Behind the scenes at Overlords of Magick

By Sherman Hirsh

Today we are privileged to read another fascinating, fact-filled essay by popular guest blogger Sherman Hirsh, screenwriter and director. Sherman has provided fascinating blog posts on the independent productions of "Surgikill," "Lords of Magick," "Scream, Zombie Scream," and "Love Slaves of the She-Mummy."(Part 1 and Part 2) Today, he writes about the production of his next film, "Overlords of Magic," a sequel to "Lords of Magick."

“Somebody want to wake up the sound man?”

It was 2AM on August 1^st.  We had been shooting since 6PM, and we were exhausted, and had three pages to go.  These were the last shots on the last day of production.  One petty torment after another delayed our wrapping OVERLORDS OF MAGICK once and for all.  The camera card filled up and the spare was missing in action.  The last few shots were recorded on my backup camera.  Takes were being ruined by extraneous loud flatulent noises from the fog machine.   Street noises ruined others. 

Finally, through the sheer determined professionalism of my incredible cast and my pig-headed refusal to schedule any more shooting days, we finished and the actors stole as many props as they could get away with and went home. (Why not?  They were only getting $10 an hour.  At least they waited until we were done.  On one picture I made, LOVE SLAVES OF THE SHE-MUMMY (1998),  an actor stole a prop he was due to use and I had to steal it back so we could do the scene.) At long last, we had finished the principal photography.  

Day One was May 18^th.  We shot 5 nights a week, for roughly 6 hours each, and except for two weeks when we were down because a couple actors had previous commitments.   We worked straight through until we got everything I scripted.  That’s right, we shot the whole script.  We dropped nothing.  Not a single page hit the floor.  11 actual shooting weeks, 55 days, 300 and something hours on hot cramped sets, and it was finally over.  So, how and why were we doing this?

30 years ago, I wrote a little comedy fantasy meant for Cable, called “The Thousand Year Quest”.  The producer changed the title to LORDS OF MAGICK, and shot it.  What came out was a quirky odd-ball movie that somehow achieved Cult status.   Although it was never sold to the Public, only rented on perishable VHS, you can view the bootleg LORDS OF MAGICK on YouTube.  Even though there is no DVD, somehow, somebody was sufficiently impressed/confused/amused/annoyed  to tout the film to the cult movie crowd. 

In 2011, CINEFAMILY, a noted revival house in Hollywood scheduled a screening of LORDS OF MAGICK.  When I learned of this, I called the theater and inquired if anyone associated with the film would be there.  I was told that the producer had declined his invitation, and an editor backed out.  I told them I was the writer and to my surprise,( since nobody gives a rat’s rump who writes a movie), was told I could attend and do a Q & A after the screening.  I had just done the same thing a few weeks earlier for the world premier of SURGIKILL, the film I wrote that was Andy Milligan’s last project.  That screening attracted about 40 customers, and I had no reason to believe that LORDS OF MAGICK would do any better, especially since it was the lesser known of the two films and had an obscure director, not one with an already prominent cult reputation. 

Well, CINEFAMILY was packed!  FULL HOUSE!  LORDS OF MAGICK ran and was very well received.  They loved it!  I was astonished at how much they liked it, since it had received so many nasty reviews, mostly on YouTube.  Usually, with a “cult” film, people mock it, laughing at all the mistakes and stupid occurrences.  Not this time.  They laughed at all the right places.  I was complimented about it several times.  The Q&A was a dream.  I answered questions and told stories I had told a dozen times before and got tremendous happy feedback. 

During the Q&A, somebody asked me about the title.  I told them about my original title, THOUSAND YEAR QUEST and how I had written a line in a final battle scene where the villain boasts, “There cannot be two lords of magic!”  I recounted how the director latched onto that line and made it the release title, and how I had mitigated the slight by getting him to use the alternative spelling, with the “K”.

Then somebody asked me if there was going to be a sequel.  I replied with, “THERE CAN NOT BE TWO LORDS OF MAGICK!” and got a major laugh.  However, since I had recently finished SCREAM, ZOMBIE,. SCREAM, and was looking for my next project, I thought, “Why not?”   I don’t like doing sequels.  All the best material went into the prototype and the sequel turns out to be some bastard concoction with no soul and usually not even a true sequel,  i.e., “what came next,” just a perfunctory re-make. 

I wanted to break that.  I needed a powerful script.  It had to have a strong premise that still represented the genre.  I don’t have the genes for drama, so it would be a comedy.  What kind of comedy?  Not a campy sophomoric orgy of stupidity like SURGIKILL.  I don’t like Stupid.  I like Crazy.  For the plot, I would take LORDS OF MAGICK, and turn it inside out.   Instead of two brothers propelled out of the Dark Ages to battle Evil Incarnate in 1980’s Hollywood, my heroes would be two modern brothers sucked into, well, as our tagline states so eloquently: “In the last place on Earth where Magick rules, THEY broke all the rules.”

My heroes would be smart, brave, resourceful equals, not stupid, cowardly bumblers who escape destruction by sheer luck.  Smart, but crazy!  Rather than being forced to deal with forces they don’t understand, they would be experienced in the realm of preternatural and anomalous phenomena, or as they put it,” Weirdiosity.”

It all starts with the script.  I began a script that was a direct sequel to LORDS OF MAGICK.  My heroes, JACK & ARNOLD, (named for the great director of Universal monster movies who finished his career directing GILLIGAN’S ISLAND).  They were two guys who were convinced that LOM was REAL, a warning of ordeals to come!  They were afraid that the villain, Salatin, was preparing his revenge and they had to confront him and end his rampage.  Garbage.  When it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.  Let’s try something else.

OK, same guys, but this time they have acquired the Sword of Ulrick, the actual prop weapon Mark Gauthier, the actor who played Ulrick,  carried in LORDS OF MAGICK, and the only known prop to survive.  I have it and I intended to find a way to use it.  Anyway, these guys are in college and have apparently been misbehaving with the sword and are being counseled by the college faculty spoilsport to stop believing the sword has powers, etc.   Better garbage, but still…

Premise number three was an attempt to breathe life into the most overused, tired, clichéd, trite, hackneyed, worn-out devices in all of Fantasy, “And they woke up and it was all a dream…”  I changed the title to SWORD OF THE DREAMERS.  OK, so what if it is a dream?  What if the guys KNOW it’s a dream and act accordingly?  They go through all kinds of nastiness and come back fighting.  They get killed, wake up and go back to sleep and get right back in the fray.  The villain finds a way to kill them where they stay dead in the Dream World, and they have to deal with that.  They can’t, and another fabulous idea is discovered to sucketh mightily.

Up to now, I had been trying to come up with a sequel to LOM.  OK, forget the direct sequel concept.  The basic framework for LORDS OF MAGICK was that it was Episode One of The Merlinite Chronicles, with the idea of there being others in a series of Merlinite stories.  (Happens all the time in those fat fantasy paperbacks).  Instead of what happened after and because of LOM, what if I wrote a totally independent story that had nothing to do with LOM, other than the presence of a Merlinite Wizard?   What if Episode Two had little or no reference to the events and characters of Episode One?   New bad guy.  Different way of getting the heroes into the action, being that they are basically kidnapped and blackmailed into fighting the villain.  

They are drawn to a strange magical land which does not exist in another reality, nor is it in the past.  It’s in the real world, it’s happening now, but the land is concealed by magick and kept apart from the modern world.  Until our heroes mix things up.  The story is their odyssey through this “Oz Wannabe” as they try to eliminate an evil maniac who will steal the magick of this land and use it to conquer the rest of the world.  Following the same plot model as LOM, i.e., a bunch of minor magical incidents leading up to a big pay-off, things started to fall into place.  (Actually, LOM was plotted after Ghostbusters.) 

I finished the complete first draft on May 5, 2015.  It only took 3 years and 47 drafts.  I had to sacrifice some wonderful characters and some great scenes, but I had to whittle the thing down to a manageable state.  So, you will never see Uncle Ankh, the talking mummy, or  Mother Medea, 

Abbess of the Abyss, the cannibal seeress who trades her knowledge for human flesh,  or the evil Jim Hotep, vile henchman of the real heavy of this piece, The Pharaoh Cleopatrick IX!

It’s a fantasy, with our wizards, monsters, a genie, a magic lamp, an elephant, and more.  It’s a farce, with myriad references and allusions to classic comedy routines.  It’s a romance with the beautiful Guinevere of the Grave, who has been dead for 300 years, but makes a comeback.  And, let’s not forget the greatest menace of all, The Purple Parking Pixie!  Somewhere along the line, Jack & Arnold became Jack & Toby, and the title reverted to OVERLORDS OF MAGICK.  You will meet King Hoozon the 1^st, and Cedric, the feral eater of rotting rabbit.  The Pharaoh’s high priestess, Nefertootsie, threatens our heroes and all of this is instigated by the Merlinite Wizard, Merlin Monroe.  

When I mentioned that the writing took 3 years, that time included other preparations.  I was buying props, costumes, set design elements, even whole sets.  I was augmenting my complement of equipment with new lights, lenses, special effects and post production software and anything else that caught my eye.  I developed a serious eBay addiction and if I saw an interesting item, I would write a gag or even a whole scene around it.  We may be a low budget movie, but we look good!

And now I sit here, facing hours of footage files, double that in digital sound files, special effects, music, sound effects, and all of the other technical “assets” that comprise a film.  Somehow I must force it all together in a way that makes sense, and isn’t boring.  Shooting is the best part.  The rest is about as interesting as doing laundry.

I miss my cast.  I was blessed for this project with a fantastically talented and professional company of actors who did exactly what I wanted them to do.   You will hear from them in the future.  Who are they?  Buy the movie and read the credits

I had something resembling a real professional crew on this project.  My co-producer, Devai Pearce, ran my front office, freeing me to make the movie, and making sure the company got paid..  Arihel Bermudez supplied a super-sharp digital sound track, while Shadow ran the camera.  And let’s not forget Lion, our Rastafarian Stagehand.  However, I have to give a huge acknowledgement to Karl McNulty, known in the industry as UltraKarl.  As the production designer, Karl created major sets, props, costumes, special effects, and gave us a great visual treat.  I would throw an idea at him and he’d throw a prop back at me.  Or a castle.  Or a Middle Ages magic car. 

I hope to have OVERLORDS OF MAGICK finished by the end of this year.  We missed the deadlines for most of the important fantasy film festivals.  There’s always next year.  Until then, I leave you with the catchphrase of OVERLORDS OF MAGICK, Everything Was Impossible Until Somebody Did It!

Corrective surgery on invisible faces -- Surgikill and Lords of Magick

This essay is by one of our favorite Plan9Crunch contributors, director and screenwriter Sherman Hirsh, who penned both the Andy Milligan film, "Surgikill" and the 1980s adventure fantasy, "Lords of Magick." Both are reviewed on this blog and Sherman has provided his recollections of these films. In the following essay, he describes some re-editing he has done on both films, as a personal project. It's interesting to read about the private, definitely not for sale, edited versions. So here we go, enjoy readers! Above is co-blogger Steve D. Stones' art work on Surgikill.

By SHERMAN HIRSH

SURGIKILL

I was interested to learn recently that NIGHT BIRDS, one of Andy Milligan’s formerly lost films has been recovered.   This was significant to me because I was associated with another of Andy’s lost films, SURGIKILL.  Somehow, in the early ‘90’s,  word spread that Andy had made SURGIKILL, but no one knew where it was and assumed it was just lost.  Except that it wasn’t really lost.  It was being held for ransom.

Even though SURGIKILL was shot in 1988, it never saw light of day until 2000.  There was a contractual dispute between the Van Harlingens and a representative of certain investors.  This guy was a total pain throughout the production and I blame him for all of SURGIKILL’S major problems. He couldn’t keep his hands off, and was constantly interfering.  He was so nasty,  Andy almost got into a fistfight with him, because the guy thought he was a better director than Andy Milligan.  This was the guy who wanted to take out all the Horror elements and rename the film SCREWBALL HOSPITAL.  That title almost stuck.  When I was redoing the titles, I found ONE FRAME of the title, SCREWBALL HOSPITAL left from an earlier edit. 

Anyway, the film ended up rotting in a garage in Beverly Hills for more than a decade, until the VanH’s settled with him, which is why SURGIKILL was for a time, one of Andy’s lost films.  Andy was once quoted as saying that someday all shooting would be on Video.  He was right, and I was able to use technology that didn’t exist when Andy was producing to slightly improve his last film. 

A couple of years ago, I remastered  SURGIKILL for its DVD release.   This consisted mostly of redoing the titles, putting one of those dreaded FBI Copyright warnings on the beginning, and designing new box art.  While I was doing this, I got the idea of seeing if I could improve it.  I had no plan. I just started at the beginning and  fooled around with anything I thought needed fixing.  This consisted mostly of putting in sound effects where they had been omitted, and adding dissolves between scenes where the transitions  were too abrupt.

Then I decided to see if I could dress up the whole film, and erase some of the sloppy parts that were not Andy’s doing.  If you are familiar with the history of Surgikill, most  of which is chronicled in Plan9Crunch, you know that  it was “improved” by individuals with more money than film sense.  They waited until Andy’s contract had expired and put in that insipid ending and a load of crude gags that had nothing to do with the story.   As I was analyzing the film for stuff to futz with, I realized that Andy had shot the first part of the film with reasonable faithfulness to my script.  He made some changes to character names I didn’t like, but the changes he made were,  ultimately, no more than any director makes to a script to make it work in its circumstances.  The deeper you get into the film, the more the Stupid creeps in.   Nothing much I could do about that, but I could at least make it look a little better.

All I could really do was slap a few bandaids on it.  I found a reverb setting in my editing software for “HOSPITAL HALLWAY”, and applied it to all the PA announcements made by Nurse Rached, a touch that made those scenes a little stronger.   When the crepitant Mrs. Gross let loose her intestinal pollution, in addition to the existing fart sound, I filled the shot with a nasty green fog, which was funny because the characters didn’t notice it,  as if it is what always happened.   During her surgery, when her gaseous guts are detonated, I always thought the explosion was wimpy.  A louder explosion sound and a re-edit of the explosion itself gave the scene the guts it needed, in addition to the cow guts used for props.

There is a scene I really, really hate.  Someone (guess who) got the idiotic idea of hiring an Oliver Hardy look-alike to play an undertaker named BuryMore.  He looked like Ollie all right, but he was THE WORST ACTOR I EVER SAW IN A FILM!  He mumbles out a stream of stupid banal one-liners, in a really boring mumbled monotone.  I wanted to just jerk the scene, but instead, I rendered the scene in Black& White and made it grainy, like an old movie.  I filtered the sound to make it sound like an old movie, too.  Better, but still not good.

Various places had weak sound effects or no sound effects at all.  Somebody gets hit on the head with a  bedpan, you want a satisfying CLUNK.  There were a few points I could punch up like that.  Basically, that’s all I was able to do.  I gave a copy to John and Darlene ( Bouvier ) Van Harlingen, who own SURGIKILL. They  liked the new version, but never did anything with it.  When SURGIKILL had its world theatrical premiere in Long Beach, it was the regular, normal version that got screened.   So, my version exists as a file on my computer and a few bootleg copies I slipped to my friends.    Legalities being what they are, it will probably stay that way.

LORDS OF MAGICK

I’m assuming you’ve seen LORDS OF MAGICK.   If you haven’t, you can always pick up a 20 year old retired rental copy on eBay.  Not only is there no DVD of LORDS OF MAGICK,  there was never any sale of copies to the public.  It was only sold to video rental stores and the original price was $86.00!  Or you can watch the whole thing on YouTube for free.

There are two major complaints I have against LORDS OF MAGICK.  The first is that idiotic prologue.  It talks about a contest to find the Lord of Magick, when there is absolutely no shred of that in the story. David put it in just because he liked it.  He did that a lot.  That whole pointless scene of the Princess and the Pea was just one of David Marsh’s whim.   Anyway, when I made my re-edit, that prologue was the first thing to go.

The second is the overall tone of the film.  People talk about how amateurish LOM is.  One of the reasons for this is that David had no feel for the genre.  He just didn’t understand Fantasy, and he had a little trouble staging the comedy, too.  He tried to play LOM as an Urban Action Film.  That doesn’t work.   It’s the old “square peg in a round hole” situation.  Parts just don’t fit together.

The first major evidence of this is the opening scene of Salatin abducting the Princess.  It comes first in the story, making Salatin the most important character.   Also, setting up the crime before you introduce the hero is a common tactic in Urban Action films.   If you open on a high action point, everything after that is a letdown.  It’s better to build to a peak.  This movie isn’t about Salatin. It’s about the Redglen Brothers fighting Salatin, and they should come first.  So, I excised the abduction scene and moved it to  the  point in the story when the King explains the problem to the brothers, as it had been written in the script.  Instead of opening on a violent nasty incident, we introduce the brothers chatting as they head to the local tavern.  We see them in their natural habitat, a thousand years ago, enjoying the world they live in, then we propel them into the weird mean world of the 20^th Century.

With the two main problems neutralized, I could now move on the assorted minor boo-boos.  The first day of shooting was the first 1986 scene on Hollywood Boulevard.  There is a part where Ulric Redglen, the Bad Boy of Good Magic,  pulls his sword and chases a kid who makes the mistake of turning on his Boom Box and startling Ulric.  Except that the music that was supposed to scare Ulric was never added to the sound track, so we don’t know why Ulric chases the kid.  One viewer on YouTube called the scene racist.  This viewer thought Ulric chased the kid because he was Black,  because the music was missing.  I added the music.

An earlier 986AD scene had the boys doing a little necromancy to get info on how to bag Salatin.  They wake up a hanging corpse and use it to invoke some  ”OLD ONE”.  I didn’t think the stiff sounded ominous enough, so I isolated the dead guy’s lines and shifted the pitch and added a little distortion and reverb and synced that to the production sound track, giving the OLD ONE a little more menace.  The corpse was hanging by his wrists, rather than by the neck, which is what we really wanted to see, and I thought that was kind of bland.  I added a mysterious glow around the dead guy’s head to give it a little more visual magic. 

Other than that, and a few dissolves to smooth out the story, that was all I could do  for LOM. 

I wish you could see the smoothed out versions of SURGIKILL and LORDS OF MAGICK, but copyright laws being what they are, that’s not likely.  You’ll just have to watch them as they are and dream, as I did for a quarter century, how they could have been.

Here are some links to some of Sherman's previous essays for Plan9Crunch:

http://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2013/01/scream-zombie-scream-death-and.html

http://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2008/09/all-about-surgikill-andy-milligans-last.html

http://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2012/08/plan9crunch-re-run-sherman-hirsh-on.html

Surgikill -- Underground filmmaker Andy Milligan's final film

By Steve D. Stones

In 1988, underground filmmaker Andy Milligan embarked on directing his final full-length feature film. Media Arts Productions LLC produced it. The film was to be a black comedy set in a small community hospital called Goode Community Hospital, named after Dr. Grace Goode, a character in the film played by Darlene Van Harlingen, also known as Bouvier. Her husband, John Van Harlingen, was the executive producer. This film is quite departure from the canon of other Milligan films, which were over the top sex and gore epics. The film was shot in an abandoned neighborhood clinic near downtown Los Angeles.

Dr. Goode is desperately trying to keep her small hospital in functioning order as some of her staff and patients are being murdered one by one. Not to mention that she is constantly being hounded to sell the hospital for other greedy business prospects.

The film is full of over-the-top gags and gimmicks that are occasionally funny and sometimes overstated and juvenile. For example, one particularly funny scene, at least to me, shows an old woman arriving at the hospital reception desk with a bedpan stuck to her butt. Two hospital orderlies attempt to pry it off her as she stands in complete embarrassment. Other scenes show characters being hit over the head with a bedpan, or splashed with urine from bedpans. These scenes quickly become overstated. Some of the characters constantly repeating: "We care about the people we care for," quickly gets exhausted too.

Another particularly funny scene shows an old woman lying on her back in the operating room with an arrow sticking out of her butt. Apparently her husband had mistaken her for an archery target and accidentally shot her in the butt. Perhaps her husband was on a hunting trip with Dick Cheney at the time, long before he became Vice President?

A latter scene in the same operating room has Dr. Harvey and Dr. Schweitzer performing a gallbladder surgery. They can’t seem to find the patient’s gallbladder, so they end up tearing out several of the organs from the patient. This particular scene has some connection to earlier Milligan films because it is intentionally and graphically violent, even if the organs used in the scene are obviously unconvincing and fake. Herschel Gordon Lewis would be proud of this scene.

A connection this film has to earlier Milligan films is the nurse-receptionist character and drag queen Ronna, who is very similar to the drag queen in Milligan’s excellent Fleshpot On 42nd Street, played by Neil Flanagan. Ronna is later revealed to be Robert Goode, who is Grace Goode’s cousin and the murderer in the film. Robert is murdering hospital staff and patients in hopes to inherit the family hospital for himself.

Nurse Ronna and Dr. Grace Goode are the two characters I enjoyed the most, and felt the audience would have the greatest connection to. The young, fresh out of medical school Dr. Schweitzer, seems a bit unconvincing to me as he constantly sucks on a baby’s pacifier, implying that he is young, inexperienced and "wet behind the ears." This character gets a bit annoying too. Many of the actors in the film are way over the top in their acting, and frequently shout their lines, much like in an early John Waters film.

Is Surgikill a great film? No, but who cares? I like movies to occasionally be campy, over-the-top and unbelievable, otherwise I would not be writing articles for this web site. Is Surgikill Andy Milligan’s best film? Probably not. I place my vote with Torture Dungeon, which I regard as his greatest masterpiece. Still, any die-hard fan of Andy Milligan cannot afford to miss this entry in his filmography. It may not have the same low-budget, gritty charm as his films of the late 1960s and early 1970s, but it is worthy of a viewing, if only to see what his last film looks like before his death in 1991. Like Milligan’s earlier films, I am confident that Surgikill will continue to gain a strong cult following as the years go by.

Plan9Crunch review: Surgikill

In 1988, underground filmmaker Andy Milligan embarked on directing his final full-length feature film. Media Arts Productions LLC produced it. The film was to be a black comedy set in a small community hospital called Goode Community Hospital, named after Dr. Grace Goode, a character in the film played by Darlene Van Harlingen, also known as Bouvier. Her husband, John Van Harlingen, was the executive producer. This film is quite departure from the canon of other Milligan films, which were over the top sex and gore epics. The film was shot in an abandoned neighborhood clinic near downtown Los Angeles.

Dr. Goode is desperately trying to keep her small hospital in functioning order as some of her staff and patients are being murdered one by one. Not to mention that she is constantly being hounded to sell the hospital for other greedy business prospects.

The film is full of over-the-top gags and gimmicks that are occasionally funny and sometimes overstated and juvenile. For example, one particularly funny scene, at least to me, shows an old woman arriving at the hospital reception desk with a bedpan stuck to her butt. Two hospital orderlies attempt to pry it off her as she stands in complete embarrassment. Other scenes show characters being hit over the head with a bedpan, or splashed with urine from bedpans. These scenes quickly become overstated. Some of the characters constantly repeating: "We care about the people we care for," quickly gets exhausted too.

Another particularly funny scene shows an old woman lying on her back in the operating room with an arrow sticking out of her butt. Apparently her husband had mistaken her for an archery target and accidentally shot her in the butt. Perhaps her husband was on a hunting trip with Dick Cheney at the time, long before he became Vice President?

A latter scene in the same operating room has Dr. Harvey and Dr. Schweitzer performing a gallbladder surgery. They can’t seem to find the patient’s gallbladder, so they end up tearing out several of the organs from the patient. This particular scene has some connection to earlier Milligan films because it is intentionally and graphically violent, even if the organs used in the scene are obviously unconvincing and fake. Herschel Gordon Lewis would be proud of this scene.
A connection this film has to earlier Milligan films is the nurse-receptionist character and drag queen Ronna, who is very similar to the drag queen in Milligan’s excellent Fleshpot On 42nd Street, played by Neil Flanagan. Ronna is later revealed to be Robert Goode, who is Grace Goode’s cousin and the murderer in the film. Robert is murdering hospital staff and patients in hopes to inherit the family hospital for himself.

Nurse Ronna and Dr. Grace Goode are the two characters I enjoyed the most, and felt the audience would have the greatest connection to. The young, fresh out of medical school Dr. Schweitzer, seems a bit unconvincing to me as he constantly sucks on a baby’s pacifier, implying that he is young, inexperienced and "wet behind the ears." This character gets a bit annoying too. Many of the actors in the film are way over the top in their acting, and frequently shout their lines, much like in an early John Waters film.

Is Surgikill a great film? No, but who cares? I like movies to occasionally be campy, over-the-top and unbelievable, otherwise I would not be writing articles for this web site. Is Surgikill Andy Milligan’s best film? Probably not. I place my vote with Torture Dungeon, which I regard as his greatest masterpiece. Still, any die-hard fan of Andy Milligan cannot afford to miss this entry in his filmography. It may not have the same low-budget, gritty charm as his films of the late 1960s and early 1970s, but it is worthy of a viewing, if only to see what his last film looks like before his death in 1991. Like Milligan’s earlier films, I am confident that Surgikill will continue to gain a strong cult following as the years go by. Fans are eagerly awaiting a DVD release soon.

-- Steve D. Stones

Surgikill gets its long-awaited DVD release!

Andy Milligan's final film, the black comedy, Surgikill, received a DVD premiere at the Art Theater in Long Beach, Calif., on Feb. 17. Sherman Hirsh, who co-wrote the film, was there and offers these observations:

Well, the big night has come and gone and the afterglow is still bright. My cousin, Steve, and I drove down to Long Beach from the San Fernando Valley and found the Art Theater, where Lo and Behold SURGIKILL was emblazoned on the marquee, and the poster I designed was in the frame by the entrance.

Now, I figured this was going to be my only premiere and I wanted a red carpet, so I brought my own. Hollywood is lousy with tourist trap souvenir shops and they often carry Hollywood themed party kitch decorations. Amid the giant tickets and cardboard cameras and fake "Oscars" there was a 15' roll of garish red plastic sheeting pretending to be a red carpet. I never thought the people at the screening would go along, but when I joked that I had brought the red carpet, they grabbed it and laid it down at the main entrance.

I shot video of Bouvier and Doug Eames arriving and walking the Red Carpet. We even had a papparazzo. A photographer from a local paper shot a few pictures of the event and sat behind me at the screening. I got to see his reactions to the show. He liked it. We pigged out at the buffet and at 9PM sharp the Q&A started.

We answered a bunch of questions from the audience and seemed to be well received. One of the actors from my zombie movie showed up with his wife and asked a few questions. Among other things, Doug talked about how he got the part of Dr. Albert Schweitzer, and I talked about how I came up with the character. Bouvier talked about how she became involved and we had a great time.

Then the movie started and I got to see my name on the big screen. When it was over, we signed a few autographs and Bouvier sold a dozen DVD's. Once people saw SURGIKILL, they liked it. Overall, it was a great night.

DVD of Surgikill coming soon

Surgikill is finally making it to DVD. The release is scheduled for next month and there will be a release party in Long Beach, Calif. with screenwriter Sherman Hirsh and star Bouvier. For iunfo, go to http://www.artfulthinking.org/Out_At_The_Movies.html Here is a re-cast of an earlier review:

In 1988, underground filmmaker Andy Milligan embarked on directing his final full-length feature film. Media Arts Productions LLC produced it. The film was to be a black comedy set in a small community hospital called Goode Community Hospital, named after Dr. Grace Goode, a character in the film played by Darlene Van Harlingen, also known as Bouvier. Her husband, John Van Harlingen, was the executive producer. This film is quite departure from the canon of other Milligan films, which were over the top sex and gore epics. The film was shot in an abandoned neighborhood clinic near downtown Los Angeles.

Dr. Goode is desperately trying to keep her small hospital in functioning order as some of her staff and patients are being murdered one by one. Not to mention that she is constantly being hounded to sell the hospital for other greedy business prospects.

The film is full of over-the-top gags and gimmicks that are occasionally funny and sometimes overstated and juvenile. For example, one particularly funny scene, at least to me, shows an old woman arriving at the hospital reception desk with a bedpan stuck to her butt. Two hospital orderlies attempt to pry it off her as she stands in complete embarrassment. Other scenes show characters being hit over the head with a bedpan, or splashed with urine from bedpans. These scenes quickly become overstated. Some of the characters constantly repeating: "We care about the people we care for," quickly gets exhausted too.

Another particularly funny scene shows an old woman lying on her back in the operating room with an arrow sticking out of her butt. Apparently her husband had mistaken her for an archery target and accidentally shot her in the butt. Perhaps her husband was on a hunting trip with Dick Cheney at the time, long before he became Vice President?

A latter scene in the same operating room has Dr. Harvey and Dr. Schweitzer performing a gallbladder surgery. They can’t seem to find the patient’s gallbladder, so they end up tearing out several of the organs from the patient. This particular scene has some connection to earlier Milligan films because it is intentionally and graphically violent, even if the organs used in the scene are obviously unconvincing and fake. Herschel Gordon Lewis would be proud of this scene.
A connection this film has to earlier Milligan films is the nurse-receptionist character and drag queen Ronna, who is very similar to the drag queen in Milligan’s excellent Fleshpot On 42nd Street, played by Neil Flanagan. Ronna is later revealed to be Robert Goode, who is Grace Goode’s cousin and the murderer in the film. Robert is murdering hospital staff and patients in hopes to inherit the family hospital for himself.

Nurse Ronna and Dr. Grace Goode are the two characters I enjoyed the most, and felt the audience would have the greatest connection to. The young, fresh out of medical school Dr. Schweitzer, seems a bit unconvincing to me as he constantly sucks on a baby’s pacifier, implying that he is young, inexperienced and "wet behind the ears." This character gets a bit annoying too. Many of the actors in the film are way over the top in their acting, and frequently shout their lines, much like in an early John Waters film.

Is Surgikill a great film? No, but who cares? I like movies to occasionally be campy, over-the-top and unbelievable, otherwise I would not be writing articles for this web site. Is Surgikill Andy Milligan’s best film? Probably not. I place my vote with Torture Dungeon, which I regard as his greatest masterpiece. Still, any die-hard fan of Andy Milligan cannot afford to miss this entry in his filmography. It may not have the same low-budget, gritty charm as his films of the late 1960s and early 1970s, but it is worthy of a viewing, if only to see what his last film looks like before his death in 1991. Like Milligan’s earlier films, I am confident that Surgikill will continue to gain a strong cult following as the years go by. Fans are eagerly awaiting a DVD release soon.

-- Steve D. Stones

Review of Milligan's Surgikill

By Steve D. Stones

In 1988, underground filmmaker Andy Milligan embarked on directing his final full-length feature film. Media Arts Productions LLC produced it. The film was to be a black comedy set in a small community hospital called Goode Community Hospital, named after Dr. Grace Goode, a character in the film played by Darlene Van Harlingen, also known as Bouvier. Her husband, John Van Harlingen, was the executive producer. This film is quite departure from the canon of other Milligan films, which were over the top sex and gore epics. The film was shot in an abandoned neighborhood clinic near downtown Los Angeles.

Dr. Goode is desperately trying to keep her small hospital in functioning order as some of her staff and patients are being murdered one by one. Not to mention that she is constantly being hounded to sell the hospital for other greedy business prospects.

The film is full of over-the-top gags and gimmicks that are occasionally funny and sometimes overstated and juvenile. For example, one particularly funny scene, at least to me, shows an old woman arriving at the hospital reception desk with a bedpan stuck to her butt. Two hospital orderlies attempt to pry it off her as she stands in complete embarrassment. Other scenes show characters being hit over the head with a bedpan, or splashed with urine from bedpans. These scenes quickly become overstated. Some of the characters constantly repeating: "We care about the people we care for," quickly gets exhausted too.

Another particularly funny scene shows an old woman lying on her back in the operating room with an arrow sticking out of her butt. Apparently her husband had mistaken her for an archery target and accidentally shot her in the butt. Perhaps her husband was on a hunting trip with Dick Cheney at the time, long before he became Vice President?

A latter scene in the same operating room has Dr. Harvey and Dr. Schweitzer performing a gallbladder surgery. They can’t seem to find the patient’s gallbladder, so they end up tearing out several of the organs from the patient. This particular scene has some connection to earlier Milligan films because it is intentionally and graphically violent, even if the organs used in the scene are obviously unconvincing and fake. Herschel Gordon Lewis would be proud of this scene.

A connection this film has to earlier Milligan films is the nurse-receptionist character and drag queen Ronna, who is very similar to the drag queen in Milligan’s excellent Fleshpot On 42nd Street, played by Neil Flanagan. Ronna is later revealed to be Robert Goode, who is Grace Goode’s cousin and the murderer in the film. Robert is murdering hospital staff and patients in hopes to inherit the family hospital for himself.

Nurse Ronna and Dr. Grace Goode are the two characters I enjoyed the most, and felt the audience would have the greatest connection to. The young, fresh out of medical school Dr. Schweitzer, seems a bit unconvincing to me as he constantly sucks on a baby’s pacifier, implying that he is young, inexperienced and "wet behind the ears." This character gets a bit annoying too. Many of the actors in the film are way over the top in their acting, and frequently shout their lines, much like in an early John Waters film.

Is Surgikill a great film? No, but who cares? I like movies to occasionally be campy, over-the-top and unbelievable, otherwise I would not be writing articles for this web site. Is Surgikill Andy Milligan’s best film? Probably not. I place my vote with Torture Dungeon, which I regard as his greatest masterpiece. Still, any die-hard fan of Andy Milligan cannot afford to miss this entry in his filmography. It may not have the same low-budget, gritty charm as his films of the late 1960s and early 1970s, but it is worthy of a viewing, if only to see what his last film looks like before his death in 1991. Like Milligan’s earlier films, I am confident that Surgikill will continue to gain a strong cult following as the years go by. Fans are eagerly awaiting a DVD release soon.

Retro-Plan9Crunch: All about Andy Milligan's cult classic 'Surgikill'

This popular Plan9Crunch post originally ran Sept. 7, 2008:


In the late 1990s and early part of this century, a consistent Andy Milligan cult almost developed. A book was published, a few of his films were released, there were some articles in film genre pubs and zines ... but then it faded. But a tiny cult remains, think Ed Wood in the mid-70s. Here at Plan 9 Crunch we offer a DVD-R of Milligan's hard-to-find "Torture Dungeon," and we've sold at least a dozen in a few months, as far away as Peru and a university film society in Turkey. Milligan's films are crude, even "bad," but he was unique. The swirl camera, the cheesy gore (fake heads, boiled eggs in eyes), the garish, slapped-on costumes by "Raffine," the uber-dysfunctional families, the males getting it in films such as "The Ghastly Ones," the very unsexy sex scenes, the gritty camera, so effective in Fleshpot on 42nd Street. ... And I'm sure our readers could add more.

Now, on to Surgikill: A few months ago, Plan 9 Crunch came in contact with screenwriter Sherman Hirsh. He penned the original screenplay to Surgikill. Andy Milligan changed enough of it to get screenwriting credit, Sherman was given original story credit. Plan 9 Crunch, after a long wait, finally got a chance to see Surgikill. It's a different experience. It's Andy trying comedy. Sherman will tell readers why Andy made a comedy in the following fascinating essay he offers Plan 9 Crunch. Sherman's piece is fascinating. It offers readers a detailed glimpse into Milligan's late career, as well as a look into the competitive world of low-budget filmmaking. There is information in this essay that has never been published before. We're happy to share it via Plan 9 Crunch. And we want to share the news that a DVD release of Surgikill is coming soon. We'll let you know when! After Sherman Hirsh's essay is a review of the VHS version of Surgikill from Plan 9 Crunch's Steve Stones.

So, start reading cult film fans, you're in for a treat! (And if you'd like to buy Torture Dungeon, send us a note via a comment!!)

-- Doug Gibson

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SURGIKILL – A Writer’s Perspective

By Sherman Hirsh

The Public rarely knows how a film was intended to be. The practice of including "Extras" on DVD’s has created an appetite among fans for deleted scenes and commentaries about what was intended vs. what got released. SURGIKILL, the movie that concluded Andy Milligan’s film career, is in the process of being prepared for its first DVD release, but there will be no extras, so this will be the only look anyone is likely to get at what happened behind the scenes.

I am always a little amazed at how much interest there is in SURGIKILL. For a long time, it was listed as a mere footnote to Andy’s filmography. There was a period during the 90s when it seemed like every periodical within the realm of Fantastic Journalism had a piece about the career of the auteur of "THE RATS ARE COMING, THE WEREWOLVES ARE HERE," with most of them mere reiterations of the versions which just preceded them. One writer, a New York actor who had worked with Andy, thought it may have been a re-make of the European classic, "EROTIKILL."

This was during the time when SURGIKILL was still one of several unreleased Milligan films. When I became aware of all of this, I figured it would be a good time to get SURGIKILL out. I don’t own any of SURGIKILL, but I was still in contact with the producers, ( in fact, I am still working with them on the development of new projects,) and in 1996, I called their attention to all of this ink Andy was getting and they agreed with me and started the long arduous process of getting SURGIKILL out. Why was it long and arduous? That is part of the tale of the Genesis of this film, a film which is about equally despised and enjoyed by various Andyphiles.

It all started with a script written by a 38-year-old Viet Nam veteran who, having exhausted all of the cinematic possibilities of Cleveland, emigrated to L.A., in hopes of having something resembling a Hollywood career. He, I, had come to Hollywood hoping to get into production. Instead, I ended up in a series of lack-luster McJobs, that left little energy to pursue a production job, but a lot of time to write. I made my first sale of an original script in ’85. It was a XXX "Adult" film, and I got the princely sum of $1500 for it. That was followed by several more, including one that was declared #1 Adult film of the Summer of ’86.

This brought me to the attention of a director who was planning to produce a few cheapies for cable. We kicked around a few ideas, and I delivered a Spy script, a drama about someone who liked to murder teenagers, and he settled on THE THOUSAND YEAR QUEST, a Sword & Sorcery fantasy. He wanted and I delivered a script he could realize in two weeks of shooting and would cost no more than $120,000. What he got was a movie that cost $400,000, took over a year and a half to finish and was released as LORDS OF MAGICK. It is notable for having a scene in it where porn icon Ron Jeremy plays a zombie who gets blown up by the magic of one of the hero wizards.

Armed with something resembling a track record, I started a campaign to get myself a directing gig. Once again, I offered the potential backers several possibilities. One was a European-style crime farce about actors robbing banks, not for the cash, but for the publicity. One was a chiller about some college geeks who piss off a long dead witch in a swamp.

And there was that humorous, light splatter piece about the nice little hospital with a slasher problem. It was written in the Spring of ’87, under the working title of "Horror Hospital." I would show it to the teenagers at the place where I worked and they all liked it. I told them I needed a stronger title, and one guy suggested "Surgical Kill." That made me think of SURGIKILL. I recently became aware of an English group calling itself Surgikill, and I contacted them, asking where they had gotten the name. Other than claiming it had nothing top do with the movie, they were little help.

I found a company, Media Arts Productions, who liked the scripts, and they went with the medical horror story first, because of the reputation horror films have for costing little, being easy to shoot, not needing Stars, having an automatic audience, etc. The swamp witch piece went on the back burner, where it still languishes.

We had long discussions about how I would direct it and what I would need, and they seemed to be all for my concepts. Then I learned that they wanted a name director, and after seeing a want ad Andy Milligan placed in the LA Times, and without discussing it with me first, brought him in to shoot my movie. Fine, thinks I. I’ll get the next one. I was still on the shoot as writer and cranked out what seemed to be an endless supply of new or modified material. I even wrote a whole new serious version for a possible partner that absolutely no one liked, and the project went back to my serio-comic version.

We were all invited to Andy’s house in Hollywood on Orange Drive, the house where he eventually shot part of MONSTROSITY, for a pleasant brunch, and some light business chat. He was prepping MONSTROSITY at the time, and SURGIKILL would be next. He put on the charm, told me he liked the script, and I got to talk to him at length. We kicked around some technical points, filmmaker to filmmaker. He told me some of his frugal filmmaking techniques.
I brought up the popular notion that he had made films in Europe. He told me he had never made a film in Europe and had no idea where the idea came from, and I believed him. I bring this up because it shows up in 90 percent of the stories about Andy and is totally false.
He invited me into the kitchen to help prepare our meal, and we discussed his film vs. his theater career. Then he hit on me. I’m straight. We spoke little after that. Brunch was good, though.

Not long after, I noticed his casting notice for MONSTROSITY in a local trade paper, and thought I would audition just to see what would happen. At the time it was still called IT, but there was a conflict with a little thing Stephen King wrote about a monstrous clown with a thing for balloons and some annoying kids and Andy decided to change it later. However, I was inspired by all this and in August of ’87, I wrote a screenplay around Andy. It was originally called I PUKE ON DRACULA’S GRAVE, and was about a low budget shooter who is making monster movies with real monsters cooked up by his mad scientist partner. He casts his movies by kidnapping kids who come to LA to become stars, and forcing them to become HIS stars. He also sends his monsters to discipline critics who give him bad reviews.

We got invited to Andy’s studio to watch him shoot what was still called IT one night. Andy had rented a vacant bar at the wrong end of Sunset Boulevard In fact, I had been there a couple years earlier as a guest of a friend of mine who was playing in the house band when the place was called the On Club. His assistants told me the place was haunted and they were always seeing "things" and hearing "things." They also showed me several hundred dollars worth of change they had harvested from around the bar, change dropped by countless bartenders over who-knows-how-many years.

I only got to speak to Andy briefly that night. I did get to tell him he had inspired I PUKE ON DRACULA'S GRAVE. He enjoyed hearing that.

Make up and special effects on IT were handled by a talented artist named Rod Matsui. We discussed many topics while we waited for the cast to get ready. I talked about my experiences, and mentioned I had had a script ripped off by a certain director who has a reputation for similar abuses. At the mere mention of the name, half the actors in the room, long time members of the LA low budget Indie community, and apparently survivors of this director, shot me some of the nastiest looks I ever got, and I once got a nasty look from Bettie Davis!

Shooting began in a small grocery store. I observed Andy’s shooting style from the standpoint of someone who had gone to Film School. I was appalled! His lighting was primitive, a single professional grade light and a suitcase full of clip-on worklights. He shot with the lens aperture wide open and never used a light meter, leaving it to the processing lab to make things works. This accounts for the "gritty" look a lot of low budget films have.

The mic was placed on the floor, pointing in the general direction of the action, resulting in a load of room tone and echo. Now, this is a proper way to mic a live stage show, but the acoustics of an LA Mom & Pop food store call for a different approach. Unfortunately, Andy had none.

IT and SURGIKILL were shot on 35MM film. Andy usually used what are called short ends, the leftovers of unused film from other shoots, and are cheaper than "new" film. Andy’s modus operandi was to shoot the take, and check the gate on his ancient Arriflex studio camera. If there was film in the gate, he would move on to the next set up, on the assumption that he didn’t run out of film during the take. Retakes were rare on a Milligan shoot. However, there were so many low budget films being shot in LA at the time, there was a total famine of short ends and Andy was forced to buy more expensive full loads.

If you’ve seen MONSTROSITY, you may recall a scene where some lowlifes have abducted a lady and are making their escape. At one point, they almost get into an accident with another car. That was real! I was standing behind the camera when that was shot and the other car came out of nowhere. Just a lucky coincidence of someone being in the wrong place at the right time! We managed to hang around for the rest of the shoot. After that, I never saw Andy Milligan again.

I had absolutely nothing to do with the making of SURGIKILL. Andy conducted casting calls at his studio, where he encountered Bouvier. She is a multi-talented artist, designer, entrepreneur and performer, who has extensive credits in stage, film and TV. I’m not sure, but I believe she also, along with her business partner, may have invested in SURGIKILL, along with the usual moneyed lawyers, real estate investors and a few parasites who hang around with filmmakers so they can pickup cute starlets. Principal photograpy began at a decommisioned hospital near downtown Los Angeles, a neighborhood so foul, people had to be escorted to and from their cars. The weirdos in the movie were pale copies of the real homeless who lived around the facility. Additional scenes were shot at Andy's studio on Sunset.

On a personal note, I embedded a little joke in the script. I refered to the Jail Ward as the J Ward. If you recall your cartoon history, you'll remember that Jay Ward created Rocky & Bullwinkle. And the dog, Mr. Peabody and his boy, Sherman. That was my limp way of getting revenge for 20 years of Sherman and Peabody jokes. Unfortunately, Ward died before the film came out, so my vengeance is hollow and vain.

Credits are sometimes "adjusted" to suit special circumstances. For instance, Andy gets credit for the screenplay for SURGIKILL, while I, who wrote several complete drafts before Andy signed on, am relegated to "Original Story" Actually, Andy wrote very little. What Andy did originate was a large component of improvisation. He regarded the script as a catalog, not a blueprint. He would choose a scene here and a scene there and staple it all together later. SURGIKILL is about 30 percent my work, as opposed to LORDS OF MAGICK, which is about 80 percent mine.

The picture was completed, and sat for several years in the garage of one of the investors, due to the usual commercial conflicts. Andy went back to his studio and put on plays for two years until his AIDS rendered him too weak to function, and he eventually died.

The folks at Media Arts had to ransom Surgikill back, and then find a distributor. At the time, maverick film distributor and innovator, TROMA, was trolling for finished films, as they still do, and CEO Lloyd Kaufman was reputedly an Andy Milligan fan and liked SURGIKILL. However, TROMA’s standard contract is so convoluted and restrictive, it scared Media Arts away. For instance, the contract grants TROMA total ownership of ALL rights, for ALL time, even on OTHER PLANETS! Media Arts decided to pass, and eventually undertook self-distribution. They figured it was the only way to get their $90,000 back. ( THE BIGGEST BUDGET ANDY MILLIGAN EVER HAD!) Then, in early 2000, I got a surprise in the mail, a VHS copy of "ANDY MILLIGAN’S LAST FILM… SURGIKILL." And now, 20-plus years after its origination, SURGIKILL is being spiffed up for DVD release.

It is not generally known that after Andy’s commitment was up, others on the shoot shot new scenes, like one with a poorly done Oliver Hardy impersonator, and re-cut the movie. People who thought they knew what they were doing shot their half-baked ideas and glued them to the movie. What you may see is not exactly want Andy intended, and definitely not what I intended.

Critics love to pick movies apart and assign their own significance to the pieces. SURGIKILL is characterized as a departure from films in Andy’s established style. Andy didn’t want to do those anymore. Andy’s illness depressed him and made him want to make a light happy comedy. My script, although very humorous, was not a farce. Andy made everybody an idiot, and the hospital totally incompetent.

My original philosophy was to make it a good hospital, populated with quirky but capable professionals. I, quite simply, wanted the audience to care about the characters. Instead, you get a bunch of doctors who are all jerks, and nurses who are all airheads, except for the head nurse who was a drag queen, something I have always suspected was a nostalgic reference to Andy’s New York experience. I once asked Bouvier what it was like to kiss a man in a dress, and she said it was weird!

In my script, Nurse Shirley Krankhaus was a very competent, overworked head nurse. Also, calling "her" Nurse Ratched, from ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, I regarded as a totally corny cliche'. Just like I wanted Dr. Schweitzer, the 17-year-old intern, to be smart and stable, not a wimpy nerd sucking on a pacifier. The way it turned out, you not only don’t care about these people, you want the killer to waste the whole mob!

Now comes the Big So What. I am acutely aware that the public doesn’t care about what they don’t see. They embrace or reject SURGIKILL based on what they glean from the screen. To most people, SURGIKILL is Andy’s. Nobody cares two figs about writers, anyway.

So what do I really think about SURGIKILL? There are parts that scream to be taken out, but most people don’t see it from the perspective of someone who has seen the real SURGIKILL in his head for 20 years. I don’t hate it. I do resent some of the events, but I’m glad I had the experience.

It works as what it became. It’s a different movie from the one I conceived. While it’s not what I wanted it to be, what’s there is not bad. I’m not talking about quality. I’m talking about the single basic thing a film must not be; BORING. A bad movie is a boring movie. Basically, SURGIKILL is not boring. If sheer technical/aesthetic/social quality were the most important values, then we would never have seen anything by John Waters and Troma would be a long-forgotten failure.

SURGIKILL is not a movie for the masses. It has no strong clear hero, the plot is ragged and the characters are too much alike. It has Cult appeal, but not within the established Andy Milligan community, if such a thing exists. It is an anomaly, and while it may have its advocates, it will never be a full member of the Andy Milligan canon, nor be discussed in the same terms. If there is a SURGIKILL sub-cult, we'll soon know!

SURGIKILL represents one of about 30 screenplays I have written, and one of five to actually be produced. I was a filmmaker a long time before I was a writer. I was drafted out of my first job in film, a job I got while I was still in film school, and sent to Viet Nam. I was a college-level film teacher. I worked in film and video in many capacities. I was a radio talk show host. In fact, radio is my second love after film.

When Andy Warhol said that in the future, everybody would be famous for 15 minutes, he was almost right. I’ve had about five or six 15-Minute Fames, and I’ll probably get a couple more. My little movie LOVE SLAVES OF THE SHE-MUMMY is out there, selling a few copies. I’m prepping SCREAM, ZOMBIE, SCREAM! for production this Fall. Maybe I’ll shoot I PUKE ON DRACULA’S GRAVE. Maybe I’ll shoot MY version of SURGIKILL someday. Actually, I have a lot of notes pertinent to SURGIKILL 2, but I can’t really talk about that right now.

Sherman Hirsh
North Hollywood, CA
September 1, 2008

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SURGIKILL review

In 1988, underground filmmaker Andy Milligan embarked on directing his final full-length feature film. Media Arts Productions LLC produced it. The film was to be a black comedy set in a small community hospital called Goode Community Hospital, named after Dr. Grace Goode, a character in the film played by Darlene Van Harlingen, also known as Bouvier. Her husband, John Van Harlingen, was the executive producer. This film is quite departure from the canon of other Milligan films, which were over the top sex and gore epics. The film was shot in an abandoned neighborhood clinic near downtown Los Angeles.

Dr. Goode is desperately trying to keep her small hospital in functioning order as some of her staff and patients are being murdered one by one. Not to mention that she is constantly being hounded to sell the hospital for other greedy business prospects.

The film is full of over-the-top gags and gimmicks that are occasionally funny and sometimes overstated and juvenile. For example, one particularly funny scene, at least to me, shows an old woman arriving at the hospital reception desk with a bedpan stuck to her butt. Two hospital orderlies attempt to pry it off her as she stands in complete embarrassment. Other scenes show characters being hit over the head with a bedpan, or splashed with urine from bedpans. These scenes quickly become overstated. Some of the characters constantly repeating: "We care about the people we care for," quickly gets exhausted too.

Another particularly funny scene shows an old woman lying on her back in the operating room with an arrow sticking out of her butt. Apparently her husband had mistaken her for an archery target and accidentally shot her in the butt. Perhaps her husband was on a hunting trip with Dick Cheney at the time, long before he became Vice President?

A latter scene in the same operating room has Dr. Harvey and Dr. Schweitzer performing a gallbladder surgery. They can’t seem to find the patient’s gallbladder, so they end up tearing out several of the organs from the patient. This particular scene has some connection to earlier Milligan films because it is intentionally and graphically violent, even if the organs used in the scene are obviously unconvincing and fake. Herschel Gordon Lewis would be proud of this scene.

A connection this film has to earlier Milligan films is the nurse-receptionist character and drag queen Ronna, who is very similar to the drag queen in Milligan’s excellent Fleshpot On 42nd Street, played by Neil Flanagan. Ronna is later revealed to be Robert Goode, who is Grace Goode’s cousin and the murderer in the film. Robert is murdering hospital staff and patients in hopes to inherit the family hospital for himself.

Nurse Ronna and Dr. Grace Goode are the two characters I enjoyed the most, and felt the audience would have the greatest connection to. The young, fresh out of medical school Dr. Schweitzer, seems a bit unconvincing to me as he constantly sucks on a baby’s pacifier, implying that he is young, inexperienced and "wet behind the ears." This character gets a bit annoying too. Many of the actors in the film are way over the top in their acting, and frequently shout their lines, much like in an early John Waters film.

Is Surgikill a great film? No, but who cares? I like movies to occasionally be campy, over-the-top and unbelievable, otherwise I would not be writing articles for this web site. Is Surgikill Andy Milligan’s best film? Probably not. I place my vote with Torture Dungeon, which I regard as his greatest masterpiece. Still, any die-hard fan of Andy Milligan cannot afford to miss this entry in his filmography. It may not have the same low-budget, gritty charm as his films of the late 1960s and early 1970s, but it is worthy of a viewing, if only to see what his last film looks like before his death in 1991. Like Milligan’s earlier films, I am confident that Surgikill will continue to gain a strong cult following as the years go by. Fans are eagerly awaiting a DVD release soon.

-- Steve D. Stones

Sherman Hirsh on Lords of Magick

UPDATE ON March 11 -- "Ulric's Sword" added above, and a review at end of post

ANOTHER UPDATE on March 12-- another review by Steve D. Stones

WELCOME PLAN 9 CRUNCH FANS, to our week of The Lords of Magick, a wonderfully obscure 1989 fantasy feature about two wizards transported 1,000 years into late 1980s Los Angeles to rescue a princess from an evil wizard. We love this film, which cost less than $500,000 and has stubbornly stayed alive, available via online sellers. Later in the week Steve Stones and I, Doug Gibson, offer reviews of Lords of Magick and more. But first, we have a fascinating essay by the film's writer, screenwriter/director Sherman Hirsh. What follows is an entertaining, informative look into low-budget filmmaking in the 80s. It's worthy of being assigned to a filmmaking class. Plan 9 Crunch readers will recall Sherman's great essay on the making of Andy Milligan's Surgikill

http://planninecrunch.blogspot.com/2008/09/all-about-surgikill-andy-milligans-last.html

So, enjoy this great essay, look for more as the week goes on, and remember that we're on Twitter now at www.twitter.com/plan9crunch

Thanks a bunch, now read on! -- Doug Gibson (P.S. Sherman refers to the film as Lords of Magic for mostly personal reasons. He would have preferred it was named The Thousand Year Quest).

Behind the Scenes with LORDS OF MAGIC

In the 70's, if you wanted to break into movies, you scammed your relatives out of all the money you could and made a Horror movie. So, I spent my 20's immersing myself in the lore of Gore, all the time wishing I could shoot a Conan movie. I had fallen in love with Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber and their peers as my chief escape mode while I was in Vietnam, and longed to commit those synthetic legends to film. However, nobody was making fantasy movies, yet. So, I wrote and tried to shoot zombie movies and monster movies and maniac movies and so on, all the while pretending to go to college and working and teaching film courses at a local junior college and trying to sustain a relationship and survive Cleveland. Obviously, the cards were stacked against me, and I felt I was getting nowhere, and taking a long time to do it. Having little to lose, I went to Hollywood at the tender age of 34. Hey, I sold two scripts in Cleveland, so I figured I could do better in the Entertainment Capital of the World!

In the mid-Eighties, before DVD's and Downloads made independent films a popular commodity, a lot of Indie films were made for the then growing Cable TV market. “CABLE FODDER” was the derisive term for these movies, describing their marginal quality and lack of strong Box Office cast members. However, the market was profitable for a while and many filmmakers tried to get on board.

All this sounds like ancient history now, and it is. I got to participate in some of that as the screenwriter of a semi-obscure mini-epic called LORDS OF MAGIC. If you remember my recent rant about my experience as the writer of Andy Milligan's last gasp, SURGIKILL, you will recall my mentioning LORDS OF MAGIC, which I had written before SURGIKILL. Unlike SURGIKILL, I had a chance to actually observe the making of LORDS OF MAGIC. While I didn't see all of the shoot, I did see some major scenes as they were filmed, and had a chance to speak to participants who were there.

I had sold a few XXX scripts once I got to Hollywood, and longed to graduate to something I could have my real name on and didn't have to apologize for. I got involved with David Marsh, a producer/director who wanted to crack the made-for-cable thing. “Give me a film I can shoot in two weeks for $120,000” he said. We kicked around a few ideas and a few scripts that never made it to a second draft. Then at one meeting he said, “Let's do one of those movies about a wizard rescuing a princess from a giant spider or something,” and eventually ended up formulating a Fantasy movie about wizards rescuing a princess from a nasty sorcerer. Probably one of the reasons the Middle Ages fell apart was everybody was wasting time rescuing all those damn princesses, resulting in them going from Feudal to futile. I, however, loved the idea of doing a fantasy.

LOM was the result of my messing with the generic prototype of the Sword and Sorcery Genre: Hero goes on a quest to save someone or something and gets a mate, after fighting a hammy villain and dealing with magic, and prevails because Good always wins out over Evil, even though Evil is more fun. However, I tend to want to warp the conventions of a genre, because while I love the genre, I hate the cliches. I split the hero in two and made them brothers. This was so I could separate them, sending each off on a separate adventure and have them re-unite at the climax. Instead of wanting to go on this quest, my protagonists are forced into it.

I used GHOSTBUSTERS as a plot model, working the scheme of having a lot of little events lead up to a big finale. This caused the director to brag to everyone who would listen, ”It's a lot like GHOSTBUSTERS!”

He didn't want to spend a lot of money on period props, sets, etc, and made me set most of the story in modern times, a thousand years out of the time of the heroes, hence my original title: THE THOUSAND YEAR QUEST. (This was also the premise several years later, of Coscarelli's BEASTMASTER II..) The final title came from a line I composed while I was revising the finale, “There can not be two Lords of Magic!” And there wasn't since we never shot the sequel I wrote.

I wrote the first draft of LORDS OF MAGIC while I was on jury duty. The judge asked all the jurors about their backgrounds and vocations. I said I was a freelance scriptwriter and he bitched and moaned about how Movies and TV never show what really goes on in The Courtroom. I was tempted to tell him that it was because trials are really boring and technical, with very little real drama. I chickened out and said nothing. For 5 weeks, I showed up at the LA County Court House and gave reasonable attention to the case, while pre-writing LOM in my head. The other jurors would see me writing notes in my little notebook and were sure I was writing a movie about this case. Little did they know... Eventually, we all got really annoyed with the whole process and gave the plaintiff $2,100,000, and went home. After a few script re-write meetings and the usual pre-production rituals, principal photography on LORDS OF MAGIC began in April of 1986.

A few minor technical notes: LORDS OF MAGIC was shot, before SURGIKILL, on the then state of the art video format, Betacam, while SURGIKILL was shot on old-school 35mm film. At the time, shooting a feature on video was comparatively rare. There were a couple features shot in the mid-70's on video, but they never went very far. There was one other feature made at the same time as LORDS OF MAGIC on Betacam. This is not to be confused with another extinct format, Betamax, which was a home video mode. Now, Betacam is obsolescent, having been replaced by HD.

The action which took place on Hollywood Boulevard, with the Redglen Brothers getting busted by the LAPD, was the first day's output. I got to watch the shoot. I even signed my first autograph for a nice tourist family from Canton Ohio, a small Rust-belt Ruin city near my hometown rust-belt ruin, Cleveland. This was my first look at the two young actors who brought my fantasy to life. The director and I had several differences of opinion about various aspects of the film, and casting was one of them. More on that later. However, I was totally satisfied with the choices he had made for the two wizard brothers.

Jarret Parker, as our Frodo-ish nice wizard, Michael Redglen, was a professional magician. He had done shows at the famed Magic Castle in Hollywood, performing some extremely clever tricks in a show he called Microcosmos. I was there the day he showed up, uninvited, at the producers office, amazed us with a few of his illusions and went home with the part. If you watch his body language when he performs his wizardly wonders on the screen, you'll notice that he really looks like he's doing magic. He did.

Ulric Redglen, the Bad Boy of Good Magic, was portrayed by Mark Gauthier, a professional actor, who got the part through the regular channel, by auditioning for it. He told me that he had mentioned to some friends of his who were into Black Magic and Witchcraft that he was playing a White Wizard and they placed a curse on the film. I think the curse is that it's taken over 20 years for the flick to get any real attention.

The Brothers Redglen were Merlinite Wizards, followers of Merlin. As far as I know, there were no such wizards, however, according to my source material, Merlin, or Myrddhin, was a real 13th century astrologer who had absolutely nothing to do with King Arthur. Wishing to avoid lawsuits, I needed a made-up name. Glens are green, so we'll use red, hence Redglen. I met an English tourist who told me he actually knew someone named Michael Redglen. Must be that curse at work.

Their native guide in this strange new world, Tommy Hill, was brought to life by David Snow, the star of the classic, THE DORM THAT DRIPPED BLOOD. Good actor, but a tad old for a college student.

Salatin, our Boogy Man, was Brenden Dillon, Jr., a male model and ardent surfer. I always thought he was too pretty for the part. My Salatin would have been a repulsive ugly old creep, his appearance being a reflection of his befouled soul. The name, SALATIN, came from the name of a practitioner of the Dark Arts who first appeared as a character in an ancient play. I found the name in an old book on magic and witchcraft , my source material, which revealed itself to me as it lurked in the cut out bin of my college bookstore. Brendan told me that Salatin came to him in a dream, wearing a white robe. Salatin told Brendan that he approved of how Brendan was playing him. I rescued the old bastard from obscurity and he never talked to me!

I wanted to play Salatin. I'm a mediocre actor, but a brilliant ham. Unlike SURGIKILL, however, there is a little of me in LORDS OF MAGIC, all of it voice-over work. In the King's Court scene, you'll hear me shout the off-screen line, “Send for the Headsman!” I also supplied various screams, laughs, demonic growls, etc, for the end of the Gypsy scene.

Some superstitious employee told David that I had put REAL WITCHCRAFT in the movie and he took out a lot of the magic. I really hadn't, and most of it went back in. Did he really think he could make a wizard movie and not have magic? I left the old book I used as source material with the director so he could use it for reference purposes, but he got nervous and made me get it out of his house. He must have thought it was an actual Grimoir.

That old book was actually a modern re-print of THE ANTHOLOGY OF SORCERY, MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT, a French text first published in the 1920's, I used that book for all sorts of magic related material. Assorted chants, curses, Latin phrases, ETC. all originated in that book.

There is a chant Salatin speaks during the magic duel at the end:
PALAS ARON OZINOMAS,
BASKE BANO TUDAN DONAS
GEHEAMEL CLA ORLAY
BEREC HE' PANTERAS TAY
If you speak this chant in a darkened room lit by a single candle while drawing a pentagram on the floor in chicken blood, in the dark of the Moon, NOTHING will happen. This is not a real invocation of Dark Forces. It is nonsense words used in an ancient play. I copied it out of that old tome.

The aura of Magic attracted a few aficionados of the Black Arts to the project. There is a scene where the Brothers use necromancy to make a hanged corpse help them talk to “The Old One”. I was told that this was not the correct way to do this, and Ulric and Michael should have taken the severed hand of an executed felon and in the light of the Full Moon...blah, blah, blah.

Whether you interpret the “Old One” as either Satan or some nauseating Lovecraftian Deity, did we really want to talk to it? Sometimes the magic works, sometime it just fires up weirdos. Remember, however, that this all happened in Los Angeles, where the pound won't let people adopt black cats during Halloween because they get sacrificed.

A few months after the film had wrapped, I spoke to Richard Rifkin, the actor who got hanged for the scene. He told me he had hung there so long, when they finally cut him down, he couldn't lower his arms! He was supposed to have been hung by the neck, but a proper hanging harness system was not in the budget. OUCH!

Most of the interiors were shot at a rented sound stage in North Hollywood, across the street from the Ragu Spaghetti Sauce plant. The set designer made excellent use of the space. There are stairs at either end of a second story catwalk. Those stairs appear in the Inn scene and the old book vault, where Tommy and Michael are attacked by a demonized librarian. Her prosthetic make-up was created by Tom Shouse, a talented special effects artist who was the sculptor of the mermaid's tail assembly in SPLASH, for which he didn't get credit due to his non-union status. Her darting tongue was CGI. Since LORDS OF MAGIC left, the place has become the headquarters for a company which sells grooming products for the Latino market. Ragu moved too.

I was hanging around the set the day they shot the castle scene of the Brothers' trial. The King of England in 986 historically was Ethelred or Aethelred Evilcounsel, was played by John Clark, then husband of Lynn Redgrave. The assorted courtiers, as well as the customers at the Inn, were played by a local chapter of the Society for Creative Anachronism, a nationwide cult of Medieval re-enactors. They came in their own personal costumes, complete with huge swords, some costing almost a thousand dollars. However, they really knew the era and its customs. Never mind that they were dressed for a time 300+ years after the time portrayed. Hey, this is a fantasy, not a documentary. The Redglens' chief accuser was played by a disgruntled actor who wanted to be cast as the King, as evidenced by his slightly annoyed attitude. Not all acting is ACTING.

There is one huge set representing Salatin's temple and the location of the Alter of Skulls. It was done on a soundstage in Hollywood near Sunset Boulevard and Western Avenue, the same studio where Raymond Burr shot his insert scenes for the original 1950's GODZILLA. I ran a fog machine. There was also a thick cloud of smoke coming from a fire burning in the middle of the set. The special effects team who did the effect used charcoal lighter fluid, a particularly dirty fuel. I was blowing soot out of my nose for hours afterwards. This scene was a re-shoot, because the director didn't like the first attempt. Unfortunately, you can't see Tom Shouse's alter, which was impressive. It was covered in sculpted skulls, but is barely visible in this version. There is a large gargoyle idol which was rented from Universal, and had decorated their Dracula attraction until that was re-vamped into the Conan the Barbarian attraction.

This scene was shot in November of 1986. The wrap party had been in August, but they kept shooting. Somehow, a 2 week shoot costing $120K took almost a year to finish and cost almost a half million!

I watched the shooting of the action scenes involving the Rejects gang, before and after they were possessed, as shot in an alley in West Hollywood. The Rejects were professional stunt players. When you see the Redglens doing stunts, it's really Mark and Jarret doing their own stunts. They learned those stunts and the swordplay from those stuntmen. This is the scene in which Ron Jeremy, Adult Movie star, director and Troma regular, played a zombie who gets blown up. After his scenes were completed, he hung around the set wearing only his undies. I guess he just wasn't used to being around a camera with clothes on.

One incident that night sticks in my memory. There is a shot where Ulric stabs a Reject with his sword. The zombie's torso was a standard department store dummy with its chest carved out. It was covered with a rubber-like skin, and the “Reject” stood behind it. When Ulric stabbed the torso, the skin tore back, revealing a chest full of guts, REAL GUTS, as furnished by a local butcher! The actor playing the Reject reached into the chest cavity and pulled out a huge chunk of real liver covered in movie blood and started chewing on it. Everyone who wasn't gagging was laughing. I will never know why the director didn't shoot a clean take, but what you see in the film is that shot, with the gross-out deleted in editing.

Bad old Ulric, having been separated from his righteous brother, strays from his mission, with a little push from Salatin. He picks up a prostitute and gets a room. Salatin shows up rather rudely in the bathroom as Ulric is getting ready to roll and seduces Ulric into betraying Michael and joining Salatin's side. In my written version, Salatin says that since his body is very old and no magic can preserve it forever, he wants Ulric and the Princess to breed him a son whose body Salatin can take over. Our intrepid director thought this was too creepy, and took out the part about taking over the lucky kid's body. This was later the premise of GHOSTBUSTERS II. Do you detect a pattern here?

This set was the scene of a small bit of temperment on Mark's part. He was standing on the set, waiting to nail his hooker, wearing only a loincloth. He demanded that everyone not working on the picture get out. A few did, but after all, it was a Sex Scene! “Hey, I'm an Actor, not an Exhibitionist!” he declared. It struck me that it was like saying, “I'm a doughnut, not a pastry!” He was a Pro and not a Primadonna, and gave up his struggle to maintain his dignity and did the scene. At least he didn't "BALE" on us!

The Quest culminates in a massive battle of sorcery, “Just like the one in THE RAVEN (Roger Corman's).” The warehouse set took up the entire sound stage, uh, warehouse. If you have read the review of LOM as posted by ARION1 on IMDB, he talks about this scene, pointing out various shortcomings. He cites the name of the place, MARSH ELECTRONICS. I needed to avoid any legal traps, so I used the director's name. He wasn't in the electronics business, but he had a lot of electronics, so I riffed off that.

Arion1 finds the scene confusing. That's because it is. Large portions of information are missing. When Michael and Tommy arrive at the warehouse to confront Salatin, they witness him destroying a follower named Morgan. Based on the film alone, you won't know why. Actually, Morgan was a banker, who dabbles in in the Black Arts. Earlier in the movie, Tommy takes the Redglens to see him, on the chance that he might know how they can find Salatin. Morgan won't cooperate until Tommy threatens to make public the fact that Morgan does strange things with goats in his garage. Morgan relents and helps the Boys, which is why Salatin fries him.

The battle scene has all kinds of problems. For no good reason, after flinging spells at each other, Michael and Salatin suddenly are swordfighting. Why would wizards fence? At least they weren't doing Kung Fu.

The battle scene was shot over several days, but I only got to watch one. Somebody had made a finely detailed miniature of the warehouse, with the intention to burn it. There were also several harmless little snakes who were supposed to be huge and frightening on that miniature set. Never made the cut.

I wish I had been there the day the tiger showed up. He was named Raja. He was a seasoned movie cat and everybody got a chance to pet him.

Arion1 says, “The film attempts (and for the most part succeeds) in attending to every one of the elements of a fantasy adventure.” Well, DUH! It's a Fantasy Genre film, Arion1! The whole essence of Genre is the use of recognizable conventions that make the mode immediately recognizable.

He also finds fault with the battle scene. He finds it confusing. The background material on Morgan is not the only missing data. Of course it's confusing. The whole sense of attack and reply is missing. The final cut is a muddled montage of scenes until the payoff at the end when Michael discovers that Ulric has been ensorceled by Salatin.

I hate the Princess and the Pea scene. It adds nothing to our understanding of the characters nor does it advance the plot. David demanded it. I always regarded it as bulk that displaced material of greater value. I hate that David tried to make LOM into an urban action picture and sacrificed a lot of the fantasy. The film loses its intended nature as a quest. Instead of having the heroes FIND Salatin, they have to have Salatin shoved in their faces. Salatin should not have survived the adventure. Instead of having Salatin get greased once and for all, he pops up in the end tag in an gimmick totally stolen from the MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE movie.

I liked the castle used in that shot. It was about 4 feet tall and made of finely crafted cardboard. David kept it in his garage for a time after the picture was finished. He also had Ulric's sword, which I rescued from David's garage floor. It's my only souvenir of the movie, other than the original typed first draft of the script.

Does that mean you shouldn't see it. SEE IT! It's still a lot of fun, even if it has a few warts. If you are one of those fans who likes to find goofs and flubs in movies, I'll point out a few. If you watch the Redglens through most of the movie, you'll see that they are wearing amulets made by Tom Shouse, similar to those he made for BEASTMASTER. These amulets are made of metal and have glass eyes in their centers. However, watch closely and you will observe that in part of the movie, those amulets are felt and the glass eyes have been replaced by shirt buttons. Somebody lost the originals. “Lost” as in lost in the bottoms of their pockets.

While on Hollywood Boulevard, Ulric is startled by a kid's boombox when it blasts out a loud stream of music. Except that the music was never included in the final mix, so we don't really know why Ulric is suddenly chasing the kid down Hollywood Boulevard. He just starts chasing the kid for no clear reason. In the tavern scene, Ulric calls to Michael who is talking to a weeping girl, “Join us, Michael, if only in song.” Except that it's not Mark who speaks the line. It's David.

So, that's my memoir of LORDS OF MAGIC. Try to see it. There have been several copies available on eBay. I emailed one of the sellers in Texas that I had written it and that it seemed to be up for sale because it was a slow mover. He replied that it was because Science Fiction isn't very popular in Texas. Science Fiction? Did they think all those magic rays coming from the magicians' fingers were lasers? Was Salatin wearing a space suit? Beam me up, Ulric! Oh, well, at least it's not SURGIKILL!

Sherman Hirsh
sbhirsh0@aol.com

UPDATE

LORDS OF MAGICK, a short review

by Doug Gibson

I enjoy this film, obviously, or we wouldn't be featuring it. It is hampered by inexperienced acting, 80s Los Angeles settings (I agree with Sherman that it should have been set in long ago times) and the early shot on video is a tad uncomfortable to watch. I can't really explain why, it just doesn't feel right.

Having said that, Lords of Magick is a fun tale. Its strength is it simplicity. As written by Sherman, two noble young brothers who are wizards rescue a beautiful princess from an evil sorcerer. What could be plainer. Jarrett Parker and Mark Gauthier work well together as Michael and Ulric Redglen. Ruth Zakarian makes a beautiful Princess Luna. The shots of hanged men, zombies and a possessed librarian are well done given the budget. The 80s gang members seem like they might have stepped out a Police Academy film, but I love the scene where the Redglen brothers use magic to escape two thuggish LA cops.

The zombie swordfights are a lot of fun. My favorite scene is the library and the possession that ensues. The final conflict is cramped but still exciting. The low budget synthetic electronic flashes look cool. There are places that drag. I personally would have trimmed about 8 to 18 minutes from the film. But Lords of Magick keeps my interest. Again, that is due to the overall simplicity and respect for the genre that is in the script.

Sherman talks about a resemblance to Ghostbusters. I have to say that watching Ulric and Michael strolling down Hollywood I was thinking "Beverly Hills Cop" for a few seconds. Maybe it was the music??

I hope these extended 20 minutes for Lords of Magick will spur a few sales via ebay, etc. It's a fun film. An earnest attempt to capture an era that will fascinate us forever.

ANOTHER UPDATE LORDS OF MAGIC: Pimple cream not required

I have to admit that I was a bit hesitant to want to view this film. The artwork on the video box reminded me of all the geeks I knew in High School who spent their free time playing Dungeons & Dragons board games and coating their faces with pimple cream.

As a fan of “cult films,” I find that it is necessary to keep an open mind to all forms of cinema, regardless of whether or not the genre appeals to me. My second viewing of the film proved to be a much more rewarding experience. An evil sorcerer kidnaps a beautiful princess named Lina. Two Merlin Wizard brothers named Michael and Ulric Redglen are on a quest to save the princess. The two are captured by Knights in a tavern and are brought before the king to stand trial for necromancy.

The king eventually sets them free to continue their pursuit in finding the princess. In the forest, the Redglen brothers encounter a hanging corpse. After using necromancy to revive the corpse, he tells them to go to the altar of the skulls to meet the evil sorcerer Salatin. There they urinate on his altar, which infuriates the sorcerer. They demand the release of the princess. Lord Merlin soon appears and tells them to go fourth some 1,000 years into the future to battle Salatin and find the princess.

Their journey takes them to modern 1980s Hollywood, California. Although Hollywood is full of weirdos, dropouts and dead beats, the locals find the two brothers to be very strange as they wonder through the town. They think the Hollywood buildings are castles. A cop approaches them and demands they surrender their swords. Ulric fights one of the officers. Both brothers are arrested and forcibly put in the police car, but magically escape soon after.

Continuing their journey through Hollywood, the brothers find a poster advertising a theatrical production of The Princess and The Pea. Here they hope to find the princess. Entering the theater, they fit right in with the crowd dressed in medieval costumes. Outside the theater they encounter a woman who they think is the princess. A gang attacks them, thinking they are raping and kidnapping the woman. One of the gang appears to be adult film star Ron Jeremy. After reading Sherman Hirsh’s write up on this film, he confirmed for me that one of the gang members is indeed Ron Jeremy. I’m just glad I wasn’t on the set the day Ron decided to hang out in his underwear. The title of the movie would have to be changed to “Lords of Regurgitation,” if you know what I mean?

While battling the street gang, Michael recites a chant as a young man looks out on the street from his apartment window reciting the same chant. The chant transports Michael and Ulric to his apartment. Here they meet Thomas and ask for his help in battling Salatin. Thomas’ girlfriend does not believe that Michael and Ulric are wizards. Thomas takes the Redglen brothers to an address with the number 666 on the mailbox. They enter an old dark house filled with cobwebs and dust.

Michael and Ulric leave the room in search of The Chamber of Love while Thomas stays behind. A corpse rises out of a coffin with glowing red eyes. All three men eventually find Salatin holding the princess captive in a trance. Ulric breaks the spell of the trance. He realizes she is the real princess from a mark on her chest. The group flees the house and returns back to Thomas’ apartment. Here Ron Jeremy and his street gang attack them again. The gang is now possessed by the power of Salatin.

After defeating the gang, the Redglen brothers ask Thomas for candles, salt and chalk. They create a chalk outline barrier on the floor to protect the princess from the evil of Salatin. Thomas and Michael go to a local library to find a book written by Michael a thousand years ago. The librarian refuses to allow them access to a vault in the basement of the library, so the two carefully break into the vault to find the book. The librarian catches them and transforms into an evil demon.

Meanwhile, Ulric approaches a prostitute in Hollywood, and pays her with a gold coin for her services. While in the hotel room with the girl, he encounters Salatin in the bathroom mirror. Salatin convinces Ulric to betray his brother Michael by fornicating with the prostitute. He is now possessed by the evil Salatin, and kills the prostitute before leaving the hotel room.

Leaving the library, Michael and Thomas go to a gypsy named Esmeralda to ask for her aide in locating Salatin. She finds him in her crystal ball. This is one of my favorite scenes in the film because some of the special effects in the scene are quite intriguing. The skull and Buddha on the shelf in Esmeralda’s room move around and laugh. Ulric returns to Thomas’ apartment to lure the princess out of the chalk circle. She is led out of the circle and into the presence of Salatin.

Michael and Thomas soon find Salatin in a warehouse and discover that Ulric has betrayed them. Michael challenges Salatin to a duel. An armyof zombies is ordered to attack Michael and Thomas. The two escape the zombies with the princess through an opening in the warehouse wall. Both Thomas and Michael use their sorcery to destroy Salatin. With the death of Salatin comes the death of Ulric.

Michael then takes the princess back to his own time. Michael asks permission of his father to resurrect Ulric from the dead. His father must confront the archbishop for permission. The film ends with the princess delivering a message from Michael’s father, informing him that he is now a nobleman, and can now marry the princess.

This film is proof that you can’t always judge a film in its first viewing, or even by the video box art. I have a greater appreciation for it now that I have viewed it a few times and read Sherman Hirsh’s writeup on the film (found on this website.).

Making a movie is not an easy task, so we always need to keep an open mind when we sit down to watch someone’s hard work, even if it is just “Cable Fodder,” to use Sherman’s word. Forget the pimple cream when you watch Lords of Magic.

Steve D. Stones