The Creep Behind the Camera (2014)

 

Director: Pete Schuermann

Screenplay: Pete Schuermann

Cast: Josh Phillips as Art Nelson; Jodi Lynn Thomas as Lois Wiseman; Bill LeVasseur as William Thourlby; Laurel Harris as Helen Whittlesey; Mark Lee as Jon Lackey; Chris Winters as Norman Boone / Barney; Jason Coviello as Scott; Katie Bevard as Shannon O'Neil / Brett; Glenn Thayer as Larry Burell / Narrator

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

 

 I know this is low budget, but you couldn't afford a door?

With documentaries on cult directors and cinema popular, this document on the life of A.J. Nelson, a.k.a. Vic Savage, is probably one fo the most idiosyncratic in terms of trying to document his life. With talking head interviews dispensed throughout in tiny chunks, the production took a different direction for the director notorious for one film, The Creeping Terror (1964), by recreating his life as a biopic at the same time. Thus, The Creeping Terror is repurposed as the ultimate burial of Nelson as much as a document over how this film got made. 

What is a Creeping Terror? The notorious monster film where, when you lose the costume, you acquire what is a carpet from outer space, and is permanently in public domain and on Mystery Science Theatre 3000. The problem, which director/writer Pete Schuermann's film has to wrangle around, is that Nelson's life is split between this farce of a film and a deeply abhorrent man who, depicted here, did horrible things away from the film, and both sides clash. This review, despite this initial tone, requires a trigger warning as a result. The problem immediately rears its head, in the director's cut, in how we have the talking heads (members of the production, and figures like Harry Knowles) lambast the film in a light humoured tone, contrasted by the depiction of Nelson (Josh Phillips), burning his first wife Lois' hand on a gas stove.

If we stay with the light hearted side, we get a fascinating attempt at fleshing out this production. Some figures like Knowles or the Medved brothers, creators of the Golden Turkey Awards, are included but the participants of the real production are more rewarding even if they are slim in their time onscreen. Allan Silliphant, the screenwriter who (in an animated sequence in 3D cel shade) envisioned his sci-fi space monster chewing Las Vegas showgirls in a line on-stage, is fixated on Nelson not setting the crash landing site at Lake Tahoe but a ditch of a river, a fixation which is funny for him returning to it over and over again. William Thourlby, one of the actors and the main investor, laments getting involved, the main figure for money that eventually salvaged what footage Nelson made (acquired from his garage in the recreation), and even had to hire an actor to add voice narration over to make sense of. A high school orchestra teacher got his shot at being a composer in this recreation, which would be awesome but with "Monster Gets Blown Up By A Grenade" as one composition with his student musicians itself a bizarre tangent to the film. The content in the recreation, if all true, is ridiculous.

An entire paragraph does deserve to be had for the titular terror and its creator Jon Lackey, whose creature is lovingly recreated here even if only a female associate and friend, sadly only talked to briefly, is our only real figure to discuss the late man. The original creature, as recreated here, is still a rubbery monster costume, requiring multiple students in the hot weather too boil inside it to move, but it is an imaginary figure, especially when you realise this version is creepily gynaecological in look, including the mouth entrance to gobble up victims and its tall, long "head". When Lackey informed Nelson the monster is absent until it was paid, is when the rug appeared....a bastardisation made on the sly. This film's entire structure is entirely because of a perceived lack of on-set and production archive materials, so there is logic to this absurdity being acted out. Whether with creative recounting or entirely accurate, such as Nelson trying to film a car moving when still clearly no with himself onscreen, it nonetheless works.

In terms of the accuracy, director Pete Schuermann deserves credit for trying. Originally behind projects like Hick Trek: The Moovie (1999), a Star Trek parody, the narrative's setting is pulled off with success. Trying to recreate the sixties on a low budget is insanely difficult and I have to admire Schuermann and those involved here, getting the costumes and vehicles as accurate as possible, helped especially as this is not sixties chic either, but lived-in post fifties as a setting. Being shot on digital does catch a viewer off-guard, but the illusion of the past shown through celluloid does muddy our view of the past and what history is. Besides, even Michael Mann showed this discrepancy with Public Enemy (2009), set in thirties but shot on digital too, and that was high budget. The Creep... to its credit can also be credited with having good performances too, helping considerably, Josh Phillips as Art Nelson compellingly evil as a figure whilst Jodi Lynn Thomas as Lois Wiseman does play the most sympathetic figure with a level of discomfort for her plight to feel for the figure.

The only issue with the farce of The Creeping Terror is both the lack of emphasis on talking heads, and that there are some fragments disconnected to everything which do stand out as bizarre but not stitched in enough. Nelson stalking Mamie Van Doren; that he apparently shot a hole in the hand of - Carl Switzer, who played Alfalfa in the Little Rascals, or that they shot on Spahn Ranch, meaning Charles Manson gets a cameo in the film with the hint his stolen vehicles were used.

The problems with the film though, the really difficult ones, are entirely its violently contrasting sides, entirely to do with trying to create a humorous biography about a man who was also horrifying, and finding the right balance. Both sides separately work, exceptionally well, but the problems are there in putting them together. There is a huge tonal problem between an Ed Wood farce and the domestic abuse content with Lois, which is intense. It is made more uncomfortable, though with care, as the real Lois Wiseman is also interviewed, an elderly woman who is explicit about the hell she went through with Nelson. It is uncomfortably a film stuck with two diametrically opposed side - that Nelson was making a car crash, but he also abused his first wife, who suffered in from a tyrannical religious mother beforehand already, a problem to have to tell the narrative of in its entirely, from a makeshift monster to Lois trying to slice her wrists on a fence, intercutting with the real Lois having to talk of this on camera, with both sides very emotionally different in content.

Confounded by the film skipping back and forth in time, the film even without this major subplot does (for the director's cut) toppled under a challenging tonal shift it cannot meld. In the same film, not long between each other, you have Nelson have a Creeping Terror religious freak-out, in a church with the Terror leering superimposed over a giant church organ and humour of him stealing the collection plate money...contrasted by the scene, whilst carefully done, that Nelson is explicitly making child pornography on the side for money, ultimately why he has to disappear and leaving Thourlby to collect back the film for release¹. When this production works, The Creep Behind the Camera succeeds, but never was there also a violently haphazard production which ultimately scuppers itself.

 

======

1) Also a CGI locust storm taking place at this period in the film, which never made sense.