Brad Stevens - Monte Hellman - His Life and Films

16. Monte Hellman, NFT lecture and audio commentary on the Iguana DVD. According to Steven Gaydos, "Franco sold Cannibal Holocaust too quickly and missed a bonanza in Japan. So he held out when Japan offered $250,000 for Iguana. He could have recouped one-fourth of his budget in one territory. After they saw the movie, they didn't offer him a dime. It's called fighting the last war. A cautionary tale" (e-mail to the author, July 30, 2001).

17. Media Home Entertainment was a subsidiary of Heron HomeVideo, the company that purchased Iguana 's presale rights for North America. According to Di Nunzio, Heron bought the film on the strength of Hellman's name alone: "They didn't even want to see the script" (Jennifer Clark, "New Monte Hellman Film Iguana Lifts Hopes of Producer," Variety , February 3, 1988, p. 39).

18. Steven Gaydos, e-mail to the author, April 17, 2001.

19. Monte Hellman in Romauld Karmakar's film Hellman Rider (1989).

20. The cut occurs 40 minutes 26 seconds in, just after Diego finds himself in a cave near a chained Carmen. The missing footage shows Diego wandering into the darkness. After a short pause, he screams. Oberlus then appears and delivers the following speech: "Diego is gone, Carmen. You have no one to turn to but me. My name is Oberlus, and I'm king of Hood Island. Those who obey me live, and those who don't die. And death is not the worst punishment I can inflict. If you keep our home clean and open your legs when I order you to, I guarantee you a life of peace for as long as you please me. Now it's time for you to receive your husband and king. Lie down and spread your legs."

21. Hellman often cites Carol Reed's Outcast of the Islands (1951), based on the Joseph Conrad novel, as a particular favorite. As he told Beverly Waker in 1970, "I guess every film I've made has been either The Maltese Falcon or Outcast of the Islands " ( Sight and Sound Winter 1970/71, p. 37).

22. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876, Penguin edition 1986), p. 204.

23. Claire Johnston, "Monte Hellman," Cinema (UK) 6/7, August 1970, p. 39.

24. There is actually a direct reference to Back Door to Hell in Iguana. In the former film, Sergeant Jersey enters a Japanese radio station, approaches a sleeping soldier, places one hand over the man's mouth and cuts his throat, causing blood to spray onto Jersey's fingers. The action is repeated in Iguana when Oberlus sneaks onto Gamboa's ship and kills a sleeping sailor. The only difference is that here the blood sprays onto Oberlus' face. When I mentioned this to Hellman, he responded, "I don't know about reference, but I was borrowing from myself" (e-mail to the author, May 22, 2001).

25. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (Penguin edition), p.7.

26. Carmen's relationship with Oberlus is strikingly similar to Kit's relationship with Belqassim in The Sheltering Sky , a book Hellman hoped to film: "Perhaps it's a theme that moves me on some unconscious level" (Monte Hellman, e-mail to the author, April 19th 2001).

27. There is an echo here of John Cassavetes' Love Streams (1984).

28. For an even more disenchanted use of this convention, see the treatment of Scatman Crothers' character in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980), a significant departure from Stephen King's source novel.

29. Monte Hellman, sleeve notes for the Iguana DVD.

30. When I asked Hellman about this, he replied, "I always like to get individual responses from the audience. But, if you're interested in what was in my mind at that moment (which was purposeful), I wanted to convey that it was neither a boy or a girl but rather a monster like him" (e-mail to the author, May 21, 2001). Asked during the recording of his DVD commentary if the baby looked like Oberlus, Hellman more ambiguously insisted, "That's what we have to answer for ourselves."

31. Robin Wood, " Rancho Notorious : A Noir Western In Colour," Cineaction 13-14, Summer 1988, p. 91.

Chapter 16. Silent Night , Deadly Night III: Better Watch Out!

1. Monte Hellman, e-mail to the author, January 11, 2001.

2. The first sequel, Silent Night, Deadly Night Part II , was directed by Lee Harry in 1985.

3. The screenplay credit actually reads, "Screenplay by Carlos Laszlo, from a story by C. Laszlo, M. Hellman and A. H. Gorson." Rex Weiner and Steven Gaydos are credited as "creative consultants." According to Gaydos, "I asked Monte what he wanted, and he said he thought it should be funny. I said, 'Thank God, because the only thing I can do is make it funnier.' Which I think I did. And along the way gave some dimension to the Culp and Beymer characters and their relationship" (e-mail to the author, July 10, 2001).

4. Monte Hellman, NFT lecture (January 3, 1995), "Monte Hellman" ( Psychotronic 25 , p. 82) and e-mails to the author, January 11, June 10 and July 2, 2001.

5. Bill Moseley, e-mail to the author, November 19, 2001. According to Hellman, "Bill's comments about crying reminded me of two things. One, in addition to Bill, Harry Dean Stanton cried in Two-Lane , and Jack Albertson cried in Waiting for Godot. Every night, as a matter of fact. And two, Marlon Brando once told me that I couldn't be a good director because I was too nice. All the best directors, according to Brando, were sons o' bitches. Little did he know I had the ability to make strong men weep!" (e-mail to the author, November 19, 2001).

6. Monte Hellman, e-mail to the author, January 11, 2001. The Silent Night, Deadly Night franchise continued with Brian Yuzna's Initiation: Silent Night, Deadly Night 4 (1990), whose only connection with previous series entries is a scene in which a character watches Hellman's film on television!

7. Kent Jones is quite wrong when he claims that "at a recent season of his work at the BFI [Hellman] would not allow it to be shown" ("The Cylinders Were Whispering My Name").

8. "Monte Hellman Is in No Way Bitter."

9. Monte Hellman, e-mail to the author, January 11, 2001.

10. See Psychotronic 25 , p. 82.

11. According to Bill Krohn, "the idea of using The Terror came to Hellman late in the game; the script merely specifies that the characters are all watching a movie starring Boris Karloff" ("Letter from Hollywood: The Summer of Sequels—Hellman and the Others," English-language original courtesy of the author). Hellman had previously attempted to exploit the comic potential of blindness in an advertisement he wanted to make for Panasonic, which involved a blind man driving.

12. When I asked Hellman about this, he replied "I think it's Bill's comment, not mine. I don't think about the films I'm making while I'm making them, other than to wonder how I'm going to get finished on time. I enjoy reading comments like Bill's after the fact, while sipping a margarita. If I put jokes in my movies, it's without political intent" (e-mail to the author, July 4, 2001). Steven Gaydos agrees: "I came up with the line, but not as a comment on sequels. That is Bill Krohn's brilliance, not mine. It was from a book of sports quotations. Monte and I had more discussions about that joke than anything else I wrote for the movie" (Steven Gaydos, e-mail to the author, July 5, 2001).