Happy 4th of July, from my family to you and yours.
ThisKevin
the adventures of Kevin Maher, writer-comedian
On Thursday July 7, I’m screening THE CHILDREN (1980) and DON’T GO TO SLEEP (1982) in New York City. Click HERE and get tickets.
As a young boy, my favorite thing about attending the annual Proctor & Gamble company picnic was getting to hang out with older kids, because everyone knows older kids are cooler. One year, some bad-ass 11-year olds told me about a horror movie called THE CHILDREN, where a school bus full of children are exposed to nuclear fog and turned into zombies, and you can tell because they have blue fingernails. I listened to the play-by-play of this gruesome story where kids kill adults and parents defend themselves by chopping off the children’s hands. That night I couldn’t sleep because I was too freaked out by the film’s final scene. Just hearing about it scared the hell out of me. I desperately wanted to see THE CHILDREN, but was too terrified. Years later I watched the film and it proved to be just as disturbing as I’d imagined. And I loved it. Recently, I had lunch with the film’s director, Max Kalmanowicz. Over lunch Max talked about what makes child actors so creepy, the secret to making low-budget horror, the cause of our current “zombie renaissance” and the surprising link between his drive-in movie and the horrors of World War II. Plus he shared some details about his upcoming film HORROR CON.
Max K.
KEVIN: Do people ever tell you they saw the movie when they were young and were just completely terrified and haunted?
MAX: The last horror convention that I went to, I met the people from Troma, who bought the rights to my two films The Children and Dreams Come True. They recognized me from some of the publicity photos, and everybody started asking me if I would sign things. I was a little embarrassed. Basically, there were people coming up who looked too young to have been around at the time, saying, “You did The Children? Wow, that was really scary!” So that made me feel good, and I feel like if it worked then it still does now; for kids, anyway.
KEVIN: Does it seem like part of the appeal is that kids get a kick out of seeing themselves as the villains?
MAX: I think they like that the kids in the movie fry their parents. That really gives them a big giggle. They’re not scared by the kids being scary, they’re just wonderfully happy that the kids get even. The kids are the monsters. They have the power.
KEVIN: Do you have a favorite moment from The Children?
MAX: My favorite moment was when the father comes in and he sees his daughter and his son frying… who do they fry? I forget. It’s when he walks in and he sees them and they start coming towards him—the horror on his face that these kids that he’s raised are now coming after him. They look really scary. I love that!
KEVIN: My favorite scene is when Paul comes down the stairs, gets hit with the shotgun and goes over the side. Was that really a kid doing the stunt?
MAX: Well the kid did the stunt, but we had four mattresses just over the banister, so he only fell about two feet.
KEVIN: Did you do multiple takes or did he get it right the first time?
No, he didn’t, we did it a bunch of times, because the kid had a look, kids have a tendency– those kids by the way were the children of the writer, Carlton Albright, who’s also the producer. That was his younger son; the older daughter played the girl. And, uh, when he went over the first few times he was laughing, he was stiff, he was lovin’ it, he dove a couple times. So the whole idea was for him to be the equivalent of having been shot, loose, and go over. And it took a number of takes to get that to happen.
KEVIN: So he was cracking up on camera, doing a Harvey Korman?
MAX: Well he was laughing because he was diving over the banister onto the mattresses and he liked it.
KEVIN: It seems like kids must be really resilient that you can do a lot of takes with them whereas an adult might call it quits after three or four takes.
MAX: For kids it’s fun, I mean this is how, especially when you’re having them do a stunt, because to them, they don’t get that this is work and that this is going to look real. They get that you’re having them – for example, with him diving into the mattresses, he probably thought it was a great idea to pile up a bunch of mattresses, I mean I’m sure he and his buddies later piled up a bunch of mattresses —
KEVIN: So it wasn’t the last time he did that scene.
MAX: Nooo.
KEVIN: A child’s acting range might be slightly exaggerated, and that gives their expressions another dynamic; they seem even more intense, in a way.
MAX: If you have a child and they look beautiful and cute, it’s hard to get any scary value out of that. So you have to do something with that wonderful face and turn it from angelic into devilish or malevolent. And that’s a trick which you certainly can’t accomplish by having them do really grotesque, weird things because it looks funny with a kid, so you actually have a very narrow range of things you can do. We went for the ghoulish, zombie-like, light make-up. Kids are so easily amused or easily scared themselves, but in The Children, these kids’ expressions don’t change. They’re not laughing or gloating or anything, they just want to do their monsterly business of frying their parents. And kids are not usually all-business like that.
KEVIN: And just the outreached hands. Seeing kids doing stuff in unison is a little creepy.
MAX: If you have a child and they look beautiful and cute, it’s hard to get any scary value out of that. So you have to do something with that wonderful face and turn it from angelic into devilish or malevolent. And that’s a trick which you certainly can’t accomplish by having them do really grotesque, weird things because it looks funny with a kid, so you actually have a very narrow range of things you can do. We went for the ghoulish, zombie-like, light make-up. Kids are so easily amused or easily scared themselves, but in The Children, these kids’ expressions don’t change. They’re not laughing or gloating or anything, they just want to do their monsterly business of frying their parents. And kids are not usually all-business like that.
KEVIN: And just the outreached hands. Seeing kids doing stuff in unison is a little creepy.
MAX: Right, and seeing kids do things in a robotic way. Because kids are so exuberant, you know, independent. If you actually get some kids to do things in a timed, sequential way, it seems out of the ordinary, and the bottom line is that it’s scary.
KEVIN: The book 13TH GENERATION mentions THE CHILDREN as part of a theme in American Cinema: parents being threatened by their offspring. There’s CHILDREN OF THE CORN, ROSEMARY’S BABY, IT’S ALIVE, DON’T GO TO SLEEP. The book argues that Baby Boomers fear the next generation. But unlike those other films, THE CHILDREN has a satirical edge – showing the parents as being really selfish, in some cases the parents have it coming.
MAX: In my generation, I was a little pissed off that they had nuclear bomb shelters and there was always trouble, and it seems like earlier than my coming up, things were a lot better; people were dancing in the street and there was jazz and everybody was having a good time. All of a sudden it was the Cold War and there was a war every five minutes, so there were a lot of reasons to be pissed off at our parents. Like, we didn’t get such a good deal.
In this installment of SO BAD IT’S GOOD, Rusty Ward and I look at the notorious PULGASARI. Note: the movie may look really old, but it’s actually from 1985.
This was a challenging review, because we were applying our Western cultural standards to the film, but I imagine most people will do the same. That’s a fancy way of saying, my bad attitude is justified.
On Friday April 15th at approximately 2:30pm, a Brooklyn man stabbed the owner of a local pizzeria.The incident took place just outside my son’s kindergarten classroom. The weapon was a kitchen knife from the pizzeria. This juxtaposition of pizza, children and attempted murder immediately reminds me of a great film. No, not I LOVE YOU TO DEATH, but the made-for-TV movie DON’T GO TO SLEEP.
The film centers on a suburban family suffering from one tragic accident after another. The parents (played by Dennis Weaver and Valerie Harper) struggle to move on, after their favorite daughter, Jennifer, died in a fire. The accident deeply effected 12-year-old Mary (In terms of the most basic child psychology: Mary is “Jan” to Jennifer’s “Marsha”) I don’t want to reveal too much here, but long story short: Mary is traumatized and she grieves in her own unique way; by methodically killing off members of her family (including cult favorite Ruth Gordon and the boy from POLTERGEIST.)
The most memorable scene takes place on pizza night. Mary is given the privilege of cutting the pizza (under the condition that she be careful, since it is “VERY SHARP.”) Mary takes the circular utensil and slices the pizza with relish! (That is to say Mary cuts enthusiastically. It is not a relish-pizza. It’s a pie topped with pepperoni and spinach.) The filmmakers delight in zooming in and playing waaay too much “cutting” sound effects as Mary grinds the blade back and forth, back and forth.
Once the dinner has been sliced to ribbons, Mary runs the round cutter onto the tiled kitchen countertop. We follow the utensil on a homicidal journey up the stairs. The camera focuses solely on the greasy metal wheel as it creeps through the house, cutting along the counter, the walls and the wooden banister. We hear music reminiscent of Bernard Hermann’s PSYCHO score, cutting between close-ups of the blade and scenes of a hysterical Valerie Harper fumbling with the phone to call for help. But the call is disconnected when the telephone wire is cut in two.
The scene is played to perfection by perky pre-teen actress Robin Ignico (one of the three finalists to star in the film version of ANNIE.) Her chirpy delivery is played with an eerie innocence. The over-the-top performance becomes a chilling portrait of a homicidal killer wearing grotesque masks of sad-face, happy-face, scary-face.
But the real power of the scene is the pizza cutter. Harry Houdini mesmerized audiences by combining the threat of death with everyday items (one of his most famous routines involved submerging himself inside an oversized milk can filled with water.) The same is true of Mary’s weapon-of-choice. After watching DON’T GO TO SLEEP my sister would re-enact the scene every time we had pizza. (We stopped short of actually murdering our parents, and once we ever cut a phone line by mistake.) DON’T GO TO SLEEP might be dismissed as a “bad” movie, but it forever changed the way I look at pizza slicers. How many other films can you say that about?
Come see DON’T GO TO SLEEP on the big screen with THE CHILDREN
Thursday July 7
8:00pm
92Y Tribeca, 200 Hudson Street, New York, NY
two films for the price of one (just ten bucks!)
THE CHILDREN (35mm print)
When a school bus detours past a leaky nuclear-power plant, the pre-teen passengers transform into homicidal zombies with black fingernails. The children use their newly discovered nuclear powers to fry adults by hugging them to death! The ghoulish kid actors steal the movie; their hokey performances magnify the horror. You might find yourself rooting for the evil tweens as they stalk their obnoxious parents. Director Max Kalmanowicz invokes VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED and NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, while delicately balancing genuine terror with satiric edge. The low-budget creepfest features a haunting score by Henry Manfredini, who would replicate the music for the soundtrack to FRIDAY THE 13TH that same year.
Director: Max Kalmanowicz. 93 min. 1980. 35mm.
DON’T GO TO SLEEP
Aaron Spelling’s notorious made-for-TV movie pulls out all the stops: tweens in straight-jackets; killer pizza-cutters; death by pet lizard; and a hysterical Valerie Harper. Harper’s 12-year-old daughter Mary has been acting strange ever since the mysterious death of her family’s beloved older sister. One by one, Mary’s family members meet the most gruesome ends imaginable. The perky murderess is played to perfection by Robin Ignico (runner-up for the lead in the film version of ANNIE). The movie co-stars Ruth Gordon, Dennis Weaver and Oliver Robins (the kid from POLTERGEIST). See why Kindertrauma website called it “Highly engrossing, admittedly campy, indisputable creepy, and nearly impossible to shake.”
Director: Richard Lang. 93 min. 1982 (Made for TV)
note: a version of the above essay originally appeared in volume 4 of “I Love Bad Movies“
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an important message about unimportant things
Kevin Maher is LONE DRIFTER
Recently I was profiled as a star of “new vaudeville” — which is a very nice thing to say. Most anyone who visits this site is probably more familiar with my “geek out” theme nights and writings on popular culture. (Or you came here searching for images of Soleil Moon Frye.)
But I started as a solo-comedy artist (aka an “alternative comedian”)
Today’s entry will look back my 2001 solo show LONE DRIFTER. (see below, there’s video and photos.)
But first, I need to talk about two New York City institutions that were essential to my development:
Surf Reality and the UNDER St. Marks
Both spaces fulfilled New York’s promise of the possibility of theater. I’m not one to romanticized my past, but I saw and participated in some one-of-a-kind shows at those spaces. And I’d hate to think of what my youth would’ve been like without them.
Today the UNDER St. Marks needs your help. Learn more here.
As for my show, I set out to do an anti-one-man show. I wanted to skewer the cliches and present sketch comedy bits with the gravitas of legit theatre.
Some of the pieces were grotesque pseudo-psycho monologues in the spirit of Jim Thompson novels. Many of the characters were decidedly not “likable” (probably not the best approach for a new comedian), I followed Joe Coleman’s approach to painting — he said every grotesque image is a self-portrait, he finds himself in each one. (see below) I tried to do the same with my comedy.
The latest offering from Rusty Ward and me, we talk about THE HAND.
This Saturday Night I’m hosting MOVIEOKE at the 92y Tribeca. You can check out details here.
Basically, MOVIEOKE is like Karaoke for movie-lovers.
Pick a scene or a monologue and play it on the big screen without audio.
This week there was some internet buzz (or mush-mouthed internet mumblings) about the 30th anniversary of Raiders of the Lost Ark, namely this video that shows the screen-test featuring Tom Selleck as Indiana Jones and Sean Young as Marion Ravenwood. Almost as exciting as the way the 25th Anniversary of Back to the Future yielded this video of Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly.
Of course as long as there’s been movies, there’s been close calls with actors nearly taking on iconic film roles that we can’t imagine someone else playing. I call these “casting disasters” and covered it back at AMC. Here’s a few examples:
It has come to my attention that the majority of people arrive at my blog after googling the words SOLEIL + MOON + FRYE.
She’s the actress who played the title tween on NBC’s Punky Brewster (the sitcom AND the animated series.) Depending on your age, you might know her as one of the supporting characters from the syndicated series Sabrina the Teenage Witch, when Sabrina is in college and no longer a teenager. I believe Soleil played her friend and/or roommate.
In an attempt to better serve my new audience (while at the same time annoying my regular readers) I am going to devote this site to MORE images, news, video clips, vlogs, fan fiction and poetry about SOLEIL MOON FRYE. (And just to be on the safe side, I will occasionally mis-spell her name as to attract people who are wrongly searching for SOLEI Moon Frye.)
For the most part this blog is a display-case for my little obsessions and observations. This entry might not fit the usual profile, but it has to do with a writer I really like and will continue to read until one of us dies.
In Herman Raucher’s novel Summer of ’42 the main character’s high school English teacher advises him to read the complete works of one author. I have ended up doing that with novelist Douglas Coupland, who famously wrote Generation X. He’s a powerful writer and I’ve come to really love his books. I was more moved than I should’ve been when a character in Microserfs referenced the way the roof of your mouth becomes raw when you eat too much Cap’n Crunch. Coupland always combines an attention to pop-culture details with thoughtful ideas about the passage of time, our sense of identity, loneliness and depression. He speaks to me.
One of my favorite passages appears in Coupland’s third book, a collection of stories titled Life After God. In “Things that Fly”the narrator struggles with a bad break-up and reflects upon the death of Superman and a profound sense of loneliness. I transcribed this next passage and put it into a hand-made greeting card that I gave to my girl-friend, after we broke up and then got back together. So this passage has always stuck with me: