Photo by: Franco Frassetti

SID HAIG: “I don’t kill, I give life, sometimes what I give I have to take away.” (from NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 3D)

The sixties ushered peace, love, and war into American society and as this volatility raged and stung at the hearts of the populace, couch potatoes in American living rooms were unwittingly transmitted a new face of a hood, a terrorist, an all-around bad guy. This master of disguise portrayed Turks, Egyptians, Persians, Hispanics and any other “villainous group” according to Hollywood’s vision at the time. Over a half a decade into the future, his distinctive mug is as lively as it was when hippies and discoing Travoltas inhabited the earth. Embodying psychos and mad doctors and zombies and those that go bump in the night, like a seal of approval, today Sid Haig is the face of horror.

How many in Hollywood can boast a long career that includes appearances on the most popular shows of the day? Haig acted in shows with Danny Thomas, Bob Hope, and Lucille Ball. From FANTASY ISLAND to THE A-TEAM to GET SMART to GUNSMOKE.

Performing in many types of roles, superhero and science fiction genres were among them. As Royal Apothocary in the BATMAN television series, he delivers the line, “…abu rabu simbu tew.” At the hands of the caped crusader, he receives a superhero Bonk, Powie, and Zap. As Drago, Haig is the arch enemy in a cheap STAR WARS Saturday morning show entitled, JASON OF STAR COMMAND.

Haig on Jason of Star Command

Haig on Batman

This line, by Elliot Gould in BUSTING, “That’s not immediate family, that’s a creep.” in reference to Haig as Rizzo’s bodyguard, sums up the other less than savory type of characters that Haig portrayed.

After decades in television and film, Sid Haig experienced a rebirth in the realm of horror thanks to musician turned director, the one and only Rob Zombie. Not since John Wayne Gayce has anyone portrayed clowns in the proper light Haig has as Captain Spaulding in HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES.

With a white painted face, black lips, rotted teeth, blue arched eyebrows, and dabs of rosy pink on his cheeks, donning a patriotic red, white, and blue Uncle Sam hat, this fast talking, carnival barking, fried chicken sellin’, gas station roadside attraction ringmaster does what clowns are supposed to do. Commit murder.

Those unlucky enough to travel to exit 13 off route 1 in Ruggsville and buy a ticket to Captain Spaulding’s Museum of Monsters and Madmen may find themselves meeting the rest of his family in the unforgiving Texas terrain. If not by chance, then by a map detailed by the Captain himself. They may run and you may hide, but there is no chance in hell that anyone will survive Baby, Otis, Tiny, and Mother Firefly.

Although HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES was not fully appreciated by all critics, it has amassed a huge cult following. After this movie was released and Sid was billed at horror conventions, the lines to see this man that portrayed the foul clown were quite lengthy. Writer and filmmaker Joe Knetter attests to Haig’s popularity at such shows.

JOE KNETTER: [Haig]…is busy as hell at the show. I swear the guy’s line never ends. In the six years we’ve been friends we’ve done a ton of shows together and he continues to be a big draw, with fans lining up for a pic or signature.

Signing pictures and posters depicting him as his various characters, some fans bring their own images of Haig tattooed onto their bodies, which continues to startle him.

The good people at Saturday Nightmares in New Jersey had booked Sid at their convention of horror, and this is where he chatted with me and allowed me to whisk him away from his throngs of fans for a photo shoot.

AN ACTOR IS BORN

Franco Frassetti: When did you first know you wanted to be an actor?

Sid Haig: I accepted my first Academy Award in my parents’ living room at the age of nine.

Franco: Did you go to acting school?

Sid Haig: I went to undeniably the best acting school on the West Coast which is the Pasadena Playhouse . The alumni is amazing: Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, Earl Holliman, Charles Bronson, you know. Names that people might remember.

Franco: What kind of acting did you want to do?

Sid Haig: I wanted to act. I wanted to be real.

Franco: What was your first casting call experience like?

Sid Haig: The first one was for Jack Hill for his student film at UCLA called, “THE HOST.” I kinda had a leg up going in because Dorothy Arzner, who was the head of the film department at UCLA, and the first female director in Hollywood, was friends with one of my instructors at the Pasadena Playhouse, and she called her and said ‘We’re looking for a guy. Jack’s not happy with anybody he’s seen, do you have anybody?’ And she called me and said get your ass to UCLA right now. Went over there, we met; I read for him, boom, done! After that things started snowballing. I did another picture the next month. I did another picture the month after that. My first television show, which was the original UNTOUCHABLES, so everything just snowballed.

Jack and Sid have a long courtship. After Hill’s student film, the two worked together on many of Hill’s productions. What is an article about Sid Haig’s career without input from Jack Hill? Short of expectations of a response from Alan Shafer, Hill’s representative, it was shocking to see an email from Jack Hill in my inbox: …I’m delighted to learn that Sid is getting the serious attention he deserves. Mr. Hill recalled the details of his initial meeting with Haig.

JACK HILL: My mentor in the UCLA cinema department was Dorothy Arzner, who had been for many years the only female A-picture director in Hollywood. I was struggling to cast my student film, THE HOST, and after letting me go through some disappointments (read: mistakes) on my own, Dorothy tactfully suggested that I take a look at a student she knew from the Pasadena Playhouse school who she thought would be suitable. It was a young guy named Sid Haig. My first impression of Sid was that – well, he wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for the role (another mistake in my learning process) – but when he read for me I immediately noticed that he had a way of using his entire body that convinced me, this was the right guy. It was a physically, as well as dramatically demanding role – a sort of metaphysical Western that included a fight scene as well as sexuality.

Sid didn’t need much direction on my part, other than how to physically play to the camera. He mostly just showed me what he had in mind, and I pretty much agreed with him and let him run with it, a technique – if one can call it that – that later became my way of working with actors: see what they bring to the role and be open to it. In other word: First rule of directing is the same as the first rule of medicine: “First, do no harm.”

SPIDER BABY

Franco: SPIDER BABY was your first major film?

SID HAIG: That was #4 and to work with Lon Chaney, Jr. was amazing ’cause as a kid I used to go see all of his movies and now, all of a sudden, I’m there working with him. The first couple of days I was in awe, but he was so cool.

Franco: Did he give you any tips. Did he help you along the way?

SPIDER BABY

SID HAIG: He helped me in ways that didn’t have anything to do with acting but basically telling me what kind of situations to stay away from and what to do and what not to do to get ahead in the business. So, it was cool.

Franco: Did you get to see SPIDER BABY after it was released? I heard that there was a problem with prints disappearing.

SID HAIG: Yeah, I did see it. The reason it went underground for three years was that the producers filed bankruptcy and that was part of their assets and they couldn’t do anything with it until they paid off their bankruptcy. So, that is why it took so long to get out there.

SPIDER BABY

Jack Hill on SPIDER BABY

JACK HILL: It wasn’t long after, I had the opportunity to make my first complete feature film, which eventually became what is now known as a classic cult horror-comedy, SPIDER BABY OR THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD. (See, there was a big Hollywood epic out at the time entitled THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD, and, well… How could I know that my little movie would still be finding new fans two generations later?) I wrote the script with Sid in mind; in fact he was the inspiration for the character of Ralph, the monosyllabic idiot that virtually steals the show. His only dialog was, “Ih! Ih!” along with a few grunts and drooling laughter. Perfect casting, in my admittedly grass-driven imagination (it was the sixties, after all).

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 3D

I wrote it with Sid in mind is a reoccurring statement from all the film directors and writers that I have spoken with concerning the thespian of Armenian descent.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 3D

Jeff Broadstreet, director of the upcoming NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 3-D: REANIMATION wrote the part of Gerald Tovar Jr. with Haig in mind.

JEFF BROADSTREET: I knew Sid’s work because of Jack Hill. I was familiar with COFFEY and FOXY BROWN. I had some friends who were special effects make up guys working on a movie so when Sid came out in HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES, he was just such a breath of fresh air that I literally said to myself, “Where had this guy been?” I really want to work with the guy. I really want to put that guy in a movie.” So, that came out in about 2003 and when the opportunity came up to do NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD remake in 3-D, I told the writer that I want to write the Gerald Tovar Junior role for Sid Haig. I remember him looking at me and saying, “Do you think we can get him?” I said, “Let me worry about that.” So we wrote the role for him in kind of his voice and, of course, I didn’t tell him about this until later. So, when I hired my casting director, whom I had worked with before, he said, “I think we can afford him, I think we can get him.” He came in, just to meet. I didn’t ask him to read and then we offered him the part. He was a lot of fun to work with and it’s always fun when you get your first choice.

BARB MEETS GERALD TOVAR JR.

Barb is in the garage at the mortuary after fleeing from the building and encounters a zombie. Sid Haig’s character, mortician Gerald Tovar Jr., rushes in with shovel in hand, broadsides the zombie while exerting a loud grunt and instructs Barb with a sense of urgency, “Miss you can’t be here.” A beat later he delivers the line, “Employees only!” with boisterous amused merriment. The exchange between the startled Barb looking for answers and Gerald offering condolences while beating the zombie about the head, yet again, has the feel of a classic Warner Brothers cartoon. The scene ends with a rotund naked zombie lurching forward as the mortician is repelling him as if he were just a mere annoyance while trying to reason with the undead. “Mr. Del Amo, Mr. Del Amo, this isn’t helping either one of us.”

Haig’s multifarious emotions delivered from line to line displays the actor’s ability in the scene where Gerald Tovar Jr. sits in the farmhouse living room detailing the genesis of the zombie population. The scene plays out as written below:

Upon his entrance to the house evading a zombie assault, he gasps for breath while offering a hello to all present and seats himself as if there were not a care in the world.

Gerald: Do you have anything to drink? Some tea, uh water, water would be fine.

Silence. Burning stares from all.

Sheepishly, a shoulder shrug , and a chuckle.


Gerald: I’d be happy to get it myself.

Followed by a big gleaming grin.

In a deep slow rhythmic pattern: Gerald: They started coming back to life about two weeks ago.

Gerald is asked: Are you saying the dead have been coming out of the ground for two weeks?

Gerald blurts out reassurances that they are not and is asked to specify.

In a deep voice. Gerald: The other ones.

He looks to the ground then with open sad eyes. Gerald: The ones that were supposed to be cremated.

Delivering an excuse like a child taking blame, then taking credit for other things, happily smiling.

Gerald: Other things too that were supposed to go into the fire.

Stressing the syllables, Haig’s delivery is akin to telling a campfire story.

Rhythmically. Gerald: Parts, parts of bodies. Medical things.

A slow deep resonance.

Gerald: I think if I could have burned anything, it would have been themmmmmm.

Franco: What kind of direction did you give him in the living room scene. His diction, the way he rolls his eyes. His voice gets very low at some parts. Did you have anything to do with that?

JEFF BROADSTREET: I am going to be frank with you now and you can print this.

Franco: Okay.

JEFF BROADSTREET: I didn’t really give Sid a lot of direction. I mean I gave him some direction, but he didn’t seem to want to take a lot of direction from me. I only gave him like two line readings the whole film. And he didn’t want to do it, but he did do it. In any event, I didn’t coach him through that role. Basically, my feeling is since we wrote it for him, when you hire an actor like Sid Haig or Jeffrey Combs, you hire guys like that with a short shooting schedule, you are basically hiring them to do what they do. I am also a student of Hitchcock and Welles. Hitchcock always said that if you cast right your movie is about half way there. So, I didn’t give him a lot of direction in that scene; I just talked to him about it generally. But, what I did was, I shot a lot of coverage of it. I shot the master and then I shot all the other actors coverage next. There are like five or six people in that scene. And then I shot Sid last. So, by that time, he was really warmed up and what I did was I just set up a dolly track, I set up a short dolly track in front of him. And all I did was very slowly dolly into his face until it was pretty much a big close-up. And then we pre-cued the line and when he said a certain line and then we’d very slowly started tracking back out. It’s one of my favorite scenes in the film.

Haig appeared in a few lackluster films but always gave an A+ performance. In HOUSE OF THE DEAD 2, he is a doctor who is responsible for the virus that creates the zombies. This was a year before his 3-D zombie premiere. In A DEAD CALLING, he plays husband George to his onscreen wife Marge, played by Leslie Easterbrook. (The couple was also married in HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES and DEVIL’S REJECTS.) George is a caring concerned father who smiles brightly and assures her that everything will be alright. In this film, there is zero creep factor in his character. However, it would not take a gambling man to bet that future appearances by Haig will be in the form of characters that one does not wish to meet.

Haig proves the point.

Franco: Anything you want to promote now? Is there anything that we will be seeing you in the future?

SID HAIG: Yeah. I’m in a film called CREATURE…I’ve done four films after that , MIMESIS – the definition of mimesis is life imitating art. And I did a film called THE SACRED, and THE INFLICTION, and ZOMBEX, yet another zombie movie, so I’ve been busy.

MIMESIS’ director, Douglas Schulze recently returned from screening his film overseas and at the U.S. premiere of the film at the Blue Water Film Festival in Port Huron, Michigan.

Franco: Did Sid audition? Or was the part specifically written for him in mind?

DOUG SCHULZE: Yeah. Actually, the whole genesis for the idea was that we were looking for a powerful, intimidating factor, visually. Someone who actually could carry a bit of a dramatic performance and kind of look internally to the character, if you will. And, so when we were writing it I was kind of working with a co-writer and we were saying, “Sid Haig would be great for this part.” We wrote it with Sid in mind, not really knowing if we would have the chance to work with him and we were very surprised. The schedule…the planets aligned, so to speak and we were able to work with him.

Sid Haig and Doug Schulze

Franco: Was he exactly how you envisioned him to be? Did he do something different from what you wanted him to do?

DOUG SCHULZE: He came to us a very open actor. He likes to hear the Director’s perspective from the onset. So, the first time we got to meet and sit down to talk about the character, he wanted to hear my perspective on it. He sat very patiently listening and not talking. He gave me his take on it and we hit a nice middle ground. His approach was pretty dead on for what we were looking for. Sid’s character is actually a film director, an independent film director we perceive may be a mastermind behind this group and we are not sure if he is the good guy or the bad guy.

CREATURE is a film that brings back the monster horror genre. Sid is Chopper, good ol’ boy of a backwoods-down-in-the-bayou family that harbors a secret. Much like HOUSE OF A 1000 CORPSES, Haig’s character is happened upon by the roadside in a convenience store that is out of fuel and a working bathroom and the hangout for the local yokels. As did Captain Spaulding, Chopper also displays a creature-human hybrid mix that brings back memories of George W. Bush’s January 31, 2006 State of the Union Address asking Congress to ban human-animal hybrids.

Director Fred Andrews spoke about Sid in CREATURE.

FRED ANDREWS: You know what, the girls were so scared of him when they first met him, and he’s such a puppy dog. They are like, “Oh, my God, he scares me.” Working with Sid was amazing. I was really, really lucky that he was able to do it. He was busy. He was booked. We spoke and we kind of hit it off right away and he consented to come down and sweat for me. I can only say this, the guy is such a pro. He’s been doing it for so long.

Franco: I think fifty years, he said.

FRED ANDREWS: Yes, Paul Mason, my Executive Producer, was the guy that gave him his first acting job on LAREDO. So Paul called him and said, “Fred really, really wants you guys to talk.” It just worked out great. So here it is, I’ve got like the younger actors and we’re like ten hours into it and it’s hot and sweaty and it’s night and there’s bugs all over the place and they’re like, “Oh, I need bug spray , I need this.” And Sid’s just sitting and waiting for his lines. He never went back into the trailer. He would just wait. He said, “That’s my job, I am here to do my job.” Directing him was just fantastic. Pruitt Taylor Vince was also in the film and he and Sid are in a really big scene together. I have David Jensen who is another big character actor and Wayne Pére who kind of played like my local guys. So when you had these four actors together with Sid, it was just amazing! It’s just some of the best character actors you’ve ever seen. It elevated the film to a whole different level.

JEFF BROADSTREET: He was great to work with. It was a small film with a short shooting schedule and I kept expecting him to maybe kind of lose it or something. There was one day that he was kind of cranky, and we found out that he had fallen asleep in his trailer, and his trailer happened to be right next to the generator. He had been inhaling diesel fumes. So he came on the set, and I thought, “Oh, he’s finally losing it, finally losing his temper.” But no, he came to apologize that he was a little cranky. He said, “I’m sorry, I fell asleep in the trailer and I woke up with a headache.” I kept expecting him to be kind of…I don’t know…in these small movies … I worked with some actors that kind of lose it sometimes. He was great to work with.

He had actually hurt his knee out at the farmhouse set and that last day that we were shooting him in the scene where he gets attacked by all the zombies at the car, his knee was swollen. So, when all the zombies attack him and push him down, I told them to barely touch him, put your hands on him very lightly. I didn’t care for the first take so I asked him to do it again. Everybody looked at me as if I were crazy. “He’s got a bad knee, are you nuts?” “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to do it again.” He said, “Look, I know I have a hurt knee, but if we’re going to do it, let’s do it right. Have them go ahead and grab me.” I thought that he was a real trooper.

JOE KNETTER: Sid Haig was one of the first people in the business to support my work. At the time I was just writing more for fun than anything. Being a huge fan of H1000C and his character Captain Spaulding, I knew who Sid was and was familiar with his long body of work. I took a chance and wrote him to see if he was interested in reading some of my stuff and maybe giving me a blurb to use. Not only did he agree but he also went on to write an intro to my next book.

A fellow actor and friend of Sid’s, Bill Moseley shared screen time in both of Rob Zombie’s films, HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES and THE DEVIL’S REJECTS and also in A DEAD CALLING. With numerous on-set and touring stories to tell, this is one that is ever so fitting for a pair of horror actors.

BILL MOSELEY: Sid Haig and I are great buds and we worked together alot. We travel to different conventions together and we had gone on a ten day European swing. We were making different appearances. We had a couple of days in Paris and had a personal appearance for that big toy store in Paris and the couple that translated for us said that if we wanted to have fun in Paris, they’d be happy to be our tour guides . “We speak English. Obviously, we are French people and could show you around.” Sid and I were in a hotel right next to a very famous old cemetery called Père Lachaise. It’s where Chopin is buried, and Jim Morrison, and a bunch of other famous people. We said that we’d love to go see that cemetery. They said that was awesome because the husband of this couple actually worked there. So, we were going to get the inside tour of the cemetery. We showed up and met the couple and they had brought along a friend of theirs, a kind of a Goth guy, and we had this great tour and we saw all the cool stuff and we had lunch afterward.

The months went by, Sid and I came back to the U.S., and Sid called me up and said, “Do you want to hear something weird?” I said, “Yeah, sure man, what?” He said, “I posted a picture on my website of the five of us. The couple, their bud, you and me, at the graveyard, and one of the fans on my website identified their friend. He was called ‘The Vampire of Paris,’ or something like that.” This was a guy who had been quite infamous in Paris because he had also worked at Père Lachaise Cemetery and had actually been caught eating some of the cadavers. He had gone to jail for it. He had literally brought home a hand or a leg and cooked it up or whatever and ate it. He was our silent companion and he seemed like a nice guy. Sid and I both got a kick out of that.

Those that have worked with Sid Haig do wish to work with him again. If it is not a leading role, it just may be only one scene. Rob Zombie placed Haig in his version of HALLOWEEN as the grave keeper Chester Chesterfield. Quentin Tarantino is a fan of Haig and placed him in JACKIE BROWN as a judge and later as a bartender in KILL BILL: VOLUME 2. In JACKIE BROWN, Sid Haig’s name appears in a scene in the film. Pam Grier’s character looks for a name in a building directory and the name S. HAIG is listed.

Previously, Tarantino had another role planned for Haig.

SID HAIG: Quentin Tarantino wanted me for PULP FICTION, for the part of Marsellus [eventually played by Ving Rhames] and I wanted it, and there was this big screw-up between my agents and them and da,da,da it didn’t work out. I was really pissed off about that. And he told me he really wanted to work with me. So, it was agents and producers and whatever, just sometimes don’t speak the same language and things don’t work out.

Quentin Tarantino was well aware of Haig from his numerous appearances in the Jack Hill films PIT STOP, The BIG DOLL HOUSE, THE BIG BIRD CAGE, COFFY, and FOXY BROWN.

JACK HILL: My next outing – again, creating a role with Sid in mind – was my “stock-car racing art-film,” PIT STOP. And again, with Sid stealing the show as an ego-maniacal race driver whose character does a complete turn-around that not just any actor could bring off. The film was not widely seen at the time because we shot in black & white – it had a lot of night-time racing that we couldn’t shoot in color in those days – and drive-in theaters started advertising all-color bills. [It has since become another cult classic on internet downloads, of all venues.] My most delightful memory of the shoot on that picture was when we needed to have Sid actually drive a truck on camera, and learned that he didn’t know how to drive. With the result that he backed the truck into a parked car. Still, of all my films with Sid, this is the one that I’m most proud of, as a fine accomplishment against all odds.

But let me move on to COFFY and FOXY BROWN, the last two films that I made with Sid, and the titles most frequently associated with my name. In both cases, I created characters specifically for Sid. In COFFY, I had him play an Armenian hit-man, and in FOXY BROWN, a redneck aviator. He was equally convincing in both roles. Well, it may have been cheating a bit having him play an Armenian accent because Sid is of Armenian descent, and he brought a few shticks and bits of dialog to the role that I would never have thought of: an example of the thrill of working a genuinely creative player.

I was never able to work again with Sid after that time, partly because I had projects that just didn’t have roles for him, and partly because he was getting too expensive for my budgets. I did write another role for Sid in a sword & sorcery fantasy picture called SORCERESS that I eventually shot in Mexico – playing a satyr, actually, which in my mind would have been perfect for Sid, and in which he would surely have stolen the picture – but circumstances and delays made it impossible for him, and the film suffered fatally from his absence.

Still, I look forward to the day that Sid and I can collaborate once again, and every new script I write nowadays has a role for him. Hang in there, Sid, our biggest hits are yet to come!

Meanwhile, back at the convention in New Jersey:

Franco: Is being known in horror a hindrance? Are people on the street cool with you or do you find that horror actors aren’t given their due?

SID HAIG: No, people are really cool with me on the street. I appreciate that. People aren’t pushy or being assholes, which is really good. And because of the success of HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES, THE DEVIL’S REJECTS and HALLOWEEN industry people are starting to recognize what it is that I do, so things are starting to broaden out.

Franco: What is your worst film experience?

SID HAIG: I don’t even want to talk about it.

Franco: And you obviously have good relations with Mr. Zombie. How is he as a director? What is his approach?

SID HAIG: Rob Zombie, Quentin Tarantino and Jack Hill all work basically under the same premise. They make their vision clear to you and then get the hell out of the way and let you do your job. Boom, done! Okay. And that’s the way to work. If a guy has enough faith to hire you, then he should have enough faith to know that you know what you’re doing and let you do your thing.

Franco: Are there any future Rob Zombie projects that you’re involved with that you can mention?

SID HAIG: I can’t say anything ’cause I don’t know anything.

Franco: Are you happy as an actor?

SID HAIG: I’m happy. I ‘m happy with where I’m at and I’m happy with where I’m going. Always reaching for the next level.

Franco: Is there anything you want to add? Something about yourself that you would like our reader’s to know?

SID HAIG: Nothing that they probably don’t already know. Except that my little public announcement is to just believe in yourself, believe in what you’re doing. Don’t quit until you get it.

Franco: When you were just becoming an actor, where you ever told that you wouldn’t succeed?

SID HAIG: Oh, yeah. My first day in school the Dean of the school did the Orientation speech. He said there are three things that you need to become a successful actor: wealthy parents, ha, that lets me out, and you have to be tenacious (I said I could do that), and then if you have a little talent, that would help.

As a metaphor for actors yearning to drink from the fountain of success, we leave our audience with the following line from the short film THIRSTY, directed by Andrew Kasch, where we are tuned to Radio Evangelist, Sid Haig. “You’re hot and you’re sufferin’ and you’d sell your soul to Satan himself for just one drop to drink. Can I get an Amen!”

(Thank you to the following who gave their time to make this article possible: Jack Hill, Bill Moseley, Jeff Broadstreet, Fred Andrews, Douglas Schulze, Judy Fox, Alan Shafer, Andrew Kasch, Joe Knetter, Saturday Nightmares and of course, Sid Haig.)

Sitting in the Anthology Film Archives in New York watching a 74-minute 35mm print of a digital film shot using a spy camera with actors that were never sure when and where the camera was, along with unsuspecting caught-on-camera pedestrians accosted by an American on the streets of London, I realize the ironical facets and mechanics that encapsulate this project, as well as the brilliance of this film which could easily be snatched up by some Hollywood beast who would spit out a moneymaking blockbuster starring Drew Barrymore as the love interest. “Hollywoodized”, the artistry and commitment to the camera truth of this Indy feature would be forever lost.

Using Skype, I spoke to Yoni Bentovim about his film and asked for his thoughts on Hollywood remaking his film with Drew Barrymore. He laughed and stated that he had actually spoken to Barrymore’s people, made an offer for her to appear in BORGES AND I and added, “She missed the boat.”

Londoners Yoni Bentovim and his wife Emily Harris co-directed and helmed this project. They found inspiration from a Jim McBride film from the late 60′s entitled, DAVID HOLZMAN’S DIARY (just released on DVD by Kino Lorber). Both films, BORGES and DAVID HOLZMAN, give the audience insight into a man’s journey of introspection. From McBride’s film, Holzman speaks of Jean Luc Godard answering the question, what is film? He quotes, “Film is truth twenty-four times a second.” It is, unless it is perpetrated by a fraud. BORGES’ main actor, Tim Harris spoke of this quandary. “I felt guilty a lot of the time because they [Londoners] did not know they were being filmed and I was not being me.” He went about his acting by secretly taping his day-to-day existence from his point of view.

Chris McColl, who wrote the script, was at the Anthology screening to promote BORGES AND I, and spoke of the film’s incarnation. “Emily and Yoni wanted to make a feature. They had made a short film called, THREE TOWERS. They had many meetings and were told once they had a feature made to come back. They could not get a budget so they attempted to figure the lowest possible budgeted film that they can make themselves. They stumbled across an actual spy shop in London and the equipment to make the film was there.”

Tim adds, “It was definitely Emily and Yoni’s goal to make the first feature ever recorded with a spy camera. When I first got the script it was an early version that was already mixed with what’s real and what’s not. The equipment itself was cool and I think they thought of me partly because they know that I like gadgets. It was a fun project and still is a fun project because it is about filming, being filmed, looking and being seen or seen and being looked at, but also about the process of what does it mean that we have all of this technology where we can look at ourselves and look at each other all the time.”

Emily and Yoni met at The London Film School in 2000. Yoni remembers, “…She was my First Assistant Director on a fifth term short film I directed. She was in 1st year and I was in 2nd year, we clicked creatively and have worked together ever since.”

Via email, Emily reveals that she and her husband only worked on 35mm and on 16mm in school. She wrote: “Our ideas and style as well as experience lent themselves to the film format. This was very frustrating as an Indy filmmaker because shooting on film requires a lot more money than we had available. There were only two options: spend more time raising finances or shoot digitally. Well, we were itching to make another film and didn’t want to simply take one of our scripts which was conceived for film and shoot it digitally. Something that is very important to us is that a project should match its medium. We didn’t just want to shoot it digitally but wanted a digital idea. So, we came up with BORGES & I.

It could ONLY have been shot digitally. The main actor is the camera.”

Similarly, Jim McBride was faced with the dilemma of acquiring camera equipment and the lack of funds. McBride claimed that he and friend Kit Carson used, “Simply what we could get.” Their plan of action was to shoot DAVID HOLZMAN when they rented equipment for a paying job. With weekend shoots and limited film stock, the cinema verite style, precursor to reality programming, would inspire Yoni and Emily over forty years later. However, in a future filled with so many technical possibilities, filmmakers continue to grapple with limited monetary resources to fulfill their ideal vision.

While Tim is a self-proclaimed gadget lover and embraces technology for the further progression of cinema, he profiles his sister Emily and brother-in-law Yoni as somewhat cinema purists. “Emily and Yoni are much more rooted, at least from my point of view, in film, organic celluloid being projected on a big screen. Part of the strategy was for them to make a feature even though it is much more do-able now than it was ever before. It still is expensive if you are going to get really nice cameras and lenses. Because it was integral to the concept of the film and the story, it made it possible for them to play with the relatively lo-fi camera lenses that make-up high-tech spy equipment. But, compared to a film camera, it’s not as beautiful as it could be. If they were going to have it their way, they probably would have shot with a beautiful lens and with a beautiful film stock in Black and White like THREE TOWERS was.

Yoni thought of Tim for the feature since he is very physical. The role demanded the main character to conceal a spy camera as well as batteries and sound equipment. Although it is nothing like the cumbersome equipment that could be seen in DAVID HOLZMAN’S DIARY, it was still challenging.

Tim detailed the logistics of shooting. “It was tricky too because there were times I would be caught up in the conversation. And then I would realize that I have to move to get the shot so I would stretch or I would step back and people would move towards me. I was very aware of the body language because I would frame the shot as I would talk to them.”

The shooting required a crew to be nearby to assist. The batteries required charging and replacing, unsuspecting people would be pointed out for Tim to approach, releases had to be secured. This crew amounted to the directors, the PA, the sound guy, and the production manager, as well as the actors. Occasionally, Tim was left on his own, “Sometimes, Yoni would send me off and tell me to come back for lunch.”

Approaching pedestrians or going door-to-door yielded varied reactions. Many declined to speak, one man slammed his front door shut, and others were willing to speak at length. The film edited conversations that extend well over 10 minutes. It was rather a bold task for the actor.

“Being an outgoing American in London made it easier. I don’t know what it would have been like here in New York. In L.A. it would have been really difficult because people don’t talk to each other like that. I would stop a stranger in the street and ask what is their perception of me at that moment. That is a disarming question and an intellectual question. So people would think, ‘OK, you don’t want anything from me?’ No. I just want to hear your thoughts. Some people really liked it and others were confused by it. Again, I think it is a very specific thing to England and to London, as to some of the characters that I ran into. ‘Oh, you look kind of scruffy’ or ‘I don’t think that you should talk to strangers on the street.’ There’s a quite a lot of that English…I don’t know what to call it…wit or English attitude.”

Unbeknownst to Tim were the identities of the other actors cast. While on the street like a spy, he would encounter the contacts that were set-up. Of the people cast was his love interest. As is the norm in the world of cinema, there is gossip about leading men and leading ladies. (Word was that Tim “had a thing” for Sally Scott. In true investigative reporter fashion, it was paramount to get to the bottom of this. Was it Sally or was it her character Kate that Tim was attracted to? Tim’s official statement is: ” I think it’s fair to say we all had a crush on her.” This, as he pointed out, is an actual line from the film. Perhaps it was the idea of a woman like Sally, or is it Kate?)

The perils of filmmaking without permits or the appearance of actual film equipment did teeter on the brink of bodily harm for Tim Harris. “The mirror shot took a long time. That was actually much weirder than talking to people. I am walking down the street talking to myself in a mirror. People are looking at me and I was sure someone was going to lock me up. There is one moment in the chase scene when I am being chased by the big guy; I am running with this big equipment, this belt pack thing that is shaking. He told me that there were a couple of people who were about to knock me over for him. They thought that I was a thief running away from the English guy because I am a little darker, a scruffy faced guy running away from a pasty pink guy yelling “Oy, oy.” I think we got lucky that nobody tackled me.”

Chris McColl was asked to write the script and to play Tim’s brother. From New York he went back and forth with Yoni and Emily via emails prior to a script reading with Tim in New York before shooting commenced later in the year during the summer in London. He was challenged with writing a character for himself.

“We had some issues around that. They described the character to me of Tim’s brother and he’s not supposed to be a particularly pleasant guy. And so, I wrote a draft of the script and they came back and said, ‘Oh, this I great, Chris. And we really like it here but there is one problem, the character of Chris. He is really not nasty enough. And so I went back and I rewrote my scenes with Tim and sent it back to them. Yeah, well this is better but he is still not as nasty. And they actually asked, “Do you not want to play the character cause it feels like subconsciously maybe you do not want to be this guy.” I said, no no no! I swear I want to do it. Finally, the third time around I got it to where they were happy. And it was kind of fun to play a real obnoxious jerk. I think every actor says it’s fun to play a bad guy. I see the trailer and I might be the only person in the trailer that swears. So, it’s sort of a thing that I have to feel embarrassed about when I tell friends or tell family. It was easier the second time definitely. The first time, I felt like a fraud because it’s not what I set out to do. I want to write. It was my first love. When they said, “You’d be great in this!” I wasn’t sure that they were right. The other thing too, is that, I felt that I had an advantage. Like Tim said, the actors only got to see bits and pieces of the script. I wrote the damn thing so I know the whole thing.

As a scriptwriter, there is a definite version of the film in the mind’s eye. Once the cameras are rolling and the actors give life to the words on the page, do the characters behave how you created them?

“The funny thing about writing a film is that you sit in your little room and you bash away at the script. You think you are writing one thing. The classic example is the scene with Simeon, the casting director. I wrote this scene that had this Richard Attenborough intensity about it. He was very earnest and that’s not what a casting director is going to be like at all. And Simeon who is an actor, who has seen many dozens of casting directors, knows that when you walk in, they are bored out of their mind. They don’t want anything to do with you, they are just trying to get through the day, get their paycheck, and get out. So, that’s how he played it and it is hysterically funny. Mine wasn’t funny at all but I love watching people pull things out of the stuff that I write that is not at all what I expected. That’s kind of fun.”

How much does the script deviate from the typed pages?

“I don’t know. It’s been so long, I have not gone back to read the script. They really wanted it to feel organic, to feel natural. They gave the script to the actors and let them play around with it. There were key ideas that they wanted to get in. There were monologues that I wrote that were pretty accurate, like the AVATAR monologue in the party scene where Kate brings the entire party to a standstill with this discussion of heavy Hinduism. That is pretty much as I remember writing it. There are one or two others, but Angus played pretty fast and loose with some of the ideas that I threw into the script. But the ideas are still there and that’s the point. I think they wanted a film that was about his idea and the explorations and the parallels of it. But, not so much about adhering to very strict formality of language and structure of dialogue and so on.”

Part of the film contains video diaries that Tim conducted while in London and back home in L.A. with a camera that the directors gave him. He held onto the tapes for a year before they were handed in and doubted if they would be used in the film. The first cut of the film was a darker 80-minute version in Black and White. The second cut was in color with very little narration and voice over.

Chris McColl recounted the experience. “What happened was the narrative wasn’t working for them. The whole subconscious aspect of the thing is something that they wanted to explore. They got accepted to a sort of clinic for directors in Germany and they met this fantastic editor there and mentor to them and they explained the quandary in their project. The editor flew to London and viewed all of the footage including all of Tim’s diary footage.

All three began experimenting with the footage and realized that it was really working. At that point, she exclaimed, “This is great! I can’t help you.” It was not a movie that she was comfortable with but liked where they were going.” In the end, 200 hours of video footage was trimmed to 74-minutes. Yoni summarized the editing process as a ” bloody nightmare.”

Finally the editing nightmare was put to rest. Usually, at this time the distribution nightmare awakens to terrorize the independent filmmaker. How does one scream loud enough to get heard? Yoni and Emily made use of social media to get the word out, and entered the film in the festival circuit.

Emily offers this to those that aspire to recognition for their film. “My number one advice at the moment is be innovative and break distribution conventions. The Internet has opened many avenues for getting your film seen by huge numbers of people.”

The spy camera used to shoot the film was put up for auction on EBAY. The reserve price was not met so it stayed put. But ideas such as this helped eyes see the title of the film and hopefully stirred up interest.

At Raindance, BORGES AND I had two showings. The first was in a small theater that sold out and the second showing was at the biggest available theater and that too sold out. Chris McColl remembers that THE MIGHTY BOOSH comedy team had a documentary screening that was showing at the same time as BORGES that sold out so he speculates that perhaps people showed up expecting something bizarre from BORGES.

In addition to film festivals, available to filmmakers are opportunities to have the film screened. I found this film screening on the site SHOOTING PEOPLE. The screening that I attended had both Chris and Tim doing a Q&A afterwards. Chris was interviewed that evening and Tim met me weeks later on a return trip to New York to talk about the film. It is a laborious group effort to promote this film in Europe and America.

After all of this, ready for a distributor? One major issue that causes setbacks to filmmakers is copyright. BORGES had Roland Heap in charge of music (He also served as the sound recordist.) Roland’s years of experience in London recording studios working with big names was a positive note. He had provided over fifty hours of new and interesting music for the film. So this alleviated any copyright issues. Having been quite thorough about clearing copyrights, Emily admits, “Foolishly however, we did not consider the net! We now have to pay extra for Internet rights…”

With more Internet distribution channels available, perhaps this film will find its way to viewers via that avenue. As for now, what is on the horizon? BORGES can be seen on itzon.tv, an Internet film festival. And word is that Emily has gone into reproduction and stopped production on their latest film.

A bride sits beside her groom in a peddled bike taxi on 57th Street in front of Bergdorf Goodman. A chill permeates the air as this early spring wedded couple has tiptoed in the freshly planted tulips along Park Avenue and dashed across 5th Avenue with Tiffany in the background. At the behest of their photographer, they gain a momentary reprieve sitting in the pedicab. Later, this particular image appears in The New York Times.

No. This image or scene does not appear in the film about Bill Cunningham, the New York Times photographer that I now have learned is a New York icon. It was a wedding that I was shooting a few years ago. I distinctly remember an older gentleman on a bicycle photographing the couple and smiling at me, as so many people do when I am in the city shooting the dreaded wedding assignment. I discounted it and reciprocated with a false smile since I loathe weddings and detest the faux paparazzi that converge on wedding couples with such joviality.

At the studio where I worked, Cunningham’s page was displayed. At first, I thought it was an album design for the couple, then I scowled that credit was not given to the photographer, and then I realized that it was not my shot. Who shot my wedding and had it published? Who is Bill Cunningham? I went to this film screening with sleeves rolled up.

It took moments into the documentary to succumb to Bill Cunningham’s infectious smile and personality. He radiates exuberance for life while demonstrating his zeal for his lifelong passion and the bravado that it takes to achieve an impressive collection.

The cast of characters that comprise the fashion industry and New York society that encompass the world of Bill Cunningham could have been drawn from the imagination of Tim Burton: An ancient woman in a posh apartment adorned in what appears to be millions-worth in bracelets, a former diplomat qho poses with outrageously loud costume-like outfits (one used to be the fabric of his furniture), Patrick McDonald in face paint and signature hats, a bald man in a dress, socialites, fashion publishing bigwigs, and his next door neighbor, photographer Edita Sherman, still thriving well into her nineties.

At the center of these orbiting eccentrics, Cunningham remains grounded, humble, and a shining light to all. He traverses in the world of fashion, of galas and balls, of wealthy friends with the name of Astor. Yet, his existence is a contradiction. He lives in a tiny studio sans kitchen with a single shared bathroom on the floor of his rent-controlled Carnegie Hall apartment, covers the streets of New York on his bicycle, still shoots roll film that needs to be developed chemically, and has rejected payment based on his philosophy that money equals ownership of his being by the paying party. At his age, most have passed on or are sitting in a home for the ill and infirm.

He addresses the issue that by trained professional photographer standards, he may be considered a fraud based on his point and shoot method of quickly firing shots at unsuspecting passersby. He knows professional photographers, his neighbor; Edita Sherman is a well-accomplished photographer. So, he does not profess to employ their type of craft. However, this hat designer turned fashion authority is using the snapshot to visually enforce his observations and make statements. His work, stored in obtrusive file cabinets that jostle him in his cramped apartment, holds the history of fashion during his tenure.

Every authoritative voice interviewed respects and speaks of him admirably. The film delves into his personal life which is unbeknownst to mostly all interviewed. Bill Cunningham lives his private life as he does as a professional: behind a camera lens looking in. His professional life is his private life. He opts to eat takeout in the office than dine at functions, sits alone at breakfast, and rides the streets of the city on two wheels dodging traffic.

His daily tasks require that he be bold to approach people on the street and capture their image. During shooting, two girls are threatening him after he photographs them walking down the block. He just smiles.

At this point in life, in his eighties, he is embattled with a looming eviction from a place that he has called home for decades. Within that building, artists created and artists lived, artists such as Marlon Brando.

James Nachtwey is another New York lone soul who is regarded as the best war photographer of all time. It is well worth the effort to view WAR PHOTOGRAPHER to see the parallels that run in Nachtwey’s and Cunningham’s lives. Then there is another photographer that is loathed by many, notoriously by Jackie Kennedy. Ron Galella is the subject of SMASH HIS CAMERA. The Bronx born paparazzi was sued by Mrs. Kennedy, and punched by Marlon Brando.

Little Thai girls fighting bad Thai guys in efforts to rebuild their mother’s beachfront restaurant that was destroyed accidentally by a seven foot giant after chowing down on spicy “somtum.” The giant would not have been at the restaurant had not one of the sisters been a thief, and he, not a sucker for a seductive Thai con woman. Add a couple of diamond smugglers, a despicable fight promoter, wrestlers, and voila, MUAY THAI GIANT.

It is bewildering as to why this Rated R action-comedy is not a PG-13 film. There is no nudity, sex, lewdness, murder, or dark overtones. The fighting scenes are testament to the skills necessary for martial arts and wrestling, thus strengthening the argument that fighting and violence are polar opposites. If anything, this film serves as a moral lesson for kids.

When the first fight scene is introduced, it displays the art of combat and combat as slapstick while setting the tone for the film and main character introduction. As the Australian seven-foot tourist is on his hands and knees in a cowardly reaction to an engine backfiring, a young girl crouches beneath him as the thugs that she has stolen from attempt to grab and beat her. Just as nearby objects are employed to administer punishment, it is the pint-sized teen sister to the rescue, played by Junior Muay Thai champion, Sasisa Jindamanee.

Like Popeye gaining strength from spinach, this gentle giant harnesses his inner-warrior when ingesting the spicy somtum. Just as David Banner turned green as The Incredible Hulk, Barney Emerald goes ballistic and turns red. The camera technique, visual effects and red make-up is reason enough to watch MUAY THAI GIANT.

Elements such as the title sequence, CG flying plane, opening note of thanks to a princess, and choice of music, create an unusual movie experience that works well but is rather puzzling and stirs the pot of curiosity. This is the first Thai feature that I have viewed so I have no basis for reference.

Ladies and gentleman, from Australia, having served seven years in prison for multiple robberies, all 6’11, 350+ pounds, please welcome Nathan Jones. The Muay Thai Giant was a real life wanted felon who professionally wrestled in Australia, arm wrestled strong men such as Magnus Samuelsson, and spent a brief period wrestling for the WWE with the likes of The Undertaker and The Big Show.

The DVD extras contain footage of Jones being beaten as the director and producer tell of how he wanted the scenes to look real, so he paid the stuntmen from his own pocket to really batter him. Once billed as The Colossus of Boggo Road in the WWE, he and the wrestlers in this film pummel one another, use real 50-gallon drums in a fight sequence, and dive from high platforms only to plummet mercilessly atop their aching bodies. Nothing fake here as the Extras footage reveals Jones on the ground being looked after by a medical team as bodily harm was inflicted upon him.

There is no fake KARATE KID mentorship or CROUCHING TIGER wonderment. Just wholesome family entertainment as little kids and a giant are beat down by bad guys. Oh, and if you like girls fighting with flying papayas, this film is for you.
MUAY THA|I GIANT

It ain’t Hollywood. It’s Pittsburgh. The zombie theme is revisited in the city that set the zombie standard and this feature just happens to have the first NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD zombie, Bill Hinzman. It also stars other homegrown talent such as wrestling superstar Kurt Angle and champion bodybuilder Dave Hawk. The only person missing from this is Bruno Sammartino. The zombies that comprise the trio of the undead are wrestlers Kevin Nash and Psycho Sid Vicious.

A series of grizzly murders take place in a small town along the river and it is up to Kurt Angle, the sheriff, to find out who dunnit. All of the country bumpkins seem to know except for the sheriff. He asks but they don’t tell because, well hell, they just plum don’t like him and we never learn why. So, I ask the people of the Pittsburgh suburb in their own language, “Why yunz don’t like him since the majority voted him in. That’s just ignorant.”

The Jacobs Boys return from the dead after thirty years in purgatory to exact revenge on the townsfolk that done them wrong. The good ol’ boys put their Iron City beer down long enough to go out and make it right since they all reason that it’s the sheriff’s fault for not handling this good and proper. The zombie scenes are cool as the fog and the lighting are classic textbook horror and the makeup is well done.

RIVER OF DARKNESS is an ode to the zombie genre, acting after wrestling, and the reoccurring theme that the dead come back for revenge. (One scene is filmed in the same NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD cemetery.)

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was a first feature for George A. Romero and Bill Hinzman and all at Latent Image. Bruce Koehler wrote, directed, produced, shot, and did everything else on RIVER OF DARKNESS. All of these tasks plus getting distribution is quite an accomplishment. So, here is the criticism. With such affordable technology in the age of WYSIWYG, this film suffers from production problems like many other low budget films in the digital age, and this continues to baffle me. A few shots have lights reflected in the windows, one shot has the cameraman blatantly obvious to all, and there are a few color correction and overexposed issues. One can only ask, what would NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD have been if Romero and company had set out to do what they did today instead of forty years ago? To shoot on film, meter light, sync sound, the need for serious photon wattage, and all the other perils associated with waiting for the dailies are testament to the mighty Romero’s talent.

With that said, Koehler still delivers a film wrestling fans will enjoy that will probably showcase on Fearnet. Koehler’s marketing is interesting since the DVD cover uses the TNA WRESTLING logo, blurbs about “16 million wrestling fans,” and lists upcoming films directed by Koehler: DEATH FROM ABOVE, 19 DOORS, and END GAME. As the DVD started, it played the trailer for DEATH FROM ABOVE. It looked technically superior to RIVER OF DARKNESS and featured Tom Savini, Kurt Angle, and Sid Vicious, the biggest “summabich” that I ever met (alongside Captain Lou Albano who stared him up and down in amazement screaming, “Holy Shit, Holy Shit!”).

“They’re Coming To Get You Barbara.”

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD’S Russ Streiner on Johnny and the fight to steal back the dead.

The hallowed halls of a once lively theater house in Jersey City is host to the living dead roaming the chambers of classic era décor overlooked by a huge chandelier. At one end of the balcony sits a throne for the god of this zombie subculture, George A. Romero. At the opposite end, through the red and gold corridor, sits Johnny, the first breathing living man to tussle with a zombie in search of fresh flesh that our world was witness to in the 1968 epic battle between the living and the dead.

From where I stand, Johnny’s alter ego, Russ Streiner, is seated at a table next to Kyra Schon and across from director/producer of the DOCUMENT OF THE DEAD saga, Roy Frumkes. Next to Roy is special effects artist/actor/director Tom Savini and John Russo. None other than the zombie that changed Johnny’s life, Bill Hinzman, is several feet away without the slightest sign of zombie inanition. Joe Pilato, crude and lascivious, successfully holding court in front of autograph hounds and fans, boisterously belts out a series of quips and assaults peppered with an enormous heaping of profanity.

42 years after the flesh-eating apocalypse that besieged Pittsburgh, children, the old, Goth, cinephiles, and zombie devotees take this trek to pay homage to THE NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. Although Romero and company did not create the zombie genre, they certainly have been regarded as though they have; and rightfully so. WHITE ZOMBIE was released in 1936 and only a few zombie films were released between that film and Romero’s DEAD films. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD’s release spawned a slew of zombie films and created this ever-increasing subculture. Sadly, the creators of this epic picture did not reap the financial benefits that they were due. As of today, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD remains in the public domain. In the words of Charles Craig, the newscaster from the film, “It’s hard for us here to believe what we are reporting to you, but it does seem to be a fact.”

FF: How did you get the role?

RUSS STREINER: How I got the role falls into the category of nepotism, because at the time we made NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, the original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, George Romero and I had been business partners since 1961, and our production company had been doing business — TV commercials, educational films, industrial films, that kind of thing, all with the intention that one day we would get a chance to make a real movie. What our years of work in that industrial, commercial, filmmaking environment provided us with was great on-the-job training, and it was also a way where our company would buy and acquire a lot of production equipment. We ended up getting commissioned by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, their Tourist and Travel Development Department, to shoot a series of films about the virtues and values of travel in PA. And lo and behold, they wanted one of the projects to be shot in 35mm CinemaScope. That gave us an opportunity to buy a 35mm camera and have a project that, at least in part, paid for that equipment. So now we had accumulated all the equipment that was necessary to make a movie–our real movie. All we needed was a script. So we started kicking around script ideas and what came out of that kicking around was NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.

FF: Who came up with the name Johnny? Did you say, ‘I want to be Johnny’?

RS: George Romero started to actually write a script, and he had the early part of the script finished when we started to creatively bat ideas around. What about this? What if this happened? What if that happened? At the time, John Russo was working with us and he would take notes during these creative sessions. John Russo eventually was the person who sat down and took all these creative round table ideas and actually created the first draft of the script. Once we agreed on the draft of the script and we knew who Johnny was and who Barbara was and those parts were written, then we set about casting them. We had all of the parts cast. One of the last ones was the casting of Duane Jones as the main male character. We were introduced to Duane by a mutual third party friend. Her name was Betty Ellen Hawhee. We’re all from Pittsburgh. At that time everybody lived in Pittsburgh. And, Duane Jones, who was acting/teaching in New York came home in the Spring of 1967 to visit his family for the Easter holiday. While he was in town, Betty Ellen arranged for him to audition for us. As soon as we saw his audition we said, “This guy has to be our Ben.” That still left us with Johnny, and it’s getting closer and closer and closer to shooting it. And I don’t know if it was Russo or Romero but somebody said, “Why don’t you just be Johnny?” So, I would like to tell you how tough the audition session was. I ended up co-producing the film with Karl Hardman and everybody agreed. It was kinda like, let’s give it to Mikey, he’ll try it. So that’s how Russ Streiner became Johnny. It was not a tough audition by any stretch of the imagination. Dress him up and get him to do it and that will be the end to it.

FF: Did you have any reservations about doing it?

RS: No, I had no reservations about doing it because of my educational background. I went to drama school. I always wanted to be an actor. Then, when I first met George, and how I first met him was, when he first asked me if I was interested in a small movie that he was filming called EXPOSTULATIONS. Well, to be honest with you, I didn’t know which end of the film camera you pointed. I was going to be a theatrical actor. I was going to be a live stage actor. And, I agreed to be in the movie. The very first day of production of EXPOSTULATIONS, I thought, this production thing is pretty cool. And George and I started hanging out together and a short while later we decided, hey, rather than just working on EXPOSTULATIONS, how about if we actually set up a production company. That’s how we all got started in 1961.

Johnny and Barbara

FF: Your scenes as Johnny, how far into production were they shot? Were they the first scenes shot? Last scenes shot?

RS: The answer to that is yes. The cemetery scene that opens NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD was both the first scene that we filmed and it was also, coincidentally, the last scene that we filmed simply because we didn’t get finished shooting in our first day, and it had to go to a second day, but it was not a second day in sequence. The second day had already been scheduled, so the second half of the cemetery scene, the fight with Bill Hinzman got progressively pushed back through the production schedule so that it ended up being the last thing we did. That was about a three-month gap in between the first day of filming and the final cemetery scene.

FF: Is that your own wardrobe?

RS: It was all my wardrobe including the very handsome tie, and the exceptionally great-looking Buddy Holly glasses. It was my own hair, it was my own jacket, it was my own everything. And the car we were driving was my mother’s car. My brother was recording the audio. So, the Streiners have their fingerprints all over the cemetery scene. Bill Hinzman had to come along and ruin it for everyone by killing Johnny off. Just as his character was developing a head of steam, the #1 zombie comes along and kills him off. We knew right then that Johnny was going to be a character that, ironically, would come back later in the film. I guess there is no such thing as a NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD spoiler because so many people have seen it.

FF: “They’re coming to get you Barbara” is one of the most recognizable lines in cinema, was it you or George who decided to deliver it in such a way?

RS: No, it was pretty much how I decided to deliver it and since Johnny was being kind of a goofball with the teasing of his sister and so forth, whining and complaining right from the beginning of the film, “Mother stays in Pittsburgh while we have to schlep into the countryside cemetery,” he realized that his nagging and whining was beginning to get to Barbara. What was scary at the time was Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein Monster, and so Johnny adds a little touch of Karloff in his line interpretation with “…to get you, Barbara.” And it just worked, so we shot it and left it that way. Obviously it worked out pretty well.

FF: The crew, when they heard you deliver the line the first time, was there any sort reaction to it?

RS: To be honest with you, during the production, we were all seriously thinking, okay, we know the scene is running long, but we have to get the scene finished and so forth. It was pretty much a series of get your lines and change angles and get all the setups finished that we can. There wasn’t too much screwing around. I will tell you one of the reasons that I made such a big deal out of Johnny’s driving gloves at the beginning of the film is they knew when Johnny came back as a zombie to get them, that it was going to be at night. His Buddy Holly glasses would be gone, and I wanted to give him a wardrobe signature; so I figured these driving gloves will fill that need because when you see him, he bursts through the door near the end of the film and you see the hand with the black glove come up on the white door frame, you know right then that this is not going to work out too well for Barbara. But, I wanted to give that black-gloved hand as a crystal clear message to the audience–oh, oh, guess what? “Here’s Johnny.” and that device worked. I purposely froze that stare on my face. I never blink, and I stared directly at Barbara, and I think, I actually scared her in real life. I did get a reaction from the crew for that moment of Johnny’s re-entry because I think people were generally scared. They thought, maybe that I had lost my mind and was really going to drag her out to the porch.

FF: When you made this film, did you guys get a sense that you were creating something that would create a whole new genre?

We knew, obviously, we had a hokey premise. Recently dead people coming back to life is not too likely to happen. We never did answer the reason the phenomenon got started. We decided to leave that big question mark up in the air. Let the news people, let the media people try to figure out what’s going on. What do they do and then how do the people, the non-dead, react to them? And we tried to do it as we felt would be very realistic reactions and that’s the media coverage, that’s true of how the people treated them. Got them down, beat them, burned them–that kind of mentality, you know. But, that’s how we probably thought people would react.

FF: Will you address the issue of how NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD fell into public domain?

RS: That is a very long story. It’s an open wound as far as I am concerned. John Russo and I are the two trustees of the company. Karl Hardman used to be the third trustee of Latent Image, the company that owns THE DEAD. We used to refer to it as ‘the monster flick.’ The monster flick this and the monster flick that. All the job files and everything said Monster Flick. So, obviously, that was not a title that would sell anywhere. We decided we would use a title called THE NIGHT OF THE FLESH EATERS. And, as we started to leak the word to the media that our movie was just about finished, we began to refer to it as THE NIGHT OF THE FLESH EATERS. We were contacted by a distribution company that said, “Hey, we have a movie with flesh eaters in the title,” and their lawyer sent us a cease and desist letter saying don’t use it because if you come out with your flesh eater in the title it could lead to public confusion. So, we decided starting off with our fledgling, first theatrical film/movie rather than getting into a legal dispute right out of the gate, we’ll call it something else. So, George, said, “Why don’t we just put an esoteric title to it? That it will be changed anyway. Let’s call it NIGHT OF ANUBIS.” Anubis, those who don’t know, is one of the ancient Eqyptian gods of the dead. So we created our title NIGHT OF ANUBIS. Well, when we started making the rounds of the distribution companies and tried to get the movie distributed, we heard, “What the hell is Anubis?” No one is going to understand this! We gotta change the title! We agreed with the Walter Reade Organization, Continental Pictures, which was the actual distribution company with NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. We mutually agreed on the change of title to NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. According to the distribution contract, it was their responsibility to take the press kit material and so forth, that we had prepared, including changing the name/title of the film. When that title was changed from NIGHT OF ANUBIS to NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, the copyright was left off. Now the copyright laws that prevailed in those days, in the late sixties, has since been changed. One of the reasons they have changed is because of the NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. At that time if you put a movie, a book, a record, or something out without a copyright on it, you lost your rights forever. As soon as the copyright dispute came into play, we immediately challenged the copyright office on their ruling and, frankly, we still challenge it. We have never given up on that. We still maintain it was never the intention to offer this movie into the public domain and, we are doing absolutely everything possible to see that before we’re all the night of the living dead, that at least the copyright is properly restored.

FF: What has this film given you?

RS: Ah, well, one of the things, probably the main thing that’s come out of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD for me is the character of Johnny, and as one of the creative team who helped throw ideas into the bushel basket. And then, as my role as one of the trustees of the company for all these years now–decades! I know the real intimate history of how the rip-off happened. All of the copyright issues. All of the problems. One way or another, I’ve been involved. So when I look at the character of Johnny, that’s almost like an out-of-body experience. It’s almost like taking on a life that’s not me. Yeah, intellectually, I know it’s me, but it’s kinda like other people playing out these roles. But, then, I am smacked in the face with the reality. I’m still a trustee, so I deal with business issues of the film to this day and so, I’ve got this kind of paradoxical juxtaposition of roles. Yeah, that’s the movie but, here’s the business end of it and you’ve got to take care of business today. A really strange kind of juxtaposition.

Nightmare's Attendees

FF: Have you continued filmmaking or film production? What is your main career?

RS: I still make independent films. Not so much theatrical films. I do my favorite genre of documentary. I really appreciate and work in the documentary field. But, John Russo and I also teach filmmaking and, I never, ever, ever imagined myself being a teacher of filmmaking. We’ve been doing this now for over three years: The John Russo Movie Making Program at a small business college at Dubois, PA, called Dubois Business College, and I am absolutely loving my role as a teacher. The reason I am absolutely loving it is because of the quality of the students we are attracting. It is so refreshing to see that there are young people who are actually paying attention. They want to learn the right way. They are as dedicated as we were making our kind of a movie. And that has turned out to be an absolute breath of fresh air. You can see the creative spark that is in these young people, that they do their own brand of knocking it out of the park.

FF: I love Pittsburgh. I am finishing a documentary on wrestler Bruno Sammartino, who is from that city. People from Pittsburgh are really proud that they are from there. Do you find that same sentiment?

RS: Absolutely! One of the other things, one of the other hats that I wear, is that I am the Chairman of the Board of the Pittsburgh Film Office. The Pittsburgh Film Office is the economic development office, for the last twenty years now, we’ve survived twenty years in an effort to attract productions to southwestern PA, and the effort has been outrageously successful. For anyone who pays attention to where movies are being made, there are a lot of movies being made in Pittsburgh!

Boxing. The brutal sport. Known as the poor man’s way out of the ghetto.

Its combatants bear the repercussions of the devastating onslaught of physical abuse. Whereas some abhor the sport, voicing an outcry to decree a ban, others praise its combatants, giving rise to icons that are heralded as a paladin for a particular ethnic group.

Does boxing slake our animalistic urges? In its simplest terms, one must bash the head of another, put him down for the count, and make him submit to the victor. What is the appeal? Are boxers a proxy for the humble and meek masses?

Boxing movies have been around since the earliest days of cinema. Thomas Edison filmed men boxing on June 14, 1894 at his Black Maria Studios entitled, LEONARD-CUSHING FIGHT, many other Edison boxing films followed. 116 years later, after films like ROCKY, CINDERELLA MAN, THE GREAT WHITE HOPE, THE SET-UP, RAGING BULL, KID GALAHAD, FAT CITY, MILLION DOLLAR BABY, and THE CHAMP, the latest film about the boxing world is THE FIGHTER.

30 year sports business professional Greg Marotta offers his perspective. “Boxing IS Human Drama. It will continually be appealing to filmmakers because boxing offers a metaphor of real life. More than any sport, boxing presents life as a quest, a journey, a search for truth. When the bell rings there are no timeouts, no substitutions, no second string. It’s a mano a mano struggle to the finish, truth be told.”

A tough sport demands tough men. An atmosphere of negativity hovers over the type of male that steps into the ring. Rough types, criminals, kids careening down the wrong track don boxing gloves. In an instance of art imitating life, RUNAWAY TRAIN has a boxing scene that takes place in prison. The boxer is actor Danny Trejo in his first movie role. Trejo was a councilor after being incarcerated as a result of a childhood filled with criminal activity and drug use. With his signature tats and menacing demeanor, Trejo was an inmate in San Quentin, and its boxing champ. Most recently, James Toback’s documentary, TYSON, delves deep into boxer-turned-actor, Mike Tyson. The former heavyweight champion reveals a stormy childhood, prison horror, and the trepidations of stepping into the ring. These guys are furthest from the Errol Flynn boxing character in the 1942 film, GENTLEMAN JIM. Although Mickey Ward is THE FIGHTER’s main character, it is his brother Dicky Eklund that certainly has been born under the same misaligned stars such as Mike Tyson, Jake LaMotta, Hector Camacho, Bernard Hopkins, Trevor Berbick, etc. etc. etc.

Ironically, Mark Wahlberg was a troubled youth with several run-ins with the law, who grew up outside of Boston, Massachusetts, just thirty minutes from Ward.

The majority of boxing films attempt to humanize the fighter by purging the relentless thirst for blood from the battling soul. The theme of man vs. man is central; yet, man vs. himself is the battle raging on a blood-stained canvas. Usually it’s the down-and-out guy looking to make it to the top one last time, struggling to juggle his personal life and professional career.

Ward and Eklund are two brothers with a dread of Palookaville; the Hades of the boxing world where washed up, no talented, punch drunk shells of former selves lay to waste. “I’m just one punch away.” Robert Ryan’s character delivers this line to his wife in THE SET-UP. Marlon Brando’s character in ON THE WATERFRONT groans about a past opportunity after taking a dive, when he exclaims, “I coulda been a contender.” Again and again such phrases of would have, could have, should have, are mouthed by boxers.

In THE FIGHTER, Mark Wahlberg’s portrayal of boxer Mickey Ward deals with these themes. Time is running out for Mickey. The exception is that it is not he, but his boxer brother, who has the checkered history. Without the heroic ROCKY anthem blaring, director David O. Russell successfully delivers a film that is packed full of personal struggles and multi-dimensional characters without pulling any punches.

Mickey Ward’s adulatory celebration as the title-holder defines his ability as an athlete in the world of boxing and lends pride to the Irish townspeople of Lowell, Massachusetts. Surpassing all of that, his victory overcoming personal strife and the burden of being “the good son” is a monumental testament to his inner strength and belief.

As in any boxing film there is a woman. In this case is more — a woman, a mother, and his skein of seven surly slovenly sisters. The complexity of his relationship with his family and his connection with a new woman that enters his life creates a friction that combusts into a struggle that is pertinent in Ward’s in-ring domination. The script moves with fluidity while strengthening the drama and characters.

Where men are the fighters, women in this film are equally as strong or even stronger. Other than Jane Alexander’s character in THE GREAT WHITE HOPE, all other women in fighting films pale in comparison. Ward’s mother is his manager and his sisters are her henchmen. The trouble is that she is not management material and she suffers a clinging hope on her other son, Dicky Eklund.

Mickey’s new love interest is Charlene Fleming as portrayed by Amy Adams. As a bartender wearing shorts and tank top, she runs her mouth and chugs shots with the blue collars at the bar, fending off unwanted groping. Although Mickey initiates, it is she who comes knocking.

The Ward household is built on beer and dysfunction and feminine tyranny. Simply put, in Alice Ward’s home, all men have been castrated. Mickey’s ex-wife belongs in this realm demonstrating this very same behavior by ruling her current husband as she does Mickey with a berating emasculating fervor as both men react in unison with the same docile frailty.

Any woman that dares to enter as a romantic interest is doomed. Strong willed, Charlene is to butt heads with the women of the Ward/Eklund clan, as Michael Buffer’s trademarked catchphrase could have echoed loudly throughout Lowell, “Let’s get ready to rumble!” And they do.

The director chose to add a bit of comedy to lighten the tension by taking moments to get up close and personal with Ward’s sisters. They are quite the spectacle. Think trailer park, think bad hair, think Rachel Dratch characters on SNL. They don’t like Charlene and feel that she has an air of superiority about her, calling her, “Miss MTV.” Well, Charlene had some college, so she is ahead of the pack. Charlene and Mickey go to a foreign film complete with subtitles and she remarks that the film “didn’t even have any good sex.” So, now you know the general IQ of the bunch.

At the core of this dysfunctional family dynamic is Dicky, Mickey’s half-brother, the former boxer, living a warped sense of reality due to his crack addiction, truly believing that he is at the threshold of the prolific boxers dream, the comeback. Aiding in this glass pipe fantasy is his mother who dotes on him with rose-colored, heart shaped glasses. Mrs. Ward continually wears out the heads of the VCR as she plays Dicky’s recorded televised boxing matches. Her son is her hero.

THE FIGHTER is a movie within a movie. An HBO film crew follows Dicky in Lowell as he parades through the streets – the hometown hero who fought Sugar Ray Leonard. He thinks the documentary film is all about him and his comeback. What it reveals is his pathetic crack addiction, his crack addict friends, and the shambles that he made of his life. (Look on Youtube for HIGH ON CRACK STREET to see the real Dicky Eklund and his friend Boo Boo. It’s worth a look at the end credits of THE FIGHTER since the real life Ward, Eklund, and Boo Boo make an appearance.)

The problem is that Eklund trains Ward. Truthfully, he is a great trainer. However, his addiction and resulting behavior are a hindrance to his brother. Eklund wants center stage at all times, and if need be, Ward should step-aside for mama’s boy.

The defining moment for Ward’s about face is when he goes into the ring with someone that is way out of his weight class and is pounced upon rendering him a bloody pulp with just enough humiliation not to face everyone at home. This travesty was the decision of Ward’s mother and Eklund over concern of the purse. If Ward did not fight, even though his scheduled opponent was not able to get in the ring, they would go home empty handed.

Enter Charlotte, the strong willed. And so, the power struggle ensues. Eklund indirectly causes the calamity. He should have been known as The Hurricane. The very guy that is petrified of his mother contributes a swirl of issues and incidents such as arrests, brawls, tears, and family torment.

Imagine a man, a tough man, one that can easily do time, clouded with crack, bailing from a second floor window to hide from his mommy. The same man has a child that must visit him as he is incarcerated. A man who causes heartbreak, angst and disgust. This vexing soul is also so dearly loved by his family and the people around him at all cost.

In a performance worthy of an Oscar, Christian Bale plays a character with remarkable range. Again, Bale lost weight for a role. He was skeletal-like in THE MACHINIST. This time, he is as thin as a drug user. His anger, sorrow, self-loathing, and so many emotional outpourings leave one to feel for the character. Bale was not originally scheduled for the role. As Wahlberg states, “Thank God he was” the one who finally did take on the part.

In prison, Eklund suffers during his detox. Then, the darling of the pen is having his HBO premiere in a room with the other inmates. Cheers for Dicky! Quickly, he is thrown from his throne as he watches himself as a drug addict, and violence erupts as he cuts the film short. This same guy is later listening to one of Ward’s matches on the prison payphone and is giving a detailed account to all of the attentive inmates.

A new Ward takes to the ring. Raising his hands in victory is due to the family and Charlotte working as a cohesive unit for the good of Mickey Ward. Ward breaks from his Cinderella chains and finds triumph in the ring and at home to end his book with the closing, they lived happily ever after.

The boxing scenes are very straightforward. Scenes such as Robert DeNiro in RAGING BULL bearing the blows from his opponent or the highly stylized choreographic fighting from Stallone’s ROCKY series are not found in this film. The rather straightforward approach is similar to what can be found in THE SET-UP. The boxing takes a backseat to the drama unfolding outside the ring. Director David O. Russell said, “We only had three days to do the fight scenes, which made those very focused. We shot them HBO style, which was a suggestion Mark had. ”

Mark Wahlberg had met Ward, and wanted to do a biopic about him for several years. Just as Sylvester Stallone was passionate about doing a film on Bayonne, New Jersey based boxer Chuck Wepner and made ROCKY, Wahlberg felt a kinship towards Ward.

“First time I met Mickey I was 18 years old and I was already a huge fan of his. I was just starting out in my music career. Some years later I started making movies and it dawned on me that this would make for a great story. I went to Lowell, the rights weren’t available, but I got to spend more time with Mickey and Dicky. And then, I just got a call that Paramount had the rights and they had a script that they wanted to make. I read it, and right away I was in. I started training the next day. That was five years ago. We finally got the movie made, but ultimately, I promised Mickey that we were going to get this movie made one way or another. And, he was happy with the fact that I was going to play him. Also, they were all very thrilled that the people involved in the movie cared about them, were in love with them, and we appreciated what they were able to overcome and to accomplish. That was important to them. We haven’t shown them the movie yet. We will be showing it in Lowell. Alice hasn’t seen it, the sisters haven’t seen it. We’ll see how that goes. It’s okay for me because I have a lifetime pass, everybody else, I don’t know. This movie is a tribute to them and everything that they had gone through.”

Eventually, once the project was greenlit, it went with major hitches along the way, keeping Wahlberg miffed. “It was just one of those pieces of material that everybody was immediately drawn to. That’s why I thought it was a no brainer. I started training and thought it’s only a matter of a couple of months before we’ll be shooting this movie. But, wanting to do it and actually doing it are obviously two different things. For whatever reason, it attracted some really major talent but nobody wanted to pull the trigger. We’d have a start date and the next thing you know, everybody would leave and I’d be standing there saying, ‘No we have to do this, we promised Mickey, we promised Dicky, this could be great.’”

Scorsese passed, not wishing to revisit the world of boxing. At one point, Darren Aronofsky, who is a producer on the film, was geared to direct. David O. Russell took the helm of a genre depicted numerous times on the silver screen. Why was he drawn to a genre such as this? “I felt the fact that the mother was so central, I hadn’t seen that. Where the mother was the manager. Where the mother, in spite of having nine kids was still beautiful enough that she could almost look like the older brother’s girlfriends at times. There are two romances in the film, between her and Dicky and between Mickey And Charlene.”

With so many starts and stops, the cast was reshuffled many times. Wahlberg’s brother Donny was once in the running for Dicky’s role as were many others. On shooting day, it was Christian Bale who was on set. Bale didn’t have much in the way of boxing training for the role. Wahlberg comments, “He didn’t have a lot of time to train. Thankfully, the main thing for him was doing the physical transformation, which he had done in the past, which is why when I saw him across the schoolyard, our daughters went to the same school, I was like, this is the guy. I had seen RESCUE DAWN, I had seen THE MACHINIST. Thankfully he read the script right away and responded to it immediately. I knew I had the right guy.”

For Wahlberg, intermittent training as the project was constantly delayed was a decision to keep the film alive. So he looks the part and has the skills to make the film as real as possible. As the actual shoot loomed closer, training with Ward and Eklund began. “When they came to live at my house, we started the training process, every single day we would go from my house, drive down to the church, and we’d spend 20-30 minutes praying before we would go running 8 miles. Every single time we’d walk out of the church, I’d feel fine and they would walk out with tears in their eyes.” Commenting on Ward in the ring with him, Wahlberg admits, ” It doesn’t matter how much he likes you, if you get in the ring with him he is going to try to hurt you. That’s just the way it is. It’s the name of the game and he likes to play the game.”

What you see on screen is the real thing. With a 33 day shooting schedule and a budget that was halved, the focus to do it quick and right was the name of the game. “We didn’t have the luxury of having stunt doubles and stand-ins. We hired real boxers. They came to my house and we trained and we duplicated the fights and the most interesting moments in those real fights that Mickey had. I was just adamant about doing it in the very beginning because I had been training for so long. I probably made four or five movies during the course of training for this movie. It’s extremely difficult to get up three hours before your call time, train for two and half hours then go shoot a twelve hour day. I was adamant about getting the boxing stuff done so we could focus on the rest of the story. To kind of separate it from other fight films, we needed to hire real boxers and really box and shoot it like a fight you’d see on HBO.”

Was Mark Wahlberg given special star treatment in the ring with the pros? “You figure out a way to hit at 60%. But, if I catch the number three middleweight in the world with 60%, he’s gonna want to hit with 65%. The next thing you know, we are throwing pretty hard. But, you know what, nobody got seriously injured except for some bumps or bruises, we came out okay. I was really wanting to make the fights as realistic as possible, so that meant getting in there.”

With awards season fever quickly approaching, Wahlberg should stand proud that he never threw in the towel, and made a truly remarkable piece of film history.

Horror thrives on one’s fears. Little Lilith knows what scares you.

For me, it’s going into a dark room (a theater) spending 90 minutes predicting the future of the celluloid souls, and knowing that I shall never have those precious 90 minutes back.

My fear hath been realized, delivered straight from the hell in which she hails.

Lilith is truly evil incarnate.
CASE 39 depicts the tale of another creepy kid in the Pacific Northwest.

(Forgive me for going off tangent, but this is an issue that needs addressing more than this film. Why does this area of North America with its fresh landscape, excellent coffee, salmon, and the birthplace of Jimi Hendrix and music known as grundge that gave the world Nirvana and Soundgarden, have such a bad image? Sure, it’s the serial killer capital of the world. But, Jack Kerouac hopped on freight trains to get there from his New Jersey home.)

Renée Zellweger is no longer portraying the cutesy little girl looking for love. She is Emily Jenkins, a kind-hearted single social worker looking for love. CASE 39 brings 10-year-old Lilith Sullivan (Jodelle Ferland) into her heart, only to rue it later. Rescuing her from parents that are caught performing an abject act, the withdrawn child transmutes into a shining beam of light and later rears its detestable wickedness.

All those within Emily’s warm circle of love, friendship and outwardly goodwill are victimized and penalized by this little devil. On the roster of doom are Doug (Bradley Cooper), Emily’s fellow social do-good love interest, and her tough as nails cop friend, Detective Barron (Ian McShane). Even the children under the watchful eye of social services are meant to suffer under Lilith.

Act I is well done and deserves applause. Act II is where the derailment begins.

Once the secret is revealed, the challenge is to keep the audience in suspense. The plot points are ever so predictable. Emily is faced with a ward of the state that she fought victoriously to bring under her care in her own home. The audience sees what Lilith’s living victims must confront. There is no jolt to the system. There is no entrancement.

There are special effects!

Doug fears insects. The scene exploiting his fear is technically well crafted. With that said, it is an ideal time to head for the concession stand or empty the bladder. Watch CREEPSHOW for a scene of vast superiority to Doug’s when a man faces his deepest fear of insects.

The resolution to Emily’s imprecation is so common that I would bet that evil would be better prepared to combat such a mindlessly drivel-driven damnation back to hell.

If muscles were measured in voltage, the screen would generate 50,000 audience-electrocuting volts. This is what you get when Sylvester Stallone and his commando posse of meat head, tough guy, pro wrestling, MMA, karate, head pounding, thick necked bad asses maraud the planet in search of pirates, women under siege, and rogue CIA operatives exploiting and terrorizing natives of a small island.

This is a cinematic tribute to the action movies of the 80′s when most of these guys had not yet seen the plastic surgeon’s scalpel. And by that, I mean, in their 50′s and 60′s, these guys can still knock any Joe’s block off.

The roster of California based Expendables include Mickey Rourke, Steve Austin, Randy Couture, Jet Li, and Dolph Lundgren. Executive producer, co-writer, and director Stallone shares the lead with Jason Statham.

As the crew assembles in a way too-cool tattoo parlor accommodating their glistening choppers, this fellowship of man reveals that strength and killing skills are accompanied by heart and soul, a good sense of humor facing death, and a respect for women. Of course, you must overlook the brothel brigade of girlfriends that a dread-locked cowboy-hat-wearing Rourke carouses, because deep inside he is actually the sensitive type.

The screen gleams with ever more charisma with a bit of Bruce Willis and the governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger. The genius in the casting is giving actors the role in what makes them the specimens that they are. Schwarzenegger saunters off with an arrogant swagger as Sly jibes his real life political hopes, Jet Li karate chops, Rourke is the suave lady killer, Austin and Couture deliver physical punishment, and the guy that Rourke beckoned Hollywood to give a second chance to last awards season, Eric Roberts, plays the sleazy smarmy ex-CIA agent with zeal. Jason Statham has a wider range of emotions to convey and does so with his British accent.

Every cent of this big budgeted picture is visible. Beautiful aerials, explosions, sexy choppers, art department perfect tattoo parlor, giant explosions, choreographed fighting and chase scenes, excellent decapitations and occasional unsightly body mutilations, and enormous explosions, accompanied with a great rock soundtrack.

Shot in the U.S. and Brazil, the mammoth sized credits demonstrate the actual monster that this picture was to put together. This may be a story told before and there may be a cliché or two, but it is enjoyable and fun and would make a great Blu Ray gift for a home theater maniac.

In the end, Stallone saves the day and forgoes the tropical cliff side embrace with the young “chiquita en problemas” possibly because the audience frowns upon AARP carrying-card members making out with females 36 years younger. That’s real class.

It is with a saddened heart that I write this. This past weekend marked the final broadcast of the 35-year run for the Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel created movie review program. The heads of Buena Vista Television must wear mouse-ears while eating the fries of its subsidiary golden-arched fast-food chain while listening to Hannah Montana when making such decisions.

This slice of Americana and its trademarked ‘Thumbs Up Thumbs Down’ rating system has found its way off the weekly TV GUIDE listings.

As far back as my memory allows, I remember watching Siskel and Ebert review movies. I usually found them after my Saturday morning cartoons and before I went out to play. As I got older and the cartoons were less interesting, SISKEL AND EBERT or AT THE MOVIES (as it is now commonly called) continually kept a captive hold of me.

Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel offered something that was not around back then, real movie reviews. The New York papers had a small box of thumb nail movie reviews in their flimsy entertainment sections that told me nothing.

Sometimes the TV news offered a generic 30 second movie review on the morning show – which I never made a point to watch – wherein some strange-looking hairy-mustached man was talking about a film.

I savored AT THE MOVIES for the film clips. It was more exciting than looking in the Daily News for the movie ads. It fired my imagination and gave me an excuse to bolt out of the door unattended to any movie theater in Brooklyn.

As my penchant for films increased, Siskel and Ebert molded my mind into thinking of film as more than simply a reason to sit in a dark theater and eat popcorn and drink soda. I like to believe that they incubated the cinematic snobbery that I possess today.

A highlight was watching them trade jabs at one another, and at times, I thought one would get up and smack the other over a difference of opinion. Did these two loathe one another? It was great to hear them as they appeared uncensored on THE HOWARD STERN SHOW or when they appeared on some lame late night talk show.

Tragedy struck as Gene Siskel passed away in 1999 due to complications from surgery for cancer. Ebert voiced his opinion about his loving friend and cohort and the question of their love or hate was immediately laid to rest.

To fill in and never to replace, Richard Roeper took the seat next to Ebert.

Roeper had a successful show run. Once again, tragedy returned to the balcony and Roger Ebert, due to thyroid cancer, no longer made appearances on his show.

Richard Roeper hosted the show with various critics, film directors, and celebrity guest hosts including Kevin Smith, A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips. Then the greatest tragedy occurred. The same mouse-ears-wearing think tank revamped the show with two Bens. Ben Mankiewicz of TCM and Ben Lyons from E!

Two words sum this up: Travesty! Horror!

In all fairness to Ben Mankiewicz, it was not his fault. He was stuck with what amounted to a buffoon sidekick. The only saving grace are the clips of Mankiewicz responding to obviously something akin to throw-up from Lyons’ mouth and Lyons reacting with a quick taken aback head jerk and stunned, wide-eyed look of stupidity. If I were Mankiewicz, I would have taken that living breathing Barney Fife and given him a Scorsese type beating.

Roger Ebert defends Ben Lyons and claims that it is not his fault for his lackluster show performance. Excuse me, Mr. Ebert, but yes, it is. He smeared your child with abject heinous deplorable stupidity and you should not take the polite high road and excuse him. If one is presented with a job that requires skills that are out of his range, then do not accept it.

Especially since Lyons’ father is a film reviewer. Especially since this is television. To rectify the casting debacle, Lyons should have been required to hide behind the seat and occasionally mumble something, and for every utterance of stupidity, Mankiewicz should have kicked the seat and thrown popcorn and soda at the crouched, cowering, gentle Ben.

Once the year sentence was done, a pair of film critics were brought to the balcony. Michael Phillips of Chicago and fellow Brooklynite A.O. Scott did the show justice. In recent weeks, they showed clips of Siskel and Ebert reviewing movies, bantering and bickering, and going off in tirades.

And this past weekend, August 2010, after 35 years, Phillips and Scott were the pallbearers for the show that suffered death at the hands of a mouse.