OK, all you people who subscribe to my YouTube Channel, I've finally put some new stuff up there. I just uploaded a bunch of my old teenage movies. All of these were done on Super 8 film (not video, kids!) around 1979-1980 when I was 15 and 16 years old. The film was silent. The music was dubbed on ten years or so later when I transfered them to video (God, even the video transfers are ancient!). I was the director of all of these masterpieces, although I didn't understand what a director was at the time and thus gave everyone else credit.
My friends and I would get together in the morning and make a vague plan of what the movie was gonna be. Then we'd go out and shoot it. There was no editing because, even though I knew how to edit and had a film editing machine, I was also lazy. Plus it was more fun the way we did it. When we needed a special effects scene I just told the actors to wait and did some "animation" with various toys and models. When the indicator showed we were almost out of film we'd make up an ending.
Here they are:
BUCK LAZERBREATH AND ROCKY COSMIC DISORDERS ON THE PLANET OF THE DINOSAURS
Note the impressive dinosaur animation effects influenced by the work of Ray Harryhausen and Willis O'Brien!
BUCK LAZERBREATH AND ROCKY COSMIC DISORDERS MEET THE SPACE NAZIS
I apologize to anyone who is offended by the Space Rabbi and his Bar Mitzvah gun. We were teenagers in WASP-y Wadsworth, Ohio. What did we know? Don't miss my cameo as the guy who hands Rocky the Instant Space Rabbi potion!
AIRPLANE 1979
This parody of the "Airport" films was done long before the movie "Airplane!" So there! I should sue. Sorry you can't read the title cards. They were blurry to begin with and YouTube compressed them to nothingness. Note the magnificent special effects inspired by the work of Irwin Allen!
IKO MAN AND STUD MAN MEET THE EVIL DOCTOR CHAIN REACTION
I didn't know anything about lighting. This was shot on a typical overcast Ohio day and, as a result, it's hard to see what's going on in a good deal of the film. I've tried to correct this a little.
INVASION OF THE JANITOR PEOPLE
This is the only one of our films with an actual girl in it. Tim Brown knew one and got her to appear. God we were a bunch of nerds! Note my small role as the scientist who comes up with a way to defeat the Janitor People.
VOYAGE TO THE OUTER SPACE TREK
My friend Dale Houston and I were the only ones available the day we did this one. So we each operated the camera when the other one was on screen. Note the amazing special effects influenced by the work of Douglas Trumball and John Dykstra. The control panel on the space ship is actually my effects board from my guitar and a Korg synthesizer.
DIMENTIA 13 "WE ARE"
This has nothing to do with the other films. It's my band Dimentia 13 on a public access cable show in Chicago in 1988 called The Friday Club. The song is from our debut album released by Midnight Records in 1985 or '86 ("our" is a misnomer since I played all instruments on that record). Note the dates all you other bands called Dimentia 13 and Dementia 13! (I once had an e-mail exchange with the leader of one of the other Dimentia 13's who told me Francis Ford Copola, director of the film Dementia 13, contacted him because he'd heard about his band. No, he'd heard about my band. We were the ones with 5 albums out, dude.) That shirt was made of polyester and felt awful to wear. That's my real hair, although I didn't usually tease it up like that.
Have fun watching!
