Editorials
[Set Visit] Covered in Blood on the Set of Joe Begos’ ‘VFW’
Article contributed by Cinestate’s Preston Fassel.
Spoiler warning. It’s a place out of time, a nexus where the memories and aesthetics of different eras collide in ways both striking and nostalgic. The walls are wood-paneled 70s teak, the sort you’d find in a basement rec-room or the kind of bowling alley where the sound of organ music never stops. The lights washing over it all are all 80s neon new-wave, phosphorescent purples and blues and magentas washing over it all in cascading waves. The awards decorating the walls are timeless- plaques honoring the service and sacrifice of men and women from Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm. And in the center of it is a man who is very much of the now, a hipster beard and retro t-shirt bedecking his lithe body as he ducks and weaves with a dancer’s grace, camera in his hands, capturing a scene that would be surreal even if it weren’t for the incongruous clash of eras and aesthetics here: Men in stocking hats and undershirts and suits and fatigue jackets watch over a terrified girl as what appear to be hordes of the undead—are they zombies, mutants, some Lovecraftian abominations?—lay siege to the place. The man with the camera bobs and weaves, a cinematographic ballet, his feet nimble and sure, slipping around debris and detritus without ever looking down, never faltering as the men swing bats and axes and clubs at their attackers, besting them all. At last, the final nemesis hits the floor; the men breathe heavily, their battle done—for now.
“Cut!” Someone yells.
Watching from the sidelines, transfixed by the scene, is writer/director Laura Moss, the auteur behind the smash short film Fry Day. Today, she’s here as a visitor, an observer, casting her professional eye on the production of VFW, FANGORIA’s latest tale of blood, men, monsters, in which an aging group of war veterans decide to wage one final battle against a ruthless drug lord intent on silencing a girl who knows too much.
“The cameraman is spectacular,” Moss says to me. “But where’s his director?”
I’ve got the pleasure of telling her: That was the director.
VFW is the kind of movie only FANGORIA could make in 2019: A throwback horror that dispenses with any of the niceties of contemporary studio filmmaking for an unapologetically bloody, transgressive romp that pits an army of drugged-up, feral punk-psychos against literal army veterans ready to die with honor. Shot on location between a real VFW in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex (specifically post 2494, home of the most welcoming crawfish boil in the DFW) and the abandoned Forest Theater, which has stood vacant since the early 90s, it’s a film that wears its odes to the past on its sleeve. The ethos is pure grindhouse—find the right locations, the right names to put on the poster, amp up the violence to 11 and have at it. Having at it is Joe Begos, perhaps the perfect choice to helm such a project. Having cut his teeth on low-budget genre flicks Almost Human and The Mind’s Eye, he’s a director with a sensibility firmly rooted in the filmmaking ethos of 42nd Street, when a director was also cameraman, cinematographer, and whatever else the production needed him to be. And while he’s got DP Mike Testin on hand to keep things on an even keel, to watch his dancer’s approach to shooting you almost get the impression he’s ready to take this on single-handedly.
Adding to the grindhouse ambiance is the cast, a rogue’s gallery of rough-and-tumbles with legitimate horror and exploitation cred, from Black Godfather himself Fred Williamson to David Patrick “Warriors come out at play-aayyy” Kelly to Stephen Lang, terrifying today’s audiences with his turn as a blind death machine in the Don’t Breathe franchise. Even George “Norm” Wendt is here, simultaneously throwing more horror experience into the mix and giving the film that extra 80s vibe. They’re a group of guys who’ve seen it all and done it all—particularly Williamson, who, when queried about his thoughts on the film, took a pull from his stogie and politely told me, “I can’t tell you anything. They’ll kill me. I know where the bodies are buried.” To see them in action is a revelation: the 83-year-old Williamson lifting extras playing “hypers”— the marauding, drugged-out, 28 Days Later-esque fiends who comprise most of the film’s baddies—up in the air by their shoulders and flinging them across a barroom; Lang rampaging across set with a prop axe like a high school linebacker; Martin Kove and William Sadler getting into the action with a pair of prop weapons, Kove a hockey stick, Sadler a foam baseball bat studded with nails, pounding away at a couple of extras. Not that they aren’t gentlemanly about it.
“I’m not really gonna hit you with this thing,” Sadler says. “Just gonna swing it like this.”
But I don’t want him to just “swing it like this”—because today I’ve slipped into the role of a hyper myself for an unexpectedly blood-soaked sequence in which a quintet of hypers breach the perimeter of the VFW and run afoul of a particularly gruesome booby trap.
“Hit me,” I tell him. “I got a hard head. Right here, on the bald spot. Won’t feel a thing.” Sadler swings like Barry Bonds after a day at the doctor’s office. I don’t feel it. Neither, it seems, does the female hyper beside me, similarly encouraging Kove not to pull any punches. You don’t sign up to die at the hands of Kobra Kai and The Grim Reaper and not want to get hit.
“Good,” Sadler says. “You’re pros. We understand one another.”
“Can I pretend to choke you?” I ask.
“Yeah, choke me, hit me, let’s make it look good.”
With hitting comes blood though. Lots and lots of blood. In fact, you could say that, perhaps next to Stephen Lang, “blood” deserves second billing. After getting into position, my fellow hypers and I are outfitted with blood tubes running beneath our shirts that’ll activate on “action;” as they’re being taped to our torsos, Sierra Russel—she of modern SFX legends Josh and Sierra Russel, himself outside getting an exploding head gag ready—is filling out mouths with blood to spit once the cameras roll. And, once everything is in place, Sierra is on the floor between our legs with a blood canon at the ready, augmenting not just the tubes or the mouth stuff but an additional set of hoses attached to the top of a beer keg that plays an integral role in the scene. Joe, squatting now like a modern dancer feeling the earth, holds his camera at the ready. We’re about to get pummeled. And we’re about to get very, very wet.
“Action.”
And there’s swinging. So much swinging. And blood. So very much blood. So very, very much blood. It flows down our chins. It flows out of our chests in great, tidal spurts, like the gushing of a dozen arteries, dousing the fronts of our shirts, our jeans, soaking our boots in great thunderstorm puddles. Sierra activates the canon and the world turns red, filling our eyes, the camera lens, the room.
By the time it’s all done, we make Cécile de France at the end of Haute Tension look like she got a smudge on her cheek.
Once under a showerhead, though, the water quickly streaks pink and it’s amazing how quickly it takes to get clean. Some fake blood stains the skin, requires the use of shaving cream and special shampoos and loofahs caked in toothpaste to remove. Not VFW’s blood, though. For as much as Joe Begos has innovated in the realm of camera work, so have Josh and Sierra Russel innovated in the realm of fake blood, inventing their own special concoction especially for this shoot, in addition to working with Begos to design the hypers’ unique, veined-out look.
“Normally we go to Smart and Final,” Josh tells me, referring to a food supply chain in Cali. “We buy imitation syrup like McDonald’s uses by the gallon. But not for this shoot. There was going to be so much blood we were worried about stickiness.” So it was that Josh and Sierra innovated their own type of fake blood that uses as one of its primary ingredients something simultaneously simple and genius: Dishwashing soap.
“As soon as water hits it, it activates it,” Sierra says.
“We used lots of hot tub anti-foam to prevent sudsing,” Josh tells me. Once the water strikes it, though, Russel FX blood does indeed activate—one moment you look like you’ve just been gutted alive, the next you haven’t got any red on you. That means not a lot of downtime spent getting cleaned up in between takes—leaving more time to soak up the unique ambiance around VFW post-2494. Outside the facility is a playground similarly out of time, with sturdy old picnic tables and an antique merry go round (DO NOT Touch Merry Go Round says a perpetually weather-ravaged sign), and while practical effects shots are being readied—like the pool table getting set to explode—the cast lounge around on swingsets, in the doors of trailers, on tabletops. It’s time for rumination, or smoking, or, in the case of Travis Hammer and Dora Madison, who play the film’s primary baddies, working out on a pair of Olympic rings set up for them by the crew. Hey—a pair of scantily clad, ripped drug lords gotta stay looking ripped. The old pros of VFW are a contemplative lot, though. Williamson and Sadler discuss the CAA crisis. David Patrick Kelly is eager to discuss German opera. A group of actual veterans shows up—they’re holding an outdoor meeting while we shoot inside—and they knock back Sam Adams and discuss plans and minutes in the ochre light of the setting Spring sun. The man hosting the meeting is a veteran of Iraq; at the head of a picnic table is a vet in a WWII cap. Some of the extras drift over to shake their hands; they’re appreciative. They’re glad we’re all here. It isn’t often your VFW hall plays host to a horror movie. They’d like to attend the premier. Conversely, we’re welcome to the next crawfish boil.
I sit for a moment with George Wendt and ask him if there’s a role he would like to define his legacy, rather than the barfly for which he’s best known. He smiles tenderly, like a man wholly at peace with his legacy.
“No,” he tells me. “I’m Norm.”
The end of the day finds me chatting with another Sierra—McCormick, the former child star playing against type as a rough-living teen too well versed in the underworld. She’s been in horror movies before, sure, including VFW producer Dallas Sonnier’s own Some Kind of Hate, but, those were a far cry from this bacchanal. Is she out of her element here? No, she is not. “Do you like horror movies?” is like a secret code phrase, and suddenly she’s telling me stories of watching Salo and Serbian Film on Christmas morning, and we’re swapping recommendations of the gnarliest grindhouse movies we know. It’s a special experience—the horror fan in the horror movie, contributing to the genre they love. It’s appropriate in its own unique way—her character is, after all, the heart of the film, the unifying soul that brings these aging warriors together. What better than to have the actress playing the heart of a horror movie be such a fan herself? If there are better omens, I don’t know them.
It’s my final day on set and we’ve made encampment at the historic Forest Theater in Dallas, a once grand place gone to ruin. “It smells like the most antique antique store,” an extra comments, and it’s a perfect summation. If the VFW was a place that was timeless, the Forest has been lost to time, the interior gutted, desiccated wooden staircases seeming to lead to nowhere. It’s appropriate—this is Hyper Headquarters, a filthy, rotting drug den where the dregs and desperate of society congregate to give themselves over body and soul to their addictions without looking back, so it only makes sense it should stand in contrast to the homey VFW as a place defined by rot. The Russels set up shop in the old food court, extras lining up to get their hyper makeup and grime applied. Tonight Begos will be filming a Blob-like shot of the ravenous hordes charging out of the theater and towards the building across the street, which is being used for the exteriors of the VFW (the outside of 2494 is too sweet looking to occupy an urban hellscape). Rain is in the forecast. Do any extras want to go home? Should we wait to shoot? Fuck no. This is FANGORIA, and this is horror, and a little rain never stopped FANGORIA or horror.
The hypers are in their makeup. Cameras are at the ready—due to the nature of the shot, Begos has had to augment his handheld with a crane, though he’s going to be there in the quick of the action, too. Forty-plus men and women congregate in the doors of the Forest. Rain is coming down in great, sweeping sheets, stinging to the touch, the rain so hard as to almost blow it sideways. But for the lights of the theater, it’s pitch black. Is everybody ready?
This is Joe Begos. This is FANGORIA. This is VFW—the bloodiest, most insane horror movie you’re going to see this year. Of course, everyone is ready.
In the rainswept black of a Dallas night in April, the hordes charge.
After fifty years of continuous writing, Stephen King has become a genre unto himself.
The unrivaled Master of Horror made a splash in 1974 with his debut novel Carrie and has been terrifying readers ever since. Two years later, Brian De Palma brought this shocking story to the screen with an equally electrifying horror film that remains a genre classic and a prototypical example of “Good For Her” horror. This dual debut seemed to open the floodgates, unleashing endless waves of Stephen King films.
From the highs of Misery, Cujo, and The Shawshank Redemption to the schlocky fun of Cat’s Eye, Creepshow, and Children of the Corn, the last five decades have seen just about every notable horror creator take a stab at the author’s massive collection.
In recent years, this singular subgenre has begun to burst at the seams, expanding to include Stephen King-esque fare. In 2016, brothers Matt and Ross Duffer debuted Stranger Things, a sci-fi series heavily inspired by two of King’s most famous books. The Netflix series remixes Firestarter and It by following a little girl with psychic powers and an intrepid group of kids on bikes who must battle an otherworldly foe and a sinister government agency. With its clever blend of modern effects and comforting nostalgia, this gateway horror series paved the way for Andy Muschietti’s It adaptation which remains the highest grossing horror film of all time.
Four years later, Mike Flanagan would create Midnight Mass, a spiritual adaptation of King’s second novel Salem’s Lot. Published in 1975, the book sees a tiny New England town torn apart by a centuries-old vampire. Though Flanagan’s story is perhaps more tender, both iterations of the classic horror tale follow close-knit communities shaken to their core by the presence of an ancient evil.
In addition to these recent hits, 2025 was a banner year for the Master of Horror. Audiences delighted in six mainstream adaptations, including the massively popular It: Welcome to Derry which chronicles earlier cycles of the titular clown’s reign. With this boost to King’s cultural cache, it’s no surprise that we’ve begun to see more unofficial adaptations of the author’s work and horror creators who build their own unique castles in King’s creative sandbox.
So what defines a Stephen King-esque story?
For the past fifty years, the prolific author has dipped his toes in nearly every subgenre from supernatural stories and grisly gore to western fantasy and science fiction. Including his vast catalogue of short fiction, King has tackled ghosts, demons, werewolves, zombies, aliens, mutants, and self-driving cars, not to mention bizarre monsters of his own creation. But what truly unites this vast array of horror is King’s focus on relatable characters. In his 2000 memoir/instructional text On Writing, the prolific author describes the amusement he finds in writing disparate characters, placing them in horrific scenarios, then exploring the ways they try to survive.
An unofficial Stephen King adaptation may take place in the author’s native New England — bonus points if it’s set in Maine — and reference his well-known heroes and villains. But what makes the King connection unbreakable is a character-driven story about average people who band together in the face of abject terror.
Weapons Captures Small Town Stephen King
Following his 2022 shocker Barbarian, Zach Cregger returned with Weapons, a sprawling story that begins in a doomed elementary school. On an otherwise ordinary day, Justine (Julia Garner) arrives at her desk to find that all but one of her students have disappeared. As the mystery grows increasingly violent, Justine and Archer (Josh Brolin), the father of a missing boy, find their way to the home of Alex (Cary Christopher), the class’ only surviving student. In some ways reminiscent of Salem’s Lot, Weapons swings wildly through the unfortunate town, introducing us to its flawed inhabitants as we watch their lives fall apart.
Cregger’s setup nods to a pair of King short stories. Both “Suffer the Little Children” and “Here There Be Tygers” tackle monstrous presences in elementary schools, but as Weapons reaches its final act, Constant Readers may remember another Stephen King tale. Featured in his 1985 collection Skeleton Crew, “Gramma” introduces us to George, a little boy tormented by an aging witch. On an afternoon alone with his sickly grandmother, the frightened child gradually realizes that the imposing old woman has been waiting for an opportunity to cast a spell that will extend her own life by possessing his body.
Alex finds himself similarly tortured by his aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan), a garish witch who orchestrates a desperate plot to sustain her own strength. Transforming humans into mindless weapons, Gladys has taken over Alex’s family home and lured his classmates to the basement. Holding them in a comatose state, she syphons off their energy to extend her own supernatural life.
Vastly different in many ways, both “Gramma” and Weapons hinge on a sinister witch who uses horrific magical spells to sacrifice the bodies of her vulnerable prey.
Hokum Echoes The Shining and 1408
It’s nearly impossible to watch a film about a haunted hotel without thinking of King’s third novel, The Shining. This icy story follows Jack Torrance, an angry writer struggling with his sobriety and a shameful incident haunting his past. Accompanied by his wife and young son, Jack has taken a job as the winter caretaker for the Overlook, a haunted hotel situated high in the Rocky Mountains. Snowed in, Jack finds himself tormented by dangerous ghosts who amplify his greatest fears.
Damian McCarthy’s Hokum follows a similarly troubled figure. Ohm Bauman (Adam Scott) is a surly writer who travels to the Bilberry Woods Hotel in rural Ireland to spread his parents’ ashes. Haunted by his own tragic past, Ohm finds himself trapped in the honeymoon suite, a decaying room that’s been permanently closed to protect visitors from a dangerous witch trapped within its walls. Visual nods to King’s text abound with woodcut figurines and an animated clock, mirroring ominous descriptions found in King’s text.
Another terrifying sequence sees Ohm staring with horror at a closed door, the only thing separating him from the approaching witch. As the door knob slowly turns, Constant Readers remember Jack’s narrow escape from the ghostly woman in room 217. And Ohm’s popular Conquistador books directly reference King’s long-running fantasy series The Dark Tower which follows a gunslinger named Roland Deschain tasked with protecting the nexus of the universe.
In addition to these thematic comparisons, Hokum bears striking resemblance to King’s terrifying short story “1408.” Collected in 2002’s Everything’s Eventual, the terrifying story follows Mike Enslin, a dejected writer who’s risen to fame penning essays about his adventures in haunted locations. Mike arrives at the Hotel Dolphin and bullies his way into the titular room, despite the manager’s dire warnings. McCarthy nods to this story with an ominously misplaced hotel room door, reminiscent of King’s entry to 1408, an unsuspecting portal that appears to move each time Mike looks away.
However, McCarthy’s most direct reference lies in a minicorder Ohm uses to capture notes. Trapped inside the dreaded honeymoon suite, this device offers well-timed messages while sitting next to a decomposing corpse. Mike records his time in 1408 with his own trusty minicorder. Described for the reader, his tape has captured the man’s slow descent into madness as the room prepares to swallow him whole. With conclusions that differ wildly in tone, both Ohm and Mike find their lives irrevocably changed by encounters with the supernatural realm.
Widow’s Bay Builds Its Own Version of Castle Rock
Katie Dippold’s Widow’s Bay has taken the idea of an unofficial King adaptation and turned it into an art form. The Apple TV series sees the residents of the titular island plagued by a curse that dates back centuries. Not only does the picturesque hamlet not accommodate wifi connections, those born on the island face certain death should they ever try to leave. Desperate to modernize the tiny town, Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) draws in waves of tourists just as a new cycle of terror begins.
Blending horror with deft comedy, Dippold makes cheeky references to King’s body of work. Tom warns that, “there’s something in the fog,” reminding readers of King’s 1980 novella The Mist. And Loftis’ own stay in the town’s haunted hotel sees him tormented by the ghost of a murderous clown. We even spy a vintage King hardback peeking out of a local book trade box.
In many ways Widow’s Bay feels like a new iteration of the author’s Little Tall Island, a tiny village off the coast of Maine. In addition to the 1992 novel Dolores Claiborne and a handful of harrowing short stories, this quaint fishing village is also the setting for King’s 1999 teleplay Storm of the Century. Premiering on ABC primetime, this tragic tale follows a terrified group of islanders who batten down the hatches for a dangerous Nor’easter only to find a more sinister threat lurking within.
Constant Readers may also be reminded of Castle Rock, the author’s favorite fictional town.
First introduced in the 1981 novel Cujo, the charming village becomes the star of Needful Things, King’s satire about consumerism. After several Castle Rock stories, we’re reintroduced to its residents as they gossip about the arrival of Leland Gaunt and the grand opening of his curio shop. Anything their hearts desire can be found in his varied inventory, so long as they’re willing to pay the price. Pitting cantankerous neighbors against each other, Gaunt ignites a wave of grisly violence by exploiting long-held resentments and feuds.
The town’s only defense against this supernatural threat is beleaguered sheriff Alan Pangborn. Still grieving the deaths of his wife and younger son, Alan struggles to connect with his older child and pick up the pieces of his shattered life. Also a widower, Loftis struggles to raise his own restless son and explain the strange details of his wife’s tragic death. Attempting to unravel the island’s dark secrets, Tom is aided by quirky residents including a surly fisherman named Wyck (Stephen Root) and Patricia (Kate O’Flynn), an earnest Town Hall employee. King’s own novels feature many of these proactive alliances with disparate characters combining their strengths to overcome insurmountable odds.
With Widow’s Bay renewed for a second season and Mike Flanagan’s Carrie series on the horizon, the future seems bright for new King adaptations, both spiritual and directly pulled from his catalogue. The prolific author also shows no signs of slowing down with two publications nearing release. His upcoming novel, Other Worlds Than These, is the long-awaited third Talisman book which teases direct ties to his Dark Tower world. Holly Forever will be a new installment of his crime series, offering a different kind of genre fare.
This embarrassment of riches spawning multiple worlds seems ripe for spiritual adaptation and will likely inspire horror creators for decades to come.
Kate O’Flynn, Stephen Root and Matthew Rhys in “Widow’s Bay,” now streaming on Apple TV.
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