Hardcore Poisioned Eyes:
An Interview with Director Sal Ciavarello

By Kevin Lindenmuth

Hardcore Poisoned Eyes, the story of three college-age girls who go up to a secluded cabin only to be stalked by a deadly Satanist, is one of the most frightening microbudget movies I have seen. Recently, I had a chance to ask Sal Ciavarello a few questions about his new movie…

GC: What inspired you to make a supernatural oriented movie?

SAL: From a very early age I've always been interested in the supernatural, whether it came in the form of books, television airings of old Hammer pictures or a true story my mother told me when I was very young about an old man who suffered from lycanthropy! This actually happened in her home town in Sicily when she was a little girl. So, that's where it may stem from, or it could have all started on the day I went to see Dracula starring Bela Lugosi at my local library. It was being projected from a 16mm print and I was about nine or ten and those beautifully creepy black and white images are still embedded in my brain. I grew up watching what most kids who were horror fans watched in the '80s and that is the Friday the 13ths', Freddy films, and other stupid crap like that which I thought back then was great horror. I picked up my first film camera when I was fifteen. It was a super 8mm camera and I made these funny little horror films starring family members. In my senior year of high school I graduated my work to 16mm and later went to the School of Visual Arts in New York City where I continued my studies in film. My philosophy as a filmmaker has always remained the same and that is try to bring the horror genre to a higher and more respectable level.

GC: What are your influences (film, reading, et cetera) that led you to become a filmmaker?

SAL: My life changed dramatically one day in approximately two hours. There was this local mom and pop video store and this was back in the days where renting videos was a new and popular trend. I kept walking passed this ominous looking video box. It always caught my eye but for some reason I was afraid to rent it. Maybe it was because of the blurb which read: "An ultimate horror film! A savagely satanic vision of America" or maybe it was the freaky looking cover art, a very macabre montage of a decaying man rising from his bed. Anyway, I guess I must have run out of Jason sequels to rent because I took this film home with me that night and it was a night that I would never forget. The end credits were rolling and I was just sitting there on my couch with my mouth hanging open. That night I learned what a true horror film was; and that film was Dawn of the Dead. It was very different from all the other horror films I had seen until that point. I actually cared about these characters and Romero did an incredible job of creating an inescapable sense of apocalyptic doom through out the picture. Til this day it remains to be a source of inspiration for me when I'm down and it's still number one on my list.

GC: Who is your favorite director?

SAL: George Romero is my God. He's the reason why I'm a filmmaker. I love his films and to be honest and not to slam SVA (the School of Visual Arts) but I've learned more from watching his films than any film classes I took at any point in my life. I was completely shocked when I discovered that the actress, Nina Garbiras, who played the lead in my first professional horror film, Blue Shadows, a short which I made outside the film school world, went off to play one of the lead characters in Romero's upcoming film Bruiser. As silly as it sounds it's like having something in common with God. It's pretty cool.

GC: Why did you decide to do a movie on serial killer/satanists?

SAL: I have always found the dark religion to be so fascinating. I would really love to sit down and have a conversation with the Devil. There are so many questions I would want to ask him over a cup of flaming coffee. HPE was inspired by stories and research I did which began on the net and ended when I discovered a nonfiction book about a theorized conspiracy involving an ancient underground Satanic cult and David Berkowitz (the Son of Sam). The book is called "The Ultimate Evil" by Maury Terry and if anyone is interested in the subject matter this is the book to read. There is some pretty scary stuff in there. It's filled with theories, and presumably there's evidence linking Berkowitz to a very large and opulent group of folks who are not only very sick and violent Satanists but these folks hold very high and prestigious day jobs. That was all my already dark mind needed to begin writing Hardcore Poisoned Eyes.

GC: How did you decide on the film's title?

SAL: I knew I wanted to write a screenplay about Satanists. Now what I normally do when I begin my adventure of starting a screenplay is to come up with a title. For me, I don't know if it's all psychological, but I have to see the title on the top of the page; then the blank page is not so scary anymore because there is something on it, not just an intimidating blank page saying "what do you got?!?" Anyway, I listen to a lot of music when I'm writing, heavy metal, satanic metal, black metal, all that good stuff. That particular day I was listening to a song by Pantera. I think the line that caught my attention was "I'm born again with snake eyes". That really opened the flood gates to a whole sea of weird Satanic images, and from then on it evolved to what it is now. It really stuck when it totally summed up one of the character's journey in HPE, in fact she states that in her final voice over. Unfortunately, the only draw back is that every time I mention the title to someone and it never fails, but they always assume it's a freaking porno! I hate that because the film is nothing like that. No tits and ass. There isn't even any nudity in the picture.

GC: How would you say HPE differs from the slew of Blair Witch-type movies out there?

SAL: Well, first I'd like to say that I'm not a fan of The Blair Witch Project. To me, Blair Witch Project will always be a very successful gimmick but never a film. Those boys should be highly regarded in the marketing world and that's about it. The only thing HPE has in common with Blair Witch and crapola of the like is that they were shot on digital video. As much as I hated that film it did open up a lot of doors for Indie filmmakers like myself. It has given us the chance to make our first feature without putting our homes on the line and with the hope of getting wide distribution. What filmmakers need to realize is that they are hastily venturing into this fairly new medium with rushed scripts or maybe there is a lack of discipline while writing their scripts. It's like the world of Indie filmmakers suddenly realized "oh my God! I can make a feature if I sell my car!" And what they forget is that you have to take the time and be one hundred percent positive that you have written the best possible script before going off and introducing yourself to the world. I also think DV is very dangerous because now any idiot can pick up a camera and shoot some cheesy home made gore, find a couple of not too very bright hot chicks who are willing to take off their clothes and make a movie! And it's sad because these are the type of folks who are just in it for the money. They make a film for ten grand and make their profit by selling their crap to unsuspecting horror fans thinking "Wow, this looks like it might be good." Yeah. Right. My advice...Run!

GC: How did you cast your actresses?

SAL: What I normally do is try to envision or have an idea what the character looks like which can be a bad way to go about it. I mean I saw Sarah as a blonde when I was writing the script, but then Wendy Allyn came in to audition for the role and her performance just blew me away. It's funny because I had this headshot of Christine Gallo, the actress who played Angelique, and I had read something on her resume that I didn't like, I think it was the fact that she had soap opera training which immediately turned me off. Physically, she looked exactly like how I had envisioned Angelique, but I was like "come on, I don't want that stupid cheese ball type of performance in my film" so I tossed her headshot onto the reject pile. My producer Anthony Fariello was like "come on, just bring her in. Give her a chance. You've got nothing to lose except a few minutes of your time." So, after a few discussions I gave in and lucky for me I did. I would have the girls come in with a prepared dramatic monologue of their own choice and then I would have them do a cold reading. Her monologue was so powerful, emotional and incredible that I knew right then and there that she was my Angelique.

GC: How long did it take to shoot and edit the movie?

SAL: Shooting on Digital video is so different from shooting something on film. We shot the feature in a total of eleven days! If this was film it would have probably took a month. It's so unbelievable how quickly we can get shots done. There is no light meter to deal with, what you see is what you get. That's what I love about DV is that you can instantly see what you shot. We didn't need so many of those massive lights, if we did we would probably still be there trying to light the exterior night scenes. I edited the picture at the comfort of my own home which is so very cool. I can work on it at three in the morning if I wanted to (which I actually did for many nights). I cut it using the Mac G-4 with Final Cut Pro software. I think it took me about two months to finish my first cut but I was working on it for practically eighteen hours a day. Not something I advise for anyone to do, especially if you're nutritious intake is coming in the form of cigarettes and coffee.

GC: Were there any difficulties when making Hardcore Poisoned Eyes? (Weird stuff happening, production horror stories, et cetera)

SAL: We had very little problems actually. The only major problem we had was that my DP Huy Truong got pretty sick. I would say most of the film was shot using a stedicam junior and unfortunately Huy felt that the LCD screen was useless and so he kept one eye in the viewfinder and the other eye open and focused on making sure he wouldn't bump into anything while shooting the scene. We had no assistant camera person to help out. So, after a few days of shooting the feature this way, one of his eyes went nuts. He lost all sense of perspective because one eye couldn't properly focus anymore causing him to faint! It was a really scary time. I ended up shooting some scenes which I wish I didn't have to. Luckily, he quickly recovered and was okay.

GC: What is currently happening with HPE?

SAL: I've decided to self distribute the movie because I'm not happy with the deals I've been offered. I won't mention names but most of these mini-distributors basically want to distribute HPE which is cool but what isn't so cool is that they expect me to give them my movie for literally no money. That's insane. I mean they are offering a small percentage of net profits but as I've been told from people who have more experience in signing deals than I do is that I will never see a dime if I sign that kind of deal. And there's no way in hell I'm going to do that. I want get the best possible exposure for HPE. I'm working on getting HPE out on DVD with no region codes so that way anyone in the world can check it out. I hope this movie will bring more opportunities my way and hopefully I'll be able to continue to make Horror films.

GC: What is your next project?

SAL: I have several scripts that I want to bring to life. One is a continuation of the whole Satanic cult story that begins in HPE, but I would want to shoot this project on film and I have a particular actress named Hudson Leick in mind for the lead role. It's a more action pack script, lots of locations, it has a very frightening, powerful and sick ending. That's called Revelations. I also have a sort of epic werewolf/apocalypse horror film which would probably require fifty-million to bring into production. I'm currently writing a more realistic script, a DV type project. It's called South of Heaven and the lead character is a female Satanist.

Originally published in the August issue of GC Magazine - Edited by Jon Keeyes.