To follow up THE DEAD, Bookwalter upgraded to 16mm and shot another cult hit ROBOT NINJA.  From there he headed to Hollywood where he learned the business working as an editor on several low budget shot-on-video productions for Cinema Home Video (CHV).  At CHV he donned the coats of director, writer and producer and pumped out nearly a dozen productions in a three year span.  He had also started his own small video distribution company, Tempe Video, to help promote and sell his own stuff, and then in the meantime he found enough hours in the days to start up his own cult underground film mag, the popular Alternative Cinema (which he later sold and is no longer part of).  But, the assembly line rate of work at CHV pushed Bookwalter to burnout phase, and he retreated to his hometown in Akron, Ohio to rethink his goals.

It was during his sabbatical that he rediscovered his passion for filmmaking,  after discovering a script that would eventually mark his return to cult glory.  From a script by David Wagner, Bookwalter made the shot-on-video movie OZONE entirely in his hometown.  The film was well received by critics and fans alike.  Feeling hyped up by this small success, and enjoying the freedom of being in control once again, with nobody over his shoulder telling him what to do, Bookwalter quickly put out two more Ohio-based underground video hits, POLYMORPH and SANDMAN, before making his return to Hollywood.  This time he went to work for the likes of Charles Band at Full Moon Productions.

Full Moon had been pretty good to Bookwalter.  The setup allowed him to travel the world, producing and directing their films, while allowing him the freedom to expand upon his already busy video distribution company, which Bookwalter wanted to open up to the ever-growing popularity of DVDs.  He now devotes much of his time to Tempe Entertainment, building upon the list of dozens of exclusive titles, seeking out obscure underground splatter flicks for his Splatter Rampage subdivision, and discovering little non-genre gems like EDDIE PRESLEY. 

At the time of this interview, Bookwalter had launched headlong into remastering his underground cult classic THE DEAD NEXT DOOR for none other than Anchor Bay.  If you guys know anything about DVDs, then you'll understand that when Anchor Bay does a DVD job on your movie, they put out a kick-ass piece o' pie.  J.R. Bookwalter was kind enough to take time out from his labors to field a few questions for Film Monthly.

[BARRY MEYER]  I first heard about you through Film Threat, with all the ads for THE DEAD NEXT DOOR, showing that wicked zombie creep with the muzzle on his mouth (pre-Hannibal Lector).  Their review made the claim that TDND was the most expensive Super8 ever made.  Is it still holding the record? 

[JR BOOKWALTER]    I think that record is pretty safe because nobody else would be idiotic enough to attempt such a thing again! (laughs) Of course it was never our intention for it to happen that way...the project began as a $4,000 feature to be shot on VHS video, of all things! We made a lot of mistakes over the course of the 4 years it took from start to finish, and I would estimate looking back on it that a good 30-40% of the completed budget was blown on mistakes and other things that didn't equate to what was on the screen.

[BM]   Film Threat gave your films TDND and OZONE great marks, and they also seemed to like your mag Alternative Cinema.  But then in '95 they seemed to turn on you, pissing all over themselves saying that you and AC had "gone to the Dark Side and finally pandered to the lowest of the low after a mere 5 issues."  Pretty ballsy thing to say when they were on the verge of selling-out themselves – in a big way!  Did you have any associations with Chris Gore and FT?

[JRB]    I always chuckle when getting criticized about Alternative Cinema...you're referring, I think, to their review of issue #4 where they lambasted us for plastering THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE on the cover. I didn't regret it then and I still don't...I just got spanked for it again in the 10th anniversary issue of AC, but you know what? The circulation on the mag jumped dramatically when that issue came out. So I was laughing all the way to the bank. (laughs)
I know Chris Gore a little...he's featured in the NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD 25TH ANNIVERSARY DOCUMENTARY that we released in 1993, along with former FT Video Guide editor Dave Williams, who I know much better. Dave and I enjoy poking fun of each other with a sharp stick, and neither of us is afraid to bluntly tell the other what we think. Hey, more people should be like that!

[BM]    It seems pretty common knowledge now that Sam Raimi had helped finance TDND.  Why was it kept on the down low for so long, and what prompted him to finally own up to it? 

[JRB]    I don't know that I would call it "pretty common knowledge," otherwise the movie might be more financially successful than it has been. But it is listed on Sam's IMdB page, sandwiched between THE EVIL DEAD and EASY WHEELS, of all things! (laughs) The cat was out of the bag in 1987 when FANGORIA magazine did a big 4-page spread, which included a sidebar called "The Sam Raimi Connection." I then got a rather unpleasant phone call from Sam, who chastised both myself and Scott Spiegel for spilling the beans.

Sam had a few reasons why he wanted to remain anonymous...he had the deal with Universal brewing for DARKMAN and didn't want his name associated with anything else, but also he was very adamant that the movie would be mine. He didn't want that situation that happened to Lamberto Bava on DEMONS, where Dario Argento wound up overshadowing him. I appreciated that, but at the same time, it was discouraged that he wanted to hide behind the executive producer credit of "The Master Cylinder," which ultimately was a request that I declined to include. What can I say? I was young, I took it personally. (laughs)

That said, when I was negotiating the recent deal for Anchor Bay to release the Special Edition DVD in early 2005, I was gratified to discover that they didn't care about not being able to exploit Sam's involvement. I've had a lot of offers for bigger deals in the past and the deal-breaker always came down to my disclosure that they couldn't use Sam's name to sell the movie. Michael Felsher at Anchor Bay told me he felt the movie's reputation had outgrown Sam's involvement anyway, which I was happy to hear. That only took two decades! (laughs) Both Michael and I agreed that it might be fun to add that "Master Cylinder" credit back into the movie, though, so that's going to happen.

[BM]    Isn't it odd that Raimi has now jumped back into the Horror ring with his Ghost House Productions?  And why the hell wouldn't he take someone like you to help him out with it, instead of a unproven hack like Eli Roth? 

[JRB]    It's not odd if you know Sam. Now, I don't claim to know Sam that well, and we've had very little contact over the years. But he is insanely loyal to his roots, which I think is a lot of the reason that he hasn't gotten spanked more for "abandoning" the horror genre. I mean, if I were him I'd be sick of everyone asking about EVIL DEAD 4...for God's sake, he directed one of the biggest box-office films of all time, why would he want to go back to that?? But God bless him, because he is loyal enough to actually consider it. He's also been very good about spreading the love and helping people get their own projects going. I wouldn't be doing this interview if it weren't true, so I definitely owe him a debt of gratitude for that.

After 4 grueling years on THE DEAD NEXT DOOR, I made the decision to distance myself from Sam. I mean, there wasn't anything being offered when the film was finally done anyway, although there had been some discussions early on about us doing another picture together. In fact, one night on the phone he had pitched me THE MAN WITH THE SCREAMING BRAIN, way before it turned into the long-in-development Bruce Campbell flick! He literally spent an hour telling me the whole story in great gory detail, and then he was like, "This is the next picture we'll do together!" But this was before DND went awry financially, and of course his career took an upward turn so I'm sure that weighed into it also.

I'm also not particularly good at "playing ball" in this business, which is probably one of many reasons why I haven't gotten any further than I have. I really didn't want to be one of many umbilical cords attached to Sam...I wanted to be my own man, doing my own thing. King of the castle, not one of the knights of the round toilet bowl. (laughs)

[BM]    Speaking of Eli Roth, CABIN FEVER is a load of crap.  It seems that all these horror kid directors are merely copycatting the stuff they watched on video with their friends and passing it off as homage.  What do you think of the state of Horror today?  Any filmmakers out there who you think shin?

[JRB]    I hate to admit this, but I have politely turned in my "Horror Fan" club membership card of late. I just do not care for any of the modern horror movies, pretty much starting with SCREAM, which I thought was a complete insult to the genre. I got talked into seeing it by a friend, and the whole time I just sat there thinking, "This will be the death of the horror movie." And to some degree, I was right...it just bred more sequels and imitators, and suddenly every horror movie was self-aware. Now it's come even further, to the point where classic movies are being "reimagined" with a frightening pace. This is not like when John Carpenter remade THE THING...he absolutely loved the original, and that's why his remake was effective. It had all of the good stuff about the original, and it veered closer to the source material, in this case the short story. But the remakes being made now seem to be purely studio-driven, for financial gain only.

I haven't seen CABIN FEVER, so I can't comment on Eli Roth, except I have found him to be rather abrasive from the interviews I've read, considering how many people I know who loathed his movie. But, obviously somebody liked it or it wouldn't have done so well. And I think that's the biggest problem...when I was growing up, the horror fans were pretty united. I think we all agreed that HALLOWEEN was a classic, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET was a classic, et al. Now you have 50% of the fans loving a movie and the other half condemning it! I feel sorry for Rob Zombie...everyone was behind HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES until they saw it, and now half of the audience has turned on him. I mean, no offense to Zombie, but what did you guys expect? He's a fanboy, just like the rest of us. I didn't expect him to make great art or even anything original...I expected him to make a fanboy tribute to his favorite '70s movies, and that's exactly what he did. But again, the money talks, because the movie did well enough to justify a sequel, so we'll see how that does now that the fans are so divided on the first one.

I'm hard-pressed to single out any horror filmmakers, mainly because I have been making a conscious effort to avoid the movies made now. I still consider myself a fan, and my personal DVD collection is made up largely of horror flicks! But you won't find much of the modern stuff in there.

[BM]    What's your take on the digital scene, with the easy access to computers and the fairly affordable videomaking programs?  Will it generate a new and improved "JR Bookwalter"?

[JRB]    I don't think so, seeing as I was way ahead of the trends where DV is concerned! I starting shooting some no-budget stuff on S-VHS-C back in 1991, the best of which is OZONE. In 1996, we upgraded to Mini-DV with the Sony VX-1000 for POLYMORPH — that camera was so new that I believe we were probably the first feature to be shot on the format, at least that I'm aware of. And I was finishing the stuff on a Mac using Adobe Premiere, way before Apple had purchased Final Cut Pro, which Macromedia was originally working on to be a "Premiere killer".

It's funny, because I've gotten really bored of the technology lately after producing all these movies for Full Moon, where they wanted us to throw CGI everywhere to try to make up for what we weren't able to pull off on 8-day shoots. So if anything, now I'm more focused than ever on the next project being something special script-wise, and foregoing all the fancy CG work in favor of something smaller and more personal.

[BM]    I have to say that I did not snatch up all the videos that I drooled over in the pages of Film Threat, Psychotronic and PC.  I was in college, paying my own way, and couldn't afford the hefty prices back then.  To me, the problem with underground filmmaking was that the filmmakers wanted to expand their audiences, but the product was inaccessible or expensive. Now, with DVD and the Internet, this stuff is so much more attainable.  Will DVD change the underground scene?

[JRB]    DVD has broadened the availability of underground flicks to some degree, but it hasn't created more of an appetite for those films necessarily. Audiences have become acclimated to video-lensed features a bit more, for instance, although there are those who stand firm on condemning such titles. Having been doing video features for so long, I have to laugh seeing all these filmmakers who used to poo-poo the format back in the day, and they're all shooting on DV now! To be fair, there have been many advances such as 24p, and the picture quality has come a long way, but video is video, folks. (laughs)

[BM]    You haven't found that DVD has drawn in a bigger fan base?

[JRB]    No, no way...in fact, the opposite has happened, I think. There are even less fans now than there used to be, because many of the "fans" are now making their own features because it's so easy and cheap to do. But the marketplace is not there for all of these movies...I hate to say it, but the new breed of these guys are making these movies for an audience of practically no one. You have the other underground filmmakers who watch each other's projects, and a handful of die-hard fans who watch everything, and that's about it!

[BM]    Do you think that you'd ever use Tempe to go back and find the filmmakers from your heyday and help them release their classic underground films – stuff like SCHRAM, TWISTED ISSUE, KILLER etc.?

[JRB]    I thought SCHRAMM was already released on DVD by Barrel, the folks who put out the NEKROMANTIK flicks. And I think you're referring to TWISTED ILLUSIONS...most of Tim Ritter's stuff has been coming out from Sub Rosa. Not sure about KILLER. Right now I have my hands full remastering my own library for Special Edition DVD, but we have just released Jeff Burr's lost classic EDDIE PRESLEY, which was finished in 1992 and never distributed. That was our first 2-disc Special Edition, and thus far the response has been fantastic. I would have loved to put out KILLER NERD and BRIDE OF KILLER NERD because I'm friends with Wayne Alan Harold and distribute his flick TOWNIES, but Wayne's ex-partner had sold the titles outright to Troma years ago and they just finally put them on DVD as a double feature. I think by the end of 2005 I will have gotten my entire catalog of films on DVD, so I might be looking into whatever else is available at that time.

[BM]    I read in an interview that you once wrote a script (DEAD FUTURE), but decided it was beyond your means to shoot it, so you attempted to scale it down.  Have you ever thought of selling those bigger ideas to Hollywood instead of scaling them down?

[JRB]    My original version of DEAD FUTURE was just a 60-page treatment...I basically threw that story out and came up with a new one, which a friend named Dennis Petersen wrote for me. It's a great script, full of a lot of the political satire that the original had and then some, and it's a lot more manageable in terms of pulling it off for a reasonable budget. Assuming it ever gets made, I still have the bigger story which I could always tell for a third film...we basically took things back earlier in time for DEAD FUTURE, which is a little bit less "epic" in scale but by no means was a compromise in terms of ideas.

I also have a very short attention span — I get a wild hair up my ass like doing my own DVD distribution, and then I try to clear my slate so I can just focus on that. If I applied that to directing, I'd probably have a better shot at doing something. But I don't really have any interest in selling the ideas off to Hollywood...if someone read one of the scripts and made a substantial offer, maybe I'd consider it, but I'm not going to expend the energy to try to make that happen when I'd rather focus on my own thing.

[BM]    I've been reading your blog on your DEAD NEXT DOOR DVD site.  Has work begun yet on the DVD?

[JRB]    It's still early...I'm basically doing the legwork required for us to prep the new telecine, which is complicated by the fact that it's Super-8mm film and we never actually cut the film the first time out. So I need to pull the shots that are in the movie and assemble new telecine reels, and to do that the right way is a little time-intensive because some of the original EDLs and 3/4" workprint edit tapes have been lost to time. But every day I'm getting something accomplished...talking to folks about the commentary we want to record later this summer, getting all these old tapes transferred for the extras. Anchor Bay was more than happy to let me produce the disc...if they had to pay real money for all this stuff, they probably wouldn't have done it because the title is a bit obscure compared to HALLOWEEN, DAWN OF THE DEAD, et al. But since I have done so much DVD production on my own discs and was willing to do it — and wanted to do the disc the right way! — they tossed me a few bucks to do the work in my spare time. All I can tell you is, it will be the final, definitive version of the movie at long last, and if you like DND, it will be well worth the wait.

[BM]    Hey, I read in another interview that you grew up on stuff like DARK SHADOWS.  Same here!  I remember watching the show in Kindergarten, and I have forever credited that show for my love of all things horror.  What were some of your other favorite shows?

[JRB]    I'm still watching those on DVD! I have never seen the entire series, so I've been obsessively buying each volume as they come out and I try to watch at least one episode a day, usually while I sit and eat my lunch. (laughs) Some of my friends laugh at me and criticize how crude that show is, but I still love it...it transcends the low budget and low production values, if you sort of let yourself fall into the storyline. In fact, I can use that show as a great example of what's wrong with movies today. When I was a kid, stuff like DARK SHADOWS would show you enough to stimulate your mind, but they wouldn't beat you over the head with it. These days, all the movies and TV shows just show everything...too much CG, for instance. Just because you can do everything, doesn't mean you should. I feel sorry for the kids today...they have no imagination because they don't have to.

As far as other TV shows, definitely LOST IN SPACE, another one I'm watching again on DVD now. ULTRAMAN...JOHNNY SOKKO...old GODZILLA flicks...it was a great time to be a kid in the early '70s, because they showed all this great stuff. I think I was probably more into sci-fi than horror until I saw pictures from DAWN OF THE DEAD in FANGORIA #1, although I certainly enjoyed horror shows like NIGHT GALLERY and THE NIGHT STALKER. But DAWN OF THE DEAD was the film that made me more fascinated with horror, hands down.

[BM]    I feel the same way about the lack of imagination...  It annoys me that Hollywood refers to today's young audience as "sophisticated."  That's a crock of turds!  They're not sophisticated, they're really just spoiled.  Like you said, those spoiled "fanboys are now the filmmakers – but it's not just in genre films, but in the so-called "indie" scene run by major studios (good example is hack fanboy Kevin Smith).  Do you think that anyone pays any attention to the underground scene, and that one day it might be an influence on more main stream fare (or should it even be an influence)? 

[JRB]    Sadly I think a lot of what makes up the "underground" at the moment are bad backyard camcorder epics, usually featuring zombies or scantily-clad scream queen wanna-be's. Part of the reason the underground isn't above ground is that no one has any creativity! We're all just sort of making tributes to the stuff we grew up with, and yes I include myself in that, at least for the body of work I've made thus far. A lot of people are impressed by THE DEAD NEXT DOOR or OZONE or even POLYMORPH, but for the most part those are just no-budget imitations of bigger movies, even if they do turn some of the traditional conventions on their head in spots. I'd like to think we've had some "flashes of genius" now and again, but sadly thus far it's been same old, same old. (laughs)

[BM]    You mentioned that SCREAM signaled the new load of self-aware imitators, and rang out the death of horror.  I have to be honest that I had a similar fear that a major change in movies would come about after seeing STAR WARS back in the day.  I know that every other filmmaker of my generation says that SW was an influence, but I dreaded that films would loose their imagination (or magic), and become special FX phenomenon's, instead of stories.  Now we have major extravaganzas like VAN HELSING that just eat up budgets.  How far can it go?  I'm hoping that DVDs can create a new market for simple, plain old non-CG genre movies

[JRB]    Sure, STAR WARS was a huge influence on me also. I don't think I quite realized how bad that influence was until I saw a great documentary on '70s filmmaking called A DECADE UNDER THE INFLUENCE. Somebody in that doc...maybe Coppola or Friedkin...cites JAWS and STAR WARS as the beginning of a very disastrous change in the film industry, and it's true! The studios started looking less to filmmakers to bring them small movies that would make money over time and put the emphasis on a huge opening weekend box office. And what has happened in the last three decades is that movies have gotten more and more lame as filmmakers "show us the money" instead of telling a good old-fashioned story.
I think I'm just as guilty as the next guy for doing that on a smaller level...movies like OZONE, while impressive for $3,500, were basically just about how much cool stuff we could toss at the audience in the space of 78 minutes and less about "Is this a story worth telling?" And it's worse on the underground level, because we can't afford to do really cool morphs and special effects like the big boys. So OZONE becomes impressive more for the ambition than the talent, if you catch my drift.
Personally I'm beyond sick of big-budget Hollywood spectacles...the exception to that are disaster movies, because I'm a fan of seeing a whole bunch of shit wiped out. I know THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW will suck, for instance, because Roland Emmerich has made one turkey after another...but I still want to see it, because I want to see New York and L.A. get leveled on film. (laughs) That said, I feel the old disaster flicks like EARTHQUAKE and THE TOWERING INFERNO are far superior, so even there sometimes less is more.

I cite THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMAN as one of the worst examples of how CG is killing movies...it was simply terrible in almost every regard, embarrassing to the actors who should have known better. I mean, at one point they're trying to save Paris I think it is, and you sit there and go, "I'm so confused I don't even know what's going on!" Terrible, and an absolute abuse of CG.

[BM]    What are some of the titles on your wish list?  In other words, are there any films out there that you'd love to be able to distribute?

[JRB]    I'm not sure I have all that much on my wish list. There are films I grew up watching that I'd love to tackle, like EQUINOX, which I hear Criterion is doing. WHEN THE SCREAMING STOPS hasn't come to DVD yet. I really enjoyed SCARECROWS, great atmosphere, but that one is tied up with one of the studios, I think. I'm not really in a financial position yet to lay out the kind of money that Anchor Bay or Blue Underground does to acquire and restore their movies...I'm still just a little guy trying to make a buck and keep his bills paid. (laughs)

 

[BM]    You said that you turned in your horror fan card....  What are the genres that you look to now?

[JRB]    I'm a sucker for silly comedies or even cheesy dramas. I'm not all that hard to please in terms of being a viewer, I just want to be entertained, period. I thought Salma Hayek's FRIDA was excellent...SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE was a lot of fun...MY BOSS'S DAUGHTER was silly but fun...ALEX & EMMA was very cute. These are all things I've rented recently from Netflix, so as you can see my tastes run the whole spectrum.

[BM]    I realize that you're pretty tied up with the TDND DVD, but are there any directing or writing gigs coming up for you?

[JRB]    Offers come by every now and again, mostly for stuff in a similar range as the Full Moon movies I made, like under-$50,000. I think I've finally reached the point after doing so many of those so quickly that I think twice about doing them now, especially when they come attached with some piece of shit script or idea on top of there being next to no money involved. The last thing I did for Full Moon was DEADLY STINGERS, this awful "giant scorpion runs amok" thing made for Fox Home Video. I got paid decently on it and tried to do my best with what I had to work with, but at the end of the day it was still very disappointing because it wasn't a movie I really wanted to make.

I'll be writing and directing the next two episodes of BAD MOVIE POLICE, which are just short comedy skits that open some of our older shameful flicks. And I'd love to turn that concept into a full-fledged feature of its own, say THE BAD MOVIE POLICE MOVIE, sort of a variation on AMAZON WOMEN ON THE MOON or something. I also have an idea for a small drama that I want to do, very low budget and down 'n dirty like we used to make them back in Ohio. Just me, a solid cast and a few crew members. Right now I'm just waiting for a few things to stabilize on the distribution front before I go out and neglect the business for a few months to make another movie, but hopefully before 2004 is out I'll have gotten something going!

[BM]    Thanks for chatting, JR.

Check out Tempe Entertainment at www.tempevideo.com, and tune into Film Monthly for reviews of some of their DVDs.

Barry Meyer is a scriptwriter who likes nothing better than to diss hack directors as he sits and awaits his own brush with fame and fortune.