The Independent Film Corner: Greg Lamberson

Greg Lamberson is a multi-talented writer and director of such cult classics, “Slime City”, “Undying Love” and “Naked Fear”. Beside writing and directing for the screen, Lamberson is also an accomplished author. He’s written three books “Johnny Gruesome”, “Cheap Scares !”, and “Personal Demons” and he’s also the founder of Fearzone.com. Today, he is here to talk about “Slime City”, which was re-released as part of the “Slime City Grindhouse Collection” from Shock-O-Rama and the upcoming “Slime City Massacre”.

Anthony T: Tell me about yourself and how you got into directing?

Greg Lamberson: I've lived in New York State all my life: grew up in a small town called Fredonia, and moved to NYC when I was 17 to study filmmaking at the School of Visual Arts, where Roy Frumkes one of my teachers and Jimmy Muro, who had worked as a PA on BASKET CASE, was a classmate. Roy and Jimmy later teamed up to make STREET TRASH, and I teamed up with another classmate, Peter Clark, and a third producer, Marc Makowski (who's been a producer on all of my films) to make SLIME CITY.

Anthony T: One of the things that I noticed in your bio, is that you also wrote three books, besides being a filmmaker, “Johnny Gruesome” “Cheap Scares” and “Personal Demons”, which is being re-released in October. What got you into writing, in both the literary and screenwriting fields?

Greg: I'm a storyteller, regardless of the medium. I wrote the screenplays for all of my films, and I wrote several other screenplays that I thought would make good big budget movies. I'm an East Coast filmmaker, so I've never had any desire to move to L.A. and beat those paths. When I moved back to the Buffalo area several years ago, it was with a plan: to concentrate on writing novels based on my unproduced screenplays. PERSONAL DEMONS was my first endeavor, and it's the best thing I've done. It was published as a limited edition hardcover and as a small press trade paperback that received glowing reviews, but the publishing industry didn't come pounding on my door any more than Hollywood did. I wrote a second novel, JOHNNY GRUESOME, and that was also published as a limited edition hardcover. But Medallion Press also acquired it as a mass market trade paperback available in brick and mortar stores, and they picked up PERSONAL DEMONS, which will be published as a regular paperback October 1st. Working with Medallion has been great; they've really supported and promoted me and my work. This weekend, I'll be their sole author guest at Rue Morgue's Festival of Fear, where they're giving away free "ash cans," limited edition mini-books with the first three chapters of PERSONAL DEMONS. They're also publishing my werewolf novel, THE FRENZY WAY, in June next year, and DESPERATE SOULS, the sequel to PERSONAL DEMONS, after that. The idea is to create a long running series of PD novels under the umbrella title, "The Jake Helman Files."



Anthony T: “Slime City” is one of Greg Lamberson’s four films to be featured in the “Slime City Grindhouse Collection”, which was released recently from Shock-O-Rama. Tell my readers about this film.

Greg: I wrote SLIME CITY when I was 19, directed it when I was 21, and finished it when I was 23. It played as a midnight movie in NYC in 1988, and came out on VHS a year later. We sold it to about 10 countries around the world, and then the bottom fell out of the straight-to-video horror market, which had become glutted, and faded into obscurity. 10 years later, E.I. Cinema re-released it on VHS, and in 2005 they released it on DVD for the first time. Last month they re-released it as GREG LAMBERSON'S SLIME CITY GRINDHOUSE COLLECTION, featuring my other films and more extras than I can list. It's a great package, really worth the money, and I'm grateful to the E.I./POP Cinema/Alternative Cinema/Shock-O-Rama people for keeping my work available to the fans.

Anthony T: How did the concept of “Slime City” come about?

Greg: More than anything, SLIME CITY was the reaction of a small town kid moving to the big city. The SVA dorm was on 34th Street, near 42nd Street. We encountered cultists, drug dealers and hookers every day, including at the diner where we ate breakfast, and I worked at a bunch of movie theatres, including real grindhouses. This was the NYC I knew - it was a lousy place to visit, but a great place to live.

Anthony T: The film came out, around the same time period as such splatter classics “Basket Case” and “The Toxic Avenger”. What films inspired this entertaining and slimy gorefest?

Greg: BASKET CASE was playing as a midnight movie when I moved to the city, and a bunch of us use to watch it regularly, so that was definitely an influence whether I realized it at the time or not. The script was already written, and Scott Coulter and Tom Lauten already hired, when THE TOXIC AVENGER came out, so none of the Troma films were influences. I managed a theatre that premiered THE EVIL DEAD and THE DEADLY SPAWN, so those were influences: 16m horror films made by fans that received theatrical releases. SLIME CITY is often compared to STREET TRASH, which cost 40 times as much, but that wasn't an influence either. SLIME CITY was based on a short Super 8 film I made called "Bad Worms" my first year of film school, and I wrote the first draft of the feature script that summer, before Jimmy had even shot the short film version of STREET TRASH. Roy and I took a night class in production management at the same time, so he could learn how to produce TRASH and I could learn how to produce SLIME; they were supposed to shoot the same summer, but my financing fell through and his didn't. I guess I should have finished that class!

Anthony T: What were the differences in raising funds for this film compared to the film’s upcoming sequel, “Slime City Massacre”?

Greg: Even though it took a year longer than expected for me to raise the money for SLIME CITY, it came together pretty quickly, partly because Peter, Marc and I put in half the money ourselves; friends and family put in the rest that we raised. But we still ran out of money, so we went to a foreign sales rep who advanced the rest of what we needed. It's much harder to raise money these days - in this economy it's next to impossible - but it was still pretty easy for me, strange to say. John Maclay, my executive producer, and Marc Makowski, producing again, committed to half the budget right away. Look, it's 23 years later, and although none of my films were big earners, I've stuck to it because I love doing this. I wrote a filmmaking book called CHEAP SCARES! LOW BUDGET HORROR FILMMAKERS SHARE THEIR SECRETS, which got great reviews and convinced a lot of my other investors that I finally know what I'm doing!

Anthony T: What were the difficulties and pitfalls that you experienced, while filming this?

Greg: The same pitfalls as one every film I've ever made - never enough time or money. Shooting the original SLIME was the greatest experience I've ever had - until I shot SLIME CITY MASSACRE.

Anthony T: One of things that this film has, is that the fact that the two female leads are both played very well by one person, Mary Huner. Tell me how did that situation come about?

This came about out of necessity. I just couldn't find anyone to play Nicole, the bad girl, and I enjoyed working with Mary, as the good girl, so much that I asked her to don that wig and step up to the plate. I think Mary is even better in SLIME CITY MASSACRE, where she plays sort of an obsessed action heroine - an Omega Woman for the 21st century.

Anthony T: Did you ever think that you’d still be talking about this film to this day, when made the in the middle part of the eighties?

Greg: Before I made it, yes! I thought it was going to be the shit! But after seeing it on VHS... no. The film was intended to be blown up from 16m into 35mm, which would have cropped our full frame image to look letterboxed. We framed it that way, but the blowup never happened. On VHS, it looked terrible and I couldn't watch it for many years. Thank God POP Cinema believed in the film enough to release it on DVD, and allowed me to supervise the telecine. I consider it very watchable, and very funny, now. No masterpiece, but there must be some reason why it's still around when other films from that period aren't, right?

After the 2005 DVD release, I thought that was it. Last year was the 20th anniversary, and I screened it at a bunch of film festivals and horror conventions with cast members, and I told Robert Sabin, the star, and Mary, "Okay, let's have a last round of fun with this, then put it away for good." Little did I know that POP had other plans! So here it is again, being discovered by another bunch of young horror fans who dig obscure flicks from the 80s.

Anthony T: “Slime City” is just one of four films that are apart of this collection. Tell my readers about the other three films that are apart of this collection?

Greg: UNDYING LOVE is a downbeat vampire flick, ala MARTIN and Larry Fessenden's HABIT. It also played as a midnight film, received much better reviews than SLIME... and sat on a shelf for five or six years until E.I. released it on VHS as NEW YORK VAMPIRE. It's my favorite of these three films, but it's dark and moody, with a real "indie" attitude, and doesn't have the outrageous gore of SLIME. Still, anyone who likes any of my stuff should check this out, because of all of my earlier work, it's the closest to what I'd like to do with horror if given the chance. I like angry characters with in-your-face attitudes, and nihilistic endings.

NAKED FEAR is a thriller, not supernatural horror, and it pits Robert Sabin against Tommy Sweeney, the start of UNDYING LOVE. We shot this one on Hi 8 during the period when everyone though Hi 8 was going to be a revolutionary format. By the time we finished it 4 years later (for a variety of reasons) Mini-DV had become that format. I like the film - the screenplay, the direction, the acting - but Hi 8 is what Hi 8 is, and this is even further from SLIME than UNDYING LOVE was. I'm proud that all three films offer my take on NYC, and I like that different people prefer different flicks over the others - each one has its supporters and detractors. At least I didn't do the same thing over and over.

The fourth film on the set is a short, not a feature: GRUESOME, an extended music video based on my novel JOHNNY GRUESOME. It features three songs from the GRUESOME rock CD and stars Misty Mundae. I think it definitely belongs on this set because the novel is a throwback to 80s horror flicks, and the make-up was deliberately retro.

Anthony T: Now on to “Slime City Massacre”. This film looks more outrageous, in the plot synopsis alone than the first film. Tell me in your own words; what’s the film's about.

Greg: It's both a prequel and a sequel to the first film, the way that THE GODFATHER II was to THE GODFATHER; this enabled me to dramatize the back-story, rather than have characters describe what happened in the first film. In SLIME CITY, there was this dead occultist named Zachary who was behind everything and possessed Robert's character, but we never saw him except in a dream and in the author photo of a book called FLESH CONTROL. In SLIME CITY MASSACRE, Robert plays Zachary, the man behind it all, and we see how he indoctrinates street people into his Coven of Flesh. The flashbacks appear throughout the film, like on LOST, and show how and why Zachary and his followers committed suicide, and their goal in possessing others.

The main body of the film takes place seven years in our future, after a terrorist bomb has leveled lower Manhattan and the U.S. has invaded Canada for oil. Horror author Kealan Patrick Burke plays Cory, an army deserter, and Jennifer Bihl Alexa, a draft dodger, who come to the NYC ruins now called "Slime City." The place is occupied by hundreds of homeless people, and it's sort of a bizarre, MAD MAX BEYOND THUNDERDOME sort of society. Cory and Alexa hook up with Alice and Mason, played by Debbie Rochon and Lee Perkins, who teach them how to get by in this dark and dangerous world. The four of them discover the ruins of Zachary's old wine cellar, with the elixir and "Himalayan yogurt" from the first film, and all four of them get possessed. At the same time, a greedy developer played by Roy Frumkes hires a team of mercenaries to wipe out all of the homeless people. And there's a race of mutant cannibals... so there's a lot going on, a lot of action.

Anthony T: What made you want to go back and revisit “Slime City” after all those years between films?

Greg: I felt I had unfinished business as a filmmaker, that I could use what I learned over the years to make something special, and that I could do some really creative things based on the simple ideas from the first film. I figured, "If I'm going to make another low budget horror film, I'm going to do one that will appeal to a fan base that already exists."

Anthony T: How did the story for that film come about?

Greg: I was looking for a way to work Robert and Mary into a tale so we could work together again. The flashbacks worked great for Robert, who is the best he's ever been in this film. Those scenes have a lot of heart and kinky fun in them, and I think people will be attached to our creepy Coven members. Mary comes into the film in the middle. She plays her "good girl" character from the first film, but much changed. She really kicks ass! But I couldn't find an organic way for them to appear together, because of the different time periods, so SLIME fans will have to be content with the hilarious joint interview they did for the GRINDHOUSE COLLECTION. They worked together for several years in an improv group after SLIME, so they're funny together and have great chemistry.

I knew I didn't want to repeat the story and scenario from the first film. Why bother? So I came up with this slightly futuristic, somber setting, sort of like a 70s sci-fi flick before STAR WARS set everything back intellectually. And I wanted four characters to be possessed this time, instead of just one, and have very different things happen to them. The film has a serious subtext, but it's also very funny, very sexy, and very comic booky. I think it's going to be a lot of fun, whether people liked the original or not, and whether they've even seen it.

Anthony T: “Slime City Massacre” features appearances from Debbie Rochon (“Tromeo and Juliet”, “The Good Sisters”), Brook Lewis (“Kinky Killers” I Murders”) Lee Perkins (“Live Evil, “Edges of Darkness”), Lloyd Kaufman (Director of “Poultrygeist”, “The Toxic Avenger”). What was it like getting talent for this film compared to your other previous films?

Greg: Well, I've always liked my actors, but this was different. Robert, Mary, Tom Sweeney, T.J. Merrick, and even Dick Biel from my first films are all much more experienced now, and felt they had a real chance to stretch with this script, and delivered in spades. There isn't one weak performance in this film, and it's a HUGE cast, a real ensemble piece. Debbie and Lee brought a level of experience and professionalism and creativity to the film that I only half expected; they really raised the bar and challenged everyone to match them. It was a wonderful experience to work out scenes involving both of them and Kealan and Jennifer, to see all four of them flesh out their characters and expand my script. Debbie has a monologue in this that will bring tears to people's eyes, or just leave their mouths open in shock. All of the actors brought moments like this to their scenes, and it was a real privilege to work with such a talented team. Brooke plays Nicole - the cult member who possessed Mary's "bad girl" in the original, and gave a fantastic performance opposite Robert.

Anthony T: Another thing that got me interested in this film was seeing the behind the scenes footage on youtube over at www.youtube.com/Scsurvivor. This seems to be the latest trend in low-budget filmmaking, with this and Full Moon’s upcoming “Puppet Master: Axis of Evil”. How did the idea of keeping a video blog about the production of the film come about?

Greg: I'm always looking for different ways to promote my novels and books, and this seemed like a unique way to enable people to discover the film while we're in post production. A young woman named Madeleine Koestner shot and edited these webisodes and did a terrific job. I get a real kick out of them because sometimes I see things that were going on out of my sight!

Anthony T: What’s the current production status on the film?

Greg: We're going to be finished by the end of this year, on the festival circuit next year, and then looking for distribution just like everyone else. I'm really happy with the amount of interest in it so far.

Anthony T: Are there any other projects on the horizon, after this film?

Greg: Well, I have three novels being published over the next two years, and it's important to me that they don't slip through the cracks. I hope to keep making films, and have a couple on the back burner, but I think my immediate future lies in these novels. And I need to nurture SCM through its release so that everyone who might appreciate it knows it's out there. It's tough, with so much big budget product in cinemas and indie films competing for limited space in video stores.

Anthony T: Good luck with "The Slime City Grindhouse Collection", which is on DVD shelves now from Shock-O-Rama and with “Slime City Massacre”.

Greg: Thank you!

You can meet up with Greg Lamberson at this weekend at Rue Mourge’s Weekend of Horror at the Medallion Press booth, as he’s promoting his upcoming book, “Personal Demons”.

To see the behind the scenes footage for “Slime City Massacre”, you can goto: www.youtube.com/Scsurvivor.

You can also visit Greg Lamberson’s official website at http://www.slimeguy.com/.