Page 200 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

I've never thought about these films as immoral, but I do think about them as sexual and I am
interested in the ways in which different classes respond to that sexuality. And certainly, I think there
is a comparison between Society and The Dentist in the fact that Billy Warlock's character in Society
is in the same place as Corbin Bernsen's character in The Dentist. They are both just destroyed by
the immorality of the sexuality that's around them. I think with Billy Warlock it's an indictment of
the upper class, with The Dentist it's more of an indictment of the excesses of upper-middle-class
consumption. It's a bit like that movie The Stepfather (1987), the idea that the guy would rather kill
his dirty family than accept them as dirty.
Horror is often viewed as a male genre, but often underground or independent movies from the genre
do privilege the feminine. How do feel about that?
I think the fact that horror films generally victimise women is probably based on the fact
women are generally victimised in society, in some cultures more than others. But women are
generally victims of predatory, sexual impulses by males. With a horror movie there is always a
sexual component, whether its buried or explicit. Everything with the flesh has a sexual component.
A n d usually the woman is the victim because she's much prettier, much sexier, she feels much more
vulnerable. Society is bit of an aberration of that, Billy Warlock is not a girl and Society would have a
hard time working with a female protagonist. But on the other hand women do tend to be the ones
that are chased, whether it's in Halloween (1978), or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). But a lot
of the times, newer movies have them turn the tables a bit, and give females more power than they
otherwise would have in the genre.
The woman I like most in the movies I've made was Mindy Clark in The Return of the Living Dead
III 1993). The movie was really a reaction to The Bride of Re-animator (1990), because we didn't get
to see the bride enough! She was interesting but we didn't get to see enough of her. I felt for her - she-
was like the bride of Frankenstein. I felt the loneliness and the existential horror of her situation. And
so with The Return of the Living Dead III, I thought just make a zombie the main character and see
what happens! A n d so when you see Mindy Clark - she's the victim and you really feel for her, you
never lose sympathy for her, even when she hits that horrible moment and commits a crime by killing
the river man, which is when her boyfriend finally turns against her. But to me she is still a modern
horror heroine.
I wanted to finish by returning to the Fantastic Factory. The first movie from this production house is
Faust. How does this production fit into where you want to go with the company?
Well, Faust is a funny movie. It is a movie that's based on a very violent, pornographic comic book
and really I tried to maintain much of the spirit and images of that comic book. I was very happy that
Tim Vigil and David Quinn, the creators of the comic, were happy with the movie. I really didn't
want them to be disappointed that it didn't represent their work. The idea of doing Faust first was to
do something original. This is one caped super-hero that children really shouldn't watch! Also, the
film is a mix of genres. It's a movie that has a complicated structure.
We had many challenges to shoot it in Barcelona and part of what I was trying to do was to see
what problems we were going to have with the different challenges in Spain - which I had never
done before. We were getting Barcelona to double for a North American city, we were shooting
action scenes, stunts, all kinds of special effects, we were shooting a comic-book movie - there is

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