I first saw Late Phases back in July at Fantasia Fest (my review). Since then I’ve been championing the movie, urging everyone and their grandmother to see it. It’s the story of an aging veteran, his guide dog, and a tense father-son relationship.

Damici (Stake Land) stars as Ambrose McKinley, an elderly veteran. He moves into the quaint retirement community of Crescent Bay, a secluded locale in upstate New York nestled in the bosom of a thick forest. The residents don’t take too kindly to Ambrose’s biting behavior, especially when he pulls a gun on the Stepford Wives-like welcoming committee. Soon Ambrose learns that aggressively friendly old bags are the least of his worries. Crescent Bay has been rocked lately by a series of grisly murders the cops are deeming “animal attacks.” After Ambrose experiences one of these attacks firsthand, he decides to get proactive on their hairy asses.

Late Phases is certain to satisfy fans of the classic creature features of the ’80s who crave a practical werewolf transformation. The crack special effects and makeup team (headed by From Dusk Till Dawn‘s Robert Kurtzman) put together some wonderfully gory gross-out shape-shifting moments. Sweeping CGI aside, they went practical with werewolf suits and they’re huge and AWESOME. Their faces look more like Critters than wolves, but that’s part of their charm.

As Ambrose, Nick Damici gives a genuinely powerful performance. He plays it kinda like Eastwood in Gran Torino, but with more hard-boiled dialogue to spit out in his thick “fuhgeddaboutit” accent. Ethan Embry does a great job acting alongside him as the concerned son wounded by his father’s detached attitude. Their scenes together are terrific and deliver the type of credible family tension that a lot of folks can relate to.

I had the pleasure of chatting with Damici about the film and his approach to playing such a surly old character.

A lot of the reasons I love this movie has to do with your character, Ambrose. Could you talk about what initially attracted you to this film and this role?

Obviously it’s a great character and he’s blind. And basically he’s that previous generation’s veteran character. Like Clint Eastwood, I thought that would be a hoot to play. The fact that he was blind, y’know, every actor wants that Helen Keller moment, to see if they can do it. So that was kinda interesting.  And it was fun to play something different, play older than I am. So the challenges were all there to see if I could pull it off and make it interesting.

And I like to work every day. Not that I need to play a lead. I just like to work every day when I’m acting. I can’t stand to work for a few days then be off for a few days, y’know?

How did you prepare to play a blind person and what were the challenges there?

In the end it actually worked out to be surprisingly easy. I initially did the typical acting thing and said “I’ll blindfold myself.” So I would get up, blindfold myself, make coffee, y’know, do some dishes, have a cigarette…then I’d spill my coffee, break my dishes and I’d say, “Wait a minute. This ain’t working.”

Then I realized, you’re never going to realize what it’s like to be blind. Y’know what I mean? So I started watching videos of blind people. And at first I didn’t realize that there are different degrees of blindness.

If you close your eyes, you see blackness, basically. You’re cutting out the light. But the blind, they don’t have even that. They can’t say “I see black.” They can’t describe what it’s like to be blind. People who have never seen, who are born blind, their eyes don’t have any way of focusing.

Since Ambrose went blind later in life, those people have more of a blank stare. So I chose that and never moved my eyes. It became a technical thing. And it really was just a way of learning to focus peripherally and not centered. Our eyes are kinda like a camera. They focus on the center when we look at something. Y’know, first you look at that, and then you don’t…like a peripheral circle. It’s very technical. So that way when you move, your eyes don’t move.

Then I had to show it to Adrian (Bogliano) and I said, “Look, you gotta call me on it if it’s not looking real.” Especially on a set, there’s lights. And lights will make your eyes do weird shit. Especially when we were doing action stuff, which was really difficult.

All in all I think it worked out pretty easy for what it was. It wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. It was more of a trick than anything else.

It’s never explicitly mentioned where Ambrose is from, but he has an obvious NYC way about him. Did you draw on any characters you knew growing up in Hell’s Kitchen, to shape the character?

Well it wasn’t a big stretch for me. I thought for this role, what’s the difference? I had a good friend, you know Taxi Driver, the guy who comes out of the deli and beats the kid with the bat?

Victor Argo?

That’s Victor Argo. He always played the gangster in this or that. We were very close friends and I knew him for years. He died in 2004 and when I read Ambrose I said, “My God, it’s Victor.” He had this real dour sense of humor. So it was kinda like my homage to Victor. He woulda been terrific in this role, now that I think about it.

So the way of holding my face, my mouth, was very much based on him.

I was at screenings in Montreal and in Denver. Both times, people were laughing out loud one second, then bracing themselves the next. Then at the end you could hear folks sniffling they were so sad. What sort of tone was Bogliano and you as an actor going for?

We talked about it a lot, me and Adrian. We had a lot of arguments about it, y’know, in good humor. Trying to do the best thing we could. And I think he got it. Again, it’s a very campy a horror movie, but it has this other-worldly human element to it, making it a drama in a way. And I think what I brought to Ambrose was, he was funny. Even though he was cantankerous and the character is not particularly meant to be funny, he’s got this pessimistic, totally nasty kind of humor, y’know? And he’s very dark but there is some kind of humanity to him.

Y’know, basically we were making a drama disguised as a campy werewolf movie.

Speaking of the werewolves, what was it like rumbling with these guys in the huge werewolf suits?

I felt bad for the poor guys. I’m no kid, y’know. I’m over 50. So y’know when it looks like 30 seconds on screen it’s two hours shooting. You have to do it over and over and over and over again. And this kid was wearing a rubber suit, in the summer. I was like “Jesus Christ, you’re dying! Get that mask off!”

But y’know, Kurtzman did a wonderful job on the costumes. And ultimately it’s a guy in a werewolf costume, y’know? We all know that. But the transformation in this movie was pretty fucking good. Ultimately though, without the CGI, it is just a guy in a werewolf suit. And that’s fine. I wasn’t asking for more out of this movie and I don’t think the movie asks for more.

And it was mostly all one guy in all the suits playing the werewolves.

Oh really?

I think they might’ve had half a suit to shoot the other guy in, it was hilarious. And the worst part is, y’know, I can’t look at anything. I can’t focus my eyes and I had frosted contact lenses on, like I have cataracts. I can’t see outta them. And the lights and fog are blinding, I can’t see outta them, and the poor kid in the werewolf costume…we couldn’t see what the hell we were doing!

Sacrifice is a big theme in the film, I think. Father Roger addresses it in his sermon. It comes up since Ambrose is a vet. And by the end he sacrifices himself in a way. What do you think he was sacrificing himself for?

I don’t know if I saw it as a sacrifice myself. I saw it as a warrior choosing his time. Y’know, like why did Ali come back last time? And Ambrose said okay I can be a soldier one last time, I get a second chance. To do what I do best and be that. To be the best soldier, and be that.

It was more that for me, and you could say he sacrificed himself to kill the werewolves, but I don’t think it was about that. I didn’t see it that way. I just think Ambrose was just pissed off this werewolf killed his dog!

What was it like working with so many amazing veterans like Tina Louise, Lance Guest, Rutanya Alda, etc.?

They were terrific, a lot of fun, man. It was really great to meet Lance. And Karen Kynn Gorney was an incredible woman. And of course Tom Noonan was great.

The quiet moments between you and Tom Noonan are some of my favorite in the movie. He seems like such a natural actor. 

You wouldn’t think it about him, because he’s very big, very quiet. But when you meet him you’re like “Oh shit!”

The funny thing is I’ve known him for years through (Jim) Mickle. I went to a party at his house once, I’ve know him for 10 years in my neighborhood. One time I went up to him, I knew he didn’t know who the fuck I was! And I thought it was funny, y’know. Now that we have this movie, I guess he’ll remember who I am.

He actually loves bad jokes. That was our thing. My father was a bartender so I was like “Ya like bad jokes? I got a million bad jokes!”

Tell me a bad joke.

Hamburger walks into a bar. Bartender says, “sorry pal, we don’t serve food.”

Oh, that sucks.

Probably a Tom Noonan joke.

That’s another unique thing about Late Phases, its hero is an older person. Besides Embry and his wife, the whole cast is essentially old timers. Most horror flicks nowadays have teeny boppers in the lead roles. But there’s something about having an old veteran as the hero that makes it even more badass, more tangible. Do you agree?

I have nothing against youth. I was young once, but society has just over done it. You watch shows like CSI nowadays and it’s just 22 year-old investigators. Most people have to go through school for nine years first. I get it, I just don’t find it particularly interesting. I just think a certain amount of age is interesting.

Yeah, one kid in Austin asked me when I would stop doing all these action things, I said you wanna step outside?! What kinda question is that?!

Speaking of that, you used to train boxers, right?

I used to. Never professionally, but I trained kick boxers until two years ago.

What do you think of that smug fella Floyd Mayweather?

Eh, we’ll see what happens. I don’t find the game that interesting anymore. To me it’s like most professional sports, and movies to some degree. I like people for who they are. I don’t want to work for shitheads. It’s that simple. If they’re a shithead, they’re a shithead.

You’ve done quite a few acclaimed horror films the past few years. What’s attracted to you about the genre?

I like it because you use it as a metaphor, to tell human stories. I kinda find most straight drama really boring. I’m not interested in people’s lives. I feel like the horror story you can deliver it without boring people to death. Much like we did in Stake Land and Mulberry Street. And Late Phases, to a sense.

I don’t like horror specifically, y’know. I don’t like the torture porn movies, I’m not a big fan of the Halloweens and the Freddie movies. They’re fun, but they’re really for teenagers. I think there’s another element to horror to explore. I like a little more story in what I watch.

I have to ask you about Hap & Leonard. I know you’re in early production…

We’re very early in production so I can’t say much.

Are you going to be in it?

I’m not planning on it. If something comes up that I want to do I might, but right now we just want to do the best job we can on the writing and get it rolling. As for Joe Lansdale, he deserves to have a TV series on the air.

Yeah he really does.

If anybody does, y’know. We’re trying to keep it as close to the books as we can, like we did with Cold in July. It’s very difficult. Joe is a prolific writer, so it’s very interesting. It’s definitely going to be based on the books. So we’ll see what happens. It should be, if all works out…it should be airing in 2016. That’s the goal.

Are you planning on following the order of the books?

Right now we are. With the first novel (“Savage Season”) and then we’ll see from there. So it depends. But at this point I think we’re going to try and do that, a book every few episodes.

Well I have the utmost confidence in you and Mickle after Cold in July. So go get em…

A massive thanks to Nick for taking the time to talk with us!