Exclusive Interview: INDEPENDENT HORROR FILMMAKING 101 with Brad Sykes
Josh Millican
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Busy independent filmmaker Brad Sykes, whose range of genre efforts include Camp Blood, Camp Blood 2, Within the Woods, HI-8, Death Factory and Plaguers (recently released on Blu-ray for the first time via Wild Eye Releasing), fills us in on the highs and lows of making genre movies on a budget. Give our exclusive conversation a read below.
Dread Central: You’ve been at this movie-making thing for a while now! How long has it been since you started in the business?
Brad Sykes: The first time I stepped onto a movie set was the Summer of 1996, when I did an internship on Kiss the Girls in Los Angeles between my third and fourth year of film school at Boston University. My first paid job, though, wasn’t until May of the following year, when I moved to L.A. after graduation to work as Jeff Burr’s assistant on a movie called Spoiler. The next film I worked on, also with Jeff, was a Full Moon kids’ movie called Phantom Town, and it was shot in Romania.
DC: When did you know you wanted to be a filmmaker?
BS: It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment. I was a serious movie fan growing up, I loved Bond films, Chevy Chase comedies, James Cameron action flicks, and a bit later on, horror movies. I had been making shorts since age fifteen, on a Hi-8 camera, shooting with my friends around my hometown of Virginia Beach, VA. In my senior year of high school, we decided to take it to a new level and make a feature, a very ambitious horror/action flick called Bad Blood. It took about three months (we shot on weekends mostly, or after school) to make and was far from perfect, but I enjoyed the experience of writing, shooting and editing it, and that made me decide that this was something I really wanted to pursue seriously, go to school for, etc.
DC: And why do you think you gravitated towards genre movies?
BS: I think my interest in the horror genre started with fantasy stories, stuff I read growing up like Beowulf, Tolkien, Greek myths. It wasn’t “Horror”, but this stuff could be pretty dark and scary – and I was drawn to it. One of the first films I can distinctly remember seeing in the theatre was Clash of the Titans. All those Harryhausen monsters made a huge impression on me.
Later when I started watching horror films, I was really into the gore and special effects. This was the time of Re-Animator and Return of the Living Dead. I was reading Fangoria and Cinefantastique and these magazines gave you an incredible look behind the scenes, and those magazines deepened and expanded my interest in the genre and filmmaking in general. Dawn of the Dead was the first horror film I ever saw that made me realize the genre could be about more than just jump scares or gore.
The funny thing is, by the time I moved to L.A. to pursue a career in the business, I was writing artsy, weird dramas and road movies. I wasn’t necessarily trying to be a “Horror director”. But that’s what ended up happening!
DC: Did you have a mentor?
BS: Jeff Burr, who directed Leatherface, From a Whisper to a Scream, and many other horror films, was hugely influential to me when I was starting out. He really took me under his wing when I first moved to L.A., got me on two movie sets and allowed me to see (and in some cases, get hands-on involvement with) the filmmaking process from casting to editing. Jeff also introduced me to a lot of people who I ended up working for on other films, and some who even became collaborators later on when I started directing.
DC: You attended film school in Boston?
BS: Yes, from 1993 to 97. I made another Hi-8 feature and a bunch of 16mm shorts while I was there.
DC: How long was it before you moved out to L.A?
BS: It happened so fast, I didn’t have time to attend the graduation ceremony! I got a call from Jeff, asking if I wanted to work on Spoiler, and they had set shooting dates in May, so I took a few exams early, hopped on a redeye and showed up ready to work. I had really enjoyed living and working out here the previous summer so I couldn’t wait to make a permanent move to L.A.
DC: And what was the first film you got paid for?
BS: My very first “pro” paid job was a writing gig, and it happened while I was working on Kiss the Girls. The craft service guy was looking for someone to rewrite his horror script (it’s true what they say about Hollywood – everyone has a screenplay), and I was the “horror guy”, wearing T-shirts with Evil Dead or The Exorcist on them and always blabbing about horror films. He decided that I was the right man for the job and paid me $500 to rewrite his supernatural horror script. Nothing ever happened with it, but it was a fun gig and obviously I was happy to get paid to write (or rewrite) anything at that point!
DC: You were working, in a smaller capacity on some big studio films for a while there – like Kiss the Girls. How did those gigs came about?
BS: Kiss the Girls happened because the director, Gary Fleder, is from my hometown, and I had been in touch with him a bit before he got the job. While they were in preproduction, I met up with Gary and he offered me the internship.
DC: When did Plaguers come about?
BS: For a few years around 2003, 2004, I had been writing scripts for a small production company based in Washington, D.C., though their main development guy was working out of a major talent agency in L.A. The scripts were getting some decent attention (one of them had Alex Aja attached for a while before he left to do Hills Have Eyes), and paid okay, but nothing was getting off the ground. I pitched them Plaguers as a chance to make something that could be made for a lower budget with a few investors, but would be a step up for me, in terms of budget and resources.
DC: And where did the idea come from?
BS: I’d always been a fan of Sci-fi/Horror hybrids since seeing movies like Aliens and The Fly in the theatre. There hadn’t been one in a while, maybe since Event Horizon, which really took place entirely in space and had a lot of gory effects. No one had done a “zombies in space” movie before, so I decided that’s what Plaguers would be – it’s kind of a salute to those movies I grew up on while also adding some new twists to the formula.
DC: What would you say was the main inspiration for Plaguers? I could guess, but I might be off so…
BS: Well, aside from the more obvious Sci-Fi/Horror movies like the ones mentioned earlier, Demons and Prince of Darkness are two of my favorite films and you can feel their DNA in Plaguers.
DC: Steve Railsback was a real score – especially back then. How did he get involved?
BS: I usually never do this, but I wrote the role of Tarver with Steve in mind. I’ve always been a huge fan of his work, not only in Lifeforce, but The Stunt Man, Helter Skelter and so many more. While we were in prep, we found his manager’s information on IMDB and left a phone message. The next call we got was from Railsback himself! It was quite something picking up the phone and hearing that inimitable voice on the other end! We had one creative meeting with him to show we knew our stuff, and after a few details were ironed out, he signed up. In fact, Steve was the first actor to sign on to the film. He as great to work with, a real team player who cares about every aspect of the film he’s making. He later told me that only one other writer had written a part with him in mind: Chris Carter, with Steve’s “Duane Barry” character on The X-Files.
DC: And over the years, the film has gone on to become somewhat of a classic hasn’t it?
BS: Well, that depends on who you ask! We had some great reactions to it at festival screenings, including our world premiere which was in Spain. We had a lot of foreign sales, the movie has been released in just about every country in the world. Then, Image got a hold of it for the US, and bungled the release in every way possible. They didn’t really like the movie or know how to market it, so they tried to position it as a ‘big’ Sci-Fi movie like Avatar, which was a HUGE mistake. They were on the verge of Chapter 11 at the time, so they got greedy with the pricing so none of the big chains (except Blockbuster, who were themselves about a year away from bankruptcy) would stock it. And we never got a cable deal, though again, it’s played on cable in the UK, Mexico, and even Romania (I got Josephina’s mom to save the HBO program for us) and many other places repeatedly over the years! So, thanks to Image, the movie was kind of a non-event in the US.
And yet, I would hear from fans over the years who really enjoyed it, some even considered it their favorite film of mine. So, I’ve always wanted it to reach a broader audience. I thought we were frankly ahead of our time with the film, with all the intentionally retro practical special effects, the strong female characters (there are more women in the cast than men), and general 80s aesthetic. So maybe now is really the right time to release Plaguers, in 2019 rather than 2009!
DC: When did Wild Eye Releasing approach you with the idea to do an anniversary release? Or was it the other way around?
BS: Wild Eye, who had released our anthology movies Hi-8 and Hi-Death, initially approached us about doing a re-release, as the rights were available. We were interested in having the movie released on Blu-ray, as Image had only done a DVD. We had the idea for a “10th Anniversary release”, which everybody thought was a great idea, during a conference call with Wild Eye. In order to make that happen, we had to get everything prepared and delivered late last year, with a few extras delivered in early spring 2019.
DC: And there’s a lot of extra features on the disc – anything you especially recorded for the Blu-ray?
BS: Yes. We did a brand-new retrospective commentary with myself and our editor Brad Jacques, and also included a Q+A that followed a 2012 screening of the movie at a local indie theatre. It features a lot of cast and crew and runs about half an hour. We also ported over just about everything that was on the previous release so it’s a nice little package.
DC: If the film finds a new lease of life on Blu-ray, might you consider a sequel?
BS: In 2008 or 2009, when the movie was still making the festival rounds, I drafted treatments for not one but two Plaguers sequels, which would directly follow the action in the first film and take place on a “post-Plaguer” earth. The first was more of a Mad Max type film with lots of desert vehicle action, and the second (and final part) would take place in an underground bunker, like Day of the Dead.
BS: It’s been encouraging to say the least to see how fans have been embracing the movie this time around – many people were not aware of the previous release at all. It’s great to see Plaguers finally having its day and I’d be happy to continue to spread the infection as long as horror fans will have us!
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