Original subtitles

Hi, I'm David Gregory from Blue Underground.

And I'm Gary Sherman, who directed this movie.

Do you want to start by telling us a little bit about how the project came

together in the first place?

Well, this is a script that Ron and Dan had been working on, and then, of

course, Alien came out, and they had their great success with Alien.

So they were finally able to put this project together.

It started as a bit of a black comedy, which was really what it was supposed to

be and why I was actually initially interested in doing it.

Unfortunately, the group that bought the project to make it only was with us

through pre -production, then the company was sold to someone else.

while we were making the picture, and then it was sold to someone else while

were in post -production.

So as we'll talk about as you watch the film is how things changed.

So where was all this shot?

The whole picture was shot in Mendocino.

in the city of Mendocino, in the county of Mendocino, in Northern California.

And I had basically traveled the whole coast of... We wanted to shoot the

picture in California, although the kind of setting is really Maine.

Went to Catalina and looked at Catalina and then looked at every beach town

from Los Angeles north to the Oregon border.

and ended up in Mendocino, which is just one of the most incredibly beautiful

places. It's just below Fort Bragg, which is where they do most of the

work and harvesting redwoods. And so everywhere along the water here,

there are tons and tons of logs that got away as they were bringing them down

the river. And when it gets really stormy, it's pretty amazing to see these

redwood trees just...

banging up against the headlands.

It's actually quite beautiful and scary.

You actually managed to make it look a lot like a New England coastal town.

Well, it's very foggy up there, and we basically shot most of the exteriors

it was foggiest. We would kind of work our way around it going from interiors

exteriors.

We did not want to shoot in direct sunlight. And it was funny because the

scene that starts the film off was one of the last things that we shot.

And by then, the days were getting sunnier and sunnier.

And at one point, we had nothing else to shoot except the beach, and the sun was

out there bright, and we kind of couldn't call it a weather day because

fact that it was sunny.

So our grip crew constructed a flag.

that was the biggest flag that you have ever seen in your life. I mean, it was

bigger than a house, which we flew from a construction crane on a bluff about

80 feet above the beach and had this huge flag suspended to give us

shade and then basically a silk that we flew from another crane to

diffuse the light so that it didn't look sunny.

really good camera isn't it you

got to be a

professional photographer to have a camera like that uh -huh are you really

oh that's exciting yeah sometimes and this of course is

Lisa Blount and Christopher Allport Yeah, Christopher Alport. And I don't

Christopher had done very much before he did this film. And I know Lisa hadn't.

And, you know, she went on to do Officer and Gentleman.

And she won an Oscar last year for a... For a documentary. It was actually a

short film called The Accountant, which was directed by her husband.

She was quite fun to work with. We had a really good time.

And Christopher was really excited about doing this part. He really got into it.

You know, it's funny, as a Monday quarterback, looking at this film today,

think that we made a big mistake and that the Christopher wasn't, you know,

in this part. But we should have really cast a named person to play because it

would have been such a surprise.

Psycho type.

Yeah, that when he was burned at the stake in the first five minutes of the

movie, you know, because we could have gotten away with it because, of course,

he comes back. Reappears, yeah.

But I really think we probably should have spent the money and not cast this

with an unknown.

It also would have been more recognizable when we see him later.

That's true, yeah.

Now I want you to give me a nice smile, okay?

All right, Haley.

Come on.

Look at Fred.

So this is a very shocking opening scene. Did you mean it to really sort of

the audience?

Yeah, and kind of mislead them, do a little sexual titillation and

make it kind of romantic. And the music, obviously, is very

romantic. Joe Renzetti was doing his strings thing here.

You know, it's just a matter of...

misleading the audience.

If anything, I think in retrospect that it's a little long.

That I think we could have shortened this up a bit.

I don't know. I still think it's quite a jump when the locals finally appear

here. Yeah, well, you've definitely misled the audience and then, you know,

little T &A there.

All misled. No, we think that Freddy's going to get some.

Very close.

Must be a very disappointing day for him. Oh, I'm sure it's very

He expected it to get hot, but not as hot as it gets.

Hey! Why are you smiling?

And then they kind of beat him up a lot.

Can you talk a bit about the violence that you wanted to show in the movie? I

mean, this is quite a violent sequence, but it's not as if you're actually

showing blood and gore.

Well, I mean, I wanted the violence to be fairly disgusting,

which I actually, in my next picture, took that to a higher degree, where the

violence is just...

repulsively ugly and I wanted it to be that because I wanted to show how ugly

violence can be, which was, you know, in Vice Squad, which was the next film

that I did after this.

I guess I really wanted this to be as violent as I possibly could and give no

relief to the violence and as opposed to the violence being exciting, I wanted

it to be revolting. And I mean, it's set against a kind of comedy that was the

original intent of this film, which is why, you know, As you'll see, Jack

Albertson kind of plays it as broad as he plays it.

Because it was really done for comedy. Unfortunately, a lot of the comic

of the picture were removed. Some of them couldn't be, fortunately.

But the third entity that came in to become the studio that created this

didn't want the comedy at all, and they just wanted the gore.

And as we go through the picture, we'll talk about the gore that was added.

Because, of course, horror movies at this time, this was at the height of the

slasher period in horror movies. So Friday the 13th had already been out,

gory effects were very much the norm in horror movies. They were what were

expected in successful horror movies. So perhaps that's why the final financier

wanted to turn it into something like that.

Yeah. Well, you know, it's true. I mean, but we thought that we were balancing

off the gore and the comedy when we did it. I mean, what you're about to see

right now, which is a pretty scary moment in movies, this was absolutely

the original intent. This was an effect that was created by Stan Winston, who

really is the master of effects.

You know, it's funny, I've had to...

pleasure of working with some of the real greats. And Stan Winston was just

amazing to work with. I also, you know, had gotten to work with Dick Smith over

the years and Rick Baker. It's amazing working with these people.

But Stan Winston, his genius, at this time, nobody else was doing.

I mean, he had...

Stan had grown up under Dick Smith and had Dick Smith's tutelage, but Stan

was doing stuff back then that no one else was doing yet.

You think the county let me have this rig from South Beach?

Anyhow, she said he's on his way.

Well, hurry.

The fellow's a definite goner.

Did you get a good gander at that face, Danny?

Yes, Harry, I did.

Pretty, huh?

Here comes Doc.

Talk about an inch.

Doc, where's that? Just a minute.

And that, of course, is Jack Albertson.

Jack Albertson. Jack Albertson was just a pleasure.

He was just an amazing, amazing guy, and this was his last film.

He passed away while we were in post -production.

I had just done his ADR at the time. I mean, we knew he was sick, and, you

there were problems getting him insured to do the film, but I really wanted him,

and it's funny.

His first film was Miracle on 34th Street, where he was the postal worker

discovers the letter that's been addressed to Santa Claus and says, hey,

we should send this to the county court.

Well, Mr. Dobbs is our official coroner mortician. What would you say the cause

of death was?

That was the effect right there.

One of Stan Winston's great moments.

And, of course, when you watch that with an audience, that's one of those great

jump moments. That is a great jump moment. Although I must say that Stan

argued a lot about how it should be shot, but I think that in the end we

work.

In this picture, a lot, I went...

for shooting scenes in ways that would make them as strange and creepy as

possible, even if it was just impossible camera moves.

Again, you know, this was before Luma cranes were available and hothead

and so the camera operator really had to be there with the camera. We didn't

have video assist.

The beginnings of video assist were around then, but it wasn't common.

and even the establishing shot of the town was just a crane move that was just

very strange and eerie and showed how empty the streets were. He comes back to

his old hometown to help the poor folks out. That's right. You people are very

lucky. Hey, Midge, how about that coffee?

Coming right up, man. Hospital find out about this fellow yet?

Do you have any idea when he might come to?

They're not sure he will. Another thing that you'll notice is that there's no

red.

anywhere in the movie.

Lisa Blount's blouse in the opening scene is red, and you don't see red

until there's blood at the end of the movie.

Unfortunately, some of the scenes that were added in later do have blood in

them, which was not what I originally wanted with the picture.

And this, of course, is one of those scenes. We're coming up to one of those

scenes, yes.

As the fisherman is killed, this scene cut away from the fisherman

before, the scene ended before he started getting slashed and stuff.

So from Lisa Blouse until the harpoon

slashes the fisherman's face, there was no red in the film, and there won't be

any red in the film again until...

one of the other added scenes.

But it was just a matter of so that when you did see blood, it was very

shocking.

I mean, that was the original intent, and unfortunately it got a little undone

along the way.

Nicholas Rogue used a similar technique in Don't Look Now when the little girl

in the red blouse runs past. That's very much the only time you really see her.

In the red mac, yeah. That's right, yeah. That's true.

Steve did an amazing job, Steve Poster, lighting this film. I think that the

picture has a great look, and it's one of the reasons I'm very happy that a DVD

is being done, because people will be able to see how incredibly well the

photography was done in this film.

You know, we did all kinds of tests on makeup and everything because of the

that we were desaturating, and we didn't want...

any red, so we would desaturate from the red, which changed skin tones, so the

makeup on all the actors had to be done.

I've been a pilot for all of my life.

Besides,

the discussion is terminated as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah, this is where it ended. He just comes with the harpoon,

and the scene ended before he slashed his throat.

So you actually went back months later and had to match what happened before

with the same actor?

Right. We did, yeah, and we did it in the studio as opposed to on location

the original thing was done.

But it was either a matter of...

Us going back in and doing it or somebody else going in and doing it. And

figured I wanted to try and protect the movie as much as I could.

Well, let's talk about how that actually came to pass.

were you actually offered the opportunity to go and shoot it yourself,

were going to take it out of your hands and go and shoot inserts themselves?

They were going to shoot the inserts, and basically they said to me, either

shoot it or we'll get someone else to shoot it. And this is the production

company that took over the movie in the final stages of production?

The third group, yes. The group that saw my cut of the movie and said, To me,

it's a really good movie, but if we wanted Bergman to make a horror picture,

would have hired Bergman.

They just thought that the original version of the picture was a little too

intellectual.

It was funny, and everyone who saw it just... I mean, Bob Ramey was the

president of AFCO Embassy at the time, and he just absolutely loved my first

of the movie.

and they were to be the distributor of the film. Just everybody that saw the

original version just really loved it. It wasn't a lot different than this

movie. It's just the tone was different. There was more of this kind of black

comedy in the... Not that dialogue's missing or anything, but the focus and

shape was a little different, and the gory parts were really designed.

just to enhance the comedy and for the comedy to enhance the gore and the

violence. And it wasn't slapstick comedy. It was definitely deep, dark,

black comedy.

Which still permeates through every scene that Jack Albertson seems to be

Right. With the music that he's playing and the way he's playing the role.

Yeah, I mean, that was the whole idea of putting in the big band music, and I

think that the final group that took over this film, if they could have taken

out the big band music, they probably would have done that too, because Joe

Renzetti told me, who composed the music.

and oversaw the score, said that they actually did talk to him about, why do

want big band music? Who listens to big band music?

And yet I think that there's a great soundtrack to this picture.

And when Joe and I talked about this at the very beginning, about taking the big

band music into score and going atonal with it, just those little nuances.

to make the film feel strange.

You know, I mean, the way it lit, the way it looks, the way it sounds.

We went for as much strangeness in the picture as we could.

This is an art, and I am the artist.

What can you remember about a sealed box, a sealed casket? That is obscene.

As I said, you know, the way we photographed scenes, I wanted to make

as uncomfortable to watch as possible.

And we'll get into some scenes here that I think people watching the picture for

the first time really wouldn't notice how strange the camera moves are.

And just little things to make it uncomfortable, but yet pristine.

Of course, I think most people can probably relate in some way to going to

small town and it being just a little bit different and a little bit strange

not feeling quite welcome for being there.

Yeah, it's true. And, you know, that small towns give a feeling of

And one of the things that we did with this small town, if anybody's ever

actually been to the city of Mendocino, and they've seen this picture, they're

going to think they're in different places because by camera angles, I

completely changed the geography of the town.

I actually drew a map of the town and decided to take buildings and move them

around and make it much more claustrophobic than the real town was by

that we shot angles and reverses.

This is certainly not an accident.

That's right, Don. It's a murder.

And I'll bet you I'm right about the guy in the house.

Morning,

Ben.

Dan, how you doing?

All right.

Ben, have you recently had anybody check out without... James Farentino plays

Sheriff Dan Gillis. How was he to work with?

Jimmy was really fun to work with. We had a really good time on the picture.

was very excited about the part.

You know, he'd done so many television series and things, he was very excited

about doing a movie and moving his career into movies.

And, you know, being cast opposite Melody Anderson, who was expected, you

she had just shot.

Flash Gordon, it wasn't out yet.

And everybody thought Flash Gordon was going to be the hit of the decade.

It didn't quite happen that way. No, and we thought we had pulled off quite a

coup by getting Melody her first picture after Flash Gordon, but unfortunately

Flash Gordon bombed.

But you never know what's going to happen.

You know, one didn't know that 20 years later we would be doing a DVD of Dead

and Buried.

Target. That's not a damn thing with his name.

Make and McAllen, who plays Ben, the hotel owner, was kind of fun. He really

the main accent down.

He wanted to be very specific about exactly where Potter's Bluff was.

And, you know, really got into it. He was kind of fun. Added another eerie

quality. And again, we wanted to take his character a little over the top,

because it's part of this whole...

Kind of almost mystique of whether you're watching something that's serious

something that's irony.

Try.

Of course, of course.

Thanks, man. I'll talk to Janet.

Now, had you spent a lot of time in Maine?

No.

So basically you were going on the fact that how you imagine a small seaside

town in Maine to be.

Well, I'd spent a lot of time in seaside towns on the East Coast, actually.

Spent a lot of time in Upper State New York, and I'd been to Maine and Vermont

and Martha's Vineyard and, you know, along Rhode Island.

you know, in there, but not especially Maine.

And then also I'd written another film that took place along the New Jersey

coast, and so I'd spent a lot of time there.

But, you know, little towns are little towns. I mean, and, you know, even

growing up in Chicago and going to the little towns around Lake Michigan and

into Michiana and, you know, there's a feeling of those little towns that's

pretty...

specific to little waterfront towns.

Right.

And Mendocino really had the feeling. It's a fishing village, basically, and

mostly Portuguese, people of Portuguese descent who live there.

It's an interesting little town.

Is he a friend of yours, Jen? Not really. It's just the kind of thing you

think happens to other people.

That's Melanie Anderson.

Yes, this is Melanie Anderson, who is absolutely fantastic.

I mean, Melody is great. She's a real trooper. She just gets in there and does

it. Took her role in this film very seriously.

I've always, you know, I mean, Melody's had a career, but I've always wondered

why it didn't go a lot further than it did. I mean, she's wonderfully beautiful

and very talented and very sweet.

Now here's a shot that's another one of our little weirdnesses. We actually had

a dolly in the back of the Jimmy that he's driving, you know, the GMC,

and actually did a dolly move as Mr. Haskell's car moves in and

come into the profile for the over -the -shoulder of Jimmy Ferentino.

And you don't realize you're actually looking through a windshield.

No, no.

We have a few of those in here that just you're disoriented as to what you're

seeing.

And again, it's just, you know, a way of disorienting the audience to make

things feel a little strange.

I am the principal.

Yes, of course. Thank you.

see the chart. And here's another one of Stan Winston's miracles.

The body in that bed is a fully reticulated dummy. Every part of it

The hands, the head movements, everything is being operated from

cables where operators are working everything.

The blinking of the eye.

Chris Alport is not inside that. Oh, and this nurse here?

Yeah.

That's Jill Fossey, who lived in Mendocino. She was a local cast. She's

the niece of Bob Fossey.

They told me downstairs he pulled out of a coma. How's he doing?

It's touch and go.

We might pull him through, but... So the only time we actually see Chris Allport

in the bandages is when you have the close -up of the eye?

No. Not even. Not even. The close -up of the eye, this is a fully reticulated

dummy. It's a casting of Chris that Stan Winston sculpted and

did all of the armature in it.

But Chris was never wrapped up in bandages. It is only the dummy that's in

bed.

Come on, let's sit down.

Well, then we might be able to talk.

See, and here again, you know, in the scene of the doctor and Dan Gillis,

Sheriff Gillis, coming down the hallway, it's all shot very symmetrical, which

is just a strange way to look at things.

It gives the feeling more of some kind of portrait. It's like a magazine layout

as opposed to a way that you would normally shoot a scene. And there are

and lots of scenes in this picture that were shot completely.

that things were just centered, just to make it kind of uncomfortable.

But yes, this

is a dummy.

There is not an actor inside those bandages.

And this, of course, is one of the great shock sequences of the film. Yes,

well...

It was all done like this so that we could do this.

So that she could do what she's about to do.

A lot of people have a fear of needles, particularly big needles.

Squish.

Yeah, a big needle in the eye. It doesn't get much worse than that. No.

And George gets buried.

Michael Pataki, who plays the grave digger here, who's done a lot of

stuff, and Michael did this little tiny part, which at the time was a

little tiny part for him, because he's Linda Shusett's uncle.

Really? Okay. Ron Shusett's wife, who also plays the waitress in the cafe.

with Linda's attempt at becoming an actor.

But I think she enjoyed the role of wife of a producer better.

Michael Pataki had been in a number of movies where he played the lead.

Right, yeah, Michael.

No, this was a favor, Michael. And he liked the fact that he could play it

really weird. And I just told him, I'd just go for it.

Let's just go as weird as we can.

The shot that's coming up here was one of the shots that I designed to,

again, just create this feeling of being watched.

From this point here where Melody Anderson's coming up the stairs, the

the house is attached to the front of the camera.

And as we pull back here, the door locked into the door frame,

and the camera continues to dolly back.

So that we started as an exterior, come on now into the house. We now come

through the wall.

And this was at a real house. We actually cut a hole.

And the camera just continues to be voyeuristic.

There are no cuts in the sequence at all. It's all one shot.

And it just, you know, it starts with melody. Now, it actually went on longer

originally, and this was one of the cuts that was done by the...

The third entity. The scene now will end with just moving in closer, closer,

closer on Jimmy, and then he's holding the film.

And what happened after that is he looks towards the window, the camera followed

his eyeline, picks up his reflection in the window, and then focuses through his

reflection to her driving away in the car outside so that it starts and ends

an exterior.

was the idea of the shot and just to make it feel like somebody was watching

the whole thing, to make it feel very much like it's, give it

a voyeuristic kind of feeling.

It was a very difficult shot to do and to get everything working together and

get everything choreographed and to get the performances.

Now, was there any specific reason why the third entity would want that ending

of the shot taken out? They just thought it was going on too long. There's other

places in the picture where they cut tracking shots.

They just thought were too long, you know, which was... I've always had that

my career, people thinking my tracking shots are too long. You know, it's like

in Death Line. There's a real four of the movie is all one shot.

The entire reel.

I think it's eight and a half minutes long.

And I remember when I was shooting that, Jay Cantor and Ellen Lott Jr., who were

the executive producers on the movie, came down to the set.

And they said, well, how much to shoot today? And I said, well, we haven't shot

anything today. We're just rehearsing a shot we're going to do tomorrow.

They said, what are you talking about?

I said, well, we have to rehearse the shot and get it lit, and it's going to

take all day today, and we'll shoot it first thing tomorrow morning, and then

we'll move on.

Right. They said, you're taking all day to do one shot?

I said, yeah, but it's going to be eight and a half minutes long.

So in one day, I'll have eight and a half minutes of finished screen time.

And they accepted that, did they? Well, they said, well, it better be good when

we see it in dailies. And when they saw it, it blew them away.

Excuse me. Good evening.

Can we help you?

I hope so.

I'm lost.

Well, you're in Potter's Bluff. Where did you want to be?

The Seaview Lodge.

Oh, you're not lost.

Just take that highway, Highway 12 over there.

Oh, thanks.

Oh, my, what a cute little boy.

Uh, Jamie has to go to the bathroom.

Well, come on, honey, I'll show you where it is.

Oh, you want your mommy and daddy to take you, right?

Well, what is it that you want? When Chris Allport turns around here, if

have had a star... Yeah, yes, absolutely. If, uh...

It would have been quite the surprise here.

Oh, Ron, gas.

Oh, is there a gas station nearby?

Yeah, right at this point, right now.

Sure thing.

It's just down the street.

I mean, hopefully, you know, and I think that most of the audience did recognize

him, but if it had been a known star, it would have been a real surprise. It

wouldn't have even needed as much musical.

Absolutely. Speaking of the

music, Joe Ranzetti did the music you've worked with a couple of times in your

career. I've worked with Joe a lot. I knew Joe from the record business

I used to be involved in rock and roll. I was a musician. I had a group.

was quite involved and did a couple of records. Actually, I worked on a lot of

other people's records as a studio musician.

So anyways, I had known Joe. I mean, Joe had quite a prominent career in the

rock and roll business, and he's produced lots and lots of different

written quite a few hit songs.

So anyways, Joe had just done the Buddy Holly story.

and was nominated for the Oscar for it. And I was doing one of my first TV films

that I did when I came over to the United States from Britain.

So I talked to Joe. I said, you know, God, you're doing movies now. You should

do this TV movie I'm doing.

And I went to the producer of the TV movie and said, look, I want this guy,

He said, no, we have all our own, you know, the studio thing. We have all our

own people that we work with. I said, this guy's been nominated for an Oscar.

And, you know, he said to me, he says, well, he said, you know, on the day

the Oscars, there'll just be another guy that got nominated. Well, Joe won the

Oscar and ended up doing the score to my first American film and has done almost

all of my films and television series since then.

So he's one of my best friends, and I love working with him, and he's

incredibly talented.

Let's go back to the car.

an accident out in the street, and if we could get some help.

Anyone in there?

No. The lights don't work. There's nobody.

Maybe they're upstairs.

There's no lights, honey. We need some help.

Hello?

Is anybody here?

Ron, I saw a light. Try in there, then. For Christ's sake.

Is there anyone here?

Hello? Hello?

Listen, we have a son who's injured.

The entire haunted house

had to be shot during the daytime because the county

where you're working is in charge of administering the child labor laws, and

they would not grant us the opportunity to work with the children at night. So

because we had the kid in this thing, we had this tent, this entire house, but

we had the light from inside there, so we had a tent that was about a quarter

a mile long.

A quarter of a mile wide, just this whole framework was built, this huge

and all the lights had to be put in there, and then we had to ventilate it,

the ventilation fans made so much noise we ended up having to post -sync this

whole sequence because there was no way to record dialogue because it was so

noisy from the fans and the generators and the lights.

There was just no way to soundproof anything from what we were doing.

Anybody here? How many days did the sequence take, just for one day?

I think we were two or three days inside this house.

There's a lot of setups in here, as you can see, and a lot of very creepy camera

moves.

Specific lighting as well.

The lighting was... I mean, almost every shot involved a move of some kind and

a camera move as well as little things going on like... As she moves away,

there's movement behind her.

You see shadows going across the windows.

The drapes blow at very specific times just to create

the creepiness.

I mean, nothing's accidental in this sequence. It was almost like being in a

studio, although this really was an abandoned house that we found outside of

Mendocino.

The house had been abandoned for years.

There's not any ice in here for your head.

What's the matter?

Oh, you scared me, Ronnie.

There's nobody in the basement.

Oh, God. Now, come on, let's get out of here, all right?

Welcome to Potter's Bluff. You might recognize that voice.

Welcome to Potter's Bluff.

Yeah, as I said, we had to post -sync this whole thing. That guy that came

through the window was a stuntman, so I just added his voice when we were doing

the post -syncing.

How would you direct the movement of the actors who were playing the Potter's

Bluff residents when they were on the attack?

Because they're very subdued. You know, I basically just told them, you're

really cool.

I don't want you to be specifically evil.

But all of this was shot under the tent.

On the street,

yeah. Of course, because the child's in all the shots.

Yeah, well, some of this, and the child's not in the shot, some of it was

at night, but the shot with them running into the car with the child, and the

interior of the car was actually done on the stage.

in the film here.

I'm not sure I remember exactly how it was originally, but this scene was much

later in the movie because we had gone into a, you know, as I said, the shape

the movie was changed entirely, but you'll notice that the hitchhiker that

killed and reconstructed by later in the movie is in that scene.

I see. But the powers that be that reordered the film and changed the

shape of the film around, they just thought that we needed some violence at

point. Because I wanted to really build some creepiness in there without the,

you know, I mean, this scene was where it was supposed to be and everything,

the film was reshaped from the original script and what Ron and...

the way Ron and I had originally formatted the film to put it together

started pre -production on the film.

So the hitchhiker's death would have been earlier in the film.

The hitchhiker's death would have been earlier in the film, would have been

where it is in the film, and this scene would have been later. I see. The

haunted house sequence was to happen later. I see, so there was more

in the third reel where things are revealed. There's lots of things that, I

mean, I would really have to...

It's been a long time.

And I'd really have to sit down with the film and I could figure out exactly

where, because after the family, after the haunted house sequence,

you see the kid in the classroom.

And so things were restructured some, but I guess they didn't care about

the inconsistencies. Oh, nobody will notice her.

Maybe they don't. Maybe you didn't. I didn't notice, I'm afraid.

For the point of clarity, can you just give sort of a potted history of the

three different entities that were financing the movie? When you talk about

third group changing the movie, can you tell us sort of how it happened from the

first to the second to the third?

Well, originally it was a company that normally was not in the film industry,

Guinness makes ale, the brewery.

was getting into the film industry, and they had bought a studio, and that was

the studio that we originally made, or that Ron Choucette had originally made

the deal with to make this movie.

Anyhow, Guinness, kind of halfway through our pre -production, had had a

of disasters on other things and decided to get out of the business.

Well, the production company that had been hired by Guinness to oversee this

thing, as I remember,

then took over with financing from another source.

So all of our executives changed, and there was a slightly different idea

what wanted to be happening, going into phase two, which was going from pre

-production into production.

Just around the time we finished the picture and were in post -production, a

third entity came in and bought out the second entity, and this was a major

distribution company.

And they took over this company and all the other projects that this company had

going.

And then we had our third set of executives who had a completely

feeling about what this film was supposed to be.

Completely different.

And, I mean, you know, maybe we would have made adjustments, but... So

you and Ron had to kind of enter into a dialogue with this third entity as to...

try and bring the movie, keep the movie as much the way you wanted it, but try

and bring it around to the way they wanted it at the same time, which didn't

seem to be on the same page at all.

No, none of it was on the same page.

It was a pretty awful experience because I had very high

hopes for this picture in a very specific kind of way. I think

stepping back from it and trying to be less myopic about it, I think the final

result of the picture is pretty close to what the final result of the picture

would have been. I think the picture that we were trying to make might have

just a little better in my point of view than the picture that we ended up with.

I don't like some of the gore that we added because I just felt it was

gratuitous. There's also some problems in the shape of the film.

I mean, like the fact that we go right from the chicken coop scene to Dan at

home.

you know, with his wife and going through this questioning thing, which

attitude is completely wrong in the scene after the chicken coop and then

going into the scene at home.

These scenes were not supposed to be together.

There were other things that were supposed to happen in between.

So there are some inconsistencies that bother me because I know that it was

well planned out.

And just so fans of the film know, you did have a director's cut that was

screened, but that director's cut no longer exists in any shape or form. So

can't restore it for DVD.

It cannot be restored.

Every copy of it was... You know, the studio that was going to distribute the

film, AFCO Embassy, had seen my cut of the picture, and they loved it.

The distributor...

The promoter, who was the third entity that bought this thing, was kind of, you

know, was locked into the Avco Embassy deal for the United States, and they

wanted a different version of the film for Europe, and they weren't willing to

foot the expense of having two versions of the film.

And even though Avco Embassy wanted the picture kept the way it was...

They contractually did not have the power to keep it the way that it was,

got very messy. And all of the versions of my cut were destroyed so that nobody

could make the changes.

And the other entity changed. Well, it was after the

studio, after Avco Embassy saw the PSO final cut,

which is this.

that they wanted it taken back to the original cut.

And that's when all of my cuts were destroyed.

To make sure that it couldn't be. To make sure that it couldn't be because it

would have cost PSO money.

Right. And I was just kind of completely pushed out of the picture at that time.

And Bob Ramey said to me, why don't we just make another movie?

And that became Vice Squad. That became Vice Squad, yeah.

You may be right.

It's very possible.

Take it somewhere else and then place it in the wrecked car to make it look like

an accident.

Why wouldn't he make the fisherman look like an accident?

How should I know? I'm not the detective.

You are.

And keep up the good work.

Bye -bye.

Danny, Harry here.

Yeah, Harry.

Listen, I just pulled a late model Ford out of the water down by the South

Beach. Robert England.

Robert England.

I had worked with Robert England on a TV movie that I had made just before Dead

and Buried. What was that called?

The Mysterious Two.

And had really enjoyed working with him. He was just really great to work with.

And when I had this... Part of the tow truck driver.

In fact, I talked to Robert while we were doing the television movie. I said,

look, I'm doing this feature right afterwards, and there's a part that's

absolutely perfect for you, and I'd really love you to do it. And he read it

said, yeah, right, right, great.

And this was all before he became Freddy.

At the time, he'd had a small role in Tobey Hooper's Eaten Alive. He was also

Big Wednesday, the John Milius movie. Right.

But, of course, now he is known, not recognizably known, but obviously known

Freddy Krueger. Yeah, well, but, you know, I think Robert did well enough off

Freddy Krueger that he doesn't have to worry about being anything else.

I mean, facially recognizable.

You know what? He's somewhat recognizable through the Freddy makeup.

But Bob England is great. I mean, I really enjoyed working with him a lot.

Ben, what are you talking about?

He's over at Norman Station pumping gas.

Ben, he's dead.

You go over there and take a look. I never got a look at his face, Ben.

Obviously, it's a guy who looks just like him. It's the same guy.

Dan, I was standing right next to that man. You ask your wife.

The saddest part about this film was Jack Albertson's condition.

While we were shooting, there was one scene that we were shooting in his

where Dobbs was sitting at his desk and James Ferentino sitting opposite

him, and they're in conversation.

And when we were shooting Jimmy Ferentino's side of the conversation,

Albertson kept dozing off.

And at one point, I mean, because he was under medication, he was quite sick. At

one point, he just went completely out.

And Jimmy just freaked, ran off the set, and wouldn't come back onto the set.

I thought maybe he was upset that Jack had fallen asleep while he was doing his

dialogue. And I went out to his trailer to talk to him, and he was just in

tears. We sat and talked, and he told me that that's how he lost his father.

He was sitting and talking to his father, and his father just died while

were in the middle of a conversation.

And he said it just...

He said every time he was doing a scene with Jack, he was reminded of his

father, and when Jack just basically went over while Jimmy was in the middle

a sentence, it just flashed him back to his father dying, and he couldn't deal

with it.

You want to hear the really creepy part?

Yeah! Okay?

In order for the master to retain the control over the souls of his undead.

He had to cut out their heart and keep it

hidden. This is a scene that we've already had in the movie, or is this the

scene that's coming up? This is the scene that was in the movie, the first

conversation between the two of them. Right.

And Jack Albertson, his career goes right back to vaudeville. He was one of

few actors who won an Oscar, a Tony, and an Emmy.

recognizable to modern film audiences. Well, he did very few feature films, but

the ones that he did... Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Yeah, the ones

that he did were cool. My buddy Mel Stewart directed that.

You know, the first film he did was Miracle on 34th Street, where he played

little tiny role.

Unfortunately, the last film he did was Dead and Buried.

We had just done his looping.

And I had dinner with Jack and his wife, and he was in really bad shape. And

then I think it was two days after we had dinner, I get up in the morning and

the radio they said, Better an actor, Jack Albertson died during the night at

Cedars -Sinai Hospital.

And I went, whoa.

It was kind of sad.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm going up here to Ponders Bluff.

Well, if you stop at my place up the road piece here.

Hey, you want to come on up and meet a potter's wolf?

It's a real nice little town.

You ever been up there?

Never heard of it before.

Oh, well, come on in out of the rain, honey.

There we go.

All right.

Well,

here we are. See, now, I've picked somebody to play the part of the

who had a very identifiable face.

Lisa Marie.

Lisa Marie. Lisa Marie had a nose that only existed on Lisa Marie, that's for

sure.

Well, I suppose the thing is you hadn't seen her up until this point when you

see her earlier in the film.

It's probably not that noticeable, obviously, unless you watch the film a

times. Right. It isn't because, you know, she's not that noticeable in that

scene. There are no real close -ups of her smile.

Several video versions of that film, actually a couple that have been on DVD

Europe, don't actually include the fade to black and the sound of the rock

hitting her head. It just cuts directly from picture to the picture of her.

Oh, really? Well, actually, the cutting from the picture to the picture was much

different. Again, that was one of my tracking shots that was taken out, and I

don't know.

It went to the black, and then it went to a close -up of her.

His mutilated face as the blanket gets put over her and then the camera starts

moving back.

And the camera just moves back and back and back as Jimmy Ferentino walks to his

squad car and drives away.

I don't know. I mean, there were a couple of comments made about you don't

away from action. I mean, like, you know, these strange rules that, you

that's an ending.

It's not a continuing thing. You should move into your action. You shouldn't

back off.

The whole idea of this film is to do things wrong and strangely because

everything in this film is strange, you know.

Anyways, I'm going to go into this sequence of seeing her face being...

kind of fun because this is a dummy.

This is another one of Stan Winston's creations.

She has an eyeball in one eye and nothing in the other.

and Dobbs is about to insert an eyeball.

Was Dan Winston your first choice for effects on this film? Yeah, absolutely.

Dan Winston was the king of effects then.

You have a very nice mix of music as well, accompanying this with the

The suspense and the big band stuff. Here's one of the places where the big

stuff went atonal.

And another eye thing here, and he closes her eye, and she looks absolutely

beautiful, and that is a dummy.

Now, right now, while we're looking at Dobbs, the dummy's being moved away, and

the real Lisa Marie is being put into play.

And now when he leans down to kiss her, that's the real Lisa Marie.

Now you can sleep peacefully.

Now we're getting to a moment in the film that I don't remember.

I really, as much as I try, do not remember exactly why we did this.

The idea was Dobbs walked out and then Lisa Marie

sits up.

But we added, and I must admit I can't remember why we did this.

That's Melody Anderson.

And it was just an element.

I believe it was Ron Shusett who wanted us to do this, but I can't remember for

the life of me the justification for doing this. And, I mean, we talked about

it, and we actually, I think we shot it both ways, with and without.

As if there was some kind of...

that had to happen before she wakes up. Yeah. That's kind of what it inferred.

Yeah, I guess that, but anyways, in the finished version of the film, I believe

in my cut, I did it without Melody. Because that leads you to believe that

there's something sinister going on that Dobbs doesn't know about.

Right, which is a lie, and I don't like lying to the audience.

Three or four months.

Why? When did you think this hit -and -run happened?

It wasn't recent.

Absolutely sure.

Of course I'm sure.

Oh, you're wrong, Doc. I know you're wrong.

This is another one of those added scenes.

Is this entire sequence added? From the time that he walks into this laboratory,

just this.

Dan seeing him and talking to him about the sample, that was there.

And there was a big space in between where you don't see the doctor for a

and I guess the powers that be decided that this was a place to add in a gory

scene, and this was a scene I tried to do it as... I was hoping we would only

get to the point that they actually shoved the things in and we didn't have

see the rest of it, but that's not the way that it ended up to be.

And as I remember, this was the only...

visual effect that was not done by Stan Winston.

I don't believe Stan did this one, and I don't think it's really up to his

standards. Yeah, this is the one time you can tell it's a dummy. It looks like

dummy, yeah.

Stan Winston's dummies don't look like dummies.

And, you know, with Stan Winston doing the sculpting and Zoltan Elik doing the

makeup work, it doesn't get any better than that. I mean, you know, Zoltan.

You know, as a makeup person, as an on -set makeup person, is absolutely

and has several Oscars to prove it, including Mask, which was, I think, one

the most brilliant pieces of makeup.

Eric Stoltz.

Yeah. But Zoltan's just amazing and also wonderful to have on a set. You know,

great makeup men, great makeup people are just so...

wonderful with the cast.

I mean, they just make your day. Like, you know, on Deathline, I had Harry

Frampton, who was just one of the greats who had done Alec Guinness and

everybody, you know, over the years.

And he just created an atmosphere, the first place that the actors got during

the daytime, and Zoltan Elik was the same.

Where is he? I've got to speak to him. I don't know, but I can try and find him.

No, no, no, never mind. Look, I'll go find him myself.

But yeah, here you can see that that's a dummy.

I really was not happy with this effect at all, but I didn't think that it was

actually going to make the movie. Right.

And again, this was another one of those scenes that was moved around.

I would have to spend a lot of time looking at this, and I haven't really

at Dead and Buried a lot over the last 20 years.

There was a novelization of the movie. Was that actually written before the

film, or was it written after? It was one of those, hire somebody to do a tie

-in book. I mean, we did a lot of rewriting while we were making the film.

I worked with Ron a lot. Dan wasn't around much while we were actually

the picture. And Ron and I were constantly doing rewrites on dialogue

just to kind of enhance the characters and really make it Jimmy Farentino

and Jack Albertson and Melody Anderson as opposed to some...

fantasy that someone had created before to you know to allow the actors to

really take the parts where they wanted them to go and where we all wanted them

to go but you know it's funny when you shoot one movie and it ends up becoming

another movie it's kind of strange to look at it the differences as I've said

before are very subtle but there's still differences you know there's a gestalt

kind of thing

Having done Deathline a few years prior to this, and this film, is it safe to

say that you're a fan of the horror genre?

I am a fan of some of the horror genre.

I like really good horror.

I mean, I think Psycho is one of my... That's the top of my list.

I just think that Psycho is absolutely brilliant.

And, you know, in my childhood, it's like Guillermo del Toro talks about

How Deathline was what formed his want to be in the horror film business.

And with me, it was the House of Wax. And I saw the House of Wax in 3 -D.

You know, when 3 -D was the big thing. I mean, the guy with the ping -pong ball

paddles and shooting him out at the audience. I was so affected by that

Charlie Bronson's first major role, actually.

Was he called Charles Baczynski in the credits? Yeah, right.

He didn't have his stage name yet. But, I mean, I've had nightmares my whole

life about, you know, the people clasped down inside those boxes, you know,

about to have the...

hot wax poured on top of them, and that face when the face breaks away, which

I've done breaking away faces in several of my movies, and I think that it's

done in here at the end of the film, and then when we see Bill Quinn, who plays

the druggist, when he moves his hand after he gives Dan the film, and his

breaks. I think that's my ode to House of Wax, which I thought was one of the

most... But, I mean, I was a little kid, and my brother took me to see it, my

older brother.

I think it's kind of shaped a lot of my feelings about horror pictures.

You know, I like the British horror film of that time. I used to watch all the

Hammer films and Hammer and Butchers and, you know, all the Christopher Lee

Peter Cushing movies and then stuff like Wicker Man and, of course, one of the

greats, which is Witchfinder General.

I suppose there are certain similarities from Wicker Man in this as well in the

way that it's the seaside town.

the person against the entire village.

Yeah, but I've got to tell you, I really didn't think a lot about Wicker Man. I

saw Wicker Man once.

Wicker Man was out about the same time as Deathline, and Wicker Man was okay.

It's not one of my favorite movies.

It's not a movie that I don't like.

But it's not a film that I think made a lasting impression on me. There's parts

of it that I think are really good.

So being a fan of the Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing movies, was he your

ideal choice for casting in Death Line?

Oh, absolutely. I was really excited.

And Christopher, you know, and I knew Christopher. I had met him and we had

mutual friends and stuff.

And I asked Christopher if he'd do the movie and he said...

Only if I can do it without teeth.

I said, well, this is a police officer, an MI5 inspector, and you don't have to

wear teeth.

He said, perfect.

It was at a time that he just was really tired of playing Dracula.

It's a little more Michael Pataki weirdness.

Damn.

We've actually gone through, we passed a lot of the weird shots while we were

talking about other things.

But I think, you know, it's interesting to watch this film and really watch for

the camera moves because the camera moves are very voyeuristic.

We'll get you shovels, Sam. We're going to have to dig them up.

Dig up?

I don't dig them up. I just bury them. Which one are you going to dig up?

Uh -uh.

Not without Mr. Dobbs' permission.

Sam, you don't need Dobbs' permission. I'll take full responsibility.

I can start it.

So how long was Michael Pataki on the film for? Just one day?

I think Michael was up in Mendocino with us for about a week or something.

But, you know, he was up there visiting Linda, too. I mean, we were in Mendocino

for, like, a long time.

Between pre -production and...

I think he was up there for about three months.

A little weirdness. Dobbs taking a nap in a...

In a body drawer.

Did you have a decent budget on this film, Gary? You know, it was a decent

budget. I don't remember what the budget was, but of course, you know, the

budgets at that time were nothing compared to what budgets are today. I

the costs of filmmaking have just escalated exponentially

since then. I'm sure that if this film was made today...

You know, exactly the way that it was made, it would probably be in the 20

millions.

I don't actually remember what the final budget of this film was.

But, I mean, you know, we had to cut corners in certain places, but in other

places we were... You know, like the fact that there was no red in the

just finding fire engines that weren't red for those scenes. We'd change the

taillights of every car and put purple taillights in.

You know, because it was no red.

And what we're about to see here is a real heart.

It was that of a cow or a pig or something, but it was real.

Then again, when Sheriff Dan pulls into the gas station, if this had been a

famous actor, it probably would have punched it up even a little more.

You know, this is funny. Just the age of everything and the periodness.

You wouldn't think that 20 years ago it would become completely period.

An electric typewriter?

It's a telex machine.

I mean, now it would all be, you know.

and, you know, hey, you could do it from your Palm Pilot, what he's doing right

now. I mean, he could be, you know, he'd be out there and he says, oh, I want to

find out about Dobbs, and you just go on your Palm Pilot and send it out, you

know, go online right from your pocket.

Or cell phones, you know, no cell phones.

Changes, you know, the whole way writing, writing changes.

Of course. The way that you structure scenes, because now everybody's in

communication all the time. You know, you either lose or break or run out of

juice on your cell phone.

Yes, because even if he was a detective in a small town that wasn't quite up

with the modern world, he'd still have a cell phone. Yeah, and this whole thing

with the super 8mm film that her kids shot, this will be video now.

I mean, if you'd have a DV cam, I wouldn't have to go to the drugstore.

So, I mean, you know, plots just change completely.

Or you could just make it a period piece from the early 80s.

Yeah, that's true. That's what you have to do. You have to make stuff period

pieces in order to get out of everybody being in communication.

You know, there's all kinds of suspense devices that you used to be able to do

that you can't do anymore.

Especially in cops' stuff.

I mean, cops are in communication now all the time. There's no way, there's no

time that they're out of communication.

So you have to send them to a rural area where there's no signal.

Is there any way whatsoever to reanimate people after they have died?

To get them to walk around?

Oh, you have been working too hard. I'm not joking.

You're serious.

Do you remember what you said after examining that particle of human skin on

supposed hidden run?

Sure, I said it had been dead months. But it wasn't months.

It was my car, it was my accident. You've known Steve Post and the DP for

some time. We were kids.

Our parents knew each other. We both grew up in Chicago.

And then I didn't see Stevie for years and years. He went off.

He went to art center school in Los Angeles, and I had gone, well, Stevie's

older than I am.

Anyhow, Steve ended up coming, I was at ID, at the Institute of Design, at the

Illinois Institute of Technology, majoring in photography, and I think I

like... my second year, first year, second year, when Steve came back to I

as a graduate student, and we were in some of the same classes together.

And then we started working together, and as we'd pick up jobs, if I got a job

as a camera operator, I'd bring Steve as my assistant. If I got a job to light

something, I'd bring Steve as my operator, and he would do the opposite.

So we'd always keep each other in pocket change. I mean, we were doing, like,

you know,

whatever little kind of jobs that we could pick up together.

So it was pretty exciting.

Steve and I had done a television movie together, and then off of my

television movie, actually, I got Steve his first feature, which was Blood

Beach, Jeffrey Bloom's film.

Is that how you got him on this? Because he'd already done a horror movie. He'd

already done another horror film, yes.

Although I wanted Steve to do this. And I knew, I mean, I was scheduled to start

this right afterwards. And we were arguing back and forth about who should

the DP. And I really wanted Steve to do it. Did you get him involved then

right in the early stages of pre -production so you could talk about the

draining of the red out of the picture?

Yes. Yes, he was.

I had talked about, you know, Steve and I had talked about what I wanted to do

with the visual of this picture well before he even was assured of doing the

film. But, you know, we knew we were going to make it happen, and with Brian

Frankish being the production manager and my first AD on the show,

and Brian and Steve and I, the three of us are really good friends, so we knew

we pretty much could make this happen.

Black and white.

Was it actually shot on Super 8, the black and white?

Yeah, it was.

You know, the idea was that the really brutal, bloody violence, like, you know,

the stabbing, so that we could have it there because it was black and white.

You didn't see the blood.

Now, do you think you were intending the audience to be distracted from the

reveal of the victim because they were being surprised by the fact that it was

Melody Anderson who was doing the stabbing? Right. All you wanted to do

that it was Melody that was doing the stabbing. It didn't matter who the

was in there so that we'd see the rest of it later.

And they just wanted, you know, it's Dobbs.

See, there's the girl getting hit in the face with the rock.

And all of this stuff was much more graphic than... Was this stuff that was

afterwards?

It was shot at the same time we did the scenes, but we actually shot it on Super

8 when we did it.

Okay, so it wasn't as bloody because it was in black and white, so you could

push it a little further. Right, and we could push it a little further.

Now, what about this strange setup you've got here of several screens of

different sizes?

Yeah, the pictures.

We had talked about this from the beginning of how we were going to do

the set decorator and the production designer and the art director, and we

together, and I just said, I want these beams of light going off in different

directions. I want different size screens.

You don't want it to be a little bit of a fantasy land. It has no relationship

to reality.

And it's just Dobbs' chess game.

Yeah. I mean, this whole thing, the whole story is Dobbs' puppet show.

I mean, that's what it all is supposed to be.

Which is why the reordering and the stuff that was done to the picture I

objected to because it took away from, and even seeing Melody Anderson in that

scene. Because at that point, if it was Dobbs' puppet show, Dobbs was

manipulating the audience instead of the characters on screen.

Right.

Oh, Janet. Hey.

My masterpiece.

I love his speech here.

Yeah, I was going to say, for saying he was on medication and very unwell, he

really seems to be entering into the spirit of his character.

Oh, he was, you know, Jack was all into this. I mean, he was...

We had a lot of fun making this picture. There were certain things that were a

problem. We had one person who was brought in by the production company to

of oversee some stuff who had a bit of a drinking problem.

because it was supposed to take care of some stuff that was never taken care of,

and we almost had a tragic accident one day because something was not done

right, and so there was a little bit of upset about that.

Tragic accident, as in someone got hurt?

Almost got hurt.

Nobody actually did get hurt, but there was a road that was supposed to be

closed.

And we were all set up in the middle of the road, and we had all these people in

the middle of the road, and suddenly a car comes around the curve at 60 miles

hour. It was a kind of deserted road, but we thought it was closed. And doo

-doop, and just pounds on his horn. Everybody had to run out of the road,

goes by, and doo -doop, and it ended up this person had never called the police

to close the road.

When Melody gets shot here, that shot, where her hand goes up to her ear was

because one of the squibs went right up towards her face.

And that was real. She basically couldn't hear the rest of the day.

But she was great. She incorporated it right into the character.

Unfortunately,

she's so wired up here in this scene that she looks like she's gained weight,

and it was only because the way the costume had to be done with the blood

and everything.

There's another one. I really love that.

We shot Dobbs and the bullet goes right through the screen at the same time and

blood spews out the back.

There was not much that was accidental on this picture. Everything was pretty

planned out. I mean, every camera move, everything.

It's just, you know, the whole pacing, and there was stuff added in that I

wouldn't have left in the picture. There was stuff taken out that I wish was

still in the picture.

I know that you mentioned the death with the tubes up the nose.

It seemed like that character wouldn't be the kind of character that would be

targeted by the village people. No, he was already one of the people. Exactly.

He was one of them at the very beginning. I mean, you know, that was

idea. He was part of the puppet show. He shouldn't have been.

He was killed a long time ago. Yeah, that makes sense. He wouldn't have been

killed like that either. I mean, I think that death is absolutely ludicrous.

This

is

a nice scene.

Bury me?

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I think, you know, had the picture kept the order that it was supposed to

have and the tone that it was supposed to have, this really would have been

extremely moving.

It is reminiscent of also a moving scene in a movie that Bob Clark did in the

70s called Dead of Night or Death Dream where a kid comes back from Vietnam and

he's already dead and then at the end he actually, his mother helps him bury

himself.

Melody was scared to death. I mean, she's lying in that grave, and when she

to, you know, cover herself with the dirt, I mean, basically there was just

about long enough to get scissors in there before she came bursting out from

underneath, you know. And the juxtaposition of the big band music, da

-da, you know, against this.

And the fact that clearly the big band music is very important to Dobbs and his

whole process, but he had to put it on before he actually does his work. Right,

you know, here he is doing his makeup.

And going back and forth with the music from this kind of eerie, kind of

classic, gothic horror music, you know, horror film music.

Duke Ellington never expected that.

Probably not.

This was a production nightmare, actually, this scene, because suddenly

realized that there was prosthetic makeup that had to be done on the entire

for one scene.

And it was like an assembly line in makeup.

And I must admit that I wasn't that happy with, you know, with what

looked like. And we couldn't take things as far as we really wanted to take it.

What, would you have had them cracking up a bit more? Yeah, I just think that,

you know, we could have been a lot more.

I mean, see, Robert Englund, I think if everybody kind of looked as good as he

did. But it's a pretty creepy scene.

Yes, it is.

Do you think at this point we're supposed to start realizing that maybe

of them, seeing as they're not attacking him? But they do start to attack him in

a minute.

See, if the film had had its tone that it had, the murders weren't out of any

reason. It was Dobbs having a good time with his puppets. I mean, all of the

other murders were just murders, but they had to die violent deaths in order

be reanimated.

But there was no...

purposeness to it.

So this is the same.

Everybody's just around him, and now they're going to kill him, if they were

going to kill him.

But they're not.

It's all being done as part of Dobbs' puppet show.

I mean, Dobbs got what he wanted, which was just for Dobbs to be killed

violently so that he could reanimate himself, so that he would no longer get

sick.

An ending now popularized by the Sixth Sense.

Did you ever shoot the reverse shot here of Dove saying his final line?

Oh, I'm sure we did.

And I don't remember how this sequence was ended in

my cut. I think I stayed on Dan's hands because... Because of the great look on

his face.

Yeah. Yeah, I think the reaction was probably better than seeing Dobbs

saying it.

And I think it would have been very anticlimactic to go back and forth. I

it would have taken away from the strangeness of it. The fact that he's

to a very freakish realization.

Come, Dan.

Let me fix those for you.

Did you keep track of how the film did when it came out? I didn't really.

You know, I wasn't the only one that was not happy with the final version of the

film. Also, the studio, Avco Embassy, was not...

that they had to distribute a film that wasn't really the film that they wanted

to do. And I think that pretty much on the American release of the film, I

know what happened foreign, but on the American release of the film, it was

kind of dumped on the market. There wasn't a lot of advertising done. There

wasn't a lot of promotion done. I wasn't involved in the promotion of the film

at all. I didn't want to be. I actually was already making Vice Squad.

So looking back, any more thoughts on the making of this picture?

No, you know...

Dead and Buried was a really interesting picture to make, and I just wish that

it could have ended up as the picture that we initially intended to make.

For a long time I was so angry about the changes and what was done with it, I

just wanted to disown the picture for a long time.

And it isn't until recently when everything's been happening with...

several of my old movies, and I, you know, especially Deathline, and I've

to so many festivals and things, and then, you know, the big thing at Lincoln

Center when Deathline was honored at Lincoln Center, that people started

to me more and more and more about Dead and Buried, and I just actually started

looking at it again and saying, you know what, as much as I've wanted to disown

it, there's something very special about this movie.

And I think that what we're trying to do with the original film does still come

through.

I just wish that it still had the flow that it had.

I mean, there was a place in the middle of the film where they put in a lot of

this violent stuff and moved stuff around to make the middle move what they

thought was better. I wanted it to be slow, and I wanted it to make the

uneasy and just kind of punctuate it with... It laughs, then punctuated with

gore. So that when you realized what this whole thing was about, that it was

this man who decided to use real human beings, take their lives away from

them, and reanimate them as his puppets, of how really awful and

frightening this really was.

And that's what I think the film was about. The film was about Dobbs.

And the film was about Dobbs being a puppeteer. And I think that's what

attracted me to making the film. And that's the film that I wanted to make.

Okay. Thank you very much, Gary Sherman.

Thank you.