Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on May 21, 2007, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
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Abel Ferrara and Larry Cohen? Too mainstream. Frank Henenlotter and Jeff Lieberman? Overexposed. Behind these oft-celebrated auteurs has lurked a whole subculture of 1970s and ’80s American independent horrormeisters—filmmakers who cranked out mini- (and sometimes micro-) budgeted shockers that may not have been as praiseworthy as those of the aforementioned directors, but exert an off-mainstream fascination of their own. We’re talking people like Frederick R. Friedel, whose North Carolina-lensed oeuvre is highlighted by the minimalist hack-’em-up opus Axe; Joseph Ellison and James Bryan, who from opposite ends of the country admonished audiences Don’t Go in the House and Don’t Go in the Woods, respectively; and Johnn (yes, with two n’s) Wintergate, who shot Boardinghouse on early-’80s consumer-level video yet managed to see the result receive theatrical release.
At a time when every DIY director is claiming his or her movie harks back to that boom period for down-and-dirty fright fare, and the term “grindhouse” has become a buzzword, it’s only appropriate that Stephen Thrower’s years-in-the-making book Nightmare USA has become available from Britain’s FAB Press. Subtitled The Untold Story of the Exploitation Independents, it begins with a lengthy essay on the subgenre and compiles in-depth interviews with over 20 practitioners of the budget-gore trade, plus reviews of well over 100 chillers from the era with notes by a number of other filmmakers, all wrapped around an eye-popping collection of rare stills, posters, ad art and other extreme visuals across its 528 pages.
A die-hard fan of low-budget American horror from his teens, Thrower was inspired to express that love on paper during a difficult time in his life six years ago. “I fell seriously ill for a couple of months,” he recalls, “and while convalescing, I tucked into a great pile of U.S. exploitation videos, including many I’d never seen before. It felt good to forget about my woes by watching all these characters being sliced and diced and axed and burned alive! Very therapeutic. By the time I was well again, I was obsessed with the idea of writing a definitive guide. I’ve never been that enamored of mainstream horror; it has always been the independent stuff that appealed to me. I was obsessed with European horror for many years—the Dario Argento-Lucio Fulci-Mario Bava axis—but after Beyond Terror, my book on Fulci, I felt I’d reached saturation point. I wanted to refocus, and the American material really appealed.”
He found a kindred spirit in FAB’s Harvey Fenton, who had previously published the definitive Beyond Terror and, like Thrower, “grew up in the UK during the ‘video nasty’ era—and many of the films covered in this book were prime ‘nasty’ stock,” he says. “Axe, Don’t Go in the House, Don’t Go in the Woods, Robert Endelson’s Fight for Your Life, Forest of Fear, Frozen Scream, The Slayer, The Toolbox Murders…the list goes on. This is the stuff we grew up on, and a fundamental part of what turned me on to horror movies in the first place. A more rootsy project I cannot imagine.”
Noting that most previous books on the subject have tended to either focus on individual filmmakers or present a wide-ranging assortment of capsule reviews, Thrower aimed “to combine the depth of the former variety with the breadth of the latter.” As the likes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Dawn of the Dead and The Last House on the Left had already been covered, pardon the expression, to death, he set out to track down the creators of “movies that have never been under the spotlight before.” Largely utilizing the Internet, he started putting out feelers and began to make contact with these filmmakers, who were in some cases integral in pointing Thrower toward others. By the end of the process, the author had enough material for two books (more on that later), and he claims that “at least 18 of the 25 directors in the book’s main section have never discussed their work in print before. It’s actually amazing how few directors of classic ’70s exploitation have been interviewed.”
The bulk of the chats were conducted over the phone—“long sessions, often for hours at a time,” Thrower reports. “The first edition of Nightmare USA should just about pay back my phone bill! Maybe a quarter were done via e-mail. The only one done face-to-face was with John Ballard, the director of Friday the 13th: The Orphan, who came to London when his jazz-singer wife played at the famous Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London.” The most surprising interviewee, he adds, wasn’t a director, but “Rue McClanahan, the actress. She’s famous for The Golden Girls, but she made her starring debut in the early films of John Hayes, who went on to make Grave of the Vampire. She was an incredibly valuable and enlightening interviewee on Hayes, who died some years ago. She gave me fantastic background material, and that chapter became one of my favorites.
“Then there’s Jim Bryan,” he continues. “I first contacted him to learn about Don’t Go in the Woods, which I love, but he turned out to have had a far more complex and varied career than I’d expected. It was the same with Norman Thaddeus Vane of The Black Room and [1983’s] Frightmare, who I was amazed to learn had made two experimental black-and-white films here in London in the early ’60s.”
In addition to relating their histories, the filmmakers helped out by providing stills and other visual material to support the text of their interviews, and in certain cases unearthed surprising bits of memorabilia. “After 10 years of putting together horror-film books, it’s tempting to say I’ve seen it all,” Fenton muses, “but I must admit that holding an original Easy Rider call sheet in my hands was quite a surreal experience. This was supplied to us by Daniel DiSomma, a.k.a. Tony Vorno, the director of Victims!, because he was part of Peter Fonda’s Rider crew in the early days of his career. I also got a kick when I first saw James Cameron’s promotional artwork for Frightmare. Yes, that James Cameron.”
Yet even with all this cooperation, there were still gaps to be filled when it came to illustrating the lengthy tome. Once the contributions of the interviewees had been sorted through, Fenton made an appeal through the FAB website to collectors and fans for visual material relating to a long list of titles. The responses came from all over (full disclosure: This writer was one of those who contributed), and Fenton says, “We will always remain grateful to the handful of dedicated and enthusiastic horror-movie fans who showed us so much generosity by allowing us to reproduce their precious memorabilia in print. I had no idea what sort of response we would get, as it was not something we had done before, but suffice to say we got what we needed to complete the book.”
The result will appeal to those who saw these films at drive-ins or hardtops back in the day and viewers who consumed them at home during the VHS boom, as well as newbies who may only be familiar with them via their influence on current fright fare. While he admits to enjoying certain of the 2000s’ homagistic horrors like Wrong Turn, Thrower believes they’re missing the anything-goes charm of the genuine article. “What strikes me as different from the true grindhouse movies,” he says, “is that the new ones are made very much within the mainstream industry, and constructed to a mainstream template. Although they’re often quite gruesome, which is nice, they lack that delirious quality you get from the really heavy, sleazy ’70s horrors; these new movies are ‘well-made,’ but in a sensible, four-square way. I would prefer a little more idiosyncrasy, a bit more craziness in the actual style. For me, films like The Headless Eyes, Boardinghouse, The Child or Death Bed: The Bed That Eats have something strange and wonderful to offer. In the best independent exploitation films of the ’70s, you never knew quite where you were going.”
To celebrate those qualities and herald the book’s release, Fenton put together a special one-day festival of features covered in its pages, giving London-area fans the chance to experience the likes of Don’t Go in the House, Boardinghouse and Victims! on the big screen. Fenton, who culled the 35mm prints from assorted collectors, even scored a world premiere for the event: “Fred Friedel had just finished putting together his new film Bloody Brothers—basically a magnificent blending of his classics Axe and Kidnapped Co-Ed,” he reports. In addition, Friedel and Ellison attended as guests of honor, and the result was a sellout—giving further recognition to moviemakers who have waited decades to receive it.
