Herschell Gordon Lewis: My interview With The Godfather of Gore.

Mention the name Herschell Gordon Lewis and you immediately think of gore films such as Blood Feast,2000 Maniacs and The Wizard of Gore, to name a few in the Lewis cannon of blood and gore mini epics; films that were made on micro budgets, complete with technical errors and mostly bad acting. 

Relegated to small Mom and Pop theatres who couldn't afford major Hollywood product, those movies kept the independent movie houses in business and were enjoyed by  patrons seeking a different kind of  movie going experience. More importantly, they made money for the films investors.

Lewis wasn't the first producer to include gore in his pictures; Hammer Films and the independent studios in the fifties and sixties treated film goers to scenes of blood and violence. Lewis however, upped the ante, so to speak, showing his audience graphic disembowelment in an unflinching manner. Since the mainstream studio's wouldn't make this type of entertainment(although they would eagerly jump on the band wagon  over a decade later ) these films never played a major theatrical venue. Although Lewis is known primarily for his "blood and guts" movies, he has also produced and directed nudie films, kiddie matinee features and mainstream dramas.

I myself never saw one of Lewis's films until after I interviewed him in 1984, so I had no idea of the quality of his output. Upon seeing a few of his outings I came away with the impression that although his films are entertaining on a certain level, they were nothing to write home about. One of his films, The Wizard of Gore was almost repellent in it's depiction of girls being mutilated. I can honestly say I won't be watching it again. That is not my idea of entertaining cinema. But he does have many loyal fans, so it's true what they say: there's no accounting for taste.

The interview took place, ironically enough, on Halloween 1984 and was originally published in a French magazine called Mad Movies(there's an interesting story behind that, but it's too long to go into here.) Lewis proved to be both engaging and articulate as we discussed his career as a filmmaker. At the time of the interview, Lewis was involved in direct marketing and hadn't been behind the camera since 1972, although at the time he was discussing with producer Jimmy Maslon plans to direct Blood Feast 2. The plans fell through and Lewis never made the film. The movie was eventually directed by Jackie Kong and was released to video as Blood Diner.



JV:   How do you feel about being known as The Godfather of Gore?

HGL: I feel great. I like the appellation. I suppose there might be more classic ways of being remembered in the film business. But I'm flattered and honored because I don't know of anybody else in the film business,who with budgets as small as mine, was able to have any impact on the industry. And every time I see a contemporary horror film, I can envision the descendant type relationship between that film and one of the early ones that I made. So I'm certainly not unhappy being known as the Godfather of Gore and I'm delighted to have that type of recognition.

JV: When Blood Feast was first released, did you anticipate the audiences positive reaction to it?

HGL: Yes, I expected the audience to react to this picture. I knew that the film had startling elements in it that had never been on a screen before. What I didn't anticipate was the way the film took hold and spawned an entire genre of film that hadn't existed before. Very odd. In retrospect, I can see the logical progression which reflects back again on the first question you asked. The logical progression is that when people in the film business see success,it's quite logical that they would gravitate in that direction the way iron filings gravitate to a magnet. That's true in any business. Someone has success in personal computers,at once there's a host of personal computer companies. I had expected Blood Feast to do business. I knew from what we had in our editing room,as we cut that film, that it wasn't an ordinary film;that people couldn't ignore it.  I knew that we had an impact far beyond the cost of the film. And I knew working with David Friedman,who was an excellent exploitation man, that we had a campaign that would bring people in to theatre. You must understand,as I'm sure you do, that you can always force that first audience into the theatre. You simply spend enough money to get them in there. Once they hit the street, then you're at the mercy of word of mouth. That's why some pictures with big campaigns open well and then die. That's why some pictures with poor campaigns open poorly and then swell to a crescendo. Example: Harold and Maude,which is still being shown as a cult film. It had almost no campaign whatever. Some films that have no campaign and nothing much to talk about have no chance at all. I'm still surprised at some of the titles the major companies put on their pictures. The titles would keep people out. Anyway, I'm not sure the reaction to Blood Feast was universally positive. There were, as we had anticipated, a lot of negative reaction. We weren't too concerned because you can always express your displeasure by not going to the theatre,or by advising your friends not to go. But in general, we did expect that the film would have some position in that years group of releases.

JV: Out of all of your films you've made,why are 2000 Maniacs and A Taste of Blood  your personal favorites?

HGL: I'm glad you know that. My answer is simpler than the question and that is that they are well acted,they are credibly acted. We didn't just run film  through the camera for those two pictures.The acting in 2000 Maniacs pleased me, when one considers that was our second gore film and the first one that was truly scripted. I think we did very well with it because our budget wasn't that much larger than Blood Feast. With A Taste of Blood, I had a film in which the actors were universally professional. Which I admit, tongue in cheek, was somewhat unusual for me. I had good locations. I had excellent co-operation from various places where we wanted to shoot film which showed production value, such as the docks with the big casket coming on and off the boat. A Taste of Blood runs two hours,the longest of my films. I couldn't bring myself to cut much of it and I don't think that it suffers from being overlong because the acting and the action do blend so very well. It's well edited.

JV: One the other hand, why is Color Me Blood Red the least favorite of your films?

HGL: Two reasons. One, I think the cutting on that film is atrocious. I say that competitively perhaps because I had nothing to do with the cutting of Color Me Blood Red. As you know,film history being what it is, there are few secrets. Dave Friedman and I had sued Stan Kolhberg,a third partner, for misappropriation of funds. This was after we had shot Color Me Blood Red,but not cut it. Dave subsequently settled with Kolhberg,moved to California, and he, before moving to California, turned the cutting over to a commercial film cutter, who cut it the way you'd cut an industrial film. It had no wallop at all. To top it off, they added a music track which was foolish. It was the kind of music track you would put on The History of Tulip Bulbs. It was purely canned music. And that had no power at all. The film as shot, I felt, had a pretty good chance because it was the first film that had any sense of humor at all. As shot it was better than as cut.

JV: Did you produce an obscure science-fiction film called Monster A Go Go under the name Sheldon Seymour?

HGL: Yes and no. Monster A Go Go is the film produced by a man named Bill Rebane titled Terror At Halfday. Halfday oddly being a small town town north west of Chicago. Rebane was unable to complete the picture in glorious black and white. I'd bought it just as footage. He had exposed 80,000 feet of film  and I finished it. There wasn't enough to make a feature out of. The story of that picture is fairly well known. I shot a thousand feet of close ups of hands and telegrams and just feet walking and shuffling and people getting in and out of cars just to tie the segments together. And the film was impossible,so we couldn't release it with the name Terror in it. Strange as it may seem to some people who know that we made low budget films, we had some integrity. Certainly, we had integrity of title.And there was no point putting Terror on a film,the only terror of which, was the terror of having to sit through it. So we made it into a satire,which it had been unintentionally under the original production banner. And we called it Monster  Go Go. Certainly I wasn't going to put my name on that, so I used our stock name Sheldon Seymour. As I think you know, I came to the conclusion that everybody in the film business was named either Sheldon or Seymour. So I thought if I used the name Sheldon Seymour, or as we sometimes use Seymour Sheldon, we'd reverse the names,everybody in the business could identify with that character.

JV: Many film enthusiasts cite bad acting as one of the weakness's in your films. Do you think using well known actors would have made your films any better?

HGL:  Certainly. Now, I don't want to go with the word "well known" in quotation marks. I would rather use the word professional, because many well known actors have no  professionalism. No one ever claimed that Marilyn Monroe could act or that Tab Hunter could act. These were simply bodies with campaigns attached to them. When I did use good actors as in Two Thousand Maniacs,as in A Taste of Blood; the films were better. I don't agree that bad acting was universal to our pictures. Moonshine Mountain had very good acting in it. The film with Claude king, Year of The Yahoo, had good acting in it. The difference was not necessarily in the acting,but the amount of production time. That's strictly a budgetary matter. Give me several million dollars and I'll remake Blood Feast and you would not recognize the acting. Nor would you recognize the ration between cost and return,because that wouldn't improve that much. One of the realities of the film business is economics. And that enters into the mix. I never set out to win an award; that wasn't the goal. And when I see films lionized for acting talent, I often see films that don't bring that good of a return at the box-office. Then the critics mourn," Oh my. Why wasn't it that this marvelous film didn't do any business and had to wind up on cable?" The answer is that it didn't have the exploitation values. It's a decision someone makes. No one ever looks at Star Wars or Return of The Jedi and says, " That has good acting, that has bad acting," Acting doesn't enter into it. This girl, Eddie fishers daughter, I don't recall her first name(Carrie Fisher),who was the star of that trilogy of science-fiction films(The Star Wars series);would anyone call her an actress? She is simply a vehicle. In that instance,she is fortunate,all of them in that group of films,are fortunate to be surrounded by dazzling,expensive effects. I didn't have those effects,so my actors had to stand on their own.

JV:  Some independent filmmakers, who work with very small budgets, will shoot their films in 16mm and then enlarge them to 35mm before releasing them theatrically. Since production costs have risen dramatically in the past ten or so years, if you were making Blood Feast or 2000 Manics today, would you film them in 16mm as a method of cutting costs?

HGL: No. I don't think you cut that much cost. You cut that much cost if you are working for Walt Disney Productions on a nature film and you're going to put yourself in a rabbit hole over the winter and expose 400,000 feet of 16mm film from which you select 5,000 feet you then blow up to 35mm.With the kind of shooting ratio's I had, I'd rather shoot in 35mm and avoid the grain crawl. I grant you that with liquid gate process there are some improvements in blowing up 16mm to 35mm.I challenge anyone to blow up 16mm to 35mm and have as good quality a printing negative as one would have from shooting 35mm original. Furthermore, I'm more inclined to shoot in 35mm because since I shot my films, the best improvement in film production has been lighter weight 35mm production equipment. I would no longer have to haul that Mitchell with it's cast iron blimp over hilltops. So I don't agree with the later day Saints of this business who say," Shoot in 16mm and blow it up to 35mm." What that means to me in English is," I don't have 35mm equipment." It doesn't mean," I'm making a better picture".


JV:  I heard that you play a small part in A Taste of Blood. Is that truth or rumor?

HGL: Truth. We have a scene in A Taste of Blood in which we have a cockney sailor who is suppose to say," Evening, matey. Ain't a fit night for the devil." And I found a perfect English Britisher who could affect a cockney accent and had a bristling moustache. His line as it came out was (imitating a cockney accent)," Evening,matey. Ain't a fit night for the devil." Which only he and I could do properly. Well, naturally as often happens, he decided he didn't want to make his fifty dollars,or whatever we were paying him and he didn't show up to shoot. I had a boat I had to be off in two hours. Well, in the wonderful world of make do,which is part of low budget film making, there are two rules: One is,you do not panic. The other is, if one thing won't work you try something else. Which is what we did.   I had no one else within four blocks who could affect a cockney accent,so I was it. One of the crew members who had hair all the way down his back,very agreeably cut off a hunk and I made a moustache out of that,which was put on with Stein's spirit gum. I put a stocking cap over my head and played the role. I did not do it in  order to be a Hitchcock. I did it because the actor hired to do it didn't show up. 

JV: Another story making the rounds is about an album released in the South with you playing the theme from 2000 Maniacs on the banjo. Is there such an album available?

HGL: There's no album. There was a record. Paul Champion,who was a fine banjo player, played the banjo. I was the voice on the recording of Two Thousand Maniacs and I'm also the voice on the theme music that opens the picture. I didn't play the banjo. I think part of this folklore comes from some horsing around we did when we shot a film called This Stuff'll Kill Ya in Oklahoma City. A man named Bill Mays, who ran a  country and western ballroom,had me over there one night. As a joke, I got up with a guitar in my hand and eefed. Eeffing is a singing technique in which you make noises as you breathe in and out. It's almost a lost art. But I'm an eefer. I spent about twenty minutes up on the stage playing the guitar and eefing and singing some strange songs that I had written for various films. He recorded it and I don't even have any idea what happened to that recording. I kind of wish I had a copy. But the Two Thousand Maniacs recording also, I think, is lost in history somewhere.

JV:  Since you've not only directed your films, but also have also done the camera work, do you consider yourself  primarily a director or a cameraman?

HGL: I don't think it's possible to unscramble the egg. I don't always start on the camera. Usually, the film starts with somebody else on the camera and out of exasperation I wind up on the camera and the original cameraman winds up as assistant cameraman. Not unhappily because the pace had picked up. A director who doesn't know what shot he wants isn't really a film director, he's a stage director. One  reason  we were able to survive in this dog eat dog business is because we didn't have to shoot each scene thirty one times. We would shoot it, make our insert shots and know what we wanted in front so that we wouldn't have to say," Oh boy,we better cover it another way. I'm not sure we can cut this film." Furthermore, there were some shots in which the cameraman simply didn't want to be on the camera. When things were flying at the camera as we had in Gruesome Twosome or we had a demolition derby and all kinds of odd things coming smack dab at the camera. I felt immortal. I didn't think I was going to die with a lens in my eye. Another factor was, frankly, I was very good on the camera. I could load it faster than anybody. I could fire it without shaking like I had Parkinson's Disease. But I didn't feel that I was a cameraman. I did camera work,in fact, for other producers. But I did that in between my own pictures just to make sure that I hadn't lost any abilities I had on camera, the way that someone will try to speak a foreign language in between times of being in the country. Which I wish I had done on my recent trip to France, which pointed out to me how much French I had forgotten. Yet, after I'd been there about a week it began to come back. Same thing is true on the camera.

JV:  Do you think a movie's quality relies more on the directors budget or his ability to utilize what he has at his immediate disposal?

HGL: I think the movies quality,using the term as it's often used,that is production value, depends on the budget. I don't think it has anything to do with what the director has at his disposal unless he is,as I was, forced to improvise and forced to beg what he normally would pay for. Now, that only applies to low budget pictures. After a certain point is reached, there is no such thing as the director having something at his immediate disposal. Because he had surrounded himself with people who have the where with all  to pay for locations. To pay for automobile rentals or to get them on a different basis from saying," Hey, do you want your car in a movie?"  I don't think the question is germane above  budgets of,I guess in today's market place, about half a million dollars.

JV:  In the film Moonshine Mountain there were a couple of gore scenes you removed because the film was being shown to family audiences. What did the deleted scenes show?

HGL: The main scene I pulled out of that, right at the so called World Premiere, we had nine World Premieres on Moonshine Mountain in various markets. But the first legitimate World Premiere was in Charlotte, North Carolina where I took out the stomping scene. That scene had a man, a huge lout about six feet nine inches tall,weighed about three hundred pounds;he had on hobnail boots and he took these federal agents and cracked their heads together and stomped them to death. We had a shirt which was stuffed with pig ribs and various glop. That boot came scrunching on the shirt. We had slit the buttons so they'd pop open exposing all these innards and it was a pretty grotesque effect. It was one of our better gore effects, but I guess it didn't belong in Moonshine Mountain which wasn't really a gore film. When I saw all those station wagons full of kids coming into the theatre, I knew where the scene was, I cut that film; I knew every foot of Moonshine Mountain. I felt it was better to take that out than to have a bunch of angry parents saying," Why did I  bring my children to this theatre?" You must keep faith with your audience and the campaign hadn't tipped them off that there was going to be such a scene in there.

JV: A lot of your films were released mainly in the South. In what way do you feel the South's reception of your films differ from the North?

HGL: First of all, I made a lot of hillbilly pictures and those are well received in the South. I also feel that people in the North,and I'm not trying to draw any geographic inferences because you're talking about tens of millions of people, but generally speaking, people in the North are more at the mercy of the urban newspaper critics than people in the South. People in the South, at least in those days, made up their own minds about a picture. We didn't play Radio City Music Hall; it wasn't that kind of film.We were in a different ambiance and I reveled in it. Yes, with a picture like She Devils on Wheels we had a thirty five theatre break in Chicago. But that was rare. And even when we opened in thirty five theatres, none of them was a downtown theatre. We didn't have that kind of release. Since we were independent filmmakers, I think the market place still has that geographic differential between North and South in independent film making. Although the lines have blurred a great deal. If I had my druthers, I'd druther have a small town in the South anytime where the people deal in their own reactions. Where they are influenced by how much the film entertained them and not by what Roger Ebert thinks of it.

JV:  When you started out as a filmmaker, shooting industrial films, what were some of the things you learned to prepare you for entry into the feature film market?

HGL: Well, first of all, I learned how to cut film. A big,big thing to learn. A lot of people think they know the film business because they know how  to yell," Roll sound." or at the end of a scene they'll yell cut, Cut." They are deluding themselves and their films invariably will cost substantially more to make.  I learned  how to light set. I see people yet today who take a day to light a simple set with two people sitting and talking. I laugh at that because there's no challenge. I know how to light a set flat. I know how to light a set for mood lighting. I know how to light a set for a romantic dinner setting.  I know how to light a set for the evil that might occur where the shadows have to be long. All these things I learned shooting industrial films. I also learned a certain discipline; that you must get a certain number of feet of film finished within a certain period of time. No one's going to wait with a television commercial that must go on the air. No one's going to wait with a film for the post office department; they have it in release as of the first of the year. You can't indulge your own ego. I think it's a good training ground,but I don't recommend it as a training ground when you're going to be dealing with actors.

JV:  During the years you made films, did you ever read any of the movie critics reviews and if they were negative, did they affect you in any way?

HGL:  I read any reviews that came my way. It affected me if the review referred to something that I could control for the next film. When we had negative reviews, and I must tell you that is another piece of folklore that I resent just a little, because these things are taken out of context by people who want to think the the popularity of the film was at war with the critical reaction to them. That isn't the case at all. We had negative reviews, yes. So did Francis Ford Coppola. We never had a review as devastating as Heaven's Gate which cost what, Thirty Seven Million dollars?  When a review referred to something I felt we could correct, I took it very seriously. Because no one can operate in a vacuum and no filmmaker should. I won't say won't because they do it all the time,but no filmmaker should play God and say," Public be damned. I know everything." I don't know everything. I didn't know everything then and I probably never will know everything. I just know instinctively and also from aggressive study of the marketplace what might succeed in a theatre. Usually,the reviews that were negative referred to the grizzly aspects and how could I accept that criticism when that is exactly what we set out to do. In a sense, our success was better because the reviews pointed up the goriness of what we were shooting. That's what we were doing. That's why I can answer the very first question you asked about being known as The Godfather of Gore with pride. They hadn't come across this before.  It's not as though they didn't know what to do about it. But it is a circumstance which yet exists today. People fear the unknown to some extent. They were outraged by seeing on the screen scenes which they never thought they would see on the screen.



JV:  What advice would you give to aspiring filmmakers who want to break into the feature film market?

HGL:  I'm the wrong person to ask that question of because I feel that an aspiring,young filmmaker should not indulge his egomaniacal fantasy's, but should rather make films that theatres can and will play. Shooting scenes which are exploitable,thinking in terms of coming attractions,I call then coming atrocities,the trailer, as he makes this film thinking of what he might show on television as a teaser campaign to bring people into the theatres.
Throughout his production thinking of establishing himself as a producer who made money for the people who backed his film. If  that producer is self financing and has not raised ten cents from outside sources, then please ignore that advice. But if we're dealing with other peoples money, then I beg who ever follows these footsteps to have some respect for the American dollar which makes his posturing and strutting possible.
Time after time, I see the experimental films which don't have any purpose other than to establish the filmmaker as an experimenter. And I think that's not only wrong, I think it's an insult,an outrage,an annoyance to the film world in general because these are films that can't make money and can only be used by the producer himself to show his friends," Hey, I made a film and look how I hand held this camera." My advise to an aspiring filmmaker condensed into one sentence would be: make a film someone will go to see and enjoy. The trick in making films of this type is to have the audience feel they got their money's worth. And it isn't all that difficult if you can remove yourself  one step from the arena and look at it from the view point of someone sitting in a seat having paid two dollars to get in.

JV:  In Chicago you  owned and operated a place called The Blood Shed Theatre which showed exploitation movies and live horror shows. What was the inspiration behind this unusual venture?

HGL: Well, we had it in Olde Town, which was an arty section of town. There was no room in the city for another conventional film theatre. I had the knowledge of how to draw a knife across some one's neck and have blood spurt out without actually damaging that individual. It was quite a logical thing to have a different kind of theatre. The theatre was a success,even though we didn't have enough seats in there to make it truly profitable. It was a success until we had trouble in Olde Town of an ethnic nature, which literally drove us and some other people out of the area. It was a noble experiment. I had at the time two old Holmes incandescent 35mm projectors which were perfect for showing on a screen that size. We had about two hundred seats in there. It was fun. I wasn't there every night,but I had a loyal crew who were. We had a waiting list of people who wanted to be  the live vampire. We'd simply stop the projectors and send them out at random into the audience and they'd slit each others throats and stab each other. One would bury an axe in the other ones head and then they'd come back in chortling and laughing and on we'd go with the show. The market place could use on of those theatres today, I do think.

JV: I read that you've agreed to direct Blood Feast II. Have you started production on it yet?

HGL: No, I haven't  and I have not agreed, as of this moment,to direct it. I have a profound respect for Jimmy Maslon who owns the rights and is one of the authors of the script. But we haven't yet reached agreement. I'm not entirely sure that film will ever be made,but it could be made. That's not the only source of interest at the moment in my making another picture. But as of today,today being October 31, Halloween,a very good and logical day to do this interview,1984, I have no firm agreement with anybody to direct another picture.

JV: How would you like to be remembered in the annals of film history?

HGL:  I don't have any choice there. I shall be remembered as the Godfather of Gore. How would anybody be remembered? How many people are there whose memories are linked with veneration such as D.W. Griffith and even he is under attack because of his racist film Birth of A Nation. Hitchcock, the image is tarnished. Cecil B. De Mille,a tyrant with mixed reviews of his actual talents. How many giants are there on the earth? I'm quite content with the little niche I've carved in the annals of film history. And I don't see it changing. I am as I said earlier pleased that so many recognize it and are following,

JV: My last question to you is, what is your reaction to your recent popularity among horror movie fans?

HGL: My reaction in two words? Thank you.

Bill Rebane Interview: An Independent Filmmaker From The Midwest.

My 1986 interview with filmmaker Bill Rebane has had an interesting journey; it went from possibly appearing in Fangoria magazine, which would have paid me, to being featured in Gary Svelha's Midnight Marquee, which aside from being given a pat on the head and an "Atta boy, Joe" from Svelha himself, paid nothing. Unfortunately, Bill George once again rears his ugly, balding head in this story as he has from time to time in previous posts. But he's a part of my history, so it is what it is.

It was during this period of time that I listened to whatever Bill said, because I mistakenly thought he knew what he was talking when it came to getting an article published. He said to just send it to Fangoria magazine and they would read it, love it and publish it-according to him it was that simple. Well, my article came back with a letter from editor Anthony Timpone saying that they didn't accept unsolicited articles and that the magazine had an eight month moratorium on interviews at the moment. 

I called Anthony to find out how to summit an article in the future and he graciously gave me useful information on the do's and don'ts of sending an article to Fangoria. When I mentioned to Anthony that Bill George told me to just send it to them, he said," Oh yeah, Bill." That statement told me all I needed to know. You see, Bill has this wonderful(and I'm being facetious when I say this) philosophy of that if you throw enough things against the wall, one of them will eventually stick. Yeah. Right. No wonder I think he's a clod and a clown.

In any event, I contacted Gary Svelha to see if he'd be interested in publishing my interview and he replied he wanted to read it first. That was no big deal. What was kind of a big deal was when he asked Bill George if I made the interview up. Now, that pissed me off! For him to entertain for even a second that I would fake an interview just to see it in print was beyond belief. But I said nothing and the interview was published. I didn't see a dime for my efforts, but at least I was a published writer. So, that was pretty cool, although seeing a few bucks in my grubby little hand would've been even cooler!

As for Bill Rebane, he's a filmmaker located in Wisconsin who was responsible for Monster A Go Go(originally titled Terror At Halfday), a film that was shelved when the money ran out. Hershell Gordon Lewis(Blood Feast, 2000 Maniacs) eventually bought it, shot footage to connect the remainder of the unfinished film and released it to theatres. In 1975, Rebane's film The Giant Spider Invasion made a big splash, grossing a whopping $13,0000 for the releasing company Group One. Rebane, however, didn't see a plug nickle. 

Although Rebane hasn't made a film in over twenty five years, his legacy as a Hollywood outsider is assured. He made movies outside of the Hollywood system and had them released to either theatres or on video. As an independent filmmaker, Rebane played by his own rules and succeeded.






JV: Previous to your first feature film Monster A Go Go, what was your experience in filmmaking?

BR: Limited. I was scared to hell making that sucker. Now if you would believe this, I hadn't edited, shot, directed, produced or anything of that nature before. Didn't know that did you?(laughter)

JV: No I didn't. According to the book, The Amazing Herschell Gordon Lewis,you were a relative amateur at the time.

BR: Oh I absolutely was, without question. I think I was nineteen years old or something like that. However, I had a reasonably extensive background in television production both producing and directing at that age. I was involved in the production of the first 360 degree picture shot with one camera, projected with one projector, which was a revolutionary process at that time. I don't know if you remember Disney Circle-Rama. Circle-Rama was done with sixteen cameras and sixteen projectors. Well, we did the same thing with one camera and and one projector and achieved the same effect. Or I should say a more spectacular effect. That certainly was an involvement in motion pictures, but I was the promoter, I owned the American rights to it and everything. I decided one day I was going to make a feature. I went out and raised the money and set out to make a feature.

JV: What was the budget for Monster A Go Go before you ran out of money to finish it?

BR: I think we had a budget of $80,000. We started with $20,000,went to about $25,000 or $30,000,and then the last $12,000 or $15,000 wasn't there, so we had to stop production. We couldn't hold on to Pete Thompson(the scientist in the film) and Doc Stanford came in. Doc Stanford was a music writer, music producer and screenplay writer. He did "Fairy Tales" for Sinatra, and he wrote with Jimmy Van Heusen. To make a long story short, he came in, we rewrote the whole thing, and  being short on money , he took the part of the scientist. We wrote him in as the brother of Pete Thompson. And that's how we changed the story. (On an interesting note: When I spoke with Herschell Gordon Lewis a few years earlier, Lewis claimed that he had the original actor remove his hair piece and he played his own brother.) We had a lot of good footage, and I mean a lot of good footage, considering the circumstances. When I did look at the picture ultimately, this is years ago that I saw the whole thing assembled, a good portion of it was not there. I mean the close ups, the medium shots, a lot of action stuff that was done in Chicago  but was not in the picture. It ended up having to be cut anyway possible, I suppose.

JV:  How did Herschell Gordon Lewis end up with the film?

BR:  Herschell was a maverick feature producer at that time and had just finished Prime Time and one of the other pictures. He came in much later, come to think of it. Yes, he came in a few years later because we had the footage around. I started cutting it or recutting it, and that's when he came in and we made a deal.

JV: Did you know that Lewis turned your movie into a satire?

BR: I didn't know it at the time, no.

JV: Were you upset about it since your original film was intended to be serious?

BR: No, I was not upset. I had to close my eyes and turn away in shame. It came out not at all as we intended it to be. Upset is probably overstating it.

JV: I understand that you worked on a few of Lewis's films. What was it like to work with him?

BR: It was wham, bang, thank you ma'am: fast and furious. He's a very unique guy and was able to do everything from producing, raising money, to doing his own photography, doing his own sound, directing, editing- you name it. He was a very clever and talented  guy. I'm sure if he would have chosen to do other types of pictures, he would have been very successful.

JV: What did you do between Monster A Go Go and Giant Spider Invasion because there seems to be a big gap?

BR: Oh, there's a big gap. (laughter) I did a lot of short subjects, which at the time was a big thing, including one that became quite popular, probably as popular as Giant Spider Invasion years later. It was called twist race, a musical which was sold to American International Pictures. We followed that one with Dance Craze. Then we did one called The Love of Stella and another one called All Fall Down. They were quite unique because they were all original; a lot of music, a lot of dancing, very colorful. We put the first ones together very fast. Twist Race was shot in one night, and of course, in 35mm,color,the whole pizazz. The original music and the story were created two nights previous to that. That particular one became quite popular because it was the first twist picture out. It played as a co-feature to Pocketful of Miracles, Frank Capra's picture, all over the country in first run theatres. Universal made an offer to buy it and get it nominated for the Academy Award. We couldn't meet the last play date. In other words, in order to qualify you have to play a key theatre in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York by a certain date, and we couldn't get into New York. It was close to the due date. But never the less, it enjoyed a great deal of success and made a lot of money. Now meanwhile, I went back to Europe, where I'm from originally, and I was in charge of production for Studio Bendesdorf for close to nine years. We did How I Won The War; Chitty, Chitty Bang Bang; Dollar with Goldy Hawn; and The Final Guns for Columbia Pictures. I was involved in that for two and a half years, as the executive producer and director of three one hour episodes. That was supposed to be the first roadshow picture or first mini-series type film. That picture was the turning point because it went on and on and on with lots of problems, and that made me return to the States. I was so sick of the business, I was never going to make another picture again.

JV: From there did you go on to make Giant Spider Invasion?

BR: That was the third picture that I did out of Wisconsin. The first one was Invasion from Inner Earth. It's getting a lot of television play all over the country, and here people keep calling me and telling me they saw it. That was done at the end of 1972.

JV: What was Invasion from Inner Earth about?

BR: That was a science-fiction type psychological drama made in northern Wisconsin. It's a psychological drama: four people lost in the wilderness being haunted by something that is coming form the inner earth, an alien type thing. Then we departed and did an NBC special on snowmobiling called The Roar of Snowmobiles. Then we came to the Spider picture.



                           
JV: How were you able to do that kind of picture for only $350,000?

BR: Well, it was partly because of the geographic area. I mean, it's cheap to shoot here,and having the right story that was tailor made for the resources we had helped to keep the budget manageable. In the meantime, I had considerable amount of years in production ,in all phases of production, so I was able to use a small crew.

JV: So being in Wisconsin, you wouldn't have to use the SAG or any union crew when you make a film?

BR: We did. Giant Spider Invasion was a SAG picture. It had to be simply because of the names involved.

JV: Was Giant Spider Invasion your biggest film financially as well as being the most widely released theatrically?

BR: Absolutely. It was one of the fifty top grossing films of that year. It was on the charts as one of the all time rental champions. The last public quote I heard about it was on the Johnny Carson show, I think, somewhere around "77.

JV: Since the film gave you legs as an independent filmmaker, did Group One release any more of your movies?

BR: Group One made all the money on the Spider picture. We landed up pretty poor. As a matter of fact, this year,1987,is the year where we're supposed to cash in our non recourse notes, and it was a tax shelter to boot. The distributor made one hell of a lot of money. Anyway, the figure Carson quoted was about $13,000,000,and for '75-'76 those were big numbers.

JV: Since you didn't end up with very much money, did you ever go into litigation with Group One?

BR: We came close to it. We did audits which didn't go anywhere, which cost a lot of money. After a year or two years of hassles and what have you, unless you have the resources to keep fighting a lawsuit for long periods of time, it's senseless. At the time, I wasn't as well versed on distribution and I think we made a bad deal. We probably should've been more cautious from the beginning. But everybody made deals like that in those days. You didn't have the foreign markets to go to; you didn't have the independence you have today.

JV: At any time during your career did you ever four wall( the term four wall is where a filmmaker or releasing company would show their film one theatre at a time) one of your films?

BR: Yes we did. As a matter of fact, we did a little bit of that with Invasion from Inner Earth. We released it initially ourselves, the Key International picked it up in Denver, and then American National ended up with it.

JV: This brings me to my next question. As an independent, do you find it harder to deal with distributors than if you were connected to a major studio?

BR: It used to be that way. Things have changed considerably since 1979-1980. They have changed in particular since the foreign market and foreign video became strong. The Star Wars pictures changed a lot of things. It changed things for the low budget producer because suddenly the American public was looking at millions of dollars worth of special-effects, production values and what have you. The small picture that could've been released independently theatrically or even by the producer if he had the right backing, all of the sudden, somewhere around '79,you couldn't do that any more. The pictures that we did up until 1980-81 suddenly were no longer placeable theatrically, because theatrically, the demand was different.

JV: Since the demands for theatrical films became different, wouldn't your films wind up playing the drive-in circuit?

BR: Absolutely. But that was always the strength for these little pictures, the drive-in market.

JV: Now that the drive-ins are dying, mainly because of spiraling real estate costs and the popularity of the VCR, what is your opinion of the demise of the drive-in theatre?

BR: Well, video's done it. Let's face it: cable, satellite, the video market. But thank God for the video market for the independent. The theatrical market is awful tough today ,especially for the small picture. If you make a picture and it happens to have legs, and you think, shit, this will go theatrically, sure you can do something theatrically. But if it falls short of that, thank God you've got the international market. Without that, we would be in tough shape. And I mean we, all of the independents.

JV: By the way, I saw your film The Alpha Incident on TV recently. I thought it was a tight, suspenseful picture. Was that film fairly easy to make, or did you have any trouble during the production?

BR: No, that was a pleasure. I kind of enjoyed that. It had a bit of a challenge connected with it, because it's very difficult to sustain four people for ninety minutes in two rooms. It was a step toward the type of thing that I wanted to do and it did enjoy a pretty good theatrical run. I don't know if you know this, but Alpha Incident played as a co-feature to Star Wars in tons of theatres throughout
the country.

JV: As you continue to make films, do the budgets increase significantly?

BR: It varies. You've got to remember, since I've been in Wisconsin, I've been splitting my time building up our studio complex here. We have probably the most unique production  complex in the country. The name of the studio complex is the Shooting Ranch Studio.

JV: Because you are an independent filmmaker, is raising the financial backing for your projects difficult?

BR: That's always the most difficult thing of the whole business. You know, it's easy to make a picture, but to get a decent distribution deal that returns money to the investors ultimately is extremely difficult. This is a universal problem. This is not my problem; I think it's every independent's problem. When you begin to have distributors go broke, they have your picture and they go bankrupt. Suddenly you don't have a picture. You have problems paying back your investors, therefore, it's difficult to get more money for another film. I have a philosophy that if distributors would play ball with the producers and do their thing properly, some of these problems would've been eliminated a long time ago. But you just can't expect that because of the nature of the beast. Of all the pictures I've done, they all have grossed decent or big amounts of money. They've all made money for the distributors. None of them landed up on a shelf and was buried. That's unfortunate, because some of that success should've been passed on to the investors.

JV: Did you ever consider doing what Tom Laughlin, who made the Billy Jack series, did: set up your own distribution company?

BR: We did. And as a matter of fact, it started with The Capture of Bigfoot. We released it initially ourselves. As a matter of fact, right out of here, we got over five hundred bookings nationally. We started with one hundred prints, but the ongoing cost of advertising was too humongous. So finally we made a deal with another distributor; distribution takes more capital than production does. And as of late, since 1980-81,we've been marketing foreign ourselves. We've done reasonably, if not very well, in that area.

JV: A lot of regional filmmakers end up moving to Los Angeles because they think that's where the action is as far as movie-making is concerned. Have you ever considered moving your base of operations to Los Angeles?

BR: Nope. Never. Now that is not to say that I would not make a picture in L.A. But I certainly wouldn't want to get into that rat race. That sounds kind of stubborn, but there is too much potential here to grow with and you can't beat the costs.

JV: Especially when using a union crew in Los Angeles you can't bring in a film for less than two or three hundred thousand dollars.

BR: Besides, there's a tremendous waste out there. I don't want to go on making pictures for a couple of hundred thousand dollars or three hundred thousand dollars. But even if you make a picture for a million, I mean, it would have to cost two million there, and I doubt very much that you could with that enhancement of dollars equally enhance the production value there. Certainly some things call for large expenditures. I mean, Hollywood is Hollywood. But in most cases it's just a total waste.

JV: As someone who's seen the ins and outs of independent filmmaking and distribution, what advice would you give to a filmmaker just coming into the business?

BR: I suppose the first thing is to make sure he's got a good script; a good gut feeling about it. Know the market place; you've got to know what is selling. What are the ingredients that are making it today?  Then either find a screenplay that has all of those ingredients or tailor make one. You know, nobody takes advice in this business(laughter).

JV: Are you planning to make any more films in the horror/science-fiction genre?

BR: We are. Oh absolutely, we just finished one. I think it's a great horror story with Tiny Tim. It's a picture called Blood Harvest and it's a classic horror story. It's a bit unusual because of his character. He is marvelous in it, absolutely marvelous. It's a big looking picture. I'm very proud of that one. It'll be released somewhere around March.

JV: One of your films that I'm curious about is The Game. What's that film about?

BR: That's the one I don't want to talk about.(laughter) No, no, God, no. There's two pictures I don't want to talk about at. One is Monster A Go Go and the other one is The Game.

JV: Well then, we'll just skip that one entirely. (laughter).

BR: There's nothing I can do about it if somebody sees it. Listen, whaddya want for $25,000,right? That beats any of Hershell's budgets, I just want you to know. What might be significant, which always boggles peoples minds, when you think in terms of The Game for that kind of cash, Demons of Ludlow was made for $120,000. The Devonsville Terror was $165,000. Alpha Incident, that was a high budget picture, was $220,000. I think the the biggest problem we've had on our pictures, if I may mention that, is that when you're on these low budgets, you have to get actors from your local area. That's something that I'm going to try not to repeat too often, because you're stuck with a certain quality of talent. I think these are the biggest shortcomings. Then maybe the other shortcoming, if any, is that I'm not a blood and guts man for blood and guts sake. Distributors are always accusing me of not putting enough flesh, blood and guts into my pictures. My films are a bit mild. So in Blood Harvest, we gave them the full nine yards.

JV: Let's say if someone were to give you a very large budget, I'm talking millions of dollars, what kind of film would you make?

BR: I have some pet projects on the shelf that I would love to do. I have a love story; I have a teenage action picture which it looks like we're going to be doing anyway next summer. That's a contemporary story totally removed from the horror/science-fiction genre. And there are some large scale projects which we have been kicking around. But at the moment we're taking it a step at a time. We have a line up of two to three pictures for the next year that were going to be in the $400,000 to$1,000,000 category.