Interviews
[Interview] ‘Masked Mutilator’ Screenwriters Give Us a Peek Behind the Mask
On May 14th, InterVision Pictures will release Masked Mutilator and it looks to have all the makings of a cult film that will please the late night exploitation crowd. It’s a slasher about wrestling which should be a sub-genre all its own, but for some reason isn’t. Maybe Masked Mutilator will start a trend.
The film is the story of a professional wrestler that accidentally kills an opponent in the ring. This terrible tragedy leads to him taking a job at a group home for youth offenders. Unfortunately, a psychopath wearing a wrestling mask begins to butcher the teenage residents and this rehab center becomes a no-holds-barred battled for survival.
So how in the world did this wacky idea come to be? Co-writers Dale Schneck and Ed Polgardy were more than happy to share the behind-the-scenes scoop with Bloody Disgusting.
“Co-screenwriter Dale Schneck (who also managed my acting career back in the ’80s) and I collaborated on a number of screenplays over the years, and most of them were designed as a way to give the actors he represented a way to appear in various film projects that we generated. Roles were written with specific actors from Dale’s stable in mind, so it would be an easy sell to any producers who wanted to fund the movies,” Polgardy says when asked how Masked Mutilator came to be.
“I was a big horror fan and Dale had an inside knowledge of pro wrestling, so we decided to mix the wrestling and slasher genres to create a hybrid movie involving wrestling-action and horror. In fact, the Steve Carson role was originally written for me, but by the time we put everything together to make the movie, I was in the middle of editing comic books for BIG Entertainment, and I couldn’t break away from my job in Boca Raton, Florida for the number of days they would need me to act in the move, which was being shot back in Pennsylvania. So I became one of the producers and Brick Bronsky, who directed the picture, took over as Steve Carson.”
“In the late ‘80s I was the personal manager of a number of pro wrestlers who wanted to get into movies and television,” Schneck tells us. “One of those wrestlers was Jeff Beltzner aka Brick Bronsky. I submitted him to Lloyd Kaufman at Troma Pictures, and Brick landed his first feature role for them in Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD. Because Lloyd liked Brick so much, he then cast him in Class of Nuke ‘em High II & III in the lead roles.
“While my clients took me to wrestling shows, I became fascinated by this sub-culture of pretend violence. I also realized the physical risks they took, applying holds that if actually applied with real power could kill someone.
“Ed and I had written a serious drama set in the world of pro wrestling titled Hammerlock, which was optioned by a few companies but never got made. I think that’s when Ed and I wrote Masked Mutilator thinking a low-budget horror film night be fun with a wrestling villain. However, Ed and I always wanted to write a solid plot-line that made sense. We didn’t want to do just another horror/slasher film where a group of young adults go off to a camp and get slaughtered one by one without a clever motivation behind the murders. Ed and I wanted the audience to empathize with the juveniles in the group home. The kids had to be much more than simply fodder for horrific murders,” recalls Schneck.
“There were a few producers with money to spend who were interested in Masked Mutilator right off the bat, but when those deals didn’t work out, we decided to forge ahead and finance the project ourselves. Four or five of us kicked in some money, with Dale putting up the lion’s share of the cash to fund the production,” Poldgardy continues.
The film began production in 1994, but then hit a bit of a roadblock and was delayed for two years. In 1996, they got back at but still weren’t able to get a finished film in the can. Complications that often arise with indie filmmaking left Schneck, Polgardy and the rest of the cast and crew with a film that was nearly complete. And then it just sat there and sat there and sat there. Until now.
“I had all the film elements stored in my home basement,” Schneck says. “And it bugged me that all the work and effort and money we put into this project never saw completion or release. I felt sorry for all the cast and crew who worked on the project and couldn’t at least show a completed film to their family and friends. (I also felt a bit sorry for my wallet.)
“As a former film critic, I was used to meeting press deadlines and completing articles on time. But with Masked Mutilator, the work was still in pieces and unfinished. That haunted me for over 20 years.”
“The way the picture was shot with a lot of improvisation on the set left some holes in the storyline that needed to be fixed for the movie to work,” Polgardy says. “We were 80% there for years, but couldn’t figure out how to glue it all together. And all of us were determined to fix the problems, so everyone who put their blood, sweat and tears into the original production could finally see something cool onscreen. We were constantly trying to come up new scenes to make everything gel, but none of them seemed to be working, until, about a year ago, when we thought of using a contemporary wraparound sequence to tie everything together, and once we had that wraparound shot and edited into the movie, we finally had something we could take to potential distributors. I knew David Gregory over at Severin Films, and I thought it would be a great regional horror film for him to release through his Intervision label, and, luckily, he agreed!”
Getting a film back on track and finished 25 years after production first began is no easy feat, especially when it requires writing and filming new footage. You need much of the original cast and crew to be on board. In the case of Masked Mutilator they had a star that was more than willing to do his part.
“Tom Taylor was always involved as an actor and producer on Masked Mutilator. He’s been one of the driving forces behind getting everything finished since day 1, so he was completely ready and available to be in the wraparound scenes,” says Polgardy.
“A bit of trivia: Tom and I had our feature film acting debut together in Bill Lustig’s Maniac Cop. We have the opening lines in the move. When screenwriter Larry Cohen’s daughter, Jill Gatsby, is leaving a bar, we both try to pick her up, but she doesn’t want anything to do with us. Then she goes outside and gets murdered by the Maniac Cop. Goes to show you what happens when you don’t say yes to a date with Big E or Big T!”
“I have been working with Tom all these years,” Schneck tells us. “In fact, I have been developing a reality series again set in the world of independent pro wrestling, and Tom Taylor is one of the stars of that project. Tom also worked with former wrestler Doug Yasinsky (Carl the cook in our film) as Doug’s heel manager at wrestling shows.”
While Taylor has continued to be active in the wrestling community and work as a promoter in Pennsylvania, he’s not the only member of Masked Mutilator’s production to remain busy. A number of the people responsible for this indie wrestling slasher have gone on to develop extremely impressive resumes. The fact that they worked with such high-level talent isn’t lost on Schneck and Polgardy.
“I think it’s amazing how lucky we were to find these talented people for their first time in front of a camera,” says Schneck.
“It’s an incredible feeling to see people you grew up within the movie business go on to have successful careers,” says Polgardy. “I love it. In fact, I pinch myself every day when I think about all of the adventures I’ve had producing movies and working with famous people I only read about when I was just a fanboy living in Pennsylvania. Just incredible.”
Some of those talented people include Glenn Hetrick, a makeup artist that has worked on everything from Star Trek to The Hunger Games all while serving as a judge on SyFy’s Face Off, and actor James DeBello.
“I was also a high school journalism teacher, and Glenn Hetrick was in my yearbook class at Saucon Valley High School. I knew he was creative and so easy to work with. Glenn was always highly motivated and artistically gifted, so that made him terrific in front of the camera as well as super valuable creating special effects with Paul Sutt for our film.
“James DeBello was only 14 when he auditioned for our film. Obviously, his parents were supportive and once we cast him, they had to bring him to the set for his one day of shooting. I recall that he was rather shy, but so polite and respectful. Years later when he starred in Paramount’s Detroit Rock City, and then followed up with Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever, and others, I was glad we gave just a little helping hand to the successful career he accomplished.”
On May 14th, we can all step into the ring with Taylor, Hetrick, DeBello and the rest of the Masked Mutilator crew as this long-lost film finally comes home to DVD and Blu-ray, courtesy of InterVision Pictures.
Interviews
“Pretty Little Liars: Summer School” Series Creators on Bigger Slasher Season, Horror Influences, and Spooky Spaghetti
The slasher-themed relaunch of “Pretty Little Liars” from series creators/writers/executive producers Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (“Riverdale,” “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”) and Lindsay Calhoon Bring (“Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”) is back with the brand new season “Pretty Little Liars: Summer School,“ plunging the final girls into a summer of horror.
“Summer School“ begins TODAY (May 9), only on Max.
After surviving last season’s Millwood massacre and unmasking “A,“ Mouse (Malia Pyles), Noa (Maia Reficco), Faran (Zaria), Imogen (Bailee Madison) and Tabby (Chandler Kinney) are back to process their trauma and get on with their lives. Except they’ll be forced to take on summer school. When a mysterious new villain emerges, summer school won’t be the only thing derailing the girls’ plans for summer fun and romance (read our review).
Bloody Disgusting spoke with Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Lindsay Calhoon Bring about the second season, which continues the heavy emphasis on horror and packs in the references. That even includes an homage to Bloody Disgusting!
The pair also reveal more about this season’s threat, and what lies ahead.
“Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin“ saw the core five survive their violent confrontation with “A,“ presenting a unique scenario in creating a slasher centered around not one but five Final Girls. That presented a unique challenge for the writers this season.
Aguirre-Sacasa explains, “It’s funny, your first question literally cuts to the heart of basically every conversation we have in the writer’s room, which is most slasher movies or shows have one final girl. But the very essence, heart, and DNA of our show are that we have five final girls. Six, if you count Kelly [Mallory Bechtel]. One of the tropes of a final girl is that there’s always an amazing chaser test at the end of the movie. We landed, I think, pretty early on the idea that Bloody Rose would test each girl as though preparing them to be the final girl for the final test. So that was a very conscious decision early on, and that would be a cool way to create horror set pieces for each girl.“
“It was,“ Calhoon Bring adds. “In season one, our ultimate final girl ended up, story-wise, thematically, with our sins of the mothers being tied to the child, and the ultimate sinner being Imogen’s mother. Our ultimate final Final girl was Imogen. This season going in, we knew that we wanted to test each girl, as Roberto said, but we also did love this idea of one of our little liars being the final Final Girl. So without giving too much away, our finale does center on one of our liars as the ultimate Final Girl this season.“
There’s a distinct tonal shift this season, with “Summer School“ much lighter than the grim “Original Sin.“ While the setting contributes to that, Bloody Disgusting asked the showrunners whether the shift in horror – embracing everything from creepypastas to cult horror – informed that tone shift in any way.
Calhoon Bring answers, “We always approach every episode, every season with story first, character first, and what are our little liars going through? We knew that with season two, we didn’t want to forget the events of season one. We didn’t want them to jump past them. We wanted them to live in them and move through them. At the same time, per your tone question, we thought, ‘Gosh, season one was really heavy. The girls were grappling with really dark, grounded horrors and dramas, as well as the heightened horror of having a Michael Myers chase them with a knife.‘ We did want to infuse more fun into this. Summer, to us, did feel like the perfect backdrop for fun, slasher horror, a little more fun for the girls bringing in Dr. Sullivan [Annabeth Gish] to help them work through their traumas, but also give them permission to have summer flings, have summer jobs, have a good time. So we did consciously do a bit of a tonal shift as well.“
Creepypastas influence the horror in a huge way this season, both with the villain, Bloody Rose, and the mysterious “Spooky Spaghetti“ website. Aguirre-Sacasa breaks down the idea behind “Spooky Spaghetti“ and a surprising source of inspiration for its creation.
“Obviously, one of the inspirations for season two was the Slender Man,“ the showrunner says. “Lindsay and I love not the Slender Man fictional movie but the Slender Man documentary, and we are obsessed with the Slender Man true crime case. I think one of the things we think is so terrifying about the Slender Man is that you kind of don’t know if he’s real or not. You don’t know if it’s this supernatural figure that crossed over into the real world. So, we needed a website that held that legend, and thus Spooky Spaghetti was born. One of the really fun things about it that we liked was that it took one of our favorite Pretty Little Liars, Mouse, and put her at the heart of the mystery in a really organic, cool way. Sometimes, that can be the hardest thing to do. But I remember when we got the cut of the first episode, I think, Lindsay, you got to see it before me, and you called, and you were like, ‘Oh my God, here’s what really works. Spooky Spaghetti.‘ We agree.
“But for sure, listen, I think we all check Deadline and Bloody Disgusting ten times a day, so it’s an homage to Bloody Disgusting as well.“
The default aim for slasher sequels is to go bigger than before, and “Summer School“ takes that to heart with more elaborate, visually creative set pieces this season. Especially the more Bloody Rose tests the Liars.
“We have such an amazing team, and we love talking about them,“ Calhoon Bring says of this season’s sets. “Our production designer, Brett Tanzer, and his set decorator, Lauren [Crawford]. We also have an amazing locations manager, Dave Lieber, who has so much fun. Sometimes, the locations will inspire a story for us, too, because as he’s looking around the locations in the upstate New York towns that we’re seeing, he’ll send us photos and say, ‘Hey, I found this amazing roller rink.‘ Then we think, ‘Well, we have to use that amazing roller rink. We have to find a space for this.‘ ‘Hey, there’s this an abandoned campground. What could we do? Can we do an outdoor movie at an abandoned campground? That would be amazing.‘
“We worked very closely with our team to make sure that every episode was very special and had a special set piece. A big ongoing conversation for us that was a tricky thing to do actually was that we knew early on that we wanted Faran to be a lifeguard, and we knew that we wanted to have a pool as a summer set piece. Those conversations happen so early, and finding a pool isn’t as easy as it sounds. It’s like finding the right pool, making sure that it’s the right aesthetic, that it’s broken down, that there are woods nearby, that it feels scary, that it’s operational, that we can use it. So, those conversations happened even sometimes earlier than we were writing the episodes.”
Aguirre-Sacasa elaborates, “Just to piggyback off that, the day that Lindsay and I got emails from Dave, our locations manager, for the church where Redemption House, that storyline was set. When we toured it, it was like, ‘This is the creepiest.‘ Literally, it’s next to a cemetery, and across the street from it is another cemetery. It’s like, ‘Yeah, we’re going to be setting up shop here.‘ We just moved in for the season. It was really great.”
While the series creators won’t spoil all the horror fun ahead in “Pretty Little Liars: Summer School” – but definitely expect the new season to really embrace all of your summer horror favorites in a big way – the pair do offer some exciting teases for what’s ahead.
“We’re so happy that we have Annabeth Gish with us, reprising her role as Dr. Sullivan,“ Calhoon Bring tells us. “Roberto, you’ve mentioned this; one of our favorite things in horror movies is the amazing monologue that a harrowed, usually final girl gives talking about her trauma. Roberto invoked Phoebe Cates in Gremlins, talking about that ill-fated night. We love those. We think that Annabeth, as Dr. Sullivan, delivers a tour de force horror monologue and a horror sequence in our penultimate [episode] that we’re very, very excited for people to see.“
“Yeah, it is kind of like Jason’s mother’s monologue about Jason drowning,“ Aguirre-Sacasa added. “It’s about Dr. Loomis talking about Michael Myers and the devil’s eyes. We love that. I think we can also tease in our finale. It’s our favorite episode of the season, the finale, and knowing that we had done essentially a handful of final girl chases and tests throughout, we knew that our finale had to be pretty apocalyptic and pretty epic. So we looked at some of our favorite movies like Midsommar and Texas Chain Saw Massacre for those truly apocalyptic horror movie endings that are just so gonzo, and without spoiling much, we wanted to do our version of that.
“And it is pretty harrowing, pretty harrowing.”
Which Final Girl will become the ultimate Final Girl this season? “Pretty Little Liars: Summer School” debuts exclusively on Max on May 9 at 12:00 a.m. PT with two episodes, followed by one new episode airing weekly through June 20.
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