Regurgitated Films' Shawn Allen recently conducted an over-the-phone interview with director Danny Draven (Horrorvision, Darkwalker, Hell Asylum, Deathbed, Cryptz). Danny had alot of interesting things to say, so read on and enjoy the first exclusive interview from Regurgitated Films, The Future of Independent Gore!!!

Shawn Allen - How old were you when you started getting interested in horror films?

Danny Draven - Pretty much when I was born I would say, no ah I was pretty young, like around seven or eight. I used to stay up late at night watching movies that I wasn't supposed to, you know that type of thing. Constantly renting horror shlock that I wasn't supposed to be watching, because an eight year old really isn't supposed to be watching that stuff. But I was really fascinated by the content, you know, the monsters and the decapitations and just one thing after another, then I developed an interest in the horror genre from then on.

S.A. - Out of all the pictures that you've directed wich one did you have the most fun making?

D.D. - Well, I've made five movies. The last one I made was Darkwalker. Ah, which was my favorite to make? Probably Cryptz. Well, production-wise it was my favorite, but it's not my favorite movie that I directed. You know, as far as not as many problems. The actors were easy to deal with and the production itself ran smoothly, and it was a well produced movie. The others I can't say the same for, but Cryptz was definitely the one that was most pleasant to make.

S.A. - Wow, I thought you might say Deathbed.

D.D. - No, Deathbed was actually a real pain in the ass. Between the personality differences between certain people and production problems, and ah I would just have to say it was a really hard movie to make.

S.A. - You had alot of sound problems on that film didn't you?

D.D. - What on Deathbed?

S.A. - Yeah.

D.D. - No

S.A. - I thought someone at Full Moon was quoted saying that you had sound problems because of planes flying by every five minutes.

D.D. - Oh, I know what you mean. I thought you meant In the actual mix itself. Yeah, ah, there were a couple of scenes that we shot where I rented a local sound stage here In L.A. It happened to be a place where they shoot alot of porn, so, hence the price was cheap to rent it out. So we built a little set at the end of the movie, you know where she's on the bed.

S.A. - That set turned out really good.

D.D. - Yeah, well that was all a porn set actually. So, what happened was that particular sound stage is right next to Burbank Airport. There was another room we used there, the scene where Karen was crying and all that. Well, that was kind of a hard scene for her to do, because she had to cry alot, but I had to keep calling cut because airplanes kept flying over. So yeah, we were able to shoot around it, but yeah we did have sound problems on those particular days, because that's a really dumb place to put a sound stage I would imagine. So yeah, we did have some sound problems. That was definitely the hardest one to make.

S.A. - What was it like working with Stuart Gordon and Mac Ahlberg?

D.D. - Um, It was great. I've been a fan of Stuart Gordon's since Reanimator and From Beyond and all those films that he did and I knew that he worked with Full Moon. I knew he did this and that. He directed Fortress and Space Truckers and all these other big movies, and, ah it was through Mac Ahlberg that I actually had met him. Mac had shot HorrorVision originally and that's how I met him, and I knew Mac's background. He shot Reanimator and From Beyond, and so we got to talking about that. Then a couple of years later we met up again and I hadn't seen him for a while. I took him out to lunch, and he started talking about Stuart and, Full Moon at the time had thrown away alot of the old masters that they didn't need anymore, so I had saved Pit And the Pendulum out of the trash, and I wanted to give it to (Stuart), you know. Who knows maybe one day. I had actually saved alot of this stuff and I was intending on one day giving it to the person who made the movie. So you know, I actually did that with Stuart. That's how I met Stuart, Mac told him I had this master. So I set up a meeting with Stuart and I went down to his office and gave him his master and, Stuart's a really nice guy so we got to talking and I told him about the movies we do and the type of budgets we do them on. And he was just completely in awe, and just wanted to know more because Stuart's also a producer. Literally within a week or two, umm I was supposed to make a movie after Cryptz called the Grim Rapper, but I really didn't want to make it. I wasn't going to direct it, just produce it. I was going to hire James Black to direct it. You remember James from HorrorVision, right?

S.A. - Sure do.

D.D. - So, James was going to direct it. I said I would just produce it, that way James would get it. Anyway, I ended up after two weeks of working on it I quit. I told Full Moon to stick It up their ass.

S.A. - Didn't you like it?

D.D. - It wasn't turning out and I don't know, it just didn't work. And so, anyway I gave up that project and said no, and like a week before that I had met with Stuart, and Stuart called up Charlie Band and they caught up on some old times, and Stuart asked him if he knew who Danny Draven was, yack yack yack, and he said "Hey, I have this project called Deathbed and I want Danny to produce and direct it." And Charlie said okay. And I said "okay no problem", and so that's how that kind of came about. But Charlie wanted to be one of the executive producers and it would be Stuart Gordon presents Deathbed. And thats how that happened. All through a master I had found. But actually I had saved Troll too. They were throwing out Troll and just recently I met with John Buchler who directed it and gave him his copy of Troll. There's a gold mine out there in trash cans.

S.A. - What are you working on now?

D.D. - Umm, I'm working on several different things. Ah, I own a post production company too, so when I'm not actually busy making movies I'm actually doing alot of post production work for other people, like Dave DeCoteau and these guys. I do all their post for them. Umm, but right now I've been pretty busy with post but I actually got a couple projects on the back burner. One's kind of top secret, so I really can't tell you too much, but I will tell you that It's a creature feature right along the lines of a pumpkin head type movie, and I'm thinking of doing an H.P. Lovecraft adaption.

S.A. - Which one?

D.D. - Probably Lurking Fear.

S.A. - That should be interesting, Full Moon's version was pretty good.

D.D. - Yeah, but it's so old though, I'm thinking of doing it in a different text. And I have some other projects floating around that are in the early stages of financing and what not, but it might be a while before you see anything. They're going to be a jump up though, you know, production-wise. Alot of the movies I made in the past were made very cheaply, but this one will be a bigger budget than all the other ones, and it will be a better format then all the other ones.

S.S. - Is there going to be a Darkwalker 2?

D.D. - Ah, I don't know. They put that at the end credits. He's (Chuck Williams) like "hey, put a Darkwalker 2 at the end" and I'm like "I don't know if we are ever going to make a Darkwalker two!" But the movie has done pretty good though, I mean there's something I found out today but I can't tell you though. Maybe you will see it on the web site in a couple of weeks, but there's some good stuff happening with Darkwalker.

S.A. - Your wife did the soundtrack on that movie didn't she?

D.D. - Yes, yeah she scored Darkwalker, Cryptz, Hell Asylum, and I do alot of post for people and she scores some of their movies too. And she also plays in an all female tribute band to Iron Maiden. They're called the Iron Maidens, so if you like Iron Maiden then check them out. (www.theironmaidens.com) I actually cut some of their videos for their web site. You know, some of there music videos I actually put together for them.

S.A. - What do you see in the future for Darkworld?

D.D. - Ah, well, pretty much the goal is to have an independent studio outside the hollywood system that makes films that are of this genre. Not just horror, ya know; horror, sci-fi, fantasy, or black comedies, that kind of thing. But right now it's kind of more horror. But the whole thing is to really have a place to make movies and not having to go to, you know, Warner Bros. or something. I mean these movies are done very fast and with a little amount of money, I mean Cryptz was shot in eight days and alot of them were shot in eight days, literally from the time the concept came, like, for instance; In December of 2001 I sat with Charlie Band and he's like "hey I need some kind of urban film", and I'm like okay, "It's gotta be like something with vampires" and I'm like okay, "come up with something". So I came up with the title, Cryptz, then I hired a writer to write it and ah pretty much within three months we had a screener ready to go for Blockbuster. It was shot, posted, and done and in the can and ready to go. And it made alot of money. Actually it made well triple it's budget by alot. Cryptz was fun though. I wish I would have had more time with it, because it kind of got a quick post finish.

S.A. - The actors seemed like they were fun to work with.

D.D. - Oh yeah, they were, definitely. One of them wasn't, the lady who played Koolata, she was like an alcoholic or something. Anyway, she showed up on the final scene where she gets killed, she's drunk off her ass. The original script made alot more sense at the end, you know, because the ending kinda just happens. But she showed up and she was drunk and I only had like two hours left, and we were out of that location for good, and I had the whole ending to shoot still. So I told everybody to take five minutes and get the hell off the set, and tried to come up with an idea "What can I do, I can't come back for another day of shooting, this woman's drunk, what do we do? So, I came up with the idea "okay fuck the script", so I threw the script away and had them come back and I said "okay all your going to do is fight", cause you know drunk people like to fight alot. So she comes out and she's just swingin' and swingin', and she's like actually hitting the other guys who are acting cause she's so out of it, and then I said "so just fight and throw her up against the wall some how and stick a pole in her and then she'll blow up in post!", and that's how that happened.

S.A. - What was it like working with Dukey Flyswatter? Is he as crazy on set as he seems to be?

D.D. - No, he's not, he's not at all really, he's pretty mellow most of the time, but he turns it on and turns it off, ya know. I mean, when he's in front of the camera it's on, but when he's behind the camera you can talk to him like a normal human being and he's very cool and a really nice guy actually. You know, he obviously doesn't need any makeup. Umm, no, but Dukey was great to work with definitely. He's one of the best people that I worked with on Deathbed. Actually, he wasn't originally cast for the part. It was actually a last minute thing. The guy that we cast for Deathbed, it was like the third day of shooting and we already cast this guy and he didn't show up at all. We tried to call him and he wouldn't call back. I don't know if he just said to hell with it or what, but, so we called Dukey literally like two hours before we were going to shoot the first scene with the guy with the necktie, ya know, and all that stuff, and ah Dukey came down and did it so...

S.A. - Wow, he pretty much saved the film didn't he?

D.D. - Yeah, he did, and I'm glad the other guy quit 'cause he sure didn't have the look that Dukey did.

S.A. - How did you meet J.R. Bookwalter?

D.D. - Well, I started at Full Moon as a web designer and, actually, I worked at Full Moon for almost a year in the web division. I don't think I even walked by him, but the way I actually met him was through a friend of mine. We call him Spud, and he actually was the one who intrduced me to J.R. When J.R. was making Witchouse 2, he came back from Romania and I had met him then, ya know. We kept going out all the time with Spud and I kept hanging around with him and we just kind of hit it off with, ya know, having alot in common. So, J.R. had hired me for the beginning of Witchouse 2 where I get my arm cut off, but that was actually my first thing with J.R. Then he started hiring me to cut music videos, and to do post work for him, and then into directing HorrorVision and that's how I met him.