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Oh, this is a good question.

I think a cult film

is a film that the audiences find on its deathbed.

A film that transcends everything.

So you got to have a little bit of mojo.

There is no shortage of stupidity.

- You can't try to do it. - It just happens by accident.

You think about it like a potato.

- It's like cheese. - It ages well.

A potato that has a series of fishing hooks in it.

Except for the ones that get mold.

When you pick it up, it is impossible to put it down.

I had to go find it on VHS and watch it

and go, holy cow, that's amazing.

The average mainstream movie,

100,000 will see it one time.

Profanity, murder, bullets, wounds.

This is your own little gem.

A cult movie, one person will see the movie 100,000 times

and they don't get sick of it.

It never stop showing somewhere.

It totally works.

It's just lightning in a bottle.

Of all the genres,

the one genre that we always thought was kind of...

the lowbrow genre, but the one that has lasted the longest

is the horror movie.

The lowly horror movie

has somehow survived all these years.

Among the ones that have been talked about a lot lately

with the passing of George Romero

is the re-creation of the zombie movie.

George redefined it in "Night of the Living Dead,"

which was a movie that not many people saw what it was new.

It's so unlikely.

I mean, the movie was made for very little money in Pittsburgh.

It's in black and white.

Yeah, that's what made it seem so creepy.

It did. It was creepy and it was real

and it was newsreel-ish.

It's like it was something that was happening right now.

Because this goes back

to when all the TVs were in black and white.

And it survived all the bad things that happened,

such as falling into the public domain,

which actually ended up helping it

because everybody could see it and watch it.

And now it has become I think a classic,

but also a true cult movie

in the sense that you had to follow its fortunes

from 1968 all the way till now.

And it's been incredibly important

in terms of the development of the genre,

and it's so influential to so many filmmakers.

"Night of the Living Dead"

only garnered any attention with horror fans

when they saw it at midnight.

And those midnight screenings were amazing

because of the publicity and the newspaper coverage they got.

The killers are eating the flesh

of the people they murder.

- We had no idea. - We made the film.

I thought of it as a one-off.

The cast and crew were shocked and then applauded.

There's no film in this world that affected me as viscerally

as "Night of the Living Dead,"

especially when zombies were pulling viscera

literally out of human beings.

And of course it became one of the ultimate cult hits.

It had an afterlife that went on and on and on.

And the one sequence in "Night of the Living Dead"

that got the most attention

was the little girl turning on her mother.

Aah!

Aah!

"Night of the Living Dead" is considered

one of the most influential horror films of all time

because of its rawness.

It was shot in black and white, made for $114,000,

came out of nowhere from Pittsburgh.

It was the first modern zombie film.

Had we had the money to shoot in color,

I might have been tempted to shoot in color.

But I'm so glad that we didn't.

And it was one of the first films to use graphic gore.

Well, you know, I was supposed to do the effects

in "Night of the Living Dead,"

but I had enlisted in the Army.

So I was in Vietnam

when George made the "Night of the Living Dead."

I don't know who can give you an answer

about why people love zombies so much.

George probably could.

Everybody that was talking about "Night of the Living Dead"

was talking about it because of its politics,

largely because of the African-American lead,

and, you know, the anger of the sixties and '68.

What Romero largely introduced

was the idea of complete social breakdown

and a rampaging plague that could not be put down.

And those things, especially in the 1960s

when "Night of the Dead" came out,

were extremely potent.

We saw society crumbling all around us.

There were people who even saw, you know,

the hippie movement and drugs as being a kind of zombie plague.

And it also had a political subtext to it

that won over a lot of mainstream critics

like Rex Reed, for example.

It dealt in its oblique way with race relations.

I'm fighting for everything up here,

and the radio and the food is part of what I'm fighting for.

Now get the hell down in the cellar.

You can be the boss down there.

I boss up here.

I think every African-American actor in America

owes Duane Jones a huge gratitude

for providing a porthole for us.

So absolutely Duane was pivotal.

But even without that subtext,

nearly 50 years later the film has an impact.

The ending packs a real gut punch.

It's like the line from "Night of the Living Dead."

They are us and we are them.

But I think they were referring to the redneck hillbillies

who turned into, you know, killers,

making a sport out of killing the zombies, you know.

All right, Vance, hit him in the head.

Right between the eyes.

Good shot.

Okay, he's dead. Let's go get him.

That's another one for...

Come on, you little bastards!

What you would think after "Night of the Living Dead,"

that it would have established itself and you wouldn't...

but, no, you have to continually reboot the brand.

And "Dawn of the Dead" did exactly that.

For 10 years I avoided doing another one.

Immediately after "Night of the Living Dead"

became "Night of the Living Dead,"

which took a while, actually,

you know, I had lots of calls

saying, can you make another one?

I said, aw, nix. I don't want to be buttonholed.

"Dawn of the Dead"

really was a surprising and a revelatory movie

for a lot of us back in the seventies

because horror and satire

were not natural bedfellows back then.

We really weren't used to seeing them combined

in the way that George Romero did.

And I said I got to have some kind of a political idea.

What the hell is it?

Looks like a shopping center.

And I socially knew the people

that were developing a shopping mall.

During an apocalypse, where else would you go?

A mall. Great idea.

And I went out to visit,

and the trucks were just bringing in

everything that anyone could ever want.

I've been thinking.

Maybe we got a good thing going here.

And it was the first time we had seen anything like this,

and I said, this is the idea.

I don't think that anyone else

has produced or written or directed zombie films

with an underlining message.

Certainly ours was consumerism.

It's Christmas time down there, buddy.

Fat city, brother.

So he took this idea

of the most blandly homogenized, reassuring setting imaginable,

where people essentially become zombies,

become zombie shoppers,

and he made that satire, that satirical idea literal

by having a mall filled with zombies

who, in the most amazing scenes, totter around

and seem to have some vague memory

of their consumerist addiction

to go alongside their lust for human flesh.

"Dawn of the Dead" was like a three-month Halloween.

I did the makeup effects, I played a part,

and I did the stunts.

I carried a sleeping bag around the mall

and fell asleep under an escalator, and somebody...

Tom, we need you to play Blades.

Tom, what's his face needs makeup.

Hey, there's a stunt coming up, you know, with a truck.

You want to do it?

So, I mean, it was the most fun

you could possibly have, you know.

Three months inside of a mall.

And we had free run of that mall.

Say goodbye, creep.

We shot at night, and every morning

elderly people would come to walk around the mall

and get their exercise just before the mall opened.

So there was a mad rush for everybody

to get the crew and cast, to get everybody out of there.

Get the zombies in a certain place,

get their makeup off, get them changed,

and get them out of there.

And we didn't want to have an issue with the mall,

nor did we want to have

one of the elderly people in the community turn a corner

and run smack dab into a zombie and have a heart attack.

We didn't want that to happen.

That was an issue.

Back then, it was practical.

Everything you see was happening right in front of you.

We had an assembly line.

So I would make up the appliance zombies,

and they would make up the gray zombies, you know,

maybe doing plants in there.

And it was easy.

Well, the helicopter zombie in "Dawn of the Dead,"

that gets applause in the movie theaters.

A guy's getting the top of his head lopped off,

and people are applauding.

So I cast his head and built a dome.

It is perfectly round.

In the movie it looks square

because it was a rainy day and the hair kinked up.

It's not supposed to be a Frankenstein look.

And the top of his head was just five or six pieces

attached with fish line of varying lengths,

and we had a guy run with the fish line,

which unraveled the top of his head.

And we were pumping blood up through his legs.

The blades were put in later.

They were animated in later.

"Dawn of the Dead" really had the same situation

as "Night of the Living Dead."

Midnight screenings, word-of-mouth,

newspapers and monster magazines.

I was a combat photographer in Vietnam.

I saw horrible stuff.

That's why my stuff has to be anatomically correct.

Because if the fake stuff doesn't give me the same feeling

I got when I saw the real stuff,

the fake stuff isn't good enough.

That's the great thing about George.

As a special effects guy, he would let be improvise.

Most of the deaths in "Dawn of the Dead"

are things we came up with.

You know, we would go to George

at, you know, 3:00 in the morning.

How about if we drive a screwdriver

through a zombie's ear? Okay.

So we're building retractable screwdrivers

out of soda straws, you know.

I just love George as a director

because he's an editor first.

Very detailed about what he does, you know.

Many angles, you know.

Because he knows he's going to sit there

and put that together the best way possible later.

It's considered a major historical accomplishment

in the African-American community

that I survived the first five minutes of a horror film.

Back in those days,

African-Americans didn't survive the first five minutes.

Today's filmmakers owe "Night of the Living Dead"

so much cred, especially, of course,

TV shows like "The Walking Dead"

and video games and movies like "Resident Evil."

They all owe George Romero so much

because he's the one who established the formula.

- Oh, absolutely. - Absolutely.

Everybody copies him, you know.

He's the originator, he's the creator.

I guess he's the person who set the standard

for this kind of movie.

He's the master.

The most loyal of all fans in genre are the horror fans.

And if they like something and they embrace George Romero,

and he became an icon from that till he died.

The cool thing about cult movies is you can kill the hero.

Oh, no, no, no.

"The Evil Dead?" No.

I think I saw a little bit of "The Evil Dead,"

but it really, really scared me.

Aah!

The plot of "Evil Dead"

is about an unlucky quartet of college kids

who go to that remote cabin in the woods

that hides the "Book of the Dead,"

and once you read from the "Book of the Dead,"

it unleashes this unholy army of dead-ites

that possess the people in the cabin,

turned friend against friend,

leading to all kinds of blood, guts,

and frenetic camerawork by the incomparable Sam Raimi.

If you could take a time machine

back to these miserable 13 people,

this cast and crew locked in a Tennessee cabin,

and say, guys, it's going to be fine

because "Evil Dead" is going to become "Evil Dead 2."

And then there's going to be a third one

and then there's going to be a remake

and then there's going to be a musical

and then we're maybe going to put it on TV

and this is never going to stop,

I think it would have blown their minds.

Tennessee had a film commission.

Can you help us find a cabin?

Somebody was killed at that cabin was the story.

Had no power, no running water, no electricity.

There was four inches of cow shit on the floors.

We would take turns sleeping and doing security at the cabin

because we got some equipment that was stolen.

Right next to a $20,000 Arriflex camera was a power saw.

That's what they needed in Morristown, Tennessee.

I'll take the saw.

"Evil Dead" became a cult classic

I think largely based on the reputation,

which was fostered by no less than Stephen King.

In '83, Stephen King was Stephen King, you know.

You didn't mess with Stephen King.

He was the master of horror.

At the quote he said, was "Evil Dead"

is the most ferociously original horror film of the year.

And our heads exploded. We were like, wait a second.

Did Stephen King just say that?

So we used that quote, and what that did

was it sent a force field out around us,

and it caused reviewers to go,

oh, maybe this isn't a low budget piece of shit.

The film was released to theaters,

but it really wasn't a big hit at the time.

It came out during the eighties horror boom

where most audiences

were just going to see slasher films during that period,

and the film was kind of overlooked.

A piece of trivia about "Evil Dead"

is that you have Joel Coen of the Coen brothers

editing the film.

And Sam had this sequence

of getting Linda ready to strap her in.

He's going to hit the chainsaw.

And Joel did all these sharp cuts and really made it snap

and we put in all these sound effects in it.

Finally pull the tarp back and, bam, that saw fires up.

It had a real visceral effect. It's got balls.

That's a throaty son of a bitch.

It's like a '72 Mercury or something.

I have to hold the chainsaw over Betsy Baker's neck.

Well, it's not fake. We had a debate.

If we turn the blade around the opposite way,

then maybe it would take longer to cut into her

if there was a mistake or a problem.

So we thought, yeah, that's the safe way to go.

Let's just turn the blade around and it won't be as sharp.

And I could see Betsy's neck from where I am,

and her neck is throbbing.

And my blade's going eee-eee-eee.

You just have to tell yourself, Betsy, I will not kill you.

But I thought as a result it made for a good visceral scene.

To me, "Evil Dead" is just this tribute

to if you don't have the money

and you don't have the special-effects budget

to make your dream a reality, you hack it.

You figure out how to do it based on whatever you have.

The motion he captured

with cameras running through the woods,

and that this camerawork just gets popularized

and spread around from limitation.

Ellen Sandweiss, who plays my sister in the movie,

she's chased at one point.

She gets, you know, violated in the woods by these vines.

And she's in her little slippers and a nighty.

So Ellen is running all night long through the woods,

and she's just getting cut to shit.

Rob Tapper, the producer, looks down.

There's a drop of blood on the dolly track from Ellen.

And he goes, that's how you know

you're getting your money's worth.

You see the effect of "Evil Dead,"

which is considered one of the most painful, horrible sets

of all time because Sam Raimi believed

that to get a good performance from an actor,

you had to torture them.

Like Bruce Campbell hurt his leg,

and so he starts hitting his wound with a stick

to get this agony out of him.

We had a sequence where I've got to shoot out a window.

Typically, of course, you'd have a fake load in the gun

and then effects guy would put a charge on a safety glass window,

and it would look fine.

No. Take a shotgun, let's put a shell in,

you're going to blow the window out.

And there's a camera guy right outside there.

Boom. Cut.

Jim, you good? Yeah, it's okay. It's okay.

But since then, its reputation has continued to grow.

Even though it's on DVD and TV constantly,

people still want to seek it out in the movie theater,

see it on the big screen

for that audience participation experience.

And then after the Stephen King endorsement,

the "L.A. Times" called it an instant classic.

That did it.

That made people look at it differently,

and then the reviews sort of changed.

There was a reviewer who said

even if you're lopping your girlfriend's head off

with a shovel,

even that can be done artistically.

Home video was exploding,

so we hit that kind of at the right time.

And those are the things that really, I think, propelled it.

And the fact that Sam Raimi... I'll go on record.

I feel that he certainly has genius characteristics.

That's what's exciting to me about a cult film

is that, you know, your limitations

become what make you legendary.

The film was banned

in, I don't know, half a dozen countries.

Germany just un-banned it.

30 years it took those fuckers to the un-ban it.

Come on, man, give me a break.

"The Devil's Rejects" in particular

was the best time I ever had making a movie.

It was an "I love you, man," moment.

I am the devil,

and I am here to do the devil's work.

- Aah! - No!

The plot of "The Devil's Rejects"

is to kill everything that moves.

"The Devil's Rejects"

is the sequel to Rob Zombie's first movie,

"House of 1000 Corpses."

It's three outlaws on the run

being chased by a crazed sheriff.

It's time for us to do what the good Lord would refer to

as a cleansing of the wicked.

Captain Spaulding is just trying to protect what's his.

A little aggressively from time to time,

but we get there.

Never turn your back on a fucking clown

when he's talking to you.

Get your fucking hands off of me.

I see Rob Zombie's "The Devil's Rejects"

as a cult classic in the making, you know.

I think it was originally perceived, you know,

as a really good horror film by horror fans.

A lot of times cult films aren't necessarily good films.

That right there is one sad, pathetic statement

of cinematic affairs.

But there has to be something in them, a performance.

If you've got a problem with my timeframe, son,

you best spit it out right now.

Yeah, I got a problem.

I got a big fucking problem, bozo.

Well, make your move, whitey.

There has to be something

that a lot of fans can hang their hats on

and that they can discuss and love together.

Fans love the actors from that movie,

Bill Moseley and Sid Haig,

who are heroes at horror conventions

all over the country.

I always loved and hated clowns simultaneously

because, you know, like Lon Chaney

played clowns a couple times.

I always love those films.

But I remember the opening of a new McDonald's,

and I'm on my dad's shoulders or something,

and Ronald McDonald's there.

He was trying like, hey, Ronald McDonald.

And I'm like not having it. Why would I?

I mean, it's like this greasy looking stranger

with this white stuff on his face.

- What's the matter, kid? - Don't you like clowns?

- No. - Why?

Don't we make you laugh?

Aren't we fucking funny?

You best come up with an answer

'cause I'm going to come back here

and check on you and your mama.

And if you ain't got a reason why you hate clowns,

I'm going to kill your whole fucking family.

There's always a sense of family

when you're making a movie,

but it's always best friends until the last frame.

So when we shot "Devil's Rejects,"

that was a very, very special set

and we had a wonderful time.

What you call me?

Well, if you give me a chance,

I was going to call you a crazy, pig fucking,

dumb ass, pussy piece of shit.

Oh, brother, youse a dead man.

Shooting that, there was a freedom that we felt,

and I think there was an overall atmosphere created by Rob

that was fantastic.

Are you saying that I would cut off a chicken's head,

put my dick in it, fuck it, and go, aah?

You accusing me of fucking a chicken, motherfucker?

What I didn't want to do

was "House of 1000 Corpses Part Two."

I had no interest in that. It could've been a Western.

I could have set it in 1890 if I wanted to.

I wanted to make something that was like a postmodern Western.

I'm calling the shots.

Consider me fucking Willie fucking Wonka.

This is my fucking chocolate factory, you got it? My factory!

We shot "House of 1000 Corpses" on 35 millimeter,

which I hated the way it looked. It looked too clean.

So I shot "Rejects" on super 16

and blew it up to 35 just to help.

He made it look like 35 from the seventies.

An improvised thing would be Sherry

sticking the ice cream on Bill Moseley's face.

Sid absolutely improvised.

Tutti fucking fruity was his improvisation.

I think I'm going to get me some tutti fucking fruity.

You know, I think I'm going to get me

some tutti fucking fruity.

- Tutti fucking fruity. - That sounds good.

- Tutti fucking fruity. - Shut up.

- Rob fell off the couch. - Boom, it was in.

That was it.

A lot of the fans of "Devil's Rejects"

say that that was the moment

when instead of thinking of the Fireflys and Otis

as like the worst scum of the earth,

that's when they started to relate to them.

Even though all three of them are despicable,

I needed a reason

that somehow the audience would strangely like them.

And my theory was always like as long as they're cool.

Cool trumps everything.

Yeah, I liked the ending.

That really worked because I didn't know if it would.

You know, I told everybody,

oh, yeah, I want to play the whole ending

to "Free Bird" for seven minutes.

They're like, oh, boy.

And we were shot 100 times each with rifles,

so the chances of us surviving are pretty slim.

But Sid pointed out

that the soundtrack includes beating hearts.

The heartbeat stops.

You know, I never figured that out,

but, you know, leave it to Sid.

"Devil's Rejects" will probably be right up there

with "Night of the Living Dead" and "Halloween," you know,

as the years go on and as horror fans go back

and rediscover the films of their youth.

So that cult is going to continue to grow.

You know, and it's so funny,

because a lot of times at various fan conventions,

I'll be sitting next to Sid

and someone will come up and say, you know,

is there going to be a sequel to "Devil's Rejects?"

And I'll say, Sid,

is there going to be a sequel to "Devil's Rejects?"

He goes, no. And I say, why?

And then we count one, two, three.

And then in unison we say, because we're fucking dead!

The one that I think is a midnight movie,

and it did shock me when I first saw it,

is "The Human Centipede,"

which is about a scientist that grafts people,

grafts them together with mouth to anus.

And there's three sequels, so it is...

- Three sequels. - A total of four films.

No, I think there's three altogether.

So it is Lord of the Rims. It is that, really.

And I saw the first one, and I couldn't believe...

It is a shocker and it is well acted.

It has good acting in it.

But I didn't see the second and third one

because I thought enough is enough.

But I heard the third one

has like 100 people anus to mouth.

Here's hoping.

But you're saying the first one is...

I thought it was pretty good and it was like, whoa.

100 people?

You better fact check it.

That's probably more assholes

that's been in a single place since Congress.

Yeah, yeah.

- He sews them together? - Yes.

What's the purpose?

The purpose I forget.

The purpose was...

Sheer delight, I imagine.

Yeah, yeah, that's entertainment.

Maybe they'll do that as a musical.

I guess you couldn't really, if your mouth is...

A lot of kick steps.

- You could hum. - Yeah, you could hum.

A hum job. Oh, God.

The plot of "The Human Centipede"

is probably the most depraved idea anyone's ever come up with.

It has to do with a mad scientist

who comes up with this brilliant idea

to stitch together people from mouth to anus

to create a human centipede.

You know, it's a love it/hate it kind of movie.

There's really no middle ground on "The Human Centipede,"

but I think it's pretty sick and entertaining.

And it's the kind of film

that seems to have been engineered

to be a midnight movie, a cult movie,

and I think in this case the director scored

and it really is the quintessential midnight movie.

One night I was watching television with friends,

and there was a child molester on,

and he got a very low sentence.

And I thought, oh, my God, this idiot.

Why don't they sew his mouth to the anus of a fat truck driver?

That would be a proper punishment.

And everybody laughed. Oh, that's horrible.

But the idea kept lingering in my head

and I thought that might be a brilliant idea

for a horror film.

And then I Photoshop my then girlfriend

on her hands and knees and I tripled the image

and I put them behind, mouth to anus, the picture,

and I thought this looks brilliant.

Ingestion by A,

passing through B to the extraction of C.

As you can imagine, people thought I was absolutely crazy.

It started, of course, with the investors.

A human centipede.

When I did a pitch for them,

I had to leave out the words mouth and anus.

So I told them it's about a surgeon

who surgically connects people,

and, yeah, they were quite interested.

Yeah, well, he's English.

Let's try it. Let's do it.

We cast it in New York with American actresses.

It was very nice. These pretty girls,

they came in all with makeup, perfectly dressed.

I was living in New York and I was 22.

It was my manager at the time called me

and said, hey, do you want to audition

for this controversial European film?

They knew they were casted for a European horror film,

so they were all excited.

And they sat down and I slowly talked about

what I was going to do with them and how it would look.

I knew a couple of the girls,

and they were like, this is porn.

I'm never doing this. Like, what's going on?

And they like called their agents or managers

and walked out.

And I stayed because I'm a weirdo and I was curious.

And I was like, this can't be real.

And by default I think I got the part because I stayed.

What was that?

I have no idea.

When I finally did get the part,

we had a meeting and signed contracts,

she handed be a booklet and she said here's the script,

and it wasn't a script.

But if we don't find a place in like 10 minutes,

we are running back to this car.

It was a very tiny booklet, you know,

bound on one side, and it was just paragraphs

of every scene in the movie of what was going to happen.

So basically it was an outline,

and then everything in the movie is improv.

It was a very interesting way to make a film.

We got a flat tire. Can we come in?

I was really drawn to the film

because you start off being, you know,

a girl bopping around Germany.

And then all of a sudden you become this pet,

this creature, and not a person anymore

and being treated basically like an animal.

Bite my boot.

So the defecation scenes

that Tom, you know, wrote into the films,

basically, you know, he would give us the direction of just,

picture the nastiest thing you've ever tasted

and just go from there.

And that's basically what everybody did.

Yeah!

Feed her! Feed her!

But the one scene in the movie that was the most grueling

was when we did the staircase,

crawling up the staircase as the centipede

where we had to stay connected the entire time.

Eat!

Eat!

Every night after shooting the centipede,

they would have a masseuse

come to our apartments that we were living in

and give us like a full body massage.

Then we would just roll over and fall asleep

and then do it all the next day.

So they treated us very well, you know, as a centipede.

I think Tom had the foresight

to know what it was going to become.

But he honestly was like the only one, I think,

who really saw that it was going to become a cult film.

"The Human Centipede" is a perfect example of a film

that can be discovered streaming or video-on-demand.

It's got that title that really seeped into the zeitgeist

that people remember and they seek out.

Probably because of mostly it's notoriety,

the film is so extreme and over-the-top.

There we go.

Yeah! I did it!

It kind of creates like a beacon

for cult movie aficionados.

Modern technology really helped it

to become a cult phenomenon,

because on social media

everybody shared the images from the film.

And people were disgusted and they sent it to another friend,

so that really helped get the cult success.

And it was one of the best films on the VOD IFC ever had.

It's hard to say if it really deserves to be in that category

of one of the greatest cult films of all times

because it's not that old.

But I think because of just how well known it is

and how it's spoofed on so many things,

it's referenced so many times in pop culture...

Oh!

Aah!

Tom Six's claim to fame for this film

is that it's 100% medically accurate, which is true.

I consulted a doctor in Holland, a real surgeon,

and he made this very detailed operation report for me.

And he said I could actually make a human centipede

in my hospital.

You have to administer anti-rejection medication

and they need vitamin injections to keep them healthy.

And you have the problem of them choking, of course.

They have to eat the shit, but they don't have to vomit.

That's quite tricky, of course.

But if you get them enough fluids and vitamins,

they could live for a long, long time.

I have some funny stories about fans.

Yeah, people are like obsessed with me lots of times.

They think you are worse than Hitler or you're Jesus.

You have girls that connected like dolls they made,

mouth to anus, little dolls, and they present it to me.

And a lot of women said, I want to have your baby.

So it goes very, very far.

It's really incredible to be a part of something like that

where it just keeps going and going and going

for years to come.

And I don't expect it to ever really stop.

Well, I've always loved horror films.

I was talking to a friend about the fact

that everyone was making vampire movies in those days,

and I said why doesn't someone make a Frankenstein movie.

Because I always liked Frankenstein movies the best.

And this friend recommended

that I take a look at the Lovecraft story.

Herbert West brought a lot of dead people back to life,

and not one of them showed any appreciation.

"Re-Animator" is a masters class of film directing.

It's the obsessed doctor genre film,

and it's the zombie genre film all melded together.

"Re-Animator" is about this insane person named Herbert West

who has been working on reanimating corpses

and is doing so with the freshest ones possible,

which increasingly become people that have just died

often because of his experiments.

Granted, it was an accident,

but this is the freshest body that we could come across

save for killing one ourselves.

And every moment that we spend talking about it

costs us results.

Now will you give me a hand?

And so the fantastic element in the story

was the idea that there's a serum

that brings the dead back to life.

So we wanted everything else,

all the medical stuff to be as accurate as possible.

How can you teach such drivel?

These people are here to learn,

and you're closing their minds before they even have a chance.

What are you here for, Mr. West?

You know, you should have stolen Laura Gruber's ideas.

- That at least you'd have ideas. - Mr. West!

Dr. Hill is so pitch perfect evil.

It's going to be a pleasure to fail you.

And so you hate him just immediately,

and Herbert West hates him.

And then when Herbert kills him, literally cuts his head off,

and you're like, great, the bad guy's gone, and he's not.

Herbert can't help himself

and brings the head back to life.

Then he's got to walk around with giant zombie shoulders

so that the effect can work.

"Re-Animator" is a cult classic, stood the test of time

mostly because of its sense of humor.

Lovecraft, to his credit,

he wasn't a particularly funny writer,

but he was writing what he considered a comedy,

and Stuart Gordon and Dennis Paoli

kind of brought that to light.

And so the movie "Re-Animator" is very funny.

You'll never get credit for my discovery.

Who's going to believe a talking head?

Get a job in a sideshow.

You know, when we were working on the movie,

we knew that we needed to have something

that would set it apart from all of the other movies.

I have plans.

The scene that everyone always wants to talk about

is what we always called the head gives head.

It's with Barbara Crampton, he picks this beautiful heroine.

She's strapped down to the table.

The evil doctor, his headless body is holding his head

and guiding it around the room

and he's guiding it towards the naked tied lady on the table.

Obviously doing very, you know, leering things toward her.

And then it's like, well, now he's going to do the thing

that there's no way they're going to show you.

You know, it's upsetting that you have a head giving head,

and it's very... not for most people.

I love it!

There are so many great scenes in "Re-Animator."

I think my favorite one is when

they're bringing the cat back to life in the basement.

Because this poor little cat did absolutely nothing wrong,

and then it's just this kind of like grotty puppet.

It doesn't even look like a real cat,

but it's just like attached to Herbert West's back

and he's just like flailing around.

Get it off of me!

It's a little known fact that David Gale

was the model for Dudley Do-Right,

the cartoon character.

I think there is a train approaching.

He's friends with Jay Ward,

and I think they modeled the look of the Mountie on David.

We were incredibly naiïve

in that we thought we could get an R rating for the movie.

It was interesting, in those days

one of the things

that was sticking in the backs of our minds

was that another movie had been released unrated,

and it was, believe it or not, "Room With a View."

So we were very worried

because we have all these naked zombies running around.

But as it turned out, there was so much blood in the film

that it didn't really matter.

They were never going to give us an R rating

no matter what we did.

H.P. Lovecraft's classic tale of horror "Re-Animator."

It will scare you to pieces.

And it really found itself on VHS

as so many horror movies did in the eighties.

When younger people are finding horror movies,

that's always one of the ones everybody says.

You've got to watch "Halloween,"

you've got to watch "Nightmare on Elm Street,"

you've got to watch "Evil Dead,"

and you've got to watch "Re-Animator."

If you are into gore,

you've got to start with that

and then kind of branch out from there.

It's very gratifying

that people are still enjoying the film.

They just put out a new Blu-ray of the movie,

which has something like 24 hours worth of material,

which I always think is hilarious

because the movie itself is less than two hours long.

There is a live stage musical.

Bastards.

There's a comic book series, there's a board game coming out.

Lovecraft never regarded the story very highly,

and yet it's become this property

that has so stood the test of time.

Because of the Stuart Gordon film,

you think you know, hey, I remember "Re-Animator."

And then you go and watch it again

and it's like, no, it's funnier than I remember it

or its gorier than I remember it or whatever.

Or it's exactly as I remember it, and it's just great.

Now, one other picture

that has come down through the test of time

is Tobe Hooper's "Texas Chainsaw Massacre."

Oh, my.

Which, speaking to the idea

of people who are regional filmmakers.

Oh, that's my number one of all favorites.

He made this picture on weekends

with, you know, borrowed equipment, 16 millimeter.

It had a reputation at the time

of being the grossest, most horrific, disgusting movie,

which it isn't.

There's very little actual gore in this movie,

and there's very little actual real violence.

Almost everything is implied.

- It's all in your imagination. - It's all situational.

And that door slamming, Leatherface's door.

- And once that door slams... - Oh, God.

You don't even want to think about what's going to happen.

You really believe that there were parts of America

where this was happening. There are.

- You know what? - They probably are right now.

That's what I'm saying

is like it does tap into genuine fears about the other,

other, you know, people that you don't know.

And the hitchhiker in that movie.

People always say what's your type?

I say him.

What happened was true.

The most bizarre and brutal series of crimes in America.

Before there were cult movies,

"Texas Chainsaw" was the cult movie.

It gets into your brain like a million worms.

Cadavers wrapped around gravestones

with these police style close-ups and photographs.

I went...

I don't know if I can watch this movie.

This is the opening minute.

The plot of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"

is a bunch of kids get in a van.

They're going to one of their relatives' places.

It's in Texas.

I didn't want you to know any of these people

or it would mess up, you know, that whole documentary feeling.

It's a slow burn beginning.

But then they pick up that freaky weird dude

and he cuts his hand.

He's obviously demented.

They don't realize it, but he's part of a family.

It's a nice family if you're the Manson family, I guess.

I got some good barbecue here.

Why don't you fellas stick around here a while?

They turn out to be people who were cannibals.

You could take me to my house.

I live right off this road.

The scene in the van,

we're making a lot of physical stuff up as we go.

The casting is amazing, the performances.

Ed Neal, I don't know who won the Academy award that year,

but they should just give it to Ed

because it wasn't as interesting as whatever he was doing.

I mean, and you watch, and you go are these people even actors?

I don't know. Are they just weirdos that they cast?

"Texas Chainsaw Massacre" changed the horror genre.

So putting a mask on Leatherface

created a new kind of monster.

When we went to do "Evil Dead,"

we studied the drive-in movies to see, what are they watching?

For me, it was "Texas Chainsaw."

I remember watching that in the theater

man, I doubt we could do as good as that.

Because that scared the living piss out of me.

"Texas Chainsaw Massacre" to me is an amazing movie

because there's really not that much gore in it.

It's just the characters are terrifying

in a very kind of real... it's just the acting.

It's scary acting.

If I could wind the actor up enough

to let all that fear and terror come out,

that would transcend the screen.

The cinematic experience and your emotional experience

would create something that was between you and the screen

and not just on the screen.

So the movie is very, very low budget.

Shot on super 16 millimeter.

If hell had home movies, that's what it looks like.

- It looks real. - It's docu-style.

And also, too, it says right at the beginning

this is a true story, right?

Which is bullshit.

The fact in the back of your mind

you're thinking, is this real?

Did this really happen?

It makes it all the more disturbing.

The movie is so good at creating an unnerving tense atmosphere.

Because the movie also has a lot of twisted black humor.

It's funny. It's a funny movie.

Even though it's the most horrifying experience

you'll ever have.

So they cut her finger

and they stick it in grandpa's mouth.

And as he sucking the blood out of her finger,

he's like kneading like a little kitten

or like a little baby.

It's so twisted, it's funny,

but it's horrifying.

The chainsaw guy's going to make everything safe.

Here's what you must do to the chainsaw

in order to prevent

any of the actors for being harmed at any time.

We'll put like a little metal plate there

underneath the paint slab.

And then will put some suet meat on top of the metal plate.

And then the blade... it's still moving, but no sharp part.

It'll come down and the suet meat will pop through

and it'll be great.

The heat will transfer...

through the metal plate to the tender flesh below.

Here comes the chainsaw, the suet meat pops off,

and Gunnar is screaming on the ground, going, aah!

Cut to Jay Parsley on the other side of the camera,

going, wow, Gunnar's doing great.

The beauty of the film,

if there is a beauty to such a disturbing film,

is that a lot of it's done through suggestion.

I've often thought that "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"

is one of the most deceptively scary movies ever made.

Leatherface puts her on the meat hook,

and the MPAA, they were more open then.

I would make a phone call and say,

how can I hang a girl on a meat hook

and get a PG rating?

And they said, well, you can't.

It's a simple quick edit.

Show the hook. She's lifted up.

Clunk.

Aah!

And it pans down her body

and she's hanging over an old washtub,

and the washtub is there to catch the blood.

You're aware for an instant

of blood coursing onto the ground.

Many people thought they saw blood gushing down.

I think it was one of those movies

that began to make explicit what was only barely implied

in the movies we were used to seeing of that time,

like "Psycho."

Because I think it is the greatest modern horror film

after "Psycho."

It seemed that there were more good reviews

because it was refreshing at least to the critics.

It was the grind house movie that critics recognized

as being a kind of a primitive work of art.

So then Rex Reed saw it and he loved it.

And everything just from that moment changed.

It became part of its legend that there was a copy of it

in the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection.

And it started building its own cult.

It's incredible, directors that I love their work,

so that I've done something that they care about.

The feeling is kind of overwhelming.

That people like Wes Craven and Rob Zombie and Ridley Scott,

well, in their own words,

have been influenced by "Chainsaw."

I heard that Ridley has his own 35 millimeter print.

I know Stanley Kubrick had his own 35 print.

I'm deeply honored.

"Chainsaw" was chosen

as one of the greatest cult films of all time

because it doesn't die, it doesn't go anywhere.

Here we are 44 years later.

We'll step back 44 years in time

to that magical, magical time when we made this film.

Come, come.

Look at this. Here's the infamous feather room.

When you walked into this room,

these feathers would waft up around your legs.

It was so powerful.

And from the second you entered the door,

you were there.

The minute you are inside the door two feet,

you were into character.

The infamous dinner room.

Aah!

This was one of my favorite places on the set.

Give me a hand with grandpa.

Give me a hand with grandpa, which I think was an ad lib.

Leatherface appears in the doorway

and knocks him silly,

and Bill does that wonderful thing with his feet.

Why there's a metal door in the middle of the house,

we don't know, but there it is and it's wonderful.

It's always fun coming back here.

Hearing the voices of my friends,

some here still and some gone.

Science fiction, it never approached

the level of literary science fiction in films.

Literary science fiction was always much more intellectual.

And "Death Race 2000," which is a very cartoony movie,

is also very subversive.

And it was a big surprise hit.

It was definitely a hit.

It put New World Pictures on the map

and it really I think established Paul Bartel

as a credible filmmaker.

And I'll be giving you the blow-by-blow, play-by-play

when the kings and queens of the open road

roar onto the track.

Do I hear the sound of engines?

Humanity is still recovering

from this gigantic economic catastrophe

that happened in 1979, and it's been 21 years later

and the only way we can think of to deal with this

is this transcontinental road race

between men with names like Frankenstein

and women named Calamity Jane,

who are going to get points for mowing down people,

and that sometimes these people want to get killed.

- Aah! - Oh!

Oh, why did she do that?

To show me she loves me.

The original script was just a straight racing picture

with the drivers trying to knock each other off the road,

and I felt it needed something additional.

And I came up with the idea

the drivers got points for killing pedestrians.

Frankenstein scores!

And it became a cult classic

because it was violent and it had a sense of humor.

Women are still worth 10 points more than men

in all age brackets,

but teenagers now rack up 40 points,

and toddlers under 12 now rate a big 70 points.

The big score, anyone, any sex over 75 years old

has been upped to 100 points.

I saw "Death Race 2000" in the editing room

with Joe Dante on the moviola.

And Sylvester Stallone's part,

he was improvising a lot of lines

and he was really, really funny in it.

And we kept saying, who is this guy?

This guy's great.

It is the movie went on, his part got cut down, you know.

It's a real shame.

But I always remember what he calls his girlfriend.

"You know what you are? You're a baked potato."

For me, I think you are one very large baked potato.

I don't know, he was standing there,

so I started talking to him.

And I said, you know, how you doing?

What's going on, you know?

And he goes, well, I'm living in a closet.

I went, what?

You're living in a closet? That's good.

That was his room.

And he was writing a stupid script called "Rocky."

I felt so bad for him

because it's so hard to get a movie on, you know.

His acting was great,

but he certainly couldn't be a script writer.

"Rocky?"

I felt that David Carradine

had the power to play Frankenstein,

who was, of course,

the world's champion race driver at the time.

Yet at the same time, there was a subtlety

that I saw in some of his performances.

What did you expect, another pretty face?

Only in a Corman movie does this happen.

My character, it was a female driver,

which was stupid because I didn't drive.

I didn't know how to drive. I'm from New York.

I didn't know that Mary couldn't drive a car.

- Yeah, they towed me. - It was so embarrassing.

What makes "Death Race 2000" a cult classic

is the political subversiveness in the storyline.

A cult film is generally a genre film

that has some element in it that goes beyond the conventions

or the limitations of that genre.

And I think "Death Race" did that

by bringing in these political and cultural thoughts.

The transcontinental road race,

which upholds the American tradition of no holds barred.

"Death Race 2000" is this movie

that kind of almost predicts "The Hunger Games"

and the "Running Man"

and these films we're going to start seeing about reality shows

where all of America just wants to watch people die.

And also has a really demented black sense of humor

that Paul Bartel did such a great job of mining.

There is no cause for alarm.

The patient has been flown in from abroad

in a state of suspended animation.

But Paul is from...

he's almost from the theater of the ridiculous.

Oh, "Death Race 2000" I saw at the drive-in

when I was a little kid, and, you know,

at the time it was like so funny and so shocking.

And it's a movie that made fun of death,

which very few movies even today will do that.

Or the fact that, you know,

you're laughing at the fact that people were dying.

It's great, it's really funny,

but it's also about killing people.

I mean, you can't get around that.

You can't say this is so funny

and nobody cares about killing people.

No, no, no. They were lined up, we killed them.

It was just funny.

You can't take the killing of the pedestrians seriously

unless you're a pedestrian.

Aah!

All right, all right, and yes, sirree!

The opening, of course, is very strong.

And I remember doing it took the whole day for this one shot,

which is actually quick for Kubrick.

Because that one shot

is the whole experience encapsulated

with the eyelash

and the look that became the symbol.

"Clockwork Orange" is the adventures of a young man

whose principal interests

are ultraviolence, rape, and Beethoven.

Unlike so many other cult classics,

"A Clockwork Orange," when it came out was a hit.

"Clockwork Orange" was nominated for best picture.

"Clockwork Orange" is a Stanley Kubrick film.

It's one of the greatest films of all time.

Even though the movie was super successful

when it came out, it has become this cult film

partly because I think the movie still feels so dangerous.

Malcolm McDowell really grounds that film

and gives us someone to sympathize with

in a world gone mad.

He will be your true Christian,

ready to turn the other cheek.

Yeah, I've often thought, why is it still relevant?

Young kids doing drugs, gangs.

Hello.

Very frightening, frightening movie

and, you know, his sounds and his music,

and the sexuality of it.

And also I remember when I was young,

there were stories about it inciting actual violence.

Like in England, gangs were roaming the streets

like the droogs, and a homeless man was killed.

And Stanley Kubrick actually chose

to pull it out of circulation in England.

Of course, if you get your life threatened

and that of your family, then of course, you know,

you take advice from the police, and Stanley did that.

And the police told him to withdraw the film.

And I think these add to its mythos

and make it a cult film.

You know, if "A Clockwork Orange"

got banned at the beginning,

then the audience has to fight extra hard to find it.

And that's a brilliant film.

I mean, there's just no denying it.

Malcolm McDowell is so brilliant

in "A Clockwork Orange."

He's scary.

He's funny. He's twisted.

You can't keep your eyes off him on the screen.

He's the ultimate antihero because we hate him so much,

but when he becomes a political puppet,

we can't help but feel sorry for him

because his right to choose has been taken away from him.

So we ultimately side with him

despite all the heinous things he does.

It talks about a kind of apocalyptic time.

It certainly talks about a kind of gang

and how they try to fix this guy

and how that sort of ends up hurting itself.

But I don't think it's sci-fi.

I think that's just straight on very edgy drama.

We made a black comedy.

Are you now or have you ever been a homosexual?

- No, sir. - Right.

Leave it the hell alone and don't touch it.

It's a very important work of art.

Kubrick really was able to take advantage

of the changes in censorship laws

that occurred in the late 1960s

and put images on the screen that are probably as extreme

as have ever been committed to a mainstream film.

When it came out, nobody could get past the sort of surface,

which is the violence.

Well, you look at the "Singing In The Rain" scene today,

and that's an example of a scene

where you feel like you could not make a movie

that had that kind of scene today.

"Singing In The Rain"

came out of absolute pure necessity

because we had ground to a halt.

Creativity just came, bang, to a stop.

So we didn't shoot for five days.

I mean, unheard of, never do it today.

I think on the fifth day,

he looked down and said to me, can you dance?

I said, of course I can.

I jumped up

and just instinctively went into "Singing In The Rain."

Oh!

Aah!

And on the beats, kicking, whacking.

And, you know, Kubrick's face was one of sheer wonderment,

and he bought the rights to "Singing In The Rain"

there and then.

- Very well, little brother. - Very well.

But I did in fact meet Gene Kelly,

and I was very excited to meet him.

There's a great party in the flats of Beverly Hills, Malcolm.

There's going to be a lot of movie stars,

you know, like old movie stars.

Do you want to go? And I went, hell, yes.

Oh, my God, that's why I'm here.

I don't give a shit about the young ones.

I want to meet the old ones.

So we go into the party and, you know,

I see a few great movie stars, you know.

And he came up and said, hey, we're in luck.

Gene Kelly's here. Do you want...

I went, oh, yeah, I'd love to meet him.

So he goes up. Gene Kelly had his back to us as we came in.

He tapped him on the shoulder and he goes, Gene,

I just like to introduce you to Malcolm McDowell.

And he just looked at me.

He turned and walked off.

40 years later, of course,

I'm telling the story at the Academy.

And afterwards, a sweet lady, an older lady came over

and said, Malcolm, I was married to Gene.

And I went, oh, my God. Well...

She goes, oh, he did not... he didn't hate you.

It was Stanley.

And I went, Stanley?

Why would he hates Stanley?

She goes, well, he never paid him.

And I went, well, of course he didn't.

Of course he didn't.

Well, the whole shoot was very physical

and basically I was being whupped and slapped and punched

for just under a year.

And then he's tortured by the man, by some establishment,

you know, parent, parental types.

But the worst I think was the scratching of the corneas,

because those lid locks, you know,

they used in delicate eye operations,

but normally the patient is lying on their back,

not sitting up in a straightjacket

watching movies.

And they kept slipping out,

but because the eyes were anesthetized,

I couldn't feel it until, you know, the drive home.

This is for your own good.

You'll have to bear with us for a while.

But it's not fair.

It's not fair I should feel ill

when I hear lovely, lovely Ludwig Van.

Some people accused Stanley Kubrick

of almost endorsing that kind of violence in the movie,

reveling in it.

And ultimately, I think it's a far more moral film than that.

But the fact that he walks that line,

the fact that you can almost feel that joy

that at least the character of Alex is taking in his violence,

that's what gives the movie its edge.

And I think you'd be pilloried

if you tried to make a movie like that today.

Well, when I saw the film, I was thrilled with it.

I mean, how could you not be?

You know, I gave the performance of my life

with a genius director who was at the top of his game.

He was 47 years old.

It's such a unique vision.

It still feels like

a cutting edge, dangerous version of the future,

and that is entirely due to the fact

that Stanley Kubrick is a filmmaking God.

I was cured all right.

"Blade Runner,"

which was a very expensive studio picture by Ridley Scott,

which was maligned by the critics

and not enjoyed by the public,

and yet had such a strange cachet to it

that it actually became fascinating,

and people revisit it.

And different cuts of the picture

would then come out,

and the owners discovered there was actually a chance

to make some more money from this picture

by trying to find different versions

that they could keep putting out and people would re-buy it.

I would say of the first one, though,

the director's niece's cut was my favorite.

Of all the ones.

Yeah, because it was a little shorter,

but, ooh, so more impactful.

More human than human is our motto.

The reason you picked it

as the greatest cult film of all time

is because it is the greatest cult film of all time.

It was not a big hit when it came out.

It was misunderstood.

It probably is the greatest movie ever made.

"Blade Runner" is a movie

deserving of its exalted cult status.

There's this interesting lifecycle to a cult film

where maybe it starts off at the bottom and nobody cares,

and then it rises up in esteem,

like, say, "Blade Runner,"

and it becomes like the film that everybody wants to watch.

It goes almost from cult film to masterpiece.

The real reason for the cult is that film never went away.

It just kept building and building and building.

But it's among movie fans.

I still don't think it's a film for the mainstream audience,

and I think that's part of the appeal of it

is people really take it as their own.

People are expecting a high octane sci-fi action movie

like the ones that had come out before then,

namely Ridley Scott's "Alien" and "Star Wars"

and the Superman movie and on and on it goes.

So when "Blade Runner" came out, it's the slow quiet mood piece.

And it came out in the summer, and people didn't go to see it.

Ridley Scott made this film noir

about a private detective

who's hired to terminate rogue androids.

- I need the old Blade Runner. - I need your magic.

I don't work here anymore.

And it's about his conscience

that starts to question whether he's doing the right thing

and whether the androids are more human.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.

What is the meaning of being alive, you know?

What's the difference of you being alive and me being alive?

If I'm a replicant and you're a human being,

what's the difference?

If I still have feelings, you know, what's the difference?

Because I was manufactured or not, you know.

That was always kind of the thoughts

that I thought about when we were doing the movie.

What's the difference between you and me?

And also people argue

whether the Harrison Ford character is a robot himself.

We don't know.

And I ask Ridley Scott that, and he thinks he was.

And that conflict, because at the end of the picture,

he takes a replicant, which I play,

off into the, you know, off into...

well, it depends on what version,

but off into the big blue sky.

That when they went to do in the early nineties

the director's cut,

they actually restored earlier versions of the film

with no happy ending tacked on.

I love "Blade Runner."

I've always loved "Blade Runner."

But I love it for different reasons, you know.

My uncle did the arrangements to the soundtrack.

Vangelis wrote it and Jack Elliott,

who's my uncle, did all the music,

all the orchestrations.

So I remember going into the studio late at night

when you'd hear that, you know...

That's Tom Scott playing that sax,

romantic, you know, little riff.

I think there are people who worked with Ridley Scott

who might be afraid to work with him again, you know,

because he's pretty demanding.

Although now that he's older, I think he's quite mellow.

He was very controlling.

I mean, I guess that wouldn't be a surprise, right?

Very much into every detail.

Very much an artist.

I mean, as grueling as it was,

which it was, it was also very exciting, too.

You could tell because you were looking at these amazing sets

and you were looking at all of this care, you know,

and money and effort, you know,

to produce something that all comes together.

It was like, damn, you know.

It was like, wow. This looks amazing, you know.

I look like an old-fashioned movie star in this show.

I almost wished that Humphrey Bogart was still alive

so he could've played the part that Harrison Ford played.

I mean, the visual design of "Blade Runner"

was kind of off the charts when you really think about it.

That was not CGI.

I mean, they had special effects in it, you know,

but not the same thing

in the sense of what we're seeing today.

This is kind of old school.

It's the last of that industry really.

"Blade Runner" influenced so many filmmakers.

I don't think Luc Besson

would have a career if it wasn't for "Blade Runner."

Every movie of his has something from Blade Runner in it.

And we see that in so many of the science-fiction films

that have come out since.

"Minority Report," one after the other.

Working on "Blade Runner" was an experience

that I was extremely naiïve when I walked into.

I'm referring to the scene where Deckard pushes Rachael.

But I do remember feeling pretty ganged up on that day,

and I remember at the end of the day

just feeling just like beat up

for a variety of different reasons.

One being that Harrison Ford has a very rough beard, you know,

and so my face was just like crccccck.

And then Harrison, at the end of the day,

he looks at me and he turns around

and he walks to the corridor and he moons me.

He actually moons me.

And I'm looking at him like, okay.

Like, you know, this was a tough day I guess.

I kid you not.

I think it set the tone

for every science-fiction effort that came after.

And there's a lot of that going on now

where people are talking about artificial intelligence

and cloning and things like that.

It was ahead of its time.

"The Brother From Another Planet"

is the only movie

that I ever got the idea for the movie from dreams.

The plot of "Brother From Another Planet"

is an escaped slave from outer space

crash lands in New York harbor.

Makes his way to Harlem.

Immediately realizes, because even though he's new,

he can understand what's going around on him,

and he, you know, keeps learning more

that he'd better assimilate very quickly.

And then finding out

whether he's ever going to be able to go back home or not.

Welcome to Babbaland, brother.

You got that faraway look in your eye.

It's funny. The first time I read the script

was obviously because my agent had called me

and said John was looking for a kind of Buster Keaton.

I read the script and realized what John was doing,

that he was talking about looking at Harlem

from the perspective of someone who didn't live there

but looked like he should belong there.

And I loved it, just fell in love with it.

And the idea that the character didn't speak

attracted me even more.

One of the reasons for the brother to be mute

is to draw things out from other people.

I wanted to be Ernie Banks.

Mr. Cub.

And it never really dawned on me that he was black.

David Strathairn and I

play these kind of intergalactic bounty hunters.

Have any of you seen this man?

We have reason to believe he's been in here.

For the movement of the two men in black,

I wanted there to be something off about it.

And so much of our movement was done backwards.

So we actually started on the stool,

swiveled, backed out of the bar.

And because we were shooting on film,

we actually had to turn the camera upside down

to do that because later we were going to flip the film.

That would give you the reverse effect.

I think my favorite scene is the one on the train

with Fisher Stevens with the card trick.

Somebody told John about the card trick,

and so John put it in the movie.

But the idea that he does this card trick

about, you know, cards disappearing and reappearing

and then says...

Want to see me make all the white people disappear?

Because once we get to 96th Street,

most white folks got off the train.

See? What did I tell you?

My favorite in the movie is the eyeball.

One of the driving engines of the screenplay for me

was the idea of seeing through somebody else's eyes.

I mean, the brother literally takes his eyeball out,

and then we see what his eyeball saw while he was somewhere else.

It's wonderful that John has the character

land on Ellis Island.

Well, where else should he land as an immigrant?

It's wonderful that he has me

go past the statue that represents freedom,

and then have me go into Harlem

and talk about vis-à-vis whatever I go through,

the hypocrisy of what goes on in this country

as it pertains to especially people of color.

The spaceship probably cost us $100 altogether

and all the visuals that we did for it.

The wide shot of the arc of the spaceship

going into the harbor

was done with construction paper and a pin

and me in the sound mix going chww.

I always wished... with the spaceship,

I always wished and I never did,

that I had taken a picture of it from the outside.

Because from the outside,

it look like something that the Little Rascals had made.

It was all wood.

The light that sort of spun

was literally a tin can with a light inside.

I mean, it was all this kind of very, you know,

resourceful kinds of ways

of creating the atmosphere inside the ship.

You know, this is not "Star Wars."

This is a $1.98 science-fiction movie,

and it's going to be about the people you meet,

not so much about the hardware.

When the film first came out,

most people thought

it was yet another black exploitation film,

so it didn't do quite well right away.

Remember, we had video stores.

Then suddenly every doorman,

every kind of what Ralph Ellison would say,

the cog within the machine,

every black person inside the machine,

they had all seen it and they recognized what the film was.

So that's where it began to grow in terms of popularity.

Movies have a much longer life than they used to.

Movies are, you know,

they only live when somebody is watching them.

And so that you hope that your movies

have a second and third act

and that they're available in some form.

"Liquid Sky" is a bitching movie,

especially if you've tripped on acid, okay?

Which I've done a lot of.

"Liquid Sky" is about invisible aliens.

I think they land on the Empire State building.

There is some connection to heroin use,

and there are people that are voyeurs

that sort of spot what's going on with these aliens.

It's really hard to summarize. Let's put it that way.

"Liquid Sky" is a movie made for and about people in New York

in the early eighties who took a lot of drugs

and they were in sort of the art and fashion scene.

And tiny little aliens come down, and they kill you

if you have endorphins going off in your brain.

So they start out with heroin users,

and then they realize, hey, people having an orgasm,

that's way better.

And so then they kill people having sex,

and generally the people having sex

are also on some sort of drug.

And at the same time,

there's this sort of, you know, androgynous model

who is being really aggressively raped and beaten

by a lot of people.

And then she sort of gets her revenge

through her weird friendship with these little aliens.

I think that's what it's about.

I don't know what genre is "Liquid Sky."

The Berlin Film Festival had a catalogue made by genres

and they put "Liquid Sky" in the catalogue "out of genre."

It's a mix of a lot of different genres, and I like it.

And a lot of films which are my favorite films are like that.

They are out of genre.

I know you care for me.

And Caroline, she's playing herself in the film.

She was a fashion model

in the most popular model agency.

It's very hypnotic, the movie,

and it sucks you into this strange world

that you've never seen before.

- Nobody fucks at the club. - Everybody's gay.

It was the new wave of both music and film,

and you could do stuff like this.

And it's kind of up to each viewer to make sense of it.

I'm falling asleep.

I'm tired and I'm falling asleep

and you're boring me to death.

It was mind blowing.

At the time, I thought it was just this sci-fi reverie.

You know, 20 years later I was thinking about it.

I thought, oh, it's about the experience of being on heroin.

I think I read in many papers after that,

in many articles that "Liquid Sky" was slang for heroin,

which has obviously never been.

Maybe it's become after the film.

That I don't know. It's very probable.

You know, anybody who sets out to make a cult movie

is, you know, destined to fail.

It's never going to actually reach cult status.

But I think in this instance with "Liquid Sky,"

he sort of was.

Like he had this one specific thing that he wanted to do.

It was for a cult of people, a specific group of people,

and yet it has found sort of acclaim,

and everybody, you know, knows about it.

You see the poster

or, you know, just the font of the "Liquid Sky" title,

you're like, oh, I know what that is.

There is no chance that somebody like me,

who never made a commercial successful film,

can make a film in Hollywood.

So I need to make something very low budget.

That wasn't the problem to make low budget.

The problem was how to make successful low budget.

I really didn't know that it was impossible.

That's probably why I managed to do it.

Unfortunately, I discovered that it's easier to make a cult film

than to raise money for making a cult film.

Investors don't want the risk.

I think "Liquid Sky" has stood the test of time

in terms of cult status

because you can't help but just keep watching it.

You just sort of get sucked in and then by the end,

you're just like, well,

now who's going to get turned into aluminum foil?

I want to know.

Some people think it's the best film ever

and some people think that it's the worst film ever.

And I like it.

You either love the whole movie

or you like none of the movie.

That's what I've decided just this second.

He's a rocker...

- Doctor... - Don't tug on that.

You never know what it might be attached to.

- Inventor... - Activate oscillator.

He's breaking the sound barrier.

Philosopher...

But no matter where you go...

there you are.

I said I was conscientious

in research for this little interview.

Because I haven't seen "Buckaroo Banzai"

since we did it in, jeez, '84-ish? '84.

So that's now however long it is.

Yeah, so I saw it again yesterday.

I went online

and read a big Wikipedia thing about the movie, too,

which you can do.

Things I've never known.

So I know more about it now than I ever knew then.

What is the plot of "Buckaroo Banzai?"

The plot of "Buckaroo Banzai" is bananas.

Laugh while you can, monkey boy.

Yeah, they're a bunch of do-gooders

and a kind of a Renaissance man of sorts.

May have the curved yasargil, please?

It's not here, Dr. Banzai.

Uh, let me have the straight one then.

First you've got to know Buckaroo Banzai,

who is a neuroscientist,

astrophysicist, rockstar, ninja.

Biracial, but played by Peter Weller.

Government agent.

And just a general cool guy.

The most well-known person in the entire world.

And has a band, the Kung Fu Cavaliers,

who are also the most well-known people in the world.

He goes against evildoers, currently in the shape of aliens

that he finds in the eighth dimension.

Living on a simultaneous plane of existence with our own.

Which he breaks through

by going very fast and running into a mountain.

- This is Chase-One. - We got his tracks.

They go right up to a wall of rock.

Why the eighth dimension?

Because the fifth, sixth, and seventh were irrelevant.

And the fate of the planet is at stake.

John Lithgow plays an alien

who has been in the body of an Italian Nazi scientist

since World War II.

- Jesus Christo! - Make the ganglia twitch.

We're home free.

Jeff Goldblum plays a brain surgeon

who wants to be part of the band

and spends the whole time in this ridiculous cowboy outfit.

There's a million characters in it and they all do stuff.

Yeah, I don't actually think

the plot is all that important to them.

It came out against "Gremlins" and "Ghostbusters"

and what else did you say?

And "Indiana Jones." The first "Indiana Jones?"

Oh, "Temple of Doom."

Is that why it didn't do well?

Well, things work out perfectly one way or another.

That's my philosophy.

And it's found the audience that it's found.

I think "Buckaroo Banzai" has become a cult classic

because it looks like it should be

the best comic book movie you've ever seen.

It's the latest issue.

And you watch it and you think maybe it's your fault

you don't understand what's going on.

And so you're like, well, I've got to watch it again.

And from there, you start

to really like the characters and the music.

And the kind of just crazy qualities of everything.

What is it?

And once you see a movie like that

like 10 times

and you still can't really understand what's going on,

that's bound for cult classic-ness at that point.

I don't think the ambition is

when you go into a movie like that,

hey, I hope this becomes a cult movie,

because that means it'll have a small but devoted following.

I think they were hoping for something more.

- It was like insta - cult.

And I believe it has become an official cult movie

because I read like 20 page essays

about the physics of "Buckaroo Banzai."

Favorite scene in "Buckaroo Banzai."

Well, like I say, my own parts I... I...

Oh, don't you get it?

I do have a speech where I like the idea.

I could probably do this better now,

where I go, wait a minute, wait a minute.

I figure out...

1938, "War of the Worlds," that fake radio news broadcast

that got everybody scared thinking real-life Martians...

were landing in Grovers Mill, New Jersey.

That's kind of a nice idea, although I could do it better.

And I had a pair of glasses on

that I remember having gotten myself at l.a. Eyeworks.

Silver-ish.

But besides that, any scene with John Lithgow is delightful.

Shut up, John Bigboote, you're a coward.

You are the weakest individual I ever know.

And then he turns back around

and you can see he's going to laugh,

and so they have to cut.

The scene in "Buckaroo Banzai"

which I have watched with my sister on the telephone.

My sister lives in L.A.

The scene that always makes us drop the phone receiver

is when they're in the lab

and there's this watermelon just sitting there,

and Jeff Goldblum kind of says, what's that?

And someone else says, I'll explain it to you later.

Why is there a watermelon there?

I'll tell you later.

- Hey, what is that... - what's that watermelon for?

He goes, I'll tell you later.

And cut. Hey, send that to them.

Tell them that version, I think I just did it better.

Reinsert that. Re-cut that into the movie.

I recommend it.

I guess I don't look the same, but anyway, there you go.

- That's like the whole movie. - I'll explain it to you later.

Just enjoy.

Gee, I don't know.

You seem to have a particular fondness for it maybe yourself,

and maybe you guys like it.

You know, I know it qualifies on several different lists

as not having done well, being quirky, being eccentric,

being unique and unusual in some ways,

having something to do with aliens, space aliens probably,

and then getting a following, getting a life,

and a continual devoted, even fanatical following.

That's probably it.