Page 196 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

is a self-confessed European horror fan, it seemed appropriate that he fully immerse himself in such
a filmmaking culture and he has since relocated his family and work activities totally to Spain. The
Fantastic Factory have already produced several films with Yuzna in both directorial and production
roles. These have included Faust (2001) (an updated cult comic-book version of the man who sold his
soul to the devil), Arachnid (2001) (a scary spider extravaganza directed by Jack Shoulder) and, most
recently, the popular sequel Beyond Re-Animator (2003).
In the following interview, Brian Yuzna explains his motives behind forming the Fantastic
Factory, his dream of remoulding Barcelona as the new horror film centre of Europe, as well as
explaining how foreign films influenced his own development as an American filmmaker responsible
for a series of gruesome movies that combined blood, humour and cutting social satire. The interview
was conducted in March 2001 and includes a closing update of the Fantastic Factory's fantastic
progress to that date.

Xavier Mendik: The idea of an American horror director relocating to Europe to begin a new genre
production house is an exciting development. Can you tell us a little more about the project?
Brian Yuzna: The production house to which you refer is called the Fantastic Factory and this
is a project that I'm developing with Julio Fernandez of Filmax International in Barcelona. Filmax
is a Spanish distributor and what we aim to do is to create a label of fantastic films from a variety of
genres such as sci-fi, horror, science fiction and hard action movies. We intend to create a line of genre
films for the international market produced in Spain, but using talent from all over the world. We
are going to employ Spanish talents, but we are of course shooting the movies in English, because we
want to compete internationally. We are not just interested in being a success in Spain. We want to
be a success internationally.
How did the idea for the Fantastic Factory come about?
The idea behind the Fantastic Factory began with a conversation I had with Julio Fernandez at
the Sitges Festival in October 1998. By January 1999 I had moved to Barcelona and I've been living
there with my family ever since. That's where we're set - because that's where we make the movies.
This is a project that is completely Spanish-financed, with no ownership outside Barcelona. So this
will be quite unique in the independent movie world, and I think it's very important for genre movie
fans. What we are doing is trying to create something using the inspiration of production houses like
Hammer and the American international - those types of early independent genre films. I feel that
Hammer was the most successful of all of them, because they had better quality consistently.
And of course the other thing about Hammer is that it was a factory and as a result there was an
internal consistency of its productions.
Yes. What we are trying to do is make the label meaningful in a similar way. For example, I would
go to the video store and pick a Hammer film, even though I didn't recognise it - because I knew how
it fitted into their catalogue. Of course at this point we're not comparing ourselves to Hammer. But
what we are doing is trying to create a context for these productions. We called it the Fantastic Factory
because fantastic is of course a loaded word. On the one hand it's a very positive word - it's 'fantastic'.
On the other hand it represents all these genre qualities. We didn't want to call it horror because that
was limited, not sci-fi - that's limited, but we felt that with genre cinema I think fantastic fits well.

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