Getting With The Program: Q & A With The Spook Lights

Popshifter: What are your five fave low budget flicks?

Carnival of Souls

Scary Manilow: This is too hard for us to narrow down. Seriously, there are a few mainstays, but our favorites can change from day to day depending on our moods, and there are so many great ones to choose from.

I think I can safely name three solid ones: Glen or Glenda, Carnival of Souls, and My Brother’s Wife. To my own personal list, I might add Blood and Black Lace and Sin in the Suburbs, but I really don’t know. Like I said, it changes all the time.

Curvacia VaVoom: Carnival of Souls has a really personal effect on me. First of all, it was filmed here in Lawrence, KS where I live, AND in Salt Lake City where one of my best friends, writer and tango instructor Cassandra Mogusar, lives. She took me to the creepy pavillion when I visited her, and it changed my life. The day was wet and cold: grey, black, and white. I’ve never been to a location where I felt more like I had stepped into the middle of a high contrast black and white film. We found tiles from where the pavillion was, before it was destroyed and rebuilt in a different location. The movie was made from almost no money, and the soundtrack by Gene Moore, on the organ, is phenomenally insinuating.

Scary Manilow: We actually have the wooden organ frame and a few pipes from the church scenes stored in our garage right now, courtesy of our goodest friend Tony Peterson.

Curvacia VaVoom: But before all that, I MET a person who was a production assistant in the movie. He was in a nursing home. I had never even HEARD of the movie, but he constantly talked about a “Carnival of Souls.” I didn’t even know he was talking about a movie; I just figured he was living in his own zombie ballroom fantasy in his mind, and sharing it with whoever would listen. Everyone ignored him, but I was fascinated by his every word. Then I saw the movie on the rack at the local video store, took it home and watched it, and it was like Kubla Khan was realized before my very eyes Everything he described was THERE! It was so. . . just so perfect and amazing.

Blood and Black Lace

It’s not low budget, but Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace is another movie that changed me. The lurid colored sets of the movie—along with the soundtrack—really drew me in. I decided, “Why can’t my house look like that all the time?”

So I started working on arranging our whole house with cheap colored lighting. I feel like the aesthetics of your most dwelled-in environment really effect you, and there’s always a cheap or free way to control aesthetics. Is the bus late? Surround yourself with broken colored glass or make up stories about the people around you! Are you renting and can’t paint the walls? Get a bunch of green, red, yellow, and purple bulbs for your light fixtures and live in a fire colored wonderland. Are you going to be standing in line all day? Adorn yourself in a garish dress, plastic flowers, and paper snakes.

Anything by Doris Wishman appeals to me. I love her camerawork, how she’ll focus on a plant or a table randomly while someone is doing a voice over of their “thoughts.” She was a real bossy lady too. I wish I could have met her.

Popshifter: What do you think of the trend of “fake” low budget movies?

Scary Manilow: For the price of ONE bullshit low-budget movie, I could cough up TWENTY actual low-budget movies, and there’d probably be a budget left over for drinks and a pair of fancy slacks. They’d actually be movies worth watching, too—more than just fake tits and cars blowing up. Every single character would be played by someone in drag, and Curvacia would always show up somewhere to impress audiences with her VICIOUS CHAIN-TWIRLING ABILITY. I’d probably also throw in some William Castle-style hijinks just to get my jollies. Who can I talk to to make this happen?

Curvacia VaVoom: Quentin Tarantino is a kiss ass.

Click to read more from The Spook Lights on. . .

Elderly delinquents
Low-budget movies
What’s wrong with Hollywood?
Horror movies and what’s next on The Program

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