A fight has just broken out on the set of a new movie, and B-flick veteran Joel D. Wynkoop is being dragged, kicking and screaming, through the warehouse studio by producer Andrew Allan. Tensions tend to run high on any film shoot, and 10 hours into a 17-hour day, it’s not uncommon for a fuse or two to blow.
At the age of 82, the culturally anointed Godfather of Gore, Herschell Gordon Lewis, is back behind the lens on his 37th feature film, GRIM FAIRY TALE (first exclusive photos at right and below). The movie, produced by Andy Lalino and Allan of the Film Ranch company, marks his first true return to form; his only other production since he effectively left filmmaking behind in 1972 was the 2002 semisequel BLOOD FEAST 2: ALL YOU CAN EAT.
“I wasn’t thrilled with BLOOD FEAST 2, and the reason is because for that movie, I was simply a hired director,” Lewis tells Fango. “I had nothing to do other than to sit in the chair and yell ‘Roll, sound and cut,’ which, with my vintage and history, was something of a mismatch. So it was as though I was looking at somebody else’s product.”
As a reaction to that experience, Lewis penned GRIM FAIRY TALE himself. “We’re shooting my script,” he states. “Harry Truman once said, ‘The buck stops here.’ On this movie, the buck stops with me; I have no one to blame. On BLOOD FEAST 2, I had all kinds of people to blame.”
Filming on location in Tampa, Florida, the production has taken over a soundstage and erected a gigantic game-show set, bathed in the kind of crisp, vibrant, almost jarring color schemes that are a hallmark of Lewis’ filmography. The show is called Truth or Uh-Oh, a quiz competition where “If you get the question right, you get a million dollars cash and villa in the Cote d’Azure and a Mercedes Benz 600 and a trip around the world, but if you get it wrong…” You can see the childlike twinkle in Lewis’ eye and he explains what comes next. “Radial Saw Rex [played by 6-foot-5-inch, 265-pound MMA fighter Eclipse] comes up with this radial saw and they spin this big wheel, it comes out ‘left arm’ and…whack!”
With that in mind, audiences accustomed to Lewis’ standard orgies of blood should not be disappointed, and the film has brought on the Oddtopsy FX team of Marcus Koch and Shelby McIntyre, who were responsible for the guts and gore in last year’s 100 TEARS (which Koch also directed). “We’ve been nose to the grindstone trying to make as much as we can in as short a time as possible,” Koch says. “It’s like a live-action cartoon—anything goes.”
That agrees with Lewis’ description of GRIM FAIRY TALE as a parody. “The whole idea is to say, yes, this is as bloody as it gets,” he notes, “but it is not serious blood.”
The writer/director seems happy with the way things are turning out. GRIM FAIRY TALE marks the first time the legendary director has shot on a digital format (using the RED ONE hi-def camera), and the hardware is allowing him to work fast and keep the movie “on time and on budget.”
Taking lessons learned from his days cranking out his original gore feasts, Lewis is making the absolute most of his limited funds. “We’re getting far more movie than anybody deserves to get based on what we’re putting into it other than sweat. I have always maintained that brains are a very effective substitute for dollars…if you use them!”
