Sex, Monsters and Digital Video
An interview with Halfway House director Kenneth Hall
by Amanda By Night

(Photo by David S. Cohen)

I'm sitting across from Kenneth Hall at the popular Burbank restaurant Dalt's, watching him sip a martini on a Friday afternoon. Before the interview, we discussed the state of current independent cinema. He's not really happy with it. And if anyone knows about making an indie genre movie good, it's Kenneth. A staple of the low-budget horror movement of the 80's, he's had his hand in everything from Linnea Quigley's Horror Workout to Puppet Master. Working in every capacity imaginable, from special effects to directing, he's a horror renaissance man. After a 14-year break from directing, Kenneth is about to unleash a new monster onto the scene. This beast called The Halfway House, which features nubile bad girls being fed to an one-eyed tentacled creature and starring Mary Woronov as the nun from hell, is about as good as they get. Kenneth was eager to talk to Unitshifter about a life in the B movie industry. And we were happy to hear it. Here's what he had to say…

What was the first big film you worked on?

The first time I was hired, because there was no pay initially, was for Fred Olen Ray's The Tomb. He gave me one of the all time immortal B-movie quotes, "Well y'know, screenplays are funny things. People can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for them, but if you write them yourself, it's free."

When you directed your first film, Evil Spawn, was it a good experience?

Good and bad. Fred shot one day and then apparently lost interest in it. When I started talking to him about doing a completely original film, I was sorted of baited and switched into being a director of what was called The Wasp at the time. Originally Fred had shot Bobby Bresee wearing a bug mask which looked like a dime store Halloween mask. Even wearing high-heel boots she could barely see eye to eye with the girl she was killing. I was stuck with a generic John Carradine scene that Fred had shot several years before. He literally hired Carradine for a day supposedly to shoot various scenes for 'a' movie. He fully intended to take each individual scene and cut it for separate movies so he could have five or six films "Starring John Carradine!"

You also wrote the infamous Nightmare Sisters…

I was set to write I Was a Teenage Sex Mutant, which became Dr. Alien. That got delayed. So Dave DeCoteau came over one night and said he had a great idea. He wanted to do a movie with Brinke (Stevens), Linnea (Quigley) and Michelle (Bauer) called Sorority Succubus Sisters, which was the original title. Basically the girls are sorority girls who get transformed into demons and go around orally castrating guys! I always thought castration was a funny subject, unless of course it happens to you! I said let's go one better and have them start out as really nerdy and have them transform.

It only took four days to shoot. How did you feel about the end product?

We refer to that one as it was more fun to make than it was to watch. It's a funny film but the problem with doing comedy on that sort of (timeline) is that basically every shot was done in a single take. I would sit and watch and when an actor blew a line I'd say well there's another joke that will never be in this film! It's a very talky script. I had to make it go on and on because it's got to eat up some screen time. I would tease Dave that we should shoot the film with security camera masters so we wouldn't have the need to do any coverage! Under the circumstances I think it's a pretty fun little movie. The people who deserve the credit are Brinke, Linnea and Michelle, who had tons of dialog. All the scenes with the girls as nerds were done in one day.

Since you've worked with the three original Scream Queens, how to you feel about how the label is being used now?

I guess the problem for me is that girls today can appear in one shot-on-video movie and call themselves 'scream queens'. Back then these girls, particularly Linnea, were making film after film and really earning the title. My concern when I did Halfway House is that I didn't really know who was considered a scream queen. I did find Athena Demos (Angelina) through a scream queen site. That's the beauty of the internet. I checked out her bio and she had worked with two guys I knew. There's something to be said about word of mouth and reputation. She's the hardest working scream queen in show business! She's very cool and she introduced us to our composer (Atom Smith), who she's now engaged to. Conversely, there was another scream queen, who I will not name, that we cast in the role of Eddie. Thankfully we saw what she was going to be like to work with in enough time to fire her. She had a really negative attitude. I've heard stories from other directors that hiring her was the worst mistake they ever made.

Was she the only actress you've ever had to let go from a production?

Yeah. It was a nightmare. Monica Shere took over the role and was absolutely fantastic. She did all her own stunts.

Why did you take such a long break from directing?

By the late 80s I had almost a dozen produced screenplays to my credit and I had directed a couple of things. I started writing more to generate material to direct. The worst thing I could imagine was being a writer and not being able to direct my own stuff. Writing these B-movies you got paid what you got paid and you were lucky if you could stretch out your paycheck for two or three months and there's no residuals. That would have been OK if I felt like I was progressing to a certain point. Around the early 90's the bottom fell out of the direct-to-video market. I had not made that transition into just being a writer-director for hire into producing my own content. The thing with B-movies is that there is some money to be made between one or two people but people will work for little or nothing. I found myself in a situation where I was barely able to survive for awhile. In the early 90's I found myself breaking back into special effects, which led to me starting my own special effects company, Total Fabrication, which was founded in 1995 and is still going today.

People think Hollywood is still the movie-making capital, but let's face it, producers are spending their money elsewhere. When things started to slow down after 9-11 I considered a variety of directions, including trying to start a restaurant. In early 2003, I went to a Monsters Among Us show where I ran into a lot people I know in the horror movie business. I reconnected with why I came out here… to make movies.

Where did the idea for Halfway House come from?

It was one of the situations where I knew I wanted to make a movie. I knew more that I wanted to bring in some of the retro elements that I sincerely love. I wanted to make sure we had lots of cool creature effects because I wanted the film to stand out from all these low budget vampire and zombie movies. I'd had an idea back in the 80s, which was much more simplistic called Gut-Eating Monsters From Hell, which was the original working title for Halfway House! It was pretty much about girls being kidnapped, thrown in a basement and fed to a hungry monster. Originally I was thinking of an ordinary basement in a boarding house and woman and her son or deranged handyman being the culprits. Somehow I came up with this idea of a Catholic halfway house. And maybe have our landlady turn into this evil nun!

Sister Cecelia (Mary Woronov) menaces Cherry Pie (Stephanie Leighs).

I was raised Roman-Catholic and went to Catholic school for 12 years. With all the current scandals in the Catholic Church and the fact that they're so eager to completely deny this just because they have the protection of the Vatican just makes them ripe for a target of satire. If I was consciously trying to take pot shots, it was at any kind of organized religion and the fact that so many people get away with stuff because they hide behind religious freedom. There's some subtle political commentary but it's not intended to overwhelm the desire to make a really commercial film with lots of nudity, violence and monsters.

You're a fan of exploitation…

The one guy I truly admire, who recently passed away was Russ Meyer. His films have sadistic violence towards women at times but he always managed to balance it by having these incredibly strong, almost superhuman, female characters. Especially when you look at a film like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! with Tura Satana. She's probably one of the strongest females in movie history. He made these joyous 'sexploitation' movies where women almost always seemed to have the upper hand. It took the edge off of films that deal with torture, sadism and rape. I think the keyword is fun. Even some of the people working on my movie were squeamish with certain scenes like the attempted rape with the Virgin Mary. I always hasten to point out it doesn't happen. Boy, if there's one scene that people remember, even if they just watch the trailer, is Athena Demos dipping that Madonna statue into a bottle of Vaseline. There was a conscious effort to try to go over the top. To try to put something that had some legitimate shock value but didn't cross my own personal lines…

I read in Film Threat that your cast's, uh, assets were 100% natural. Did you plan on that?

It's a personal preference of mine. I really hate these things that look like basketballs wrapped around a woman's body. I just wanted to go for something more natural which in that sense is a retro aspect. You didn't have those kind of boob jobs back in the 60's and 70's. We consciously went after some different ethnicities. We actually had a problem with a very small number of African American women auditioning. We were lucky to find Monica.

You also had some plus-sized women in the shower scene.

A couple of girls weren't exactly Barbie doll physiques. Some of the girls in non-nude scenes were relatives who were under 18! We didn't want to get them into any trouble there.

How'd you get Mary Woronov?

Mary was always on the top of my list. But I knew the realities of casting and schedules and had to consider other people. It was actually through Del and Sue at Dark Delicacies. I asked them to get my information to her. She called me one day and we started chatting. I sent her the script first. She read enough to know it was her cup of tea. A lot of her decisions are not based on financial considerations. They're based on whether or not she's going to have a good time or if it's something that appeals to her aesthetic. We had a good ol' time.

What about Janet Tracy Keijser (Larissa)?

Janet Tracy Keijser takes aim as Janet.

That was very fortunate. Brad Sykes introduced me to her. His wife (Josephina) was the production manager. Janet had worked on several of her films. He admitted he'd never gotten a chance to give her a role worthy of her abilities. She came in to read for us but the only role left open was the jogger at the beginning. We thought it was a thankless role especially after we saw how good Janet was. Her overall attitude was really cool and very helpful and gung-ho. That evening, the actress whom I'd written the part of Larissa for called me up. She wound up having a scheduling conflict. She was sad she had to back out and I certainly don't hold it against her. We had originally written the role of Larissa to not have any nudity.

That's funny because Janet is nude quite a bit!

We'd just interviewed Janet that day. We had Janet come back and read for the lead and she was great. The bonus was that we wound up adding some nudity for her character.

Where did the monster and the Lovecraft elements come from?

Originally it was going to be a monster in the basement and then we started getting into some religious themes. I thought it would be fun to juxtapose the whole Catholic thing with some kind of cult. I always assumed it would be some kind of Lovecrafitan cult. I probably would not have done it if we were going for a more serious tone with the film but the Necronomicon has become a joke in and of itself. Some Lovecraft websites have gravitated towards us because of that, yet we were rejected by the Lovecraft film festival!

Hardworking character actor Yog Sothoth stars as "The Big Creature".

Which part of writing, producing and directing did you like the most?

Actually, I really enjoyed the directing part of it. As executive producer I knew I didn't want to be bogged down with the day to day worries of production so I brought in Ed Polgardy. Even though we were on a tight schedule I felt happier directing this movie than I ever had before. You still have to compromise but I didn't feel I was forced into it. I'm not saying I won't ever do a director-for-hire work if it would give me the opportunity to work with situations I might not normally do with my own productions. At least that's the way I feel now.

Do you have supplemental material planned for the DVD?

We'll have a few extras including a music video by Insecto Circus who did the ending title theme. I'm anxious to see what the MPAA will ask us to cut. It will be my first actual involvement with submitting a film to the MPAA. Basically in the current climate, I think the lesbian scene will get some trims. I cut that scene a little longer than I normally would have, hoping they'd pull it back to where I want it to be.

That scene is shocking but not particularly graphic…

And that was exactly the point of it. Most people were surprised it didn't go on longer, but we weren't trying to do a Cinemax style soft-core sex scene. I just wanted to hit them hard and bluntly.

Is shooting a scene like that difficult?

It's difficult and we did try to keep a closed set, but you've got to have certain crew people standing by. It's tough but it depends on the comfort level of the actors. We were lucky that most of the actors were very easy going.

Are you pleased with Halfway House?

I'm very happy with it. It's my first time having complete control over a movie. I financed it myself. It's not something I recommend to the squeamish. There was also a lot of stress and pressure, but despite all that it was hands-down the most fulfilling and enjoyable experience I've had.

(Photo by David S. Cohen)