Video Scripts: Moulin Rouge, The Hills Have Eyes Part 2, The Stuff
Cody shares a few more videos he wrote for JoBlo YouTube channels.
I have been writing news articles and film reviews for ArrowintheHead.com for several years, and for the last couple 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
Three more videos that I have written the scripts for can be seen below; one for the JoBlo Originals channel and two for the JoBlo Horror Originals channel.
For the non-horror Revisited series, I wrote about Baz Luhrmann's 2001 musical Moulin Rouge:
Moulin Rouge script:
INTRO: Construction on the Eiffel Tower, then the largest man-made structure in the world, was completed in 1889. And that wasn’t the only world-renowned location to open to the public in Paris that year. 1889 is also when the Moulin Rouge cabaret opened in the Montmartre district… and the things that went on in that venue are so legendary, more than a dozen films have been made about it over the decades. The film we’re looking at in this episode of Revisited may be the most popular of the bunch – it’s director Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 Oscar-nominated hit with a very appropriate name: Moulin Rouge!
SET-UP: The Moulin Rouge was named for the windmill on top of the building – a tribute to the fact that several other windmills used to stand in the area. The cabaret was one of the first places in Paris to have electric light, and that light helped lure in patrons of all classes. From the rich to the destitute. After all, it only cost one franc to enter the stucco elephant that stood in the garden. Inside that elephant, patrons could smoke opium while watching belly dancers. And inside the Moulin Rouge, the courtesans were creating the modern form of the can-can dance.
Australian filmmaker Luhrmann was inspired to make a movie set in and around this iconic French location after watching a Bollywood movie during a trip to India. Luhrmann was dazzled by the style of the film – the mixture of comedy, drama, tragedy, and musical sequences. And he was in awe of just how captivated the audience was by what was playing out on the screen. How involved they were in the story. He began to wonder if it would be possible for a Hollywood movie to work for viewers in the same way that Bollywood movie did. Luhrmann was raised by a ballroom dancer, a fact which inspired his feature debut Strictly Ballroom, and has worked extensively in theatre, both as an actor and a director. So he brought a lot of music and theatre knowledge to Moulin Rouge. In addition to classic musicals, vaudeville, and cabaret culture, he has named the Greek tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice, Giacomo Puccini’s opera La bohème, and the Alexandre Dumas story Camille as direct influences on his film.
The story Luhrmann crafted with his frequent collaborator Craig Pearce is set in 1899, ten years into the Moulin Rouge’s long reign as a tourist destination. The character we follow into the mad world of the cabaret is Christian, a young English writer who has come to Paris to immerse himself in the bohemian lifestyle. To be one of the “children of the revolution”. He immediately falls in with a bunch of artists who are planning a play they will put on at the Moulin Rouge… if they can secure a financier. The artists take Christian to the Moulin Rouge after he helps them with the writing of the play. This character is obsessed with love, he believes in it deeply, he wants to write about it. Problem is, he has never been in love before. This changes at the Moulin Rouge. When Christian spots dancer-slash-courtesan Satine, it’s love at first sight. Unfortunately, Satine has been promised to the wealthy Duke of Monroth, who will finance the play Spectacular Spectacular and the cost of converting the Moulin Rouge into a theatre. In exchange, he demands a contract that binds Satine to him exclusively. Christian is able to win Satine’s heart in return, but they have to keep their romance secret. If the Duke finds out Satine is in love with a penniless writer instead of himself, he’ll pull his funding. Spectacular Spectacular won’t happen. Worse yet, the Duke obtains the deed to the Moulin Rouge as part of his deal and could shut the place down completely. After his henchman kills anyone the Duke orders him to.
Luhrmann had recently had great success making a modernized and highly stylized version of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet for 20th Century Fox. As Moulin Rouge began to move forward at the same studio, there was some consideration given to the idea that his Romeo and Juliet star Leonardo DiCaprio might star in this film, too. That idea only lasted as long as it took for Luhrmann, DiCaprio, and a piano player to try to get through a performance of the song “Lean on Me”. DiCaprio said that as soon as he went for a high note, Luhrmann realized he had an atrocious singing voice.
The casting process was extensive, and Luhrmann has teased that he has “audition material of people you wouldn’t believe.” Among the other actors who were considered for the Christian role were Jake Gyllenhaal – who seriously impressed Luhrmann with his singing abilities – and Gyllenhaal’s future Brokeback Mountain co-star Heath Ledger. Courtney Love auditioned for the role of Satine, which ended up going to Nicole Kidman. Ledger got to read with Kidman, and Luhrmann felt they had incredible chemistry, even though Ledger was substantially younger than his potential co-star. But then Ewan McGregor caught the director’s attention. And when he proved that he could sing, he was cast as Christian.
There aren’t any historical figures who match Satine exactly, but the character was partially inspired by real Moulin Rouge can-can dancer Jane Avril. A person who has been described as “graceful, soft-spoken, and melancholic”. Jane Avril had previously been played by Zsa Zsa Gabor in the 1952 film Moulin Rouge. Several other characters in Luhrmann’s film are directly based on, and share names with, real people who spent time at the Moulin Rouge around the turn of the twentieth century. John Leguizamo takes on the role of popular artist Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa, whose legs stopped growing after he broke them both in his early teens. Lara Mulcahy plays Môme Fromage, which was the stage name of a real Moulin Rouge dancer. DeObia Oparei appears as Le Chocolat, who would perform a clown act at the cabaret. Keith Robinson is performer Le Pétomane, who had a stage act that was so unique – built around the fact that he could fart on command – that it’s shocking the movie never shines a spotlight on his ability. The Satie character, played by Matt Whittet, was inspired by composers Erik Satie and Maurice Ravel. The supporting cast also includes Richard Roxburgh as the Duke of Monroth, Jacek Koman as The Unconscious Argentinean, and Caroline O’Connor as the trouble-causing Nini. With an appearance by Kylie Minogue as a Green Fairy from the label on a bottle of absinthe. Played by Jim Broadbent, Moulin Rouge owner Harold Zidler is based on real-life Moulin Rouge manager Charles Zidler… but the real Zidler was dead by the time the events of the film take place. He passed away in 1897.
Luhrmann wasn’t interested in meticulous historical accuracy, as is most evident in the songs chosen for the film. Moulin Rouge isn’t carried by original songs, nor is this jukebox musical filled with the songs people would really be singing in 1899. The songs belted out by the characters are totally anachronistic. They sing songs that performers like Queen, Nat King Cole, Madonna, and The Police wouldn’t originate until many decades later. There are so many popular songs in the film that it took Luhrmann two and a half years to acquire the rights to use them all. Some songs, like ones by The Rolling Stones and Cat Stevens, he had to let go of because he couldn’t secure the rights. Courtney Love didn’t land an acting role in the movie, but she did give the filmmakers permission to use the Nirvana song “Smells Like Teen Spirit”.
REVIEW: Luhrmann considers Moulin Rouge to be the third and final chapter in what he calls his Red Curtain trilogy. Following Strictly Ballroom and Romeo and Juliet. These films don’t have any direct connections to each other, but as Luhrmann explains: they all have very simple stories and take place in heightened worlds. To keep the audience awake and engaged, they each use a device like dancing, singing, or iambic pentameter, a style of writing that was popularized by Shakespeare. Lines written in iambic pentameter consist of ten syllables that alternate between short or unstressed syllables and long or stressed syllables. All of the films in the Red Curtain trilogy were also designed to be comic tragedies. Moulin Rouge fits the criteria perfectly, as its story of star-crossed lovers is extremely simple and straightforward, but the viewer becomes deeply invested in this story due to the song choices and the performances of McGregor and Kidman. The opening scene of the film makes it clear that this story is going to have a tragic ending. But Luhrmann still keeps us wondering what’s going to happen. And makes the viewer hope that maybe somehow there will be a happy ending after all. If only Christian’s narration would stop telling us that everything’s going to go wrong.
Luhrmann was able to create a heightened world for the film by shooting it almost entirely on stages at Fox Studios in Sydney, Australia. The movie doesn’t often look like it’s taking place in reality, it appears to be happening inside a piece of artwork. It took six months to shoot Moulin Rouge, from November 1999 to May 2000, and the production ran over schedule, so Luhrmann and his cast and crew had to hustle to vacate the soundstage before George Lucas moved in to film Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones there. McGregor stuck around, though, since he also starred in Attack of the Clones. One reason why filming took longer than expected may be the fact that Kidman received multiple injuries during the production. She broke ribs twice – once from a corset being pulled too tight, another time from being lifted in the air for take after take. And she tore cartilage in her knee when she fell down some stairs while dancing in heels. But even with these injuries she soldiered on and did everything that was required to properly bring Satine to the screen.
Watching Moulin Rouge, it seems like it must have been an exhausting project to work on. There are so many dance sequences and musical numbers, and it comes off as being all the more exhausting due to the film’s fast pace and frenetic editing style. The first fifteen minutes of this movie will be an endurance challenge for some viewers. Everything moves so quickly, the actors are so excited and loud, there’s goofball characters and a Green Fairy, cartoon sound effects, there’s dancing and laughter, you’ve got Jim Broadbent screaming in your face about having fun. It’s sensory overload. Which is fitting, because Christian is surely experiencing sensory overload as well. He has just gotten to Paris, met a group of people pursuing a thrilling artistic venture, and now he has been dropped into the insanity of the Moulin Rouge. According to Luhrmann, the idea was to express the excitement the cabaret brought to its patrons in 1899 in a way that modern viewers could relate to.
Thankfully, the film calms down a bit soon. When Christian spots Satine and the love story begins. Once you reach the sequence, set inside that legendary stucco elephant, of the smitten Christian trying to convince Satine to give him a chance, you can’t help but start caring about these characters. And while the two sing lyrics from songs by The Beatles, Kiss, Phil Collins, U2, Wings, David Bowie, Dolly Parton, and Elton John to each other, falling in love right before our eyes, you might even fall in love with the movie. That’s the most joyous part of the film, because Christian quickly learns that being in love with someone is more complicated than he ever imagined. Especially when you have a creepy, insanely jealous Duke lurking around at all times.
There’s not much to the story of Moulin Rouge and we know it’s not going to end well as soon as it begins. But Luhrmann brought that story to the screen with style to spare, and the actors did incredible work in their roles. The love Christian and Satine feel for each other is palpable, and comes across as being so deep and genuine, watching the film turns out to be a heartbreaking experience. But it’s worth the ride to see Luhrmann’s visuals, to see the life and emotion the actors imbue their characters with, and to hear the songs they sing.
LEGACY/NOW: Moulin Rouge was originally scheduled to reach theatres in December of 2000, but was pushed back to a summer 2001 release. Giving Luhrmann more time to perfect the visuals in post-production. The delay worked out, because the film was a financial success. Made on a budget of fifty million, it ended up earning nearly one hundred and eighty million at the global box office. It also went over well with critics – and received praise from directors of classic musicals. West Side Story and The Sound of Music director Robert Wise and Singin’ in the Rain director Stanley Donen both had positive things to say about the film. Wise was quoted as saying that Moulin Rouge had “reinvented the Hollywood musical … in a way that is always surprising, always enlightening, and always exhilarating”. Donen called the film an expertly done musical that “challenges our notion of pace by presenting every moment as a showstopper”.
The film’s status in pop culture was greatly enhanced by the release of a soundtrack album that Luhrmann produced. Although the soundtrack features some of the songs as performed in the movie, it also has covers of songs that weren’t in Moulin Rouge. Like Beck covering Bowie’s “Diamond Dogs”, a trio including Bono covering the T Rex song “Children of the Revolution”. And a cover of the 1970s hit “Lady Marmalade” by some of the biggest female vocalists of the time: Mya, Pink, Lil’ Kim, Christina Aguilera, and Missy Elliott. That soundtrack was a massive success, selling more than seven million copies and going double platinum. The “Lady Marmalade” single ruled the Billboard charts for weeks, and Paul Hunter directed the singers in a video styled to resemble Moulin Rouge. The video won both Best Video of the Year and Best Video from a Film at the MTV Video Music Awards, and the song won a Grammy in the Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals category.
The movie won its share of awards as well. Moulin Rouge received six Golden Globe nominations including Best Picture in the Musical or Comedy category, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Actor, and Best Original Score. The original song “Come What May”, which Christian writes for Satine in the film, was also up for Best Song. Kidman went home with the Best Actress award, the film won Best Original Score – and it also won that Best Picture award. Moulin Rouge was nominated for eight Academy Awards, but “Come What May” was disqualified because it hadn’t been written specifically for this movie. It had been written for, but not used in, Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet. Somehow the Academy also neglected to give Luhrmann a Best Director nomination. Golden Globe Best Picture winners often win Best Picture at the Oscars as well, but Moulin Rouge didn’t. Instead, the award went to the movie that won Best Picture in the Drama category at the Golden Globes, A Beautiful Mind.
Moulin Rouge did win Oscars for Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design. And while it was nominated for twelve BAFTA Awards, making it the most nominated film of the year at that year’s BAFTAs, it only won three: Best Original Music, Best Sound, and Best Supporting Actor Jim Broadbent. The National Board of Review picked Moulin Rouge as the best film of 2001, and so did the viewers of the BBC’s Film 2001 television program. The American Film Institute ranked it in the top ten of the year. Over time, the film has continued racking up accolades, with multiple polls naming it as one of the best films of the twenty-first century. Empire Magazine even ranked it at number two hundred and eleven on their list of the five hundred greatest movies of all time.
Luhrmann wondered if a Hollywood movie done in a Bollywood-esque style would work for the audience, and the answer was a loud and clear “Yes”. A “Yes” that has been reverberating for over twenty years now. Moulin Rouge deserves all of the attention it gets, as it is an incredible artistic achievement that is also a very emotionally engaging musical love story. One that teaches us the greatest thing you’ll ever learn: which is just to love, and be loved in return.
Next up was a script for the WTF Happened to This Horror Movie series, where I wrote about the troubled production of Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 (1985):
The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 script:
Every master of horror has some missteps somewhere on their filmography, and director Wes Craven had his fair share. For example, the man who gave us A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream also brought us The Hills Have Eyes Part 2. A film made out of desperation, and with ambition greater than its budget, the sequel to The Hills Have Eyes is a clunky Friday the 13th knock-off. It even has Friday the 13th music! And it’s so padded out with flashbacks to the first movie that even the dog has a flashback. At least there’s some good slasher kills to be seen along the way. The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 was definitely one of the low points in Craven’s career, so we’re going to try to figure out What the F*ck Happened to This Horror Movie.
Wes Craven made his feature directorial debut with the 1972 revenge film The Last House on the Left. A movie that was so shocking to critics and audience members, many questioned Craven’s morals and sanity. So while he wanted to continue his filmmaking career, he wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea of making more horror movies. His producer friend Peter Locke thought he should capitalize on the success of The Last House on the Left as quickly as possible. But Craven spent years trying and failing to get non-horror projects off the ground. Once he ran out of money, he finally agreed to make a horror movie with Locke. The idea was to make a low budget film that could be shot in one location. And since Locke’s wife was working in Las Vegas at the time, they figured the Nevada desert should be the location. As Locke and some other investors put together a budget of three hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, Craven wrote the script for what would become The Hills Have Eyes. Although, the title on the first draft of the script was Blood Relations.
Craven drew inspiration from the sixteenth century story of Sawney Bean, which may or may not be true. But legend has it that Bean lived in a coastal cave in Scotland with his wife, multiple children, and grandchildren. This family survived by ambushing people, killing and eating them, and keeping their belongings. When the Bean family was caught by members of civilized society, their executions were said to be brutal and torturous. So Craven crafted a script that would center on mirror families. One would be a take on the Bean family; a group of cannibals living in a cave in the Nevada desert. The other would be the Carter family from Ohio, inspired by Craven’s own family, who venture too far into the desert while on a road trip. As the cannibal family attacks and torments the other family, the more civilized people are driven to a point where they become savage themselves. And they get their revenge.
Released in 1977, The Hills Have Eyes wasn’t as successful as The Last House on the Left, partly because it kept being chased out of theatres by Smokey and the Bandit. But it did well enough that it got Craven’s career rolling again, and it ended up making more money as the home video era began. Craven went on to make the horror movies Summer of Fear, also known as Stranger in Our House, and Deadly Blessing. Then he got an opportunity that could have been a major breakthrough for him. He wrote and directed an adaptation of the DC Comics property Swamp Thing. Unfortunately, Swamp Thing was a box office failure and left Craven scrambling to find a job. It was difficult, because Hollywood was looking down on filmmakers who were considered horror directors at that time. He had written A Nightmare on Elm Street, and it was being rejected by every studio in town. He was able to get some script doctoring gigs, but his own projects weren’t going anywhere. While A Nightmare on Elm Street was eventually picked up by New Line Cinema, it still took a couple years for it to go into production. In the meantime, Craven ran out of money again. So it was time to re-team with Peter Locke.
Distributor New Realm had success releasing The Hills Have Eyes in England in 1978. When the movie reached VHS, it was a huge hit for the British video company VTC. So for a year and a half, New Realm and VTC had been reaching out to Craven and Locke, asking for a sequel. Even offering to finance the project. Now that Craven had reached the end of his resources and was desperate, he and Locke agreed to make The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 for them. Craven knocked out the first draft of the script in about two weeks, and based on that draft a budget of one million dollars was secured. The producers were pleased with the script, but thought it should be expanded. So Craven wrote a revision that he felt would make the film bigger and better. And the producers got even more excited for the project when they saw the revisions. But they never added money to the budget. Now Craven was stuck trying to make the bigger and better version of the script for the budget that had been put together for the first draft. That’s when things started to go wrong. Craven would go on to say that The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 was a real nightmare to shoot.
Craven already had a major hurdle to overcome when he was writing the script: almost all of the cannibals had been killed off in the first movie. The leader of the group, Papa Jupiter, was dead. Oddly, despite that fact, the title on the first draft of the sequel was The Night of Jupiter. Papa Jupiter’s sons Mercury and Mars were dead. His wife had survived, but she hadn’t been involved in the action. His daughter Ruby was alive, but she had turned against her family at the end of the film. Jupiter’s son Pluto had also appeared to be killed. But actor Michael Berryman had such strikingly unique features, a close-up of his face had been the main image on the poster for The Hills Have Eyes. The movie was sold on his look. So Craven decided to bring Pluto back. He was badly wounded, it had looked like his throat was torn out by a German Shepherd called Beast, but he was patched up and lived. And The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 probably would have been better off if Pluto was the only cannibalistic killer in the movie. Living in the desert on his own, still using his decimated family’s tactics of murder and theft to survive. But that’s not the case. Pluto is not alone. Craven decided to add another cannibal into the mix. Someone who is talked up like he’s the worst of the bunch. He’s called Reaper, and it’s said that he’s Papa Jupiter’s big brother. This causes a major continuity error, because the history of the cannibal family was all laid out for us in The Hills Have Eyes, and there was no room for Jupiter to have a big brother. If Craven had said Reaper was Pluto’s brother, another one of Jupiter’s kids, and we just didn’t see him in the first movie for someone reason, it would have been fine. But he decided to break our brains instead.
With the cannibals in place, Craven needed a new batch of civilized characters to put them up against. Although several of the protagonists from the first movie survived, he decided to bring back only two of them, and one just gets a cameo. In this sequel, we find out that Bobby Carter, played by Robert Houston, now owns a Yamaha dealership in Burbank, California. He also sponsors a motocross team, and at an upcoming race they will be showing off the benefits of a new formula of gasoline Bobby has created. Problem is, this race is going to be held out in the desert, close to where the cannibals attacked Bobby and his family years earlier. Bobby is too stressed and afraid to go back out into the desert, so his wife and business partner Rachel tells him she’ll accompany the team to the race while he stays home. By the way, Rachel happens to be Ruby, that former member of the cannibal tribe who turned against her own family to help Bobby’s. Janus Blythe reprises the role, but wasn’t happy with the script. She liked the idea of Ruby returning to the desert with the German Shepherd Beast and crossing paths with Pluto again. But she felt there was too much going on around that. She wasn’t a fan of involving a motocross team with special gasoline. Robert Houston wasn’t happy with The Hills Have Eyes Part 2, either. But a lot of that has to do with his own appearance. He was so appalled by the way he looks in this movie, he never acted again.
Nice guy Roy, played by Kevin Spirtas, known as Kevin Blair at the time, and prankster Harry, played by Peter Frechette, are the racers of the motocross team. On the bus ride out to the race in the desert, they’re joined by mechanic Foster, played by Willard Pugh. The role of Foster was written specifically for Pugh after Craven met him while he was doing uncredited rewrites on the 1984 action movie Toy Soldiers. John Laughlin’s character Hulk is probably either a racer or a mechanic, but it’s never quite clear. Either way, he’s on the bus. Also along for the ride are Harry’s girlfriend Jane, played by Colleen Riley, Foster’s girlfriend Sue, played by Penny Johnson, and Roy’s blind girlfriend Cass, played by Tamara Stafford. It’s clear from early on that Cass is our heroine this time around. Craven named the character after the Cassandra of Greek mythology, who could see the future, but no one believed her dire prophecies. That’s because Cass has some mild psychic abilities. Which don’t really end up helping in this situation. Craven would pay tribute to the legend of Cassandra again years later, in Scream 2.
During their bus ride, the motocross team realizes that Daylight Savings Time has ended. Clocks have moved forward one hour, so they’re going to be late for the race. Unless they take a shortcut through the desert. Of course, that shortcut takes them right into the territory Pluto and Reaper have taken control of. And the bus’s gas tank springs a leak on the way. The group ends up stranded on an old ranch that sits above an abandoned mine shaft, surrounded by traps that have been set by the cannibals. And Pluto and Reaper proceed to pick them off one-by-one.
There are elements of The Hills Have Eyes that feel inspired by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the two films even had the same art director, Robert A. Burns. While The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 begins with a text crawl and narration, like the early Chainsaw movies did, this one feels like Craven’s take on Friday the 13th. The music that accompanies scenes of youths getting slashed up even sounds like Friday the 13th music. Which makes sense, because it was provided by Friday franchise composer Harry Manfredini, who previously worked with Craven on Swamp Thing. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Manfredini’s music is great and there’s fun to be had when characters are being slashed. The motocross element even allows for a chase sequence across the sand and around the rocks of the desert. Some of the best scenes involve the Cass character being stalked and chased around the ranch by Reaper. Finding ways to outsmart her attacker and fight back. Even though she can’t see him. These scenes, matched with Manfredini’s music, are so intriguing, it’s enough to make the viewer wish there had been a Friday the 13th movie with a blind heroine. It’d be a lot better if that was Jason Voorhees chasing Cass instead of Reaper.
There are good things in this movie, but there’s also something lacking here. The script comes off as being half-baked, the dialogue is clunky. And how can you have a big guy called Hulk and give him a death where he doesn’t come in physical contact with the killers? He never has a chance to defend himself.
Many have pointed fingers at Reaper as one of the big issues with the film, and not just because his existence is a continuity error. The character was played by seven-foot-four actor John Bloom, with Craven’s Swamp Thing cast member Nicholas Worth dubbing over his voice in post-production. It wasn’t until they were on set that Craven realized that putting Bloom on a motocross bike looked silly. He said Bloom made the bike “look like a tricycle. It was the most ridiculous sight in the world when he actually got on this thing and his feet were hanging off.” Michael Berryman was also underwhelmed by the appearance of Reaper – specifically the makeup effect that was put on his face. Makeup artist Ken Horn, returning from the first film, tried to find a look for the character that was simple and believable, yet durable enough to move around aggressively on the set and ride a motorcycle. Bloom had to spend two hours in the makeup chair for his transformation into Reaper. Berryman wasn’t impressed with the result, or with Bloom’s performance. And, like many fans, he questioned why Reaper was there in the first place. Speaking with Fangoria magazine, Berryman said, “A lot of the story concepts in Hills 2 needed to be clarified. They never explained what happened to Pluto between the two movies, and we never learn where the character of Reaper came from. What the hell was Reaper anyway? The guy looked like he had a big chunk of a basketball stuck to his head. It looked terrible!”
Craven was aware on set that things weren’t working with this movie, but he didn’t have time to address the issues. There was a completion bond in place, filming had to be finished by a certain date. They could only blast their way through the script and hope to come back for reshoots later. So working on this movie was not an easy or pleasant experience. They were in a hurry, shooting scenes that weren’t satisfactory. They were filming way out in the California desert, a forty-five minute commute from the hotel the cast and crew stayed in. Production took place in the spring of 1983, when it would get miserably cold at night. Crew members were working hard in horrible conditions. Everyone was cranky. Berryman had serious issues with an executive producer. The project started to fall behind schedule. Peter Locke was worried, as he couldn’t see how Craven was going to be able to finish filming in time. There was so much tension on set, a food fight even broke out during one lunch break. An effort to lighten the mood.
Janus Blythe made the mistake of going to a salon and getting her hair cut when she had a day off in the middle of the shoot. But that wasn’t the biggest problem she had on this movie. She was very concerned about a scene Craven had written for her character. A death scene. Rachel, better known as Ruby, was originally supposed to fall into a pit and be impaled on an arrow. The scene was simplified so that she only had to be filmed falling down and hitting her head on a rock. Blythe felt that either option was a bad idea. She didn’t think Ruby should be killed off, as fans of the first movie would be upset if they did this. But they had to stick to the script to get the movie finished on schedule. Craven told Blythe he would rewrite Ruby’s fate and this would be something they would fix in reshoots. For now, though, she had to hit her head on a rock and appear to die. Blythe found her own compromise: she doesn’t play the scene as a death scene. When Ruby hits her head on the rock, she played it like she was just knocked unconscious. We never see Ruby again after this, but at least Blythe’s performance left her fate ambiguous.
Craven and his crew managed to get The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 shot on time, but the director didn’t consider filming to be finished. Principal photography had been done in such a hurry, he didn’t have the chance to film some shots he wanted in the movie. Scenes needed to be reworked and reshot, including the ones involving Ruby’s fate. As Craven assembled the footage, he was hoping the producers would provide some extra money and schedule some days of additional photography. That extra money never came in. The reshoots Craven and Blythe were looking forward to never happened. The movie was never properly completed. All the scenes Craven wasn’t happy with, all the moments he wanted to fix and do over, they’re in the cut of the movie that was released to the world.
The movie has a running time of exactly ninety minutes, but some padding was required to reach that length. There’s the opening text and narration that was mentioned earlier. A long title sequence. And there’s the element of the film that it’s best known for: the use of flashbacks to the first movie. The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 has a reputation that could lead you to believe it’s the most flashback-filled movie out there. Aside from Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2. The truth is, there’s only five minutes of flashbacks to the first Hills Have Eyes in this one. A reasonable amount for a 1980s slasher sequel. The problem is how the flashbacks are handled. If the footage from the first movie was just presented as a five minute recap at the beginning of the sequel, no one would question it. Instead, Craven adds the footage into the movie by having survivors flashback to it on four separate occasions. Thirty-three minutes into the movie, we’re still getting flashbacks. Bobby has two flashbacks. Ruby has one. And then, one of the most absurd moments in horror history. We see Beast, the German Shepherd, having a flashback to his previous encounter with Pluto. The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 is best known for being the movie that has a dog flashback in it.
No one was happy with how The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 turned out. But while it was disappointing to Craven and fans alike, it did serve its purpose. Thanks to distribution deals, it was already profitable before filming had even begun. And it got Craven’s career back on track. When word got out that he was making a sequel to The Hills Have Eyes, it helped New Line secure funding for A Nightmare on Elm Street. And while that deal was being negotiated, the network ABC reached out to Craven about directing a TV movie called Invitation to Hell. He took the job and had just two weeks to prepare for the filming. He was gearing up for Invitation to Hell during the day, doing post-production work on The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 at night. And doing a major rewrite of A Nightmare on Elm Street in any moment of spare time. He had gone from not being able to get a movie made to making three back-to-back-to-back.
Invitation to Hell aired on ABC in May of 1984. A Nightmare on Elm Street was released that November. Although The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 was shot before both of them, it didn’t get a small theatrical run until August of 1985. So while it was something Craven made out of desperation when he couldn’t make anything else, it ended up looking like his follow-up to the huge success of Elm Street. That definitely didn’t help the reputation of the movie. It was going to be underwhelming no matter when it was released. Coming out after Elm Street made it look even worse.
Looking back on this doomed sequel years later, Robert Houston said, “It tells you a lot about filmmaking that somebody like Wes, who is capable of very good work under the right conditions, is also capable of doing something like The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 under the wrong conditions. The film really doesn’t reflect on Wes as much as it reflects the difficulties of the film industry.” Peter Locke added, “That was a picture that didn’t have enough money to be completed properly and I’m the producer, so I take the blame for that. Wes wrote it, he had a great idea for it, but we just didn’t have the finances to finish it properly, the way it needed to be finished. I’m sure he would’ve made a very, very successful film had he gotten the money he needed.”
Despite the trouble they had on The Hills Have Eyes Part 2, Craven and Locke remained very aware that this was a property they could continue to benefit from. In 1994, it was announced that they, along with Craven’s son Jonathan, were developing another sequel. Berryman was contacted about playing Pluto again in a film that would be called The Outpost: The Hills Have Eyes 3. The story would take place in a government testing facility in the desert, where members of the cannibal tribe are brought to be examined for their survival skills. Locke said the script they had in place was very good… but things changed during the development process. What started out as The Hills Have Eyes 3 became an original story called Mind Ripper. And Berryman wasn’t in the cast. Mind Ripper was released in 1995 and quickly faded into obscurity. But Craven and Locke returned to The Hills Have Eyes to produce a remake in 2006. The remake, directed by Alexandre Aja from a script he wrote with Grégory Levasseur, was so successful, another The Hills Have Eyes 2 followed in 2007. Directed by Martin Weisz and written by Wes and Jonathan Craven, that The Hills Have Eyes 2 was also considered a disappointment. But not as much as the one released in 1985.
As the decades went by, Craven mostly only talked about The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 to joke about it. Or apologize for it. He was once quoted as saying, “I’m sorry about The Hills Have Eyes Part 2. I was dead broke and needed to do any film. I would have done Godzilla Goes to Paris.” A Craven movie about Godzilla wrecking Paris actually could have been really cool. But we got The Hills Have Eyes Part 2 instead, and it’s kind of fun to watch. Even if, nearly forty years later, we still don’t know where the hell Reaper came from or what happened to Ruby. It’s troubled, it’s unfinished, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense as a follow-up to The Hills Have Eyes. But it does have a dog flashback in it. Isn’t that enough?
And for the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw video series, I recommended Larry Cohen's 1985 film The Stuff:
The Stuff script:
INTRO: Did you ever hear about the time the American James Bond teamed up with a homegrown militia to take down the Stuffies? Those people whose minds had been warped by a dangerous dessert that came seeping through the ground like bubbling crude? Our heroes faced down evil corporations and floods of sentient marshmallow fluff to save the world from a junk food apocalypse. If you haven’t heard this story, then strap in, because we’re about to tell you all about The Stuff. That’s the name of both the deadly dessert and the movie that was made about it, which might be the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw.
CREATORS / CAST:: Over a writing and directing career that lasted more than sixty years, Larry Cohen told us some incredible stories. Stories about a Maniac Cop. Stories about Black Caesar, who dealt with Hell Up in Harlem. With the It’s Alive trilogy, he even told us multiple stories about killer babies. Which were amusingly absurd at times, but also effectively creepy when Cohen wanted them to be. Since he was a filmmaker who made killer baby movies work, it should come as no surprise that he was also able to make a great horror movie about a deadly ice cream substitute.
Cohen was often praised for his dedication to crafting interesting characters, no matter what sort of story he was writing. So even when he was making a goofball movie about a tasty treat that causes horrific side effects, he was able to draw in a strong cast. For The Stuff, he re-teamed with his Q: The Winged Serpent star Michael Moriarty, casting him as an FBI agent turned industrial spy named David Rutherford. Although most viewers will be left thinking of the character as Mo. People call him Mo because whenever they give him money, he always wants mo’. As the story begins, The Stuff has become an overnight sensation in the United States. It’s delicious, has zero calories, no artificial ingredients. Why wouldn’t it become popular? Its sales are leaving ice cream, yogurt, cookies, everything else in the dust. So representatives of the ice cream industry hire Mo to find out what The Stuff is made of so they can try to replicate it. And beat it at its own game.
Mo’s investigation brings him into contact with advertising agency executive Nicole, who named The Stuff and has put together an incredible ad campaign for it. Once you watch this movie, you’ll never be able to get the jingle for The Stuff out of your mind. Nicole is played by Andrea Marcovicci, who had done a lot of serious, dramatic work in her career and saw The Stuff as a chance to be silly and have a good time. Mo is basically portrayed like an American version of Roger Moore era James Bond, so of course Nicole falls for him immediately and helps him investigate her employer. Mo also crosses paths with a guy called Chocolate Chip Charlie, played by Saturday Night Live’s Garrett Morris. Charlie was the owner of this story’s stand-in for the Famous Amos cookie brand… until the executives behind The Stuff bought out his company and tossed him. So he has a grudge against The Stuff, and so does a young boy named Jason, played by Scott Bloom. Jason is one of the first people in America to realize that The Stuff isn’t the healthy treat everyone thinks it is. This stuff, which looks like marshmallow fluff, is actually sentient. A living organism. It can move on its own, and Jason sees it doing just that inside his family’s fridge. Once someone has consumed enough of it, they become Stuffies; The Stuff takes over their minds and bodies. It makes them do its bidding until they’re used up and The Stuff has to ditch their crumbling corpses.
The Stuff isn’t manufactured. Whatever it is, it seeps up out of the ground, is siphoned into trucks and shipped off to consumers without any sort of processing. Realizing that The Stuff could be an apocalyptic threat if it’s not dealt with, Mo seeks the help of right wing militia leader Colonel Malcolm Grommett Spears, played by Paul Sorvino. Who operates out of a castle in the American countryside. Convincing Spears that The Stuff is the work of Communists, Mo gains the support of him and his soldiers. They back him up for an assault on The Stuff headquarters.
Along the way, Danny Aiello shows up as Mr. Vickers of the FDA. Vickers thinks The Stuff is such a great product, he even feeds it to his dog. That turns out to be a terrible idea. Aiello’s appearance is brief, so he gets a guest star credit, which always seems weird to see on a movie instead of a TV show. Patrick O’Neal plays Stuff distributor Fletcher, and Alexander Scourby, in his final role, is Evans, a representative of the ice cream industry. Cohen regular James Dixon has a role as a troublesome Postman. Abe Vigoda, Brooke Adams, Laurene Landon, Tammy Grimes, and Jason Evers appear in commercials for The Stuff. So does Clara Peller, who had just asked “Where’s the beef?” in a popular Wendy’s commercial the year before The Stuff was released. In this movie, she asks, “Where’s The Stuff?” Cohen also gave Eric Bogosian, who had just starred in his film Special Effects, a cameo as a supermarket clerk. And Mira Sorvino, Paul’s daughter, a future Oscar winner, makes her screen debut as a factory worker. But good luck trying to spot her. Mira was visiting her father on set one day, and he and Cohen decided to stick her in front of the camera.
BACKGROUND: The idea of making a movie about a mind-altering, monstrous dessert may seem odd, but Cohen only had to observe the world around him to be inspired. This story, a satire of consumerism and corporate greed, occurred to him after he had read several newspaper articles about products being recalled. As he told Starlog Magazine, “We’ve all read about the Food and Drug Administration recalling something which ended up poisoning people, or killing their children, or causing women to get cancer or to become infertile. And we’ve also read about automobile manufacturers recalling cars for structural faults which caused people to be injured. So, it is very common for the public to be endangered by mass-produced products. Companies are in too much of a hurry to get their products onto the market.”
He was also fascinated by the amount of junk food the public consumes. And continues to consume, even though we know the damage it can do to our health. So he came up with the most unhealthy dessert possible. To bring his vision of The Stuff to the screen, he secured a budget of one-point-seven million dollars and a distribution deal with New World Pictures. The budget was so tight that the crew was given a five dollar limit on their lunches, but Cohen had enough money to make his movie.
The filmmaker and New World ran into a disagreement at the casting stage – he wanted to cast a then-unknown Arsenio Hall as Chocolate Chip Charlie, while New World insisted that he cast the more familiar Garrett Morris. But for the most part, the company left Cohen alone and let him do his thing. Production on The Stuff lasted from August into September of 1984, and seems to have gone rather smoothly… Although additional photography was required when Cohen thought of a new ending for the movie after he had edited together a rough cut. That’s the scene where Fletcher and Evans get their comeuppance, being forced to eat a large amount of The Stuff themselves.
Of course, the most complicated part of making The Stuff was figuring out how to bring this Stuff to life on screen. Multiple methods were used to portray The Stuff on screen, depending on the scene and what was required of the substance. Special effects artists Steve Neill and Rick Stratton made The Stuff on location, while stop-motion animator David Allen was hired to create scenes where The Stuff moves on its own. Sadly, moments that Allen animated involving “Baby Stuff” and “Walking Stuff” didn’t make it into the finished film. Plastic, rubber, slime, ice cream, yogurt, shaving cream, and mashed potatoes dusted with baking flour were all used for The Stuff at different points. When actors had to eat The Stuff, it was a mixture of yogurt, tofutti, and whipped cream. Cohen said that most of the cast put on weight during the production because they had to keep eating The Stuff. Marcovicci wasn’t happy when she had to eat it, because this sort of thing was not on her diet. But even more than the tasty Stuff, she hated it when The Stuff was played by firefighter’s foam. That’s because the foam was made out of fish guts, so it was disgusting to be around and didn’t smell very good.
A company called Effects Associated was hired for the shots of exploding factory buildings. Cohen thought the result was underwhelming, so he paid them half the amount they were asking for. This led to a lawsuit that was decided in Cohen’s favor, because he and Effects Associated hadn’t made a copyright agreement regarding the use of the shots. Effects Associated was free to use the footage of exploding factory buildings for other projects, it wasn’t exclusive to The Stuff.
The factory building explosions weren’t the only unsatisfactory things Cohen dealt with. He was aware on set that some scenes weren’t working. There was one where Mo and Nicole hook up at a hotel that so obviously wasn’t necessary, Cohen went home early that day. He left cinematographer Paul Glickman with Moriarty and Marcovicci to finish shooting the doomed scene on their own. That scene actually did end up in the first cut Cohen showed to New World Pictures. But then it and several others were cut because the distributor was disappointed with the movie he delivered to them. New World was expecting The Stuff to be a straightforward monster movie, something nasty and horrific. They didn’t know what to do with the movie Cohen had actually made, full of satire and humor. A movie that goes for laughs more often than it goes for scares. The one way they could see to make it more marketable was to make sure it was shorter and more fast-paced. Cohen described his own cut of the movie as more dense and sophisticated than the cut New World released. But he also admitted that some of the scenes he cut out while speeding up the pace for the distributor were extraneous. While it hurt to cut out some of the moments, there were funny scenes he wanted to keep and wasn’t able to, he also thought it was a wise decision to cut some of the scenes he had originally included. The final cut of the movie ended up being about thirty minutes shorter than Cohen’s director’s cut.
Now New World had to figure out how to sell The Stuff. They decided to promote the film as if it were the movie they had expected it to be. Not the movie it actually was. The ads and trailers ignored the satirical element and tried to sell it as a conventional horror movie. New World first scheduled The Stuff for a March 1985 release, but delayed it a few months and ultimately gave it a limited release in the United States beginning in June of ‘85. Information on how it did at the box office isn’t readily available at this point, but it is known that The Stuff wasn’t a hit. Cohen felt New World hurt the film’s chances by not focusing on the humor in the advertising. And he also said that it was dealt a blow by Mother Nature herself. A hurricane hit New York the same day The Stuff was released there. Newspapers weren’t delivered that day – so the public didn’t get to see that critics had given the movie positive reviews.
Cohen had a friend in advertising who had created the Stuff containers for the movie. During filming, Cohen was planning to do some tie-in marketing and sell The Stuff nationally in those containers. Of course, this version of The Stuff would have just been regular ice cream, not a substance that would turn people into Stuffies. The idea was to see how much of The Stuff they could sell before consumers realized it was just a movie promotion. But that plan seems to have been abandoned by the time The Stuff was released.
The Stuff wasn’t a box office smash, but it did develop a cult following over the years as viewers caught up with it on VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray. Its appreciative audience includes Rupert Grint of the Harry Potter franchise, who lists it as one of his top five favorite movies. Grint told Rotten Tomatoes, “I’m a big B-movie fan, and for me this ticks every B-movie box. It must be the most original idea for a monster, an evil mass-produced dessert. It’s got the strangest characters I’ve ever seen in a film, which makes it a forever favorite of mine.”
WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: The movie definitely has some bizarre characters. The concept of a killer dessert is already an unusual set-up, but a lot of filmmakers could have done something interesting with the idea. None of them would have made a movie that’s anything like The Stuff, though. Only Larry Cohen would have thought to make a couple of the stars an American James Bond and a militia leader who is bummed because nobody likes him. Even Cohen himself couldn’t describe The Stuff as any particular established genre. It wasn’t fully horror, it wasn’t fully comedy. It was its own thing. A Larry Cohen Movie. Some viewers will be put off by the tone and the characters, while others love it because of how unique it is. It’s a joy to watch Mo Rutherford make his way through the film, unearthing the mysteries of The Stuff. Moriarty gives such an awesome performance as this character, it almost makes you wish he and Cohen had made a whole series of Mo Rutherford movies. He didn’t need to mess with The Stuff again, but it would have been fun to see him go on other adventures. And eliminate other strange threats.
Cohen assembled an excellent supporting cast for Moriarty to work with, and put them in some very memorable scenes with The Stuff itself.
BEST SCENE(S): One of the most memorable scenes in the movie is the first one, in which an elderly mine worker is the first to discover The Stuff. He sees this white substance bubbling out of the snowy ground… and his first instinct is to stick his finger in it and give it a taste. And it’s a good thing this guy will eat whatever he finds on the ground. We would have been missing out if he didn’t, because we have him to thank for the whole movie that follows. Entertaining scenes like the one where Jason busts up the many Stuff displays in a supermarket. Or where Vickers is attacked by his Stuffy dog. And where Chocolate Chip Charlie’s mouth opens wide to let Stuff spew out.
Among the many great scenes involving The Stuff is one set in a motel room, where The Stuff comes pouring out of Mo and Nicole’s bed. Shooting this scene required a revolving set. And luckily, a revolving set had recently been built for another horror production. Just weeks before Cohen used this set to show a flood of The Stuff defying gravity, Wes Craven was using the revolving room to film scenes for A Nightmare on Elm Street.
PARTING SHOT: Cohen was able to achieve a fast and fun pace for The Stuff when he whittled down the running time for New World Pictures. But the movie goes so quickly, you can tell it’s jumping over transitional moments and leaving out some information. It feels a bit wild and scattered. So it’s interesting to hear that fans might have the chance to see the director’s cut someday. The nonprofit arthouse organization Denver Film recently found that a 35 millimeter print in the possession of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences is the director’s cut. Those thirty minutes Cohen removed in 1985 are in that print. So hopefully someone will be releasing that soon.
In the meantime, the theatrical cut of The Stuff remains highly entertaining. Some fans have been enjoying the film for more than thirty-five years now, while more are discovering it all the time. It’s worth checking out if you haven’t seen it. We’ll give Larry Cohen himself the final word on this one. To anyone who decides to watch The Stuff, Cohen promised, “You will be involved with the characters and the story. You will genuinely care whether or not these people get out of danger. You will believe in the danger and accept the threat as being real. You will be scared. And at the same time, you will laugh like hell.”
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!
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