He’s been called “The Master of Splatter” and “The Prince of Gore.” His films are loved by legions of underground horror fans, cherished for their use of excessive blood & guts and their charming DIY aesthetic. I speak of none other than Kansas City’s Todd Sheets.
Horror Geek Life caught up with Sheets to ask him about his career, his newest film to hit home video, Bonehill Road, and his upcoming film, Clownado.
Horror Geek Life: You’ve been steadily pumping out homegrown gore flicks since the late ’80s. Films like Zombie Bloodbath and Violent New Breed are classics for fans of underground horror. What’s your secret to having endured so long in an industry and genre that’s constantly changing and evolving?
Todd Sheets: Well, I think I’m insane (laughs). I think I must be crazy to still be doing this for 30 years. Truthfully, those really early movies I did, the first batch of movies that got released of mine, I’ve kind of disowned those because I went through a lot of hell. I had some critics, so-called critics, tell me that if I ever picked up a camera again, they would kill my mother. They were pretty serious, they were very nasty people. Apparently, movies, even bad ones, must be doing something to harm everybody out there, they get so angry about it. My films weren’t great, I was a kid, but there was a spark. There was something in there that people saw that they liked, and they thought there was something in there they could market. David DeCoteau, who was my mentor, saw some things in there, and from there, the ball kept rolling.
It was the VHS boom, and they needed products, things were flying off of shelves. I was lucky because I got in the door at that time and was able to get my films distributed all over the world. We had a lot of gore and really put all of our energy toward the gore effects. When I first got started, that was what it was all about, the make-up. I got the Dick Smith make-up book when I was a kid, and I was a Famous Monsters kid, Forrest Ackerman, and all those guys, and I was all about the make-up, and I was trying to learn how to do all that stuff there in my kitchen. You could make all these creatures, so that’s what I was kind of doing. I think because of that, the homegrown make-up thing, that’s where my concentration was.
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I was learning lighting and things as I went along, we were just kids with a Super 8 camera, it was my father’s, and we were just trying things out. Then, video came along, and we’d try to get video cameras any way we could, we’d rent ’em, or we’d borrow ’em because we were just kids and we were trying our best to do something kinda different. I guess that got us in the door.
I kind of consider Zombie Bloodbath my first real movie because that’s the first time I realized, “Hey, I’m making a movie here. This thing’s going out all over the world.” So, we really tried harder, and then, of course, our luck, we finally get it together, and we have the flood of ’93 in the Midwest and half of our locations were completely underwater. Just a horrible flood. So we weren’t even able to complete that film correctly. I had to cut parts of the script. I had a deadline because we were supposed to have a big theatrical showing here in the Midwest, we had already sold like 600 tickets, this thing was huge. So, we did the best we could, and it was an eye-opening experience.
We tried to get better with each movie. Violent New Breed happens to be one of my favorite early movies because we really worked very hard. The scripts were pretty original. Moonchild was really original, Violent New Breed was really original, and even the Zombie Bloodbath movies were original. What we tried to do was take all of our favorite elements of all the different kinds of zombie movies, Fulci zombie movies and Romero zombie movies, and even Tombs of the Blind Dead and things like that. We tried to throw ’em all in there and make it kind of unique. I think that’s kind of the longevity side of it, we tried to give people a different kind of look and everything.
HGL: You’re an icon of the “shot-on-video horror” movement. Tell us a little about what SOV means to you and how your approach to filmmaking has changed with the advent of digital.
Todd Sheets: My thing was, I loved film, but it was so expensive. With Super 8, it was weird because it had a light meter, and you would use this light meter to gauge whether you had enough light. You’d work so hard with Super 8 to get your perfect picture, then you’d get it back, and it would be dark! It would be black! You’d be like, “What happened? You can barely see anyone moving around! I made this Frankenstein epic, and you can’t even see the monster!” It was really hard as kids when you’re trying to save money to do this, and you’re never going to get your movie done. It was really a nightmare. So, I was like, how the hell can we do this? I really loved doing it, I wanted to give something back to the world that gave so much to me, which was horror movies, sci-fi, and fantasy. You know, when you have a bad day, you go see one of these movies, and it all goes away.
So then video came along. We didn’t even think of what we were doing as pioneers, turns out we were, but we were just trying to make movies with the only things we had. Financially, that was all we could really do as kids was start shooting on video. We’d borrow cameras, it was hilarious, some of those cameras were so bad back then. You’d have to carry this huge thing with you, this brick, the thing was like a hundred pounds! It was terrifying. It has this cable attached to it. We did what we could, for better or for worse. As things progressed, cameras started getting smaller, and they started building all that in, which helped. With digital, it’s pretty great because I can almost, almost get back to the look that I love so much, which is film. They finally almost perfected that, and now they’re screwing it up again. Instead of 30 frames per second, they’re doing 60 frames per second, and it looks like a soap opera, everything is too crisp. Ya know, 4K, 6K, Whatever K, it’s too much. You can’t hide the seams in a monster suit anymore because it’s like a soap opera, everything looks really weird.
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For Bonehill Road, everyone’s asking, “You going 4K?” and I’m like, “No. I’m going 2K and blowing it up to 4K to get a little grain in there.” I’ve got editor friends in LA who take actual film stock, and they can lay it into the image so people don’t really notice it. I’m not talking about the fake grindhouse effect, they can actually take real grain from that film stock and embed it into your image. You’re able to make it look even more like film with 24 frames per second. Things like that. That just makes my heart feel good. We’re shooting 4K now, of course, but for Bonehill Road, we wanted it to look like a 16 mm, handheld, gritty, in-your-face kinda thing.
HGL: Speaking of Bonehill Road, it is a werewolf film on steroids. What can you tell us about how it came to be?
Todd Sheets: Well, Bonehill Road started out as an idea in about 1991. My buddy, Jerry Angell, and I would hang out and watch horror movies, and right down the street, there was this old abandoned, 3-story, scary-lookin’ house right on the corner of Bonehill and Wolf Road. True story. I conjured up the image of this whole Texas Chain Saw Massacre kind of thing going on, but instead of the family being cannibals, they were werewolves. So, this mother and her son are on their way to a holiday, and they have some problems, basically, this family sets a trap in the road and causes them to blow their tires.
Over time, movies like Wrong Turn had basically that same storyline, only they were still cannibals, but we thought, “You know, we don’t have the funds to do this right, I can’t do good werewolves. So, we’re gonna wait until I can.” Lots of years later, I still dreamed of making a werewolf movie, but as the years progressed, since other movies kind of mirrored our original ideas, we kept evolving the script and changing it to where it kind of flipped. Now it wasn’t about a family of werewolves, it was about a pack of werewolves, and the mother and son are a mother and daughter. I started reading a lot of my psych books from being a psych major about the relationships between mothers and daughters and trying to learn. As a guy, writing this was very hard for me because I had to learn what it was like from a female perspective. About the love of a mother and the love of a daughter and the bond there. Then, from there, we built upon that with an abusive relationship they were trying to flee from, and they hit some kind of creature. That’s how we started elaborating on it.
My main goal was to make a werewolf movie that had great werewolves. No CGI werewolves like The Howling and American Werewolf in London. That was going to be hard with no money, so we decided to do an Indiegogo. Everyone was telling me to do an Indiegogo, but I was like, “I hate the idea, it makes me feel like a beggar,” but I put it out, and the thing blew up. We made $13,000, and it kept growing from there. The bottom line was that the actual production cost was about $13,500. We went out to LA and did some additional shooting for the transformation scenes, little things here and there with Joe Castro, who was fantastic. I wanted to have a transformation scene in this movie that was a woman, there are a lot of movies that start to show it, like The Howling, but you never really see the full transformation. Being a huge fan of American Werewolf, I wanted it to be in a brightly lit room. That was something that we really wanted to do, and it took a lot because here in the Midwest, we have make-up artists who are amazing, but they don’t do that kind of stuff anymore.
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So, I had to find someone who could do it, and Joe was definitely ready for it. He loves that kind of stuff, and it’s a challenge. He worked so hard, and he did it with so much passion and love in his heart, and he gave us a hell of a deal because he believed in it. Same with the suits, the guys who made our suits did it without charging us for labor because they were like, “We love what you’re doing.” Same with the masks, which came from England, the mask maker was GES FX. We had six different heads. He asked, “What do you want this to look like?” and I was like, “Man, I want this to look like a cross between The Howling and American Werewolf in London, my two favorites, with shades of Dog Soldiers” and he said, “We can make that happen,” and that’s why the werewolves have these different looks. Humans all look different, why should the werewolves look exactly the same?
I was really excited. It just felt like it was the right time, everybody got on board, and there haven’t been any good werewolf films in a while. It was pretty original, everyone who read the script said, “Holy hell, this isn’t just a werewolf movie, this thing has got a lot of other stuff going on over here, and it’s really got some strong characters.” I, personally, was really happy with all the acting involved. I was really proud, it’s one of my favorite films I’ve ever made. To be honest with you, I’m a werewolf fanatic, and I’d really love the movie if I hadn’t made it. I thought it was a pretty good movie.
HGL: You mentioned the special FX, and your films are known for their commitment to shocking and inventive practical FX. Bonehill Road is no exception. Can you tell us more about what went into the FX sequences in this film and working with gore master Joe Castro?
Todd Sheets: A lot of thought went into it because there was a lot of trial and error. In my head, I saw it, I knew what I wanted. We shot that scene (the transformation) the first time on a very hot August evening, and I got back and looked at the footage, and it was not quite there. As I said, we have a very talented FX crew here in Kansas City, but this is not something they normally do. Transformations are difficult, and you don’t want them to look hokey and you don’t want them to seem super cheap, even though it was cheap, we didn’t have much money. We had to make this look bigger and better.
So, Joe contacts me, we’ve been friends a long time, and he asks me how Bonehill Road is coming along. I say, “Joe, brother, I gotta tell ya. Everything’s great except the transformation. It’s killing me, I’m going out of my mind.” We’re about a month away from the premiere at this point. He’s like, “Well, hell, what do ya need?” I sent him the script, and I tell him my ideas, and he says, “Alright, well, tell me if you can get out here, and we can make this happen.” Joe had no time, he had about a week to prep, and he was making this happen. He was so excited, he was like a kid in a candy store, and he’s got this great studio.
We also had to recreate a kitchen. Joe found an old cabinet. It wasn’t even really the right color, but we lit it in a way that made it look like the right color. For her foot transformation, we had to find a piece of matching carpet! And he found all this stuff. We’re putting all this together to make it match footage we’d shot six weeks before! What a magical moment because it worked. We got to do the stretch-o face, and Dilynn (Fawn Harvey) underwent huge amounts of makeup. Joe was so good he was able to build the fangs on her own teeth. He made the facial pieces for her, mind you, he did this by sight, he didn’t have a mold of her because she was in Kansas City. And they fit! It was unbelievable.
HGL: After watching the film, I can say that all of the hard work paid off! You now have a new upcoming film, Clownado, which is being described as having a film noir style. What made you choose this approach, and what we can expect from a gory horror film in this style?
Todd Sheets: You know, I’ve always loved film noir, much like I love werewolf movies. Film noir has a distinct look. Lots of movies, even Supernatural, I love that TV series. I’m watching it this week and realizing that Supernatural is all shot with the same style. It’s got the Venetian blind lighting and all this stuff that’s really learned from the noir style. Even a lot of Carpenter’s stuff is influenced by that. Noir is also a story style.
With Clownado, it starts there. All my movies start in one place and end someplace completely way off in the distance. For us, we can’t do anything just normal. Film noir was something I wanted to bring into it. The look, the style. Also, it starts with a bit of that in the story. There’s this weird love triangle, this guy who owns this circus is being messed over by his dame, and she’s got this other guy at the circus that she’s messing around with. They’re plotting to steal from him and run off into the night. He catches them in the act. Then it blows off from there into a horror movie.
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It’s really the style of the lighting and the style of the dialogue. It’s just an experiment because I absolutely love those kind of films. I have a huge collection. These were from a time when there was rich storytelling but also very rich visuals. They were in black and white, and they didn’t have color to tell stories, so they found a way to do it with shadows and lighting. I’ve got this amazing book, Painting With Light, by John Alton, who was one of the great cinematographers of our time. He created these looks that are still being used today. I absolutely loved it. So for Clownado, we decided not to just make a horror movie like everyone else, we’d make something, in color, mind you, very popping great colors because it’s a clown movie, but do it in a noir style. Take some time with the lighting and make it look brilliant.
HGL: The trailers and updates are definitely keeping us excited to check it out. Lastly, what’s next for Todd Sheets? Obviously, Clownado madness is in full swing, but is there anything that fans of your films can look forward to on the horizon?
Todd Sheets: Well, I’m working on a concept and script called The Ballad of Marshall Stack. It’s named after a song by the NWOBHM band Raven, who I’ve kind of gotten to be buddies with. We hit it off because they love horror movies. I’m a big British metal fan, Iron Maiden is my favorite band of all time. I always loved that title, It just hit me one night. I couldn’t sleep because this concept came to me about this sheriff named Marshall Stack.
He used to be the leader of a heavy metal band. They didn’t make it, but they got kind of close. His band was on the edge of success. He becomes a sheriff, some bad things happen, and these people try to kill him. It turns out his city council and all these people are part of a cult. So, it’s kind of like if you took Twin Peaks, an Italian Western, and you mixed it with The Devil’s Rain, with a little bit of Evil Dead thrown in there. The gritty, old school, gloppy Evil Dead-style. That’s kind of what this movie’s turning into. I’m really excited about it.
I’m thinking about some cameos like King Diamond and Lizzy Borden, I’m trying to get Dee Snider. I’d known Dee when I was younger, I’d met him a few times, and he remembered all of our old adventures in Kansas City. I’m getting ready to pitch it to him, I’d like to have him play the mayor of the town. I’m just trying to make this a fun party movie with a really brutal storyline. We want to try to depict things more realistically in this, compared to Clownado or Dreaming Purple Neon, which is being called one of the goriest movies ever made. And it probably is, we really went crazy with the gore in that one. That was kind of my statement. Marshall Stack is going to be more like Bonehill Road than that. It’s gonna be gory, but it’s gonna have a good story as well. Reality with fantasy elements.
Bonehill Road is now available on DVD from Wild Eye Releasing, and keep your eyes peeled for news on his upcoming film, Clownado.
Seriously appreciated! Thank you so much!