Friday The 13th Part VII: The New Blood
by Chas Balun
Director John Buechler's comments about the cuts required by the MPAA on his current film, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, are all but drowned out in teh dubbing room as both sound and image flicker violently to life in front of us. This reel is dark, grainy, heavily scratched, and in glorious black-and-white. It is also being frantically cut, dubbed and edited here at KDH Sound Studios in Santa Monica. The postproduction team is well aware they have less than 30 days to get the picture in shape for its May 13 opening.
Ch-ch-ch-ah-ah-ah booms through the
speakers. Yow! And at the level of an Iron Maiden concert, too! Buechler
leans over and explains this is still a very rough cut mix and the sound
is way too loud in parts. Ch-ch-ch-BLAM! Jason's at the door, ax
in hand...jump cut to bimbo looking up. WHAM! Blade in the face,
body slumps to ground, ax handle quivering. This sequence reruns countless
times as Buechler explains, "We have to submit our picture almost on
a daily basis to the MPAA. We've submitted this cut and the MPAA has vetoed
it." OK now, kids, let me tell you what you'll be missing so you'll
relax and be able to get on with your lives. After the aforementioned frontal
ax assault, you see a quick insert, all seven frames or so, of the ax blade
imbedded in the girl's face. You know how long it takes seven frames of
35mm film to whip through a projector? About a quarter of a second, give
or take a millisecond. You can't even sneeze that fast.
"You can see the ax come forward," says Buechler, "but not the impact. They object to that. What can I tell you?" Buechler elaborates on the ratings board and their approach to graphic violence. "The MPAA deals with the quantity of violent acts," he says. "And when you're dealing with a film that has 17 deaths...well, it's kinda difficult." Buechler acknowledges the fact that often times horror filmmakers will load up on certain FX sequences in order to draw the MPAA's attention away from other, more essential FX scenes.
Greg Johnson, location supervisor for Mechanical and Makeup Imageries agrees. "We went to extremes in certain areas, we overdid it, so we could keep the other effects in. They can't cut the whole film out, so they'll get rid of the worst things first."
One of those over-the-top FX sequences involves an ax hit that splits a character's face in two in what Buechler describes as "the most spectacular makeup effect we've ever created." Johnson simply calls it the "Cootchie-face" gag. You won't see that one either. Forget about the fabled Bushmaster 5000 evisceration scene too, the one juicily described by Johnson in Fango #74 as a real chunk blower. "We're tearing apart this body," he enthuses, "and the cameraman kind of turns around and grabs his mouth. It was his first day on the film." Again, you'll miss that. "You'll see the approach; you won't see the impact," sighs an exasperated Buechler. "They're castrating my film, inch by inch."
Now, as Buechler momentarily leaves the screening
room, I refer back to my notes and am drawn immediately to the circled notation
near the top of the list; "What about Buechler's anti-slasher comments
in the March '88 issue of Cinefantastique?" Yep, sure, gotta'
play hardball here, just like the big league snoops on 60 Minutes.
I smell a confrontation here - eager splatter hound vs. the Ghoulie/Troll
man turned gore apologist. With remarks like "I've never done a slasher
picture and I never wanna do one" bristling in my brain, I prepare
to be polite, tactful and, er... well, pushy, if I have to. The fans have
gotta' know the truth.
The morbidly delicious irony of this situation is not lost on your reporter, though the confrontational fervor has dimmed somewhat by the fact that Buechler saved me from a $40 parking ticket by loaning me five quarters for the meter. (I had no change, just $100 bills. You know how we Californians are.) But before Buechler returns, I'm treated to the dramatic telekinetic unmasking of Jason, followed by the fiery finale in which our ol' boy turns crispy critter from Crystal Lake. I did say dramatic, right?
When Buechler returns, the lights are up. The editor, producer and others in the postproduction crew avail themselves of the various boredom-stifling toys scattered about the studio, including a basketball hoop, golf clubs, an exercycle, and a rowing machine. Buechler sits back down, resumes sketching on a creature design, and laughs heartily when I pop the question about the CFQ article. He makes it plain that he has no wish to recant or rephrase anything.
Regarding the patented Friday the 13th stalk 'n' slash formula, Buechler asserts, "We changed it. Radically. In simplest terms possible, it's a good v. evil confrontation. It has very little to do with a slasher film." Not altogether convinced at this point, I ask Buechler about his feelings that graphic horror films "should explore psychological terror or deal with fantasy as a gratuitous exploitation of murder. I don't like to show a blueprint for murder, I try not to get into the mind of a killer." He insists that Jason is really no longer human, but a "dark force, an evil unstoppable force of nature. He's like a tornado, his actions are those of a supernatural force."
Hollywood's Dr. Frankenstein
by Riva Dryan
Welcome to the frightening world of Hollywood's Dr. Frankenstein, monster-maker/director John Buechler, whose radio-controlled creatures and battered corpses have had starring roles in such horror classics as Re-animator, Troll, Celler Dwellar, and Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood.
Buechler, who houses his bizarre imitation of hell in a cavernous office in North Hollywood, most recently created a series of special effects for A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. And they were so convincing, most audiences lost their appetite for weeks - especially for pizza!
"I created the horror pizza," Buechler says, "It's a terrifying scene in which Freddy confronts a young woman with her worst nightmare - spending the rest of her life in a dead-end job as a waitress.
"Well, there they are in a restaurant
from hell, and the waitress serves him a pizza. Only that ain't no ordinary
pizza - it's a pizza with meatballs wearing the faces of various children
who poor souls Freddy has stolen. All of a sudden, those meatballs start
writhing in agaony. But Freddy isn't worried. He just picks one up, watches
it as it screams in terror, pops it in his mouth - and calls it "soul
food."
Making a pizza with talking meatballs is easier than you'd think, says Buechler. And to prove it, here's the recipe. First, design a foam-rubber pizza lookalike. Then insert tiny mechanical pieces that make the meatball faces move.
"The meatballs are radio-controlled little heads that are animatronincally articulated by six operators off screen," says Buechler. "Basically, it's an electronic form of puppeteering."
Buechler also created Nightmare's chest of souls, a ghoulish sequence of events in which Freddy's chest expands to reveal the anguished faces of his victims. Most people find themselves reduced to knock-kneed terror. Although Buechler is proud of his work on Nightmare, he is particularly proud of his work on Friday VII. "I directed it," he says. "And considering I only had three months to get it into the theaters, I think I did a pretty good job. But the thing I really enjoyed was creating an even more horrifying Jason," says Buechler. "When the movie opens up, poor old Jason has spent the last ten years of his life chained under a lake. Released from his watery grave, he looks positively terrible. His body is so deteriorated and eaten away by the water and time that you can see all the way through to the bone."
No audience in the world has ever quite forgotten Freddy Kruger - or Jason - or the day that Sonny Bono turned into a swamp in Troll. "The sequence begins with Sonny's arm being punctured by a magic ring," Buechler says. "With the help of a bladder device used in much the same way as in Nightmare's chest of souls, Sonny's arm begins to blow up. The next level of transformation happens to Sonny himself.
His skin goes green, then, with the help of a hidden appliance and skin constructed of foam, his body starts pulsating - so much so, you feel there's organic material pushing its way through his system. His eyes go white, and at that point we cut away to the Troll watching the process. By the time we cut back to Sonny, you see the first of a series of mechanical heads that were sculpted in sequence of transformation - each level being more severe than the last," explains Buechler. "Basically, there were three stages of mechanical heads. And each one pulsated and moved in a different way, unfolding and pushing out, until all that was left was a gourd that slightly resembled a human head - but not much anymore."
Intercut with a startling stop motion animation sequence, created one frame at a time, the scene culminated in the entire room in Sonny's apartment being overtaken by forest and stars, with Buechler's little cable-controlled puppets peeping mischievously out of the shrubbery. Buechler points to another of his creations. "Cellar Dweller, the eight-foot monster I built and created for the movie of the same name, has over one hundred facial expressions. Isn't he beautiful?" he asks, stroking the beast's impressively furry chest. "I used a combination of acrylic, yak, and crepe. But sometimes I just use human hair."
Human hair? "Oh yes," says Buechler. "Look at that fellow over there." An emaciated man, his eyes lolling back in his forehead, lay against the wall. "He's supposed to be human, so I gave him human hair." Buechler dips his finger into a tumbler of blood, and laughing, licks it clean. It was real human hair - maybe it was real human blood?
"They don't call me Hollywood's Dr. Frankenstein for nothing," Buechler says, his eyes suddenly alarmingly evil. "Actually it's a mixture of Karo syrup, sugar, and food coloring."
