Midnight Movie
Directed by: Jack Messitt
Once again we are proud to bring you yet another exclusive interview with a director who is destined for great things. In 2008 Jack Messitt gave the world his direction debut horror film Midnight Movie which quickly won praise from fans and critics alike. Now in 2011, Jack is back with Midnight Movie-The Killer Cut which enhances the movie with added/deleted scenes and a much better quality. It really is the definitive version of a slash film that already has a strong fan base, and we at HorrorCultFilms are delighted that this new vision is out now to buy for fans.
When Jack Messitt sent HCF a copy of The Killer Cut, we wanted to sit down and talk to him about it! And there was only one perosn we could send and that is the team’s No.1 Slash fan Ross Hughes who already was a huge fan of Midnight Movie and was delighted to meet a director who brought a new possible franchise to the ever popular genre.
Excited like a child at Christmas, Ross sat down with Messitt and the conversation went from Midnight Movie to Friday 13th part 26 and many other things, it really is a quite stunning read!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZXKt-a1W8E
AN INTERVIEW WITH JACK MESSITT
Welcome Jack to HorrorCultFilms First of all can we say how honoured that you have found time to sit with us and answer a few questions. Can we start by telling our loyal readers a bit about yourself, a little history, what inspired you to go into film making and where you feel you fit in with today’s market?
Before directing Midnight Movie, I worked as a Director of Photography and Camera Operator for close to twenty years, so I’m no stranger to the production process. A graduate of the American Film Institute, my work includes hundreds of hours of television: Fox’s Bones, Sons of Anarchy and American Idol as well as the feature films Irreversi, Girl With No Number and The Curiosity of Chance.
I have been making movies since I got my first video camera when I was eleven. Oddly enough, horror was one of my first watchable “films.” When I was sixteen, I made Friday the 13th – Part 26 with a bunch of friends. The production values weren’t all that good, but the blood was flowing even then.
Where do I fit in today’s filmmaking market… that’s a tough one. I love making movies – TV too. I bring a lot of production experience to the table and that really helped put every penny of Midnight Movie’s budget onto the screen. Where I fit in is really for others to decide, but I look forward to making bigger and better movies as my career progresses.
What the heck was Friday 13th Part 26 all about?
We are sitting here today to talk about one thing and that is Midnight Move-The Killer Cut. For the readers in Great Britain, can you please tell the unlucky ones who have not even seen the original why they should be excited about such a film?
Midnight Movie is a fun, roller-coaster ride of a movie. It harkens back to the fun slasher films of the 80’s, but with the things that today’s horror fans want as well. I think that it has characters that you care about and a villain that is pretty bad-ass. What more could you want from a horror film?
Before I even get to the Killer Cut, as a Film Director behind this critically acclaimed film, is it frustrating that fans overseas like here in Britain do not get the chance to share in your vision will what seems at the moment an unlikely Region 2 release DVD?
No filmmaker is happy if people can’t see their work. Really, I want the movie available to everyone, but those decisions aren’t made by me. If you want to see it, be sure to ask the distributers in the UK to pick it up!
Does such a factor in the long run hurt you personally because you have put all your effort in such a film and for fans over here their only chance will be to illegally download which will hurt you financially?
Illegal downloading sucks!
I understand the reasons people do it, but everyone has to understand that pirating stops movies like Midnight Movie from being made. If a distributer hears of a demand, they will fill it. If there is no demand due to the illegal use of the internet, these films don’t get out there. And without that revenue stream, it makes it tough to get a movie made in the first place.
So, you have to remember that every time you download a movie, you are killing off the very thing you are enjoying.
I personally owe you a great debt of gratitude for sending me a R1 Copy of Midnight Movie a film that I can only say is not a normal director’s cut but a complete overhaul. Its really like you managed to do your Evil Dead 2, without the need of doing it all over again, was that you aim?
I’ve seen a lot of director’s cuts that weren’t better versions of the movie. They were longer, yes, but not better. So when I started The Killer Cut, I didn’t want to make the same mistake. I didn’t want to shove in a bunch of scenes that didn’t belong there in the first place. My goal was to enhance an experience that people already liked. That meant a lot more than just re-cutting the film.
I loved Killer Cut, it seemed a much tighter movie in terms of script and the pace was much better. I suppose people would ask why did you not do this the first time around? Was it a case of looking at the finished article and thinking “damn I could improve that?”
With Midnight Movie, many of the limitations to my original vision were purely budgetary. The ideas were there, just not the means to execute them. So when Bigfoot gave me the opportunity to overcome some of those limitations, I jumped at the chance.
There isn’t a filmmaker out there that looks back at their movies and doesn’t see a better way to do things. Look at Spielberg and Lucas – they have retouched classic films. Hindsight is always 20/20, even with cinematic geniuses that had pretty good budgets to work with at the time.
From the start of the original production, I made sure that every penny of our limited budget made it onto the screen – and I think it shows. But there were a few things in the original version that just fell a little flat for me because of those budgetary limitations. The added visual effects are there to enhance the experience in a way we didn’t have the budget for the first time around.
The other goal of The Killer Cut was to streamline a few areas that I felt just weren’t as tight as they could be. So I took the editing room scalpel to the film and made a lot of changes that you won’t notice, but the feel of those areas will be a lot better. And I made a lot of cuts. Even though we added several minutes of new material, the running time of the two films is about the same.
Much of the new footage we added was shot specifically for this version of the film. It was designed to fill in a few holes that myself, and the fans of the original, felt were missing. We really made an effort to enhance the mythology of Radford with the new footage. And the scenes that we extended with footage from the original shoot were enhanced with the new visual effects, making them a completely new experience.
It must have hard though for you to even think of being tempted to mess with such a horror film that gained massive praise. Were you worried about upsetting the fans who cherished the original?
My goal was to give fans of the original cut a much better experience. So far the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive that we accomplished that.
But in achieving that goal, we have been able to convert more than a few people that did not like the original Midnight Movie into fans of The Killer Cut. In the end, I think that is what I am most proud of.
The Killer Cut improves in my opinion of the way you changed the new Bogyman Radford. The character changes from being just a blueprint of the slash killer to something else-something original- which is of huge credit to you and the writers because once you have seen one Michael Myers, you have seen them all? How did you come up with an original design?
Radford owes his formation to all the horror icons that have come before him. Really, he has pieces of a lot of our favourites in there. But his back-story makes him an original.
From the first draft of the script, Radford was always a supernatural killer. But his motivation was something that definitely changed over the course of the project.
Originally, the movie in the movie was a just mish-mash of images – like the video tape in The Ring. But I thought that in order to have the audience in the movie stay in the theatre for any length of time, there needed to be a story – So after a long process, The Dark Beneath was born.
The movie in the movie was hugely important because it was the backbone of the entire film. The Dark Beneath was Radford’s back story. He was a man so obsessed with his movie scaring people that he embedded his soul into the film itself – in a quest to become the killer from his film.
Radford’s film needed to be something worth that obsession. So when crafting The Dark Beneath, we wanted to create the mythology of a horror movie that, while failing in its own box-office results, influenced a new wave of horror films.
Supposedly shot in 1964, Radford’s film was hugely influenced by Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. When he started The Dark Beneath, Radford set out to do what Hitchcock could not. His goal was to completely disregard the Hays Code as only an independent film could do.
In doing so, Ted Radford’s one and only film was a box office failure, mainly because only a handful of theaters would show it. Radford’s incarceration soon after finishing the film did not help much either.
But The Dark Beneath would go on to be a huge influence of the films of the late 60s and early 70s. Traces of The Dark Beneath can surely be found in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and other horror classics.
Even the trailer for The Dark Beneath was influential.
https://www.TheDarkBeneath.com
Compare its trailer with that of 1972’s horror hit The Last House on the Left:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W9KPhmYYtg[/youtube]
With the mysterious disappearance of the inmates from the Newhaven Psych Hospital in 2006, a new interest in The Dark Beneath emerged. With this renewed interest, it was picked up by Inquisition Film, a low budget film distributer, and somehow made its way to the Avenue Theatre.
And thus, Midnight Movie and Radford as a supernatural villain were born…
But the killer in the original script was even more supernatural. He thrust his hands into his victim’s head and they turned to dust. I was worried about pulling off this effect well on our limited budget. And I thought that the repetition of the same supernatural kill over and over would get stale as the movie went on.
We needed to ground Radford in reality.
And to help that, I thought that we needed him to have a signature weapon. Something real, something to be feared…
Now, everything under the sun has been used in a horror film. We’ve seen the chainsaw, we’ve seen the butcher knife. You name it. So coming up with something that could be instantly identified with Midnight Movie was the challenge.
When we were toying with the movie in the movie being a 1930s style film, the killer used a fire poker. But when I switched gears on the style of the movie in the movie, the fire poker was lost and the search began anew.
One day, in a flurry of emails, one of the Producers suggested a corkscrew knife. That’s when the lightbulb went on in my head! In college, I had written a serial killer novel where the killer had this implement that was this metal cone with a handle. You could puncture into someone’s chest with it, and as you pulled it out, it had razor sharp edges. It would pull out this chunk of flesh. So I took this 15 year-old idea and combined it with the corkscrew knife idea and our killer’s signature weapon was born.
The Supernatural aspect of Radford is extended more in Killer Cut and brings a different slant to this character, it moves this figure away from the human aspect of say Michael and Ghostface and creates his own mythology. In many ways in my eyes we get a much stronger Bogyman with this version, you must be happy with this figure you have created?
When I was putting together the original cut, I had a lot of ideas on how Radford should move through his environment, but they just weren’t within our budget.
With The Killer Cut, we were able to utilize a lot of those original ideas to go back and make Radford a much more menacing villain. Believe me, the visual effects in The Killer Cut help create a totally different mood and feel for the film.
I think that The Killer Cut shows Radford as he was suppose to be – so much closer to my original vision of him. And I think that he is much more menacing because of it.
Am I happy? Absolutely. Radford finally gets to shine like he was supposed to.
I suppose the hard part of all was the mask, its an important stable of all slash films? How much hard work was needed to create such a design or did you have an idea straight away?
Radford’s mask is something we really struggled with. The script always had the killer in a mask. And masks have been done to death. To come up with something that is unique and scary was a huge challenge. So, we went through a lot of ideas and a lot of failed designs.
Then one night when I was really frustrated, I starting scouring the internet for ideas. I kept coming to these two iconic images. One is the Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn poster, with the skull and eyes. That has always stuck with me since that movie came out. The other image I kept going back to was Hannibal Lector’s restraint mask in Silence of the Lambs. So I started playing around, and I cobbled together the basic design of our killer. Lunar Effects took my ideas and defined them with a lot of the small details. In the end, I was really happy with how it came together.
Another huge plus was Rebekah Brandes who is hot and sassy, and a real good casting by yourself?
Rebekah was a huge find!
We were a non-SAG film as a condition of our funding, so we didn’t have the chance to get any names. But when we found Rebekah, I knew that we found a star. She might not be a household name yet, but she will be soon.
We at HorrorCultFilms like to ask all the talented directors who kindly give up their time to do an interview for three same questions, so moving away from Killer Cut for a moment, can you please tell us one interesting fact about yourself?
I was actually a pre-med student in college… Luckily, my passion for filmmaking pulled me away from that (or was it organic chemistry?).
If you had a chance to spend the evening in a pub talking movies with any director, dead or alive, who would it be and why?
John Ford.
He made so many classic films, in so many different genres, I wouldn’t know where to begin the questions…
Who are your influences?
I have had so many influences as a filmmaker. Mainly all the movies I watched throughout my life… Sitting down and watching movies has always been the best way to “study” film. And every film I have ever seen, both the good ones and the bad ones, have influenced my work.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s, so Spielberg and Lucas had a huge impact. But I also watched a lot of Scorcese in my teens.
But probably my biggest influence were all the films I saw in my college film theory courses at Indiana University. While I did take a class on Hitchcock, a good portion of the films I watched were not the ones you saw at the theatres – Not always easy to sit through, but there was always something in them that you could take away and put to good use.
Back to Midnight Movie-The Killer Cut, there is an argument that the Slash genre is dead, especially after the flop of Scre4m, it seems that many fans are sick of seeing these masked fiends killing teenagers, yet for me personally I never get tired of it. What I loved about your movie is that it plays with fans expectations. For instance we get a character who is set up to be the good one but then is killed, its a freshness that sparkles in an age of same old, was this an intended plot vice to play with the emotions of the viewer?
I tried to play a lot with our audiences expectations in Midnight Movie. We would lead you down a path to the expected, then pull the rug out from underneath you.
Who we kill off and when is not the usual path. It was a way of telling our audience that anything goes…
The ending of the film is the same kind of thing. Whatever you were expecting, will most likely not happen.
I also saw a nod to The Shining with Caretaker Halloran, who rushed to that hotel to save that poor boy but was met by an axe? He too was set up to be this hero but was killed off with ease, was this scene in your mind when you wrote about that certain character?
I love The Shining. And yes, when he gets it in the face, it is a huge nod to Caretaker Halloran.
In fact there are load of nods to classics of the genre, most notably Psycho, I mean there is one kill where do not see a it but the audience watching the film do, all these homage’s suggest you are a real horror fan?
I love horror movies and I wink at a lot of my favorites in Midnight Movie. It would be tough to make a horror movie about a horror movie and not comment on the experience. Some of my references are right out there, plain as day. But others, like The Shining reference you mentioned, are a bit more subtle.
When it came to the violence and gore level of Midnight Movie, I wanted the kills to get better as the movie went on. If the movie’s marquee kill starts the film, it makes it tough because you have little place to go from there.
So I decided to set up the kills in the movie to mirror the history of horror. In the beginning, you see just before and just after, like early Hollywood. But as the decades moved on, Hollywood’s kills got more and more gory. So do the kills in Midnight Movie.
And we get all the way to the “torture porn” level… And while it is by far the creepiest scene in the movie, there is a surprisingly small amount of gore. Just goes to show you that the mind will fill in the blanks in a far worse way than a filmmaker can.
How do you feel about the state of the horror we are seeing. Midnight Movie has this old fashioned style which many fans of old will love, but it seems these days you need a character to be holding a camcorder to make a successful horror film?
The video camera POV is a phase…
But horror movies have always been a direct reaction to the social fears of the times because what scares an audience today will most likely not scare them tomorrow.
Unlike a lot of other genres, horror movies speak to the fears of today. They are scary because of the world we live in. In the 50s, we were afraid of communism. The movies of the time speak to those fears. Do they play the same today? No. Some have stood the test of time, but they are the rare exception.
Really, horror movies have always been hit or miss. For every good one, there have always been a slew of bad ones. And when there is a successful horror film, it spawns dozens of imitations trying to ride its coat tails. Today is certainly no exception. You have to watch out.
While the onslaught of horror remakes is a bit disconcerting, you have to realize that it isn’t just with horror movies. The studios are looking back in the archives to find any kind of a brand. Making old tv shows into movies or remaking an old movie is working because people are going to see them.
Sure, some of them are good and deserve to be rewarded, But too many of them were not thought out enough or needed a few more rewrites. Really, the only way to stop this trend, to get original stories back to the forefront, is to vote with your wallet.
The success of films like Paranormal Activity are great. Not only was it an original story, it did not have the gloss of the recent horror remakes. And whether or not you liked it, it really touched a nerve with audiences.
I hope that served as a wake up call for the studios. There is a market for new stories and the next great horror film is probably going to come from another unknown.
One bright spot in horror is that television seems to have embraced the genre in a big way – The Walking Dead, True Blood, The Killing. Really, that is where I see the real creativity happening. As fans of the genre, we have to make sure to support good horror wherever it is…
And what of these re-makes, would you be happy in a few years time seeing Midnight Movie being re-made with a bigger budget but with no input from yourself?
My guess is that something close to Midnight Movie will be done on a bigger scale by the studios. It is too fun of a concept not to…
Would I be upset if I’m not a part of it? Doubts. But I’d love for Midnight Movie to have been an influence…
Midnight Movie originally won 2 awards at the Chicago Horror Film Festival you must have been really proud considering it was your debut film?
Because we had a distributer so early in the process, we didn’t play that many festivals. The Chicago Horror Film Festival was our first… And yes, I was extremely proud that we won Best Feature Film. Especially considering that Chicago is my hometown.
Any chance of Midnight Movie II-Redford strikes back?
A Midnight Movie sequel??? That is totally up to the horror fans out there. Bigfoot is actually testing the waters with The Killer Cut. If it does well, I think that the sequel will happen. So if you want to see Radford back again, you need to start spreading the word that the The Killer Cut is available. I have some great ideas of where to take the story, so I hope I get the chance.
So what next for you? Another horror, maybe another slasher?
As a screenwriter, I have a thriller that is just about to go into production in China. It is like Eagle Eye meets The Usual Suspects. There are a lot of kick ass moments in this one and I can’t wait to see how they pull them off. And since that movie will be for the Chinese market, I’m hoping that the English language version of this script will be my next directing project.
I also have several other scripts that are about to go out, and they cover a wide array of genres. My personal favorite is a big sci-fi movie about the Telepatrol – a crack and hush-hush security team that is sent to catch mutations created by the new mass-transit marvel. Sort of Aliens meets The Fly.
Of course, I have a few horror scripts and I am really excited about a rewrite I just finished – Friday, Bloody Friday. I learned a lot from Midnight Movie’s single location and this script really takes that concept to a new level. It’s about a small town Sheriff’s station that turns into a night of terror when a group of college kids are trapped inside with a psycho cop picking them off one by one. It has a pretty high gore quotient and should be a great time for the effects crew.
Really, with all these potential projects in the works, even I don’t know which one will be next for me. But I’ll certainly keep you posted…
Can I just say this has been a real pleasure for us at HorrorCultFilms to meet you Jack Messitt and we wish you all the best for the future and hope that one day we can do this again? Is there anything final you would like to tell the readers?
I made Midnight Movie: The Killer Cut for the fans and I took a lot of their comments, both good and bad, into the editing room with me.
Really, The Killer Cut is a totally different movie than the original – much closer to my original vision. So if you haven’t seen the movie before, this is the version to watch. And if you think you have already seen Midnight Movie, I guarantee that you haven’t seen it like this.
Thank you Jack and we hope Midnight Movie becomes the success it fully deserves!
One of the best things from the above interview is hearing what Jack Messitt used to do as a young lad during the summer holidays. There is something quite surreal and great that while kids were building secret den’s, playing football in the park or chasing after their first sweetheart, our Jack was off with a bunch of friends, camera in one hand, fake blood in the other, and making glorious films like Friday 13th Part 26, and just having a laugh and a blast, something that all film fans would wish to do!
On hearing that bit of information, you kind of feel more appreciation towards Midnight Movie, the directing debut from Messitt which has just been released in a new form (more on this in a bit), because you realise that the film is in fact made by a man whose love for the genre is there for all to see. You do not decide to make your own Jason film if you are not a fan of the character and the genre to begin with, and all those years ago, I bet he never once thought he be doing a film for real.
What did Mr Messitt think when he turned up on the first day of filming? Here is a honest and great friendly man living a dream that we all wish to do! I have always wanted to make a Halloween film, to make Michael Myers scary again, to get everyone talking about Haddonfield like they did all those years ago, and even now I feel I could have done a better job than the horrid H2, but I have never had the ambition or drive to make it happen. Messitt like Stevan Mena before him are two people I admire. They are doing the very things that makes me appreciate all the hard work that has gone into making such movies like Midnight Movie and MaleVolence simply because these are films made by die hard fans. These are not people in it for the money but for love and to give fans hope that the genre is not dead, for Messitt there was probably not much difference between making Midnight Movie and doing those Friday 13th films, apart from a bit of pressure, being older and the glorious sun was not shining on his back. The love that made him want to get up and make those films is still there has judged by the entire running frame of Midnight Movie, this is a slasher film made by a fan for the fans, and I doubt not many will complain!
HorrorCultFilms has not been around long for us to have reviewed the original Midnight Movie. It came out in 2008 back when the seven of us who created HCF we all writing on another forum and just starting the road to friendship that would lead to the birth of this website. By saying “the original!”, I am not saying this is a re-make, more of a touched up version, some extra scenes, better effects and a overall better quality. This is the version Messitt always intended and its finally out to buy even though its only available on Region 1.
To comment on the new version I need to tell the readers a bit about the plot, which you may not know. Well it’s all about the film “The Dark Beneath” a low budget horror film directed by Ted Radford who also wrote and starred in it! The story goes is that Radford became obsessed with his role and was committed to an institution. Thirty-five years later in true Myers style, he escapes with rumours of the entire hospital staff vanishing with him Now it’s five years later, and The Dark Beneath is being shown for the first time since Radford’s strange escape. With the cinema packed, the film rolling onto the screen, all things are calm until some of the teenagers in the audience realise that one of their friends are somehow in the film and is getting killed by the psychopath. Soon their nightmare is coming true, fiction becomes reality, because the bogeyman on screen is coming out of the picture and with no escape, the few remaining have to fight for their very survival.
Regular readers know that I find it hard to criticise films of this nature simply because of the respect I have for the makers. Yes you do get bad films now and again and yes I do have a very good rant simply because many are made without a care or thought for the fan but like MaleVolence, Midnight Movie shines because of the respect it shows to the film fan. Its pure slash through out and a huge step up from the much high profile films of recent years like the re-makes of Prom Night and co, simply because while its basic concept is not new, Messitt does try to differ some of the angles to make the expected come across unexpected which makes the viewing all the more pleasant!
Of course the film within a film is not new to the horror field. While many have compared this film to the classic Demons and also there are echoes to the splendid In The Mouth Of Madness, I did see more similarties to the Australian horror shock CUT which had Kylie Minogue killed off in the first 15 minutes. Slash fans will probably notice that it as well but I am taking a punt here and say they will find Midnight Movie more enjoyable simply because the boogyman is better.
Radford is a beast of a killer and most importantly he is original. It helps that the mask he wears is friggin cool because that part of the film is important to fans in a weird way. Have a cool mask you half way there, just see the furore of H2 with Myers not wearing one to see how fans are passionate about this angle so its safe to say Radford looks the part! He also carries possibly the best weapon see in a long time, a spiral device which comes across more scary than a kitchen knife. There is also a supernatural slant to the character that is not often used in the genre. These days its all teenagers hiding behind the mask, but this goes back to the old days of when Jason gets knifed, shot, stabbed and burnt yet still keeps on coming, which again suggests that Messitt really can not leave the summer holidays behind!
Another plus are the creative kill scenes that sparkle with ambition. There are no dull killings here, just a bloodbath of high quality that will delight fans and again because of this the film rises from its obvious low budget. The cast are capable not ground breaking but do their job well, apart from the stunning and very promising Rebekah Brandes who steals every scene she is in.
The direction of Messitt is superb, there are some angle shots that will make you sit up in awe from the talent emerging and there is no doubt that we at HCF will be keeping an eye out for this young man who seems to be on the path for stardom. The only negative I can take from the film is that the film moves away from the slash angle to torture porn for a brief spell which everyone knows I am so tired of seeing in horror.
So is the killer cut better than the original?. Well you can notice the difference, the film looks richer and more professional even though the amateurish look of the original was never a problem. It also runs smoother with a tighter running time, The Killer Cut is a marked improvement simply because it looks and feels the way the original should have. The main problem it might have is that while it offers enough to warrant a second purchase, fans of the original may not see the whole point of this re-issue simply because they love the original no matter how it was like. What they wanted most of all was a sequel and its strange that this new version holds all the cards, because if it sells well, then maybe in two years time we be talking to Messitt about Redford Strikes Back, which is a prospect that thrills me.
At the end of the day you realise that Midnight Movie is a film born in the wrong age. This could have easily been released in the 80’s during the slasher boom because it will no doubt get lost in the new craze of Camcorder horror and re-makes. The best thing I can say to Messitt after watching Midnight Movie-The Killer Cut is that it knocks the spots off the Friday re-make in terms of quality, thrills and enjoyment and for that he should be proud that he has created a new bogeyman who could become a new icon of horror.
Also, maybe, just maybe, all those years ago when Messitt was filming Friday 13th Part 26, he was actually practising for the real thing, because if Hollywood is obsessed with re-making all classics, then if they decide to make Jason Pt 2, then it won’t harm them to look at Messitt for duties, because by reading this interview and watching Midnight Movie, they may have a perfect candidate to bring some class back to Camp Crystal Lake!
Another blinding interview mate, my God your getting good at this. I can really see your love of this film too. I have seen the original and quite liked it, but have not seen the Killer Cut. I shall look on Amazon for a region 1 copy.