made THE QÜEEN OF EVIL an easier sale. The fact was, even if the film stunk the people out of the theatres, at least we could guarantee them some­ thing playable.
You share writing credit on the screenplay with Edward Mann. Where does he f it in? Ed was the fourth partner of five. He came
into the story because I had worked with him previously as a co-writer on a script he brought to my attention called THE COUNTRY TEAM, based on a book by Robin Moore. It was about South­ east Asia, where I had served. Ed needed a co­ writer. I was paid very little money and the film was never made. I knew Ed and he was into low- budget films. Neither I nor my two partners had much to speak of in the way of experience, so we put Ed into our partnership to give our alliance a sense of respectability. We made him the president of the company in order to lend our­ selves his track record. Ed went on the script as a co-writer with me, but I am really the one to blame, because Ed really did not write a thing; he simply red-pencilled a few pages. He was actu­ ally so occupied by other projects that we never had any single long discussion about the project. I have no beef to make; his name is on the film, and it’s my regret that we did not work more together on the script because it does contain weaknesses, as you know. Ed Mann put us in touch with a Canadian
clothing company that looked very good on paper. They had Oxford diplomas from the School of Economics, a big new office up in Montreal; they looked great. They were inter­ ested in doing a film in Canada under a tax shelter; that is to say, they would put up $60,000 and they would take a depreciation of $240,000, which was permitted under Canadian tax laws. They were anxious to shoot the film; they invited us up, saying that everything would be great. They allowed us to use American performers under the stipulation that we use Canadian tech­ nicians—that was their only condition. This was terrific: we had an extra $60,000, giving us a budget of $ 150,000. Little did we know what was in store for us. This was the beginning of the end.
In hindsight, what was the biggest mis­ take you made at this juncture? Our biggest mistake was not being content
with just $90,000. We should’ve taken that money, goddamn it, and gone to Riverdale or Tarrytown or some such place, where we had a nice house picked out, and shot the goddamn
film! In black and white! 16mm!We should have rebudgeted the film from $130,000 (our original goal) to $90,000 and shot it cheap, fast, and hard—like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, which looks like it was shot on toilet paper, but at least it works! 1 think we should’ve gone with that; it would’ve been more in the style of VAMPYR, if we had done it for less money. But the sickness set in, the sickness to be professional. We didn’t have a casting director on our bud­
get, of course, so I supervised all the casting myself. Again, this is my fault—instead of paying scale to some interesting young actors who might have been able to come up in the business as a result of the film, we began to inflate the produc­ tion. We began thinking in terms of people like Jonathan Frid, Joe Sirola, Anne Meacham, Roger De Koven. They’re not boxoffice names, in any sense of the word, but they were all established actors with track records. Most were paid above scale. In some cases, scale. I found everyone through casting sessions, with the exception of Martine Beswicke. I had seen her in DR. JEKYLL & SISTER HYDE and was impressed by her beauty, her aura of self-control and discipline, the haughty look about her cheekbones. We contacted her in Italy, made her an offer, and after a lot of bargain­ ing, she agreed to do the film. She met us in Canada on the second or third day of production. I wanted the audience to believe, as much as
they could, that the events onscreen were taking place in America—so we ignored the local talent from Quebec.
And the production crew? I assembled the production team with Glenn
and Kapelman. Again, we got ourselves into a bit of difficulty because the original Canadian co­ producer, as part of their deal, asked us to use their director of photography, Roger Racine, who would not only provide us with his services, but also his equipment. Said equipment was supposed to be professional 35mm, but wasn’t. We had a lot of problems with the lighting, with a lack of voltage, with a lack of lights, and we ended up using 16mm sound (as opposed to 35mm sound) to save ourselves some money. As the film progressed, I found myself having more and more difficulty with Mr. Racine. And at no point, during the film, could we fire him. If we fired him, he would take his equipment with him. Rental cost to replace that equipment would’ve been way out of our range, so in effect, instead of the director being in charge, as is customary, I found myself a prisoner of Mr. Racine—for economic reasons.
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