Weird, Wild, Macabre: An Interview with Filmmaker Tom Lee Rutter!
Tom Lee Rutter is one talented mean bad ass UK underground workhorse. Seriously, this guy has been labouring away for a while, and his latest released creation, Day of the Stranger (see review here), is being noticed by many who have a taste in the weird, wild, and macabre – and spaghetti westerns! And it’s being slandered by others which is the way of the world when you put out a low budget flick, unfortunately. I grabbed Tom and went totally all out in-depth on finding out who exactly the fella is. Who I found is a genuine movie fanatic with a pure love for what he does (even through a few downers).
Now then my buddy, I’ll start by saying a huge thanks for taking the time to chin-wag for Severed Cinema. What have you been up to today?
Yup Jamie! Well, today it’s been business as usual with my full time job – I’m a support worker and work with adults with LD in a supported set of flats. Sometimes it’s manic and sometimes it’s quiet. So quiet in fact that I get a lot of script-writing and, ahem, interviews done in the office.
The biggie subject at hand must be the glorious Day of the Stranger. I loved it so much, as I noted in my review, but for anyone who hasn’t seen it, how would you describe it?
Thanks man, real nice of you. I’d describe it as a British, no budget, guerrilla-shot take on the acid western and grimy 70’s cinema. It’s violent, psychedelic, and hopefully captures some of the hallmarks of classic head-trip and spaghetti western cinema. As an avid fan of ambitious no-budget films and the whole SOV thing I thought it would be appealing to those like-minded to see some Brits in the Midlands try pull off such a thing.
It shows that Midland Brits can achieve something so way out, man. I read that it’s based on a tale by Mark Twain. What’s the synopsis of the original Mark Twain story you drew inspiration from?
It’s a bit tricky as there’s probably four or more different versions of the story and all of them remain pretty much unfinished. Then there were versions that ended up in print which were edited hybrids of differing versions. The crux of the story though is that three lads in small town Austria meet a suave and otherworldly teenager by the name Traum; who’s actually Satan incarnate and proceeds to expose the three boys to the harshness of life and all of it’s violence, piousness, and pathetic ways. They bare witness to his magical properties and he transports them to various places to witness the never-ending carnage of man destroying itself. He ends by pretty much telling them how insignificant they all are before fucking off into the nothingness. Deep, cosmic stuff for turn of the century literature!
He could have just told them that. “Hey, you’re all insignificant, take it or leave it, I’m off back into the nothingness – meh!” There’s so much I want to ask about the movie, but I really don’t want the whole interview to be based on one subject. So, what’s been the general reaction to the film so far?
Not bad man, but I really believe it is one of those films you are either on board with or not at all. Those that do like it are primed to enjoy such cultish, lo-fi, no-budget wonders and can see what I’m doing with the sub-genre and why it’s quite a unique little beast. Those that don’t like it though have criticized everything from its lack of budget to it’s uneven-ness of tone – which I suppose they have a point with in certain regards. It has as much going against it as it does going for it I feel.
It annoys me so much when people suddenly become experts in films and the budgets they should have. I guess they’d not even bother if they had a low budget. So aside from the idiots who feel they’re self important critics over finances, would you consider this a break through film?
I’m not sure. Feature film wise I suppose it is. I had a good run with my earlier ‘featurette’ Bella in the Wych Elm in 2017, which introduced me to the world of film festivals, magazine coverage, etcetera, so I consider that my flagship little film that got the ball rolling. I then wanted to carry on in the style and themes of Bella with a feature film of sorts but Day of the Stranger ended up being a right big spanner in the works. I actually started Day of the Stranger long before Bella back in 2014 but it ended up being a big fuck off albatross so getting that finished and out there was like playing catch up! I owed it to the film and all involved though.
Would you consider it a near breakdown movie?
Oh yes. It really did take me to the brink and back. At times I honestly questioned whether I even had a shred of talent to be bothering with it all and there were a lot of tears of stress, anxiety, anger, and depression. Then for the most part the deeper I’d be getting into it the more work I was ultimately creating for myself and there were points when I hated the thing that much I couldn’t bare to look at it. So as you may well know if you’re not ‘feeling it’ then how on Earth can you make progress on the thing? So many times it nearly ended up in the bin. There were times that it felt like the universe was trying to tell me It’d never get completed. An example is the first time I had a rough cut of the whole thing together – the hard drive it was on died on me, taking a lot of raw footage with it! It felt as though for such a long time that this was never going to see the light of day and that it was my baptism-by-fire film school and in true Jodorowsky Zen-like fashion was willing to write it all off to gain the wisdom, clarity and insight into myself and the filmmaking process to start afresh. It went and got finished though. I honestly didn’t see it coming! It would be fair to say that a lot of what was going on in the film thematically came from a place of unresolved issues too – with a couple of demons to exorcise – not quite breakdown level but a lot of personal shit to wade through. Sometimes that stuff only becomes clearer when you take a step back and look at it.
You’ve gained a big severed Creepy thumb in the air for naming Jodorowsky. Speaking on the theme of surrealism, how much work went into this surreal masterpiece? I hear it took a few few years to complete.
It was the first film that I have ever made that has had a big fuck off ton of re-shoots and whole sequences, even characters deleted! Things got so murky and muddled with what I was trying to say with the thing that at one point in the process I couldn’t even explain to anyone what the film was even about. It was a project that grew, shrunk, and grew again in some weird acidy fluctuating stream of progression and stasis.
At one point a cut ran for 110 minutes and it would have bored you to tears. It was full of ham-fisted existentialist garb.
Nothing wrong with a good dose of existentialist garb, man (laughs)
The end result has the ideal amount I think but that was fucking ridiculous. One of the main problems was that we pretty much rushed into shooting. I knocked up a rough draft and rather than thinking it through we just cracked on. Then whenever I needed to take the film in a different direction we’d already shot scenes that took the film another way. So they went in the bin and we started again. That happened quite a lot. The biggest problem I should mention is that initially The Stranger was played by a completely different actor. He wasn’t very good at all and his complete lack of qualities to make the role ping really got me down. Problem being he was also a very enthusiastic force in getting the film finished – so he could hawk it around as a star vehicle for himself basically. His drive combined with mine meant we were getting things done. Downside was he was crap (laughs).
Between 2014 and 2015 we had a steady enough flow of shoots but they started to become fewer and farther between. It’s because I knew we’d started a bit of a monster undertaking and to make the film better we created extra characters and extra scenes to colour things in a little. It’s actually quite a tight piece character-wise but it was originally more explicitly a two-hander between Caine and The Stranger. We’d keep re-shooting The Stranger’s scenes as he was not bringing the goods to the table and I ended up cutting out most of his scenes and dialogue! 2016 I think we only shot ONE scene (the campfire chat) and after that in 2017, things with Bella took off so I finally put the project on ice for a while.
Things with the original Stranger actor eventually came to a head. He wanted ‘his’ film out there and was offering to buy the footage from me and tried his best to undercut me and take ownership of the thing. He proved to be a very sly and fragile narcissistic old thing. He even started making his own film posters for his own version of the film to be made by some other guys he could leach off and even started knocking out his own script with chunks lifted from mine! At one point he even had the nerve to send it to me to have a read and even started rallying around my friends to be in it! I think it was a ploy to have me hurry up and finish mine. I’m not sure though. He had a knack for getting pissed on his own and making a tit of himself online and one night threatened to stab me should the film never get released. So off he finally fucked and the future of the film was most definitely uncertain. That was until I worked with the amazing Gary Baxter on my next feature and the energies started picking up again. I gave reviving the western a lot of thought and we realized we could actually pull it off if we just re-shot the role. We did just that and while the other guy was shooting with us on and off for around 3 years Gary nailed the part of The Stranger in just 2 days and there was much rejoicing (hurray)!
Sounds like you both had a bit of a Kinski and Herzog thing going on. (laughs) It was all well worth it though, I truly feel you beat Tarantino and such in the trying to be spaghetti stakes? It felt so authentic in so many ways. Big fan of grim spaghetti westerns then?
Very kind of you to say I beat Tazza. I will honestly say hand on heart that we ended up using a lot of the ‘grindhouse’ effect tropes to mask a lot of bad camerawork and editing cover-ups because of my sheer ineptitude. Even the overdubbing was because we didn’t have a mic so these little throwback touches all grew out of necessity really.
Regarding grim spaghetti westerns abso-fucking-lutely! I grew up hating westerns. My dad was obsessed with them and on a Sunday was always forced to watch those (mostly) lame John Wayne/ American flicks. They bored me to tears. It wasn’t until I was knee deep in watching all the subversive stuff that I watched some of the Spaghetti ones and when the really good ones blew your mind there was no going back. I guess with any genre/ sub-genre you’re going to have ones that really raise the bar and then you galvanize any you can get your grubby little mitts on – and have to sit through a lot of shite!
Would you say that Lee Van Cleef is one of the greatest bad asses of cinema?
Oh yes. The Leone movies, The Sabatas, Day of Anger, all those Antonio Margheriti films – right up to Escape From New York and Armed Response. Bad-ass till the end. But then the Spaghetti Western’s gave us plenty of top drawer bad asses. Milian, Hilton, but yeah – there was only one Van Cleef!
Please explain to anyone who aren’t aware, the concept and existence of acid westerns.
So the Acid-Western was a short-lived subversion of the American Western made during the rise of counter-cultural cinema. They challenged the values as depicted in those dusty, patriotic tales of the wild American frontier. The white gun-toting settlers were paving a new way towards that American dream while the natives were merely mindless savages. The acid western turned that rise of American civilization into a nightmare already in decay, and soaked in blood. It was also the perfect mirror to hold up and show folks what was really happening in their own realities – aided by heavy doses of psychedelia, surrealism, brutality, anachronisms – you name it. It was such fertile ground and a great template to completely turn on it’s head to usher in a new way of thinking courtesy of the long-haired hippy kids of those stuffy republican suits of old Hollywood.
We’ve spoken about films in general before, and you appear to be an obsessed movie buff.
I am first and foremost a movie obsessive. It all started with that love of horror, those covers on the shelves of the video shop, and it grew and grew from there. Horror is the best gateway drug into all that exotic world cinema and arthouse stuff. Somewhere along the way the boundaries blur and you wind up watching stuff you’re too young to understand – but it stays with you and you can’t get enough of it. You just keep digging to try and find that next film that’s going to change your life. I love that just when you think you’ve seen it all you get hit with a film that blows your addled little mind and you’ve no idea why you hadn’t caught on to it before! There are so many incredible visions out there and I’m out to see the lot. The older the better, of course. If a drugged up visionary freak shot some allegorical fever dream with dwarves and a gallon of fake blood in the mountains on super 16 back in 1971 over two brutal years then I want to know all about it!
(Laughs for a while over that last comment and the image in his head) Day of the Stranger has a really wild cast, a small cast, but a very rewarding set of characters. How were Gary Baxter and Dale Sheppard to work with? It is totally their vehicle as far as giving their all in front of the lense.
Dale is a mate and was my housemate at the time too. We started shooting the western to battle the inertia of our smokey shared abode. He hadn’t acted in anything before and the opening scene of the film was actually our first day of shooting. We gathered whatever props we had and dragged our pink-eyed arses over to Hartlebury common which we frequently remarked looked like it could be the Wild West. Little did we know that that beautiful sunny day in April 2014 would be the start of something that would be such a bastard to finish. Sure Dale fluctuates in weight throughout the course of the film but you know what? He carried his role brilliantly in my opinion – for somebody who’d never acted before he was spot on in the role. As for Gary, well – as mentioned previously he really saved our film from oblivion. We were stuck with that previous guy and for a while thought there was no way on Earth we could re-shoot a main role. As soon as Gary wore that costume he transformed, man! I’d never worked with anybody quite like that in that they gave off such a completely different aura – they were literally somebody else! He gave The Stranger a witty, wise – yet dangerous, trailer-trash-cum-Charlie Manson vibe that was just perfect. He smashed his reams of dialogue, and at this point in the game – we’re talking August 2019 now – Dale had been doing it for long enough that he was the best he could be and together they were dynamite.
Tell us a few things about your upcoming flick, The Pocket Film of Superstitions. For instance, what’s the storyline?
The Pocket Film of Superstitions doesn’t really have a storyline. It’s a ‘fantastical cinematic almanac’ – a filmic version of one of those pocket books you’d find on ghosts, UFOs, and superstitions, and the like. It’s basically an excuse to shoot loads of atmospheric and quaint vignettes of various superstitions through the ages and to really throw a party on screen. It’s going to be funny – to the point of Python-esque and Dadaist silliness and it’s going to be scary – with that uncanny/ folk horror and classic ghost story vibe. Is it all going to work as a whole? Not a clue. We’ll have to wait and see. It’s a step up from Day of the Stranger in that I’m throwing a bit more money at it and I’m a different filmmaker to the one who haphazardly started a western back in 2014.
It’s a kind of follow up to your earlier work; Bella in the Wych Elm isn’t it?
Yeah in a spiritual way it is. I love playing with textures and creating things that balance ethereal beauty with a down to earth, archaic spookiness. I got really excited with what I was playing with on Bella so wanted to make something a bit more polished and feature length. I love those exploitational ‘documentaries’ they’d release in the ’60s and ’70s. They’d supposedly inform the viewer about ‘witch cults’ and nudist camps which was just an excuse to show a lot of nudity and other exploitative content. Legend of the Witches is a big example that served as an influence. I love films like Antony Balch’s Secrets of Sex – which are vignette based, but aren’t exactly anthologies and presented as ‘informative’. I wanted to make that sort of pseudo-docu-horror film that’s a little bit of everything. It has the appearance of a documentary but nothing in the film is really factual. I also love silent cinema – there’s nothing more intoxicating than sticking a bit of ambient music on over a silent film in the early hours of the morning. You are literally watching ghosts parade your screen in a sort of cinematic afterlife. They are truly like fever dreams, and I want to make fever dreams!
Tell us a bit about working with the iconic, Caroline Munro.
That was one of the best days of all my filmmaking escapades. I was full of nerves as you could imagine as this was somebody iconic who’s worked with them all: William Lustig, Christopher Lee, Jess Franco, Luigi Cozzi, the lot. Hammer, European, American – you name it. She’s got it all covered. What’s more too – she had just lost her husband and she was still grieving but wanted to keep working to keep her head above water. I have so much love and respect for that lady as she really didn’t have to turn up and shoot with an unknown director of small, quirky films but she did and she was the most beautiful soul you could ever wish to meet. An angel inside and out. We went for drinks afterwards and we watched the episode of The Frankie Howerd show that she was in with her. So surreal. She is the furthest thing away from a diva you will ever find. I am truly honoured to have her as part of this film and that day couldn’t have been possible without our man Gary Baxter, his beautiful lady Jayne and my friends Michael and Lou of Fausti Films (check them out!). I’d love to work with her again and I wish her well. Okay, gush over.
Be honest, would you consider yourself to be an easy man to get on with as a director?
By all accounts yes I am incredibly easy to get on with so I’m working towards being more of a tyrant. Bastards make the best films!
Watching the trailer there’s a distinct feeling of early cinema classics such as Haxan but sort of incorporating a ’70s feel, the kind of early ’70s movie you’d find Something Weird Video releasing. What was the inspiration behind it?
You’ve totally hit the nail on the head with what I’m doing with the thing. I wanted to make the film appear as though some cheap auteur in the 1970s was riffing on silent movies! Haxan is an all time favourite, to the point that I’d say I’m basically remaking it. There’s really nothing like that film and everything about it is interesting. The style, the form, the content, the imagery – it was so singular and ahead of it’s time. It still blows my mind. So yeah, I’m ripping off Haxan by way of 70’s skid-row cinema. I’d have loved to have shot it on celluloid if I weren’t so skint. Another huge influence on the film is the film adaptation of Sir Henry at Rawlinson End. Check out the beautiful sepia-tinged cinematography in that. It’s also really low budget so the film stock is really grainy, low-end and tonally quite deep. It’s so unique and beautiful. The look of that film I totally wanted to capture but I opted for a blue tint instead of sepia.
Bella has two variations around hasn’t it? Normal and a silent?
That’s right yeah – I loved working with the silent film aesthetics that much that I just thought ‘fuck it – why not make a silent version with differing scores.’ Even though the film is set in the 1940s onwards which is way after the silent-era, I was utilizing the aesthetics more to create the feeling of a hazy and distant memory – a feverish account of some murky goings-on that we’re still not quite sure of. It was also an opportunity to work with some musician friends that I admire. Craigus Barry and Deathly Pale Party provided 2 amazing scores for the silent version and The Worrisome Ankletrout graced the original version with his amazing and haunting music. There have been other folks who have stepped forward and had a go at scoring the silent version too which is just amazing.
Speaking of Bella, what’s it based around?
The ‘WHO PUT BELLA IN THE WYCH ELM’ mystery is a local, true unsolved mystery of a skeleton found in a hollowed tree in Hagley Woods by a group of lads who were out bird nesting. Since then many theories have been attached as to who the unidentified female remains may be. Some said it was the result of witchcraft, some say she was a German spy and some believe she was a gypsy. It became more and more intriguing when graffiti started adorning the walls of the neighbouring towns and beyond “Who put Bella down the Wych Elm – Hagley Wood” and other variants. All the ingredients for a spooky little examination!
Aside from that certain ‘actor’, what downers have you experienced along the way in the struggles to make underground movies?
All of them (laughs). Day of the Stranger was one of those films that seemed like a good idea at the time but it opened up such a can of worms it nearly finished me! The casual viewer doesn’t really care about those things when they watch the film though and couldn’t give a shit if you suffered…they’ll also likely tell you you shouldn’t have bothered in the first place! There comes a point when it starts becoming all about getting the thing finished regardless of quality. That’s when you know it’s a bit of an ordeal. Then you’re not even sure who watches these kind of DIY films anymore. Technology is so fancy and efficient these days that most viewers can’t hack lo-fi stuff and don’t even entertain the idea of watching something that isn’t HD/ 4K with polished grading etc…even though most of what you see is still mostly the same old shit. So sometimes you’re not sure why you’re making the films anymore – it’s not until you exhibit it to your own kind of people that you remember why you put yourself through it. I also have to remind myself why I’m making the films I make in the first place. I remind myself of the love for lo-fi/ weirdo/ bizarre and interesting films made with nothing – that’s totally my bag and have to remember there are other folk out there too with those tastes. Underground films made with nothing are going to get ripped apart and slated and we’ve had our fair share of bad reviews but that’s not a bad thing. You should embrace it. It’s all part of the game. You could have made a film for 100k and it could still get the same hate. I could go on but if the fundamental love and passion for it is still there – everything else isn’t so bad.
A newbie asks you which film they should watch so they understand your world. Which one would you recommend?
I’d say The Pocket Film of Superstitions but it isn’t finished yet so they can’t haha! Bella still gets a lot of love and sells well so I’d likely recommend that…
I wanna hear something about your early short flicks, such as Feast for the Beast, Mr Blades, and so on. Hell, there’s so many. Do you feel they still stand up today?
Not really (laughs). Blades and Feast are actually feature length at 70 / 73mins and while Feast is still quite fun I’d say Blades is rough as arseholes. It has some really nice gore in it though. There are a nice run of shorts that came afterwards though that I collected up into a bizarro anthology called The Forbidden Four and there’s some nice lo-fi bizarro stuff in there…kind of a precursor to the western some of it. All of them are on Youtube now but I won’t link you up because I’m not that cruel.
Okay, I’ll have a look later cause I want to suffer. Meanwhile, let’s go right back to your genesis, when did you discover the beauty of films and what made you want to pursue your career?
It was all about the horror. At 3 I’d seen Jaws and by 5 I’d seen A Nightmare on Elm Street. My little brother and I just wanted more horror. We raided the video shelves and if they had great covers we’d rent them out. Then we realized the covers usually cheated us so we’d check the stills on the back – if they looked promising we’d go for it. Films such as the 80s remake of The Blob and Night of the Creeps really set the bar high so we had to sit through a lot of shit. The more we watched the more we appreciated the crappier films and started to get the gist of the business and identified the patterns we’d usually come across such as re-titled films, Italian films masquerading as American, all that stuff. We started making our own films when we nicked off with the family camcorder to shoot horror films and pornos with our cuddly toys. They were our first actors!
Pornos with cuddly toys? You know you mentioned opening a can of worms, well…. tell me more…
Haha, well tbh I think we made cuddly toy pornos before we even watched any actual hardcore porno. We were very young – we were likely riffing on Porkys or / and Meet the Feebles even though we’d only heard of Peter Jackson’s follow up to Bad Taste and used to have a hard time finding it until Arrow re-released it in their early days. We just wanted to be provocative and controversial – even as early as then, because we were already into the subversive and ‘rude’ stuff. We’d hear of cartoons rated 18 and were ever intrigued. Plus the cuddly toy thing was our first experience with framing the camera and learning the language of sequences. Our school mates were roped in to be our actors next. Some embraced it, others couldn’t give a toss!
What films have influenced you? If you had to be locked in a room for a month, viewing only films made around a certain decade, which decade would it be?
It would have to be the ’70s for me. They fully realized the grit and experimentation in features by then before the 80’s went and softened the edges.
Influences range from everything between trash and art – preferably the two in unison a-la Jean Rollin. Too many to mention! I’ve got a particular hard-on for Czech new wave. The stylistic flourishes and dark, dark, dark sense of gothic, absurdism, and humour blows my mind.
(I must add now that Tom Lee Rutter is going to become my perfect drinking buddy. ’70s films? Jean Rollin? He’s like my long lost movie brother, seriously!)
Visuals? Story? Or both?
Both. Some films don’t need story where as others depend on story. Some films are visual assaults on the senses where as others are minimalist. The Pocket Film of Superstitions has no story, and is me trying to pull of a visual feast on next to nothing. If it doesn’t work then back to storytelling I go.
Sounds like you both had a bit of a Kinski and Herzog thing going on. (laughs) It was all well worth it though, I truly feel you beat Tarantino and such in the trying to be spaghetti stakes? It felt so authentic in so many ways. Big fan of grim spaghetti westerns then?
Very kind of you to say I beat Tazza. I will honestly say hand on heart that we ended up using a lot of the ‘grindhouse’ effect tropes to mask a lot of bad camerawork and editing cover-ups because of my sheer ineptitude. Even the overdubbing was because we didn’t have a mic so these little throwback touches all grew out of necessity really.
Regarding grim spaghetti westerns abso-fucking-lutely! I grew up hating westerns. My dad was obsessed with them and on a Sunday was always forced to watch those (mostly) lame John Wayne/ American flicks. They bored me to tears. It wasn’t until I was knee deep in watching all the subversive stuff that I watched some of the Spaghetti ones and when the really good ones blew your mind there was no going back. I guess with any genre/ sub-genre you’re going to have ones that really raise the bar and then you galvanize any you can get your grubby little mitts on – and have to sit through a lot of shite!
Would you say that Lee Van Cleef is one of the greatest bad asses of cinema?
Oh yes. The Leone movies, The Sabatas, Day of Anger, all those Antonio Margheriti films – right up to Escape From New York and Armed Response. Bad-ass till the end. But then the Spaghetti Western’s gave us plenty of top drawer bad asses. Milian, Hilton, but yeah – there was only one Van Cleef!
Please explain to anyone who aren’t aware, the concept and existence of acid westerns.
So the Acid-Western was a short-lived subversion of the American Western made during the rise of counter-cultural cinema. They challenged the values as depicted in those dusty, patriotic tales of the wild American frontier. The white gun-toting settlers were paving a new way towards that American dream while the natives were merely mindless savages. The acid western turned that rise of American civilization into a nightmare already in decay, and soaked in blood. It was also the perfect mirror to hold up and show folks what was really happening in their own realities – aided by heavy doses of psychedelia, surrealism, brutality, anachronisms – you name it. It was such fertile ground and a great template to completely turn on it’s head to usher in a new way of thinking courtesy of the long-haired hippy kids of those stuffy republican suits of old Hollywood.
We’ve spoken about films in general before, and you appear to be an obsessed movie buff.
I am first and foremost a movie obsessive. It all started with that love of horror, those covers on the shelves of the video shop, and it grew and grew from there. Horror is the best gateway drug into all that exotic world cinema and arthouse stuff. Somewhere along the way the boundaries blur and you wind up watching stuff you’re too young to understand – but it stays with you and you can’t get enough of it. You just keep digging to try and find that next film that’s going to change your life. I love that just when you think you’ve seen it all you get hit with a film that blows your addled little mind and you’ve no idea why you hadn’t caught on to it before! There are so many incredible visions out there and I’m out to see the lot. The older the better, of course. If a drugged up visionary freak shot some allegorical fever dream with dwarves and a gallon of fake blood in the mountains on super 16 back in 1971 over two brutal years then I want to know all about it!
(Laughs for a while over that last comment and the image in his head) Day of the Stranger has a really wild cast, a small cast, but a very rewarding set of characters. How were Gary Baxter and Dale Sheppard to work with? It is totally their vehicle as far as giving their all in front of the lense.
Dale is a mate and was my housemate at the time too. We started shooting the western to battle the inertia of our smokey shared abode. He hadn’t acted in anything before and the opening scene of the film was actually our first day of shooting. We gathered whatever props we had and dragged our pink-eyed arses over to Hartlebury common which we frequently remarked looked like it could be the Wild West. Little did we know that that beautiful sunny day in April 2014 would be the start of something that would be such a bastard to finish. Sure Dale fluctuates in weight throughout the course of the film but you know what? He carried his role brilliantly in my opinion – for somebody who’d never acted before he was spot on in the role. As for Gary, well – as mentioned previously he really saved our film from oblivion. We were stuck with that previous guy and for a while thought there was no way on Earth we could re-shoot a main role. As soon as Gary wore that costume he transformed, man! I’d never worked with anybody quite like that in that they gave off such a completely different aura – they were literally somebody else! He gave The Stranger a witty, wise – yet dangerous, trailer-trash-cum-Charlie Manson vibe that was just perfect. He smashed his reams of dialogue, and at this point in the game – we’re talking August 2019 now – Dale had been doing it for long enough that he was the best he could be and together they were dynamite.
Tell us a few things about your upcoming flick, The Pocket Film of Superstitions. For instance, what’s the storyline?
The Pocket Film of Superstitions doesn’t really have a storyline. It’s a ‘fantastical cinematic almanac’ – a filmic version of one of those pocket books you’d find on ghosts, UFOs, and superstitions, and the like. It’s basically an excuse to shoot loads of atmospheric and quaint vignettes of various superstitions through the ages and to really throw a party on screen. It’s going to be funny – to the point of Python-esque and Dadaist silliness and it’s going to be scary – with that uncanny/ folk horror and classic ghost story vibe. Is it all going to work as a whole? Not a clue. We’ll have to wait and see. It’s a step up from Day of the Stranger in that I’m throwing a bit more money at it and I’m a different filmmaker to the one who haphazardly started a western back in 2014.
It’s a kind of follow up to your earlier work; Bella in the Wych Elm isn’t it?
Yeah in a spiritual way it is. I love playing with textures and creating things that balance ethereal beauty with a down to earth, archaic spookiness. I got really excited with what I was playing with on Bella so wanted to make something a bit more polished and feature length. I love those exploitational ‘documentaries’ they’d release in the ’60s and ’70s. They’d supposedly inform the viewer about ‘witch cults’ and nudist camps which was just an excuse to show a lot of nudity and other exploitative content. Legend of the Witches is a big example that served as an influence. I love films like Antony Balch’s Secrets of Sex – which are vignette based, but aren’t exactly anthologies and presented as ‘informative’. I wanted to make that sort of pseudo-docu-horror film that’s a little bit of everything. It has the appearance of a documentary but nothing in the film is really factual. I also love silent cinema – there’s nothing more intoxicating than sticking a bit of ambient music on over a silent film in the early hours of the morning. You are literally watching ghosts parade your screen in a sort of cinematic afterlife. They are truly like fever dreams, and I want to make fever dreams!
Tell us a bit about working with the iconic, Caroline Munro.
That was one of the best days of all my filmmaking escapades. I was full of nerves as you could imagine as this was somebody iconic who’s worked with them all: William Lustig, Christopher Lee, Jess Franco, Luigi Cozzi, the lot. Hammer, European, American – you name it. She’s got it all covered. What’s more too – she had just lost her husband and she was still grieving but wanted to keep working to keep her head above water. I have so much love and respect for that lady as she really didn’t have to turn up and shoot with an unknown director of small, quirky films but she did and she was the most beautiful soul you could ever wish to meet. An angel inside and out. We went for drinks afterwards and we watched the episode of The Frankie Howerd show that she was in with her. So surreal. She is the furthest thing away from a diva you will ever find. I am truly honoured to have her as part of this film and that day couldn’t have been possible without our man Gary Baxter, his beautiful lady Jayne and my friends Michael and Lou of Fausti Films (check them out!). I’d love to work with her again and I wish her well. Okay, gush over.
Be honest, would you consider yourself to be an easy man to get on with as a director?
By all accounts yes I am incredibly easy to get on with so I’m working towards being more of a tyrant. Bastards make the best films!
Watching the trailer there’s a distinct feeling of early cinema classics such as Haxan but sort of incorporating a ’70s feel, the kind of early ’70s movie you’d find Something Weird Video releasing. What was the inspiration behind it?
You’ve totally hit the nail on the head with what I’m doing with the thing. I wanted to make the film appear as though some cheap auteur in the 1970s was riffing on silent movies! Haxan is an all time favourite, to the point that I’d say I’m basically remaking it. There’s really nothing like that film and everything about it is interesting. The style, the form, the content, the imagery – it was so singular and ahead of it’s time. It still blows my mind. So yeah, I’m ripping off Haxan by way of 70’s skid-row cinema. I’d have loved to have shot it on celluloid if I weren’t so skint. Another huge influence on the film is the film adaptation of Sir Henry at Rawlinson End. Check out the beautiful sepia-tinged cinematography in that. It’s also really low budget so the film stock is really grainy, low-end and tonally quite deep. It’s so unique and beautiful. The look of that film I totally wanted to capture but I opted for a blue tint instead of sepia.
Bella has two variations around hasn’t it? Normal and a silent?
That’s right yeah – I loved working with the silent film aesthetics that much that I just thought ‘fuck it – why not make a silent version with differing scores.’ Even though the film is set in the 1940s onwards which is way after the silent-era, I was utilizing the aesthetics more to create the feeling of a hazy and distant memory – a feverish account of some murky goings-on that we’re still not quite sure of. It was also an opportunity to work with some musician friends that I admire. Craigus Barry and Deathly Pale Party provided 2 amazing scores for the silent version and The Worrisome Ankletrout graced the original version with his amazing and haunting music. There have been other folks who have stepped forward and had a go at scoring the silent version too which is just amazing.
Speaking of Bella, what’s it based around?
The ‘WHO PUT BELLA IN THE WYCH ELM’ mystery is a local, true unsolved mystery of a skeleton found in a hollowed tree in Hagley Woods by a group of lads who were out bird nesting. Since then many theories have been attached as to who the unidentified female remains may be. Some said it was the result of witchcraft, some say she was a German spy and some believe she was a gypsy. It became more and more intriguing when graffiti started adorning the walls of the neighbouring towns and beyond “Who put Bella down the Wych Elm – Hagley Wood” and other variants. All the ingredients for a spooky little examination!
Aside from that certain ‘actor’, what downers have you experienced along the way in the struggles to make underground movies?
All of them (laughs). Day of the Stranger was one of those films that seemed like a good idea at the time but it opened up such a can of worms it nearly finished me! The casual viewer doesn’t really care about those things when they watch the film though and couldn’t give a shit if you suffered…they’ll also likely tell you you shouldn’t have bothered in the first place! There comes a point when it starts becoming all about getting the thing finished regardless of quality. That’s when you know it’s a bit of an ordeal. Then you’re not even sure who watches these kind of DIY films anymore. Technology is so fancy and efficient these days that most viewers can’t hack lo-fi stuff and don’t even entertain the idea of watching something that isn’t HD/ 4K with polished grading etc…even though most of what you see is still mostly the same old shit. So sometimes you’re not sure why you’re making the films anymore – it’s not until you exhibit it to your own kind of people that you remember why you put yourself through it. I also have to remind myself why I’m making the films I make in the first place. I remind myself of the love for lo-fi/ weirdo/ bizarre and interesting films made with nothing – that’s totally my bag and have to remember there are other folk out there too with those tastes. Underground films made with nothing are going to get ripped apart and slated and we’ve had our fair share of bad reviews but that’s not a bad thing. You should embrace it. It’s all part of the game. You could have made a film for 100k and it could still get the same hate. I could go on but if the fundamental love and passion for it is still there – everything else isn’t so bad.
A newbie asks you which film they should watch so they understand your world. Which one would you recommend?
I’d say The Pocket Film of Superstitions but it isn’t finished yet so they can’t haha! Bella still gets a lot of love and sells well so I’d likely recommend that…
I wanna hear something about your early short flicks, such as Feast for the Beast, Mr Blades, and so on. Hell, there’s so many. Do you feel they still stand up today?
Not really (laughs). Blades and Feast are actually feature length at 70 / 73mins and while Feast is still quite fun I’d say Blades is rough as arseholes. It has some really nice gore in it though. There are a nice run of shorts that came afterwards though that I collected up into a bizarro anthology called The Forbidden Four and there’s some nice lo-fi bizarro stuff in there…kind of a precursor to the western some of it. All of them are on Youtube now but I won’t link you up because I’m not that cruel.
Okay, I’ll have a look later cause I want to suffer. Meanwhile, let’s go right back to your genesis, when did you discover the beauty of films and what made you want to pursue your career?
It was all about the horror. At 3 I’d seen Jaws and by 5 I’d seen A Nightmare on Elm Street. My little brother and I just wanted more horror. We raided the video shelves and if they had great covers we’d rent them out. Then we realized the covers usually cheated us so we’d check the stills on the back – if they looked promising we’d go for it. Films such as the 80s remake of The Blob and Night of the Creeps really set the bar high so we had to sit through a lot of shit. The more we watched the more we appreciated the crappier films and started to get the gist of the business and identified the patterns we’d usually come across such as re-titled films, Italian films masquerading as American, all that stuff. We started making our own films when we nicked off with the family camcorder to shoot horror films and pornos with our cuddly toys. They were our first actors!
Pornos with cuddly toys? You know you mentioned opening a can of worms, well…. tell me more…
Haha, well tbh I think we made cuddly toy pornos before we even watched any actual hardcore porno. We were very young – we were likely riffing on Porkys or / and Meet the Feebles even though we’d only heard of Peter Jackson’s follow up to Bad Taste and used to have a hard time finding it until Arrow re-released it in their early days. We just wanted to be provocative and controversial – even as early as then, because we were already into the subversive and ‘rude’ stuff. We’d hear of cartoons rated 18 and were ever intrigued. Plus the cuddly toy thing was our first experience with framing the camera and learning the language of sequences. Our school mates were roped in to be our actors next. Some embraced it, others couldn’t give a toss!
What films have influenced you? If you had to be locked in a room for a month, viewing only films made around a certain decade, which decade would it be?
It would have to be the ’70s for me. They fully realized the grit and experimentation in features by then before the 80’s went and softened the edges.
Influences range from everything between trash and art – preferably the two in unison a-la Jean Rollin. Too many to mention! I’ve got a particular hard-on for Czech new wave. The stylistic flourishes and dark, dark, dark sense of gothic, absurdism, and humour blows my mind.
(I must add now that Tom Lee Rutter is going to become my perfect drinking buddy. ’70s films? Jean Rollin? He’s like my long lost movie brother, seriously!)
Visuals? Story? Or both?
Both. Some films don’t need story where as others depend on story. Some films are visual assaults on the senses where as others are minimalist. The Pocket Film of Superstitions has no story, and is me trying to pull of a visual feast on next to nothing. If it doesn’t work then back to storytelling I go.
Practical? CGI? Or both?
Practical! But CGI is sometimes a necessity for us low/no budget film-makers. If you’re film cost a gazillion dollars though why not just go practical? I’d much prefer to see miniatures and matte paintings any day. I’m aiming to use as little CG as possible in any of my films.I love artifice so I don’t care if it looks fake. If there’s passion and effort gone into it then it excites me.
Where do you get your strength from to continue? I mean, away from making films, what do you live for?
The missus will tell you that I walk around in my own little world looking at everything and wondering how I could use it in a film. It’s very frustrating for her but it’s just who I am. We’re lucky to have such a lovely network of great, talented people where we live. Friends who are extended family. I live to be a decent, none-judgmental and positive person. It’s all about finding the talents and positivity in each other. I also live for the laughs and for the music. We’re also highly lucky here in Kidderminster in that we have our own little film scene on the go. We have Bazz and Mike at White Raven Films who make great films on the more extreme side and Kieran at Severed Head Films who is currently gearing up to make his latest horror feature. Exciting stuff and it’s great to have like minded souls around me.
Do you ever hit the convention circuit?
I’m not ‘there’ yet – I go to conventions as a fan!
What have I missed from this interview? Any last little stories you’d love to share with Severed Cinema which might stun us?
It’s already been a colossal examination of all things ‘me’ to which I thank you for showing an interest. I won’t rattle on much longer. Before I bugger off though I have to mention my brief time as a ‘Fortean expert’ and ‘Kino documentarian’ on Russian TV show Mysteries of Mankind with Oleg Shishkin. A producer got in touch with me about Bella and interviewed me via skype. I thought it was just for research purposes so was surprised when I saw they’d dubbed me in Russian. They also used a lot of clips from the film. It got stranger when they asked me to wax lyrical about other subjects such as ghosts at Alcatraz which I’m no expert on. So for a laugh I filmed myself in a tweed jacket in front of my bookcase and googled some shite about Alcatraz and it ended up on the show in Russian. I could have been saying anything…
Thank you so much for taking the time answering these random questions. I have so many other things I want to ask, so maybe one day we could do a second chapter and go really deep into some of your past glories. Lastly, for now – one film, one album, and one book. Which three you would never get bored of?
A pleasure Jay mate! Aaah, one film, one album and one book. Tricky, man! Ok then – Film: Eraserhead. Album – as I know you like your psych I’ll go with 25 O’ Clock by The Dukes of Stratosphear; the ‘joke’ psych band XTC made up for a giggle in between albums. Book? I’ll go with ‘All I need to know about filmmaking I learned from the Toxic Avenger‘ by Uncle Lloydy.
