecraftian is about the kind of twin notions of the ancient evil which in the body of Lovecraft’s work tend to either come from the depths of the sea or from the farther reaches of the universe, and come to us from extremely ancient times.

It is also stated in the jacket that “Lovecraft saw no proper collection of his stories published in his lifetime: they have inspired countless thousands of people since his death.” Why do you think it is that people like Lovecraft seem more popular now than in their own lifetimes? Were they simply ahead of their time?

Yes, I think so. The same applies, absolutely for Poe. even more so with Poe than Lovecraft. Poe was the single biggest influence on Lovecraft’s writing. Exactly what were the influences on Edgar Allen Poe’s writings are hard to fathom. Poe is fully formed almost out of nowhere, he belongs in no mainstream of literature and he arrives fully formed, absolutely complete. And although his stories had some success in his lifetime, the same thing is true with Lovecraft and obviously you have to look at the young age of which they died. Poe was 40 and Lovecraft was around 46 so relatively speaking they were very young. Maybe if they had lived into their 60s or 70s they would have seen some of that success come to them.

Indeed Poe’s work was becoming very popular, very quickly after His death, and I said that I as a young boy had my Father’s copy of ‘Tales of Mystery and Imagination’ to look at and I subsequently came into possession of an older version of the same title which One of my Grandfather’s Brothers gave to His Brother as a Christmas present in 1920, which is just 70 years after Poe’s death. So he was in the mainstream very quickly. The stories are universal and will remain universal even more for Poe than Lovecraft. Lovecraft is more a taste for the specialist really, whereas Poe’s work addresses absolutely fundamental human fears. But yes, without question, both of them were very ahead of their time. Poe is credited with creating the detective story with ‘Murders In The Rue-Morgue’, he’s credited with creating the Science Fiction story and the Horror story, and Lovecraft has very much that cross over between horror and science fiction. Which we’re very used to now, but perhaps not at the time when Lovecraft was writing his stories.

Robert Englund was brought in for Ambrose Bierce’s ‘An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge’, what brought him to the table and will there be further collaboration in the future?

At some point Alex and I had a conversation about guest readers, and I’m not sure exactly when that originated. I know Robert pretty well, we’d made a movie together in the mid 90s and I knew him pretty well from the convention circuit as well. Alex and I picked out some stories that we’d like him to read and I contacted him and told him what the series was about and put forth the idea to him and he was enthusiastic to do it. And somewhere in the summer of 2009, Alex and I went to the San Diego Comic Con and in the following week we went down to Los Angeles and hooked up with Robert and recorded Ambose Bierce’s ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’ and he has also recorded for us Lovecraft’s “The Terrible Old Man” and an Edgar Allen Poe poem “The Sleeper”.

To the second part of your question, along with the recording session with Robert we did a session with Jeffery Combs who most horror fans will know from Stuart Gordon’s 1985 film “Re-Animator” playing Herbert West, adapted from Lovecraft’s stories. I also got to know Jeff pretty well over a number of years on the convention circuit, so again I contacted him, initially with the idea of asking him if he’d be interesting in reading the Herbert West series of stories, and he said yes. So he’s recorded those which will be in 6 installments over the last 6 volumes of the series. He has also recorded an Edgar Allen Poe story “The Cask of Amontillado” and an Ambrose Bierce story “A Fruitless Assignment” so those collaborations are already there. We have also talked about putting together a complete Edgar Allen Poe, Ambrose and Lovecraft collection. And I’ve been wanting to expand the scope of guest readers and maybe even some stories that I’ve already recorded for the Spinechillers series for those collections we could get some other actors in to read other stories.

There’s also a number of stories by Women writers have come up while we’ve been putting the series together, I’ve also been discussing with Alex about doing a separate series covering those writers and it would be very nice to get some actresses associated with the genre to come on board to read as part of that series. So yes I hope there will be further collaborations.

For several years you had your one man show ‘An Evening With Death’, is there any chance you’ll be taking it on the road again?

I hope so. To explain “An Evening With Death” is a one man theater show, which I created with the help of a very close friend of mine, an actress back in England Mary Rosco, who helped me devise the show and also directed it. I’ve been performing it principally at colleges and universities in the States, usually in October around Halloween. A collection of pieces to some extent surrounding the season of Halloween but also around the idea of death with original linking pieces which I wrote myself.

The last few times I performed it was back in Britain at the Abertoir Horror Film Festival, I performed it in the theater as part of the festival weekend and then at the Riverside studios in London in November last year, again it was part of a horror themed festival. I’m very proud of the show and I love performing it, so I would hope it’s not the end of the line. The college and university bookings have stopped over the last while but I would certainly hope that there will be life in it. And again it’s to a great extent a story telling exercise and a story telling experience so it relates quite closely with the Spinechillers series. Alex and I have talked about the possibility of it being a kind of live Spinechillers event. So maybe the two things will come together in someway, but at the moment the live Spinechillers is no more than talk. We’ll have to see how that develops.

What’s next for you? Any projects in the works?

Experience tells me, the more you talk about these things the less they happen. I’m in a permanently frustrating position. I would say there are 2 movies that I did that are about to see the light of day. An independent, low budget British horror movie that I did at the beginning of last year called “Umbrage” written and directed by Drew Cullingham. It’s a really good script, and I thought a very powerful story, I play the lead role in that and it looks like we’re going to get some limited distribution on it. And then a movie which I shot in Barcelona called “Exorcismus” which was a two scene cameo part in that, but I know that was just screened at this years Abertoir Film Festival so it seems that has seen the light of day.

Otherwise I am sitting on maybe half a dozen scripts, some of which are fairly ordinary I’ll be absolutely honest. But I would say three or four of those scripts are outstanding. One is written by Frazer Lee whom I collaborated on the short movies “On Edge” and “Red Lines” a number of years ago. Quite frankly and honestly I do not know why this film was not in the can five years ago, it’s nuts that it isn’t. It’s an outstanding script, it’s a great idea with franchise potential. And I know that Robert Englund was also attached to it and he was also very keen.

A movie called “Tomorrow Gamble” which again I’ve been attached to for probably three years now. Robert Englund was even more enthusiastic about that script than I was and God knows I’m pretty enthusiatic about it. It’s an outstanding script and again I just cannot believe that that movie is not being made. It’s a comedy horror, a Lovecraft comedy horror. It’s a British script that was sent to me. I’m not a huge fan of comedy horror but this made me laugh out loud and it also takes it’s horror and Lovecraft seriously and I would really love to see that made.

There’s a movie that Neil Marshall is involved in as producer which I have the script for and I’ve said yes to. Which is a traditional English haunted house/ ghost story with I think a very clever twist, and again I think a very decent script. But I’m not hearing in the case of either of those scripts that any funding is coming along.

It’s just one more thing that makes me angry in this flood of expensive remakes. Studio executives should not be putting money into remakes, taking a safe ride on the back of the work of people who were principally first time directors when those movies were made the first time around. “The Hills Have Eyes’, “Friday The 13th” and “Nightmare on Elm Street” and the irony of all this crap about remaking Hellraiser is that if Clive were to go into a studio executive’s office and pitch Hellraiser today, they’d turn him down in a heartbeat. It’ the job of the studio to find new talent. It’s something I’m opposed to in principle, nobody wants to see these things. I think people go to see these things for the same reason people slow down on the freeway to see a car wreck.

I hated the remake of Halloween with a passion and I came out of the theater knowing that I’m part of the problem, not the solution, as I gave them my money. And the only motivation for making these films is money and the only thing that will stop them from making them is if they stop making money. I actually think people should illegally download the remakes. So don’t give them your money and they’ll stop. My point being is that it annoys me that these remakes are filling up the market and swallowing the money that new original movies should be making. Studio executives should be on the lookout for the new Sam Raimis, the new Toby Hoopers, the new Wes Cravens and the new Clive Barkers.

You can buy Doug Bradley’s Spinechillers Audio Books and Dvds or download single stories in mp3 format at http://www.renegadeartsentertainment.com/spinechillers-home

Live from the Festival of Fear 2011, Jesus magGot conducted his first camera interview… with the challenging Tim Sullivan. Challenging in that it’s hard to say who’s interviewing who. All in bad taste, just the way we like it… enjoy.