Arrow Video Frightfest returns for its twentieth year of frightful delights later this month. Running from Thursday 22nd August to Monday 26th August, the film festival showcases the best and brightest in films that embrace the darker side of cinema. In the run-up to the festival, we at THN are bringing you a series of interviews with some of the filmmakers presenting the fruits of their labour to the Frightfest audiences.
If you fancy your Frightfest horror film with a side of romance then look no further than Sadistic Intentions. Stu (Jeremy Gardner) and Chloe (Taylor Zaudtke) are two strangers who share the same mutual friend Kevin (Michael Patrick Nicholson); both have been lured to a house in the middle of nowhere for different reasons. Stu is there for band practice, and Chloe is there to score some weed. After Kevin is delayed, the pair face an uncomfortable amount of small talk as they wait for his arrival, but when Kevin does finally arrive, things take a sadistic turn.
Directed by Eric Pennycoff, Sadistic Intentions is a film of two parts, the first is a Richard Linklater like romantic comedy, the second a bloodthirsty fight for survival. They’re interesting conflicting stories that work well when thrown into the mix together. Given it’s rather unique storytelling, we sat down with Pennycoff to get his take on the film, what it’s like working with Larry Fessenden, and whether he’s got his Frightfest karaoke song picked out yet.
What was it that got you into fimmaking?
What got me into filmmaking really was, from a practical standpoint, I was an intern at Glass Eye Pix in 2010. I had thought about making movies before then, but it wasn’t really until I started seeing Glass Eye Pix’s DVDs, and subsequently meeting them, that I was introduced to this new wave of low budget pictures. You could see how they were made, but at the same time they were incredibly engaging, so it wasn’t that they were just cheap. They were incredibly engaging and interesting and unlike anything I had seen, but they seemed possible to make. It was the first time I was introduced to, I guess what you’d call an independent horror scene. That’s really where it began from a practical sense, but I’ve grown up just loving all the classic kid’s movies that most kids my age loved, but in addition to that, horror specifically was always something I gravitated towards.
I worked in haunted houses as a kid and I was just always fascinated with how things worked. Even if it was behind the scenes at a haunted house or roller-coaster – indoor roller-coasters always fascinated me – I was just so amazed at how things were contained. How it was just simple this wall, or this piece of drywall that was painted to a certain thing in a haunted house for example, that could have such a dimensional separation from the world inside the haunted house compared to the parking lot you were in outside. I was always just fascinated with that wall between the real and the unreal.
So was it the internship at Glass Eye Pix that allowed you to get Larry Fessenden in for his cameo in the film?
Yeah, I mean that’s definitely when I first met Larry. We shot Sadistic Intentions about a year and a half / two years ago. After I’d interned in 2010 with him and a number of people that worked with him, it was years and years of working for him. I had helped edit a few of the special features on his Shout Factory Blu-ray box-set. I had done little jobs before then, but when I helped him edit some of those materials that was really the first time we sat down and spent time just the two of us. Just sitting down and going through his incredible archive that he had of behind the scenes footage, and all of these 35mm scans that he’d had done for the box-set. I really got to know him then, and around that time was when I was really trying to make a feature film happen, and I knew that whatever it was that chances were there was a way to get him in it one way or another. He’s great, he’s one of those people that, whether you have gone through the school of Glass Eye Pix with him, or you’ve just been in or around, he’s just so down to help young filmmakers, old filmmakers, anyone. There’s so many people that make things with him that have been with Glass Eye Pix since the early years.
It screens at Frightfest, but have you managed to see his new film Depraved yet?
I have not. I considered asking for a link because I’m such a fan of his movies. When I found out that it was playing at Frightfest I thought I definitely don’t want to see this on a computer or a TV, this is one to see in the theatres. I’m very excited. I know he’s been talking about making that one for quite some time and just knowing bits and pieces about it, it’s always been intriguing. Especially because of the way that he treats the mythos of the classic monsters is so interesting. Even his first feature No Telling is in some ways a sort of retelling of the Frankenstein story, so I’m intrigued to see how he treats it here.
Sadistic Intentions
Where did the idea for Sadistic Intentions come from?
You know the idea for this movie was born pretty quickly out of necessity because another film I was trying to make with the exact same house and exact same three actors fell apart. We had something else planned that we had been trying to do the previous year, a tad bigger in scope, but similar to Sadistic in many ways, but it didn’t happen. I was in this moment where I was moving States and I thought I’d never get this movie made, but I had these three actors that I had just been in love with for so long, both as actors and as people. I just thought I’ve got this house, I’ve got these three actors, what do I really need, what can I really tell with those four crucial elements. I started to go through some ideas that played into the previous film, but started to think about well why would you need to be in a single house.
This is a single house romantic thriller with very dark undertones and I started to think about all of these legends I had heard about of famous rock bands, or small bands, locking themselves away in house to try and record an album. Often a lot of drama comes from that because very few bands can get along for that amount of time. There’s the story of Led Zeppelin or maybe Jimmy Page purchasing the house that was owned by Aleister Crowley, and there’s more legends and mythos that go into that than there’s actually quantifiable viable information. But that always made for an interesting set-up, and whilst Sadistic Intentions is not that story-line exactly, that’s where I got that idea of a musician luring a fellow band-mate and a friend of his to his house and a reason that you could be there for a period of time. It then turned into one of those stories that a lot of people can relate to where you show up to some place where you’re invited by a friend and you get there and maybe that friend is not there, or it’s mostly people you don’t know, and you’re left to endure one another. That can either go favourably or not so.
That feeling of just having to wait or endure people you don’t know or maybe wouldn’t get along with because you have mutual acquaintances. That’s the spark of where the story came. Just trying to find a good reason to be in that house. The film that we had tried to make prior was an entirely different plot that was also something that revolved around a good reason for two / three people to be in a house. I have this tendency of trying to make a film, and then the first thing I come up with is maybe a little harder to pull off and then I scale down until I have something that’s doable. The most important thing for me was the actors. As long as I had these three actors and this house, I knew that the story that came about would be interesting.
Horror and metal music have always gone hand in hand, why do you think that is?
The metal head character has always featured in films, they’ve always been in the background, or they’ve been a joke bit. I think more and more now, just with film-making, even outside of horror in a broader sense, you just see more and more sub-genres, sub classes or people that have not been featured in films making their way from background parts to leading roles. Personally, my way into it was I was playing in heavy metal bands. That was pretty much all I cared about and all I did from age sixteen through twenty / twenty one or so. Heavy metal was really the first thing that made me come out of my shell. I was a very quiet kid, didn’t really make friends until I got into high-school, with people at different schools because I started to play in bands and there was really no one from my high-school or my close friend group at the time that were into that. So it was really the first thing that took me out of my shell and introduced me to a family outside of my own.
To many people your metal head or horror film fan are seen as these creepy weirdos who worship the devil etc. but here, with Stu, you show a different side to most media representations.
It’s true. I think that while this is a movie that can be quite specific to metal heads and subculture ideology, at the the heart of it, its a very universal, cautionary tale and that’s really because I feel at the heart of every person, regardless of what sub genre or alternate class they belong to, we’re all people at the end of the day. I think telling the story within the medium of film, lends itself to that because films being at their most simplistic are about the human condition. I think it’s something that is important to have in each film, you always want to keep people as people in horror movies where things are really fantastical. It can be over the top. That’s always been important to me, yes representing people that we don’t know a great deal about, or the majority don’t know a great deal about, as human beings.
When I was watching it there was something distinctly Richard Linklater about the film, well the first portion at least, were there any films that influenced you?
One film that, it’s such a strange film because it is a genre film, but it doesn’t subscribe to any one genre, but I always find myself coming back to this movie regardless of what I’m writing because I feel that it has something that applies to what I’m doing, or it’s just something that I love so much that I think just has so much to offer as a film, by Derek Cianfrance called The Place Beyond the Pines which was his follow up to Blue Valentine. Blue Valentine is a great movie as well, but I really think The Place Beyond the Pines is just such an epic, but an epic of human proportions. It’s not an epic action movie. It has action elements and thrilling elements but at the heart of it is just this great human story. I’ll say the same about Inherent Vice which is a Paul Thomas Anderson film that I think people are still coming around to where it has so much going. So much so that people can’t seem to follow that story for the most part. But if you can cut through all the smoke and confusion, at the heart of it is just this great love story about a love that could never be. I find myself regardless of what I’m doing looking for what can this really boil down to at its most simplistic? For me that was the connection between Chloe and Stu in Sadistic.
Sadistic Intentions
For the first half of the film we spend a lot of time with these two characters, getting to know them. How important was it for you that the audience spent so much with these characters getting to know them?
It is very important. It’s in the script, I haven’t looked at the script in a long time, but I’m sure the page count, or the minute count, probably lines up to about the way it does in the edit. Yeah it’s important to me, I love simple straight-forward horror as much as anyone. Most of the horror that I watch is that in many ways, but for some reason I just felt compelled to spend time with characters long before I’m gonna do anything sinister to them.
It makes sense, you want the audience care about these characters and what is going to happen to them.
I think you said it perfect with metal heads being approached in different ways. You need that time to break down that stereotype. Because people going into it, once they realise that they’re in a band and they’re involved in metal music, some people might have their minds made up already. That time is really to get everyone on the same page, because you are dealing with preconceived notions.
The film has already had a couple of screenings, what has the reception been so far?
Quite honestly, better than I anticipated, and that’s basically because I tend to have low expectations for most things. It’s one of those where I knew going into the writing of it, the shooting of it and certainly the editing of it that this could go either way. It’s a genre film. It’s certainly a horror film I believe. While horror audiences are certainly open to different things, it seems like from what I’ve seen in the previous ten years, there’s always that thought in the back of my head that says, ‘is anyone going to care to watch these people? Or do they just want to get to the real horror of it all?’ I’m happy that I followed my gut on this one because so far, I won’t say surprising, but it’s been calming to hear that people, while they do enjoy the horror, really appreciate the first thirty-five minutes.
It next screens at Arrow Video Frightfest, what can the Frightfest audiences expect from this film that they might not get from some of the other films playing?
I mean you get romance, you get horror, you get great acting. You get a thunderstorm brewing in the background. You get wicked, sweet heavy metal. I mean you get all these things which, while they may feel to some separate in their own world, I think are really well jelled together. The sound mix is terrific and the cinemas that it’s playing at it looks and sounds great, so this is the place to see it. For fans of horror, for fans of love – which I love love – I think everyone loves love whether they say that they love love or not. It’s really in some ways a twisted love story that was never meant to be. I think a lot of people can relate to that.
You’re coming to Frightfest for the duration, have you picked out you karaoke song for the Sunday night party?
Man I’ve gone to couple of festivals now with some serious karaoke competition and I just didn’t have anything on the spot. I feel like I really need to prepare something in advance. Fortunately, I’ve got a long enough flight to figure what I wanna sing. I will be at the Phoenix Club as well on the Wednesday [for the pre-festival party] night. I will presenting a film / trailer that evening so anyone that’s there, let’s hang out.
How does it feel to be part of the line-up?
I was blown away by the list that had played Frightfest when I was sent the link to see everything that’s been played there over the last twenty years. It’s like every good movie has come through Frightfest.
Sadistic Intentions was finished a while ago, are you working on anything at the moment?
Yeah, I’m always writing, always trying to figure out if anyone will let me get away with doing this again. Some days it feels like, ‘oh yeah,I can make another one,’ and other days it’s like, ‘no one’s going to let me get away with making this one.’ I have a melodramatic revenge comedy set in the Southern United States that I really want to make next. It’s been written for a little bit, it requires some specific things that are easily in low budget in some regards, but require a bit more support in others. So I’m working away on that one, hopefully it will happen.
Sadistic Intentions screens at Arrow Video Frightfest on Friday 23rd August 2019.
