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Quint visits the set of Don Coscarelli's MASTERS OF HORROR episode, Part One!!!
SPOILER ALERT !!
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a little write-up of my time spent on the set of Don Coscarelli's episode for the Masters of Horror TV series called AN INCIDENT ON AND OFF A MOUNTAIN ROAD, which was chosen to kick off the series starting tonight!
I wasn't asked to hold this write up until release, but I've just gotten so behind since I visited the set over the summer... I've done no less than 3 film festivals on top of my regular duties of interviewing, reviewing and nightly updating. I kept pushing this one off because it didn't premiere until the end of October. October has lasted all of 3 days as far as I'm concerned. The month has flown by and I just realized that the damn thing airs tonight.
So, here it goes.
They shot this sucker up in Vancouver, a town I haven't been in since 2001 when I journeyed up there for the Vancouver Film Festival (this was a good fest, one where I saw BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF on the big screen for the very first time and was introduced to a little filmmaker named Takashi Miike with a flick called ICHI THE KILLER.) I've been to Toronto in the years since and I must say... I greatly prefer Vancouver. I'm a sucker for green hills and the town just has a cooler, more laid back vibe.
I spent two weeks on the set of Don Coscarelli's previous directorial outing, the indie feature BUBBA HO-TEP, which has since gained a large cult fanbase. In the interest of full disclosure, Coscarelli and I have been friends since we met at a local showing of all his PHANTASM films back in 2000, but my appreciation of his work started when I was very young and saw PHANTASM 2 and BEASTMASTER on HBO.
The following is a completely honest look at the trials of shooting an hour long show almost entirely on location with night shoots in only 10 days. There is drama, success, frustration and, of course, humor. Enjoy!
My first day started with a van ride into the wilderness outside the city of Vancouver. We went to a beautiful wooded location that had a giant still lake. I was told by some of the crew that some of LAKE PLACID was shot here and I don't disbelieve it.
This was a half and halfer day. Half daytime, half nighttime. The daytime was spent gathering all the flashbacks for our main heroine and the nighttime was focusing on the chase in the woods between our monster and our heroine.
The story is about a girl that hits a lone car that is hidden around a curve of a windy mountain road. She goes to see if anyone else is hurt, but only finds an interior covered in blood, a door open with the blood trail leading over the rail and into the woods. She calls out, trying to find the hurt person and someone finally comes out of the woods. Unfortunately for her, it's a giant psychopathic albino with gold teeth who is dragging behind him the still squirming ex-occupant of the hit car.
From here on out our heroine is being chased through the unfamiliar woods by this knife wielding killer. During the cat and mouse chase, our heroine (played by a young actress named Bree Turner) flashes back to her relationship with a survivalist (played by Ethan Embry). She uses these memories of him teaching her how to set traps to help get an edge against her pursuer.
So, what I first saw shot was a scene toward the end of Bree Turner and Ethan Embry's rocky relationship. She's becoming fed up by the lonely living, the distance he's keeping her from her friends and how roughly he's been treating her. They're arguing as they approach their cabin in the middle of nowhere, both sweating and carrying huge backpacks. They've been on a long hike.
The framing (2 35mm camera set-up) was an over the shoulder of Bree looking at Ethan and the lake and mountains behind him. He calls her "weak" and offers her a hunting knife. She fumbles it while trying to perform a knife-flipping exercise and gets a stern reaction from her husband. She attacks him with a sweep of the leg. He dodges, happy that she's showing some aggression and easily graples her, humiliating her with an ass-slap. She responds with a healthy face slap. In reality, she was really hitting Embry hard across the face (his insistence, although after the 2nd take of betting belted in the face he let out a "Jesus Christ, woman!"). She actually draws blood before this flashback scene is over.
Coscarelli's direction kept guiding Embry to play the character darker while guiding Bree to be less strong and more vulnerable. Good call. The scene worked better on the last take than it did at the first, which is the goal, isn't it?
The next set-up was dubbed the "Wet & Sexy" scene. This flashback takes place earlier in Embry and Turner's relationship, in much happier days.
Rain machines and a golden gel on the lights made this a pretty nice looking scene. It has Embry and Turner pull up to the Cabin in his 4X4 (with Oregon plates). He runs immediately into the cabin, getting out of the rain while Bree stays to enjoy it. He slowly comes back as she flirts with him. The scene ends in a big ol' sloppy wet kiss.
While doing the dry rehearsals for the scene, Embry was noticeably more happy and energetic. "When do we get to make out?!?"
After this was lunch. I met Joe R. Lansdale many times before when he, Bruce Campbell and Coscarelli were touring around with BUBBA HO-TEP, but we met up again during lunch. Lansdale's a funny as shit guy in person and I found myself hanging with him and his son for the 3 days I was onset.
Lunch was spent on the lake-side, swatting mosquitoes as the sun went down. Quite a nice, relaxing time, actually.
After lunch I met Moonface for the first time. Moonface is the killer, that freakish giant Albino. He was played by a giant Canadian named John De Santis. He's a big guy, but not like bulky wrestler big. He's tall, meaty, but still somewhat lanky. The trench coat his character wears gives him some more bulk, though.
His make-up was up to KNB standards. He wasn't just white, but had many veins crackling their way underneath the milky skin. With the make-up on he looked cool, but I was only intimidated when he spoke. He had a voice even bigger than he was. Seriously, it was like Tim Curry's Darkness voice from LEGEND without the technology to deepen it.
However, as is always the case, he was the kindest and nicest of guys in person. He was even a bit on the goofy side, cracking weird jokes and flashing them gold choppers often.
This was my favorite stuff of the first day. Darkness had fallen and the hard working Canadian crew had built a giant treefall in the woods about a 20 second walk from the Cabin, but will appear to be a completely different location in the episode. Mist was creeping around the trees, the set lights making it eerily bright. Bree is trying to find a way through the treefall when she is spotted by her pursuer. He is lit from behind, but not overly lit. Very atmospheric and theatrical.
Coscarelli got many different takes of Moonface flipping his huge knife so he can grab it by the blade and toss it off camera. There was a set of knives... a real steel one and a couple of rubber ones. He was throwing the rubber ones, of course. He got the fluid motion of bring the knife up, catching it right and throwing pretty early on, but couldn't quite luck out in the subsequent takes.
The next set up had Bree reacting to the knife impacting the wood next to her. Of course, in classic movie-trickery fashion, the hero steel knife was already plunged into the tree and Coscarelli whip-panned the camera to give the illusion of following the knife's trajectory, stopping with it already stuck in the tree. There's a finger-hole in the knife's hilt and through this hole, when the camera whips and stops is Bree's wide eye. Pretty neat shot and it only took a few takes to time it right so Bree looks over and is aligned with the eye-hole. They also did a couple takes without the knife there. I guess in case the shot didn't look right and they needed to digitally put the knife there.
She scrambles under the treefall and gets her ankle grabbed by Moonface. All this was claustrophobic and hand-held, shaky-cam stuff.
The next big set piece as the cold Canadian night inched closer and closer to daylight was the trap Bree sets on the other side of the treefall. It's a pair of small scissors (from her purse) that is jimmy-rigged on a spring trap. The didn't shoot the building of the trap while I was there. This scene had her running away from the trap, muttering "Take that, motherfucker..." as she runs by camera.
Apparently, Bree had a problem with that line and argued to change it to "Take that, you fuck!" Coscarelli didn't quite agree and after some discussion she did it as scripted.
The trap that is set up works, nailing Moonface in the soft flesh under the eye. They shot Moonface bellowing, holding his eye as he stumbles to his feet. He doesn't pause too long, though, and continues after our heroine.
The night was running long and they were going into overtime, the producer all of a sudden standing closer to Don and the cameraman than he was the rest of the night. After a talk between Coscarelli and the producer they decide to go ahead and get Bree's reaction shot to Moonface's off-camera bellow, which is supposed to be coming out of the woods somewhere behind her. The shot was already half-lit, so they finished and nabbed some takes before the day was wrapped.
The next day I rode in the production van with Coscarelli and Ethan Embry. We went to a different location up in the mountains outside of Vancouver and the ride was about 45 minutes. In that time I got to chat up Embry a bit. You see, I love DUTCH. Of John Hughes' work from this era, only CURLEY SUE gets more shit than DUTCH (which, like PRETTY IN PINK, he only wrote, but it still feels like a John Hughes movie to me), but I love Ed O'Neill and Embry's interaction in that flick.
Embry had fond memories of working on that movie. He told Don and I a story about how conservative Hollywood really is, despite its liberal face. He was apparently kicked off the Universal lot during the DRAGNET show that reteamed him with O'Neill because his car had an Anti-Bush bumper sticker on it.
That led into some weird 9/11 Conspiracies which in turn had Embry show Coscarelli that infamous trick where you fold a US $20 bill and it shows the twin towers with smoke billowing out of them. Fold it another way and it looks like the pentagon on fire.
Before you begin to think this was all a liberal jerk-off session, let me say that this occupied about 4 minutes of the drive, the rest was Embry talking lovingly about his children, his love of motorcycles and answering questions about his previous work.
It was a spectacularly beautiful summer day in the mountains of Canada. The green was vibrant, white snow was still visible on peaks that weren't all that far away, the sky the perfect baby blue, the air crisp and pungent with the smell of wilderness.
They had two primary locations for this day: a field with the tree-covered and snow-capped mountains in the background and about 200 feet to the right of this Moonface's cabin was built.. The latter set was nicknamed Crucifix Alley because of Moonface's tendency to keep the bodies of his victims set up on either side of the wide dirt path that leads up to his front door.
Coscarelli was off setting up a shot for later in the night, so after some bullshitting with Lansdale and his son, Justin, about '60s and '70s horror movies, Stephen King books and dirty jokes, I went to explore the gore as it were.
I ran into Howard Berger (the B of KNB) who I had met on a few occasions and watched him prepare some of the mummified dummies. Moonface has a penchant for drilling out the eyes of his victims, but the dummies still had their eyes, so Berger's job was to fix that. These dummies were tied to their wooden mounts with nasty looking razor wire, limbs contorted and twisted in unnatural ways.
Berger brought one of the crucifixes down, dug out his pocket knife and cut into the head of the poor schmuck. The schmuck was made of foam and after a little burrowing, Berger had him eye-less. The yellow foam was quite visible, so Berger took some black spray paint and darkened it up inside. As he lifted the crucifix back up, he looked at me and said, "I'm Jewish. My people are good at doing this..."
The actual cabin itself was set up so it's nudged just up to the edge of a precarious cliff. Run down and horror movie-lookin'.
Since the show airs in a few hours (on Showtime, check your local listings!) and the rest of my report details some really spoilery stuff, I'm going to cut it off right here. I'll be back with the conclusion tomorrow night, which has car crashes, more corpses and the time crunch really putting the pressure on the production! Until then, this is Quint bidding you all a fond farewell and adieu!
-Quint
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good fun. Too bad I don't have Showtime.
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Oct 28, 2005 5:39:19 PM CDT
Met Mr Coscarelli in Tucson last year and he is the nicest guy..
by doom ii
I wish he got more studio work as he has loads of talent (more than ex-indie director and all around overrated Sam Raimi) and is stuck begging for money to make small films. Look at the shots in the Phantasm films and Bubba Ho Tep. The framing, lighting, build ups and the gothic settings. Kenny & Company is Coscarelli's great little 2nd film from the 70's. Even the Beastmaster has much to love (in a guilty pleasure sort of way). Coscarelli needs more work as does Monte Hellman!
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just that,thank you
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I just got HD and Showtime and this show, which I've been patiently awaiting since I first heard about it long ago, is starting tonight. Perfect timing! I'm one excited horror geek this weekend.
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A family member of mine went out with one of Hughes' regular "players" and he/she didn't have a lot of nice things to say about the man. After Ferris Bueller wrapped, the man (Hughes) ditched his old cast members and had a sort of mid-life crisis (not wanting to use his past actors or write about high school anymore). He never contacted any of the old cast members (holidays, birthdays, to say hello) and is sort of a recluse now....Then he wrote Home Alone again (Home Alone 2)and again (Dennis The Menace) and again (Baby's Day Out).....I understand wanting to move on, but making 3-4 movies with the same people, then never speaking to them again...Weird.
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That's about as tasty as this episode looks. MMMMMmmmm...good!
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We want it. We need it. We demand it. So where the hell is it?
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ahem.. you ARE on the internet.
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ahem.. you ARE on the internet.
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It says internal error and then when you try again it appears as a double post.
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"Yeah Dario. Suspiria isn't your best movie BY A LONG SHOT." :P
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That was a pretty damn good premiere, although I knew Embry had to be in the truck. Damn, Angus Scrimm looks younger now than he did in Phantasm. I'm officially a Bree Turner fan now. Next week's ep looks creepy as hell!
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maybe i was just really tired, but the ending underwhelmed me a little, i was actually expecting to her 'take over the reigns' so to speak. that seemed to happen all the time on tales from the crypt, so i just got used to it.
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I'm not blown away by the story of the first episode (a little too much Jeepers Creepers, not enough originality), but the production values are top-notch and the acting was great accross the board. Angus Scrimm was almost unrecognizable not playing the Tall Man, and it was nice to see he's got some range. I'm excited about what's to come....this is going to be a good series to follow.
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Extremely well done. It takes true talent to liven up the old "man-with-knife" genre; Coscarelli has it with aces. (Not to diminish Lansdale's fine story.)
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http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?treefall
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I added Showtime to my cable package a few days ago specifically for this series. The first episode was great and next week's looks creepy as hell. Am I wrong in thinking that Stephen King had something to do with at least one of the movies? Please tell me I'm right. I know what I'm going to bed reading... http://www.joerlansdale.com/stories.shtml
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That was a really badass episode. Bree Turner was an out-of-nowhere hottie and John De Santis was awesome as Moonface. Great story with great directing. DocArzt said it best, "Coscarelli has it with aces." Bra-fucking-vo!
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Don Coscarelli has pulled off another masterpiece. I'm starting to think it's his best effort yet. With the time restriction of one hour, it really helps to focus on the essentials, and gore without the lag time you get in alot of films.
And Moon Face, he was great! -
Go to amazon.co.uk and type in phantasm under dvd's. Cooleset box set EVER is released on monday!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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that story sucked. survivalist husband training? yeah, thats convenient. bree turner sucked. i didnt buy her macguyver-isms for a second. the direction was good but it wasnt scary or suspenseful at all...masters of horror, right? even the mummy scenes in bubba ho tep were creepy as shit, this was just lame. it had its moments and it wont deter me from missing an episode, but it wasnt by any means badass or awesome. give us the next bubba-movie, don. you did yr best with an extremely lame script. kudos.
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Watched it last night. Not really scary. The heroine had so much time to set up these different traps that she just could have escaped by walking away instead. It was good seeing Angus Scrimm again... especially since I thought he was dead...
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But otherwise cool shit, dude. I met Coscarelli at a screening of Bubba Ho Tep here in Phoenix a year or two ago, he's really nice as a few other people have mentioned already. I thought the first episode was really fucking good, though. Of course it wasn't scary. We're internet geeks, no scary movie is scary to us. But it was still fucking cool. So yeah, it was a little convenient that she married some super survivalist dude, but it still made for an interesting watch. Especially the eye goo on the drill, mmm.
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Oct 30, 2005 8:53:32 AM CST
survivalist husband training? yeah, thats convenient.
by godoffireinhell
Indeed it is, but that's why the story/film tells her story. Would you have rather have seen the story of any of the other couple dozen poor victims who were not blessed by just such a convenience and butchered without putting up much of a fight?
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Oct 30, 2005 9:47:28 AM CST
"Would you have rather have seen the story of any of the other c
by tripp5
yup. keep it simple.
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...and it was very disappointing. No atmosphere at all save for the moment where we see the killer for the first time and Bree Turner doesn't know who he is. He's just walking up at hill, getting closer, as she's trying to talk to him. There's no music or anything here and it really built dread. Unfortunately this was the only time this happens in the episode. So, a disappointing start but thankfully it wasn't made by someone I consider to be a "Master of Horror", so please roll on the Carpenter episode!
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So are people that type words like "Meh".
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Hope it's good. The story was great with only the exception of the stockings rigged traps, never could buy into that working. Still, great story that with no holding back would be great for a short. I can't wait for Season 1 to hit DVD. This show is one of the best ideas I've heard of in ages. Too bad I got to wait forever to see it. Peace.
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But Lansdale is far more clever than the story itself. He really is a fantastic writer but the thing was just so straight forward that I couldn't care much. When you only have people's attention for a taut little hour, you have to give twists/turns and an interesting narrative. But it basically goes like this: *SPOILERS* Girl drives car to music. Girl crashes car. Perfunctory happy flashback. Girl goes to other car in road, finds blood, it's a massacre. Scary man appears she runs into forest. Perfunctory flashback #2, survival time. Girl sets trap... *END SPOILERS* This is probably going to take too long to break down, but it was just a series of events... Nothing really interesting or compelling I mean *SPOILERS* the death of moonface is just... blam, he's dead. No punch, no nothing. *END SPOILERS* Which just saddened me. I was expecting some Lansdale cleverness and I got... Nothing. But it was solid, I'll give it that. Enough to keep me interested into the next episode I suppose.
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Not sure what the film used, but in the story we find out that her ex was really crazy and had her trapped up at their cabin and to escape him she ended up killing him. His body is in her trunk. The fight with Moonface is pretty drawn out and really horrible. At one point I thin she even had to fight him off with the remains of a dead infant... but it's a blurr. Either way, there was a nice twist in the story when she adds her boyfriend to Moonface's scarecrows... cutting out eyes with hole through the head and all! If they left that out then there really wasn't much point in making it. Peace.
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I love her. Ever since I saw her about 5-6 years ago on that crappy MTV show Undressed.
I thought she was great, I was pleasantly surprised.
I was annoyed at first at her convenient trap-making abilities but the fact that they actually worked against her I thought was pretty original. -
Oct 30, 2005 10:04:00 PM CST
"she even had to fight him off with the remains of a dead infant
by godoffireinhell
Oh, don't you worry, that's very much in the filmed version! It made me laugh so hard I fell off the damn couch! May very well become my favorite cinematic moment of 2005 - and it was on TV.
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Can't remember where, when, or by whom, but this Lansdale short story was filmed before.
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I mean, without those moments... anyway. Can't wait to see it, but I guess I'll have to. Peace.
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because Hurricane Wilma knocked the fucking power out. Seven days and counting.............I can't wait for these to come on DVD.
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Agreed, but Don was one of these director/writers who decided horror just wasn't for him anymore and tried to move away from it for awhile. Hollywood sees him as a horror guy, unfortunately.
All the time between Beastmaster and Phantasm II trying to get family films and other types of stuff made hurt his career.
I hope he comes back strong with this stuff, I really do.
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Oct 31, 2005 10:03:08 PM CST
Disappointing start, but from a director I don't care about.
by chickychow
So luckily I don't put too much stock into it (Angus Scrimm was easily the best aspect of it). The ones I'm looking forward to are Dante, Miike, Romero, and Corman, just for curiosity's sake.
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Nov 08, 2005 11:10:35 PM CST
To all those people who said, "I don't have Showtime, so I c
by 3 bag enema
That was only redeemable as MST3K material. Complete crap. I cannot believe this director has made a career for himself. Apparently "Hack Director" should be a viable career presented at high school job fairs.
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