The SLIME CITY MASSACRE Design Gallery

With less than a week of pre-propuction remaining before principal photography starts on SLIME CITY MASSACRE (yikes!), I thought I'd shine a spotlight on some of the other talented individuals working on this film. So far, I've concentrated on special effects and some members of the seven-man team realizing them, because I love monsters so much. Sometimes I have to tear myself away from Andrew Lavin's SFX lab to go hiome and do my producer's chores. Making monsters or crunching numbers, making monsters or crunching numbers, making monsters or crunching numbers...

Production design is a critical aspect of filmmaking, especially in period pieces or projects dealing with the fantastic. It's also an area where most low budget films fall short, partly due to budgetary restrictions and partly due to a lack of resourcefulness on the part of the filmmakers. SLIME CITY MASSACRE is set during two time periods: in 1959, at a soupl kitchen run by the chrismatic cult leader Zachary Devon (Robert C. Sabin); and in midtown Manhattan, in a neighborhood known as "Slime City," seven years after a terrorist bomb has wiped out lower Manhattan. We're shooting in an abandoned postal facility adjacent to Buffalo's Central Terminal Station.

The rust belt is ideally suited for my post apocalyptic vision, and I actually created my screenplay around this and other nearby locations. On the surface, these buildings seem "ready made" for shooting, with no art direction required. But I want this film to be special, so I enlisted the aid of several talented people.

Emil Novak is SCM's production designer. He designed the sign for Zachary Devon's Soup Kitchen (digitally comped onto the actual location by R.J. Sevin); the labels for Zachary's "Home Brewed Elixir" and "Himalayan Yogurt"; a doll that holds a special place in my heart (there are numerous references in the script to PLANET OF THE APES, BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES, and THE OMEGA MAN); a foreboding metal door that leads to Zachary's wine cellar; and a caged gate that admits our four "heroes" into their fortified living quarters. Emil is also responsible for several other odds and ends, such as props and moving debris around to be more camera friendly. A filmmaker himself, he understands what looks good to the camera.

Eric Mache is an old friend of mine who's created numerous movie posters, DVD covers, and comic book covers. For the original SLIME CITY, he created the movie poster for the midnight movie theatrical run, which was used for the second VHS release and the first DVD release. He also created the first JOHNNY GRUESOME painting, which he presented to me on the set of Frank Henenlotter's BRAIN DAMAGE, and poster art for UNDYING LOVE and NAKED FEAR. He also created the faux cover for FLESH CONTROL, the book authored by Zachary Devon, so it seemed appropriate for him to design the cover for that book in SCM. In all matters of design (including special effects), I've freed my team from having to stick to the design elements we used back in 1986; I want them to set their imaginations loose, so the new and improved cover for FLESH CONTROL is radically different from the first one, and serves to paint Zachary as more of a beatnik than an evil sorcerer. Eric has a role in SCM, too: he's one of five mercenaries hired by a greedy developer (played by Roy Frumkes) to rid Slime City of its homeless population.

I'm not a big believer in storyboards. I storyboarded the original SLIME CITY from beginning to end - and through the storyboards away after the first day of shooting. They're very restrictive on a director. On UNDYING LOVE I used a shot list, and on NAKED FEAR I winged it. But we have a lot of special effects and action in this new film, so I thought I'd better have some jsut to be safe. As a writer-producer-director taking care of a three-year-old, I didn't have time to draw them myself, so I pressed artist Shannon "Spidey" Wheeler into service. In the sequence present in the gallery, two obnoxious prick fraternity brother (is there any other kind?) videotape a bum as they beat him. Two "Slime Heads" arrive and issue slimy justice. Shannon has also helped Emil with some heavy moving and is tackling some additional design challenges.

Another aspect of design is costume design. We brought Sunny Halecki in as our costume designer almost at the last minute. Her primary responsibility is to outfit four of our main characters (played by Jennifer Bihl, Debbie Rochon and Lee Perkins), as well as several of our supporting characters. Brooke Lewis, who plays Nicole, a prostitute drawn into Zachary's "Coven of Flesh," Kealan Patrick Burke, and Robert Sabin are all providing their own wardrobe; in Brooke's case, this entailed a heathy amount of window shopping. Sunny's work will be ongoing up to and through production, and I won't be able to show you her work until we've started shooting, but you can see her hard at work "deconstructing" and "reconstructing" wardrobe in the gallery.

John Renna, our production manager, has been a big help to Sunny, and has taken on responsibility for several costumes himself: that of The Mayor, a brute he plays himself, and at least eight costumes for our garbage-bags-and-duct tape-and-gas mask-wearing cannibals. Pictured in the gallery are John and Andrew Laviin as they create the costume for Arick Sczymecki, a fellow SFX artist who pkays one of the cannibals.

As we enter the final stretch leading to shooting, it's both exciting and rewarding to see how much work so many people have put into this project, all out of a love for filmmaking. I can't wait to see how this stuff looks in the finsihed film.