NS: You know, it was a conscious decision in all of my films except the last one to not have any nudity or rape scenes. There is a rape scene in Long Island Cannibal Massacre, but I don’t consider it disturbing because it’s a monster doing it. There was no thought to have it in the first one, but in the other two, I could have, but I consider nudity to be completely gratuitous. It distracts from the plot of something like that. There has to be a reason for nudity, and it can’t be simple titillation. So many movies show a girl getting into a shower—what’s the point of that? And believe me, I’m not against it at all, but in the films I was making, I wanted all of the attention focused on the horror and the story and the atmosphere.

Let’s say you’re watching the movie, and you’re paying attention and you’re totally intrigued. Then suddenly I cut a scene of a girl who takes her shirt off and you see her big boobies—where is your mind going to be?

PG: Uh, not on the movie.

NS: Exactly. I did not want that to happen. Now, there is phony nudity in They Don’t Cut the Grass Anymore, but it’s a fake body.

PG: And if you’re titillated by that scene, you’ve got some issues.

NS: (laughs) What do you mean? I was.

PG: Well, Nathan, that’s your issue, and I’m not going to get into it.

NS: I have been seeing someone about it. I’m getting near to the bottom of why that is (laughs). That movie was so cracked that I thought it would be great to show the whole body getting torn apart.

PG: Well, as you said in the commentary, you wanted to show people being completely decimated.

NS: Taken apart until there was nothing left. And we succeeded. You know, I’m glad, because the effects were very crude, and intentionally so, because we had very little time to shoot it. It wasn’t like LICM, where I wanted to make sure every effect looked real. I’m glad they look [they way they do], because they’re still…gross.

PG: They’re disgusting. I was watching that movie at work and I thought that to myself: “I’m really getting repulsed by this.” And then I thought, “Damn, he pulled that off.” I’ve seen thousands and thousands of gory movies—the stuff from Asia and the like—but that movie’s effects are physically repulsive. And I couldn’t think of a movie that I’ve been nauseated by in a long time, for what it’s worth.

NS: Well, it’s nice to know that you’ve achieved something in this life (laughs). I’m proud to know that I’ve completely revolted you.

NS: After LICM? No, I hadn’t even thought of [going to a distributor] yet.

PG: Were you going to wait until you had more films?

NS: No. I guess I was brainwashed by what was considered to be acceptable as commercially viable. I felt that the films I’d made, although they were effective, were still not on a level where they would ever be accepted by professionals. Even though I was told by several people that they were good enough to show to producers that I could make a film, it just never sunk in.

PG: So did you have a long-term plan to make filmmaking a career?

NS: No, because I was young and working at different jobs, which was distracting. I never made a movie when I was working—only between jobs. The longest time was between LICM and TDCTGA—five years. I was working in Manhattan at the Royalton Hotel, and I didn’t do anything creative. So when I left that job, I made TDCTGA. And then I had odd jobs here and there after that, and when I wasn’t working again, I made Vermilion Eyes.

PG: So when did you take these movies to show in Manhattan?

NS: It was right after I made TDCTGA. I met this guy who was selling very rare films on video. He was advertising in magazines, and he had some movies that I really wanted to see, so I contacted him, and we got to talking about films.

PG: Who was this?

NS: Yes, it was Michael Burgujian, and I think it was Shock Cinema. He passed away recently. Rick Sullivan was also friends with him, and he was associated with people like Michael Weldon because they would get prints of movies from him. Anyway, Mike told Rick Sullivan about my films, and Rick wanted to show my movies at his film series. He showed everything from Herschell Gordon Lewis to The Horror of Party Beach.

So Rick contacted me and wanted to play my movies. I was a little nervous, but I did it. First one I showed was LICM, because I thought that was the strongest of the three. I was so afraid—this was the first time I had a paying audience, and I was going, “Oh my God…what if they don’t like it?” And I was stuck at the projector, because I had to mix the sound, so I couldn’t watch the movie or run out. But they loved it—there was big applause, and Rick told me to bring it back several times. Then I brought TDCTGA, and that went over extraordinarily well. The one I was afraid to show was Weasels Rip My Flesh—I thought they wouldn’t buy that one. And I couldn’t believe that they loved that one too.

PG: Well, there’s a charm to it. There’s a certain naivete that’s very charming, but what comes through to a viewer is your enjoyment in making the movie. You get the idea that you were having fun.

NS: That’s interesting that it would be noticed, because we had the best time making TDCTGA. TDCTGA was a lot of business.

PG: I think you said that it was a longer film to make.

NS: It was longer, because it was a more complex thing. I wanted to make as classy a horror film as possible, and of course, the better a thing you want to make, the more time you have to put into it. You can’t just zoom through it like [we did] in TDCTGA. There were certain things that I wanted to do, and I didn’t want to do them any other way, and if I wanted to do them my way, that meant having to wait to get the right time, the right people, the right effects. That’s what took so long. The biggest nightmare, the one that wasn’t fun, was Vermilion Eyes.

PG: Why was that?

NS: Oh my God…because it was an experimental idea, and it was something that went completely out of control. It was like something evil, and it kept growing—it was like The Andromeda Strain.

PG: Just complications on top of complications?

NS: We loved doing the creation of it, but never did so many problems mount with actress. John is the only male in the film—that was the point. There was not to be another male in the film, because it was dealing with the psychoses of this character that only sees women in his world. So I had to have all these non-actresses in the movie—and the movie had to have nudity, and that turned out to be a living hell to get someone affordable and would do nude scenes. I didn’t know people in the business like today with these cheapo companies that have made these scream queens famous and who you can go to. But at that time, I wasn’t aware of these people.

The closest I ever came to getting someone like that for Vermilion Eyes was one of the girls that was in the Cinema of Transgression—I forgot what her name was, but she was in a lot of them. I went to a meeting with her because she’d agreed to be in the movie, and I brought a demo reel—some of it had been finished, and I cut one scene that I thought would show her what the film would look like when it was done. Sadly, it was better than anything [the Cinema of Trangression] had done. But again, I wasn’t thinking about content, I was thinking about execution, and she was appalled by what she saw. Like an idiot, I chose the wrong thing to show her?

PG: What did you show her?

NS: Some extremely violent scene of a girl being hurt, which was my stupidity. I was thinking more of the artistry of filmmaking, not the context. I realized later what an idiot I was for showing that scene. I was at her Manhattan apartment, and after I showed the ten-minute sequence, she and her friend were completely silent.

PG: That’s never a good reaction.

PG: And that’s “art,” and your stuff isn’t.

NS: Blind sadism, or whatever it is. So that would have been my only “name” person, if you could call that a name. And she wasn’t going to be in a scene like [the one I showed]. Her scene was all dialogue, because she could perform, but she’d made up her mind.

PG: Backtracking a bit, after Rick asked you to screen your films, were you getting some reaction from some of the underground movie magazines like his or Psychotronic?

NS: Things were starting to turn up. Magazines were starting to write about the existence of my films, and when they played Manhattan on a screen, I started getting contacted by magazines for interviews.

PG: Who were you talking to?

NS: Chas Balun of Deep Red was one of the first one. A lot of the European magazines—British and German—I’m trying to remember which ones. And some newspapers.

PG: Did you ever talk to Shock Xpress?

NS: No, I never talked to them, and I liked them. In the Flesh and Deep Red were two that I talked to. I did an interview with Uncut, although that was recently. Oh, Draculina did a feature, but that shows you the attitude of these people. There was a long interview that was supposed to be printed in another magazine, and they said that they were going to send it in to Draculina. So what they did was edit the entire interview and only use the parts that made me look like a maniac, because that’s what he was into.

PG: Oh, yeah. That’s the version of you he wanted to show.

NS: And people told me: “We read that interview with you in Draculina. You sounded like a really scary person. We thought you were a maniac.” Oh, great.

PG: Were you surprised to hear from European magazines?

NS: You know, it’s weird. It was sort of like a progression, the way everything came about. I never flipped over it—you know when I would have flipped? It’s weird how time strips you of your child-like enjoyment, because back then, I would have flipped if Fangoria was interested in coverage, but they wouldn’t cover what I did. But when they mentioned it recently, it didn’t really mean much to me. You know, it’s like, where were you when I first made them? I remember approaching them at one point, and they were like, “Oh, we only cover movies that are accessible to the public.” And I said, “Yeah, but you guys have covered some independent stuff.” But you have to remember, they were a commercial magazine.

But it’s funny—I remember there was a point when they didn’t even want to cover Argento, and now look at them. I remember I met (early Fango editor) Bhob Martin early on in ’82 at one of Rick Sullivan’s showings, and I told him that he should cover Dario Argento’s stuff—Deep Red and all that stuff. And he said, “No, we’re not interested.”

PG: Well, wasn’t Fango like Castle of Frankenstein at that point? It hadn’t really embraced gore in the way it did in the mid-‘80s.

NS: Also, I think at that time Argento wasn’t embraced in the United States.

NS: You notice how each film became more and more violent? That’s because I was becoming more and more angry—unconsciously—and it was coming out in the movies.

PG: Who were the people that you were interacting with?

NS: They were just like Gordon Gekko (from Wall Street), but an army of them, male and female. Imagine female Gordon Gekkos—young, female Gordon Gekkos.

PG: What was your job at the hotel?

NS: Basically, I worked in the main office with the manager of the hotel, who was also working with her brother who was in real estate. She was a real estate mogul, and managing this giant hotel was like a side thing.

PG: So you got to see the bad side of business.

NS: Oh, man…I tell you. It was incredible—it was like a cartoon or something that Hollywood had made up to make people in business look evil. And I’m not saying that all business people are like that, but a good portion of them are. Most people who are enormously successful—multi-millionaires and billionaires—are cutthroat. That’s how they got where they are. So I saw so much of this going on—they managed stores, and people who couldn’t pay the rent on time because times were tough, they’d come down on them. And they would laugh about it after they’d hang up the phone and say, “What’s for lunch?” And I knew that the person on the other end was miserable and terrified that their business was going to close. It was like “I’m superior, and this person is inferior, so they deserve exactly what they’re getting.” And they would never pay their bills, like their phone bills and such. And I understood why they did that. The longer they could hold out paying every tiny bill until they were warned with collection, the more interest they would earn.

As I said on the commentary for TDCTGA—and I think of all the DVDs, that’s the one that needed a commentary—there were a lot of things that I wanted to do that would have made it a more sophisticated movie but couldn’t be done because John had to go into the Peace Corps. The film was really shot in five days, and again, not five full days. In fact, to show you how quickly it was shot, we had the cast party the day before John went into the Peace Corps, and we were still down in my basement, adding sound effects and dubbing lines. We were still finishing the movie as people were coming into my house for the cast party.

PG: What did you have to remove to accommodate for John?

NS: A lot of things, a lot of great ideas. I found some old notes that weren’t used, and I said, “Oh my God, this is funny stuff.” I can’t begin to tell you how much more there was. It was going to be less gore-oriented.

PG: Was there going to be more with the psychiatrist and the other girl that were tied up?

NS: It was going to be so much more of that sort of thing—backstabbing and people not treating each other right. And look what it turned into—you have two girls having a barbecue. What did they do wrong?

PG: Well, they’re kind of mean-spirited. They probably deserved it.

NS: They probably bought the most expensive franks and argued over the price. But a subplot was cut with the two detectives. They were going to be on Billy Buck and Jacob’s tail for the whole movie, and that would have been really great, because they worked together very well. But that scene alone had to be shot so quickly—I hated the way that scene was blocked, because I couldn’t use a tripod, we were losing the light, and a train would pull up, and the whole area would be loaded with people.

PG: Yeah, you couldn’t have a body lying around in that situation.

NS: No time for anything. And I hated the way I shot it—I didn’t like the camera placement. I think it’s kind of funny, but it should have been much funnier and better shot.

PG: You call TDCTGA the “ultimate backyard movie.”

NS: Oh, yes. Because it was all shot in backyards.

PG: Did you ever have anyone stumble into one of your shoots?

NS: Oh, yes, the police, during the other films. TDCTGA, not so much, because it was all in backyards. But we had a lot of interference from police on TDCTGA and especially LICM and heavily for Vermilion Eyes. Hilarious stories.

PG: Were neighbors calling up and saying, “My God, they’re cutting someone up next door?”

NS: Oh yeah, people called, people were looking from houses and saying, “What’s going on?” And then suddenly, police cars would show up. It was incredible.

PG: Did they eventually become familiar with you and say, “Oh, it’s just Nathan”?

NS: No, no! It was always different guys. And state troopers too. There was one time where I made a terrible mistake where a state trooper pulled up and I walked up to him and waved the camera at him—and a camera looks like a gun. I realized later, “What if he’d thought that was a gun and shot me?” And then we shot a block away from the Amityville Horror house for TDCTGA, and a cop pulled up and watched us shoot. I was uncomfortable having him watch us, but he finally got bored and left.

The best cop story is associated with Vermilion Eyes. There’s a scene where I used a lot of smoke bombs. So these two nice cops pull up and ask, “Hey, what’s going on?” So we show them the camera and all the effects that we had on the scene, and they’re laughing, and say, “Okay, have a good time!” They were very cool. So they pull away, and then another cop pulls up. He says, (gruff voice) “What are you guys doing here?” So we tell him we’re making a movie and he says, “You can’t shoot here. This is private property.” And I said, “We’re going to be done shortly—“ “No, no, no, pack your stuff up and get out!” So I said, “Well, there were two policemen here that said we could.” “Well, they were from another district!”

PG: Right. Their laws don’t hold up in this district.

NS: Yeah. “They don’t know what they’re talkin’ about—pack your stuff up and get out!” So as he’s telling us this, the first two cops come back. And I said, “Oh—oh, sir, there they are now!” You should have seen this cop’s face—it was great! He was so nervous that I was going to tell them what he said. These two cops get out with big smiles on their faces—“How’s the filming going?” I’m not kidding. This is the absolute truth. And the cop that told us to leave didn’t say anything. He tells us, (nervous), “Uh, okay, when you’re done, just pack up…” He gets in his car and drives away as fast as possible. That was incredible. I couldn’t believe that the other two came back—I don’t know why they did.

PG: I’ve got a few more TDCTGA questions. Was there a particular inspiration for the “Disco Godfather” movie (the grindhouse slasher pic that Billy Buck and Jacob go to see)?

NS: No, that was just blaxploitation. That was supposed to be a little more complicated—he was a pimp and she was a prostitute. And there was more dialogue to that scene—it was a longer scene, but I didn’t feel that it was necessary to have it as long as it was, so I cut it down and then added some lines to make it funnier?

PG: The line from the Coffy trailer?

NS: Yes, yes! I’m glad you noticed that. Now I know I’m talking to an aficionado. Yes, the lines were stolen directly from that and from Rudy Ray Moore, like “Don’t gimme no sass or I’ll kick your ass!” I had to use those lines—you’ve gotta remember that when I made that, people weren’t familiar with those movies.

PG: Unless you’d seen it in the theater.

NS: Right, so I thought I could get away with using these Rudy Ray Moore lines. No one would ever know where I’d gotten them.

PG: They also back up the idea that TDCTGA is a satire—as ridiculous as some of those movies were, you probably won’t hear that sort of dialogue in the films. The trailers, yes, but not the movie.

NS: Right. Also, I don’t consider that a racist scene.

PG: No, I didn’t get that. It’s a joke—you can tell that, and I think anyone who gets upset at that scene is being overly sensitive.

NS: Have you ever heard about anyone being upset by it?

PG: No, but you know with fans and genre writing—someone’s going to find something to complain about in every movie.

NS: Sometimes I’m accused of misogyny, especially with Vermilion Eyes, but they don’t understand that there’s an explanation for why the guy is the way that he is.

PG: It’s all through the main character’s perception.

NS: Right, but not only that, because the rest of the cast is all women, and the violence is all directed toward them. And there’s an obsession with sex and death, so it can easily be misconstrued as the ultimate misogynist film, but it’s not. If the film was really, truly misogynist, there would be dialogue in it that shows it, but there’s none of that.

Now, one woman asked me if I had a problem with women after seeing TDCTGA. And I said, “What are you talking about?” She says, “That scene with the Barbie dolls—how come there are no Ken dolls (the film opens with shots of Barbie dolls in various states of “mutilation”)?” I said, “Well, probably I didn’t have access to a Ken doll and didn’t want to spend $20 on one.”

PG: If you don’t have an extra $20 to spend on the film itself, you’re not going to then blow it on a Ken doll.

NS: Right. And this woman is getting on my case because I used only Barbie dolls.

PG: Well, everyone has an agenda.

NS: That’s true.

PG: Billy Buck’s line, “I can make a better movie in my own backyard”—is that a comment on exploitation movies?