Kerry Prior’s new film The Revenant follows Officer First Class Bart Gregory who is killed while on duty in the Middle East, but he doesn’t stay dead for long. When Bart’s body is returned to the U.S. he wakes up as a Revenant, aka the living-dead, and he craves human blood. With the help of his friend Joey Leubner the two set out to “exact vengeance upon the criminal element to protect the innocent,” while trying to keep Bart from decomposing.

The Revenant is a horror/dark-comedy set to release in the Fall of 2009. Director Kerry Prior took the time to chat about his new film and his long career with HYB’s Morgan Suszek.

rev⋅e⋅nant   [rev-uh-nuhnt]
–noun
1. a person who returns.
2. a person who returns as a spirit after death; ghost.

Horror Yearbook: Kerry, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Kerry Prior: I’m from Cleveland; I’m an Aries; my favorite color is purple no wait, blue; I don’t have any pets; right now my feet are cold, so I think I’ll put on some socks. I just directed a movie called THE REVENANT.

HYB: What’s your favorite scary movie (the ones you’ve worked on do count)?

KP: That’s a tough one. The easy answer would be to say that I don’t have a favorite, and offer a list of ten of my favorites, but that’s a copout, isn’t it? If I had to pick one, I guess it would have to be ROSEMARY’S BABY. No, wait, THE SHINING. I’ll have to think about it. If I had to recommend a movie that I’ve seen recently that would truly have you on the edge of your seat with terror, one that would disturb you for days after viewing it, then I would recommend IRREVERSIBLE, by Gaspar NoÈ with Monica Bellucci, but it’s arguable that that isn’t even a horror movie. But you did say “scary” movie. Oh, wait REFLECTIONS OF EVIL, by Damon Packard; now there’s a scary movie. It paints a picture of society as utterly horrifying; it leaves you feeling ill; it’s hilarious, and frightening and brilliant. And there’s this scene with a young Steven Spielberg . . . Damon Packard is a genius. I met him in an airport once; he was on the way to England to talk to some people about funding a movie or some such thing, so I introduced myself. When it came time to shoot THE REVENANT I called him; he was going to come to the set and do a cameo. We scheduled him in but on the day the 2nd AD couldn’t get a hold of him. He was a no show. No hard feelings. I still think he’s a genius. I didn’t answer your question, did I?

HYB: I’d say that was close enough. Kerry, when it comes to your FX work you’ve got quite the resume: A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: Dream Master, Phantasm II, Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead, Phantasm IV: Oblivion, The Lost Boys, Bubba Ho-Tep the list goes on. What, in your opinion, is the best thing you’ve done FX wise?

KP: I don’t know. I never really worked on that one thing where I’ve had both enough money and enough influence where I can say, that’s really representative of what I can create for this project. That’s something I wouldn’t change. I look back on my days at DreamQuest; that was a really fun time. I was working with people who were at the cutting edge of the industry on some terrific big budget projects NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, TOTAL RECALL, THE BLOB, THE ABYSS. I met Jim Cameron, Michael Jackson, Richard Edlund. And it was a time where the visual effects industry was exploding. DreamQuest, Boss Films, Apogee, and ILM dominated the industry and were all in competition. There were a lot of incredible, creative personalities doing amazing things. I’m best known for my work on smaller films where I had more influence, but less money. I think I created some good stuff for the money. But I look at that work now and think it’s crude and even silly. But technology is completely different now. You wouldn’t approach it the same way at all. We are doing gags on THE REVENANT in ways that we wouldn’ t even have thought of ten years ago. Why use a rubber severed (name your appendage) when you can comp in a real one digitally far cheaper and to better effect?

HYB: When it comes to directing you’re still getting your feet wet, if you will. The Revenant marks your second setting in the director’s chair, and forgive me for not being familiar with your first work Roadkill, but coming from an FX background did you find it difficult to cross-over?

KP: My sights have been set on directing since I was in film school so it didn’t seem like a transition at all. While I love effects work, it was always a way to make a living until I can get my directing career off the ground. I’ve written several screenplays, short fiction, some commercial copy it’s all story telling. I was nervous during pre-production; not sleeping, anxious; but as the shoot approached and everything fell into place, I relaxed, and by the time we turned over I was totally comfortable and at home on the set.

HYB: As a follow up question, did Roadkill ever get a wide release and, if so, where can I get my hands on a copy?

KP: ROADKILL was never released. The financier never finished funding the movie, and it was never completed. It was a long and painful struggle, and a story better told over a drink, or in your (read: my) therapist’s office. I still own the rights to the film, so maybe in the future I’ll scab it together and get it out there.

Is there any director in particular, or directors, that have really inspired you to take on the challenge that is directing?

KP: If you mean, are there directors who inspire me or inform my work, yes I love Polanski, Kubrick, Scorcese the usual lineup. Paul Verhoven is terrific. I think Michael Haneke is incredible; brilliant, intense, dark, and sometimes hilarious. If you mean, was there one particular person I know who encouraged me to direct it would probably be my old friend Gerald Hughs, who I met in Film School.

HYB: Independent films rely on support from those involved as well as the audience the film is geared towards. Compared to your directorial debut would you say The Revenant has earned more of a following?

KP: Well, ROADKILL had no following. I also directed another movie in the interim, which met a similar unfortunate end, and it did gain a bit of a following mostly on college campuses around LA. But already, on the Internet, THE REVENANT has gotten an incredible amount of attention. People write and say they can’t wait to see it; rumors are passed around about release dates and such; we’ve had several distributors approach us already without having seen the film. We have a leg ion of fans and nobody has even seen it yet.

HYB: Not only are you directing The Revenant but you’re stretching your writing wings as well. May I ask what inspired this black comedy of undead proportions?

KP: I always thought the vampire was a terrific creature, a great macabre monster. But the common vision of the vampire is largely a construct of Hollywood. It is a creature that slowly evolved over the last hundred years starting where Bram Stoker left off with every new movie, a new permutation. Now vampires can fly and have super powers, and they burst into flames when hit with sunlight, and explode into dust clouds when tagged with a wooden stake they have evolved into super heroes that drink blood. And of course, they are sexy. That started with Bram Stoker or arguably Polidoris Vampire. So, movie audiences want to relate to this sexy, all-powerful PVC wearing goth-emo superhero. But that means that the hero has to be sympathetic so the he can’t possibly drink human blood so it’s always a situation where the vampire has to abstain from drinking blood, or he is a vampire cross-breed who doesn’t need blood and has the superpowers and sexy rock-star costumes but doesn’t need blood some contrivance to make the vampire friendly and safe–likeable. It’s like when they made The Terminator into a little boy’s pet robot, forever emasculating one of cinema’s great monsters. Kinda gay.

But if you go back before Stoker and Polidori, there was a time in history when the general public was terrified of vampire plagues. In the early eighteenth century the Roman Catholic Church was so wound up about it that they hired a Benedictine monk, Dom Augustine Calmut, an intellectual who had written several famous treatises on the Old and New Testaments, to investigate and dispel rumors of a vampire plagues. In 1754 A Treatise on Vampires and Revenants was published, but rather than dissuade belief in vampires, it fanned the flames, because suddenly the Church was legitimizing vampires.

Those vampires or revenants I think there is a distinction–were creatures that were dead, but got up at night to harass folks. Eventually, they would call in the authorities and exhume the body and if it was uncorrupted i.e.: not rotting, then it was deemed a vampire and they would lop off its head, or any number of regional rituals including stakings and/or burnings, and that was the end of it. These creatures weren’t the glamorous raven-haired rockers of Hollywood; they were moldy corpses, tottering about, sucking blood, infecting folks. And there was little agreement on how they returned from death, or how to dispatch them.

That seemed like a good basis for a movie.

HYB: Directing, writing, producing, and editing, The Revenant is sure keeping you busy. Did you still find time to get down and dirty with the FX team?

KP: Hell, no. I was tempted to interfere with everyone on set at some point, but I’m sure they were happiest when I was bothering some other department. I had some strong opinions about how we should approach the different gags, (makeup effects) but we had folks who are way better FX artists than I ever was.

The visual FX are a different story; I’m basically acting as the visual FX supervisor, so I have a hand in all of that. But aside from shooting some plates and elements, and doing a couple of digital matte paintings, I have real artists putting together the VFX.

HYB: It looks like The Revenant isn’t short on acting talent around the set. Was there any actor/actress in particular that you enjoyed working with above the others?

KP: We have a terrific cast on this flick. There’s no way I can choose one person above any of the others. At one point or another each of the leads surprised me—exceeded my expectations. Jacy King was just solid. You watch a scene with the group and she’s just totally on point. In editing we’ll watch a cut of a scene and I’d say, what’d you think of that? and someone will say, “I don’t know. I was watching Jacy the whole time.” She was terrific.

We were shooting a scene with Louise, and she just nailed it. Blew us away. I was going to cover the scene, but we were breaking for lunch so we just watched the scene again, and said, “what are we going to cut that up with? So we blew off the rest of the coverage.

David is a terrific talent, obviously. He has a lot of potential. And I think he does his best work in THE REVENANT.

And then there’s Chris Wylde . . .

HYB: Is there any performance that we should look out for?

KP: Chris Wylde is a comedian he’s actually Zakk Wylde’s little brother; used to have his own show on comedy Central. He played “The Beast” in the Dell Taco commercials. So, we knew he was right for funny stuff. But his character takes a dark turn as the story goes on. And Chris totally brought it. He had this underlying anger; the cadence of his voice changed’ he was really great. He show-boats, of course, loves being center stage, but he was great to direct. If I’d say, “Chris, you gotta pull back here. You’re being funny with this,” and Joey would be believing it not making a joke out of it, the next take he’d nail it.

We were shooting a scene, and we’d rehearsed it, but the cameras rolled and he did something totally different, totally unexpected. But it was exactly right he was Joey, intuitively. And I thought, “Shit, he knows this character better than I do.” And I wrote it. Chris steals the show.

HYB: Alright, now I don’t think I’ll be too far off if I say pretty much everyone in the HYB fan base is a big fan of boobs and blood, will The Revenant satisfy our cravings?

KP: Does anything really satisfy our cravings? I will say that, in number, we have more nudity in THE REVENANT than most movies you’ll see. But that’s a misleading answer. The nudity is not portrayed in a typically prurient way it’s meant to be creepy and unsettling not sexy. But, taken out of context, maybe you’ll have some material. Especially if you’re a little unbalanced.

HYB: About how much blood would you say you’ve used throughout the making of this film?

KP: You mean fake blood, right? I wasnt personally involved in mixing up the blood on this one (although I’ve certainly mixed up my share). I’d be guessing. The undead in THE REVENANT have a darker, more corrupted looking blood than regular bleeding folks. So there were two mixtures. I think I saw at least a couple of five-gallon buckets twenty, twenty-five gallons maybe?

HYB: Now, The Revenant is a mixture of horror and dark comedy. In all honesty I can say that mixing those two genres can be a risky operation. I know you wrote it so you may be a little biased, but, in your honest opinion, do the horror and the comedy balance each other out in this offering?

KP: Yeah, I have no idea. I’ve been living with it too long. I hope so. My goal was to keep things true to the story. It’s easy to break the tone if you aren’t vigilant. And with this story especially there’s a delicate balance of tones. It’ll go from being ironic or funny to (hopefully) truly terrifying, or even heartbreaking, in the same scene. I stopped thinking of it as a horror movie–or a comedy—a long time ago. It’s definitely a black comedy.

HYB: As a final question I thought I’d give you a real thought provoker. If there was one thing you could do over or change about the production of The Revenant what would it be and why?

KP: I really can’t answer that. That’s what post is for fixing all the mistakes you made during production.

Kerry, it’s been a pleasure. I look forward to seeing the film and best of luck in the future.