Another trio of videos that were written by Cody for the JoBlo Network.
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
- 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
- Terrifier, My Little Eye, Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein
- The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Tremors 5: Bloodlines, M3GAN 2.0
- RoboCop 2, How to Train Your Dragon, A Working Man
- The Predator, Masters of the Universe, Mortal Kombat 2
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 Movie Network channel.
First, I dug into the making of the 1988 William Lustig / Larry Cohen classic Maniac Cop for the WTF Happened to This Horror Movie series:
Maniac Cop script:
A brutal killer is stalking the streets of New York City; a man dressed as a police officer. He lures victims in with a false sense of security, traps them with the authority an officer of the law commands, and he murders them, whether they’re guilty or innocent. It took a couple of genre icons to get this idea into production and more icons to deal with the threat on the screen. This is the story of Maniac Cop, and we’re going to find out what happened to this horror movie.
It all began with the 1980 slasher Maniac. The mainstream feature directorial debut of William Lustig, the film caught a lot of attention when it was released, especially for the shocking moments of violence, featuring Tom Savini gore effects. Lustig followed that up with the 1982 action thriller Vigilante, which gained a cult following, but wasn’t a financial success at first. And then Lustig hit a six year dry spell. He would work on projects that wouldn’t go anywhere. He was getting offers to make movies in Los Angeles, but he didn’t want to leave his home in New York City. Then, his fortunes changed when he met fellow filmmaker Larry Cohen.
Cohen had almost thirty years of experience in the industry at that point and had made movies like the It’s Alive trilogy, Q: The Winged Serpent, and The Stuff. Over lunch one day, Cohen asked Lustig why he hadn’t made a sequel to Maniac. Lustig didn’t think a follow-up to that one would work… but nothing was stopping them from making a different movie with “Maniac” in the title. Beverly Hills Cop and RoboCop were recent releases at the time, so Cohen came up with the idea for Maniac Cop. Speaking with Fangoria magazine, Lustig explained, “Larry had the idea of doing a Friday the 13th-type movie that centered around a cop. Something less mean-spirited than the usual gore film, with intelligent characters and numerous clever twists.” He said that when Cohen first told him the title and tagline, he “laughed my head off. Who wouldn’t? A movie whose tagline is ‘You’ve got the right to remain silent forever’ is not something you’re going to take too seriously.”
Lustig was friends with filmmaker James Glickenhaus, who was very well off, thanks to a family business. One day, Glickenhaus mentioned to Lustig that he had just made fifty million dollars from that business. So Lustig asked him if he could have one million of that to make a movie and pitched him the concept of Maniac Cop. Glickenhaus just happened to be securing a production deal with Leonard Shapiro at the time, so he not only ended up giving Lustig a budget of one-point-five million dollars for Maniac Cop, but the film also became the first project for Shapiro-Glickenhaus Entertainment.
Oddly, Shapiro didn’t like the title. When he signed on to produce the film, it was in his contract that he wanted the title to be changed. Lustig told Guns, Guts, and Glory: “We fought over it. I said, ‘Are you crazy? That‘s the whole movie! It‘s the title!’ He said, ‘’It makes it sound so down,’ or words to that effect. And I said, ‘That‘s the fun of the movie, it‘s Maniac Cop!’” Of course, Lustig won that argument, and was very happy to be able to keep his attention-grabbing title.
Just one month after Cohen came up with the idea, while the script was being written, Lustig was already filming because the St. Patrick’s Day parade was going through the city and he wanted to get footage of it to increase his film’s production value. He had Bruce Campbell and his Evil Dead director Sam Raimi come to the city so they could be part of the parade footage – Campbell playing the film’s hero and Raimi making a cameo as a news reporter. The rest of the movie wouldn’t be filmed until the summer. But, thanks to the parade and some decorations, Maniac Cop became a St. Patrick’s Day movie.
What’s surprising, especially since Lustig was turning down L.A. projects, is that a lot of Maniac Cop was filmed in Los Angeles. The parade was in New York. So was the opening sequence, some establishing shots and attack scenes, and the helicopter footage. But, to keep the film on budget, a lot of it had to be shot on the West Coast. As Lustig commented to Camera in the Sun, “I didn’t do it because I wanted to. I did it because New York is expensive. Especially when you bring people in and put them up in hotels.”
The script Cohen wrote to go with the title tells the story of Matt Cordell, a New York police officer who may have been trigger-happy, but was seen as a hero to many due to the notable busts he made. But he got too close to bringing down crime bosses with connections in important places. City Hall turned against him and had him convicted of rights violations. He was sentenced to serve hard time at Sing Sing… and didn’t survive very long in prison, being surrounded by criminals he had put away. He was attacked and stabbed to death in the shower. At least, that’s what everyone thought. He wasn’t quite dead, kept alive by the need for vengeance. Now, he’s on a mission to wipe out the higher-ups and politicians that sacrificed him to protect themselves. Lustig cast Robert Z’Dar as Cordell, having been creeped out by his performance in the 1986 film The Night Stalker. John Naulin, who worked on Re-Animator and From Beyond, provided the Cordell makeup effects, which were designed to make you wonder if the guy is dead or alive.
Lustig built an incredible cast around Z’Dar and Campbell. For the first hour of the film, it seems like troubled, hard-boiled detective Frank McCrae is the hero. That role went to Tom Atkins from Night of the Creeps and Halloween 3. Then, like Marion Crane in Psycho, McCrae is removed from the picture in a shocking moment and different characters have to step up. One is Campbell’s character, Jack Forrest, whose own wife, played by Victoria Catlin, suspects he might be the maniac cop. But he’s not a killer. Instead, he’s a cheater. He has been having an affair with fellow police officer Theresa Mallory, played by Cohen regular Laurene Landon. Of course, nobody believes that Matt Cordell is alive. So it looks like Jack Forrest is going to take the blame for his crimes. Veteran character actress Sheree North was cast a cop with a romantic connection to Cordell. Legendary character actor William Smith was cast as Captain Ripley. And, as the commissioner, we have Shaft himself, Richard Roundtree. Lustig said they were able to get an A cast for this B movie by giving the actors good characters to play and a good story for them to play around in.
Going for a cast like this was a great move. Not just because you can count on all of these actors to deliver solid performances, but also, it enhances Matt Cordell to see him causing trouble for such a cool group of actors. If he can take on these badasses, he’s quite a badass himself. Sadly, Bruce Campbell has turned his back on Maniac Cop over the decades, saying that, while he thought it was perfectly legit at the time, it’s not a good movie in hindsight. When the subject came up during a Variety interview, he took the opportunity to poke fun at Cohen’s writing. He said, “Maniac Cop? Were there any memorable lines in that movie? The guy who wrote this movie wrote a bunch of exploitation stuff. He claimed that his dialogue was actor proof. That his dialogue was so good, no actor could screw it up. I had a different take. Your dialogue is so bad, it’s actor proof, because no actor can say your dialogue. Thanks for playing, Larry.“
But, at the time of production, Campbell had no issues. And the filming of Maniac Cop went very smoothly, with Shapiro and Glickenhaus being very accommodating producers. The only issues came up late in the process. Lustig has said, “This guy showed up at dailies with a clipboard and a little light, starting to write notes to us. I neutralized him by giving him a big credit in the main title with the provision that he should go and take a walk. That was it, there was an attempt to collaborate and it was quickly neutralized. I‘ll give a credit – go away! He has this big credit in the main title and he was never there for production.”
Then, Lustig disappointed the person handling distribution sales by turning in a movie that was better than expected! Throughout production, he would downplay the quality of the film to them, saying, “I think it’s okay, it’s gonna work, it’s commercial.” His approach was to lower expectations and deliver something better than expected. But, the sales person felt that if Lustig had hyped it up properly, it could have sold for higher numbers. Oh, well.
Lustig did make this a great movie that deserved to be a big success. He has described Maniac Cop as “an action-packed horror with some real satisfying scares (and) a clever, tongue-in-cheek quality, even in its most violent moments.” And with this film, he and Cohen brought us one of the last great horror icons to come out of the ’80s, Matt Cordell. The film is rather atypical for a slasher, with its big city setting. This allows for some bigger sequences, like a jailhouse raid and a climactic car chase which builds up to a spectacular stunt involving a truck crashing off of a pier. The story is well-rounded, the mystery intriguing, and Lustig shot the film with a nice, dark, moody atmosphere, going for a noirish look. That atmosphere is greatly enhanced by a haunting score provided by Jay Chattaway, who gave Cordell a very unnerving, whistle-based theme.
Even though the movie was undersold to distributors, Maniac Cop was successful enough to launch a franchise. Released in 1988, it was followed by Maniac Cop 2 in 1990 – and many fans feel that sequel is even better than its predecessor. Then, Maniac Cop 3, which had a very troubled production, came along in 1993. In recent years, Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn was trying to revive the property with either a feature remake or a TV series. But for some reason, the revival never got off the ground. Which is a shame. We’ve lost Robert Z’Dar in the years since the original films were made, but Matt Cordell is still out there… and he deserves a comeback.
At least we got a pretty cool trilogy out of the concept. And it got started with an awesome slasher movie that is perfect for St. Patrick’s Day viewing.
A remake of the Troma classic The Toxic Avenger is coming our way and I was asked to write an "everything we know" article about the film. The information from that article was then used for this video:
And for the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw series, I wrote about the 2014 Kevin Smith film Tusk:
Tusk script:
INTRO: Is man indeed a walrus at heart? That’s the question Kevin Smith sought to answer with his 2014 horror film Tusk, a wild and weird movie that was inspired by a hoax classified ad and workshopped on a podcast. It features an insane Michael Parks, a scenery-chewing Johnny Depp, a walrus-human hybrid, and it’s the Best Horror Movie You Never Saw.
CREATORS / CAST: Filmmakers are often asked how they get their ideas. Tusk is a rare case where a filmmaker’s fans were able to hear the exact moment when inspiration struck. On June 25th, 2013, Kevin Smith sat down with his longtime friend and producer Scott Mosier to record an episode of their podcast, episode 259 of Smodcast, to be exact, and one of the things Smith decided to talk about on the show was a classified ad that had been brought to his attention. It was posted on the website Gumtree in the UK. An old man who had a long and interesting life had settled down in a large house and he was lonely. He was looking for a lodger, offering free room and board to anyone, as long as they were willing to spend two hours a day wearing the realistic walrus costume he had constructed. While in the costume, they were to behave like a walrus, make walrus sounds, and even eat the fish and crabs the old man would serve to them. The old man had spent three years alone on Saint Lawrence Island, where his only company was a walrus. It was the most fulfilling friendship he ever had, and he was looking to relive that experience, in a way, with his lodger.
Of course, this ad turned out to be a hoax, written and posted by a man named Chris Parkinson. But it hadn’t been confirmed to be a hoax yet when it was discussed on Smodcast, and while digging into the strange concept this ad presented, Smith began to see this as the makings of a body horror film. The story of someone undergoing a transformation into a walrus through forced surgeries performed by a madman. By the end of the podcast, he had decided that he should make this movie, because who else was going to make a walrus horror film? He asked listeners to vote on Twitter. If they wanted to see him bring the idea to life, tweet Hashtag Walrus Yes. If they didn’t, Hashtag Walrus No. The podcast episode was uploaded, and the next day, the amount of Walrus Yes votes was overwhelming. Fans had given the idea the greenlight. So, on June 28th, Smith started writing the script – which he titled Tusk and wrote while listening to the Fleetwood Mac song “Tusk” on repeat.
The story centers on Wallace, an American comedian and podcaster who specializes in cringe humor, making fun of people. His latest target is a Canada-based youngster featured in a viral video where he accidentally cuts his own leg off. Wallace mocks the kid’s misfortune… but he’ll get his comeuppance for that. Against the wishes of his girlfriend Ally, who feels he has lost his humanity since finding success through his podcast, Wallace catches a flight to Canada. He planned to interview the kid from the video, but he arrives just in time for the kid’s funeral. Stuck in Canada with nothing to do, Wallace chases another lead: an ad posted on a restroom wall. An old man has settled down in a Manitoba mansion after enjoying a long life at sea. He’s looking for a lodger, and he has stories to tell. So Wallace heads out to interview him. The old man is Howard Howe, and one of his stories involves him being shipwrecked long ago. While he waited for rescue, his only companion was a walrus he named Mister Tusk. Sadly, he had to kill and eat Mister Tusk to survive. He has been obsessing over that ever since. And has become a serial killer, capturing victims, surgically turning them into human-walrus hybrids, and giving these new versions of Mister Tusk a chance to fight for their survival. Howard drugs Wallace, removes his legs, sews him into a walrus costume made of human flesh, and gives him tusks, fashioned from his own leg bones. While these awful things are happening, Ally starts searching for Wallace with the help of his podcasting partner Teddy and Guy LaPointe, a former inspector from Québec who has been on Howard’s trail.
Michael Parks had played the villainous preacher at the heart of Smith’s previous film, Red State and had given an incredible performance. So, Smith brought Parks back to play the twisted Howard Howe, giving him another chance to play crazy and deliver monologues. Justin Long, who is a regular in both horror movies and Kevin Smith movies, was cast as Wallace, with Genesis Rodriguez as Ally, Haley Joel Osment as Teddy, and an uncredited Johnny Depp, wearing a prosthetic nose, as Guy LaPointe.
BACKGROUND: Smith’s first choice to play Guy LaPointe was Quentin Tarantino. Since he had first seen Michael Parks in From Dusk Till Dawn, which Tarantino wrote and acted in, and Tarantino was a fan of Red State, Smith thought he’d like to be in this new Michael Parks horror story. But Tarantino turned down the offer… and Smith later learned that he turned it down because he thought he was being asked to play the walrus man. Smith cast his own daughter Harley Quinn Smith as a convenience store clerk and had her share the screen with her friend Lily-Rose Depp, who happens to be the daughter of Johnny Depp. Since their kids were friends, Smith had Johnny Depp’s number, so he reached out to him about playing Guy LaPointe. Depp’s response: “How delicious! This seems like something I would love to swim around in. Color me intrigued.”
Smith finished the first draft of the script on July 16th. He pitched his low budget walrus horror movie to Blumhouse a couple of days later. Blumhouse was in, even though Universal Pictures, which they have a long-term production deal with, hated the script. Smith was hoping to get Tusk into production in September, aiming for a Sundance premiere the following January. For a moment, it looked like he was on track to do just that. Then Blumhouse pumped the brakes. They wanted Smith to cast Jesse Eisenberg as Wallace, as they felt he had great commercial appeal, and Eisenberg wouldn’t be available until January. Smith didn’t want to wait, plus he had Justin Long in mind for Wallace, so he stepped away from the Blumhouse deal. It was a decision that worked out, because Long helped make Tusk a deeper, more effective movie, working with Smith to add more content to the script dealing with what it is to be human and humane.
Smith was willing to sell his house to raise the money for Tusk, if necessary. But then Demarest Films stepped into provide the funding, and they were able to secure distribution through A24. Production began in North Carolina at the start of November, just four and a half months after the podcast recording where the idea first came up. It was too late to make the Sundance submission deadline, but at least the movie got made. A24 released it in September of 2014. It wasn’t a box office success. It made less than two million dollars worldwide. But it has gathered a cult following on home video, and is apparently popular among the art school crowd.
WHAT MAKES IT GREAT: After Justin Long first read the script, he told Smith, “I’m nauseated, I’m terrified, I’m thoroughly confused in the most entertained way.” Which is the same way many viewers have reacted to the finished film. You can probably tell, based on the basic description, whether or not the movie is for you. It’s a body horror film about a man being turned into a walrus. If that doesn’t sound appealing to you, you’ll likely be appalled by the movie. If that sounds like something that’s so crazy, you have to see it… Well, this is the best “man turns another man into a walrus” movie that could have ever been made.
Tusk works as well as it does because the lead actors fully committed to their roles. Wallace is a bit of a scumbag, but he doesn’t deserve what happens to him. He goes from an uncaring joker who cheats on his girlfriend and mocks people for a living to being terrified for his life, taken apart piece by piece. It’s difficult to imagine anyone living up to the performance Justin Long gives as the walrus, acting from inside a disgusting costume designed by special effects artist Robert Kurtzman. Michael Parks is fascinating as Howard Howe, expertly delivering his dialogue, revealing the emotional core of his character, who is completely insane but manages to hide it well. Most of the time. Genesis Rodriguez also gives an amazing performance as Wallace’s girlfriend, who is heartbroken that her boyfriend has become such a jerk… and has secretly retaliated by sleeping with Teddy behind his back.
Things get very dark and intense between Howard and Wallace. And just when the film reaches its darkest point, Johnny Depp’s Guy LaPointe enters the picture, feeling like he stepped in out of a different movie. Possibly a cartoon. Depp’s acting is goofy and ridiculous, but he brings a whole new energy to the movie.
BEST SCENE(S): And there’s a flashback scene where LaPointe interacts with Howard, who deflects suspicion by pretending to be mentally impaired, that has to be seen to be believed. It’s four and a half minutes of absurdity with an accordion soundtrack.
As with Red State, many of the best scenes in Tusk involve Michael Parks delivering dialogue. But he’s not the only one who gets to monologue in this movie. Johnny Depp has his when Guy LaPointe is introduced. Genesis Rodriguez was also given a monologue, which she recites while looking directly into the camera as it pushes in for a close-up and tears run down her face. It’s mind-blowing. Captivating. Devastating. It might be the single best scene in the movie.
Or, it would be, if the first full reveal of Wallace as the walrus wasn’t one of the best shots in cinema history. Horrific… and yet, at the same time, so shocking that it’s amusing. Much like the movie as a whole.
PARTING SHOT: While crafting Tusk, Smith started to envision a series of Canada-based horror stories. He called it the True North Trilogy. Even though Tusk wasn’t a box office success, he was able to make the second chapter in the trilogy: Yoga Hosers, about teen convenience store clerks battling Bratzis (foot tall Canadian Nazis made of sentient bratwurst with concentrated sauerkraut for blood). Yes, it’s even weirder than Tusk. And got a worse reception. But fans are still anxiously waiting for the third installment in this trilogy: Moose Jaws, about a killer moose terrorizing a summer camp.
We’re desperately hoping that Smith will get to make his moose movie someday. In the meantime, at least we have his crazy walrus movie to go back to and watch again and again. He had an idea for a movie about a man turning another man into a walrus… and he got it made. Very quickly. This movie actually exists, and we’re eternally grateful for it. Walrus Yes, forever.
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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