The Horror Returns - THR: Flashback - David Gregory Interview

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

Remember when we partnered with BingeMedia to bring you an interview with David Gregory? We do! Enjoy this little blast from the past as we bring you part 2 of a BingeMedia/THR crossover. Thanks for listening! The Horror Returns Website: https://thehorrorreturns.com THR Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thehorrorreturns THR Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thehorrorreturns/ Join THR Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1056143707851246 THR Twitter: https://twitter.com/horror_returns?s=21&t=XKcrrOBZ7mzjwJY0ZJWrGA THR Instagram: https://instagram.com/thehorrorreturns?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y= SK8ER Nez Podcast Network https://www.podbean.com/pu/pbblog-p3n57-c4166 ESP Anchor Feed: https://anchor.fm/mac-nez E Society YouTube Channel https://youtube.com/channel/UCliC6x_a7p3kTV_0LC4S10A

James victims, for those of you who delight and dread, who fantasize about fear, who glorify gore, welcome, you have found the place where the horror returns. Listeners beware, this podcast contains major plot spoilers. and the foulest of language. Join us in celebrating the old and the new, the best, and the worst in horror. Greetings, listeners. You have found the horror returns, but not just any episode of the horror returns.

This is a very special part two of a two-part interview that I conducted with my real good friend Jack Falvey from binge media. How's it going, Jack? Oh, it's going great, man. What a great interview. Yeah, that was a lot of fun, man. We interviewed David Gregory, who is the director of a number of documentary films.

The one that caught our attention was Lost Soul, which was the film about Richard Stanley's, I guess you would say, failed attempt to make the island of Dr. Moreau that probably would have been better than the finished product. Would you agree? Probably. He's also the president of Severin Films, and I met up with him at Texas Frightmare and noticed all the wonderful old horror and exploitation titles on the table and kind of got to talk to him a little bit and found out he actually had directed this film. So, Jack, thanks for joining me, man. Are you ready for us to roll part two here for our listeners? Absolutely.

Very excited. And just for the ones who missed it or who don't listen, where should they point that clicker to go back and pick up part one? Yeah, part one is featured on this past week's binge cast. So as this drops, our show that dropped on Monday, in all likelihood featuring some of the Lollapalooza Recap and a few other things from the boys, that's where you'll be able to find this.

And, you know, here the first half of our really, fantastic interview with David Gregory. All right, excellent. So this is the first of hopefully many crossovers with binge media and the horror returns. Hope you guys enjoy part two. I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about the project, frankly. There was some lunatic movie that's known as one of the worst films ever made.

Nice, yeah. You know, I wanted to talk a little bit about Theater Bazaar because that was a, that was a horror anthology film. that came out maybe at a time where they weren't as popular. And, you know, horror anthologies are, seems like we get a lot of them more and more every year. I mean, I think the last one that I saw was Tales of Halloween, but, you know, you get your trick-a-treats. There are three VHS films.

Oh, yeah. All kinds of stuff out there now. So I was just wondering, like, what are the events that led up to the release of that? And, you know, was there, like, specific inspiration for it or, you know, where did that come from? It was exactly that that there hadn't been many horror anthologies in recent years. I think Trick or Treat was actually before Theatre Bazaar, but Theatre Bizarre, like a lot of the ones that have come about since,

was a multi-director anthology. And there hadn't been that many of those. They did exist, but there hadn't been that many of them in the years previous. Most horror anthologies had one director and usually one writer as well, right going back to waxworks in the the German Expressionism film and right up until the 2000s

it was usually just one director but it came about because I was I was festivaling my first feature at Plague Town and I was at the Boston Underground Film Festival with Kareem Hussein and we were just talking you know bitching like filmmakers do about how hard it is to get a feature off the ground and stuff like that

and it just seemed to me that an anthology would be a good way for filmmakers to actually be able to get a film made without it just being a short that wouldn't get seen and have a have a have a basic idea thread theme to run through like a lot of anthologies do and then just you know approach a few filmmakers and see if they be up for the challenge and and that's basically what happened. started with Kareem, he brought on Doug Buck, then we approached Richard, a couple of the filmmakers we approached, either couldn't do it or had to drop out. And then, you know, once we got the whole package together, I actually got better directors, higher profile directors together than I thought I would get

because really it was an excuse for me to be able to make another movie as well. And it would be easier to sort of raise the, money for for something like this if I was able to get some you know a couple of decent directors on board and I think the roster that we got was great and I think ultimately everybody entered into the spirit of it and delivered something that was way above and beyond what I could have expected for what the budget was so I'm pretty proud of the movie with how it came out and then and it seemed like very soon after that a lot of anthology movies were happening with

with the same kind of model. And I'm not saying it was my idea that anyone took. I'm saying that it was more kind of the climate for filmmakers at the time, that it was getting harder and harder for them to get features off the ground. So it seemed like approaching filmmakers to contribute an anthology meant that they're not taking three years out of their life. You know, you can give them, these are the parameters, this is the budget, come back with a film, where it's a pretty enticing thing for a, for a,

for a filmmaker to commit to because it gives you creative freedom, but it also makes you part of a project with, you know, with colleagues. Yeah, it's a match made in heaven, basically, for the format that it is. Yeah, yeah, no, it was a really, in terms of creatively, it was really kind of satisfying projects all around, and we premiered it at Fantasia, which is where a lot of the filmmakers had had films before, so it all seemed kind of like family-like almost.

They gave us a real impressive premiere. And then, lo and behold, just like so many filmmaking stories, we sold it to a distribution company who basically stole the film, never paid for it. And we had to sue them. Oh, boy. So Theatre Bazaar 2 was put on hold. And that's when all the VHSs and ABCs of deaths and all that kind of came out. And so then by the time we finally got the rights back,

I mean, I think the anthology format has kind of been done. done to death at this point. But we are going to put out a special edition Blu-ray of it through Severin. So it will at least have a chance to shine without it making money for somebody else. That sounds great. Looking forward to that one. What are the biggest differences for you to prepare for and execute documentary filmmaking versus a scripted work? I suppose the main difference is that with the scripted work, you once you, Once you're out of the gate, you have to get to the finish line as quickly as possible. Because once you start shooting and you've got everybody there, that's when you start hemorrhaging money all over the place.

And you've got a ton of people that you only have for a limited amount of time. Okay. With the documentaries, we're working with other people's schedules. So we're reliant on interviewees and things to fall into place that we have to do. So I'm always working on a number of different. documentaries at the same time that are in various stages of production. Ah, okay. Yeah, so basically, I, you know, I've got one right now that we're in post-production on,

about the life and death of Al Adamson, which is, which has been in production for about a year and a half now, and is being edited by Mark Hartley, the guy directed Electric Bugaloo and not quite Hollywood. And, and, but it's, you know, it's taking its sweet time to get to the finish line, because there's no actual delivery date necessarily. I mean, I know I need to get it finished because we've been spending money on it, and we've licensed a bunch of the movies to come out with it when we bring it out. But at the same time, it's not like I'm delivering for somebody else,

or I'm reliant on, you know, the actors' schedules or something like that. Interesting. Very interesting. I mean, yeah, documentaries always have the, well, not always, but a lot of the time it seems like they have the benefit of being able to take more of a cursory look at things, step back for a moment, take your time and really craft the narrative that you're trying to get across. You know, something like LA 92 that I just saw. Very interesting approach. Again, a similar approach where there's no narration, really. There's nobody guiding me through the story.

But you can definitely see where, you know, they're not. necessarily a slave to the clock when it comes to putting together and making their overall points. It's kind of interesting to hear that perspective on it. Right. So this is a very nerdy question, but it's one that I always like to ask people because I think it's... Here we go. I'm very much in the middle, just for the listeners, very much in the middle of this debate. But are you more of a Star Wars guy or a Star Trek guy?

Well, seeing as I've never seen a full episode of Star Trek in my life. Oh, no. I will have to go on the side of Star Wars, but I'm not the hugest Star Wars fan either. I will say that I saw the first Star Wars when I was, I think, five years old, and it blew me away. But I never saw the Empire Strikes Back until a few years later. And then I saw Return of the Jedi when it was kind of ending its run. So by that point, I'd already become a... a horror fanatic.

Right. So it never really kind of took me away in the same way we did with a lot of people. Gotcha. Gotcha. Interesting. Didn't pop up on the radar the same way the Exorcist did. No, exactly. Well, although I have a beef with the Exorcist as well because not being Catholic.

I don't find it nearly as scary as a lot of people do. I was much more, I was much more a Texas chainsaw guy when I was a kid. Actually, that kind of leads to a different question that, now that I think about it. So what are, like, when it comes to horror films, do you have a couple that are real benchmarks for you that you sort of look at and you say, yeah, like, that's, that's perfect. Like, I want to emulate that or just some general favorites?

Yeah, I mean, Texas Chainsaw and Dawn of the Dead were the ones that I, that really stuck with me when I was a youth. But having said that, the day that I saw Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I was watching it with my business partner Carl. When we were in school together, I guess we were probably nine years old or something like that. And I remember we were pretending to play chess in the living room. So if our parents walked in,

that's what we could say we were doing. Whereas we were watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And also on that very same day, Jess Franco's Bloody Moon, which is a movie we've brought out on Blu-ray through Severin, which is a very important movie to us, because we thought that was, those two movies were the best movies in the world. Now, as time has gone on, I've sort of realized that Texas Chainsaw Mexico is actually genuinely one of the best movies ever made,

and Bloody Moon is kind of like a fun slasher. But certainly those were both very landmark movies as far as I was concerned. But, I mean, you know, there's any number of them as life has gone on. I mean, when I saw Twin Peaks Firewalk with me in 1992, I thought it was just a, best thing I'd ever seen and ever will see. And I was just watching it again the other night and I still think it's a masterpiece. But yeah, and zombie, and zombie, as it's called here, it was called zombie flesh eaters in England was one of the first, pretty, I think it was the first gore movie that I ever rented when we got a VCR when I was a kid. And I just rented it based on the cover

artwork. And again, it was the cut version in England, but I still thought it was an absolute masterpiece. believe how impressive this movie was. And a lot of it was to do with the atmosphere and the makeup, less to do with the actual splatter, because a lot of that stuff was cut out of the UK version. But, you know, once I got to see the Uncut version, which came out a couple of years later in England, obviously it was even better.

But that also was a pretty major landmark movie. And Susperia, the same. thing. When I first saw Susperia, I was just, you know, just just the noise and the beauty that accompanied the outright violence was, was something that was really impressive. Oh, that's Susperia score still gets under my skin. That's an amazing score. Yeah. But even, but now, but, you know, things change. Like, nowadays, like, I'm more inclined to put on phenomena than I am to put on Susperia. So, so, you know, who knows, who knows why our, why our tastes, uh, uh, uh, um, are attracted to one thing over another over time. Sure, sure. Well, David, I met up with you in Texas at the Frightmare Convention last month.

I'm curious how often you make it to Texas because there's actually a cult classic convention coming up, 29 September through the 1st of October you might be interested in. Oh, really? Yeah, it's going to be in Bastrop. I'm looking at the website. They're going to have most of the family from the original Texas Chainsaw Masker in attendance. and a number of people from part two as well. Oh, well, that's cool.

I mean, I love Texas, obviously. It's got, you know, Texas Chainsaw Shocking Truth was my first feature documentary. I was mainly shot in Austin. And, you know, I've been to Fantastic Fest and the draft house a couple of times with my, with work that I've done. And, of course, we go to the Texas Frightmare every year, which is far in a way the most outstanding horror convention that there is, certainly that I'm aware of. I mean, that's, we, we, we try and have a bigger presence and, and, uh, design releases around Texas Frightmare nowadays because it's, uh, it's quite, in fact, we, I was just talking with Lloyd from Texas Frightmare right afterwards and telling him how it was even better

than a lot. Every year, it just gets bigger and better. And, and next year we're working on bringing a guest who is, uh, uh, over from Europe, who is, uh, connected to a couple of the movies we'll be putting out next year. Obviously, I can't say who it is at this point, but, So that's for Lloyd to announce. But, you know, it's something we very much look forward to every year. All right. Well, that does bring us to a final question we want to ask you. What do you see as the future of Severn films?

Are there any upcoming projects that you're free to talk about at all? Yeah, so I've got the Al-Adamsson documentary, which is pretty fascinating. I don't know if you're familiar with Al-Adamsson, but he made a lot of very low-budget horror and exploitation movies in the 60s and 70s. like Dracula versus Frankenstein, Satan's sadist, blood of Dracula's castle, naughty stewardess, his nurse sherry. And he basically retired from filmmaking in the early 80s, but unfortunately is more famous now for being known as the guy who was murdered by his handyman and buried underneath his jacuzzi. So then this all happened out in Palm Desert, not far from here in L.A. So it's got the whole crazy filmmaker's story of this guy who just used to Shanghai people and go out to the desert and make these wacky exploitation movies, including like a lot of old Hollywood stars like John Caradine, for example, and then a bunch of new cast and crew talent, like Vilmosh Zygman and Laslo Kovacs, the DPs, both worked on Al-Adamsson movies. but then it takes this left turn in the last act into this kind of true crime drama

which is an area which I haven't really explored before in my documentary work so I've been interviewing a lot of kind of witnesses and people who knew him not from the movies but from that life after he retired and also a bunch of police and the DA and doing a fair amount of investigative stuff to figure out exactly how it went down so that's pretty cool so that should be finished I don't know hopefully hopefully in the early fall

that will be that will be finished and ready to go and ready to show up festivals and then I also shot another feature documentary on dark shadows as I mentioned and that's for that's for MPI that one's the closest to being finished and then thirdly the third

feature documentary I'm working on is called Enter the Clones of Bruce which is about which is about all those fake Bruce Lee films that came out Oh, for sure. Yeah, so basically once Bruce Lee died, you know, here was this guy who became the biggest movie star,

the first Asian movie star in the, who made such an impact across the world. All of a sudden drops dead right before his biggest movie came out. So there's this massive gap in the market. Finally, the Hong Kong industry thought, okay, let's make movies for the international market that are action movies and they lose their biggest star.

So all of a sudden, and also when Bruce died, of course, it was quite well known that he was in the middle of making a movie. So all these movies came out that were either kind of fake biopics

or fake sequels to his movies, you know, Fist of Fury 2 or whatever, or exit the dragon, enter the tiger. And then there are just like wacky ones,

like the clones of Bruce Lee where, you know, A scientist gets some of Bruce Lee's blood and makes a bunch of Bruce Lee's to go and fight the triads. Or the dragon lives again where he's in purgatory and he has about to go to hell. And he has to fight like James Bond and the man with no name and Emmanuel even and Popeye. Oh my goodness. Wow. How did I miss this?

Yeah, exactly. So there's a ton of them and there are four key fake bruses. And so far we've got three of them on camera. One of them is refusing to participate, which is really annoying. So we're going to try and keep on doing that. But if not, then we're going to finish it without them, because we've got so much great stuff. We shot in Hong Kong and Taiwan and South Korea just towards the end of last year.

And so that's all coming together. And in the meantime, we've got, you know, about three movies a month coming out through Severin. And a bunch of great stuff. So no shortage of stuff to do. Where do we go to to purchase all these wonderful Blu-Rays and DVDs through Severin? You can go to Severin-dash-films.com or just follow Severin films on Facebook because that's where we make all our announcements and all the special offers and the special sales and stuff like that. Yeah, Severin Films on Facebook is where we do regular updating and keep everybody abreast of what we're up to.

Great. Well, we really appreciate it. Jack, did you have any final words? No, just that really, again, can't say it enough. Love Lost Soul. It's one of my favorite documentaries of the past 10 years, right there with, like, King of Kong and some other entries. And I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us.

But, David, can we find you anywhere else on Facebook or Twitter? Any other handles you want to throw out there for the listeners? Yes, Severin films on Twitter as well, and Instagram as well. so yeah we're just severing films that's that's where all of the information of all the stuff that we're working on will be excellent

excellent well Lance I think we're I think we're all said if we're ready to wrap this thing up yep outstanding David we can't thank you enough for your time man I appreciate it guys no problem and we'll we'll email you when everything is up

and send you the links and all that good stuff and again you're getting double coverage with this interview with two groups, although I think there's probably a lot of bleed over and listeners, but we'll still get you a number of extra ears listening as well. Thank you very much. Well, good luck editing that. Real good. Thank you.

All right, thanks, David. Thanks. Thank you.