Pulp Features

Independent films often leave a little to be desired. Some are just plain awful, others are little more than low budget knock offs of Hollywood’s favourite themes and many independent filmmakers remain stuck in obscurity.

From the crowd, some people get good, get lucky or just have a knack for capturing the interest of a sceptical crowd. New York based film director and producer, Greg Pak may well be such a person.

Although he has several shorts to his credit, his most recent work, Robot Stories, starring Tamlyn Tomita and Sab Shimono, is his first venture into feature film. This film won him the 2002 screenplay award at the Hamptons International Film festival and has since been well-received elsewhere. That same year, a screenplay for his Rio Chino won the Pipedream Screenwriting Award at the 2002 IFP Market.

Greg Pak studied political science at Yale University, history at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar and finally film production at the NYU graduate film program.

Although Robot Stories might be making some waves on the independent circuit, Pak is by no means a lucky newcomer. His collection of short films comprises a bizarre collection of strange comedies. Cat Fight Tonight is described as an encounter with a crazed man, a crazed woman and a crazed cat. In all honesty, I didn’t see this one, but only heard about it. I can well imagine!

The Penny Marshall Project is more tongue in cheek, with an actress playing an aging Penny Marshall, along with an equally world weary Frances Ford Coppolla, played by an equally tired looking actor, going into the woods with some others, to recapture their spirit for life. The results aren’t pretty.

Other shorts by Pak include Mouse, Fighting Grandpa, Brother Killer Wolf, Asian Pride Porn (probably his most well-known film and available on Atom Films), and his Po Mo series.

Pak, himself, still resides in New York where he operates Pak Man productions. Aside from his own film projects, he is also involved with various Asian American film societies and works towards gaining recognition for fellow Asian Americans. Two sites that he edits are FilmHelp.com and AsianAmericanFilm.com

Busy, prolific, and with a talent for humorously depicting the strange, Greg Pak may well be someone to keep an eye on.

New York based Chuck Parello is a relatively new director whose first two films have dealt with psychotic killers. He is fast becoming a recognized face amongst horror fans due to the graphic nature of his movies and the genuine fright they provoke. The unsettling factors within his projects are not helped by the fact the people dealt with were based on real-life murderers of the craziest order, rather than purely some screenwriter’s imagination. When it comes to the uncanny, truth is always stranger than fiction.

Parello’s first major directorial job was “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Part 2”, the sequel to “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer”. While it was not a bad project as far as horror films go, it did not gain him as much recognition as he might have desired. His second film, “Ed Gein”, proved quite the contrary.

Ed Gein has been the subject of numerous films before, usually with a change in name and surroundings. No one will deny he was a prototype for Hannibal Lector in “Red Dragon”, “Hannibal” and “Silence of the Lambs”. He also inspired both “Psycho” and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, another lesser known film named “Deranged”, and several documentaries.

In real life, Gein was a farmer with a mother’s boy complex living in Plainfield Wisconsin who managed to pass for normal by day, but liked to rob graves by night. He was quite a craftsman, so to speak, fashioning furniture out of bones, a suit made out of women’s skin and a variety of trinkets made from skulls. He was eventually captured after having killed some local people and leaving enough clues to bring the police right to his door step. Gein was arrested, placed in an insane asylum where he eventually died.

For more information on this movie, you can visit www.edgeinthemovie.com which has a trailer, a more in-depth article on Gein’s life, information on the film, and the actors involved.

Steve Rainsback makes a convincing Ed Gein in this, and even looks quite a bit like the real madman. Others in the cast include Carrie Snodgress from “Diary of a Mad Housewife”, and several newcomers.

Parello’s direction gives this movie a truly creepy atmosphere, sickeningly so at times, but this is the intent. His work on this picture has gained him quite a following amongst horror fans and enhanced his reputation as a ‘psycho-killer director’, so much so that he is supposed to be in-line to do another movie shortly, again based on real-life psycho killers. This time around it is The Hillside Stranglers who will reportedly become his subject.

Although a relative newcomer, Chuck Parello has set the groundwork to be around for a long time to come. “Ed Gein” has been well received on the festival circuit and was the winner of the best film award at the Sitges Film Festival.

Chuck Parello’s next project is another true story - “Deep Forest” about a man murdered thirteen people in Northern Spain in the 1850s and then claimed to be a werewolf when he was caught.

He may not be an internationally known name, but since the 1970s, The Ghoul has been one of the figureheads of pulp cinema in the American Midwest. Based in Cleveland, Ohio, The Ghoul (real name Ron Sween) has become one of the most beloved figures on area TV, hosting some of the worst movies ever made, sometimes with all the inappropriate ad-libs, dubs, or splices which make the flicks halfway watchable.

The Ghoul is actually a spin-off of the late Ghoulardi, who originated the character (weird fright wig, long lab coat covered with monster buttons, etc…) in the early 1960s. The Ghoul took over the role with Ghoulardi’s blessings several years after the original went off the air and has become a mainstay ever since. Aside from the TV show, he also makes several appearances at horror shows, malls and comic shops… and he has a book out.

The Ghoul even has a website.

Among the best of the worst that The Ghoul has aired, and often screwed with, are such classics as “I Was a Teenage Werewolf”, “Night of the Living Dead”, “Scrooge”, “The Screaming Skull”, “Santa Claus Versus the Martians” and “Amsterdamned”. Often he redoes the theme song, dubs in burps whenever someone is drinking, has them saying “Ow, ow, ow!” when being mutilated by a monster or a psychotic killer and that sort of thing. The comedy is not for everyone and some critics have said that they would prefer him not to do pop ups or cut ins as it prevents them from enjoying the movie. I once felt the same way when I used to go to the Rocky horror Picture Show and told friends for once I would like to hear the soundtrack from start to finish. “No, you don’t,” said my friend and when the film came out on video, sans interruptions, I learned why! Much the same here, as the ad-libs and comedy can make, rather than break, some truly horrible films.

There have of course been others who have done or do such TV shows. Vampira, Elvira, Edmus Scary (a Phoenix based horror host who used this name as a spin-off of his real name, Ed Muscari, though he was immediately taken off the airwaves when caught up in a shocker-type scandal away from the studios). Whether or not anyone has done it better than the Ghoul is debatable. Few, however, have lasted as long as he has.

When contracts prevent him from doing his pop ups and inserts, The Ghoul still manages to amuse his audience with skits and routines ranging from the tasteless to the side-splitting.

Among his cohorts are Froggy, a spoof on the studio mascot, to whom the Ghoul is always doing bad things, Franky (A talking Frankenstein head) and Junior, the Ghoul’s dog. While the late Ghouladri often took jabs at newscaster, Dorothy Fulheim, in the 1960s, The Ghoul follows suit with barbs aimed at present newscaster, Denise Dufala. When Dufala announced the release of a CD, for which she sang and let proceeds go to charity…the Ghoul was in his element. He released a CD “Skeet Shoot”, among other things, making fun of the product while gaining yet more publicity for the release and helping her cause. The digs between the two of them continue to this day.

At many horror shows and conventions, The Ghoul remains strikingly different from other dealers and celebrities. He signs things for free and at times even brings his own photos to sign and pass out. For a long while, he was offering a free signed photo to people who sent a self-addressed and stamped 5by7 envelope to the studio.

When certain people failed to follow instructions and sent a regular-sized envelope, he would make fun of them on the air, cutting the picture in half and mailing it, folding it different ways, or just giving the signed portion of the still to the intended victim.

Though in the past year or so his ratings have been hurt by annoying network time changes, he continues to drive forward and there is no indication he will pack it in at any time soon.

It’s a pity he doesn’t have an international audience.