Page 202 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

also a great number of Spanish or European actors, and we were still trying to shoot it all in English
A n d on top of that the film had to be shot with three major genre styles based on the three major
characters' points of view of the problem of evil in the world. Detective Margolies' (Jeffrey Combs)
view is that bad people do bad things to other people for personal gain - the solution is to put them
in jail. So when we see him we tried to shoot his perspective as an action movie, because that's his
world. When we get to Jade De Camp (Isabel Brook), her movie is a thriller. For her evil is a disease,
the hero is a sexually-disturbed man who is sick and is a predator, and if you could just cure him
with medicine, science and compassion then we could solve this problem. These movies always have
a lot of shadows so we shot her section as a thriller movie, finding out her back-story - giving her
her movie. The third part was shot as a horror movie. John Jasper (Mark Frost) knows evil is the
battle between God and the Devil and the soul of every man. It involves the supernatural, miracles,
magic and everything in between. You see scenes of him eating a heart which is straight out of a
horror movie, something that doesn't belong in the other two characters' movies. But finally all of
our characters have to enter the horror movie. A n d at the end we even have a big monster! So this
made the movie very complicated and it made it a danger of losing every audience. We made a lot
of choices that limited the audience, like with the music, for which we chose a hardcore heavy metal
soundtrack. I thought this is the milieu of this movie - we used them as scote and not as transitions
for the album.
Your films are renowned for their flashy, visually interesting film style. Does Faust fit in with this
tradition?
We shot it in a style that is uncomfortable, sexy and violent, which meant we can't have kids.
Normally a caped hero has kids - we can't have that. We also cut it in a very aggressive style, which
will alienate certain audiences that can't watch that kind of editing. I think it fits the comic book but
it certainly doesn't help you expand your audience - which makes it very risky - but you can't ignore
it, its unlike anything else.
What other projects can we expect from the Fantastic Factory?
The second movie we made, Arachnid (2001), is about a giant spider in the jungle. The film is
directed by Jack Shoulder. It's a giant spider movie for your grandmother! You can take yout whole
family. I think that in the long run, how well Faust does is not going to define the Factory - it is
certainly going to make people understand we're not going to follow the path anyone else has laid out.
That's important for me to say I just don't want to feel we have to play it safe, and this is one way to
do it.
The idea of creating a 'Horror Hollywood' in Spain ultimately seems like a high-risk but creative and
ambitious project.
Yes, you know, it is a high ambition, but I think that's all part of the feeling - there's a spirit in
Spain right now that's very ambitious and very open and that's what attracted me. This is because I
felt a little of what I loved about L.A. What I love about L.A. is that people go there with incredible
ambition and nine out of ten of them crash and burn bur they give off a wonderful light as they expire.
I feel the same way here in Spain. In Julio Fernandez we have a guy who's a visionary, ready to put the
money on the line, who has a company that's ready to get behind it and I think we will either have a
wonderful success or give off a great, bright light as we expire!

188