Editorials
[Set Visit] A Trip to Gepetto’s Lair in ‘Cassadaga’!
Last October, Tim Anderson and I trekked over to Sanford, FL to visit the set of Anthony DiBlasi’s Cassadaga, which premieres this coming Saturday, October 22 at the Screamfest Horror Film Festival in CA. The film – which centers on a deaf girl who attempts to contact her late sister’s spirit during a seance but instead attracts the avenging ghost of a murdered woman – looks to have some fairly intense moments judging by what we saw during our trip.
The two days we were on set for, which also happened to be the final two days of principal photography, were filled with things we can’t really get too specific about – like what exactly is going on in Gepetto’s lair – but Tim did a really respectable job of giving you guys an idea of what you’re in for without completely ruining any third act plot points.
Read past the break for Tim’s set visit report and check back shortly for interviews with the film’s producers, Scott Poiley and Bruce Wood, as well Anthony DiBlasi.
Just off the main drag in downtown Sanford, Florida–a picturesque turn of the century city founded on the shores of Lake Monroe–there is an old brick warehouse that serves a film production studio. From the outside it resembles any old industrial building that has been sitting around for the better part of a hundred years. A few cars are parked off to the side, the asphalt’s cracked with weeds–the kind of thing Florida is know for. Old streets built on swampland, just a little disuse away from the elements creeping in, taking back what was once theirs.
From the main entrance, the non-descript building doesn’t appear to be the scene of anything specifically special. But around back the unmistakable bustle of a motion picture film set is buzzing at full tilt. Wardrobe, Make-up, Grip Trucks and Craft Service are all situated in what on any given Sunday is probably an empty parking lot that would be just about big enough to park a few dozen cars, or maybe play a game of soccer with some street kids. But today, and for the next several weeks this is ground zero for a new horror film–A film based on the spiritualist community of Cassadaga which lies just 31 miles up the interstate.
Cassadaga was founded in 1894 by a medium who claims he was sent there after a vision told him to travel to Florida from Iowa. A hundred and seventeen years later Cassadaga is recognized as a U.S. Historic District and better still as “The Psychic Capital Of The World”. It’s not a place to suffer fools and they take their spirituality very seriously in this little hamlet with only about 55 homes on 57 acres. In Cassadaga, the people keep to themselves a bit, and locals know that despite obvious appearances the town is really not about ghosts and goblins. Much of this explains why there have never been horror movies made about this legendary town–even though it has shown up in popular books and made mention on TV shows such as The Glades.
But this Cassadaga has only a tenuous connection with the real place. This films exists in a very fictionalized version of the small town. One where a young woman with a tragic past, hopes to start fresh. One where the ghosts of the past are still present and a serial killer is stalking his prey.
And, it’s the killer (known only as ‘Gepetto’) whose lair inhibits the set we are visiting today.
Inside the warehouse the production team has crafted a two-story torture chamber–where the killer (because all horror moves need an antagonist) has set up shop. Literally shop. The room, all dingy and painted a two-tone of yellowed/white and green, is a veritable workshop of fear, with every manner of rusty tool needed to extract bloody terror. Severed doll heads hang from the walls and in the center of the room, an enormous marionette’s control bar hangs ominously over the set–foreshadowing the unspeakable misery that I’m sure will be befall some nubile young starlet in only a matter of hours.
As the crew runs in and out of the set prepping for the next shot, I’m struck by the obvious associations between a puppeteer, pulling strings to make entertainment and the role that a horror movie director plays in toying with audience expectations, moving this piece here to make a reaction occur over there. That’s when my eyes make their way over to one of the masterminds behind this production, Director Anthony DiBlasi.
DiBlasi, who made his directorial debut with the Clive Barker adaptation Dread which was picked up by Lionsgate for their After Dark Horrorfest is no neophyte genre filmmaker. He started his career as Barker’s assistant before graduating to an Executive Producer position on films like Midnight Meat Train and Books of Blood. But this time, instead of working from source material that’s he’s intimately familiar with, DiBlasi finds himself behind the lens of an original screenplay by a pair of newcomers Writer/Producers Scott Poiley and Bruce Wood.
This trio have assembled a cast lead by Kelen Coleman (Children of the Corn: Genesis), Kevin Alejandro (True Blood) and Oscar winner Louise Fletcher (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest). With an Effects/Make-up team lead by Lee Grimes (Pirates of the Caribbean, Zombieland, Sorority Row) fans looking for some gruesome gore gags and–from what I saw–one hell of a set piece (see the poster art) are in for a real treat.
Having spent the final two days of Principal Photography on set with fellow writer David Harley, I was struck by how intense portions of this film are and by how committed the crew and cast (specifically Coleman who was put through the emotional wringer, yet still spent her downtime, happily chatting about what a great time she was having, and personally lamenting that she hadn’t made it to Universal Studio’s Orlando to visit The Wizarding World of Harry Potter) were in turning out a film that satisfied not only genre fans looking for horror, but suspense fans and mystery fans looking for a solid story arc.
David and I sat down with the filmmakers–who took time out from getting the final shots of their feature in the can–to talk to us about where the story came from, and how they found themselves on the set of their first feature (for Poiley and Wood) and for DiBlasi, how he founds himself 3,000 miles from home, in the 100 degree Florida heat, making a movie about a girl, a ghost, and a serial killer that’s not quite all there (you’ll see what I mean)…
Editorials
Not Another ‘Scary Movie’: Revisiting Forgotten Parody ‘Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th’
After Scream (1996) made a killing at the box office, as well as won over critics and audiences, a lot of folks in the movie biz thought they could do the same thing (and yield similar results). That thing, of course, being a slasher. Most of these opportunists wound up being pretty straightforward; they were low on humor or commentary. Yet others, like Scary Movie (2000), saw the potential for spoofing Scream, and acted on that impulse with both haste and excitement.
A few months after the Wayans’ comedy first hit theaters, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th landed on the USA Network, as part of the channel’s “Shriek Week” programming. That straight-to-cable (then home video) destination is possibly why many people still don’t know about this one. Or they simply chose to forget. Whatever the reason, only one of these two horror parodies came out on top—and it’s certainly not the movie where Coolio channeled Prince, and Tom Arnold saved the day.
Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th previously went by the name of I Know What You Screamed Last Semester. That Trimark acquisition then settled on a wordier title, just so it could avoid the litigious wrath of Miramax Films. Folks may or may not remember that Columbia Pictures was sued over the “implied connection” between I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and Scream. So, yeah, there was no way that this competing Scream parody wasn’t going to be kept on a tight rein.
A Heavy Reliance on Late ’90s TV References
Simon Rex, Julie Benz, Majandra Delfino, Harley Cross, Danny Strong, Tom Arnold and Tiffani-Amber Thiesen in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th.
Naturally, there would be similarities between Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th and Scary Movie—their scripts are built on the backs of the same two movies. It goes without saying that the other big slasher of the 1990s, I Know What You Did Last Summer, was as much of a target as Scream. However,the film pads itself with more TV references than Scary Movie did.
Half the cast coming off of (and in some cases, returning to) a WB show could be a reason why. Dawson’s Creek is particularly zeroed in on, based on how there’s a central character named “Dawson Deery“, and how the teen drama’s teacher-student affair plotline is satirized to the nth degree. As if there weren’t enough nods to television, Baywatch, VH1’s Pop Up Video, and even those cheesy Mentos commercials all serve as joke prompts.
Shriek director John Blanchard and writers Sue Bailey and Joe Nelms all hailed from television, so it’s understandable that they would stick close to home. The movie’s humor in general makes more sense, in light of learning that Blanchard worked on SCTV, Kids in the Hall, and MADtv. The writers, on the other hand, were each fairly green, with Bailey being the most experienced of the two; she wrote and produced the game show BattleBots. Nevertheless, they, plus Blanchard, churned out a passable, joke-a-minute movie. The whole thing is staggeringly of its time, but no one here was aiming for longevity.
Having seen enough of these kinds of movies, we know to expect jokes of the low-hanging fruit variety. That’s the parody’s whole prime directive. From the characters having names like “Screw Frombehind” and “Doughy Primesuspect”, to stereotyping that feels taboo nowadays, this is a movie from a different era of comedy. Its coarse, corny, and unapologetic sense of humor won’t sit well with everyone in these more enlightened times. In which case, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th can be treated as a time capsule.
Does Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th Humor Still Hold Up Today?
“You may already be a victim”—Someone receives a most peculiar threatening piece of mail in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th.
Although Shriek doesn’t live up to its own claims of being so funny that you’ll die of laughter, its bawdier parts could still lead to some nervous laughter. For instance, after this movie’s parallel to Drew Barrymore’s Scream character is done in—not by the killer but by a bug zapper—the movie throws a newspaper next to the victim’s fresh corpse. The headline? “Popular slut killed! Football team mourns”.
We then move on to the wacky and inappropriate goings-on at Bulimia Falls High School, home of the Hurlers. At this nexus of constant absurdity, indecency, and surrealism, students are seen fornicating on the lawn, cheerleading squad applicants are advised to be comfortable with partial nudity, and terrorists openly prepare for an anthrax attack. It can be a tad jarring to watch, especially if you didn’t grow up witnessing this style of comedy firsthand. Hell, even if you did, you may still have a “what the hell were they thinking?” reaction.
It’s not just the aggressively edgy humor here that can make you chuckle—the slapstick, the sight gags, and the ribaldry all have a decent chance of landing. The movie’s own villain, whose hockey mask was instantly transformed into a crudely Ghostface-esque one after coming in contact with an open flame, commits more cheap laughs than kills. His and his victims’ chase sequences, most of which are cartoonish in nature, left this writer grinning. The Scooby-Doo fan in me also totally ate up that clever unmasking joke.
Final Thoughts on This Forgotten Horror Parody
Shriek If You Know What Did Last Friday the 13th
Now, the jury is still out on whether these comedies are to blame for the death of the first slasher revival. There is more to consider than some parodies. At the very least, the likes of Scary Movie didn’t exactly encourage big studios to put their money on a trend that was being derided to death (and not as profitable as the spoofs). These sorts of movies also felt unnecessary at the time, given how their principal inspiration is already a deconstruction of the genre. But like anything else that quickly becomes popular, mockery is unavoidable.
Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th is indeed a movie nobody asked for, much less needed. As a sample of pre-millennium humor and cultural attitudes, it’s not always precise. But as I’ve laid out, your mileage may vary. Horror parodies typically don’t have the best track record, so managing one’s own expectations here is recommended.
Upon rewatching, I for one laughed a bit more than I did back then. Only this time, I responded to the jokes that my younger self didn’t notice or find all that amusing. So it just goes to show that the movies don’t change—we do.
Harley Cross and Majandra Delfino must unmask the killer a number of times in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th before learning their true identity.
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