Exclusive Interview : Dante Tomaselli talks Film Making

Horror-movies.ca is a great horror site -- very happy to speak with you.

I plan to shoot The Ocean sometime between Nov 2005 and March 2006. That's when the waves are the biggest in Rincon Puerto Rico. The screenplay is wild, blood-soaked, hallucinogenic, very ambitious. I'll basically be making a big budget disaster film, with a little over a million. It'll be a challenge, for sure, but I'm up for it and, you know, I really have no choice...The Ocean is screaming out to me...to be made -- just like my other movies. The tagline...A New Wave in Terror...  

Satan's Playground was festering in my mind for a long time. Being from New Jersey, I've always been really creeped-out by the Pine Barrens area and the legend of the Jersey Devil. I thought it would make a very spooky horror film. The idea of a demon lurking in the woods... and a vacationing family lost.     

I made Satan's Playground specifically for horror fans, so that makes me feel very good. More than any of my movies, Satan's Playground is for lovers of retro horror cinema. I want it to be a treat. I want the color-saturated visuals to pop and seep into your imagination. I want the audience to have fun.  

Sure. These actors excite and inspire me. I'd rather work with someone who really pushes my buttons...I need to feel stimulated. I have a deep passion for horror films from the 60s, 70s and 80s. 

 

Felissa Rose was startling, totally one-of-a-kind as Angela in Sleepaway Camp. I saw the film when I was 14 in 1984. I'm not really a big fan of the movie itself. I am a fan of her performance in it. What a pleasure to know her all these years later. It's exhilarating to see how Felissa completely loses herself and becomes the character. She's fearless. She magically transforms. That's what it's all about!   

Well, I haven't worked with Judith O'Dea yet. That's coming up. She's going to have a starring role in The Ocean. I'd like to work with Jessica Harper...from Suspiria. That would be a starring role too. Jessica and I are in touch, in fact, and she's waiting for the screenplay.

 

Ellen Sandweiss from The Evil Dead was a total joy to work with on SATAN'S PLAYGROUND. Terrific, classy actress. We are good friends now and will work together on lots of other movies. Edwin Neal was great. We got along nicely and he played his role to the hilt! There are a lot of horror actors I plan to work with. You'll see.   

I love Communion (aka Alice, Sweet Alice) and have watched it probably over a million times so there's no doubt I'm influenced by it. Plus there's something in the blood, something in the family genes. It's a weird, paterson new jersey, italian-american catholic thing.

 

But overall, I'd say I'm really influenced by the nightmares I had growing up. Bad dreams that seemed to never end...The images and sounds are still etched in my mind. They're swirling and need to come out...  

Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now. Totally hypnotic, emotionally charged experience. I love early Carpenter like Halloween and The Fog. Saw both films when I was 9 and 10. Early Cronenberg, The Brood. The Premonition - what a scary offbeat gem. Let's see.

 

What else? Let's Scare Jessica to Death is one of my favorites. I'm in love with that movie because it's ambiguous and genuinely scary at the same time. Early Romero like Night of the Living Dead, Martin, Season of the Witch...Of course The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Evil Dead, The Exorcist, Rosemary's Baby, The Omen, The Shining, Tourist Trap, Carrie, Coffin Joe films....Dario Argento's Suspiria...I enjoy movies that depict a bona-fide supernatural experience. 

The House with Laughing Windows. It's the only movie that has given me nightmares as an adult.  

I am always mixing sounds; it's an addiction. I have so many different individual sounds floating around in my mind it would drive a normal person mad.

 

This all goes back to when I was three years-old and I'd instinctively play eerie music on the electronic organ. I'd sit there for hours, fantasizing...I definitely need to compose the scores to my films. I like to have the bulk of the music done before the movie is even shot. That way, when I'm on set, I can slip into a trance and feel inspired...   

Sure. It's painful starting out and trying to get a feature made. It's nightmarish -- in the worst way possible. But I had to go through it. All the hustling and torture. I had no other choice. In life, it's all I ever wanted to do -- and I'd be locked in an insane asylum if I couldn't do what needs to be done.  

All I knew is that somehow, someway I had to create trancelike horror movies...I'd walk on broken glass for it.   

Well, I wasn't really through with Desecration. Horror was a continuation. In Desecration, the lead character, Bobby, was traumatized by his mother's death...and life.

 

His mother abused him and wanted him to remain in a hell-like state. As a result, psychological or supernatural, the boy became trapped in a world of everlasting pain. With Horror, I wanted to show what he would be like after all of that. The evolution of someone like that. As you can see, in Horror, Bobby is renamed Luck - and he's a drug-deranged, delusional psychotic. Both films are paranoid mind trips. They're loops.        

 My nightmares. Definitely. Or I just reach back into some emotional darkness I experienced growing up. I'll tap into that, harness it. In all my films, so far, adults are monsters and children have no voice. Sometimes children are literally mute. My films always focus on women and children. Men are on the outskirts...or they're just plain evil.

A very talented filmmaker, Christopher Garetano, who directed the short INSIDE (featured on Fango's Blood Drive DVD), and recently completed HORROR BUSINESS, will direct a bio film on me. It will be his film. I'll just supply material.

 

I'm not producing it. It's his baby. We cemented the project this morning. THE HORROR OF DANTE TOMASELLI. Christopher said it'll include clips from my early films and revealing interview footage with cast and crew members.