Big-Screen Badass!

Dec. 3, 2015, will be something of a milestone for trash fans; in the midst of giant international blockbusters, a locally produced grindhouse film will make its debut on the three-story Esquire IMAX screen in Downtown Sacramento. Promising a decidedly different “epic” experience, Badass Monster Killer is the third and most ambitious feature-length film from Christy Savage and Darin Wood, the filmmakers behind the legendary Trash Film Orgy, TFO Productions, Zombie Walk and Carnival of the Dead. Pitched as a hybrid meeting of Shaft and H.P. Lovecraft, the film not only meets these expectations, but bursts gleefully (and gorily) through them from one over-the-top scene to another.

Badass Monster Killer follows Jimmy Chevelle (Jawara Duncan), a tough-talking undercover street cop, secret agent and all-around ladies man whose only goal is to put an end to the diabolical, supernatural occult bullshit taking over the streets of downtown Camaroville. Behind the scenes of evildoing is Chevelle’s nemesis, Reverend Anton Dellamorte (Ryan Cicak) who, along with a bevy of local pimps, plans to unleash an ultimate, tentacular evil upon the city by getting his claws on the Necronomicon. Along the way, Chevelle must navigate a treacherous path of friends, foes and foxy ladies, including Lola Maldonado (Amy Geiger), princess of the criminal underworld.

The world of BMK is heavily immersive and unlike anything else we’ve seen in TFO’s filmography, from 2008’s Monster from Bikini Beach to 2011’s Planet of the Vampire Women. Camaroville is a painstakingly realized, neon-drenched animated landscape, replete with distorted expressionist buildings and littered in every shot with in-jokes and sly references down to the smallest graffiti or glowing sign. The result is a living encyclopedia of the Trash Film aesthetic, packed to the brim with strip clubs, acid-spitting mutants, sexy cult members and, most importantly of all, buckets upon buckets of gore.

Although there is a galaxy of unpredictable factors that go into a film achieving “cult status,” the folks at TFO productions seem to have nailed it. More than three years in the making, Badass Monster Killer is layered with so many hidden gags and double-take causing, spew-your-beverage-out rewatchable moments that the film will be a must-own on DVD. It doesn’t hurt that 100 percent of the film’s DNA is from pure cult stock, from classic blaxploitation classics such as Superfly and Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song to Lovecraft, the cultiest of cult horror authors. Viewers should prepare for a monstrous onslaught of Shoggoth, Fungoids from Yuggoth and a likely visit from Cthulu itself.

We recently caught up with the co-founders of TFO, Darin Wood (director) and Christy Savage (producer) to interrogate them about their latest project and the mutual cult obsessions that have made their creative power what it is today.

{Jimmy Chevelle (Jawara Duncan) in Chinatown}

What are your filmmaking backgrounds? How did we get to the TFO productions we see today?
Christy Savage: Darrin and I first started before we were even dating, when we were just friends. We were working on films together in the early ‘90s. Back then, we were shooting on Super 8 because video was still pretty shitty at that point, plus Super 8 was kind of a “cool” thing to do. We ended up not finishing those movies after running out of money. After that, we did a cable access show for many years called Deth’s Oogly Hed. It was like a horror movie magazine show, and we showed a lot of movie clip…We would do themes, like “How to be a Successful Slasher Movie Killer”. That led into the annual film festival (Trash Film Orgy) at The Crest. By 2005, The Crest Theater had put in digital projection, home video was looking better, and that was the catalyst that made us go “Holy crap, It’s time for us to start making movies again! We have a place we can show stuff, we have a crew, let’s do this!”

What was the genesis of BMK as a project? How did that brainstorming session work?
Darin Wood: On paper, it wasn’t as freaky as it is today—it was more of a straight-up urban horror movie with on-site location shooting. I thought we couldn’t do it—we would have to get permits to shoot in alleys in downtown Sacramento, and all that stuff. And then one day I realized, “Oh, wait, I could do all the backgrounds with CGI!” I can’t make them look like real buildings, but If I make them all tripped-out and bent and stylized, it won’t matter! The realism doesn’t have to come into play. After a while I started to like that idea even more. No one can say “Oh, that part didn’t look real.” It’s obviously not real! The buildings are cartoons! It gives you a lot of freedom. It doesn’t have to look real, it just has to look cool and colorful.
CS: We’ve always been big fans of blaxploitation and horror, and Lovecraft’s work, so it was only a matter of time before we started putting them together. I remember we talked to one of our distributors for Planet of the Vampire Women over a lunch. Darrin mentioned having an idea for a blaxploitation movie, and he was like “Don’t do that! That’ll never sell, especially in the international market.” Of course, they went out of business six months later. Luckily we didn’t listen to that guy.
DW: He didn’t get it.

{The Kung Fu Foxes}

How much does the Cthulu mythos come into play in the film?
DW: People out there that are real hardcore Lovecraft fans, they’ll get some references here and there, but it’ll probably be pretty silly as far as relation to the mythology goes.
CS: I was reading a note though, on the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival website yesterday, and they were talking about there actually being a pretty good audience for things that make a little bit fun of the whole mythos, because a lot of the horror is so serious, that people enjoy having a release—kind of similar to Roger Corman’s take on always having jokes to put in your horror movies. I mean, just look at Re-Animator! Did that take itself seriously? Come on! [laughs] And that’s probably the best Lovecraft movie out there.

Badass Monster Killer seems like a big step up in scope from your last film, Planet of the Vampire Women.
DW: And if you were to see Bikini Beach, it’s definitely a big step up from that, too. In between our first films, there was stuff that we earmarked to say “hey, let’s do better in this department.” Someone recently asked me if there was different software involved, and I thought about it … It was the same camera, the exact same editing software, the exact same CGI technology from Vampire Women, it’s just that I’ve learned more tricks. At one point when I was working on it, and it was taking a long, long time, I could at least look at it and say to myself, “It looks like I imagined.”

There’s quite a few familiar faces from your other productions. What can you tell us about the star of the new film, Jawara Duncan?
DW: Jawara Duncan was also the male lead in Vampire Women. He’s super good, has an awesome sense of humor about himself, and also, we did a lot of physical stuff like fight scenes, even when he’s up against invisible monsters, and he was super good at that. He came into this one already cast—we never considered anyone else. With fight choreography, sometimes you’ll get guys that are all over the map, but Jawara has been consistent, and it makes the editing so much easier. He just gets it. He was able to do a lot of things physically and comedically, it was great.

Will we be seeing any more Badass Monster Killer adventures in the future?
CS: We currently don’t have a script for Badass Monster Killer 2, but who knows, if this one goes viral …
DW: This is just my own hypothesis/speculation. When we did Vampire Women, Paul Allen and I did a comic book for BMK. Rather than have it just be a straight adaptation of the movie, we told another story featuring some of the characters that survive and whatnot. It had Jimmy Chevelle in it, with a completely different storyline. We didn’t finish, and it’s not going to be done in time for the premiere, but sometime in the future, we might return to it or, if a sequel became possible, I’d be down to use that as a skeleton for the new script. It could happen!

{Reverend Anton Dellamorte (Ryan Cicak) in Evil Lair}

What does the elevator pitch for Badass Monster Killer sound like?
CS: It’s kind of like Shaft meets Lovecraft. Lots of blood, lots of boobs, lots of monsters. That translates into any language—great for the International market!

How did BMK get to have its premiere at the Esquire IMAX?
CS: We were lucky with our former partners at The Crest, working with them, still, because of some of the connections we had and mostly because of the reputation we’ve built with the last couple of movie premieres. With the last one, Planet of the Vampire Women, we almost sold out The Crest. We have a pretty good following in town, so we were able to go to the IMAX and pretty much convince them to take a chance on us, you know, “We can fill your theater- we can do this!” A little bit of clout, and a good reputation, and they’ve been great to work with, so we’re really looking forward to this.
DW: I think the IMAX experience is gonna be really great. For us, with the surround sound mix, which nobody does at our budget level, I don’t know if we could have done it at too many other places, to really do justice to the audio. The picture is the picture, and it’ll be huge and everything, but for us, it really had to be the surround sound.

Philip Baldwin’s soundtrack for BMK seems pretty essential to the plot. How did the process for that work?
DW: When we started filming, I started thinking about integrating the blaxploitation feel into the soundtrack. We started talking about the Curtis Mayfield soundtrack for Superfly and how Mayfield is almost like another character in the film, like the narrator—he’s telling you about all the stuff that’s happening on screen, or he’s commenting on the characters. That’s all it took for Phil to get excited about that idea, and it comes out in the end result. It’s really funny, and I haven’t even figured out all of it—some of the lyrics are really buried down in there. But the composer has always been like that, from Bikini Beach onwards. He mixes in some buried moments of dialogue that I still come across in the last couple of films.

What does the future hold for TFO films and events?
CS: We’re still trying out new venues for the film festival; We’re going to get this film out to a wider audience on DVDs, VOD, additional screenings in other cities … and then start another movie! Also, Zombie Walk will take place next year as always.
DW: There’s a bunch of scripts that are done, a bunch that are partially done, at some point we’re gonna have to decide what we wanna do.
CS: I’m always voting for the giant armadillo movie …
DW: I’d like to do something that can make use of the CGI city again, because it took three years to put together! [laughs]

What should new viewers/potential fans expect at the Dec. 3 premiere?
DW: I think what you need to bring to the table if you’re a new viewer or not is just a sense that the film, and all of our films, don’t take themselves too seriously, I think they’re all fun.
CS: Fun! Fun is the key word.

{Lola Maldonado (Amy Geiger) and Jimmy Chevelle}

Catch Badass Monster Killer’s world premiere Dec. 3, 2015, at Sacramento’s Esquire IMAX Theatre located at 1211 K. Street. Tickets for the two showings, 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m., are available online at Badassmonsterkiller.com or by calling (916) 443-IMAX.

Sacramento’s infamous late-night film festival, Trash Film Orgy, has officially returned for its 13th year! It all goes down on Saturdays at midnight now through Aug. 17 at the historic Crest Theatre, where TFO not only plays killer films like Shaun of the Dead and Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!, but also hosts entertaining live stage shows encouraging audience participation. There are also games, costume contests, prizes and tons of other weird, awesome stuff. There are four weeks of TFO left, so don’t miss out! July 27, 2013 see Sean S. Cunningham’s original 1980 slashfest, Friday the 13th; Aug. 3, 2013 is The Road Warrior, an Australian post-apocalyptic action flick from 1981; on Aug. 10, 2013 see Escape From New York, a 1981 science fiction action movie set in the future (1997, hah!) from influential filmmaker John Carpenter (Halloween, Big Trouble in Little China and others); and finally, on Aug. 17, celebrate Trash Film Orgy’s 100th show with a double header featuring H.G. Lewis’ classics Two Thousand Maniacs! and Blood Feast. All seats are $10, and only those 18-and-over are allowed in. If you wear a costume, you’ll save yourself a buck while gaining countless street-cred points. For those of drinking age, the Trash Lounge does serve beer and wine, so you can feel free to get a little loose. Doors open at 11 p.m. and the screenings start at midnight. For more information, visit Trashfilmorgy.com.

Planet of the Vampire Women

Not Rated

Anyone who’s stuck around through the credits of your run-of-the-mill Hollywood blockbuster knows that movies require the hard work of a lot of dedicated individuals. From actors to directors, caterers to key grips and so forth, it’s easy to see where a lot of the money from those astronomical budgets is going.

Small or even no-budget films aren’t any easier. They require just about as much work to get the job done. However, instead of relying on a vast team of trained professionals, a dedicated few are required to wear many hats. Such is the case with the Sacramento-based filmmakers behind Trash Film Orgy, headed by director/writer Darin Wood and his wife/producer/director of photography Christy Savage. The credits for TFO’s latest feature, Planet of the Vampire Women, which has just landed a U.S. DVD distribution deal through Seminal Films (international distribution is also being secured through ICAP Media), show a long list of names, but in this case don’t be surprised if you see the same name multiple times.

“I tell the guys this every time. I tell them this every month, and they’re like, ‘I don’t know how to do this, I don’t know how to do that.’ I’m like, we’re going to find out how to do it. I tell them, ‘You don’t understand–95 percent of the whole thing is creative problem solving,’” Wood says. “Just figuring out what the thing is and then options, maybe trial and error. It’s all about that.”

The result may fall short of a James Cameron opus, but what you get is something that feels handmade and personal. Most importantly, though their budgets might be small, TFO certainly does not skimp on the fun. As Savage puts it, “We’re of the mind that at this budget level, you can’t take yourself too seriously, because no one else is going to. At least if you give the people the fun and the silliness, they’re going to have a lot more fun with it than trying to do a $25,000 uber-serious movie. I mean, it worked for The Blair Witch Project, but it doesn’t work for most people.”

This ethos is readily apparent in Planet of the Vampire Women. The film originally premiered at the Crest Theatre in Sacramento on Aug. 31, 2011, but it will return to the venerable movie house on April 13, 2012 to celebrate its distribution deal and official DVD release, which is set for April 24, 2012.

The film opens at a multi-billion dollar space casino that is ransacked by a group of space pirates led by Captain Mickey “Trix” Richards (Paquita Estrada). The heist doesn’t go unnoticed, however, and the group is pursued by the ever-dutiful space marine-turned-cop Sergeant Val Falco (Jawara Duncan). The chase takes its toll as both pursuant and pursuer end up crashed on a deserted rock of a planet on the outskirts of the universe. To make matters worse, Captain Richards has become possessed; she is transformed from foxy inter-galactic plunderer into a vicious undead vixen who must feast on the blood of the living–you know, a vampire–unbeknownst to the unsuspecting crew.

Loyal crewmember Ginger Maldonado (Liesel Hanson) takes the reins, leading what’s left of the ragtag group on what turns out to be a futile expedition to find and rescue the missing Richards. As our heroes plunge forth into this extra-terrestrial heart of darkness, the plot begins to unfold, which involves a doomed race of parasitic beings fighting for survival and an effort to ensure that they don’t spread like a plague across the galaxies. Simple and effective, the story is B-movie gold, giving a wink and a nod to the great films of trash cinema past while casting itself as a new cult classic.

Planet of the Vampire Women’s most striking feature–other than the gratuitous blood and bare breasts–is its setting. Wood, Savage and co-producer Amy Slockbower have crafted an eye-catching world. From the gloriously gaudy interior of the casino to the surreal, cartoonish rock formations of the abandoned planet our protagonists have found themselves stranded upon, sets are cohesive and colorful, and the film’s plentiful CGI follows suit. While it may not look realistic per se, it meshes beautifully with the drugged-out look of the Vampire Women’s more conventional backdrops.

Computer graphics are something of a new feature in TFO’s bag of tricks. In fact, as Savage tells Submerge, Wood, putting his creative problem solving skills to the test, learned 3-D digital modeling on the job with help from students at Art Institute — Sacramento while making Planet of the Vampire Women.

“We knew it was going to be a space movie. There were spaceships and crap like that. We were going to do miniatures in the beginning,” Wood elaborates. “We were just going to buy a bunch of models and mash them all together, and make them look like something random, but I wasn’t going to get them to look the way I wanted them to look.”

Another feature that sets Vampire Women apart from TFO’s previous effort, Monster from Bikini Beach, is more coherent storytelling. Whereas the latter sometimes felt as if it was two movies in one–a story about a down-on-his-luck rogue cop entwined with local crime syndicates colliding with a Creature from the Black Lagoon-type tale–Vampire Women plows headlong into a straightforward story arc. While Bikini Beach wasn’t short on delightfully cheap thrills and snappy dialogue, TFO’s latest film feels more confident and ends up more thoroughly enjoyable. The snappy dialogue hasn’t suffered one bit, though, as evidenced in memorable lines such as “My bullshit meter is picking up huge readings of I don’t give a fuck.” Priceless!

The April 13 event at the Crest has implications beyond just a mere celebration. TFO will also unveil its Planet of the Vampire Women comic book, written by Wood and featuring the artistic talents of Paul Allen.

“[Allen] was at a screening of Planet of the Vampire Women, and he got really excited about it and went home and did some drawings over the next couple of days,” Wood says of the project’s beginnings. “It’s got this Ed Roth kind of style. He’s a really funky kind of artist. He kept saying, ‘We should do a comic book,’ but I was like, ‘We don’t really have any money. We just did the film. We don’t have the resources to do a comic book.’ I would see him at parties, and he would keep bugging me about it, but I never took him seriously.”

Eventually, Wood gave in to Allen’s tenacity to bring Vampire Women to the paneled page. Wood says the story of the book is a mix between a prequel and a sequel, following the exploits of pleasure-clone Astrid Corvain (played by Stephanie Hyden in the film).

“It was a lot of fun,” Wood enthuses. “I’ve never written a comic book before.”

Beyond that, the Vampire Women screening at the Crest will also serve as a fundraiser for TFO’s next movie. The film is untitled as of yet, but the working title is “Badass Monster Killer.”

“I’m hoping not to use that, but some days it grows on me,” Wood says of the name.

He describes the film as “A Blaxploitation take on a Lovecraftian world.” As a result, Wood says he’s also been throwing “Loveshaft” around as a possible title, but jokes that it sounds too much like a porno.

TFO has also set up a campaign on http://www.indiegogo.com/ to raise funds for their forthcoming production. A synopsis posted on the site reads as follows: “On the trashy side of Camaroville, there’s a mob turf war going down, but the new gang in town ain’t content with merely controlling the local dope and sex trade. They are also mixed up with dangerous black magic, intent on resurrecting hideous demon-gods who have waited centuries for the chance to eat all our souls and enslave mankind!”

Exclamation indeed!

See Planet of the Vampire Women in its newly remastered form at the Crest Theatre on Friday, April 13, 2012 at 10 p.m. Tickets are just $10 and can be purchased through http://www.tickets.com/index.html. Some official copies of the DVD will be for sale along with the Vampire Women comic book. If you’d like to donate more to the “Badass Monster Killer” fund, head to http://www.indiegogo.com/badass-monster-killer

The Sacramento Horror Film Festival returns to swallow your soul

Hamsters can make the perfect family pet. They are very cute, very fuzzy and very thirsty for human flesh. The fluffy monsters will kill your friends and terrorize your neighborhood as they cackle and stare into your soul with their beady red eyes. If you turn your back on them, they will eat you from the inside out, showing no mercy. At least they will according to Tim Meunier’s favorite short horror film, Night of the Hell Hamsters. This cheesy horror film, along with hundreds of other frightening flicks, is part of the Sacramento Horror Film Festival, a four-day event that is ready to kick off Halloween. But this is not your average film festival; not only is it fully loaded with independent films, it also contains shorts, documentaries, music videos, animations, live music and even the Zombie Beauty Pageant.

Since 2007, Meunier, the founder, director, programmer and head of staff of the popular growing festival, somehow finds time to work a full-time job and view every single horror film that is entered into the festival–all 4,800 of them!

“I watch every film that rolls through the doors and as soon as the festival is over, I start accepting entries again. So it’s a year-long process,” Meunier said over the phone after working a long, “chaotic” day. “Of course a lot of people wait until the last minute so it gets a little hectic.”

Throughout the year of watching those flicks, Meunier’s trained eye looks past the blood, guts and killer hamsters to catch the numerous aspects of each film. He watches for production quality, editing, acting, direction and most importantly originality of the storyline.

“My goal in the festival is to show entertaining films that you are going to remember and to promote new talent that can hopefully move on to make bigger films,” he added. “Every movie in the festival I am a personal fan of and I think that somebody will like it because I liked it.”

But in a dwindling economy, this horror film lover struggles with cash flow. After five years of finding cash sponsors to support the event, this will be the first year that the entire four days of horror will be funded by Meunier himself. He and his staff also struggle to find appropriate places to advertise for the event.

“We’ve been turned away from some businesses because of the type of event. We get treated like the unwanted child of the film festival community,” he said.

Advertisers might be hard to find these days, but the fans are not. Meunier and his staff have garnered a following called the “little horror family” in the Sacramento area. The turnout for the festival has ranged from 1,000 to 2,500 people for one weekend. “It’s like a reunion every year for some of these people and it feels good. We have some die-hard fans.” Every year the staff can expect to see the same faces returning to support the festival. In the past, one Sacramento resident parked his RV in the parking lot in order to be the first person in line for the films and entertainment.

“Our crowd is the Horror Film Festival. I don’t know what it is or if it’s something they put in the popcorn, but we have very vocal crowds, they are very boisterous. It’s almost like all day is a midnight screening,” Meunier said. “It’s not your typical film festival environment.”

The Sacramento Horror Film Festival is one of the many horror related events that have a similar fan base in the Sacramento area, including Trash Film Orgy, Vampire Ball, Rocky Horror Picture Show and Evil Dead: The Musical. “I wouldn’t be able to be doing what I’m doing today without the support of a lot these other groups. I give them props and shout outs,” Meunier said. “Without them I don’t know if I would have had a following. My fans are their fans and their fans are our fans.”

The horror family for the film festival has found a “cozy little joint” to call home at the historical Colonial Theatre. The atmosphere of the old venue speaks for itself. “It’s a one-screen theater, and they have pro-wrestling matches there every month. So sometimes the concrete is a little red-stained from whatever matches they had. It has a creepy, rough environment, so it’s very fitting.”

In the beginning, the idea of the festival started off with Tim doing a little research and asking questions of film festival directors around the country, including Greg Ropp, president of the Eerie Horror Film Festival in Pennsylvania and Nathan Schemel, local director of the Sacramento Film and Music Festival. “When I first started I didn’t know there wasn’t a horror film festival in town,” Meuinier said. “I just Googled stuff. I wasn’t involved in the film community that much, I didn’t know if there was a demand for it. I didn’t know if five people were going to show up or 500 people were going to show up.” As a former paranormal activity group member, Meunier found friends that were willing to help out with the cause and after five years he has kept the majority of the same staff members. Over the years, the 32-year-old has learned that some of the best independent or big screen horror flicks have some of the lowest budgets behind them. “A lot of these films require using friends and family. It’s like, ‘Hey mom, do you want to get killed in this scene?’ Even the big Hollywood horror films are nowhere near the budget of the Avatar’s. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a $150 million horror film,” he said. “But it’s great practice for independent filmmakers to make low-budget films, because they are still going to have to cut corners, even if they make it big.”

Whether it’s Nightmare on Elm Street or Night of the Hell Hamsters, the Sacramento Horror Film Festival wants to leave you with one thought: that horror films are made for an audience to scream at, jump at and even laugh at. “When I get scared I love it. It’s like a drug to me. I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs, I’m addicted to horror. It should never be taken seriously. To me it’s the fun house mirror of society. It’s taking real issues and giving a funny take on it, a unique take, splashing some fake blood on the situation, or amplifying the situation to make it easier to deal with. That’s what the horror film is.”

The Sacramento Horror Film Festival takes over the Colonial Theatre from Oct. 20—23, 2011. Tickets for each event can be purchased a la carte at the door for $10 or an all-events pass will cost just $30. For a full rundown of all that the SHFF has to offer, or to purchase an all-events pass, go to Sachorrorfilmfest.com.