The Catch Me Interviews

Phil Smoot Interview page 2...


As this interview begins, Phil and I had just arrived at the part of our conversation where the subject turned to cowboy legend, Lash LaRue and how Phil came to know this gentleman.

PS: I had never seen a Lash LaRue picture before I met Lash LaRue. I had only heard of him as a legend. I had heard people talk about Lash LaRue, this western star. I was working on one of Earl Owensby's 3-D movies called "Chain Gang" which was a movie that took weeks and weeks to shoot. I was on that movie for twelve to thirteen weeks operating the B camera, the second camera, and shooting tons of footage for that movie. One day I noticed this guy suddenly showed up on the set to play one of the guards and you couldn't take you eyes off of him. There's certain people that you look at and you just see them and it was Lash LaRue. And I see why that man was a star. I later went back and I saw a bunch of his pictures and they're awful. God, they're horrible. They're poorly made, they make no sense. But you couldn't take your eyes off of the man, he was fascinating. Had that man been in good movies, good quality motion pictures, he would have really been something. He had a charisma about him. There are certain people, like Marilyn Monroe, you want to look at Marilyn Monroe. There are so many [actors] you look at and they're so forgettable, but there are other performers like Susan Hayward or Boris Karloff or Lugosi, you can't take your eyes off those people, even when they're in a bad picture. You're watching that person and you'll sit through the most god-awful movies because that person is in it. And that was what Lash had, he never was in a good picture. "King of the Bullwhip" was the first movie I ever saw him in and I happened to watch it on television. Because of him and because of the bullwhip fight sequence he is in so much of that picture really makes it work. Otherwise it's an awful movie, but it really is fun to watch. I met [Lash] around the fall of 1983 and I mentioned to him that I was probably going to do a movie the next year and I thought, "Why don't I put him in the movie?" So we started talking and later on when things came about and the money was there and I was free we did "The Dark Power" which we filmed during the four weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas of 1984.

DJ: I'm wondering, how did Owensby come to cast LaRue in "Chain Gang"? That was one of the first films that Lash had done in quite a while.

PS: I don't know, Lash just showed up. I guess Lash was trying to establish himself again. LaRue had a strange history. After the B westerns kind of went away and after having done that ABC series, "Lash of the West" around 1953, he was in a few series. He made appearances in "26 Men", "Judge Roy Bean" and he did a few episodes of "Wyatt Earp". He and Hugh O'Brian didn't get along very well and [Lash] got replaced by some other actor. In the 50's and 60's he was kind of a promoter for Chrysler and different people. In the 60's he fell on hard times and he started doing odd jobs. I guess he felt it was time for him to do something again. They said that Lash became rather difficult to work with at one time so I guess he wanted to try and do movies again. He was a stand-out kind of person and he had a lot of charisma.

DJ : And again, it was the Owensby film that was responsible for bringing Lash into "The Dark Power"?

PS: Yeah, I would have never have met him otherwise I guess.

DJ : What was the genesis of "The Dark Power"? How did this film come about?

PS: I actually just wanted to make a movie. I was outside the house one day and I noticed some bare spots in the yard and I said, "I wonder why we get those kind of bald spots in the yard where no grass grows, for such a strange reason?" It's kind of weird the way that happens. I kind of commented about that to someone and I said, "Hey, you know, there's an idea. Why isn't there growth, maybe because something is under there." So mention that to a friend of mine who was a camera assistant by the name of Rodger Painter and Rodger knew a lot about the Indian myths and mysticism and he told me about the Toltecs which is apparently a Central America, South America, Mexican tribe that existed before the Aztecs. [Roger] told about some of the mysticism and how [the Toltecs were] buried in the four quarters of the world and buried themselves in the round. I thought that's cool, that's a good myth. So I went looked up a little stuff and I wrote the script in four days. Tommy Elwood, who was a make-up artist at the time, was typing it as I was hand writing it. So basically I wrote the script in four days and let me tell you, don't write a script in four days without re-writing it later on which I did and hammered it out and then we made a movie.

DJ: I was very fortunate as I was able to attend the premiere of "Dark Power" at the Carolina Theater back in 1987. That was a fantastic night and I know I certainly had a ball (as did everyone else who attended).

PS: Oh, it was. It was a fun night. The thing is you've got to know what you made. I knew I wasn't making a good good movie. I knew I was making something for people to just have fun with. You know, I've run into a lot of people who've seen the movie somewhere and they all liked it, they had a good time. It's a silly, dumb, crazy little movie. But that's what I made. I didn't have the ability to make any great statement about life and I didn't have the money to make a big picture of any kind, so I wanted to make something to have a good time and I think that's what it was. We only had a $120,000 to do everything and that was to shoot the movie, to make the movie, to buy everything, to make the prints with, to make the interpositive with, to complete it, to do everything single thing and pay all the fees for everything. It's not one of those movies that are easier to make today because you can do a lot things today that you could not do back then. I think that for what we did, we had a good time. If you ask me if there is any disappointment, the disappointment is that we didn't sell the movie like we should have. I had a buyer who wanted to buy the movie and wanted to give us $200,000 upfront for the U.S. rights to the picture. We were getting calls from everybody and everybody was confused thinking that this was a bigger movie. Fox, Universal, Paramount, everybody called about the movie and I knew they were not going to take it. They just read all the publicity we were getting. We were getting in People Magazine, we were getting all this national press because of Lash LaRue. I knew they were not going to take a little movie like that at the time. Nowadays they might take it and under some other banner put it out on video. We had a guy who wanted to put it out at the drive-ins. Everybody thought ["Dark Power"] was worth more and they wouldn't let us sell it that way. Unfortunately it turned out to be the wrong decision not to go ahead and sell it. The movie would have made a lot more money and it turned out not to be the financial success that we wanted it to be. That's really my only regret with the film is that we didn't immediately sell it to this company and put it out. What happened after that, around 1985, 1986 is that the video market [took-off]. When the video market first started opening up in the early eighties, they were buying every single movie because the major studios were not releasing their films on video. They didn't know what home video was about. What happened was right after we made our movies, "Dark Power" and "Alien Outlaw" was the major studios decided to start selling their movies, and not only selling their movies, but their libraries, to video. So they had sixty to seven years worth of movies that they started selling to video stores. Suddenly video stores were swamped with [films] they had to buy to get the audience to come in and no longer were they buying the unknown pictures because if you were a new video store, and you had only so much cash to spend, you were going to buy all these movies from "Casablanca" and "Gone With the Wind" and everything to sell to rent to your customers, not something called "Dark Power". The value of these [independently made] movies became very little. Nowadays you can make an independent movie and get some sort of decent distribution out of it because you have 100 million VCR's in the United States. By next year they think there might be 25 million DVD players in this country. People have bought so much stuff, they [now] look for something different. At the time, the value of our pictures lessened. "Alien Outlaw" was sold for $35,000 dollars in Germany. It was one of five pictures that was to be bought at one time. Ours was one of only two that the German distributor took. They didn't take the other three. Had we waited another two months, you could not have gotten $3,500 out of Germany for a little picture like that because they just would not take them. We also got $35,000 from Japan, plus some sales from a few other Asian and European markets for the film. But the marketplace fell apart for small films so we really got hurt. That's the reason I didn't do any more movies as far as director, producer, writer after that because there was no market for them and we had not shown that we could be successful with those two pictures. It's not like the world has lost out on anything, but I think the movies are fun.

DJ: I still say that "Alien Outlaw" was certainly one of the highlights of Phenomicon 1998.

PS: Thank you, I appreciate that. I like the movie. It wasn't until I actually looked at it again around that time (June 1998) that I realized what a good job Kari Anderson (the star of the film) did and how all the actors really worked hard. I was so busy trying to get the movie made I really didn't see what other people were doing. I really didn't realize how pretty [Kari] was and what a good job she had done.

DJ: It seemed like Lash was having a good time making "Alien Outlaw".

PS: LaRue was having a good time back then. I really regret that I was not able to do more film with him because I really liked the guy. There are a lot of stories about him and things he said and everything else and yet I really liked that guy. He and I got along well. Anything I asked him to do, he would do. I think I could have just about asked him to jump off a cliff and he would have done it for me. There were always dis-rumors about working with these old cowboys and old actors. There were myths that they'd be drunk all the time and not show up and give you problems. None of that was true with Lash LaRue. If I asked him to go and do some interview at a television station at 6 o'clock in the morning to be on their morning show, he would go do it. The man was very cooperative and never gave me a fit or a fuss. He was just so good and he always worked and got his lines together. I so regret that I did not get to do more with him. I actually wanted to make a movie called "The Last Ride to Glory". I sort of wanted to do a movie like "Targets" with Boris Karloff. [Karloff] essentially plays himself even though he plays a character known as Byron Orlock. He plays himself as a has been, an actor who was an old horror film guy whose time has kind of passed. I wanted to make a movie called "The Last Ride to Glory" where Lash LaRue was this old cowboy who goes to film conventions whose time has kind of passed and then he had to sort of be a hero in real life. I thought what a great thing it would have been to have done and we just never got the opportunity to do it and I really regret that. That's one thing I really would liked to have done. I thought it would have been such fun to have made it. I thought it would have been like making "The Shootist" with John Wayne. Even though it was a western, it was almost autobiographical western. [In "The Shootist" there was] this character in a western who has cancer, whose this old has-been gunslinger. I thought that would have been a fun thing to do. I was actually going to talk about in "The Last Ride to Glory" [Lash's character was] doing low budget horror films for this no-name producer. We were really going to play it up and have fun. I really regret that we didn't get to do that. I think it would have been great fun to have done those things.

DJ: Well now you did give him those last two films. That was good.

PS: He was neat. Lash was a fun guy.

DJ: Again, I still recall the showing of "Dark Power" at the Carolina Theater. Meeting Lash at that show was a highlight of the evening.

PS: Lash, I think, has been unfairly criticized over the years. Everybody talked about him being the 'poor man's' Humphrey Bogart. Well, you know, that's not such a bad thing to be if you're compared to someone like Bogart. It must mean you're pretty good because whose been in better movies than Bogart?

DJ: That's true...

PS: He was a fine performer. Like I said, he had incredible presence and I regret I didn't get to work with him more. I did work on a picture that he did a day part in called "Escape". It's an awful movie.

DJ: Yeah, I saw where he did a couple of films. I had "Escape" and I think that was the last one that he did.

PS: Did he do "Another Pair of Aces", or something or other? That was one of the television movies that he did along with the "Stagecoach" thing.

DJ: Yeah, "A Pair of Aces" and "Stagecoach".

PS: I think it's sad. I think he was really overlooked because of the kind of movies he was in. A lot of the B-western cowboys were not good actors. We used Sunset Carson for a day in "Alien Outlaw" and I really liked the man, he looked great on film, but Sunset couldn't remember two lines in a row. And as an actor, he was not an actor. I mean he was a great cowboy, but he wasn't an actor. I can't tell you how I struggled with him on that scene we did with him in "Alien Outlaw". The camera took ten years off of him, he really looked good in "Alien Outlaw". In person you could tell he was not doing that well, but he looked great in "Alien Outlaw". Sunset Carson was probably the tallest, best looking of the cowboys in the 1940's. He was probably the youngest too. As far as an actor goes, he was not an actor. He was a cowboy and he was interesting as a personality, I think. He could have been a model, but he was not an actor. I say that with all respect to the man, I really liked him. he was very nice to me and he was really trying hard. But like I say, he could not get two lines and it was a real struggle. And to get him to sound anywhere near natural...I look at those old westerns and he was the same way in those.

DJ: How about Wild Bill Cody?

PS: He didn't have to do too much in the film except a little scene[where he is] sitting on a bench. He was a nice guy. He worked out fine. He was basically a showman, he was basically a guy who traveled around the country putting on western shows. In the 40's and 50's was his day. I don't know if he was actually in any movies, he said he was. I don't really know. He was basically one of these showmen who went around the country with his wild west show. [He was a] really nice guy and I thought he was a great, colorful personality. He was fun to be around. I liked those guys. "Alien Outlaw" was a hard picture for me to make. It was very difficult. It was raining every day, not a hard rain, but it was misty. You can't see it in the movie, but it was misty the whole time. We didn't pick difficult locations, but because of the movie they had to be scenic locations and they weren't easy to get to on a low budget with a small crew. So it was a tough movie on me to do. All the actors and crew had a lot more fun on "Alien Outlaw", but for me I had more fun on "Dark Power". "Alien Outlaw" was a struggle for me everyday just to try and get that movie done and get it done without going over budget. It was so hard, so very hard to do. It's a better made movie [than "The Dark Power"]. It's a pretty movie. But it was hard for me to do.

DJ: How did Carson and Cody come to be involved with "Alien Outlaw".

PS: I just thought it would be interesting to put some old B-movie cowboys in a movie that was kind of centered around that kind of theme. I actually wanted to get Kirk Alyn to play a little part too. You know he was the guy who was in the first "Superman". Since it was not a Screen Actors Guild picture, he had gotten caught before [for appearing in a non-SAG film] and penalized by SAG. Nowadays you can't make anything without the Screen Actors Guild. You have to [work through them] to get the right actors. But then at that time you still could [circumvent SAG]. But he was afraid he would get in trouble and we decided it was better not to do it. He wanted to [be in "Alien Outlaw"] really badly, I mean he really did and I wish we could have. I actually had talked to Clayton Moore, the Lone Ranger, but Clayton Moore didn't want to do anything that wasn't the Lone Ranger. Basically ever since 1949 about everything he had done had been the Lone Ranger and he did not want to take any chance on changing or messing up that image because that's who he was, he was the Lone Ranger. So he didn't want to do it. [He was] the opposite of Kirk Alyn who really did. Those other guys (Carson and Cody) had most appealed to me about being in it. So I did get Lash, Sunset and Wild Bill Cody. Lash you know worked the whole show. Sunset, he came in for the press conference and we used him the first day of shooting. And Wild Bill Cody, I can't remember what day we shot him in the picture, but he was only a day part too.

DJ: What roles were you envisioning for Kirk Alyn and Clayton Moore in "Alien Outlaw"?

PS: There's a part in the film where Kari Anderson goes to this agent, talking about making her a bigger star rather than having a little backwoods gun show. I kind of wanted (one of) them to play the agent. That was what I was wanting them for. I thought it would have been cool, kind of one of those real in-things to have one of them being the agent. It wouldn't have been so much to some people, but for people who were kind of into this thing, they would have kind of appreciated that.

DJ: I think it would have been way cool to have had Superman and the Lone Ranger in the same movie...

PS: Oh, yeah. It would have been fun to have done.

DJ: Now I wanted to ask about Kari Anderson, the female lead of "Alien Outlaw". I did some checking on her and this appears to be her only film credit.

PS: I don't think she's done anything else. She was a dancer. I think she owned a company called Dancer and Co. for a while, it might have been a talent agency or a dance agency. She was a beautiful girl, great legs. You could tell she danced. I really regret we didn't do more with the picture because she worked so hard . I didn't realize at the time, I just paid no attention to it. I was just trying to get the movie done. It wasn't till later that I realized what a hard working, dedicated person she was and how really good she was. [When we were shooting], I didn't think she was all that great. I listened to what she said and went, "It's okay. It's functional. I'm getting it done." I didn't realize what a really good job she did until later and watching it and going, "Wow, this person was really working hard for me." And I don't think I ever told her that, about how good of a job she was doing.

DJ: Now did she actually do the trick shooting in the film herself?

PS: I think some of it was us cutting away. She fired the weapons, she was fine with everything. Any of the trick stuff was stuff we did as far as cutting and editing. She could ride the horse. She did a stunt where she fell off the horse. I didn't appreciate what a tough stunt that was. She never acted like she had any fear. I really appreciate what a good job she did now.

DJ: Are there any regrets concerning "Alien Outlaw"?

PS: That film I have some regrets about it technology wise. I wish we had had a chance to remix that movie. Editing wise I think it's a really well edited picture. The music is by Marcus Kearns. Marcus did a great job with the music, but unfortunately its done with an old computerized system. No matter how great a score he did, it can only be so good because of what we had to work with at the time. Unfortunately there's a few places that the music could be even better cued because he did such a good score. If we could redo that, and have that movie come out in stereo, I think it would really blow you away. Anybody who knows anything about music can listen to his score and tell you it's really excellent.

DJ: Now "Alien Outlaw" is only available in Europe and Asia. How was it received there?

PS: I have no idea. The distributor sold a few countries. 21st Century Distribution made a deposit for the US rights for the picture. Then they put out that "Phantom of the Opera" around 1989, or something, that lost a lot of money and they were never able to pay us more money for the movie. So they were never able to put it out in the US. Then the rights expired. I really need to talk to someone about putting it out on DVD and tape and putting it out in the US. I think people need the opportunity to look at the film. So I regret that we haven't put it out in the US, so I'll probably do that over the next year or two.

DJ: What is the status to the rights of "Dark Power" right now?

PS: We own all the rights to it. George Walker, John Wolfe and I still have all the pictures. We still have all the elements: the negatives, the positives, the prints, sound tracks, everything. That's ours, we have all those.

DJ: That would be cool if you could release "Dark Power" and "Alien Outlaw" as a double feature.

PS: One thing I'd almost like to do is a window box, 1.66 version and then on the flipside do a full frame [version]. I'd kind of like do two DVDs. One DVD for "Dark Power" with a full frame on side one and a letter boxed version on side two. Then we could let people pick which version they wanted to see.

DJ: Any extras we could look forward to on these DVDs?

PS: There's some behind the scenes footage that a friend of mine shot on "Alien Outlaw". Plus there's a lot of stills and photos and stuff that we could put together in a DVD that would be kind of fun. I think people would appreciate this kind of stuff.

DJ: Your cast for both films were largely North Carolina based, many of them would still be around and you could talk to them about [providing] commentary.

PS: Oh, yeah. You could certainly use them. And some of the people who worked on the films have gone on to do a lot of things. The guy who shot them, Paul Hughen, he was the camera operator on the "Scream" pictures and you'll see his credit on a lot of big movies. And Dean Jones who worked make-up on both, especially he designed the stuff for "Alien Outlaw", he did [make-up] for several "Star Trek" movies, as well as dozen of other movies. He was on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" as one of the make-up artists for the entire run of that. He won two emmys for that show. We had really good people who worked on these movies.

DJ: I talked to Dean Jones briefly about his work on "Dark Power" and "Alien Outlaw" when he was working on his own film in North Carolina, "Dead Inn". He talked about his cameo in "Dark Power" as one of the sorority girl's boyfriends.

PS: Yes. In "Dark Power" he gets his face ripped off. In fact that saw one of those national stories they did on "PM Magazine" at the time. That was one of the scenes that they came out and photographed while we were doing it.

DJ: I did want to ask you about the rest of the cast of "Dark Power". Like Paul Holman...

PS: Paul was in two or three Earl Owensby pictures. He was the guy that played the big, kind of Smiley Burnette kind of character. He was in both that and "Alien Outlaw". I haven't seen Paul in years. I don't know if he's a round or what he does of anything. he was so good. He came in on "Dark Power" and memorized his lines in two hours. He never missed a beat. He was marvelous. I would love to have put him in more movies. He was a funny, marvelous, really good [actor]. He was like a John Candy character, really fantastic.

DJ: I remember his flatulence scene in "Dark Power" in particular...

PS: Yes. He was funny, he was really good. And you know Mary Dalton, my ex-wife and the mother of my only child, she was in the first movie we did. She went on and got a doctorate degree and she teaches at Wake Forest University. Cynthia Bailey, I don't know what she does now [or] Anna Lane Tatum, I don't know what they do now. I don't know what most of the people are doing now, I don't think I've seen hardly any of the actors since then. You're going to meet people and move on and you do other things. A lot of people you just don't see. Like Rick West, he was the gaffer on "Alien Outlaw". He did, I think, "Terminator 2" and "True Lies". He's like one the chief electric people [in Hollywood]. You see their names pop up now and then, but some people you don't get the opportunity to work with again.

DJ: Most of the people you worked with, were these folks you had worked with previously with Owensby?

PS: Yeah, I had worked with Paul Hughen, who shot the movies, I had worked with him on some stuff. I worked with Rick West before. I worked with Tony Elwood, who was the chief make-up artist on "Dark Power", I'd worked with him on a couple of shows before. Some of the people I had worked with on previous things before we worked on those pictures. I always had good people and either the people I worked with who had already done a few things were good or else they were people who did things and who went on to do better things. I've always had an eye for good people. I've always been able to tell who could do a job and who couldn't do the job.

DJ: I was curious how you went about getting the folks you hadn't worked with before. Was it through connections? You know, someone says, "I know this person who can..."?

PS: Yeah. Osmosis is a big thing. You don't get them from a resume and you don't get them off the internet. It's word of mouth, it's osmosis, it's things like that. I was production manager on "Children of the Corn II" and "Hellraiser III" and I had never met the producer before he came out to talk to me about doing these pictures. It was all something on a telephone, It was the same way on "The Boneyard", a horror film we did with Phyllis Diller, Norman Fell and Ed Nelson. I had never met the people before they came out. A lot of its word of mouth and you hear about people.

DJ: You had a lot of success working in the film industry here in North Carolina since you filmed "Alien Outlaw". Do you ever think there will come a day when you might direct another feature film?

PS: I think that I will direct again in the future. It's just that putting a show together is a lot of work, and you need lots of support if you're going to direct.

DJ: Even if you yourself don't direct, is there a chance that you mightdecide to make one of the films you had considered making with Lash LaRue?

PS: Maybe. There were a couple of ideas that are still very good, but they would need some updating.

I want to take this opportunity to thank Phil Smoot for taking time out of his busy schedule to talk with me. I also want to wish him the best of luck in all his future endeavors.

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