The Gorier the Merrier????

I find myself infused with a new sense of purpose. It's a little more than a month away from The Hills Run Red hitting the dvd shelves and I'm gearing up for shameless promotion time. It's strange I honestly find talking about myself and promoting something a little awkward.

I seem to feel that when I do interviews that the people asking the questions are doing it just to be polite and really could give two shits about me or the movie. I mean there's a million of guys like me out there - struggling to "make it" whatever "it" is.

So while doing one recent interview I was asked the question...

"How bloody is it?"

It got me to thinking. I answered honestly, but also realize that in early answers, in the same interview, I diplomatically excused why some of the more turgid material that we shot, was now in truth locked away in some dark vault most likely never to see the light of day.

The point is that stuff wasn't cut because it was too bloody, but it was graphic. Sometimes graphic doesn't mean amazingly sculpted pieces of brain splattering someone or a camera going in for the kill on a Vag-shot. Sometimes there are horrific things done that are unsettling and in your face and yes even ugly. For a while, almost right up to the point of shooting the scenes, I was hesitant to film these things and can't say I'm surprised that they got cut.

It would have taken the movie to a different level to be sure and they would have been talking about some scenes for their shear batshit craziness - so in a way I feel like one ball was cut off. But I've also thought that it could have turned the movie into a kind of geek show. It's more traditional now and honestly I don't know yet if this version will get me more of what I want, or if the geek show one would have made people curious, pay attention.

These are some of the hardest times for filmmakers like me. The movie has been finished for months - but it hasn't come out yet. Many people haven't seen it - and for me, part of those many are agents, managers, producers - basically someone who could get me another job or open a door. Right now I'm the unknown - the buzz has been pretty good and more people have heard or know about the movie than I suspected. But it's the dreaded waiting around, and since offers aren't coming in - developing something new.

I was lucky with one script because with a few minor revisions - the script I read, I thought was really good. The other - needs work - I think I'm the only one that sees it for what it is - or at least what I think it should be, but I think I also speak the same language as it's creators.

The funny thing, and this brings me back to that question...

"How bloody is it?"

Is how that question has gotten me thinking about not just what I do, but the genre. Now don't get me wrong I love gore as much as anyone when it's well done - unless it's Irreversible where it was done too well - thus achieving the desired effect. But horror has always been more than blood and guts.

I find it a bit off putting to be honest that today if a movie is rated PG-13 as a horror movie that people automatically think that it'll suck. Granted what's been coming out for the most part that has been branded with the PG-13 has sucked, so perhaps it's peoples reaction to those films. But for example Drag Me to Hell was PG-13 and I thought it was a blast. A old fashioned funhouse ride. Big, over the top, fun. It seems like people today want their horror just mean spirited and ugly - with so much bloodshed that you can see the victim's digestive system live and at work!!!

But lest I be called a hypocrite - I will admit that there are several sections in Hills Run Red that do or try for the same thing. We have several scenes that would now be cataGOREized as torture porn. Funny how going for suspense turns into torture, but then again we are living in a world where The Last House on the Left remake is called a Crime Drama.

But my much belabored geeky point is that, when did horror become all about blood and guts? When did just trying to scare the pants off of the movie goer not become enough?

Are Poltergeist, Fright Night, The Haunting(original), Rosemary's Baby, Invasion of the Body Snatchers... hell Frankenstein not horror enough?

Is that why Drag Me to Hell didn't do well? If all the audience wants is more blood, what does that means for us the filmmakers? What does that say about where we are going?

With that I encourage you shamelessly to enjoy The Hills Run Red. It's rated R - so ya know there's the good stuff in it ;)

Get Wasted this Halloween

Hey guys, 

Was just checking out some stuff on the web and came across this from the old company I worked for....Full Moon Entertainment.

Looks like my first movie, The Dead Hate the Living!, has been included on Full Moon's latest boxed monstrosity for Halloween called  WASTED WEEKEND.  Looks like the set also includes Shrieker, Stuart Gordon's Castle Freak, The Killer Eye, and the dvd premiere of Richard Elfman's crazy film Shrunken Heads.

It's pretty cool that out of the hundreds of movies that Charlie Band has in his catalogue that Dead Hate was chosen to be a part of their Halloween collection for 2008.

Check it out and order it at www.fullmoondirect.com

Of Inserts, art, and things that could get me in trouble.

Hey Everyone - wait...no one knows about this blog, so really I'm just saying hey to myself - that's strange, but hopefully all that will change soon and you'll all be reading this going "why the fuck is he saying hi to himself, hmmm lonely much?"  

Anyway thought I would post a little teaser art for the Hills Run Red.  The art your seeing is a poster design that I worked on with my good pal and hopefully future production designer Michael Broom - a scarily talented guy who was very instrumental - and just plain mental - in designing the look for the killer in the movie - Babyface.

This is an insert poster design for the movie within the movie.  Now I hear what your saying, "Wait, movie within a movie?"  Yes The Hills Run Red continues, though not instigated by me, the movie about a group of people making a movie - and add on to that for this one that the group in my movie, who are making a movie, is about ...wait... you got it - A MOVIE.

Everyone confused yet?

The first movie I directed some 8 years ago - The Dead Hate the Living ( and so do many others it seems hate the movie) was about a group of indie filmmakers who broke into an abandoned hospital to shoot a zombie movie - with hilarious consequences!!  Um.... yeah.

The Hills Run Red is about a group of documentarians who travel to the middle of nowhere in search of answers that surround an obscure but notorious slasher movie made in the early 80's called The Hills Run Red - with hilarious consequences!!!  Well not really, unless you are seriously fucked in the head, and then probably like me, you'll find the humor somewhere in it.

It wasn't my dream or goal to find another movie that dealt with some kind of movie making plot, but sometimes these things just find you, and after many years trying to make another movie there is a time when you work with what you are given and try to make it better, more interesting and apply what you've learned before.

That has been accomplished.  It's miles different from The Dead Hate the Living, and I can't wait for people to see it. 

Anyway back to the art.  I have always been a fan of painted poster art of the early slasher movies of the 80's.  From Friday the 13th to The Burning, even Grizzly had amazing painted posters and it's an art form that has sadly been almost completely dissolved with the advent of photoshop.  Now I love me some photoshop and honestly that program is the only way someone like me who can't draw a straight line can satisfy their artistic cravings, but the old art said so much more about the movie than most of today's posters.  If you haven't seen Frank Darabont's The Mist (and if you haven't, then why are you here?) you'll appreciate the first few minutes in regards to painted poster art, and then appreciate the monster awesomeness of the rest.

Insert posters where basically just a slice of a full movie poster.  14"x36" as opposed to 27"x41".   I loved their compactness and the fact that they take up less wall space.  I have a decent collection of insert posters myself.  Sadly they don't make insert posters or the other old promo favorite the half sheet.  It has always been my dream to have an insert poster and half sheet for a movie I did, and now THANKS TO PHOTOSHOP I can.

So here is my first attempt at The Hills Run Red (movie within the movie) insert poster.  The powers that be (the studio) will probably hate it and only let me use it in the movie itself, but I think something like this would be a really cool giveaway.

Also I would like to direct anyone that reads this to my good friend Joe Lynch's (Wrong Turn 2) blog, where he in his latest blog wrote some very nice things about some footage he was show or NOT SHOWN ;) the other night.  He tends to ramble, like me I guess, but his blogs are always informative, usually fucking funny, and he always tells it like it is.

Check him out here....

http://drjoemommalynch.blogspot.com

Till next time....

Welcome Foolish Mortals

Welcome to my blog.  Here I'll be keeping everyone on track with my latest project "The Hills Run Red" - a new horror film for Warner Premiere and Dark Castle Entertainment, and projects from the past, present and future.

So pull up a chair, pour yourself some of that rot gut, and spend a few precious moments with this diary of a madman.  

Trust me  - the journey will be worth it.

Beast Wishes

Dave