Event report, Roebuck talks Halloween 2
This weekend, the team at Bantam Street films held their fourth LA premiere for Larry Blamire’s third “throwback” film Dark and Stormy Night at the Egyptian theater in Hollywood. You may remember Larry as the writer/director behind The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra and The Trail of the Screaming Forehead (coming to DVD from IFC in the fall). The term “throwback,” coined by me by the way, is the word I use to describe these films. Larry has built a cult following by recreating films from the ’40s, ’50s, and now ’30s, and injecting humor into the proceedings.
I pulled him away from his mob of fans and friends and asked him what inspired him to make A Dark and Stormy Night, which is essentially a 1930s murder mystery. “There had been movies that had been similar to old-dark-house movies like Clue and Murder by Death, both of which I really enjoyed,” he said. “But I wanted to do something that threw in every possible cliche. Sliding panels, secret passageways, phantoms, the reading of a will, all on a dark and stormy night, and just have as much atmosphere as we could. It was a lot of fun because we had to capture a certain style and I think the actors did a great job of capturing that style of acting. I’ve just always loved those kinds of movies. Any movie were people are in an isolated situation and there’s a killer in their midst.”
Wandering through the lobby, I found the portraits of the Cavinder family displayed about and took my time to enjoy every subtly disturbing detail. Painted digitally by artist Cortney Skinner, the Cavinder portraits remind one of the freaky portraits in Disney’s Haunted Mansion.
A saw Dan Roebuck, who plays reporter 8 O’Clock Farraday, Alison Martin, who plays the psychic Mrs. Cupcupboard, and Brian Howe, who plays the foppish Burling Famish Jr., and approached them to get their take on the film. “It’s sort of like ‘Ten Little Indians’, but nuts,” said Alison. “Are we allowed to say indians anymore? Ten little native americans maybe?” added Dan. And having him in front of me, I couldn’t help but pump him for information on his upcoming appearance in Halloween 2, maybe you’ve heard of it?
“Halloween 2 is going to be really epic,” stated Dan. “The tone changes throughout the movie and its going to be a little different than what people think. People will love it. Rob Zombie’s never disappointed his fans. He’s disappointed a lot of people who don’t like to see people’s heads cut off, but those people aren’t going to go see H2, they’re going to go see something with Jennifer Aniston.” I had to ask if he was going to die in the film and he craftily replies: “I can tell you that I have died on film many times and this will definitely may or may not be one of them.”
Switching gears back to Dark and Stormy Night, I asked the trio, who have worked with Blamire more than once, what the experience was like. “Well, it’s great, because you know you’re going to be handed something that you know is unlike most of what you’ve done before,” said Brian. “And it’s going to be in a very specific language because he [Blamire] puts words in a funny order. There’s no ad-libbing in a Larry Blamire movie. So you know its going to be something really different and really fun. He’s very democratic in his writing, I think everyone gets a chance to shine.” Alison added: “It’s really, really fun. We literally would make each other cry, we were laughing so hard.”
The film started after a few trailers for the rest of Blamire’s oeuvre, and for the next 92 minutes the film kept the nearly-sold out audience laughing. In the end, there was wild applause as the cast and crew took the stage for a Q&A session and raffle. The winners of the raffle walked off with Bantam Street merchandise, they were the production company for the film, and the audience walked away with a better appreciation of the old-dark-house movie.
I caught up with Alison, Brian, and Dan again and asked how they managed to create their characters or channel their 1930s selves to so accurately portray the stock characters in a low-budget murder mystery of that era. “Well, as you know I played 8 O’Clock Farraday, so I would only come to work at 8 o’clock. Even if they needed me at 7, I’d only come at 8 o’clock. And by the way, I’d leave at 8 o’clock, which proved problematic because they’d have one minute to shoot out my entire day. Well, it was really more like 59 seconds.”
“For Mrs. Cupcupboard I shook a lot,” said Alison. “And I channeled things. I channeled a lot of things. And the hat. I need something on my head to actually act in Larry’s films. I had a headband, and a turban, and cantaloupe, so there you go.” Brian chimed in with his acting technique, “Stacy Smith, our lovely makeup girl, would draw a little mustache on my lip. My pencil-thin mustache was actually drawn on with a pencil and that was the beginning of my day.”
The fans and well-wishers lingered around for an hour after the show to congratulate the cast and crew, but mostly Larry for making not only a great homage to 30s mystery movies, but a damn funny movie, too. I took him aside one last time before he headed off to bask in the glow of a successful screening and asked where his fascination with making throwbacks came from.
“I think there’s an audience for throwbacks,” Larry began. “There’s an audience for a more traditional kind of entertainment but with a little twist on it because these are not strictly traditional. They are tweaked in little ways and we’re just emulating these old movies. But I do think there is an audience and we’re tapping into it. We have a grassroots following that is just growing and finding these movies which are an alternative to super-fast editing and super-loud in-your-face sound. Why does everything have to be like that? Let’s have something that’s a little more traditional but still takes you to a strange and different place, because that’s ultimately what we want to do.”
Even though Dark and Stormy Night and the Cadavra sequel The Lost Skeleton Returns Again! are not available on DVD yet, I asked how soon we could get the dvds in our grubby little hands. “We’re looking for distribution, they’re both out there and we’re shopping them around. We’re taking meetings and holding screenings like this one. The response has been great so far. The perfect thing would be if one company would pick up both movies.” But even though the films haven’t seen the official light of day on store shelves, Blamire and company have not slowed down and are still churning out films. “One is Voyage to the Planet of Space, which is an outer space-type space opera film which will be very different from this one. It will be all soundstage stuff so it will have every practical effect you can imagine. Lots of monsters, creatures, and aliens. It’s basically a very silly journey to another planet and that leaves it wide open, you can do anything you want with a movie like that. The other movies we have on our slate are not necessarily throwbacks. We have some contemporary ones, too. We want to branch out and we don’t want to get pigeonholed.”
As I left that night, I couldn’t help but want to see the movie again. I just had such a great time watching it and the people behind the film were as nice as can be. Here’s hoping original, entertaining movies like this get to see the light of day sooner than later. Like producer Mike Schlesinger writes in the movie’s presskit, “We’re making fun, smart pictures, which seem to be in short supply these days, and we like to think our movies aren’t like anybody else’s. For one thing, we’re not afraid of black-and-white!”
Visit the official Dark and Stormy Night site here!
Source: Jose Prendes
