Video Scripts: Terrifier, My Little Eye, Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein

Three more of the videos that have been written by Cody.

I have been writing news articles and film reviews for ArrowintheHead.com for several years, and for the last few years I have also been writing scripts for videos that are released through the site's YouTube channel JoBlo Horror Originals. Recently I started writing video scripts for the JoBlo Originals YouTube channel as well. I have previously shared the videos I wrote that covered 

- Frailty, Dead Calm, and Shocker 

- 100 Feet, Freddy vs. Jason, and Pin 

- Night Fare, Poltergeist III, and Hardware 

- A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, and It's Alive

- Dark City, Mute Witness, and The Wraith

- Army of Darkness, Cannibal Holocaust, and Basket Case 

- Halloween timeline, The Pit, and Body Parts

- Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, and The Thing (2011)

- The Monster Squad, Trick or Treat, and Maximum Overdrive

- A Fish Called Wanda, Night of the Creeps, and Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI

- Race with the Devil, Speed, and Romancing the Stone

- Maniac Cop 3, WarGames, and Night of the Living Dead (1990)

- The Rock, Witchboard, and Friday the 13th Part 2

- Intruder, Saving Private Ryan, and Big Trouble in Little China

- The First Power, Psycho (1960), and Hot Fuzz

- Cat People (1982), Bride of Re-Animator, and Con Air

- Moulin Rouge (2001), The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 (1985), and The Stuff

- Children of the Corn (1984), Bone Tomahawk, and Fight Club

- The Departed, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, and Ginger Snaps

- Silver Bullet, Last Action Hero, and Children of Men

- FleshEater, Christmas Vacation, and Lethal Weapon

- The Thing (1982), Monkey Shines, and Friday the 13th (1980)

- P2, Lethal Weapon 2, and Frozen (2010)

- Lethal Weapon 3, The Blob (1988), and Lethal Weapon 4

- The Fast and the Furious, Dance of the Dead, and The Rage: Carrie 2

- Puppet Master, 2 Fast 2 Furious, and Castle Freak (1995)

- The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Fast & Furious, and Halloween III: Season of the Witch

- Fast Five, Dog Soldiers, and Tremors 3: Back to Perfection

- Drag Me to Hell, 3D '80s Horror, and unmade Mission: Impossible sequels

- Sleepaway Camp, Tremors 4: The Legend Begins, and 2001 Maniacs

- Gremlins, Furious 6, and Lone Wolf McQuade

- The Last Showing, Grindhouse, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)

- Christmas Horror, Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys, and Furious 7

- Drive (2011), 1986 horror comedies, and Alien: Romulus

- Murder Party, Twisters, and Hellraiser

- Black Phone 2, Super 8, Red State

- Longlegs, The Mummy (2017), Dead-Alive

- Mission: Impossible 8, When a Stranger Calls (2006), MCU Blade

- Stardust, Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, Gladiator II

- Salem's Lot remake, Versus, Judgment Night

- Scream 7, Prom Night (2008), The Mummy (1999)

- Terrifier 3, Link, The Mummy Returns

- Parenthood, Nobody 2, Adventures in Babysitting

- Final Destination 6, Ginger Snaps Back, Nosferatu

- Jurassic World Rebirth, The Gate, The Electric State

Three more videos that I have written the scripts for can be seen below, two for the JoBlo Horror Originals channel and one for the JoBlo Upcoming Movies channel.

First, I dug into the development of Damien Leone's Terrifier for the WTF Happened to This Horror Movie series: 

Terrifier script:

Art the Clown. He’s a homicidal maniac. He’s a supernatural being. He’s disgusting. He’s amusing. He’s the latest cinematic madman to be added to the ranks of genre icons. And he’s been around longer than you might realize. He’s been lurking around for a couple of decades. His breakthrough moment came with the 2016 movie Terrifier – and we’re going to examine that film... and the bad clown at the heart of it all... with this episode of What Happened to This Horror Movie?

Writer/director Damien Leone first brought Art the Clown into the world with a short film called The 9th Circle, which was shot in 2006. The story centers on a young woman who’s creeped out by a strange clown in a train station. The clown ends up attacking her, delivering her to a coven of witches that are in direct contact with Satan himself. Leone never intended for Art to be the lead villain of the short. But he found that everyone who watched it thought Art was the best thing about it. So, a few years later, he decided to make a short that was all about the clown. That twenty minute short was called Terrifier. It follows a woman who’s driving down an isolated road when she crosses paths with Art at a gas station. And he proceeds to relentlessly pursue her for the rest of the night. Attacking, torturing, and disfiguring her. All just for his own amusement.

The Terrifier short caught the attention of a producer who wanted to include it in an anthology film. The rest of the anthology would be made up of shorts directed by other filmmakers. But the producer wanted to shoot new footage of Art the Clown to insert into those other shorts. Leone didn’t like that idea, so he pitched his own: he would build an anthology out of The 9th Circle, Terrifier, and a new story that deals with an alien invasion but includes a nod to Art. Titled All Hallows’ Eve, that anthology was released in 2013. And by the time it hit home video, Leone was already planning to make a feature film that would serve as a showcase for Art. This character that seemed to fascinate anyone who watched the short films. He made the monster mash Frankenstein vs. the Mummy first, but then he circled back to his killer clown.

Speaking with Bloody Flicks, Leone confirmed that he drew inspiration from multiple existing characters when he created Art. He said, “Pennywise from Stephen King’s It was the killer clown king even back then. So I knew if I was going to step into that arena, I was going to have to do something drastically different. If you compare Art to Tim Curry’s Pennywise side by side, you’ll notice they are almost polar opposites. Pennywise is colorful, Art is black and white. Pennywise has hair, Art is bald. Pennywise speaks, Art is silent. Pennywise doesn’t use weapons, Art carries around a garbage bag filled with weapons. I also took personality traits from my favorite slashers and attributed them to Art. For instance, Art is essentially the silent stalker à la Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers, but with Freddy Krueger’s sense of humor. Art is ultimately my tribute to everything I loved about slasher movies growing up. I wanted to take familiar elements that we all embraced from American horror movies, combined with the graphic violence and atmosphere of Giallo films. Hopefully creating something fresh and exciting.”

The Terrifier feature was an independent production, with producer Phil Falcone providing funding. Some more money was raised through an IndieGogo campaign – but that campaign fell short of its fifteen thousand dollar goal. Only four thousand, three hundred and sixty dollars were contributed. Leone went ahead and made his movie anyway. Working with a budget that was around fifty-five thousand dollars. This is a good example for other indie filmmakers to follow. Make your movie, even if an attempt at crowdfunding falls short. Just because a fundraising campaign didn’t generate much interest doesn’t mean the project isn’t going to be successful.

And just because the Terrifier feature was going to be an hour longer than the short didn’t mean the plot had to get overly complicated. Leone crafted a very simple story for the film. It starts with two young women, Tara and Dawn, heading home from a party on Halloween night. They decide to stop by a pizza place so they can sober up a bit. And in walks Art the Clown. Once Tara and Dawn have caught his attention, he dedicates himself to ruining their night. He stalks, tortures, and kills them – and pretty much everyone else he happens across. There is no intricate back story given for Art, no motivations. There’s nothing going on here but sadistic mayhem. Extended stalk and slash sequences, with Art doing things that are weird, gross, and disturbing. Leone’s approach was to make the movie feel like a fever dream, with a relentless sense of dread. And he succeeded.

Jenna Kanell was cast as Tara, with Catherine Corcoran as Dawn. Samantha Scaffidi plays Tara’s sister Victoria, who gets pulled into the horrific events. Some of the other victims include characters played by Pooya Mohseni, Matt McAllister, Michael Leavy, Gino Cafarelli, and Erick Zamora. Katie Maguire, who played a babysitter in the All Hallows’ Eve wraparound story, also shows up. Playing a different character, but one who still has some very bad luck.

The project hit a bit of a speed bump when Mike Giannelli, who had played Art in the short films, decided not to return. He was replaced by David Howard Thornton, a stage actor with a background in mime and physical comedy. That experience was greatly beneficial to his performance, as Thornton was able to make the silent killer even more unnerving. Leone told Clout Communications, “Everything people loved about Art was a testament to how Mike Giannelli portrayed him and now I had to start from scratch. Very frightening indeed. But as luck would have it, David came in for an audition one day and my producer and I immediately knew this was our guy. David pantomimed the act of stabbing someone to death and sawing their head off with great exuberance and glee. He’s also extremely animated, tall and thin. I always envisioned Art to be of a more slender build and I was excited to see what little quirks and nuances David could bring to the character. Working with David was a total delight from start to finish.”

Terrifier was made specifically to let viewers watch Art do his thing for a longer period of time. We might connect with other characters and hope they’ll be able to get away from this insane clown. Because nobody here deserves what Art does to them. But it wouldn’t serve the viewer well to get too attached to any of them... because chances are high that Art is going to make a bloody mess of them. The film serves not only as a showcase for Art the Clown, but also for gory special effects. Which were provided by Leone himself. He had been interested in special effects since he was a kid, especially the work of Tom Savini. That’s what got him into filmmaking. And he proved to be quite capable of making nauseating death scenes. Turning Terrifier into a gore-drenched throwback to the ‘80s glory days when Savini was splashing blood across the screen on a regular basis.

The Terrifier short had a scratched up, Grindhouse-style look to it. But Leone and cinematographer George Steuber decided to ditch that aesthetic for the feature. Figuring viewers would get tired of the fake scratches very quickly. Steuber was able to give the movie an old school look without beating up the image. The story is clearly set in modern day. The characters use cell phones and laptops. They take selfies. But the movie still feels like a remnant from a time gone by.

The finished film made its festival debut in 2016. And ended up securing a distribution deal through Dread Central Presents and Epic Pictures. Genre fans began taking note of it right away. Then it reached a wider audience through streaming services like Netflix, Prime Video, and Tubi. Minds were blown. Stomachs were turned. And Art the Clown began gathering a large fan base. Leone always felt that Terrifier had the potential to lead into at least two sequels... and in 2019, he started working on Terrifier 2. Which had a higher budget than its predecessor; a little over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That film was released in 2022, and performed better than expected during its theatrical run. Opening the door to a Terrifier 3... which had a budget of a couple million dollars. And did so well at the box office, it humiliated the under-performing Joker sequel. 

While we’re speaking of sequels, we should mention that All Hallows’ Eve spawned a franchise as well. Although the adventures of Art continue elsewhere, the All Hallows’ Eve sequels are a collection of short films from multiple different filmmakers. Just like the producer’s original vision for the first movie, before it ended up being made entirely by Leone.  That movie led to Leone making the Terrifier feature. And as the series goes on, maybe we’ll see one of the sequels launch a filmmaker to a similar level of success. Either way, we have two separate franchises to enjoy.

So what happened with Terrifier is that Damien Leone came up with a character who appealed to viewers to a surprising degree. Even the filmmaker himself was surprised by how interested people were in Art the Clown. But he went with it, endeavoring to give the people what they wanted. They asked for more, so he gave them more. And even though he made it disgusting, people loved it. There have been ups and downs along the way, but the Terrifier franchise is a great success story. And an example of how to build on success.

This is shaping up to be a substantial franchise. Art the Clown is still out there. He’s more popular than ever, with fans who just can’t seem to be enough of him. There will be more Terrifier movies. Leone has said that he wants to wrap up the story before Art wears out his welcome. Aiming to end things with Terrifier 4 or 5... But he also knows that you can’t keep a good slasher down. Especially when they have a supernatural element to them. They have tried to end all of the major slasher franchises. But the iconic killers just keep finding new ways to come back. And the same thing could wind up happening with Art. We might be seeing this guy carve up new victims for a long time to come. So keep your stomachs strong, because there’s always more blood and guts to be spilled.

For the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw series, I wrote about director Marc Evans' My Little Eye: 

My Little Eye script: 

INTRO: This is the fictional story of five strangers... picked to live in a house... and have their lives taped... to find out what happens... when people stop being polite... and start getting murdered... My Little Eye. And if you haven’t seen this one, it’s the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw.

CREATORS / CAST: Reality shows are nearly unavoidable these days, but back in the ‘90s they were still rare. Aside from MTV’s The Real World and episodes of Cops, we hadn’t been exposed to much reality programming yet. And when word started leaking out about the development of shows like Big Brother and Survivor, they sounded odd. A little twisted. And potentially dangerous. Big Brother was offering the chance to watch its contestants on 24/7 live streams. Survivor was taking its contestants out to isolated locations and leaving them to provide basic survival necessities for themselves. While the concept of Big Brother just seemed weird, the description of Survivor stirred up real concern that somebody could die on that show. We know now that everything has turned out fine. Survivor has aired for over forty seasons to date. And Big Brother has proven to be so popular that more than sixty countries have put together their own version of the show. Resulting in over five hundred seasons airing across the last few decades.

It was when we were hearing the first rumblings of Big Brother and Survivor that writer David Hilton realized these reality shows were presenting the perfect set-up for psychological thrills. And there were also web cam streams online to provide more inspiration. A treatment was written that made its way into the hands of director Marc Evans. Who had gotten his start in TV before moving into features with the drama House of America. And the crime thriller Resurrection Man. Neither of which had been successful. So when Evans started developing the My Little Eye script with Hilton, he saw this as a make or break project. His directing career depended on it. If this one failed, he might never direct another movie. James Watkins was brought in to work on the screenplay alongside Hilton. And once a couple drafts had been written, the project was pitched to Working Title. A British film studio that’s a subsidiary of Universal. By then, it was the summer of 2000. Big Brother and Survivor had both made it to American airwaves. And right around the time the first season of Big Brother aired its finale, Working Title gave My Little Eye the green light.

The screenplay crafted by Hilton and Watkins begins with an online ad. Five contestants are being sought for a reality webcast. If they spend six months living in an isolated house that’s full of cameras, they’ll win one million dollars. There won’t be any competitions or evictions. All they have to do is live in the house – a place so far out in the middle of nowhere that they’ll be taken there by helicopter. Occasionally, supplies like food, booze, and cigarettes will be delivered to their door. But they will also have to fend for themselves, setting snares for animals in the surrounding forest. Hunting deer. Stuff like that. And if anyone leaves during that six month period, everyone loses. No one will get a single dollar.

We’re shown clips from the audition tapes for the five characters we’ll be following through the film. Stephen O'Reilly, who works primarily as a composer these days, was cast as Danny. The sensitive guy who’s into woodworking and was raised by his grandfather. His main goal is to be able to take his grandpa on a nice vacation once he gets out of the house. Sean C. W. Johnson, who may be best known for his work in the Power Rangers franchise, was cast as Matt. The good-looking guy who says he’s there for the challenge. Jennifer Sky was cast as Charlie, who’s on a quest to become famous. Sky hasn’t done much acting in the last twenty years, but at the time she had a following from her roles on the TV shows Cleopatra 2525 and Xena: Warrior Princess. She’s also known for having a short-lived marriage to Alex Band, the lead singer in the rock group The Calling and the son of Full Moon founder Charles Band. For genre fans, Kris Lemche may be the most well-known cast member among the contestants. Around this time, he was also in Final Destination 3 and the Canadian werewolf classic Ginger Snaps... And if you want to spend a day just watching Lemche be awesome, Ginger Snaps, My Little Eye, and Final Destination 3 would make for a great triple feature. 

The character of Emma is the obvious horror movie final girl. She auditions to be on this webcast because she thinks it will be a positive life experience. A way for her to learn about herself. How nice and wholesome. Of course she’s going to make it to the end. As he was putting the movie together, Marc Evans was drawing inspiration from John Carpenter. There are hints of The Thing in the film’s snowbound, isolated setting and the fact that the characters feel increasingly paranoid. But he has also cited the works of Roman Polanski as a source of inspiration. And part of the reason why he cast Laura Regan as Emma is the fact that she had a Mia Farrow vibe to her.

Evans told Jigsaw Lounge the Polanski influence can be found in “the atmosphere. Because a lot of his stuff relates to a house becoming a sort of malign presence. Repulsion, and Rosemary’s Baby as well.” He liked that Regan was reminiscent of Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby because “that character was in the same sort of position of not knowing what was happening to her.”

Regan has gone on to do more genre work, in the films They, Hollow Man 2, and Dead Silence. And a lot of television. O’Reilly, Johnson, Sky, Lemche, and Regan play the five contestants. But two other characters show up as the story goes on. Nick Mennell, who would later be killed by Michael Myers in Rob Zombie’s Halloween and Jason Voorhees in Platinum Dunes’ Friday the 13th, plays a cop. And Bradley Cooper, who has since been nominated for many Oscars, makes a brief appearance as Travis, a guy who says he got lost while skiing through the forest. But can he be trusted?

That’s the problem in this place, it’s never clear who you can trust. Knowing it wouldn’t be interesting to show the six months the characters spend in the house, Evans and the writers jump straight to the final week. That’s when everything starts to fall apart. The furnace breaks down. Food isn’t being delivered anymore. It seems like a stalker might be lurking at the edge of the forest. A message left on a frosty window and a bloody hammer on a pillow reference a traumatic incident from Emma’s past. Danny receives a devastating letter from home. The outsider Travis says he has never even heard of this webcast. A supply delivery contains nothing but a gun and some bullets. Is it taunting Rex about his father’s suicide? Is The Company trying to drive the contestants out of the house so they won’t have to pay them? Would The Company go so far as to kill them?

BACKGROUND: Filming on My Little Eye took place in Nova Scotia throughout the months of March and April in 2001. With sets being built inside an abandoned leisure center. To achieve the webcast look, the movie was shot on mini-DV camcorders. And since the house is meant to have cameras all over the place, much like the Big Brother house, there were around eight cameras covering each scene. So once Evans was in the editing room, any moment would have eight angles to choose from. And he could pick which angles he thought a webcast viewer would click on. 

As he put together the sound design, another filmmaker became a source of inspiration: David Lynch. Because, as Evans put it, Lynch “just knows to put you in this place that’s really strange that you’ve never been to before, with a masterful use of sound. He was a big influence.” The sound was recorded normally, then beat up in post-production. To drop in aural disturbances, the constant sound of whirring cameras, and low industrial rumbles. Creating an atmosphere meant to get under the viewer’s skin.

The aim was to get the movie as close to a ninety minute running time as possible. Evans wanted it to be the cinematic equivalent of a thrash metal single. Short, effective, and nasty. But it proved to be very difficult to get the film down to ninety minutes. The first rough cut was four hours long. Evans started to lose confidence in the film as he went through the editing process. So Working Title suggested holding a test screening in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, that screening was held on September 11, 2001. And, understandably, the test results were terrible. Nothing was going to go over well with an audience on 9/11. For a while, the companies behind My Little Eye didn’t know what to do with it. It was so dark and unnerving. Was there any place for it in the post-9/11 market? It looked like it might go straight to video. Then they found distributor Momentum Pictures, which believed in the film and wanted to give it a theatrical release. And when a woman had a panic attack at a festival screening in Scotland, that just made it clear that Momentum had made a great decision when they acquired this movie.

Made on a budget of three million, My Little Eye earned nine million during its theatrical run. So it was a solid success. And when Universal brought it to DVD, they did some interesting things with it. An audio track called Conversations of the Company allowed viewers to eavesdrop on what members of The Company are saying to each other throughout the film. In a UK release, viewers could choose to watch a version of the film that was presented as if it was being viewed on the Company-run website. The interactive mode even lets you see certain scenes from multiple different angles. This includes the Travis and Charlie sex scene, so it proved to be a popular option for some viewers.

WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: It’s cool that there’s a Company audio track and an interactive website version of the movie. But My Little Eye didn’t need those enhancements to be entertaining and intriguing. Evans put a lot of effort into creating a dark, unsettling atmosphere for his movie – and it paid off. When you’re watching My Little Eye, the imagery and sound really make you feel like you’re in the house with the contestants. Stuck in the middle of nowhere. With something dangerous lurking outside. Evans and the writers did an excellent job building up the paranoia. And the cast did great work bringing their characters to life. That’s not to say all of the characters themselves are great. Some of them definitely could have been given more depth and made more interesting. But we still get drawn into the situation and want to see them come out of it okay. And if they don’t all come out of it okay, there are some expendable ones we wouldn’t mind seeing removed from the story.

As mentioned, Kris Lemche is awesome in this movie. Making Rex the most fun character of the bunch to watch. While Emma worries about her past, Danny and Matt hang around being bland, and Charlies does her “horny girl wants fame” thing... Rex tries to keep things under control for as long as possible, in hopes of getting his money. And when things start getting too strange, it’s Rex who is able to start figuring out exactly what’s going on.

BEST SCENE(S): Rex is the MVP of the contestants. But the standout sequence of the film is the appearance by Bradley Cooper. Paranoia is already running high by the time his character Travis shows up at the door. Things have been getting increasingly uncomfortable in the house. Then this guy arrives, saying he got lost skiing. His GPS died and he’s not sure how to get back to his truck. Now it’s dark out and he needs shelter. So the contestants take him in – and he soon reveals that he has never heard of the webcast they’re supposedly on. Even though he’s a programmer who says he lives on the internet when he’s not out skiing in the middle of nowhere. This gets the contestants more worried than they already were. Travis, on the other hand, seems surprisingly at ease. He quickly sets out to seduce Charlie, which is not a challenge. And not only do the cameras everywhere not bother him... he even gives them suspicious looks. And when he speaks directly to one of the cameras the following the morning, that’s when it becomes very clear: there’s something bad going on here. Bradley Cooper is only in the movie for around nine minutes, but he makes an impact.

PARTING SHOT: My Little Eye makes for an impactful viewing experience overall. Even if you don’t remember the details of what happens in it. Beyond the fact that people get murdered. Somehow, by someone. The imagery and the atmosphere can stick with you for years. Marc Evans took the concept and made it into a very effective psychological thriller. And its success saved his directing career. He has continued working steadily ever since this movie was released in 2002. Bouncing back and forth between feature films and episodes of TV shows. He has more projects lined up, making their way through pre-production. And it’s all because of My Little Eye.

I also put together an article on everything we know about the Frankenstein movie Guillermo del Toro is making for Netflix, and that served as the basis for this video:

More video scripts have been written, so another batch of videos will be shared here on Life Between Frames eventually. In the meantime, keep an eye on JoBlo Horror Originals and JoBlo Originals!