BY DR. BENNY GRAVES
For some, SPOOKIES is a very complex haunted mansion tale, a confusing monster mash with an incomprehensible plotline. For others, it’s an ’80s cult classic, an unforgettable serving of campy magic with truly impressive special effects. Yours truly is in the latter camp, a believer who knows SPOOKIES is one of the most fantastic cinematic carnival rides ever created. Disparate horror elements caper and dance before your eyes, and just when you think you’ve sorted it out, new insanity is thrown into the mix.
Originally, SPOOKIES was conceived as a joint directorial feature by Thomas Doran, Brendan Faulkner and Frank Farel, titled Twisted Souls. However, after Doran and Faulkner were fired, the producers were left with three hours of rough footage, lacking connective tissue for a feature film. So in 1985, NYU film grad Genie Joseph reluctantly slipped on her Dr. Frankenstein lab coat and set about turning Twisted Souls into a viable movie. What followed was an arduous tale of blood, sweat, tears, exploding Grim Reapers and, of course, farting zombies. Who better to tell it than Miss Joseph, herself!
I have an unabiding love for SPOOKIES and find it both a delightful oddity and a poignant example of how challenging it can be to make a movie. How did you get involved in horror films, and how did you eventually end up in the director’s chair?
So what happened was, I was editing a different film down the hall, and this producer said to me, “Hey, I’m looking for an editor.” I didn’t think I wanted to do it, but I wanted to be polite. So he brought me into the editing room and showed me a three-hour movie. It was so incoherent, I could only watch it in fast motion. The three directors had been fired. I said, “You’ve got some great special effects and some great monsters, but the dialogue is terrible, and the performances are questionable.” So I told him I’m going to cut away everything that’s not usable. We’ll keep what’s usable, and you’re going to need to do a reshoot. I assembled 45 minutes of usable footage. The cast were friends of the original directors and refused to participate. So I had to write a new storyline. It was very low budget; we had nine to ten days to shoot half a movie. And so that’s what I did! The goal was to make it look like one movie.
We need to talk about the farting zombies…
So the producer liked them, the sound guy was cackling, and I lost that fight, so it ended up in the final film. This was the 1980s; it was the cinematic Wild West. We weren’t in the corporate mold. What’s ironic is SPOOKIES was distributed by Sony as their first acquisition. Of course, no corporation would make a movie like this. But it was their first film, and I saw it in Times Square in NYC in the theater [with] a typical horror film audience yelling at the screen, telling the characters, “Don’t go in there!”
You continued in horror with a movie called Mindbenders.
Yeah, we shot that up in Canada. Skip Lackey and I wrote that together. It was Leet Turgeso’s first movie and starred Roy Thinnes from The X-Files. Another director was set to shoot this movie, and the script was horrific. I was told the movie had to start shooting in ten days because we only had the school over Christmas vacation. So we had to write a brand new script, cast the film, and start shooting before Santa did his thing.
Do you feel like you came away from SPOOKIES with any lessons?
You know it’s very hard to make a movie, period. Now, add to that – you’re making a low-budget movie, and there’s no cushion. There’s no pampering. With SPOOKIES, we were three people jammed in a hotel room using porta-potties. It’s just challenging, and with all the bruhaha that followed. I haven’t gotten any glory, and didn’t get paid anything beyond what I got for directing and editing the movie. But there’s nothing like being in the editing room to see what makes a movie work. When you’re in the editing room, you get to see two things: What goes in and what goes out. It’s trial by fire, you live, and you learn, and Mindbenders, which was a similar low-budget challenge, we put out something that was very good.
What are you doing now?
I was originally working with soldiers to manage PTSD using comedy and improv. It was a very effective program; we started to get an 80% reduction in PTSD. We brought in therapy dogs, and the results were such that I knew this was my life’s work. I rescued Oscar, a dog that was in a kill shelter and on death row with one day left. He became my therapy dog, with incredible instincts about people. If I were in a circle with a group of soldiers, Oscar would greet every soldier and sit in front of the one who was suicidal. That began the work I do now, The Human-Animal Connection. We work with high school students, 911 operators, veterans. It’s amazing what therapy animals can do to help people in distress.
SPOOKIES and Mindbenders are available on Blu-ray through Vinegar Syndrome.
