Horror Geek Life is on location for the filming of Full Moon Features’ upcoming sexy sci-fi film, Femalien: Cosmic Crush. We spoke with Charles Band about the movie, as well as his Deadly Ten film series, and what it’s been like taking fans behind-the-scenes with their live-stream production.
Horror Geek Life: Charles, what made you decide to revisit the Femalien franchise for the Deadly Ten series?
Charles Band: Deadly Ten was to make a mix of pictures dating back to Necropolis, which was a long time ago, that would touch over thirty years of making weird movies. I didn’t want any of them to be alike, so some of them were obvious sequals to franchises that we’ve been known for; we’re finally going to make the new Subspecies film. That is very exciting, and we’re going to Croatia now. But, you needed a sexy movie in this, one that has the sexploitation vibe that we exploited really well in the ’90s. I had a label briefly called Surrender Cinema that was concurrent with Full Moon, that was doing well, and I had a kids label called Moonbeam. But the idea with Surrender was well-appointed sci-fi fantasy sexy movies in theme storylines that at least allowed some of what we are well known for.
There was a fellow who was a buyer at Hollywood Video, back when we were the number one independent supplier to Blockbuster and Hollywood. Those good old days, but, you know, the world’s changed. But back then, Full Moon and Moonbeam combined were doing really well. The guy at Hollywood, the buyer, said, “You know, Charlie, some of the successful titles right now we’re presenting, other than yours, are Playboy and Penthouse. They’re both making sexy motif films, but they’re not like the genre you’re in. Now, it’s kind of maybe hard to make a sexy horror movie, but you can make sci-fi and fantasy. So, why don’t you dream up some fun ideas that would cater to that audience, and also bring in your audience.” I come up with all these concepts and ideas I said, “Well, what if we do one called Femalien, which would be about this sci-fi chick who comes to Earth and wants to experience sex with men and women?” He said, “Oh my god, that would be awesome!” So, I came up with a whole bunch of other titles: The Exotic House of Wax, The Exotic Time Machine…spins on sci-fi fantasy motifs that we can do well and have some pretty people pretending to have sex.
These movies were incredibly successful, more successful in terms of return than even the horror films, in a two-year period. By the time we had made maybe 20-25 of them, and, by then, we had made two more sequels to Femalien, a new fellow came in and became a majority stockholder of Hollywood Video and turned Hollywood into the family video store. He literally kicked out anything that was erotic, so Playboy went away, Penthouse, and Surrender Cinema. I stopped making them for 10-15 years, but those movies as rental items just had a life of their own. They just kept renting and renting, and that was VHS turning into DVD. So, I just thought we’ve got to harken back to those days, at least for one, while doing the Deadly Ten. People, I think, still enjoy sex in this weird world, so I thought, well, we may as well make a sequel to the most well-known franchise.
HGL: For Femalien: Cosmic Crush, you brought on first-time director Lindsey Schmitz, who also wrote the film. What has it been like working with Lindsey on this project?
CB: It’s great, Lindsey and I go back many years, he’s been very involved, as well as Nakai (Nelson), in dozens of Full Moon films, and it just seemed like the right film. He was excited about it. We have gone a little overboard, I mean, even though we’re a small production company, we’re here on a warehouse/sound stage where there’s sci-fi sets, there’s caves, there’s beautiful girls we’ve brought in from God knows where. So, we’ve gone a little further than even what we did back in the nineties with the original Femalien. I think people appreciate it, and now we have this new spin that I invented, this live-streaming thing, where all ten of these Deadly Ten movies are being live-streamed.
People who tune into it get really excited; they say it’s habit-forming and they can’t turn the thing off. When I explain it to someone who thinks they know what it is, but doesn’t really understand, they go…”Wait a minute, you mean this is live-streaming not for like an interview, but for the entire day, for your entire shoot, for ten movies?” I say yeah, if you want to see what it’s like on a set, which there are great moments, there’s a lot of moments of people waiting, and there’s all sorts of drama sometimes on a movie set. When we turn the cameras on in the mornings until we turn them off in the evening, we are live-streaming all ten of these productions. So far, we were in Vegas with Weedjies, in Toronto with Necropolis, we shot Blade in L.A., and now we’re in Minneapolis with Femalien. We’re going be in Italy for one of the movies called Shadowheart Curse, which is a paranormal romance much like a movie I made the nineties called Meridian with Sherilyn Fenn. We’re also going be in Croatia with Subspecies, so we’re all over the planet, which is kind of cool.
HGL: We had reported on the live-streaming last year after we spoke to you in another interview, but seeing it in action is pretty wild! With Femalien: Cosmic Crush, were you concerned at all about making a sexploitation film in this current climate?
CB: I’ll tell you why I’m not concerned. I’ve seen the pendulum swing both ways, so now we’re in this correction era of what makes sense and what’s cool and what isn’t. I think people are finding their footing, in a way. The truth of the matter is that if you want to see hardcore sex, it’s free online. Movies that are sexy and titillating but don’t really go that far are few and far between, and they’re not really being made anymore. In the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, a lot of these films were made because hardcore was much more rarefied and harder to find, the internet didn’t exist. There were days in the early days of direct-to-video where you’d have to spend a hundred dollars to buy a VHS of a pornographic film. The world is vastly different. During those days, HBO and Showtime, in their infancy, used to show late-night erotic fare. They would show this exact movie we’re making. Separately from movies I have made, we’ve also bought some movies over the years that premiered on HBO and Showtime. They were sexy, but they didn’t go too far. They were, probably by today’s standards, an hard R-rated show. A storyline and just, you know, a lot of people banging. Those days ended as hardcore fare became everywhere, especially online. So, people have not been making these movies, and I think there’s an audience for films that are fun and sexy and kind of silly, but don’t go too far.
HGL: I agree, and it’s great that the film is female-led, obviously.
CB: This is about as female-led as you can get. (laughs)
HGL: I’ve been talking to the cast, and this seems like a very comfortable environment for them. They all say that Full Moon is treating them very well on-set, which is great to hear.
CB: And, it’s fun. It opens up an audience because we have people all over the world watching and they’re amazed.
The primary audience will be on Amazon. I mean, Amazon is very restrictive, you can only show so much on Prime. We’ll have a harder version, still very soft, but 90% of the people who will see this movie will see it on Amazon.
One last thing, there’s something really cool about doing something for the first time. I’ve done that over many years with different things, dating back to that first independent home video company before you were even floating around. But the fact that we’re the first company to ever make ten movies live-stream, I guarantee that at some point, a major studio will make a $200 million dollar blockbuster and they will live-stream their entire production. It will be much fancier, there’ll be more bells and whistles, but this is the first.
We’re getting some amazing letters. One guy said, “My folks spent a quarter of a million dollars sending me to film school, and I think I’ve learned more watching Blade.” And yeah, if you want to really know what it’s like making a small movie, you’ve got to be on set.
I have a close friend who is a well-known line producer of reality TV. She’s done some of the biggest live reality TV shows. So, she said, “What you should do is create drama. You know, do some crazy stuff. Have the police break in.” I said we don’t need that, the whole idea is for people to really know what it’s like. There’s times that it’s boring, there’s times when maybe someone’s upset about something. You gotta be in the real flow of what happens on set, otherwise it’s just more fake, and we got enough fake. Anyway, that’s my take.
HGL: Thank you, Charles! I appreciate being on set and watching it all unfold.
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I love those type movies. Beautiful women, basic plot, Late night cable sort films. I say go back to making them.