rutal” is such a versatile word. It de- scribes the type of gore movies I like to watch, the genre of death metal I like to listen to and, judging by the search re-
sults on the Internet Movie Database, it’s also a popular film title! The Brutal of interest here is the 2012 film writ-
ten and directed by Michael Patrick Stevens, who also co-stars with A. Michael Baldwin of Phan- tasmfame. This is a movie that merits a purpose- fully vague synopsis. It opens with a home-video montage that establishes Carl Gibson (Baldwin) as a devoted husband and father of two young children who finds himself chained half-naked to a wooden chair in a spartan basement with no knowledge of why he’s there. The only other per- son in the house is a hulking, silent brute who re- sponds to Gibson’s frantic pleas to be let go by taking a belt sander to his head, carving him up with a Bowie knife and nailing his forearms to the chair. At the point at which the viewer is ready to resign himself to another pointless torture flick though, Stevens begins to reveal the layers of an emotionally complex exploration of crime, punishment and re- venge. That said, this wasn’t the first
film he intended to make. He had written a script called The Haunted Caves and received a number of offers to produce it, but nobody would allow him to direct it. “I decided I was going to have
to direct a low-budget film and show everybody what I could do,” says Stevens. “To keep costs down I pretty much had to keep the location to one room, but how [would] I keep that interesting for 85 minutes? I was liter- ally getting in the shower and the whole thing hit me. Brutal has so many meanings. The film is ob- viously brutal gore-wise, the guy’s name is Brutal, but emotionally, which was more my focus, it’s brutal.” Once the script was written, Stevens needed
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Brutal
two actors who could carry the bulk of the film. He had developed an earlier relationship through Facebook with Baldwin and approached him for the role of Carl. “The executive producers didn’t want him,” he
says of the actor. “They didn’t think he could reach the depth that Carl reached. I’d freeze the scene in Phantasm III when he peels back his skull and the sphere’s under- neath his skin, and when he’s trapped in the limo trying to kick his way out, and say, ‘Look at the intensity, I can get 60 minutes of that.’ I told them I wouldn’t do it without him.” Stevens proved to be right,
as Baldwin brought intensity in spades. Casting the part of Brutal was more difficult. “I was not going to play Bru-
tal at all. I’d hired a body- builder who was a UPS driver. This was in November we
were filming. Two days before we started shoot- ing, so many people had called in sick because it was cold and flu season here in Oregon that they cancelled his vacation. Everybody else said that I should do it: ‘You wrote it, you know the character.’” With that problem solved, Stevens had special effects to contend with.
“We had a special effects gal who was coming
up from California but she couldn’t make it, so the co-director, Darla Rae, and the stunt supervi- sor and co-producer, Kent Luttrell, were going to do the special effects. Literally, just ketchup, man. [Effects artist] Christina Kortum called one day before shooting because Kent had worked with her on [the TV series] Grimm, and she said she could make six of the eight days, and the other two days she would have her assistants there. The movie wouldn’t have been near as effective without her practical effects.” When it came time to score the film, Stevens
turned to Alan Howarth, best known for his work with John Carpenter on such films as Es- cape from New York and They Live. Stevens had phoned Howarth on a whim about doing The Haunted Caves four years previously and wound up visiting the musician at his studio. Howarth liked the script for Brutal and delivered a chilling soundtrack. In true indie fashion, Stevens has been dis-
tributing the film himself through the official website, brutalmovie.net, but a wider release seems imminent. “I just went to the American Film Market and
got it into the hands of all the bigger players, and our attorney is submitting it to Lionsgate and Paramount, so now we have a bigger shot with it. Wherever it goes, I’m just thrilled we got to do it.”