A Horror World Conversation with Greg Lamberson
By Steven E. Wedel

I met Greg Lamberson at Horrorfind in 2005. I remember going to dinner with him, his wife Tamar and Marcy and G Italiano. During dinner, Greg and G talked about some movie Greg made back in the 1980s and how Greg was eating potato chips when he did the director commentary for the new DVD release. Greg was funny, so the next day I bought the DVD in a green jewel case, and the novel he’d written, called Personal Demons.

You’ve got to admire the enthusiasm of the movie, SLIME CITY. Until recently, it was Greg’s defining piece of art, a low-budget cult flick that embodies everything that was great about indie filmmakers of that magical decade.

Now, Greg may be as well known for the creation of his teen zombie Johnny Gruesome. But in his latest book, he spills his guts about how to make a low-budget horror film.

Horror World: Greg, thanks for taking the time to talk to Horror World. You’ve been incredibly busy over the past few years, and it looks like things are not slowing down for you. I’m not sure where to begin, so let’s just go back to the Reagan years. Tell us about the making of SLIME CITY. Where’d you get the idea?

Greg Lamberson: I grew up in a small town and moved to NYC to study filmmaking at the School of Visual Arts. As you can imagine, it was quite a culture shock. Our dorm was in a YMCA on 34 th Street, in a real sleazy neighborhood not far from Times Square. The Moonies occupied the New Yorker Building across the street and my friends and I would eat breakfast in a diner next door with pimps, hookers and drug dealers who were getting off work. That’s the milieu that informed SLIME CITY. I only lasted a year in school because I didn’t like making short films. BASKET CASE, THE EVIL DEAD and THE DEADLY SPAWN were all 16m features that had theatrical releases, and that’s what I wanted to do.

HW: How much did it cost to make SLIME CITY, and what would that be in today’s dollars? Can you compare that to, say, the original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968) and a modern indie film?

GL: SLIME CITY cost $50,000 to shoot on 16m in Ronny Reagan dollars. I’m guessing that would be $150,000 today, except that today I’d shoot it in digital video, so it might still cost $50,000 going that route. I believe NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD cost $300,000 back in ’68, but Romero shot that on 35mm film. SLIME CITY is often compared to BASKET CASE and STREET TRASH. Of the two, it’s closer in budget to BASKET CASE, which cost $160,000—but that included a 35mm blowup, which was at least $50,000 by itself—the cost of my entire film. And STREET TRASH cost $900,000. So in comparison, my film was much smaller.

HW: SLIME CITY virtually disappeared for a while until Shock-O-Rama released it on DVD. Now you’ve been hitting a lot of conventions and film festivals for screenings. Talk to us a little about the dark period, when the film wasn’t available. Did you think it was just gone and forgotten?

GL: Yes. SLIME CITY played as a midnight movie in NYC for five weekends, and we sold it to about 10 countries around the world. It came out on video in 1989, at the end of the direct-to-video horror boom; it really was the last film of that era. Our distributor, Camp Home Video, paid us an advance, which never happens for low budget films any more, and we had a nice release. And then the president of Camp just disappeared. It was rumored that he had gotten in trouble with the mafia over a porn deal, and had gone on the lamb, been whacked, or went into witness protection. Whatever the truth is, he didn’t pay us a huge chunk of money he owed us and we couldn’t get another distribution deal until our seven year contract with him expired. During that time we learned that the warehouse where he stored his inventory sold all of his product to sub-distributors to make up for money that he owed them, so we got raped all over again. And then there were bootlegs. So I figured it was all over for my little movie.

HW: How did it come about that you and Shock-O-Rama hooked up for the new release?

GL: E.I. Cinema picked up my second film, UNDYING LOVE and released it on VHS as NEW YORK VAMPIRE, a title I hate. Those guys were SLIME CITY fans, and NYV did well enough for them that they released a 10 th anniversary edition of SLIME on VHS, in a fancy box. I was pleased with their release and did the MAKING SLIME mini-documentary for it, but Camp had already sold so many units, and DVD was picking up steam, so not many people bought the re-release. E.I. changed their name to Shock-O-Rama, and in 2004 they brought me out to New Jersey to supervise a transfer of the only existing 16m print to DVD. They did an amazing job, promoted the hell out of it, and the reaction has been nothing short of amazing.

HW: I’ve shown the film to some of my high school classes, and they seem to get it and appreciate it as a low budget film. What have you seen in audience response? In the world of CGI, do people still appreciate the old-school innovations?

GL: When the film came out the first time there was no internet, just a few horror magazines and fanzines. Now there are tons of websites devoted to this sort of obscure material, and I’m astonished by the number of new fans who contact me on a pretty regular basis. When I go to these conventions there’s always at least a couple of young guys who are fanatical about the film and ask to have their picture taken with me, so I suck in my gut and pretend to be a successful indie filmmaker—for the kids. People like the film because it is from that sleazy, grindhouse era; they like the latex effects and the fact that it was shot on film. Most of all, they like the ending, which is where most of our budget went. By definition, a ‘cult film’ is a film with a small but devoted following. I’ve been e-mailed by guys in Spain, Ireland and England who tell me this was the first gore film they saw as kids, so it had a tremendous impact on them. Two people have told me they’ve watched it 100 times. I haven’t watched it 100 times! In fact, until it was letterboxed for DVD, I couldn’t watch it at all. And in the last year young women have started telling me how much they like it, which is something completely new.

HW: OK, let’s leave SLIME CITY behind for a moment. Tell us about Personal Demons. Where did that idea come from?

GL: After making three micro-budget horror films without Hollywood pounding on my door to make me the next Mick Garris, I decided to write a big budget horror screenplay, but had no idea how to sell it. I tried turning it into a novel once before and churned out the worst, most clichéd, first person private eye nonsense in history. So it went into a drawer, on top of my screenplay for JOHNNY GRUESOME and what was then called WEREWOLF. Around 2000, I became demoralized from my lack of success as a filmmaker and decided to take a serious crack at being a novelist. I felt Personal Demons was my most original and mature script, so that’s the one I decided to tackle.

HW: How long did it take you to write the novel? Were you satisfied with the hard/softcover release by Broken Umbrella Press?

GL: Maybe a year, while I was collecting unemployment. 9/11 occurred during the writing of it and greatly influenced it. My first draft was 600 pages. I got it down to 400 and submitted it to some expensive critiquing service Writer’s Digest offered. It took nine months to get the critique, and by then I had joined the HWA and Nick Mamatas, Paul Tremblay and Kathy Ptacek had read it for me and offered me advice which I took to heart. When I got the WD critique it was a joke in comparison. So when people complain about the $65 HWA charges each year, I remind myself that I wasted $600 on WD. I may be one of the biggest and most frequent critics of the HWA, but I disagree with anyone who thinks it’s a useless organization.

Overall, I have positive feelings about Broken Umbrella’s editions. I liked the typeset and loved the cover. I didn’t like that there was no description of the story on the back cover, just a description of the Anubis Award for Horror. And of course, I didn’t like that there was no promotion for the book and that I had to do all of the legwork myself. I think it’s my best work, and as with SLIME CITY, I refused to let it die, and Medallion is publishing it as a mass market paperback next year.

HW: Now, you’ve spent the past couple of years promoting your most recent novel, Johnny Gruesome. Anyone who hasn’t seen one of the many interviews, newsletters, press releases, blogs, etc. that you’ve written about it is living under a rock. But, there might be one or two people peeking out. Tell us briefly about Johnny’s birth and his evolution from screenplay to limited edition novel, CD, promo video, trade paperback release, etc.

GL: As I noted above, the “Headbanger from Hell” started out as a screenplay which came close to getting made a couple of times. I can’t tell you how much of my life I’ve spent dealing with “executive producers” who say they can raise money but can’t. Whatever you say about some small press publishers, at least they actually produce the damned books, you know? Personal Demons received such glowing reviews that I thought it would open doors for me, but that never happened; I continued to receive the same rejections from agents and publishers. I decided the only way I could deliver that book to a wider audience was to have a successful second book, preferably mass market, by a publisher who would then want Personal Demons as a follow-up. And that’s pretty much what happened: Bad Moon and Medallion both wanted the book, and fortunately I was able to work out deals with each of them. The LE came out in January and the TPB came out in October. Medallion acquired Personal Demons somewhere between those two releases. Isn’t it great when a plan comes together?

HW: Will we see anything different in the new edition of Personal Demons?

GL: I did do an edit of Personal Demons, making very minor changes. Corporate security is a big aspect of the story, and the technology has changed drastically in just a few years. I’m glad I had the chance to tweak a few things, but it’s the same book.

HW: SLIME CITY isn’t your only film. You’ve also got UNDYING LOVE (aka NEW YORK VAMPIRE) and NAKED FEAR. The latter has never been on video or DVD before, right? Tell us about the film.

GL: I shot NAKED FEAR on Hi-8 video in 1995. We messed up the sound so we had to dub the whole thing, and my first cut came in at 64 minutes, way too short. Then my editor directed his first feature, a crime drama called WEST NEW YORK, so for two years we did no work on my film. By the time we did the dubbing, and shot and edited additional footage, it was 1999. Digital Video was all the rage, and Shock-O-Rama had no interest in picking it up. That really played a big role in my decision to switch from filmmaking to writing prose fiction. Shock-O-Rama releases most of their acquisitions as double features, and when they decided to give SLIME CITY the deluxe treatment I didn’t want to split miniscule royalties with another filmmaker, so I said, “Just release NAKED FEAR as the second feature, it will make everything simpler.” So that’s how I got that out there—really, it’s a full time job making sure my work doesn’t completely disappear! I think it’s a good little film, and just today at a book signing for Johnny Gruesome someone told me how much they like it.

HW: OK, finally! Let’s talk about your most recent book, Cheap Scares. Obviously, your experience in the film world qualified you to write this one. Tell us what the book is all about.

GL: Half the book is filmmaking advice from me based on my experiences on my films and others I worked on -- I WAS A TEENAGE ZOMBIE, PLUTONIUM BABY and BRAIN DAMAGE. The other half of the book consists of in-depth interviews with filmmakers Larry Fessenden, Scooter McCrae, Roy Frunkes, J.R. Bookwalter and Brett Piper—guys who have really made a mark on independent horror cinema. I also interviewed an entertainment attorney, a DVD distributor, and a marketing executive. So it’s a comprehensive look at the low budget filmmaking process, from concept to screenplay to production, post production, distribution and marketing.

HW: Who’s the target audience? Is this something the general public might enjoy? Just horror fans, or just people looking to make inexpensive horror movies?

GL: My goal with this book was to write the best book on filmmaking that I could, something that would truly inform and inspire low budget filmmakers but at the same time pull no punches and warn them what it’s really like out there, something you rarely see in filmmaking guides. As I learned from Roy Frumkes, who was one of my instructors at SVA, the best way to educate is to entertain, so I made sure there’s a lot of entertainment value in it as well, which should appeal to people who may not want to put their lives and financial security on hold for two years while they make a film. There’s also a certain historical perspective as well.

HW: Talk to us about how you wrote Cheap Scares.

GL: You know, I had thought about writing this book once before, but feared it would appear to be an exercise in egomania, and I’m generally pretty self deprecating, especially about my filmmaking “career.” After I had already dismissed the idea, Nick Mamatas suggested I write just such a book and showed me a sample proposal. This turned out to be a much bigger project than I expected, largely because I did my interviews over the telephone on a crappy recorder, transcribed those interviews, and then edited them down. It took me a full year to write; it’s 99,000 words with 92 photographs, and it’s the most honest and rewarding writing I’ve done, really a terrific experience.

HW: How will you be promoting Cheap Scares?

GL: Good question! McFarland is a totally different type of publisher than I’m used to working with. They cater to libraries and colleges and specialty bookstores. They knew their client base, and the book is essentially a textbook, so it costs $40. That’s certainly reasonable -- a bargain even -- compared to what many of us are used to dealing with in the LE market, but it’s not very practical as far as book signings go. The early reviews have been sensational, I have a lot of faith in this, and I’m really just going to spread the word as best as I can through the low budget filmmaking community. One of the great things about McFarland is that they keep their books in print for a long time, so I’m pretty confident that the target audience will discover it.

HW: SLIME CITY Massacre. What is it, and how soon can we see it?

GL: SLIME CITY MASSACRE is a sequel to SLIME CITY, but it’s also a celebration of that whole ’80s period -- even though it’s set slightly in the future, in a post economic- holocaust America -- and it’s designed to appeal to people who have never heard of the original, which is why there’s no “RETURN” or “2” in the title. It’s the best script I’ve ever written and I really want to make it. I think it will be a good horror film instead of a “good for what it is” horror film. I’d like to get it right just once! I have one investor committed, but that’s not enough. I have an executive producer, but I’ve already explained how useless that can be. Right now I’m just drinking a lot of wine so I have those empty bottles for props!

HW: What is your next novel, and when will we see that?

GL: Medallion just acquired my third novel, The Frenzy Way, for October 2010. It’s a werewolf novel, sort of a cross between the traditional horror of Johnny Gruesome and the action pacing of Personal Demons. The next novel I write will be the next “Jake Helman chiller,” a sequel to Personal Demons. I really want that to be an ongoing series.

HW: Greg, we really appreciate all your time, and your contributions to the genre, both cinematic and literary. Is there anything you’d like to add that I didn’t get around to asking?

GL: Just thank you, Steve. I appreciate your interest.

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