Here it is: the final CHEAP SCARES "deleted scene." For those who are interested, I'll continue to blog about making low budget horror films, but in real time, on SLIME CITY MASSACRE, rather than looking back.

I wrote the screenplay for SLIME CITY in the summer of 1983, after my only year of film school. From the beginning, I intended to make the film with my friends Peter Clark and Robert Sabin. Peter was my classmate at New York City's School of Visual Arts, and he'd shot my student films. Robert was a theatre major at NYU, and he'd starred in my first narrative short. Peter and I studied film production under Roy Frumkes, who'd directed DOCUMENT OF THE DEAD with a student crew, and our ... (more…)

Another "deleted scene" from my filmmkaing book, CHEAP SCARES! Low Budget Horror Filmmakers Share Their Secrets.

When I moved to NYC to study filmmaking at the School of Visual Arts, my uncle, who got me a job behind the candy stand at Cinema I (now Cinema 1, 2, 3rd Avenue), Robert Craig Sabin--who would later star in my film SLIME CITY--worked there as well, and James Lorinz, the star of FRANKENHOOKER and STREET TRASH, worked for the same chain at the Beekman Theatre (immortalized in Woody Allen's ANNIE HALL and now closed) a few blocks away. For my first few nights on the job, I worked with a young woman named Alice Martin, who trained me to replace her. I learned that she had acted in a ... (more…)

Brett Piper is another filmmaker I interviewed at length for my new book CHEAP SCARES! Low Budget Horror Filmmakers Share Their Secrets. Piper has been a hands on indie filmmaking wiz for decades. Check out the trailers (following the obligatory IMDB commercial for far less interesting material) for PSYCLOPS, ARACHNIA and A NYMPHOID BABARIAN IN DINOSAUR HELL. He achieved greater glory as the director of such E.I. Cinema/POP Cinema offerings as SCREAMING DEAD, BITE ME! SHOCK-O-RAMA and BACTERIUM. The following excerpts are "deleted scenes" from CHEAP SCARES.

I shot my first two films on 16m and my third on Hi 8 video. The guy who shot the last one admitted he wasn't a DP, that ... (more…)

Concluding the two-part interview with Roy Frumkes derived from "outtakes" from CHEAP SCARES! Low Budget Horror Filmmakers Share Their Secrets. Roy was also the subject of our very first Fear Zone Exclusive Video Interview.


Another credit of yours was called ZOMBIE HOLOCAUST, among other things.

That is true. My involvement in that was peripheral. There's a guy named Terry Levine. He ran Aquarius Films and his office was above one of the theatres in Times Square, on 42nd Street. Despite the fact that he released really sleazy, grindhouse stuff, he was a very intelligent guy. Australian, very well spoken. When I'd visit him in his office he had a set of barbells there and he'd be ... (more…)

As I've mentioned in previous installments of this column, CHEAP SCARES! Low Budget Horror Filmmakers Share Their Secrets is book I've written which McFarland & Company will publish soon (before Halloween, it appears). The book is comprised 50% of my own experiences working on low budget horror films, and the other 50% consists of in-depth interviews with other independent horror filmmakers. In most cases, I interviewed my subjects over the phone for two hours, painfully transcribed our conversations, then cut them down to a manageable length.

In the case of Roy Frumkes, my Film Production instructor at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, best known for directing DOCUMENT OF THE ... (more…)

What the hell kind of name is Scooter McCrae? That's what I wondered the first time I saw the name in print, back when Film Threat was an edgy magazine instead of a slick website. FT raved about a micro-budget horror film called SHATTER DEAD, which was apparently some zombie thing made when zombies were cool because they hadn't been done to death. Several years later, I started reading about Scooter's Second film, a semi-pornographic sci-fi film featuring a woman with clits on her eyelids. You read that right. I discovered that Scooter had worked on several of Frank Henenlotter's films, and had even co-written some scripts with Henenlotter. Since I had been the assistant director on ... (more…)

I knew James Lorinz--the actor best known to genre film fans as the wise ass doorman in STREET TRASH and as the star of Frank Henenlotter's FRANKENHOOKER--when he was a doorman in real life. Well, maybe "I knew him" is too strong a description--I avoided him; the guy was so brilliantly comedic that you never wanted to be in his sights. We worked for the same movie theatre chain and studied filmmaking with Roy Frumkes at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

The next time I saw him, he was on the humongous screen at the Ziegfeld Theatre for the premiere of STREET TRASH. He was only supposed to have one line in that film, but his improvisations with fellow thespian Tony Darrow so ... (more…)

I didn't interview James Felix McKenney for CHEAP SCARES! Low Budget Horror Filmmakers Share Their Secrets, but I would have if I'd had the room. Maybe if there's a sequel...

I did interview Larry Fessenden, who produced most of McKeneny's films--the creepy ghost story THE OFF SEASON; the grim retro sci-fi actioner AUTOMATONS; and the upcoming SATAN HATES YOU--through his Scareflix production company, and McKenney's name kept coming up. McKenney's genre films are very unusual for low budget films--because they're very good! If you don't check out his work it's your loss.

Now McKenney gives Fear Zone the dope on his darkly entertaining and thoughtful excursions into the worlds of horror ... (more…)