Digging into Kevin Smith's slasher anthology.
BACKGROUND
The concept of the Kevin Smith horror movie Tusk came out of an episode of Smith’s SModcast podcast in which he and his co-host Scott Mosier started out joking about the idea of a walrus-themed body horror movie and then, in the midst of the banter, Smith was inspired to actually make the movie. (And I’m very thankful that he did.) Smith’s horror anthology KillRoy Was Here, which he has likened to Creepshow, started out in a similar way. It has its roots in an episode of the Edumacation podcast, where Smith and co-host Andy McElfresh “accidentally brainstormed a Christmas horror anthology” that would revolve around the child-eating creature known as Krampus.
Smith and McElfresh wrote a script and were moving ahead with the film, which was first called Comes the Krampus! and then re-titled Anti-Claus. The segments that made up the film were titled The Krampus vs. The Third Grade, Hitler’s Krampus, Mask Maker, and The Proposal, with the wrap-around being The Bad Babysitter – and the plan was that each segment would have a different director. McElfresh would direct the story about The Third Grade, Smith’s longtime friend (and Jay and Silent Bob co-star) Jason Mewes would direct Hitler’s Krampus, Smith would direct Mask Maker himself, his longtime script supervisor and now director in her own right Carol Banker would direct The Proposal, and Smith’s wife Jennifer Schwalbach would direct The Bad Babysitter. Tusk cast members Justin Long, Haley Joel Osment, Genesis Rodriguez, and Michael Parks were all expected to return for this one... but then it all came crumbling down.
The project got abandoned when Michael Dougherty’s Krampus movie was released in 2015. Smith and his collaborators had been beaten to the Krampus concept and didn’t want it to look like they were following in someone else’s footsteps. But it only sat dormant for a few years before Smith and McElfresh decided to rework it into something else: KillRoy Was Here.
The script was rewritten. The Christmas element was ditched. Most of the planned stories were replaced. Krampus was swapped out for a new character called KillRoy, inspired by the “Kilroy was here” graffiti that became popular during World War II, showing a long-nosed man peeking over a fence.
With a cool, original character to build his movie around, Smith went into production on KillRoy Was Here, which was made on a minuscule budget as a project with film students at the Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida. As Dr. Larry R. Thompson, President of Ringling College, said, “KillRoy Was Here is an exciting project as part of our ongoing effort to provide hands-on, active production crew experience and screen credits for Ringling College students and graduates while also bringing world-renowned producers, directors and Hollywood-level entertainment productions to Sarasota to use the College’s film facilities. Working alongside entertainment professionals, the students participate in an immersive creative and production program that takes them from script to final delivery. They also are able to connect with these high-level industry professionals.”
So this lucky batch of students got to make a horror movie with Kevin Smith.
SETTING
Smith is best known for making movies that take place in and around his own hometown area in New Jersey, like Clerks (and its sequels), Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Jersey Girl, and The 4:30 Movie, but he has branched out several times – and not just with the Dogma, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and Jay and Silent Bob Reboot road trip movies. Zack and Miri Make a Porno took place in Pennsylvania, Cop Out in New York City, Red State somewhere in the Midwest, and Tusk and Yoga Hosers were set in Canada. Since KillRoy Was Here was being made in the Sarasota, Florida area, the setting for the story became Sarasota, Florida as well.
For the most part, the setting could have been any State in the Union, as the majority of the scenes take place indoors. Houses, an elementary school, motel rooms, etc. You just might see a palm tree when the characters go outside. But there is one segment that takes place out in the swamps and involves an alligator...
KILLER
With the Krampus option off the table, Smith and McElfresh were given the opportunity to build a new horror character from the ground up. Their creation KillRoy started out as a Florida man named Roy Huggins (Justin Kucsulain), who was a soldier in the Vietnam War (not World War II, despite that war being the one that popularized the ‘Kilroy Was Here’ graffiti), and when he was captured by enemy soldiers he got loose, killed a whole lot of people, and cannibalized one of the corpses. He had to be locked up in a mental institution, and when the place caught on fire, Roy was left to burn. Now, he’s a supernatural being who stalks the Florida swamps, and his burns have left him looking a lot like that figure in the Kilroy graffiti, elongated nose and all. They say he has a psychic connection to kids, and if someone says his name three times he’ll show up with his machete and start hacking away at anyone who has wronged a child.
The initial idea was actually that KillRoy would be a child-eating villain, like Krampus. But in the midst of production, one of the Ringling students working on the film suggested to Smith that KillRoy should be a supernatural protector of children as well. Smith and McElfresh took that idea and ran with it – but there are still traces of the original idea in the finished film, making for some inconsistencies. But, since this was just something that was supposed to give the college students some on-the-job training, it doesn’t seem that anyone was overly concerned about the inconsistencies.
FINAL GIRL
KillRoy Was Here is composed of four short stories and a wrap-around segment, each focusing on a different batch of characters. Since it’s not following the same group of people throughout, it doesn’t really have a traditional “final girl.” There are a couple of vengeful characters in the segments who could have been final girls if their stories were told in feature form, but things don’t really work out for them in the short story format.
So the closest we get to having a “final girl” is Zoe Burney as a little girl named Tyler, who has a troubling night in the wrap-around segment simply because she has a very bad babysitter. Tyler makes it to the end of the film and walks off into the darkness with her protector, KillRoy.
VICTIMS
This movie may not have any heroes or heroines, but it does have a good number of victims. That’s why I’m categorizing this anthology as a slasher movie, because most of the segments involve KillRoy showing up to kill people with his machete. He is a slasher, and he slashes quite well. Most of the segments were made after the idea of turning KillRoy into a protector of children came up, so many of his victims happen to deserve their fates... but there are some innocent victims in the mix as well.
The first segment is called Sunny and is named after the lead character, a young woman (played by Daisy McElfresh) who is suffering from pediatric arrhythmia. Ahead of a social event that’s meant to raise funds for the heart transplant Sunny needs, she discovers that her illness is being caused by her mother Cordelia (Betty Aberlin), who has been poisoning her for years. It’s a “Munchausen syndrome by proxy” situation and this poison is the same way Cordelia killed Sunny’s father back in the day. To get revenge, Sunny calls on KillRoy during the fundraising event, unleashing him on everyone in attendance. Cordelia is the one that really deserves to meet him, but he gets in some extra kills while he’s at it.
The victim in the Miss Bowers segment is a total innocent, because this segment does not fit in with the “protector of children” idea. Instead, this one – which stars Surely Alvelo as elementary school teacher Miss Bowers, Jason Mewes as a school janitor named Chet, and Chayil Rattler and Brogan Hall as little kids Cassie and Montana – tells us that KillRoy would take one of the school’s students every semester when he would “come out of the swamp for a feeding.” To save their own lives, the kids have made a deal with KillRoy to sacrifice an adult, “any adult will do,” to the monster. And Miss Bowers is the latest sacrifice.
With the Father Pat segment, we’re back to the victim deserving their encounter with KillRoy. Smith’s Hollywood Babble-On podcast co-host Ralph Garman plays the title character, part of a group of pedophile priests who get together to take the children of illegal immigrants on “camping trips” before they’re deported. Their campgrounds are motel rooms, where the priests do horrible things to the kids. To protect themselves, a pair of Cuban children call on KillRoy, who shows up to bring Father Pat’s molesting days to an end. Then he deals with the other priests as well. Before he passed away, comedian George Carlin – who worked with Smith on multiple films – said his dream acting role would be “a priest who strangles children.” Carlin never got to play such a character, and while Father Pat doesn’t do any strangling, when I see this character show up I can’t help but think of Carlin and his dream role.
Gator Chaser is an odd segment. For one thing, it doesn’t have any sort of wrap-around segment intro, and for another, the deserving character isn’t taken down by KillRoy. Professional wrestler Chris Jericho plays the Gator Chaser, who sets up meetings with men online, then live-streams the meetings so he can humiliate the guys in front of hundreds of people on the internet. He does this because he considers all homosexuals, which he calls “Gators,” to be sexual predators. When he hears that one of his previous victims has killed himself in response to the online humiliation, he celebrates... until the man’s widow (Neela Howard) shows up to dole out some vengeance by tying him to a tree and luring in an actual alligator.
That’s fine, the Gator Chaser gets his comeuppance and the widow gets her revenge. What doesn’t make sense is why KillRoy shows up and goes after the widow himself. I’ve never understood why. Is it because she left her kid sleeping in the car while she was dealing with the Gator Chaser? Is it just because she’s in the swamp? I don’t know.
The Bad Babysitter is the wrap-around segment and shows a babysitter (Harley Quinn Smith) telling these KillRoy stories to the kid she’s watching, the aforementioned Tyler. But the babysitter has a reason for telling Tyler these creepy stories: she’s getting the kid hyped up and scared about KillRoy so she can manipulate her into killing her cheating boyfriend when he shows up at the door. Armed with a knife, Tyler thinks it’s KillRoy coming to get her. Don’t worry, the bad babysitter gets her comeuppance, just like several other people in the movie.
DEATHS
A neck spurting arterial spray. A machete swung across the guts. A poison flower shoved into a mouth. An innocent woman hacked up. A creepy priest cut in half. Another who gets the top of his head cut off. A couple of people chomped on by a CGI alligator. A machete planted in a face. The kills tend to go by fast, but there are some cool gore effects along the way, and if you like to see people get slashed, KillRoy delivers.
CLICHÉS
KillRoy Was Here avoids some of the most common slasher movie clichés, but there are still some to be found. You have the deformed, machete-wielding slasher with a twisted history. The Bad Babysitter segment gives the film its deserving teenage victim. Some would say the concept of pedophile priests is also a cliché, but unfortunately it’s a cliché that’s too often seen in our own reality.
POSTMORTEM
KillRoy Was Here is famous (or infamous) for being the movie that Smith decided to release as an NFT, and it’s not clear how well that release worked out, as it seems to have been the equivalent of dropping the movie into a void, as far as viewer engagement online is concerned. Although there are 1000 NFT copies out there, only a few reviews have shown up on sites like Letterboxd and reddit, and the single review currently on IMDb was written by someone who saw it at a film festival in the theatre Smith owns. There’s a chance that over a thousand people have seen KillRoy Was Here, and yet only a handful have said anything about it. Clearly, there’s little overlap between those who are into NFTs and those who enjoy discussing films online. Although the movie was officially released long ago, there has been so little said about it, there are probably many fans who aren’t even aware that it was ever released at all. For some of those who are aware, the concept of NFTs is so off-putting and/or incomprehensible, they’ll never own it anyway. Unless it’s released in another format someday, KillRoy Was Here is practically a “lost film” at this point. The Kevin Smith movie that only a fraction of his fans have seen.
Even for those who have the NFTs, there’s a piece of the film that hasn’t been seen in full. It’s a deleted segment called The Lost Chapter, and it was split into ten parts that were dropped randomly throughout the various NFTs. It’s likely that no one will ever see this segment in its entirety, unless they go on a KillRoy NFT buying spree or the movie gets a more traditional release someday, where the segment could be included as a deleted scene or reintegrated into the movie. I have my fingers crossed for the traditional release option, because I would gladly add a copy of KillRoy Was Here to my physical media collection, to keep the Kevin Smith Movie section complete. I’m a Smith fan and a horror fan, so this movie is right up my alley. But I’m also a collector, so I would love to have a copy of KillRoy Was Here that I could hold in my hands.
It’s a shame that KillRoy Was Here has basically been locked away, as it was a fun concept with franchise potential. I’m sure it would find a following among fans of Smith and the horror genre, if only more people could see it. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly while promoting his film The 4:30 Movie, Smith revealed exactly how and why the movie became an NFT release: “We made this movie KillRoy Was Here with the kids at the Ringling College of Art and Design. I wound up with possession of the movie. When it was all done, I had this movie; perfectly watchable, Creepshow type of movie. So I reached out to Shudder and I was like, ‘Hey man, you guys wanna run this? It’s a Kevin Smith original, kind of horror movie. 30 grand.’ That was it. Shudder was like, ‘This is terrible. This isn’t good enough for Shudder.’ Then our producer on the movie, David (Shapiro), he goes, ‘I met with this company, they are interested in buying a movie to release as an NFT. The first movie to release as an NFT, and what they wanna do is use it to showcase their blockchain technology.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, all right.’ Perhaps this is another version of indie film, this is a new playground to go play in. Company paid us over a million dollars. I made a million dollars off of this movie. ‘Not good enough for Shudder.’” Now, with that explanation, the whole NFT release strategy finally makes sense.
While we wait to see if there are going to be any further, more traditional releases of the film, the only way to see KillRoy Was Here is to purchase an NFT (now on the secondary market) or get an NFT savvy person to show you their copy. Technically, anyone who owns the NFT is allowed to do anything they want with it – which is why some of the NFT owners have started sharing the full movie on YouTube.
No comments:
Post a Comment