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(hard rock music)

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(birds chirping)

(woman breathing heavily)

- [Woman] You're fucking insane!

Let me go, no! (shouts)

(bag rustling) (woman hyperventilating)

- Cut, that's good.

- I don't know how to describe it

because it's hard to describe.

I didn't know what I was watching.

Like...

I just...

I just didn't understand what it was.

(gun clattering)

- (gasps) No, no!

No!

- If I had to summarize what a W.A.V.E. movie is about,

I would really have to say

you have to see it to appreciate it, to believe it.

(woman coughing) (feet scuffing)

(woman gagging)

- I mean, I'd seen a lot of shot on video stuff,

but this stuff seemed even lower budget

than the stuff that I was used to.

It seemed very homemade, I guess, is the best way to put it.

(woman choking) (feet scuffing)

- W.A.V.E. productions are one of a kind.

And I don't think anyone

makes a movie like Gary from W.A.V.E.

- I popped it in and it was like, you know,

a woman being dragged through a hallway.

And it's just very strange stuff.

(distant tapping)

- W.A.V.E. movies are like alien pornography.

Picture an alien coming to earth

and trying to assimilate entertainment,

but not really knowing how human beings interact.

- Everything goes on not two beats, two long, three,

like five minutes long, ten minutes, very long takes.

- Who dies for 60 minutes, seriously?

- Some people get addicted to this stuff.

-And every time you see it,

it seems so forbidden and mysterious.

Like there's a photo of Gary Whitson with his camcorder,

and there's a woman chained to a, I don't know, a plank

with a mummy hovering over her.

And that just makes your mind go crazy

because you want to see that no matter what it is.

-And...

(camera beeping) Action.

(woman groaning) (feet thudding)

- Mind bending, no budget, low budget,

backyard shot on video insanity.

- I've never seen anything else like

W.A.V.E. productions movies,

and I've seen a lot of fucking movies.

(stylus clicking)

(uptempo electronic music)

- So, shot on video, no budget, direct to VHS stuff

started...

I mean, it started when, like '83?

- Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it started with Sledgehammer and Boarding House

and Black Devil Doll from Hell.

And then Blood Cult,

and all the United stuff came after that.

- I guess it was started just out of frustration,

where people said, "I need to get my idea out.

"I can't find somebody to fund this.

"It doesn't need to be on 35 millimeter film anymore.

"Or any millimeters of film anymore

"'cause now we have video cameras.

"And if porn can use this technology to tell its stories

"then so can we, as horror filmmakers."

- There were a few movies that were in every video store

like The Ripper and Video Violence.

And a handful of titles like that.

555, I remember renting as a kid.

And I remember thinking,

"Why would anybody really watch these movies

"when you could watch a real movie shot on 16 or 35?"

And that was sorta my feeling about it when, you know.

Why watch Chick Boxer when you could

watch a movie that's actually shot on film?

- Even from the first time I saw this movie Blood Cult,

which was made in Tulsa, Oklahoma

and did exceptionally well in the video stores.

That was like right ahead of Dead Next Door.

I always thought that video sounds like a great idea,

but it maybe is not the best way to make a movie

'cause it's not very cinematic.

It winds up looking more like a soap opera.

- For the first, I guess, several years I was at Fangoria,

it was sometimes a challenge to fill an issue

'cause there was not a lot of horror coming out,

either from the mainstream or really noteworthy stuff

on the independent side.

And I think that's kind of what encouraged a lot

of individuals to kind of jump in.

And also the video market was booming.

You could sell tons of tapes of any horror title.

And I think those two factors combined led a lot

of independents to kind of jump in and try their luck,

and shoot these movies on video,

and try to go out and compete in the marketplace.

You got a lot of very inventive stuff,

and also a lot of really bad stuff.

- There were sort of like random

shot on video movies prior to that.

But it was not really viewed as a thing

that was gonna happen or explode or whatever

until the early '90s.

I think a lot of that had to do with distributors

like Phoenix Entertainment.

They were marketing things like Splatter Farm

and things like this that were actually legitimately

getting into video stores around the country

to where people were starting to see this.

And, at the time, I think it was a bizarre...

It was an adjustment for the audience

because most people would rent this stuff and,

on the outside, it looked just like any Hollywood release.

The art, it had good artwork, catchy title, good synopsis.

Whatever it is that got you interested in the movie.

People had no idea what they were taking home.

Then you would take it home and pop it in and realize,

"Oh my gosh, this is shot on a camcorder.

"This looks like my Uncle Joe's home videos or whatever."

I think at that point then it sort of...

That separated the men from the boys.

- When people saw stuff shot on video,

at first they thought, "oh, this is crap."

You know, it was shot on video.

But later on, obviously, we all embraced it.

- Yeah, it's actually one of the most exciting times

in history for genre filmmaking

because it's true creativity just happening.

There were no rules whatsoever,

and they could compete with whatever else

was at the video store.

And the only goal was to get the movies at the video store,

and to have their friends watch them.

So, it's so pure.

-And you think that, from a business perspective,

that this wouldn't have really carried on very long.

Because people would rent a movie like Sledgehammer

because they thought,

"Oh, this is gonna be a horror film."

And then you think that the moviegoer, movie renter,

would be shocked at the low production value and say,

"I'm not doing that again."

But shot on video really just kind of rampaged

for like a decade and a half.

So, if it started in '83-ish,

I mean, it was still totally strong all the way

through the late '90s. - Yeah.

- Of people just shooting stuff on camcorders.

And that was somehow a healthy and continuing model

for direct-to-video filmmaking.

And W.A.V.E. came out of that.

Well, and some other weird fringe need in the market.

- Kind of a mystery actually to all of us.

- What's your advice for the person who wants

to get into video production?

- I think they need to basically get a camera,

and just basically just start shooting and have fun with it.

- Well, I really liked horror movies.

We went to the drive-ins.

The Laurel Theater in Bridgeton had horror movies.

Saturday nights, we'd have three horror movies back-to-back.

So, that's what really got me started.

And then once the video cameras came out

and they were cheaper, that's when I decided,

"okay, it's got the sound, it's got the video."

When we first started with W.A.V.E.,

it just was basically going to be a hobby.

It was just for the fun of it.

You got people together that had a common interest.

- So, the W.A.V.E. acronym actually stands

for Whitson's Amateur Video Entertainers.

As Gary got more successful,

he changed it to Whitson's Audio Video Entertainment.

Some of the harsher critics in the past

thought it should stand for We Aren't Very Entertaining.

- We had local weekly newspapers.

Anybody who was interested in horror movies

call this number, you know, so.

We had, I think it was a total

of five or six people show up.

- We knew that we were all into action,

and we were into horror films.

So, I think that's kind of what drew us together.

It wasn't just a love of film, but a love of the genre.

We liked things that were exciting.

Chick flicks out.

-An there was a ad about 10 words, it said,

"filmmaker looking for actors and special effects people."

So, I was like, Holy smokes.

Who would be doing something like that down here?

- Hi, welcome to Damsel in Distress.

I'm Clancy McCauley, and I play three different young ladies

who just can't seem to stay out of trouble.

- Clancy, of course, was the first.

She was willing to do almost anything.

- Was it exciting?

I would say about five minutes excitement

for every five hours of boredom. (laughs)

- She really got into her parts.

I mean, she was one of the more dedicated ones.

She was one to, first off, take some of the risks

so the other girls would do stuff.

She was the one diving into ponds and,

who knows, there are snakes, alligators, whatever in there.

Really getting messed up with some

of these quicksand scenes.

So, she kind of set the mold for the first W.A.V.E. actress.

- Was it always fun to be the woman that was in distress,

but then being able to turn that around

so that we could defeat the bad guy.

So, I mean.

Because I hated the weak female.

That's just a typology I always hated.

It's like, "why did the women have to be weak?"

It was nice being able to escape from the slasher

and turn the tables on 'em

and become the victor instead of the victim.

(water splashing)

I just remembered something.

I don't do dishes.

- [Aven], Here Luke let me cut you a chunk of this.

(flesh crunching)

Here you go, bud.

Nice big hunk for ya.

How's that, good?

(Luke grunts)

- I grew up, I was always interested in makeup.

Lon Chaney was a big influence back then.

A lot of stuff he did when he was a makeup artist,

there was no direction.

There was no Tom Savinis around and there's no

Famous Monsters of Filmland or anything.

He started it.

- I was always ended up in blood and guts.

And there was times that I was getting my guts ripped out.

Aven was there to put the nasty,

real cows' livers soaked in fake blood would end up on me.

I always knew if Aven was there, it was gonna be messy.

- I would go in, I'd go,

"what's my makeup budget for this movie, Gary?

He'd go, "$75."

And I'd go, "well, that's not gonna work here."

"Okay, $100."

And we'd use toilet paper, latex and this,

everything like the least expensive way to do it,

but yet they would turn out on film looking really good.

- Good afternoon,

I'm Philip Barnes with the News At Noon.

Our top story today is the continuing search

for the killer known as the Valley Strangler.

At this point, police still have no clues

as to the identity of this murderer,

and they're requesting that anyone with information,

no matter how insignificant it may appear,

to come forward and alert the authorities.

- Well, Sisters was, ironically...

There's a storyline that starts,

that I had used for the Fanny Starr character,

that dealt with daylight saving time

and sisters getting killed and so forth.

And we used that one where one sister

plans the murder of another sister.

Now, since we only had Clancy, it had to be twins.

So, what happened was, the idea is

that she plans the murder to be on daylight saving time.

But, of course, the killer doesn't adjust his clocks.

So, he ends up killing the wrong sister,

the one who planned it rather than the, quote, "good sister"

because then you don't know.

Well, really, was it the bad sister that got killed?

Or was it really the good sister dressed,

the bad sister dressed as the good sister.

It got very kind of convoluted.

- I was gonna call you later

and ask you to be my maid of honor.

- The equipment we had,

we couldn't put Clancy in the same scene with herself,

so they had to be on the phone a lot. (laughs)

So, we ended up doing phone calls between 'em.

So, that made that easier.

And then...

Yeah, it just seemed like that's how

you could progress the plot.

When you needed a phone call, you had to do this.

There had to be reasons why

you had to go here to do that.

So, to be honest, I don't remember

that there were that many, but, I guess,

yeah, I guess there were. (laughs)

(quirky electronic music)

Now, of course, the day we're shooting,

on daylight saving time, just because

it just happens to turn out that way.

- So, I showed up like an hour early,

and I'm there and no one's there.

And I'm like, "what's going on?"

- He never did anything with his clocks.

So, course he's there an hour early.

And yet the whole story for the last two months

has been this whole thing about, okay,

we're dealing with daylight saving times here.

- So, it actually works.

So, I could see somebody actually making a mistake

and missing somebody by daylight savings time.

(suspenseful electronic music)

- Hadley's Hellhole was a nightmare

that I had three nights straight.

I kept dreaming of the same thing

of being trapped in the mine, and we couldn't go up

to get out because there was a cave-in.

So the only way we had to go

was deeper and deeper and deeper.

And, at the end, there's this room,

then there's a door at the end of the room.

And when you open the door, it was the door to hell.

I had that nightmare three nights straight.

So, I was like, that would make a good movie.

So, I wrote up the script and I gave it to Gary,

and he said, "yeah, I think we can do this."

- We turned Gary's basement into a mine shaft.

We only had 40 by 40 square feet.

And we had to crawl 200 miles to this mine.

So, we shot from like

and we'd move pieces of a mine around.

The mine was basically wood-frame with chicken wire

with tinfoil over it, spray painted, but it worked.

Then there was a scene where the mine starts caving in,

and water starts pouring in.

And we're in Gary's basement with a water hose.

- [Gary] So, you could run a hose from the filter

to the top of the deck.

So, we have the water pouring through.

So, the water's pouring down on both Clancy and I.

(leaves crunching)

So, how do you like being a star?

- It's fun.

Where'd you say that this was gonna be seen?

- We would edit in camera for most of the early movies.

So, we wouldn't have any extra footage.

So, we would say "action,"

and then I would start the camera.

So, we would just have that sequence.

And I remember when they saw some of the early stuff,

it was like, "where's the other stuff

"that maybe we could fit in there"

"if we want to do something with it?"

It's not there.

I guess, specially back then, we never really thought

that people would be seeing these things 30 years later.

If I had known then what I know now,

then maybe we would've shot scenes differently.

We would've shot 'em maybe twice or different angles.

But at the time it was just let's get it,

move on to the next.

-And I would have friends,

at that time, friends would come over

and I would show 'em the movies.

And they'd go, "These aren't great."

I go, "You know what, we're getting 'em out there.

"We're making a movie."

And a lot of the guys I had were artists and semi-filmmakers

and people waiting to make that big film.

I go, "We're making films every month,

"so we're getting 'em out there."

So, that was a big thing, getting it done.

- Once again, we dwell in the realm of horror.

And here tonight with me

is Terri Lewandowski and Christine Cavalier,

who are scream queens

from New Jersey's W.A.V.E. Productions.

Good evening. - Good evening.

- Okay, Terri and Christie, obviously,

were really mother and daughter.

They came...

Their first audition was actually at the house.

- They were a pair.

They were, can I be brutally honest?

- Please. - Terri had work all the time.

Face peel, lip injections, eye bleaching,

everything going on.

And she would show up at a shoot,

if they showed up on time, which was never,

and her face would be beet red.

And we'd go, "What, did you get sunburned?"

She'd go, "No, I just had a chemical peel last night."

I'm like, "why the fuck you do a chemical peel

"when you know you're gonna be shooting today?"

That doesn't make...

And they had fake everything, very high maintenance.

(eerie electronic music)

- I think my wife's cheating on me.

- Dead North, that was probably the closest thing

that we did to a mainstream movie.

And that was the one actually got on television.

It was very well shot.

And I think it would hold it's own with any slasher.

But better than some, worse than others.

(suspenseful music)

(muffled groaning)

- Please don't hurt me!

(woman groans)

Oh no!

(ax whacking) (woman screams)

(woman groans) (woman whimpers)

- It was a lot of screaming and... (laughs)

A lot of times Gary would be like,

"okay, that scream was not realistic enough."

And I'm like, "what do you mean

"that scream wasn't realistic enough?

"I'm screaming at the top of."

He's like, "No, you're not scared,

"and they know you're not scared

"so you need to scream like you're really, really scared."

- Yeah, what happened with Dead North

was Dave had worked as an intern or assistant, something,

at a cable station in Delaware.

So, they wanted to do some interviews

with local video people.

You know, the video makers.

In fact, it was called Video Makers.

And he wanted to show Dead North on the cable station.

And I did actually at one point hear from somebody

who actually did see it on the cable station.

God, that movie stunk!

- We should have watched what I

wanted to watch to start with.

- I was really interested in doing a lot of

what they call fanzines.

I actually did a black and white comic

back in the early '70s.

I could advertise, and say,

I could do comic strips, or I could do single art pieces.

And that sold.

So, I figured if something like that would sell,

why wouldn't making a movie for somebody sell?

- Welcome to In Dire Straits Productions,

where we produce the tapes you want to see.

From comedy to horror to action adventure.

We do it all.

All from your scripts or movie ideas.

Here are some of the props

that we've used in our previous movies.

- Since a picture is worth 1000 words,

why don't you just sit back and watch these clips

from custom films we have made in the past.

- He didn't just want to be an amateur filmmaker

who made two or three films and then nothing.

He wanted it to be a success.

So, he was looking for ways to expand the repertoire.

And he was looking for ways to expand the film base.

So, he came up with the idea of let's see if

there are people who want specific films

made specific ways,

and then we'll do what we can to accommodate them.

It was also a way of getting other people

to pay for the films to be made,

so that it wasn't coming out of his pocket.

- You would have guys that would

send a five-paragraph synopsis and say,

"This is kind of like what I'm looking for."

And you would guys have guys send a 90-page script and say,

"this is my movie, I want you to do it just like this."

- Think about like cam shows nowadays, right?

So, like you ask these models or whatever

to do whatever you want, right?

It's kind of like this was before that.

You could see you have this fantasy.

You have this whatever, this thing you want to see,

and then you request it.

And then it comes to your house X amount of time later,

you know what I mean?

So, that's kind of exciting, right?

It's a little weird, but I mean, I guess,

everybody's a little weird, so everybody's got there thing.

-And, of course, you could write

to these people who make custom videos.

And you could say, "I'd love something about real estate,

"or I'd love something in it about finances."

But of course everybody wanted sex.

And people had their dark desires.

And they would basically commission somebody

to act those out on a camcorder and send it to them.

And some companies realized that these videos

weren't just meant to be for an audience of one,

but some of these stories might pertain

to a wide array of perverts and lonely people.

-And I think, for us, it becomes almost

watching other people's fantasies play out on video.

There's nothing more insane than that.

I can't think of anything else that's crazier to watch.

- It's kind of the ultimate experience

to have your own fetish brought to life on camera.

And, obviously, there were actresses willing to do them.

To take part in whatever strange scenarios

these people could think up.

- Well, the aspirations for W.A.V.E. were just mainly

to make the movies that people would want to see,

be something that I would want to see.

It would include things that

maybe the mainstream movie didn't have.

Maybe a little bit more of the exploitation

in terms of, let's say, wet t-shirts,

where you have the girl goes into the pool.

And then if you notice a lot of times they cut away,

they don't show anything.

Well, I would want to show it.

But I really wanted to just make movies

that I would want to see, that people might want to buy.

As it gradually built up,

there were more and more people that wrote

and said, "Yes, we like this."

Of course there are all different aspects.

Some people call them fetishes, but it's just like

some people like wet t-shirts, quicksand.

- Strangulation, chloroforming, dragging, carrying,

dancing with sleeping girls.

- Shooting in the stomach and stabbing in the stomach.

Any sort of navel play was popular.

To girls passing out and waking back up.

- Dominance in the form of bondage, in the form of sadism,

in the form of masochism.

Violence against women can be a fetish in itself.

- Death by tape, death by bombs, cannibalism.

- Women being murdered in particular types of clothes,

certain types of blouses.

- There's a lot of very beautiful women

that have some very difficult

and very traumatic experiences, such as being killed,

strangled, stabbed, absorbed by quicksand,

shrunk to a tiny person and then eaten or smashed.

- So, some of it was really strange.

Some guys, it was predictable.

I guess the foot fetish guy, that was the weirdest one.

But it was a way of of earning income

so we could keep filming.

So, we were like, okay, if he wants to see bare feet,

let's give him bare feet.

- I think at first I kind of thought

that we were just doing low budget horror.

And then, because a lot of the stuff

that I did at first was just half naked girls screaming,

running in the woods, getting killed, getting strangled.

And then later when we started doing other things

like oil wrestling and getting pies thrown at us,

then you start realizing, okay,

this is other stuff going on here. (laughs)

Then you see like...

You'll have somebody requested you in a film

for a certain type of scene, then you know it's fetish.

- But since you're dealing with people's perversions

or interests or obsessions,

you don't know how big the audience is.

For all we know, there are 30,000 people

that sent away to watch a woman

being tortured by a mummy in a basement.

We don't know because that's people's secretive desires.

- Yeah.

-And so, who knows.

Maybe Gary Whitson lives in a mansion and has a yacht.

I have no idea.

(both laughing)

- So, it's crazy to think that

Gary got so successful with W.A.V.E.,

that he actually quit his job as a school teacher

and just became a full-time filmmaker.

- What was your initial interest, Salvatore?

- I answered an ad that Gary put in the paper

for amateur actors.

I acted in a few of his films,

then decided, I was always interested in writing.

Let me try screenwriting, got behind the camera,

and now I'm hooked.

- Well, Sal was one of the people who came

to a house meeting and then he got involved

with writing scripts more, building the props.

He would come up with some ideas.

- Giddy up!

Ya, ya! (branch whacking)

Ha, ya!

Come on.

- What are you doing?

(branch whacking)

- I'm riding my horse.

- What are you, crazy?

- Why, yes I am.

- Sal was a character, very comical.

Kind of like if you didn't know him

and you're on the set with him,

you would picture him as a car salesman, I think.

'Cause he was always pushing to get more out of you,

or pushing Gary to do more or different things.

He was a force on the set to work with.

He was so loud, his voice, and just always talking.

And even sometimes just in the middle of shooting

he would be talking about something or one of his cases.

He was a prosecutor for Camden County,

and he had all these grizzly cases.

- Every shot was so long with Sal.

Like the struggling and the bondage took forever.

It's like, okay, can I take the gag out of my mouth now?

And can I get untied?

"No, no, we're gonna drag this out.

"We're gonna drag this out.

"You're fine!"

He was funny because his expressions

when he would be killing us was just...

His facial expressions would make me laugh.

And there was times that I would just start cracking up.

Like, okay, we do this again,

and he'd be strangling me with the eyes.

The big eyes and the faces.

Yeah, he was funny. (laughs)

- Him and Gary were interesting partners.

Sal was a lot more animated than Gary.

(suspenseful music)

- Come on, I'm carrying her.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

(suspenseful music)

- I did a younger version of Sal,

and I know Gary wants me to do it.

He wants to do some reboots now of his titles.

I'd watched one of Sal's tapes,

and I just got the voice and the mannerisms

that I grew a beard and stuff like that.

Anyway, Gary liked it.

I'm like, "I tried hard, really,

"to get into the method of the character."

But I guess I probably could have done anything

and Gary would have been fine with it.

Just showing up, I guess, would have been fine.

- I remember the one expression if...

Gary would say, "Oh, I think we have enough footage."

"Bologna, Gary!" (laughs)

That was his favorite expression, "Bologna!" (chuckles)

So, I remember that about Sal.

(muffled groaning)

(dramatic music)

(coffin lid creaking)

(muffled screaming)

I actually came across W.A.V.E. by way of a local newspaper.

But on the front page, it was a local company

doing a horror movie.

And so, of course I was thrilled.

You know, there was other people out there like me,

and in my own county, for that matter.

- He, at the time, considering Sal and I's ages. (laughs)

He was the stud of the group.

We were the old guys and he was,

obviously, at the time, probably like in his 20s.

- It was nice to have a guy on the set every once in a while

besides Gary and Sal, and even Aven.

It's nice to have a guy our age on the set.

- But yeah, we had a lot of fun.

Especially, I got to work with so many different people.

Met a lotta girls.

Had a lot of dates too when I started doing this.

So, yeah, it was a lot of fun.

- Great catch.

I don't know why someone didn't gobble him up yet.

- "Dave, you should be paying us to be in the movies!"

(Dave chuckles)

"We shouldn't be paying you."

So yeah, that's my funny story.

I would hear that a lot over the years.

- Look for us again in two months.

Until then, this is Pamela Sutch saying goodbye.

- Pam came to the audition that we had in '94

at the old studio.

She had responded to the Backstage ad.

- I found an audition.

I believe it was in Backstage magazine.

And I drove all the way out to audition,

all the way to South Jersey, and it was for horror movies!

And, wow!

I got the part! (laughs)

- Pamela Sutch was my favorite of all of 'em.

I think it's just 'cause she was like the girl next door,

and you wouldn't expect to see her

doing something like this.

I always liked that appeal.

I mean, you see some girl all gothed out,

you don't expect her to do things like this.

But someone that looked like her.

I mean, she was really cute.

And she looked like the girl next door

and she was doing this stuff.

I found that appealing.

- She was really trying.

I mean, she was pushing herself very hard,

promoting every single day.

She deserved to be a scream queen.

- No, it wasn't exciting.

It was fun, we had a fun day,

especially if the weather was nice.

I mean, we were outside.

A lot of times it was really nice.

There were a lot of bugs.

We were in the woods a lot.

We would get mosquito bites all over.

We would get scratched up, you know?

So, it was that kind of fun.

I like that kind of fun.

You know, I'm an outdoorsy type.

No, it wasn't exciting.

- I remember dressing up as a witch with a mask in one

where I'm cooking her, and I'm boiling her and eating her.

And like, it was just so ridiculous and so funny.

We were just always laughing.

So, Pam's a riot to work with.

(quirky electronic music)

(heels clacking)

- Deana we met at the Fanex convention in '94.

- I got into acting by accident.

I actually was at a horror convention for my sculpting.

I'm a sculptor, and I happened to be at a horror convention

in this little tight black dress selling my sculptures,

and W.A.V.E. was the next table over to us.

Unfortunately, their actress did not show up,

and they asked me if I wanted to get killed

in a horror movie.

So, I decided that I thought it would be cool to do

'cause I love horror.

So, I thought I would give it a try.

And I ended up being in two of their films that night.

(thrilling electronic music)

(innards plunking)

(toilet flushing)

- Deana Demko is a staple at Chiller Theatre.

And she got her start with W.A.V.E.

But she became a very successful scream queen,

and she even hosted a cable access show for some time.

(quirky music)

- I was 18.

It was after high school.

And I heard that W.A.V.E. productions

was having auditions for B horror movies.

And I thought, "Wow, this is awesome."

'Cause I've always loved horror movies.

I love acting.

And the thought of being in an independent film

doing what I love was just, I was so excited.

So, I went to the audition and I met Gary.

- She had come with her mother. (clears throat)

And we used to do a form, you'd have to fill out the form.

And there was always a question about would you do nudity?

And she was, on her form, she actually marked it yes,

then marked it no, then marked it yes, then marked it no,

kind of went back and forth.

And eventually no, she wasn't gonna do it.

- Unfortunately, since I was 18, still living at home,

my mom said no. (laughs)

She didn't want me doing the movies

because of the fetish that's involved and the bondage.

Few years later when I was 21,

I was out of the house at that point,

living with a boyfriend.

Saw an advertisement in the newspaper.

It was a big article about W.A.V.E. productions.

And I said, you know what, I'm out of the house.

I'm 21.

I'm going to call them, so I did.

And I said, "You remember me?" (laughs)

And Gary said, "Of course, I remember you."

- I had no idea how much of a talent she was

till I saw her on stage.

She actually was already an accomplished stage actress

before she came to W.A.V.E.

- I met Dave on one of the very first W.A.V.E. films.

I believe it was Cannibal Supper.

It was Sal and Gary,

and I was laid out on a barbecue, wrapped in tin foil.

I had lettuce leaves on my chest,

and I got food and fruit all around me.

And I'm basically getting ready to be eaten

by Gary's character in this movie.

Gary said, "Oh Laura, by the way, this is Dave.

"Let me introduce you to my friend, Dave.

"He's gonna be shooting with us."

And I'm like, "Hi, how you doin'?" (laughs)

I'm laying there ready to be eaten at a barbecue.

And he's laughing, and I was like,

"Sorry, I can't really get up

"and shake your hand right now."

I'm covered in ketchup and barbecue sauce.

-All the way now from?

- [Man] Philadelphia.

- Oh, the Philadelphians gonna be so happy right now.

Debbie D and company on Oceanside's record

"I Want You In My Life."

Debbie D, okay.

(quirky '90s music, "I Want You In My Life")

♪ Oh, I want you in my life ♪

♪ For all this time, forever and ever ♪

♪ Oh, I want you in my life ♪

♪ To be just mine, my only treasure ♪

♪ You know I've been around the whole, wide world ♪

♪ I've seen more sights than the average girl ♪

♪ Yet somehow I seem to miss the mark ♪

♪ Possess everything except a heart ♪

- When I actually did go for the acting

is when my whole life changed.

So, it was always trying to come in to tell me,

"Yeah, you, you sing, okay,

"but this is what you're supposed to be doing."

And I'm stubborn so I ignored it

'cause I didn't know it was a sign.

Phil Herman said there was a convention

called the Chiller convention,

and a distributor was going to be there.

And he thought it would be a good idea if I would go,

and try to help sell the movies and sign autographs

of my first movie, the Burglar from Hell.

So, we drove up and I spent a Saturday there

and my life changed that day.

I was at Chiller and I got more fans than I could handle.

They just treated you just fantastic,

meeting you on the spot.

Hi, I'm Debbie D here at the Chiller Theater convention.

Scream Queens Illustrated came up

wanting to know who this new scream queen Debbie D was.

And they shot me for their magazine that day.

- Debbie D missed her calling in life.

She should have been a comedian.

I keep saying it all the time.

- I agree with you totally.

- (laughs) She would just come out of the woodwork

with some one-liners and shit.

Or you would look at her and she just

had this naturally funny...

You can't help but to laugh.

- When you go to work with Gary,

you don't just do the one.

You're doing, you don't know it,

but you're doing other, "Oh, what is this?

"This something, well, what's this?"

"Oh, we're just going to be over here

"and we're gonna do this now.

"And you're gonna wear this outfit.

And you've just done, you were just in four movies.

We just did it because we were young girls

and we were having a good time.

And I didn't mind running around naked. (laughs)

So, he called me a lot.

- Hi, I'm Tina Krause,

and welcome to W.A.V.E.'s first video centerfold,

featuring yours truly.

- Tina was walking through Chiller, '94, spring of '94.

Sal sees her go by.

Calls her because of her hair.

Because, at the time, Sal knew somebody

who wanted custom tapes with girls with long hair.

- Somebody approached me and asked me if I was an actress.

And I just gave him a real funny look.

And was like, "No!"

But then I thought about it, and I was like,

"Well, wait, wait, wait.

"If I say I am, will you put me in a film?"

And I was really just being a wise ass.

I really wasn't asking to be.

It actually was never something I wanted to do.

I never wanted to be an actress.

And if you asked me a long time ago of the list of jobs,

I would have told you that would have

been the worst thing you could make me do

'cause I don't like memorizing things.

- [Gary] So we went outside, did a scene

where Sal strangles Tina.

Comes back, she gets to watch it

on the television that we have.

- She's kind of exotic looking.

She actually was a mixture of Asian and German.

And she kind of looked like Elvira almost.

She had long, long black hair,

really white skin, the whole vampire look going on.

- Tina, oh yeah, everyone loved Tina.

Small build, you know, that tiny girl

with those big natural bosoms,

that bounced all over the place.

And that long hair.

So she, I would say out of all the W.A.V.E. girls,

she was probably the most popular

and the most sought after.

- So I was at Chiller, and that's when I saw Tina Krause.

And, as a producer, when I saw her, I was like, "Star!"

Star quality, star.

- '94 was probably the year that things started

to get a lot more, a lot more sales,

a lot more interest in things.

You know, Tina had a lot of fans.

It certainly helped.

One of the earlier problems was that people did a good job,

but they had jobs and they had their own lives and stuff.

So, movies weren't their reason for being, I guess.

Whereas like Pam and Tina and Laura were really into it,

the other people it was more hobby.

(quirky horror music)

(suspenseful music)

(knife squelching) (Pam groaning)

(quirky horror music)

(Pam groaning)

(quirky horror music)

(soft gasping)

(Pam groaning)

The premise from the person's point of view

was his thing was people being carried,

like the Creature from the Black Lagoon type carry.

That was his thing.

- The first W.A.V.E. movie I remember

was Sorority Slaughter.

Got my liver ripped out in a bathtub.

And, I gotta tell ya, it was quite an interesting night.

- We were college girls,

and we were living next door to this crazy psychopath.

Avery strange guy that we kept snooping

on to see what's he doin'.

He's so weird.

And it turns out he was a crazy psycho killer.

(suspenseful music)

- Radu, I will get you sacrifices and a bride tonight.

(suspenseful music)

- But he was killing girls and offering them up

as sacrifices to the Great Radu! (laughs)

Which was some demon he worshiped.

And my very first death scene for W.A.V.E. ever.

And I remember I was laid out on a table in the backyard,

and I was stabbed repeatedly, over and over and over again.

Blood everywhere, lots of gore.

And I had my guts ripped out of me.

We used real cow's liver,

and it was so disgusting, and it stunk so bad.

I almost threw up, it was so bad.

But I was like, "you know, I just want to do this

"'cause this is so much fun so just lay it on me!"

- Sorority Slaughter was hilarious.

I remember laughing because I was like,

"Is this the special effect?"

We have oatmeal on our faces and you put green paint on it.

(Tina laughs)

- Yeah, there's like a very long swimming scene.

A long car washing scene.

A long just conversation that just goes way long.

A struggle scene.

It's sort of like a rape scene without a rape.

Just like the pre-rape struggle,

and it goes on and on and on.

- I think my first impression of W.A.V.E.

was probably one of just absolute horror

because it was sort of the absolute opposite

of what I was trying to do.

I was trying to make essentially the B movies

that I had grown up with that were,

I don't want to say Hollywood movies.

But you're trying to make real movies.

- I found myself sitting around afterwards thinking like,

"Man, they were really washing that car

"for a very, very long time."

- It's show time.

(camera clicking regularly)

Time to make you a star!

- Yeah, Gary's not the clearest, best director out there.

(Deana laughs)

- Well, Gary, I think probably fancies himself

as an Alfred Hitchcock type, his filmmaking style.

He's got a lot of different styles.

I think if you're talking about doing the custom movies

as opposed to some of the features we've done,

he's got a very different technique he uses.

I think with the custom movies, there's a lot of long shots.

Just to give you an example of a girl tied up,

maybe for five, 10 minutes.

And Gary says, "Okay, cut."

We'll start rolling again, more struggling.

"Cut," another 10 minutes more struggling,

Almost done.

- I don't know what kind of style there really is.

It's just pretty much set up the camera and shoot,

and that's it.

You know, even if I ask if you want another take.

"No, it's okay." (chuckles)

"We got it, we can move on."

- Does W.A.V.E. have an aesthetic or style?

- It doesn't feel artistic,

but that's great because art is a pain in the ass.

It's pretentious.

We don't need any more of it.

And Gary Whitson's films are artless,

but they are true to the needs of their viewer.

- Sometimes the wall would fall.

It was like Plan Nine.

Yeah, I would call him Gary Wood, that was my name for him.

Gary Wood.

- I need two sequences.

First, I need woman in a maid's outfit killed in an attic.

She should be strangled.

- By the time I'm done,

you're gonna think these murders are for real.

- So, this was way before the internet and to sell his VHS

Gary was selling everything through mail order.

So, besides classifieds and fanzines,

he had his own newsletter called Damsels in Distress.

And that's how he would bring everybody

up to date on what his new productions were.

- Everything including, just selling our tapes,

were all classified ads in like the genre magazines.

Fangoria, later Scream Queens Illustrated.

Draculina was a big one.

- Back then, I guess advertising was cheaper.

And a lot of very small independent companies

would advertise there because, again,

this was before the internet and there weren't a lot

of places to advertise to the horror crowd.

And Fangoria was kind of one of the biggest places you could

reach out and get that audience.

- But a company like W.A.V.E. would just be

in the classifieds with this little tiny banner

that's just like don't tell anyone that you are

sending away for our catalog, $2.

It just felt deeply forbidden.

- I covered no budget movies

because I was interested in no budget movies.

I wanted to make movies,

and I would interview people that I found out

were making a movie or already made a movie.

And then we started doing those "making of" articles.

- I would just kind of look at all the other magazines

that were around.

And there were a lot of magazines at the time

that were covering this kind of stuff.

You had Draculina, you had Film Threat Video Guide

and all that kind of stuff.

And I just, for whatever reason,

we found our own voice and our own way

of doing things I guess.

But it was not a...

It grew organically, I guess, from the first issue.

It gave birth as a completely shameless self-indulgent way

to promote the stuff that I was distributing,

but eventually became, I think a a sounding board

for other filmmakers to have a voice too.

- So, back in the '90s, mid to late '90s,

I purchased Alternative Cinema.

And with that came the catalog and the mailing list.

So, it started evolving and started adding titles to it.

I can't recall exactly how W.A.V.E. production movies

wound up in the catalog,

but I'm guessing that I was just trying

to bulk up the catalog,

to include as many independent titles as I possibly could.

- My mail order business was awesome before the internet.

I mean, the catalog grew to like 60 some pages.

And I would dedicate,

I mean, the W.A.V.E. movies sold so well

that I would dedicate one page

in every Draculina just to sell W.A.V.E. movies.

And then I had probably five or six pages in the catalog

with every W.A.V.E. title.

And they sold for 30 bucks a piece.

- With W.A.V.E. I found their stuff was selling

and then I would start to zero in on what areas,

like all the chloroform ones.

I'd make sure I got all of them up.

-And I'm not talking about one or two titles.

I'm talking about 20, 30 titles at a time, every week,

and even more.

I mean, multiples of the same title or.

It was crazy.

Usually when a person bought a W.A.V.E. title,

they would buy one title and then, inevitably,

two weeks later I would get this order for like 10 titles.

- These movies are addictive, to certain people.

Once they see that these films are filling that need

for those types of fetishes,

or this type of voyeuristic violence,

they would order 10 at a time, 20 at a time sometimes.

- Titles that would just be in my head

because, at that time, I was doing most of the work myself

and I would have to order them from Gary.

So, titles like Strangled, and there's a series.

So, Strangled 2, Strangled 3.

I don't know how many were out at that time.

- I remember people would come and

buy the whole Quicksand series that he would do.

(quirky electronic music)

- Put that in the VCR.

(quirky horror music)

(quirky electronic music)

- You guys were swamped down there, we saw.

We got some video of you guys.

You had crowds all over the tables today.

(quirky electronic music)

- From Chiller Theatre.

This is Aftermath goodbye, ha!

- I used to joke around a lot

with the guys at E.I. that Chiller, to filmmakers,

it was like the Cannes Film Festival of conventions.

And it was like a big deal.

It's like a big deal!

Like, ah!

Like you'd count the days off to Chiller.

- Remember I'd bring like, especially in the VHS days,

I'd bring like boxes and boxes of VHS tapes.

And eventually I spread out to two tables,

but even then I would have to almost

double the boxes sometimes.

And people would just dig and move 'em, dig and move 'em.

-Anybody that went to a Chiller Theatre show

knew W.A.V.E. because it was impossible not to

because they had a pretty big presence there.

- So, when I first saw W.A.V.E. it was a table,

and he was selling tapes, and he had a TV set up.

And he had photo albums.

Now, I had never seen this before.

- Well, the girls had their albums out.

I mean, these were like Polaroids and stuff.

Like some of these pictures look like they'd been abducted

and stolen back from their abductors,

and they were selling them.

- There are a lot of those movies I never actually watched.

I just kind of looked at the back and said,

"Oh, okay, it's a big, strange world out there."

- There's a tape called Eaten Alive.

And it just said, W.A.V.E. Productions, Eaten Alive.

And it was a woman on the front with her mouth open,

and it looked like two little feet kind of

dangling out of her mouth.

And I thought, "that looks really interesting.

"Maybe we should watch this."

I was not prepared at all for what I saw

because it was so far gone

from any other shot on video production I had seen.

It was only 40 minutes long,

and it was it was literally a video

about a woman shrinking people down and eating them.

And that was it.

And it was one of the most bizarre

and also entertaining things I'd seen in a long time.

- So, when you were discovering this stuff

were you shocked when you found

out just how huge the W.A.V.E. library was?

'Cause I first saw Sleepover Massacre and I was like,

"Oh, okay, I get it.

"These guys did this.

"Maybe they did it a couple of times."

And then when I finally somewhere saw the list of their,

and that was just their available titles at that time,

which is not even probably a fraction

of the total work that they've done.

It was impossible to me.

It was like the most robust filmography ever,

that I'd ever seen.

From anybody, like including pornography or whatever.

It was just crazy.

- But for the most part, you're seeking out these movies

and you're just disappointed time and time again

because it's not really watchable by humans.

- But if you're into disappointment,

it's a great archive to dive into.

- So, with any given filmmaker

talking about their filmography,

you might be looking at, I don't know, 10, 12 titles,

but with Gary, you're looking at 400 titles.

I mean, since 1987, he's made over 400 movies.

- If you don't enjoy amateur video

then you're not going to enjoy W.A.V.E. Productions.

- Customers who buy 'em would be like what is this?

This doesn't look like a movie.

This isn't like a film.

People who'd rent it from the video store,

some of the retailers.

These, they had horrible reviews

because of what they look like.

They didn't look like films and stuff.

- It almost wasn't quite fair to kind of review them

in the same context as you were reviewing

even a semi-pro film.

I mean, these movies are what they are.

They kind of defy criticism.

- I did an interview with Gary in Draculina,

and I remember asking him how long it took

to make a W.A.V.E. movie.

I don't know, write, edit, get it in the box.

And he said it took seven days.

I mean, which there have been movies made in seven days,

but usually they're shot in seven days.

They still got to do all the other stuff.

- W.A.V.E. films differ from other movies

of the '80s and early '90s because,

in other cases, other filmmakers were trying their best to

make a vague replica of what a normal movie would be.

They would say, okay, we can't do a movie like The Hidden

or we can't do a movie like Basket Case even at our budget,

but we're going to do our best to approximate it.

And W.A.V.E. never even tried to be anything but W.A.V.E.

They never tried to rise above their horror fetish market.

And they were just very comfortable there, which I respect.

- It was more of an agenda with him where with other people,

that they had a goal of making this one movie.

-And it's shot on video, right?

An actress gets a line wrong, you can do it again.

It's not gonna cost anything,

but no, in a W.A.V.E. production.

- Don't move.

- See you later. - See you later.

See you later, Blake.

- In a W.A.V.E. Productions production,

they would leave that in and you're like why?

It's the beginning of a scene, she got the line wrong.

We could start over.

It's tape, it's free, you know?

Nope, it's in there.

- But his, I remember, would be very static.

Actor would say something, static,

cut to the actress, but there'd be like a pause.

And then she'd respond.

(motorcycle engine humming)

- My folks are out of town for the weekend.

I'm gonna have a swim party tonight.

Would you like to come?

- I'd love to.

- Need a ride home? - Yes, I do.

- Really, the weirdest thing to me about W.A.V.E. movies

is just the scenes where people

are having normal human interactions.

And those seem to be the greatest challenge

for the actors.

Is just to say, we're not being menaced.

We're not being stabbed.

We're not having sex.

We're just gonna, for a minute, talk about our job

or talk about our dog or whatever it is.

And then the actors are way out of their depth

and just seem like they can't get comfortable.

But there's so many moments where somebody is just

supposed to say, "okay, now you go sell her that newspaper."

And the actors are just like, "Oh shit, oh no.

"Like I have to, I have to pass for human

"for the next three minutes, what am I gonna do?"

And those parts are great.

You feel like the fear and awkwardness and hesitation

from the actors, and I love that.

It's not bad acting.

It's just like a person who suddenly realizes

that they have to reveal themselves

as a human being on camera,

and it's sometimes too much for people.

- I guess because it wasn't really acting,

and I get very nervous when I have to be myself.

So, probably my least favorite one was

when they made me do a date tape.

It was A Date with Deana.

And I was very uncomfortable just being myself.

- The design of the original W.A.V.E. tapes,

they're actually really well-designed unintentionally,

in that sense, because the whole point of design

is to immediately attract your attention

and make you pick something up or make you buy it.

And they did that without even knowing it, I think.

It's very crude.

And it always uses the same couple of typefaces faces.

And it's just a photograph on the cover

that completely entices you to see what this is.

Because I love the aesthetic of snapshots on set

that were taken with a Polaroid or an Instamatic,

just slapped on a tape.

- [Zach] Like Mummy's Dungeon.

- Oh, yeah. - Was just like.

- That's the best.

- Yellow background, black type, mummy in a dungeon.

That's all you get.

That's all you want.

That's all you need, hear it is, done.

- I mean, it's totally punk rock, you know what I mean?

But that also comes in line with the kind of punk rock DIY

attitude behind these films, right?

(hard rock music)

- We saw these three miserable college students

raping and killing our youngest sister.

(woman screaming)

After the murder, we just totally became psycho.

(hard rock music)

- Well, revenge, I think is the primary motivating goal

of the Psycho Sisters, but also there's sometimes no real

motivating goals in a true psychopath.

It is a story about the serial killers, about psychopaths,

and sometimes that cannot be explained.

- No!

(♪ Decide by Disco Missile ♪)

-At the time I was attending the

Chiller Theatre conventions,

which were quite small back then, in the '90s.

And I came upon the W.A.V.E. table,

and I was very fascinated by the W.A.V.E. productions.

They looked very bizarre and very interesting.

And I knew they were doing custom videos.

I was interested in making a film myself.

I had no resources.

I had no film background other than

I had a cheap camcorder.

But as far as making a big production,

I was unable to do it.

So, I commissioned W.A.V.E. to produce my film.

I guess I was a custom customer.

But I think, in the end, I turned out

to be a totally different type of customer

when all was said and done.

Actually I'd been very interested in horror in general,

and monsters, vampires.

However, I came to realize in my life

that really there's no such thing as monsters,

but there are serial killers.

Serial killers are really the true monsters of...

of humanity.

And they walk the earth in surprisingly great numbers.

And to me there's nothing more frightening

than the potential of having an encounter

with a serial killer,

because they could be your next door neighbor,

your friend, they could be anybody, including women.

And at the time I became interested in making films,

there weren't really too many movies focused around women

as the villains or as the killers.

So, I thought, well, how cool would it be

to have two very normal looking women,

very hot looking women, be serial killers.

So, that's the basic concept behind Psycho Sisters.

There's a lot of problems.

The original, actually the original Psycho Sisters

dropped out, and then there was two new Psycho Sisters,

and then they dropped out.

And finally we cast Pamela Sutch and Christine Taylor

as the final psycho sisters.

So, it was quite a...

You know, we started shooting it

and then we had to keep on changing it.

- [Interviewer] Why did they drop out?

- You know, I'm not really sure.

I think it might've had something to do

with the the basic premise of Psycho Sisters.

As you may know, what the Psycho Sisters do

is they kill young men, guys,

and they cut off their penises and they put them in jars.

And for some reason, that just seemed to be something

that the girls just didn't like doing.

- Well, if you're wondering what happens in Psycho Sisters,

these sisters are psycho and they (mimics shears snipping)

Chop it off.

They chop a lot of them off. (laughs)

That's what it's about.

That's what it's about.

So is that a fetish?

- We had had other custom tapes,

but this was the first time the person

who did a custom tape directed it.

We never normally had,

normally we would not want somebody

who's doing a custom tape to be there

because may have a few too many problems.

But we had met Pete at the conventions.

So, we knew he wasn't too weird. (laughs)

- I put it together, I edited it professionally.

Put a really great soundtrack together.

And we promoted it like a real movie.

We had a big premiere at William Patterson College,

where I was an alumni, in the theater.

- And I can swear that both Gary and Sal were shooting it.

They had video cameras, in the aisle, they would be like.

It was a big event.

It was a big deal.

-And I think everybody was, I don't know,

maybe they thought I was nuts.

I'm really not sure because if you see Psycho Sisters,

you can see what it is.

I mean, it's shitty.

But it's Psycho Sisters, but I had this vision,

this is my movie, and I presented it like it

was the greatest thing on Earth.

And it is, I guess, 'cause here we are

and I'm still talking about it.

- So, if we were going to make a movie,

we needed to get it into video stores.

We're talking about VHS into independent video stores.

We literally would call video stores

and sell them our wares.

- Now, I think Psycho Sisters in particular

I saw it in a fair number of video stores.

Of course, I spent more time in video stores

than a lot of people did.

But if you're a video store proprietor,

and you're buying new tapes,

how can you pass on it, just the title.

Just the title of Psycho Sisters.

It's like you're gonna buy Microwave Massacre

because of its title.

You don't care if it's any good or what it is.

- Tina was being interviewed by somebody, I think.

And she was the first one that I heard

say fetish horror, in terms of the two together.

And I guess that's true.

But I guess my theory is that anybody who goes

to a horror movie has whatever,

if you want to call it a fetish or whatever,

you're going to a horror movie for some reason.

You're either going because you want

to see the person getting killed and decapitated

or whatever the case may be, or shot or killed or scared or.

So, to say it's a fetish, I don't think, you know,

I think all horror is a fetish in the sense

that you want to go see it for some reason.

- These are fetish films, okay?

You want to see tits, ass and blood.

You want to see death in every fucking way possible.

I was like, you know what?

The movie should just be called I Die.

And let's just put all of my death scenes.

It would last for nine fucking hours, okay? (laughs)

Every single one, you'd have a fucking library of this shit.

- Yeah, the death scenes can be a little bit

over the top, and long.

- You're strangling me.

I mean, it's not a horror thing.

Okay, yeah, we're all gonna get killed, I got it.

But honestly, it's gotta be a fetish.

Like who the hell does that for fucking 60 minutes?

I'm like, there are points, sometimes I'd be like,

"Gary, you're boring the guy."

Like I'm bored, I'm bored. (laughs)

I'm the actress, I'm dying, and I'm bored.

-A lot of pannings.

A lot of pannings of different stages before the death,

and then the death at the end.

Some people want you to die quickly.

They don't want a story.

They just want you boom, bang your dead.

You know, shooting down.

And then the sprawl on the floor, how the skirt goes up.

What shows, maybe sometimes it's just the way the blouse

opens up, or if the blouse gets ripped.

Pannings more so, for Gary, it was the death.

How long you can prolong the death.

And that was unrealistic,

unless you're the person that was actually doing the murder

and you were prolonging to see how long you

can almost take her there and then take her back.

I could see that as being erotic.

- One of the ways of dying that always made me nervous,

and I always had to be really careful about was

the plastic bag over the head.

There was a few, quite a few times I had to do death scenes

like that where I had to stop.

I'm like, "I can't breathe.

"You gotta get this off me."

- To me, like I said, it was,

if I'm getting strangled, it's about making it

as real as possible.

If I'm getting drowned.

So, that to me was my work.

- I just played a crazy person

and I just, you know, abduct her in the woods

and tie her to a tree.

And then I take it back to my place and tape her to a chair

and do all kinds of nasty things to her.

That's a typical day on the W.A.V.E. set.

- The one thing I've always said,

it has to have a beginning, middle and end.

It can't just be somebody comes in

and just basically beat somebody to death.

That's not what I want to do.

It's got to have at least a story to it.

- Yeah, I didn't know

that that had anything to do with that.

I just thought we were just making low budget

of these Alfred Hitchcock type of things.

Just horror movies, just B horror movies

where girls are running around the woods

getting killed by the killer.

- I don't know how much they actually sat down there,

sat and said, you know, who's watching this?

Why are they watching it?

This kind of thing.

It's, I'm making a movie, I'm getting killed.

That's it.

- Even though these are like ridiculous,

goofy little movies,

there's sort of this like almost scary,

edgy quality to them.

- I never thought of myself as claustrophobic

'cause I've been in trunks.

Oh, just close it.

But I guess as I'm getting older now,

like I feel like, are you sure you got the keys?

So, I might be getting to that point.

-And I would always think every time,

I'm never doing this shit again,

and I'd be there next week.

(woman choking) (chair rattling)

- Strangulation in itself to me is a very disturbing

and intimate way to die or to kill someone.

As far as the sexual aspect of it,

I suppose, again, it relates to the intimacy

that strangulation is.

I mean, you're right there.

It's, your bare hands extinguishing a person's life.

It's dominance.

And also the fact that orgasm itself,

orgasm, is I believe in Latin, it means a little death.

I mean, the fact when someone orgasms,

it's almost like they're dying.

When someone's on their last breaths,

it's like they're having an orgasm.

So, I think many aspects of death in itself

can have sexual connotations.

- Strangulation is one way of kind of,

you can kind of control the time that they die.

'Cause I know a lot of them, they strangle 'em a bit

and then they relax and they strangle a bit and relax.

-Asphyxiation of any kind, really seems

to be the ultimate violent demise in the W.A.V.E. realm.

A lot of customers really enjoy

watching women being asphyxiated.

- "Death by strangulation robs one of the self control

"and supposed mastery over life.

"Death by strangulation returns the victim to infancy,

"making him again a child in the arms of his killer,

"begging for suckle of breath, even as a babe

"entreats the mother for the life-sustaining teat."

- Celeste, you're looking exceptionally lovely tonight.

Thank you.

I liked working with Sal.

I felt bad for him because I think that he wanted

to pursue the movies.

And I think that it was getting him

in a lot of trouble in his marriage.

- Sal worked in law enforcement,

and that his wife was either a lawyer or a judge,

or someone professional.

And that his wife didn't really care for the fact

of his involvement with these tapes, as they are called.

- Sal was a public defender,

investigator for the prosecutor's office,

and his wife thought the movies might've

been a little bit too bizarre for him to be associated with.

And she gave him a lot of grief for that all the time.

- Which is sad.

I think once you take somebody's art away from them,

it kind of breaks them down.

- Well, after W.A.V.E. had clearly started

to become successful, I mean, they did a lot of business

with these kind of movies,

I started seeing a lot of other companies kind of come up

behind them and they would take out tables

at the conventions and they would pretty

much follow that model.

- Well, there was Dark Fantasies, who sold really well.

Thursday Night Video, which another one sold real well.

There was Aqua Fantasies.

There was TAG, who was near me.

There's Perfect Shot.

- Bind Her, was another one.

And that was just a weird group of people.

- I guess it seems a little fantastic now,

but I guess at the time they were selling well enough

that it gave a bit of an influence to say,

oh, well, why don't we shoot similar type things, ourselves?

- There were other companies, I worked for Bluestone.

They would go and say, "You have to get Tina Krause.

"I only want her."

And every year I'd be flying out to Canada

doing the same exact thing.

Just being shot with a gun, 100 times.

-And I did a real hanging,

and it's still selling like crazy.

Yes, I won't do it again.

It was seconds.

But being a singer too, and wanting to talk as well.

It can crush your throat.

I must've had like a lot of guardian angels

around me at that time because I said, "Oh, I'll try it."

It was painful.

I didn't pass out.

But there was someone there to CPR me if I did.

I just made my neck real strong,

and I was put up on the noose, and I said, "Just let it go."

So, I just, I got lucky, so I won't do it again.

It's on a site called Gasping Horror and it's real.

And people know it's real 'cause there's no harness,

there's nothing.

I don't, you know, it's not wise to do.

It's not like I was let go.

It was a slow, as he was pulling it up.

But I was there, my feet were hanging.

And you felt it for days afterwards,

like a little bit of a crushed larynx kind of feeling.

A little raspiness in your voice.

And if it collapsed, I would have probably needed surgery.

I would probably have a scar right here

and they hopefully would have gotten air in me,

you know, somehow.

But people have died for the craft before.

- Some of them, I think, were somewhat connected

to one another, like Factory 2000.

But suddenly, as the '90s progressed,

there were a lot of companies

that were shooting custom horror movies.

- I definitely feel that my company,

Factory 2000, was kind of following somewhat of his formula,

and biting on that, putting in certain fetishes

to gain that audience.

And just kind of wrapping whatever we could

around it to sell it at a horror convention.

It was sort of like a trick.

- But I would get called from Bill Hellfire,

and I knew it was gonna be something outrageous,

and I would just laugh.

'Cause I just, it would never be anything normal.

It couldn't be normal.

- In some ways, I think they actually kind of

exceeded W.A.V.E. because they had Misty Mundae,

who became kind of a superstar on the underground circuit,

in a way that I don't think any of the actresses

from W.A.V.E. necessarily became.

- But Gary never was upset.

He never thought, "Oh, you're ripping me off."

Or, as a matter of fact, Gary used to offer me work

that he didn't want to do,

or that was maybe not high enough pay

for both of us to be involved in.

He would just give me all this work.

- They stole all my ideas! (laughs)

No, really.

I didn't really care that much about other companies

because A. they were doing things differently.

Everybody, like you had asked before about certain things

that I do and not do and so forth.

And I know some of those companies went further

or emphasized specifically just certain things.

You know, less storyline or more,

some were more graphic than others.

(gun squelching) (gun blasting)

(woman groaning) (man grunting)

- I think it's actually healthy to be able to,

for the viewer to go and see this acted out.

Because that's who you are,

and you shouldn't hide who you are.

So, there should be everything out there for everybody.

And I'm glad that there's still filmmakers making it.

Because whatever brings you pleasure, go for it. (laughs)

It's my job as an actor to get there

and to do the best I can to portray it,

to be as real as possible.

And I didn't know it was satisfying

so many people so that's.

And I like giving gifts. (laughs)

So, that's the giving part of me.

- I remember thinking like, you know,

is this something that they want to do

to girls in real life?

Like why do they want to see this?

In the beginning I kind of thought it was a little strange.

But I actually found out over the years that guys that are

into these fetishes don't have any intentions of going out

and actually doing this to girls.

It's just something they enjoy seeing played out, acted out.

And a lot of the guys, and I'm actually friends

with some people that are into certain fetishes,

like the drowning and the different kinds

of ways girls get killed.

And they're the nicest guys in the world.

They're real nice people, real nice people.

- No matter how sexual they get and how torturous they are

for the women in the movies or the viewer,

there is a friendliness and a warmth to them sometimes

that is inexplicable and incomparable to other things.

- It was exciting to see the stupid shit

that would happen on set.

- [Art] There was not a lot of attention to safety

on these sets necessarily.

-Are you kidding me?

There was no safety on a W.A.V.E. set.

(weapon whacking) (woman groaning)

- I mainly worried about dropping girls that I had to carry.

Some of them were a little bit more than I could handle.

And when you're doing a lot of different takes

and you're carrying the girls and moving around with them,

that was challenging.

- Sometimes if you had a prop,

we would like take it out there and like, you know.

It's like, "Gary, it's a real knife."

"Yeah, yeah, but just don't kind of, you know.

"Pretend, act."

I'm like, "it's a real knife.

"Can you get a prop?"

"Oh, okay, we'll get a prop next time."

- [Gary] So we had an old studio on Sicklerville,

and we had enough space where basically 16 by 16,

that we could put walls up.

So, we'd use aluminum foil and then spray painted it

with a gray and black paint eventually.

And then sometimes I would try to throw dirt on it.

And that created the cave.

- Silver spray paint made space things, okay?

The brown and black spray paint made the caves.

-And Tina had to do a shower scene, but there was no water

because it was a fake shower in the studio.

It wasn't a real shower.

But we were just laughing the whole time and saying,

"Oh, that's the new fetish, dry showers.

"Everybody has to take a dry shower."

- Hey, you look good.

That's a nice outfit.

- Oh my God!

Oh, this guy, he would come with outfits.

They'd either be too big, too small,

too much in the '80s, too, way.

Oh my God, what the hell is that?

- Gary's funny because most of the outfits we wear

in the movies are from his own collection

that he collects from Goodwill and thrift stores.

He'll have us playing a cop

wearing a little short mini skirt

and high heels and stockings.

Like what cop goes around in high heels,

stockings and little mini skirts?

But in a W.A.V.E. movie, that's the norm.

- This is Sergeant Wilson.

I'm out here on the property now.

I found some very unusual evidence.

- I am really good at the quicksand.

And I know some of my fans out there can see it.

Like, I'm good at quicksand.

I can go under really well.

It's because I have a swimming background.

So, I would just like get to the point I could...

I'm good at dying.

You know, I can just like, be like I'm on my last breath.

And then I can go way under in the quicksand.

It was good.

It was good, really good.

- All right, so he got better with the quicksand later on,

but the first time he did it

basically what he did was he took a garbage,

like these giant garbage bags, right,

and dug a hole and then put the hole,

made the hole really, really deep.

And then filled it with water and then took the dirt

that he dug, which had every bug, insect.

God knows what was in it.

And threw it back in to the water

and then told us to get in it.

- I never liked the quicksand stuff. (laughs)

It was just so nasty.

Having to sink in that pit in the woods.

And it would be cold and it would get all in my hair.

And I would say that's probably one

of my least favorite things to do.

- I am Rana.

This is my home.

- Pam played Rana and he used

like a leopard skin seat cover off a car

or something like that to make her suit.

And we shot in the land behind Gary's parents' house.

And it was pretty jungle looking back there.

But that was a good series.

And that was the one I think I got chiggers from,

from hiding in the bushes and got covered with chiggers.

- I remember watching it and

I wasn't that happy with my acting in it

because it was early.

And I saw myself and I was like, "Ew, I suck."

(laughs)Anyway, I got really good at acting after that.

- Tina was a Nazi in that, who was Rana's nemesis.

And I was Teela the jungle girl

who was Tina's character's sidekick.

Kill! (laughs)

- Teela, get some rope!

- I would speak in like one word sentences,

like "kill" and "fire!"

- He was like, okay, now the snake is gonna attack.

I said, "okay," right?

And the first take of it,

it came around and I saw what it was.

I was just like, I couldn't even scream.

I just sat there and I went,

"You have to be fucking kidding me.

"That's the snake?

"I'm supposed to be scared?"

He's like, "Come on, it's a snake, Tina.

"It looks like a snake, in camera it looks like a snake."

-And I just remember laughing

because we all took turns being the "snake handler"

and having our hands in this snake puppet.

And it was the stupidest thing, but it was just so much fun.

And just taking turns, you know,

being this snake and attacking each other with this puppet.

- I like Deadly Sale.

- Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

That is a good one.

- Because it has even less reason to exist

than the other ones.

It's like, it's like,

"Oh, there's a problem with this real estate issue.

"Oh, and I'm tied to a tree, and there's a killer."

But it just feels like Gary Whitson that week was like,

"I gotta try something different!"

And then he got out there,

and he had the idea and he had the plot.

And he's like, "Ah, just tie her to a tree.

"That's fine."

I liked that there was like this tiny little fritz

of inspiration to do something totally different.

And even the most devoted perv watching

that would be like,

"Wait, what are we talking about here?

"What's going on, why?"

Tie her to something quick.

I don't understand the rest of this.

- I've always been fascinated with mermaids.

Ever since I was a kid,

I've always loved them and I've always wanted to be one.

So, I ordered a couple of custom mermaid tails,

swimmable, fully swimmable mermaid tails.

Just to see what kind of market there even is for that.

And, believe it or not, there's quite a market for it.

There's a lot of people that are really into mermaids

and love to see mermaids swimming underwater

and all that kind of stuff.

I know there's a big underwater fetish.

- So, I've done mermaid movies with Laura

where they've done it in, I have an above-ground pool,

which I don't know how many mermaids would

be in an above-ground pool, but.

- There was someone that ordered one years ago who was,

I guess it was a fetish.

He was into clothed mermaids.

Mermaids where you see their tail,

but they had clothes on over top,

like a skirt and a top and a then a tail coming out.

I even did one where I sunk in quicksand,

where I was a human, and I sunk in quicksand.

And then when I finally got myself out of the quicksand,

I had changed into a mermaid and I had a tail.

- Ew, that's disgusting!

(women giggling)

Oh my God, who is that chick buffing Gary's head!

Oh my God! (laughs)

- We all would improv.

We would have an outline,

but then we would just go off on one another.

It was like an improv class that was filmed

and put into a movie.

- There's been some movies where it was mainly all improv.

I mean, we had the basic idea, but we improved a lot.

- I liked the fact that you can go

and make up these characters on the spot.

Sometimes the scripts were so loose.

Okay, a lot of times, they were always very loose scripts.

So, you would show up and you'd be able to improv a lot.

And that was like a great, great learning skill.

- Can I ask you something?

- Yeah, what?

- What's with the bikini?

- The time machine has trouble transporting both animate

and inanimate objects at the same time.

The less you have on, the better.

- Oh, then Gary acts! (laughs)

Gary acts.

He gets into the movie and he tries to act,

and he's really bad.

- I would say that Gary's acting,

he did as best as he could.

- Gary's not much of an actor.

Maybe Gary should not act. (laughs)

- He had a line that he screwed up three or four times,

maybe five times.

I can't even remember.

One line and the line was, "Yes."

I shit you not.

I said my monologue, the camera turned.

All he was supposed to answer was "Yes."

And we were like, "Okay, Gary, ready?"

And he just stood there.

And we were like.

And he's just like, and then he just started laughing.

I go, what the, he's like, "I forgot, what was it?"

I'm like, "it's yes!

"It's yes!

"You can't remember 'yes'?"

- God, Mr. Johnson, you scared us.

- Sorry about that, but with this maniac on the loose,

I just was checking on you.

- [Woman] Thanks for your concern, Mr. Johnson.

(quirky electronic music)

- The idea of making custom movies is not what you would,

not what I would have immediately thought of doing.

But then you sort of think about it more over time,

and it's like Gary had the exact right idea

that everybody probably should have been doing.

It was just the thing that makes total sense

is why not make what other people want,

literally custom tailored.

He would have just a scene.

I want a movie where Tina Krause is sitting

in front of a mirror, brushing her hair.

And he would make an entire movie around it,

with a story and everything else and have fun with it

and be making money, you know?

And it was like, instead of worrying about

trying to sell it to the masses,

he's just worried about this one customer

that had this one specific fetish or niche or whatever

that they wanted.

So, really, I like to look back on that whole thing now

and think he's got the last laugh on all of us

because he was really doing it the right way all along.

- Everything's changed.

I mean, everything around has changed.

The fact that he's still making these movies,

and he's making a living off of it.

That's awesome.

- Because here we are in the modern age.

With a catalog.

(interviewer laughing)

It's full circle in many respects

that there's actually a print catalog that goes out

to thousands and thousands of people.

It's like it's 1995 all over again.

- To stay that dedicated and to keep a consistent aesthetic,

a consistent vision and a consistent goal

in front of you at all times, is tremendous.

I think it's a tremendous feat for any kind of art,

especially filmmaking.

If anything, that's one reason to check out the whole

breadth of his work.

- If you're into someone getting drowned or strangled

or chloroformed or dying in quicksand, or put an apple

in their mouth and served up on a dinner table,

I don't think you can really go anywhere else.

You're gonna have to go to Gary to get what you need.

And, obviously, after 30 years, he's the number one guy.

- It's amazing that Gary's still

making movies after 30 years.

I mean, it's just really insane.

He's still strangling girls in his backyard.

It's incredible.

- I don't regret that or anything that I've done

because if I regret than I didn't learn from it,

then it means I'm ashamed of it.

I'm not.

- Gary and some of the other small companies that

opened the door and just started all this independent film

stuff that has been going on for years and years.

So, it did actually build a career

for me because it is the career that I do have today,

and it's a full-time career.

- It's kind of the same feeling

as a Ray Dennis Steckler movie.

Everyone getting together and making a movie

because the filmmaker has this dream to do this.

And so everyone pitches in and everyone's happy to do it

because they're excited just to be

in front of the camera and just to create something.

- And that probably means that Gary Whitson

is the greatest guy in the world

because all of these people have spent so much

of their personal time at presumably very little income

to help him realize these visions

again and again, for decades.

- He's always been kind and good to me.

And...

Whenever it happens, whenever we go to the next world,

he has left me in charge of the enterprise.

I was honored and I'll probably cry thinking about it.

Good guy.

- It's just a completely different world

that spawned a modern world that we see all the time.

So, I think it's also very important

that people see W.A.V.E. as a company

that helped pioneer something like that,

these custom fetish or custom fantasy movies.

- Now, what if you gave Gary a million dollars?

What if you gave Gary a full crew?

I don't know.

You might have something a little bit different.

- He has the desire.

And I think that's what makes you a success, that desire,

and that fetish within himself,

and the desire to bring it forth and to live it.

He couldn't have asked for a better life.

- Cut, that's good.

All right, we got it!

See you on the bus, tomorrow.

Okay.

(both laughing)

(quirky pop music, "I Want You In My Life")

♪ Oh, I want you in my life ♪

♪ For all this time, forever and ever ♪

♪ Oh, I want you in my life ♪

♪ To be just mine, my only pleasure ♪

♪ You know I've been around the whole wide world ♪

♪ I've seen more sights than the average girl ♪

♪ Yet somehow I seem to miss the mark ♪

♪ Possess everything except a heart ♪

♪ But now I've seen the light and what a sweet surprise ♪

♪ And even found my heart's delight shining in your eyes ♪

♪ Oh, I want you in my life ♪

♪ For all this time, forever and ever ♪

♪ Oh, I want you in my life ♪

♪ To be just mine, my only pleasure now, now, now ♪

(uptempo electronic music)