Body Chemistry 2: The Voice of a Stranger (Adam Simon #2)

Conducted by Giallo Julian

(Modified for readability)

Welcome back! Once again, I see curiosity got the better of you. I’m glad, because this time we’re talking about BODY CHEMISTRY 2: THE VOICE OF A STRANGER with the director himself, ADAM SIMON! Enjoy!

“Pain defines pleasure,” preaches Dr. Claire Archer, the talk-radio sex therapist who captivates listeners each night with her popular call-in show. Seeking her advice is Dan Pearson, an ex-LA cop whose abuse as a child has left him with a violent nature — an insatiable appetite for rough sex. Fearing his girlfriend, Brenda, will leave him if he doesn’t get help, Dan accepts Claire’s offer to treat him in person. But her prescription of dark, dangerous sex spirals sadistically out of control, pitting doctor and patient in the ultimate sexual powerplay that will either cure Dan — or destroy him!”

Interview:

Giallo Julian: “Alright! Round two! This time, we’re talking about Body Chemistry 2: The Voice of a Stranger.

“And I found the connection to Carnosaur! I want to start off right now… I watched Body Chemistry 2 six times over the past six months. I just watched it thirty minutes ago to keep it fresh in my mind right now. There’s a point… where Morton Downey Jr.’s character is talking to someone named Gene on the phone. He’s like, “Hey Gene, what’s up?”

Adam Simon: “He’s always talking to Gene! Every time you see Mort in that movie and he’s on the phone, it’s always Gene. He’s always talking to Gene.”

GJ: “Yeah! I’m sure a lot of that’s just improv, because he’s a radio host.”

AS: “We’ll talk about that. Morton did a lot of really fun improv in that, yeah.”

GJ: “But at a point in Carnosaur, a doctor — Raven, I believe his name is, Sterling Raven [Ed Williams] — he gets up and goes to the phone, and calls someone in the state [government], and he’s like, “Hey Gene, do you mind if–” And I’m like, Ah! There it is! That one connection!”

AS: “It’s Gene!”

GJ: “It’s Gene!”

AS: “It is. He’s the connection between all of them. It’s true.”

GJ: “[laughs] Yeah, it’s all making sense. I got my board up [on the wall] with all my lines going everywhere. [pantomimes connecting lines on board]”

AS: “I did also rewatch [the film] — I have the DVD somewhere of Body Chemistry 2: The Voice of a Stranger, but I couldn’t find it. And then last night, I was like, You know what? I really should [watch it] — I mean, I remember it well. I remember lots of the experience making it…  but I hadn’t seen it in a couple of decades, at least… So I looked around to find it, and found it on YouTube. And there’s four or five folks who’ve put the whole film on there.”

“But the one I clicked on was really weird. Like, it got to this certain point — the first troublesome scene between him [“Dan”; Gregory Harrison] and Claire [Lisa Pescia] — and then it did this weird thing with it. Kind of, like, montaged it, and then it missed a bunch of scenes. And then I’m like, Wait, that’s not how the film went! But I went ahead and watched it to the end, and realized that was not it [the actual film]. And then fortunately I found there were a couple of other people — God knows WHO or WHY people are posting it there, but God bless you. I’m glad it’s living out there.”

GJ: “It’s getting out there! I mean, it’s on Tubi as well, so I’m not surprised it’s on YouTube. Pretty much anything that’s put on YouTube is put on Tubi.”

AS: “Yeah, and I noticed it was on Tubi, but I couldn’t connect to that. But it was actually… a bittersweet, but sweet, reviewing of it. So I’m prepared, too.” 

GJ: “Okay!”

AS: “But we’ll come back to the significance of the fact that you’ve watch it six times, because it was this film that a very beloved uncle of mine — Myron Simon, who was a great English professor — and he came to the first screening of it, you know, with its brief theatrical [run]. And afterwards, he tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Kid, thing is you make movies that need to be seen twice, but that most people would rather not see once.”

“And he was talking about Body Chemistry 2, because it’s true. It’s very convoluted, and back then, I’m like, Yeah, but that’s what I like!

“So, you’ve seen it six times. You get it all.”

GJ: “Oh yeah! I know the ins and outs by now. I know every scene in my head, I could probably recite it at this point.

“But you know what? You’re sitting there like, “This is me! This is me expressing myself! If everyone doesn’t want to watch it more than once, that’s on them. Not me. I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing.”

AS: “I know, I’m with you. Whether you like it or not, there’s certainly subtleties in it. It’s purposely pretty — not convoluted, but elusive. But anyway, lots that we can discuss.”

GJ: “Oh yeah, let’s go ahead and get to the first [question]. 

“Alright, first let’s get some background on this. Any background, honestly. Compared to Brain Dead and Carnosaur, there’s zilch about this film on the internet. So I’m really excited to hear all this!

“How did you get involved with this feature? I know you were offered to direct the first one, but declined.”

AS: “Well, it was more than that. Its origins — the whole Body Chemistry franchise origins… It was while I was doing Brain Dead — and as we talked about last time, Roger [Corman] lured me from going back to finish my film school degree. After I got ignominiously — ignominiously? — whatever that word would be.”

GJ: “The fancy word.”

AS: “After the [Sylvester] Stallone movie, Lock Up… I was supposed to do three pictures for him [Corman]. So while I was doing Brain Dead… he was already talking to me a lot about, “What do we want to do next? What would be the next one?”

“I was already lucky and in a privileged position there, in the sense that I hadn’t come up through the system as we talked about. I came straight into rewriting and directing Brain Dead. And at the time, I was reading a book that my dad — who does figure into this. I mean, besides his cameo, as we discussed, as the lobotomist in Brain Dead. My dad was a sociologist, and a social theorist, and a psycho-social theorist — I’d guess you’d say — who had spent many years… at the Kinsey Institute for the study of human sexuality, which was a big thing in the mid-20th century. Of really, directly addressing sex, the sexual psyche. And, in fact, there’s a line that our evil shrink — Dr. Claire Archer — has on air in the movie, that’s a direct and, at the time — like, way back now, in the 60s — a famous quote from my dad, William Simon… She puts it a little differently, but she basically quotes him without naming him… “The main sex organ lies not between the legs, but between the ears…”  And that was for his insight, and what he was writing about then.

“He had given me this book — or else I found it sitting at his house when I was visiting him in Texas, where he lived at the time — that was called Overexposed, and it was a really fascinating book… about this clinic in France that was dealing with sex offenders, and how it was treating them… When you read it, if you’re a movie fan, you couldn't help but immediately recognize, like, Oh my god! This is A Clockwork Orange come to life! Where they were taking these [people] who had sexual issues, and loading them with the imagery — literally showing them the imagery that was in their sexual fantasies — in order to try to identify what’s the exact moment of arousal, to then try to overwhelm and shift that to cure them, or whatever.

“So I read this book, and… on one of the weekends we weren’t shooting, he [Corman] wanted to talk about what the next film would be. And this was… right at the beginning of what would become the larger cycle both of… neo-noirs and erotic thrillers, as they were called, right? And I told him about this book. I said I didn’t think we needed the rights, but I would be inspired to do a thriller based on this idea of sex therapy involved with the mental imagery that the patient had. He got excited about that, in part because — One of the things he really loved in Brain Dead, rightfully so, was the incredible sets that the brilliant Catherine Hardwick had designed, and we built for that movie. He was assuming that those sets would remain standing, and that we would get to keep using them. And I did not mean to disabuse him of that, even though as we discussed last time, I had promised Catherine that I would make sure that those sets did not remain standing.

“So, the first Body Chemistry, in Roger’s mind, was going to be my next film, and was going to be shot on the same lab sets that we had built for Brain Dead, and we would’ve gone right to it… I forget which of his in-house writers, at a certain point, had started on it. Probably he hadn’t because I was then going to write it, inspired by that book I was reading. Then the whole kerfuffle happened where the sets got “accidentally” destroyed. And when he got over that, he’s like, “Okay, but still, you’re going to do Body Chemistry, right?” That’s the title he had — I think, actually, I came up with that title based on the book.”

GJ: “Great title!”

AS: “It was a good title, and it fit into the most happening. But right around that time — this does… hook into what became Body Chemistry 2 — one of the people who saw Brain Dead and really loved it was John Landis, who I have never met before then… He invited me to come meet him in his offices at the time at Universal [Pictures]. And he is just a wonderful guy, and a great mentor, and a supporter of young directors and young writers. He totally got into Brain Dead, recognized the Sam Fuller aspects, and we just geeked out on all kinds of stuff. And he invited me to collaborate with him… He said he was good friends with Bruce — whatever-his-name is… the star of Willard.

GJ: “Oh! Davidson?”

AS: “Yeah! Bruce Davidson, exactly. [Landis said] “Yeah, Bruce and I want to do… a revival of Willard. What happened to his character and all that.” This was decades after Ben, the supposed sequel they’ve done. So he and Bruce and I got together, and we came up with this whole idea for it, and I wrote this pitch. Particularly this really cool opening scene that would be the heart of the pitch. John was a great pitcher, and he would perform it in the room… The short of it, we spent months — Back it up [to the Body Chemistry discussion with Corman], I then said to Roger, “Look, Body Chemistry is cool. No, actually I’ve got this chance to go with John and Bruce, and we’re going to make Willard, and we’re going to do it for Universal or Warner Bros. [Pictures]. We’re going to be at a bigger scale, John’s going to direct and I’m going to write it, or maybe John will executive produce and I’ll direct it. We’ll see as we get closer to it, depending on how much money they get from the studio.”

“If it was a smaller budget one, I would direct it. If they were willing to put up what would have been a “John-scaled budget,” he was going to do it. And Roger was like, “Okay, fine, I get it. You’ll do it. But remember, you still owe me.”

“Roger’s a great one for collecting chits. As we’ll talk about with Carnosaur — the Diane Ladd chit that he was able to call in… That was a chit he’d kept in his pocket for, like, thirty or forty years, waiting for the moment. So his figure was, “Well, if it doesn’t work out, you’ll come back. You’ll make some more movies for me. And if it does work out, you’ll owe me, and I’ll get my pound of flesh one way or the other.”

GJ: “He’s like, “I want to get something from you, one way or another. Your chits are right here next to George Kennedy’s. You’ll be back!”

AS: “[laughing] Exactly! The permanent George Kennedy chit. So, whatever, long story short, we spent a long time trying to make [the Willard revival], and then Universal was going to do it. And then there became a huge kerfuffle over who actually owned the rights to the original, in part because — I wasn’t even aware at the time — that Willard’s based on a novel. And a really interesting novel, in retrospect, called Ratman’s Notebooks.”

GJ: “I had no idea either!”

AS: “Someone should reprint that, like Valancourt, or one of those people who reprint old horror novels. [Giallo’s Note: They were a step ahead of us.] It was actually a pretty literary, but horror, novel from the 50s or 60s.

“So it turned out that… the original was based on this book. They didn’t really have the rights, because they didn’t have the rights to the books. Some other producer owned the books, and he’s like, “No, I’m going to do what I’m going to do.”

“Short version being that [the Willard revival] did not get off the ground. Instead — many, many, many, years later — whoever owned those rights did… make a [remake], a sort of interesting one. Maybe later in the 90s.”

GJ: “That’s the remake with Crispin Glover, right?”

AS: With Crispin Glover, exactly. Yeah, it was really interesting in that it did go back more to the novel, which was not what we were going to do. But anyway… Roger [Corman] went ahead, also with my blessing, and did whatever he did with the first Body Chemistry. Which was quite successful for them, and with Lisa Pescia, who’s a great femme fatale.”

GJ: “Oh, for sure!”

AS: “And after, like, whatever it was — six months or eight months of me and John working together… and then [the Willard revival] falling apart — I got a call from Roger saying, “Are you working?” I’m like, “No, I’m not working.” [He said] “Fine. You’re going to come back and do something else?” I’m like, “Yeah, okay.” He said, “How about Body Chemistry 2?”

“And at that point, I hadn’t seen the first one, but I knew he had made it. And it had been based on… the original concept that we had talked about with the sex clinic and all. He had an initial script for [Body Chemistry 2]  by… Jackson [Jack Canson as “Jackson Barr”], who I met a couple times in there, but I don’t really remember the guy… I read it and was like, Okay, fine, I can do something with this.

“So yeah, its origins lay with that, and the first one had been — it was part of, I think, his MGM [Metro-Goldwyn -Mayer Pictures] deal. I don’t know, but whatever it was, it was — along with Brain Dead — one of the more successful films he made in that period. And as we joked last time, it did lead me to one of the Simon rules for young filmmakers — “Be careful what you turn down, or you may be doomed to direct the sequel.”

GJ: “I’m going to bring that up!”

AS: “Now, the complicating element was that there were cool things in the script, so it had shifted into this realm of the — You got to remember, this was the beginnings of an era of a lot of weird shit on the radio, like early Rush Limbaugh, Morton Downey Jr.’s earlier stuff before he moved to TV. And the idea of doing something interesting with the radio — which is fun — but I knew I would want to do stuff with the script… At that point, because of other work I’ve been doing in the meantime, I had gotten into the Writer’s Guild. It was okay for me to keep directing for Roger, I wasn’t in the Director’s Guild. Roger was not a signatory to the [Writer’s] Guild. So, theoretically, I couldn’t write it, or if I did write it or rewrite it, I couldn’t take any credit for it.

“So there was a house pseudonym at Concord[-New Horizons] — I don’t even know all the writers who many have written under the name Christopher Wooden… [Corman] said, “It’s fine. Do what you want to it, and I’ll pay you. We’ll do that separately, I’ll add that to your directing fee.”

“I hope I won’t be retroactively kicked out of the Guild or lose my pension, knowing that I did basically do a pretty extensive — I mean, I kept a lot of what Jackson had, but in watching it last night, I could recognize a lot of the stuff that both — a lot of the stuff we had improved, but also a lot of the new scenes, and especially a lot of the dialogue that I’d rewritten.

“And that’s why the credits for that — the writing credits are by [Jackson Barr] “and” — not “ampersand,” but “AND” — meaning rewritten by Christopher Wooden. Which, in this case, Christopher Wooden was me.”

GJ: “I’m not surprised he has a house pseudonym for just any writer to be like, “Hey, just throw this on there so we can get this done! Less people, the better. If we can get the director to write it, too, then perfect!”

AS: “Yeah, and in particular it was, for better or worse, a way of him not dealing with the Writer’s Guild. I mean, it may even go back to… the really brilliant writers that he worked with in the New World [Pictures]-era. Like John Sayles — such a great writer and such a great director, and his Corman films… were always the ones that really inspired me a lot. Like what he did with Joe Dante and Piranha, and some of the other ones that he did.

“Sayles, I’m sure, moved pretty quickly to writing bigger movies, but was still — like a lot of us — keeping one foot in the Corman camp, and I’m sure writing under another name. Possibly Christopher Wooden.”

GJ: “It’s a nice, little side-gig to have… while you’re getting your other stuff going. That makes perfect sense.”

AS: “So… I always like to turn the dial up to ten, you know, on the neo-noir aspects of it, and the erotic thriller. We’ll come back later to the ongoing battle I had then with Roger in the making of the film, about there not being enough sex. And other than Carnosaur, as far as he was concerned, was the moment he was happiest with me — We’ll tell that story later… how I solved the problem of pleasing him and adding a bunch more nudity and sex than was in my finished cut, without forcing my actors to come back and do the sex they didn’t do. But we’ll come back to that.”

GJ: “Yeah, we’re going to get to that in a minute. I know exactly what you’re talking about!

“I was going to ask… Does the sentiment “direct the first one, or be doomed to direct the sequel” still hold weight? Do you feel like it’s still true to this day?”

AS: “No, it’s a lot different… world in so many different ways. And that’s probably more true for low-budget stuff than it is for bigger movies, though… It’s not unheard of, you know. It is always funny that there’s a whole alternate world history — I know Quentin Tarantino is obsessed a bit with this as I am… when you see a final [version of a] movie and it’s got credits… It hides beneath it a whole history of who worked on it and then didn’t end up making it. Or the many, many writers who may have done different passes or versions — pieces of their work may remain in the film. And it goes with directors, too, and there’s lots of films that were initially set up with one director.

“The one I know that obsesses Quentin — and he writes about it really well in Cinema Speculation — is Taxi Driver, where there was a long moment when it seemed that was not going to be the breakout — in many ways — [Martin] Scorsese movie that it was, but was going to be a [Brian] De Palma movie.

“Because De Palma — and he is a great chapter. In fact, I think it’s actually the chapter in Cinema Speculation that gives the book its title. Where Quentin just goes off imagining what would De Palma’s version of that movie [have] been like, and how it would have been different from Scorsese’s. And he’s right, that would have been [different]... Yet, they both would have gone from the same Paul Schrader script, and they were in the same New York circle, and they had the same — They were kind of rising up into the same positions there, and it’s a fairly late moment at which it becomes a Scorsese movie instead, and a brilliant one. Quentin can’t care enough.

“So, who knows? Do I think that rule still holds? Probably not. I don’t think any of the rules hold anymore. Everything is so different.”

GJ: “We’ll see! We’ll see what the indie scene has to say.”

AS: “These days, the difference also is if you make those smaller movies, they’re more your signature. I think a lot of the really smart people making horror movies or smaller movies, they’re — Some definitely don’t want to be doing — I mean, the more art side of the horror biz, the Ari Asters, or Jordan Peele, or whoever — they’re not going to make Hereditary 2 or Get Out 2. They’re going to make something else really astonishing.

“But there’s also some really good [sequels] — but sequels are very built into — especially of horror — but traditionally, they were built into — it’s another aspect in which we’re in this weird world where big A-movies do what smaller B-movies used to do. The whole idea of there being multiple sequels — I mean, other than The Godfather Part II — that was not something that was traditionally, back in the 70s and 80s, done so much. It was the thing that would be done for — You’d get a whole bunch of movies of The Thin Man, or The Falcon, or whatever. Horror movies continued that tradition with Friday the 13th, Halloween, all of the Texas Chainsaw [Massacre Movies], all those that would go on like that.

“And that tradition continues. I mean, look at Terrifier — the original one, then Terrifier 2, then Terrifier 3. Or lots of other good examples… Greg McLean’s great Australian horror movie, Wolf Creek, where he himself did the second Wolf Creek. You know, where the directors themselves are going to do more with it. 

“So, I think it’s different now in terms of how those films function. But also, the whole idea of sequels got so absorbed into the tentpole — Marvel Universe, Star Trek, Star Wars, whatever — now that whole sequelization is just as much, if not more so, an aspect of big budget movies.”

GJ: “We can thank blockbusters for that, like Jaws and Star Wars. They’re the ones that really started doing sequels at big budgets. You said before that was [started by], like, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Revenge of the Creature, smaller-budgeted horror movies.”

AS: “Exactly! That’s right. Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, Second Cousin Once Removed to Frankenstein — That’s how those once worked. And I remember — and he [Corman] said it to many people, including me. Roger was really canny on that, and was really aware that that generation — a lot whom he helped come into the world, like Spielberg, and Lucas, and those guys — Roger used to always say the genius of those guys was that they did what we had been doing, but did it on a big scale. That they were the first ones to say, “Hey… instead of the big-budget movie having to be a big, serious, Academy Award-type movie, the big budget movies could be doing the same thing [that] a Corman movie or Universal movie could do.” Even though they did win Academy Awards [with those movies]... whether it was Jaws, or Indiana Jones, or, obviously, Star Wars. And then Roger, of course, had no shame about doing his knockoffs of those.”

GJ: “Hey, that’s his bread-and-butter right there!”

AS: “There’s Jaws, here’s Piranha! There’s Star Wars, here’s Battle Beyond the Stars!”

GJ: “There’s Alien, here’s fifteen other movies directly based on it!”

AS: “[laughs] Exactly!”

GJ: “He loved Alien!”

AS: “He did. He never got tired of trying to do another version of Alien.”

GJ: “You know what? God bless him for it! I love every one of them. I have a couple on Blu Ray, actually.”

“I find it interesting that even Corman — tell me if I’m wrong — but before Star Wars and Jaws, he didn’t really do sequels either. He caught onto the trend almost at the same time that Star Wars started doing it. He recognized, “Hey, sequels are going to be a thing!”

AS: “Yeah, there were certain ones — He did start to do that, I would say, more in the — well, I guess in the 80s.

“By probably the 80s… I’m thinking in particular of the Piranha sequel that Jim Cameron was involved in. And then with some of the ones like the Bloodfist movies, which were caught up in a period right before, or just almost contemporaneous, with the films I was doing there. There’s a number — There’s like Bloodfist 1, 2, 3.

“He did start to tap into that, but — And you’re right to associate that with blockbusters, because you have to remember that the main thing that distinguished the Concord-New Horizons period from the New World period before it, was that the heart of that business model [Concord’s] was home video. Home video and foreign distribution. The ancillary markets, both of which have been destroyed by the streamers.”

GJ: “Unfortunately.”

AS: “Yeah, it’s terrible that they have, but that’s another shaking rant for another day.

“So once you got into the realm where your pre-sales were going to be based on the blockbusters of the world and the foreign sales, then being able to have the same title with a number after it [would help sell the film].”

GJ: “Something people [would be] familiar with so that they’re interested, or… have that fanbase already wanting to go see it.

“I feel like, as always, Corman’s on the ball about a lot of these things, and is just able to see trends when they happen.”

AS: “Oh, he did. He was far-seeing, but particularly in terms of the audience. It took Hollywood a long time to react and realize what Roger realized early on about the youth audience, and things like that, and what they wanted.

“But at the time, I was — Look, I was happy to come back and do it [Body Chemistry 2], and to not — And that there was something very liberating about Body Chemistry 2 in there — It was a little bit like Brain Dead in that there was a script, but it wasn’t like that — With Brain Dead, I knew I was going to do a lot to transform it, and was allowed by Julie [Corman] and Roger to spend probably almost a year thinking, and researching, and transforming what had been [Charles] Beaumont’s Paranoia into Beaumont and Simon’s Brain Dead, with all the neurology and what-not.

“This [Body Chemistry 2] had a tighter schedule, but it was also — and it’s funny when watching [the movie] last night, I was thinking about this — there’s nothing else I’ve done where I was so free to actually not think that much as a writer.

“So, like I said — [I wrote the part] in the beginning with the fortune cookies inside [the gun], and the way that comes back in the end. That, and lots of dialogue along the way. But most of it, I was like, Okay, it is what it is. And I was definitely putting on this different hat, as it were, where I was really — Instead of — I mean, with Brain Dead, I was very much thinking about [David] Cronenberg and Sam Fuller, Philip K. Dick, the things we talked about last time. But in that sense, I was really thinking of a different, kind of more auteur driven thing where it was really going to be me in every little inch. Whereas here, if I was thinking or channeling anything from my cinephile past, it was all those noirs and noir-adjacent melodramas of the 40s and 50s. 

“A lot of which were directed by European directors — who were here for smaller studios — that are very beautiful stylistically. And yes, there’s stuff that’s interesting in the scripts, for sure, but you can see the directors were just coming in and lavishing, you know, whipped cream on top of the pastry kind of thing. And it’s not that the story in those things, in the themes, weren’t important. They are, it has to all reflect that. But if I was channeling something, it was certainly those 40s and 50s films.

“I’m thinking in particular of a Frenchman named Max Ophüls, who was a great French director who, during World War II, came here and made some very weird, emotional noirs, meaning they weren’t so crime oriented. They were love stories… that had the atmosphere and doom-laden noir feeling. Particularly, he had one that I was obsessed with that was a lot of what I was thinking about during [Body Chemistry 2].

“It was a movie called Caught, with Robert Ryan and James Mason, and it’s just so beautifully done  — the camera movement, and the lighting, and the atmosphere. Or certain movies from Frank Borzage, who also made love stories, but that felt like noirs. So there was a way which Robert Siodmak, who made a lot of my favorite noirs, also were — Again, these were directors who were not writing their material at all, but just coming into them and pouring their style into it.

“So, it’s really the one and only time — so far — I really approached it that way, rather than from the script up. Of coming into it and purely in the telling of the story itself rather than, in some sense, the story itself, and just released myself to have done that. And that, I think, is part of why it is — in its weird way — the least personal, but my most favorite of those three [Brain Dead, Body Chemistry 2, Carnosaur], and it’s actually the most beautiful.

“I mean, I get it, it’s a cruddy neo-noir/erotic thriller, but it has a kind of grace to it. And that includes the way it’s shot, and we can talk about — We should talk about who that cinematographer was, and how good he was. [Also] the editing, and why that guy edited it, and went on to do Carnosaur. And also the music, which in that movie [Body Chemistry 2] is actually some of the most beautiful music that was ever done for a Corman movie, by a guy named Nigel Holton. A British composer who unfortunately died very young, because he actually, I think, would have graduated into being a bigger studio composer, and people just started to get him to do bigger things.

“So there were a lot of people who came together to make that, and just — there was a joy in making them [Corman films]. I don’t know.”

GJ: “It definitely comes through in the film! It was more like an empty house that you were able to put your own furnishes in. You’re able to just have fun with it, not worrying about the foundation too much or anything. Just do experiments, have some of your flares in there. Which there are A LOT of your flares in there, I noticed.

“I agree it’s a very beautiful film, very — What’s the word I’m looking for? It might not be too personal, but I do feel it’s emotional.”

AS: “Yeah! It’s funny, because Brain Dead and Carnosaur are, in some ways, not emotional at all, and I think that’s their failings. Also, I mean, that’s what’s fun about them, but like — When we had that screening of Brain Dead at the New Beverly, the thing that really occurred to me — and I was talking to folks there about — was when I made that movie at like — I started out when I was twenty-six. By the time it came out, I guess I was twenty-seven or something. Twenty-eight.

“It was like a mind experiment. It wasn’t emotional. I didn’t have any idea what it would feel like to be Rex Martin [Bill Pullman, Brain Dead] and have your whole life turned upside down. It would be very different if I told that story in my 40s or my 50s. Same with Canosaur, in a way. They were different. They were much more — partly because they’re sci-fi in a way, and even sci-fi thrillers — are much more idea heavy.

“Whereas [Body Chemistry 2] was nothing but emotion… There’s a lot of emotion… That’s why I mentioned the music, and even the camera movement, and stuff that it has in it that we didn’t have so much in those other films. And we got away with even some crane shots, and things you never see in Corman films of that era.”

GJ: “I remember that part in the junkyard, where it had a big crane shot. I was like, That is special. That is not something I’m used to [in a Corman film].”

AS: “There’s three crane shots in it, and we had to do them. In the end, we twisted, and twisted, and twisted the arm, and got the crane for one day. He [Corman] never, absolutely — That was on the forbidden list. I mean, back when we did Brain Dead, you weren’t even allowed to use a real dolly… They were definitely not going to rent a crane. He didn’t own a crane, he didn’t like to use anything he didn’t own.

“And they finally said, “Okay, you can have it for one day.” So there’s the fairly early scene with Greg Harrison and Robin Riker, where they go to the old football stadium, and there’s a sweeping crane shot that takes them into the stadium, and then comes down the hole. We had to do that whole scene, including under the bleachers and the junkyard scene… We had to do the football [stadium] scene in the day, broad daylight. You could do, theoretically, a 12-hour day, which maybe you could shift enough to be a 16-hour day. So we had to do that all during the day, then we shifted location to… out in Sun Valley somewhere, so that we could use the crane at the junkyard to be the back of the garage. And then once the sun went down, we used the crane one more time at the diner where Mort[on Downey Jr.]’s going to meet —” 

GJ: “Clint Howard!”

AS: “I like to think of Clint as my Elisha Cook Jr. from all those [Humphrey] Bogart movies. I love him as a character actor, and he was so great to be the sleazy detective in that.

“So, you’ll notice there’s one more crane shot. They’re coming down the sign of — I don’t think that restaurant still exists anymore, but it was from one of the last of the old 50s-style diners… Because we only had the crane for a day, we had to pack all three of those [scenes]... in that one day so we could use the crane.”

GJ: “[impersonating Adam Simon] “No rest! We got to go to the next scene! Quick, get in the car! Get the crane in there! We got to go!”

AS: “That’s right!”

GJ: “I found that scene really interesting as well. Not just for the crane shot — the one at the diner — but also because you filmed it from outside the window… and that was really interesting.”

AS: “Well, that was a big debate when we shot that one. So maybe that’s a moment to stop and talk about the cinematographer.”

GJ: “Yeah! Go ahead!”

AS: “I don’t think he did any Corman films before [Body Chemistry 2], and I don’t believe he stuck around to do any after that. He’s Australian. His name is Richard Michalak, and he was great. Really, really good… He went back to Australia, I think, not long after that, and did a lot of work in Australia. Particularly, he did a lot of work with Alex Proyas, who is an Australian mostly known here for doing The Crow (1994), and then Dark City. A brilliant, brilliant director.

“And Alex was a big commercials director, and I believe Richard was the main DP [Director of Photography] for lots of Alex’s commercials… He and I sat and watched videos of these old film noirs, and of the Max Ophüls, and the Borzage, and the Siodmak films. He really embraced that, and was really wonderful about that, and worked with me a lot. [Body Chemistry 2] is a film where, if you notice, most of the scenes in there I’m really working in depth also. A lot of the blocking, you know, where the — [pantomimes moving camera] One of the background, one of the foreground, and then they move around like this, and we’ll suddenly move around with them.

“And the only time we had a bit of an argument was with that exact scene you’re talking about — at the diner with Mort and Clint. Because he also was kind of a realist, and he’s like — I wanted to shoot it outside that way because I wanted the reflections, and I liked the way that looked, and also… I just felt it was part of the noir feeling of it… He and the sound girl were like, “But yeah, then we’re not going to hear them.” I’m like, “Well, sure, we’re just going to mic them from inside.” They’re like, “Yeah, but it’s not realistic that we’re watching from the outside, but hearing it as if we’re sitting with them.” And I’m like, “I don’t care.”

“And I was — I noticed that scene last night, too, and I was like, Yeah, I was right. It’s beautiful to watch it that way, and to see these two scheming assholes outplay each other. And it has one of the things that’s, again, an example of the kind of fun we would have, because Clint and Mort like to just have fun with it. It more came out of the theatre comedy stuff I used to do, where there’s that moment in there where Clint has the contract — There’s a whole theme that runs through the film of, “What does it mean to sign a contract?” And one of the lines I do love — it was never in the original, so that I added later — when she says, “Oh, contracts are just a metaphor. A metaphor with teeth.”

“But there’s that scene where Clint’s getting Mort to sign the contract, and he’s like, [pointing to imaginary contract] “Here. Oh, wait no, and here. And here. Yeah, and here. Oh, can you initial the box over here?” And Mort is like [throws hands in air in mock frustration] — I said, “You should add another one. Do another one. Make him do another one. Make him make another signature. [laughs]”

GJ: “[laughs] I want to see this contract! [imitating Downey Jr.] “Why do I got to sign so much!? What’s going on here!?”

“Yeah, I thought it was great. And I did — It took me to, like, the fourth time watching this movie, but I did notice the contract theme going through it. I’m like, Oh, there’s a lot of signing your soul away in this movie.”

AS: “That’s right, because the whole thing with… Claire, with the evil shrink… Well, there’s three [things]. There’s obviously the whole … sub-story there about Mort, Claire, and whatever contract they’re going to sign. That contract culminating in her accidental — I don’t think she intended to kill him in that scene where he ends up dying. She’s forcing — He strong-armed her into a blackmailing contract.

“Clint makes the contract with Mort, which is really blackmail. Then Mort does that to her, but along the way, you also get that scene where Claire makes Greg — I mean, Dan, I should say his character’s name. But we should go back to our great Harrison performance, which also is a very beautiful and melancholy performance… It’s actually quite a brave performance the way he dealt with it. But that scene where she gives him the contract, and, of course, it’s blank.”

GJ: “Which it’s a horrible idea to sign any sort of blank contract.”

AS: “Of course, of course! Because you know he’s doomed at that point, where he signs the empty contract.”

GJ: “It seems like that’s also a theme with [the narrative]. Every person that signs a contract is doomed. Claire signs it with Morton, which dooms her to her ending. Morton signs his with Clint, which dooms him, because if it wasn’t for that contract, he might’ve lived. He wouldn’t have to worry about that. And then, of course, Dan signed his life away with a piece of paper, because it’s a “metaphor with teeth.” There doesn’t need to be words!”

AS: “Exactly! And we’ll come back to his unhappy ending, but let me mention a couple of crew elements… besides Nigel Holton, who again — I was just struck again last night. I wish I had the pure tapes of the music he did… We spent a lot of time together doing the score.

“He lived over in Agoura Hills, and I’d ride over the hills — where I was living in Malibu at the time — to do it. And he did it all himself, in the sense that… we didn’t have the money for an orchestra or anything, but it feels quite orchestral. Even the snatches of songs are — because we couldn’t afford to buy any songs — The little kind of 60s Rickenbacker, kind of Bird-style, or Big Star-style, kind of Power Pop song that comes in periodically… Then the fake country song that comes in a couple times. He did those, but also, there’s a very kind of Wagnerian thing with these lead motifs that — There’s a certain, specific theme that comes in every time Dan is going to have one of his fugue states with his childhood memories. Or whenever that impulse is coming up in him, that theme comes back up in the music. And Claire’s got her own theme in it.

“It’s really too bad we’re not in an era when those old soundtracks can be preserved. Maybe someday, someone will [preserve them] the same way all these Italian soundtracks exist.”

GJ: “Oh yeah, they get records and everything.”

AS: “Nigel’s score for [Body Chemistry 2]  is really beautiful. It’s very Italian. It really could be like a — if not [Ennio] Morricone, it could be Riz Ortolani, or one of the other guys in that same era that’s very, very emotional.

“But the biggest other contribution that feeds right into what will become Carnosaur — besides all of the cast members who are going to return like Clint Howard, or the only person to be in all three of them, David Sinaiko. Who is in Brain Dead, obviously, as Berkovich the assistant, and here as Buddy, the jazz DJ, getting high, listening to his bop records. And then, of course, he comes back in the diner in Carnosaur. And Clint, of course, who’s in this, and then I totally couldn’t resist bringing him back for Carnosaur.

“So we’re shooting — I think it was one of those houses that we shot at. Those are all in Altadena, I think. And again, one of the things that makes that movie feel very different from a lot of the Corman films of that time was that — also with Brain Dead — I was able to get Roger to let us out of the studio. 90% of every Concord movie was shot entirely in those Venice studios.”

GJ: “And sometimes the same exact studio with the same exact set!”

AS: “Exactly. Which goes to the heart of why Catherine was determined that we destroy the Brain Dead sets. But, in fact… by squeezing the budget in other places, I was able to beg, borrow, and steal, and get them to let us do a lot more exterior shooting… I really wanted to have the feeling of a real small town, and you can get that in Altadena, and not that far on the edges of Pasadena, but not the fancy parts… Altadena was filled with these old craftsman houses that could be from “anytime, anywhere, USA”... Like the Midwest or something.

“So one day, we were shooting — I think it was actually Dan’s homecoming scene, where he comes in to open his house, and the key can’t get in, so he climbs up. And we didn’t have a crane, but we did have a dolly with a raiser, so you could see him climb up to the roof. And that, by the way, is very inspired by another director, who inspired a lot of that movie — Nick Ray, who is also a great favorite of mine, a great favorite of Scorsese, and of Fuller — and he was friends with Fuller — for the emotional violence in his movies. And that’s somewhat of a nod to one of my favorites of his films, The Lusty Men, where Robert Mitchum comes in — You don’t know who he is or what he’s coming back to, but the fact that he knows how to sneak into the place tells you this was his house.

“So we’re shooting that scene, and this funny, little grizzled bearded guy comes up to me. We had already started shooting the film, but we didn’t have an editor on it yet. And this guy came up and asked if I was Adam, and I said yes, and he introduced himself, and he goes, “Richard Gentner.” Roger just hired him to come in and be an editor… Usually, the editors were people who were starting up, but he also occasionally got people — more often at the directing level — who are on the other way in their career. [draws imaginary graph going down] And Richard was very, very experienced… Roger had sought out to hire him, but said he could pick what film he wanted to do. He had watched a bunch of films, and he had watched Brain Dead. He’s like, “I’d like to go work with that guy.” So he drove out to Altadena, where we were shooting [Body Chemistry 2], to introduce himself, and said, “Look, I saw your film. I really loved it.” And he said, “But the editing is not very good in it.” And I kind of agree with him.

“Though, it’s my fault and the editor’s fault, but it was — it’s not — It’s okay, but it was edited in a very, like, just following exactly what I needed from my conceptual moves in it. I didn’t call it a very sensuous thing. And the key thing about Rich was that he learned to edit from working with [Sam] Peckinpah. 

“In an era when you have multiple editors on things… He assistant-edited the last several Peckinpah movies, and he really learned from the master. He learned a lot of bad lessons from the master, like “how to do too many drugs” and “drink too much”, and unfortunately really destroyed himself. But he was really — I mean, really such a gifted man, and I learned — In that period, editing that film, and then moving onto Carnosaur, but especially in editing this one, I feel like that was a second film school for me. As much as just being at USC [University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts] was, because he learned so much editing with Peckinpah.

“And so, when you see — not just the return of the flashbacks in there, but some of the violence that comes again and again, or that is broken into triple revists, these triplets musically that happen — that’s all stuff that he was showing me how to do, because he knew how to do that, so I learned it from there. That was one of the other things that I most remember from that. We really became close, and he went through all kinds of stuff. He lived for a long time on my couch when we were doing Carnosaur… He edited that film [Body Chemistry 2], and then stuck around to do Carnosaur before he had a big job. He did get hired by [George] Lucas, and was a trainer — the editor who would teach other editors up at Skywalker Ranch and stuff. But… some of the last things he… actually edited, though, were these two films [Body Chemistry 2, Carnosaur] and the little Corman tribute thing I did for Italian TV. Crew-wise, it was just a miraculous little thing.”

GJ: “That’s something I got to find!”

“The editing is really good in it [Body Chemistry 2], so it’s funny you say all that, because I was actually thinking about the flashbacks… I noticed they’re standing there — the junkyard scene in particular — he’s [Dan] standing there talking about it, like, “Hey, I have violent tendencies,” and it hard cuts to those flashbacks, music and all that stuff, and [then] back to the more somber talking scene. It’s really impactful!”

AS: “So there’s a couple of things to be talked about with the flashbacks… So two things. First was, yeah, I wanted to use them from the get-go. I know people think they’re cheesy… I had fun with them because they’re not doing — When the purpose of a flashback is to give you exposition, or to tell you, “Here’s what happened.” — That almost never works, and can feel very —”

GJ: “Hand holding. I’m sitting here, [and they’re like] “You don’t have cognitive thought! You don’t know how to put things together. Let me tell you how it is right here!” That’s very condescending, almost.”

AS: “That’s right, but here [in Body Chemistry 2] there’s something very different going on with them. From the get-go, I was determined to only have Dan’s backstory — which is discussed more in the original script, what happened to him on the force and other things like that. That script did not at all have — All that one had, as I remember, is his problems, what he did on the force that led him to be [fired]. It didn’t have the whole thing about his childhood. That’s where I took it back one further step to say, Well, what made the guy this way?

“And that’s what I mean by saying Greg’s performance is really brave, because it’s some pretty dark shit we’re talking about in there. We don’t say it outright… not just the physical abuse, but the implied sexual abuse that he probably had at the hands of his father. She [Lisa Pescia] says it right out to him about repressed homosexuality, and things like that… Greg just goes to that, and there’s just a sorrow to his face.

“Anyway, my motion was no, I wanted to use the flashbacks just to be little moments inside his fucked up brain, and just… not to explain things, but just to give you this visceral experience that was happening in his libido and… brain every time he starts to get aroused, or anytime he starts emotionally to have anything that’s going to invoke that.”

GJ: “Almost like a PTSD moment. It gets to a point, and it all comes back to him.”

AS: “Exactly! And you have it right from… the beginning, when we see him in his Russian Roulette scene with the bullet and the Chinese fortunes.”

GJ: “Great scene, by the way!”

AS: “Then, of course, it bookends at the end. That’s one of the first things I did, was create that scene and came up with that idea… I’d actually taken it from a script I had been writing for a bigger movie I wanted to do. And then I’m like, Ah, we didn’t get to do that, so I’ll just steal that bit and use it here.”

GJ: “That’s part of being a writer, man. You write things, then you’re like, Wait, that was a good scene! Mix-and-match a Frankenstein script.”

AS: “You’re always moving scenes around! So you get it there, because I never wanted to tell that full story… We shot lots of bits and pieces of those things. But in other cases, also, it was about — We always had access to — At the old Corman studios in Venice, in addition to having prints of everything, he had this whole space that had — So, this is the era before there’s purely video editing, right? We’re editing actual film.

“So pieces that are taken out of a film late [in production] were always kept by Roger, in part because he would reuse them. That was one of the things he did going back to the 60s. He would use pieces from other movies into the movies he was making, so we were always very welcome to draw on that. So some of the shots and things you see in there… I’m just grabbing from other movies that were being made at the time, or that he made back in the 80s .

“But that brings us back to this issue of — When I initially finished the film, it was perfect in its way, but Roger’s like, “I’m sorry, there’s not enough nudity. There’s not enough actual sex.” And yet, Lisa Pescia had done her work. He’s like, “Well, the scenes with Robin [Riker], they’re sweet, but we don’t get any sex. We never see her naked. We never see this.” And I knew she absolutely did not want to do any new things like that, but Roger’s like, “I have to have those scenes.”

“Now, you have to remember the whole core… idea of this movie is that poor Dan has a problem associating sex and violence, right? It just so happens that’s the big red letter with the MPAA [Motion Picture Association of America] for getting an R-rating versus getting an X-rating is that you can’t be associating sex with violence. That slips you over from an R-rating back then. Now, it happens all the time. Back then, there was still the rule that anything viscerally associating sex with violence would trip the film over into being unrated, and therefore couldn’t be released in the same way that Roger intended to. And if it’s going to a Blockbuster — Well, a lot of Blockbusters wouldn’t even carry those films, or if they did, they had a separated section.

“So in that section at the studio where Roger had the actual developed film stock, and even whole scenes — He had a whole section there that was the “forbidden zone,” that I know really irked him in so many ways, because these were all sex scenes… that he had to remove at the insistence of the MPAA to get an R-rating.”

GJ: “Holy shit!”

AS: “Particularly, these are the ones from Shannon Tweed and these other Erotic Thrillers. And Katt Shea Rubin, who has some fantastic, wild erotic thrillers with him [Corman]. Strip to Kill, and those ones.

“Richard and I stayed up all night one time at the studio, looking through all these sex scenes. I thought, What if I could not shoot any more sex scenes, but just use some of those sex scenes? And we already had this kind of flashbacky structure. It’s already set up for that. So… we just went and took the scenes — from particularly Katt’s movies — where there’s strangulation during sex, where there’s physical violence during sex, and inserted those as being the red hot center of what’s driving Dan crazy every time he starts to kiss the more innocent Robin [Riker; “Brenda”]. 

“So we do that, we cut it in there, and Roger sees it. He’s like, “Okay, that’s awesome!” And he thinks it’s awesome because to shoot new sex scenes, he had to pay money. No money, didn't do any shooting, no crew, no nothing, just Rich and I cutting those… scenes that he’d already paid for and didn’t get to use. But he said, “There’s no way the MPAA is going to pass this movie… for the same reasons they took them out.” I’m like, “Let’s just try. It’s not going to cost you anything to put them in there, and if they say we have to trim them by some, or take them out, I’ll come up — I promise you if we submit it to the MPAA and they say it’s unrated, I will call up Robin and Greg and say, “I’m sorry, we’re just going to have to do something,” and we’ll find a way to do some sex scene that will please you.” He’s like, “Okay.” So they submitted the film to the MPAA, and it passed straight through, even though it contained a dozen shots that had specifically been forbidden and forced to be removed… from those earlier movies. So Roger — That was, like, the happiest I think I ever saw him — Besides when he made the gazillions from Carnosaur.”

“It was — This was like his vengeance on the MPAA. Plus, it really fit the creative cheapskate in him, because here were these scenes he had paid for that he had never gotten to use. Not only did he finally get it to use them, but we got to use them here in lieu of spending more money to shoot new scenes.

“So the flashback structure, which at first was fairly light in it, did get heavier as my way of adding the more sex he wanted, without having to shoot more uncomfortable sex scenes that I didn’t want to shoot, and the actress didn’t want to shoot… And to me, it fit — It just told it, and the MPAA passed it, because the whole theme of the film was that this was this guy’s, you know — His mental illness was his association [with sex and violence], so because we were saying it’s bad, and because it’s only coming in the flashes of those scenes, and wrapped around this other stuff, they just passed it right through.”

GJ: “It was like, [imitating MPAA spokesman] “We love the message. Put it right through. You know what, that’s how it’s supposed to be.” And you’re like, [sarcastically] “Yeah, sure!” [thumbs up]”

AS: “Yeah! And because he’s punished in the end, of course.”

GJ: “Exactly! He gets shot! [MPAA spokesman voice] “Oh man! Perfect! This is exactly what we want!” And you’re like, “Yeah, sure, whatever you say, buddy.” [rolls eyes]

“That is — Man, that is — I mean, Roger Corman’s no stranger to reusing stuff in his films.”

AS: “He wasn’t, but he felt like that I had doubled over on him, [doing] the one thing even he had never dared to do. Which was to use the scenes that the MPAA had forced him to remove, and to actually get all those scenes back in.”

GJ: “He sat there like, “Oh, you got moxie, kid!” I mean, shoot, I never even thought of the idea — Of course Roger Corman has just a library of sex scenes that he’s not able to use!”

AS: “Well, so many of his early [movies] he did, like, he often would — He would buy these bad European movies, and just completely — sometimes for good or for bad — make them into other movies, like Dementia 13. That [Francis Ford] Coppola one is entirely made out of pieces of [other movies]. Or the Lone Wolf and Cub [:Baby Cart] movie that got turned into Sword of Vengeance, or whatever he turned it into.”

GJ: “Like how Island of the Fishmen was turned into Screamers, which we talked about last time.”

AS: “That’s right.”

GJ: “Oh man, we’ve been going all over the place. Let me see if I can get — We’ve been going through a bunch of stuff from different questions.”

AS: “Alright. Sorry!”

GJ: “Nah, I appreciate it! That’s cool! But let’s see — We already talked a little about the screenplay, which you may or may not have written depending on factors, and that you pretty much had complete control over.

“So then, let’s go ahead and talk about the fantastic cast you had to work with, like Gregory Harrison of Razorback fame, Robin Riker of Alligator, Morton Downey Jr., Lisa Pescia, Frank Novak, and Clint Howard. It’s not the same caliber as it was in Brain Dead, but how was it working with this cast? Did it go smoothly? Were there any standout moments?”

AS: “It was great! Look, it wasn’t going to be the same as Brain Dead because it was a sequel to a low-budget erotic thriller. Brain Dead was its own stand-alone, more prestige-y — in a B-movie way — thing, and it was just more unique. So that was — And remember, as we discussed last time, it had the benefit of some really wonderful help from Barbara Cohen — the late, great Barbara Cohen — who was one of the great indie movie casting directors… Normally, all the casting for Corman’s [movies are] done in-house by very talented people, who go on to be very important casting people in the big industry. We didn’t quite have that.

“Greg — Let’s just keep going on there. I’m stunned when I go back — He and I are still friends, at least via Facebook. I haven’t seen him in years, but we communicate that way. A really sweet guy. Actually, a very good actor in tons and tons of movies. Obviously, Razorback, which I was a fan of, as a Russell Mulcahy fan. I thought it was brilliantly directed. He’s great in that. Tons of TV, obviously. He’s a real actor’s actor. The thing with him is that he’s just so committed.

“So he’s different. He’s the still center of [Body Chemistry 2]. You know, a lot of silence. He doesn’t say a lot. He’s not an improv guy. Whereas, with Mort and some of the other actors in there, we could just have fun doing so, but… with him, with Robin, with Lisa, it’s just what’s on the page. But he has these — He’s very handsome, but he’s got these very deep-set eyes and this bigger forehead, which really lent itself to this sadness that I think his character is carrying.”

GJ: “A very somber-looking man.”

AS: “Yeah, and that’s a lot of what he and I talked about, was just keeping it very still and using that, because he has deep-set eyes and a pronounced brow. Look, biggest cliche in the world, “The eyes are the windows of the soul.” Biggest thing that cinematographers have to do all the time is get special eye lights in to really make that alive. But that also allows us with Greg — all you have to do is tilt his head down, and the eyes disappear. And if you, for your seventh viewing of the film, just watch — When do we actually get to see the character’s eyes, and when do those eyes disappear?

“I just geeked out and obsessed a lot in that movie — both when we were shooting and blocking scenes, and when we were lighting it, and then again when Rich and I were editing it — of being very careful to pick when you can see the characters’ eyes, and when you can’t. When are their eyes in darkness? Even back to — what looks somewhat ridiculous — the Venetian blinds on Claire and Mort’s faces in those scenes.

“But particularly with Greg staying in a more realist mode, all you had to do is title his head a little, and you couldn’t really tell what he was thinking in a way that was powerful … There is just a sadness then. You also could believe that this was… the guy whose glory days were behind him, the high school football star with the prom queen, and all this stuff, who’s come home carrying all this fucked-up-ness in him that’s never going to be out. So he was a huge pleasure to work with.

“Both the women — Robin’s great and really captured, in a poignant way, the kind of — She says in there, “I had almost forgotten you. I was waiting fifteen years.” So if you do the math, she hadn’t seen him since she was, like, eighteen. She’s in her thirties, early thirties now. She’s still dressed like the high school girl, she’s living with her dad who’s dying there on the porch, you know?”

GJ: “She’s also stuck in her glory days, almost like another — They’re both stuck in that point in time in their life. The difference is that Dan tried to escape it and got pulled back in, while she had settled into it.”

AS: “That’s right, versus… Lisa Pescia in her red dresses, and in her blond ‘do, and all of that. Which is well captured by Mort when he’s saying to her, “Look, there’s only two kinds of people in this town. The people who were born here and the people who fail here. I know you weren’t born here.”

“She comes in as this disturbing agent that’s going to — Who knows what would have happened if she hadn’t come to town? Obviously, there’d be no movie, but probably Greg and Robin’s characters… would have gotten married. But, probably, he would have beat the crap out of her with his issues, right?”

GJ: “There was never going to be a happy ending for Dan.”

AS: “Never, there was never.

“The guy who plays — Robert Beecher, who plays Robin’s father, he’s a really wonderful old character actor. I think he only gets one scene in it, but again, it’s very good.”

GJ: “It was really good! He was very sincere.”

AS: “It’s very sincere. It’s very authentic.

“The funnest person in there, for sure, is Mort. He was an absolute joy to work with. The sweetest guy, great sense of humor, joking with everybody, and he just — You can see how much he’s enjoying himself when you watch that, and he is a great improv. So yeah, those scenes are written, but the juiciest lines in there, like — When he’s just coming up with the names of the bands he’s putting out there, like, [Morton Downey Jr. impression] “Willy Wonka and his, you know, whatever those were.”

GJ: “Whistling Willows!”

AS: “And his ridiculous swear phrases, or his whatevers. That’s all just more winging it in beautiful and fun ways. I was a little afraid when they cast him initially in it, because he’s kind of this — He had this reputation as this far right-wing — What we see later in this Trump-era, or these kind of Q[-Anon] types, but he wasn’t that guy at all. That was a character. One of the first things you realize when you met Mort was — for better or for worse — he capitalized on what was happening with the shock jocks of that era, and basically made himself into a character. That was a character he played. That was not him.”

GJ: “Like Stephen Colbert. He made himself into a character.”

AS: “Exactly. In fact, he was very much like that. He wasn’t as much of a comedian, obviously, as Colbert is, but he created this fictional character in that way, which is not who he was. Super educated, super intelligent, super funny. [He was] actually from a big entertainment industry family because his father, Morton Downey Sr., was one of the great Irish tenors of the 30s. And he had grown up in Hyannis Port with the Kennedys. He was best friends with the young Bobby and John and Teddy Kennedy. He was in that world, playing touch football in the sands of Hyannis Port.

“So he had fun parodying this character he created that was already a parody. He then kind of parodied it again.”

GJ: “It’s a satire of the parody that he created for satire.”

AS: “Yeah! And yet he’s so fun and perfect in it, and just a joy and a pleasure to work on it [with].

“There’s one other cast member I got to mention who’s not listed in the credits, but is in one of my most favorite scenes. It was somebody I had worked with in the theatre, who went on to become very famous. He had just gotten a big agent, and I told him, “You should come just do one day of shooting this for me.” He had only done a couple little parts, but he had been in a couple of my plays, and I loved him, and he’s super fun to work with. He showed up the day we were going to shoot it, and he said, “Look, the thing is — My agent found out about it, and she does not want me to do it, because she’s just starting to put me up for these bigger parts, and felt that it would prejudice some of it.”

“He had a pretty pristine — The little bits he had done in movies were… like The Grifters, and more important movies. She didn’t want [Body Chemistry 2] on his list. I’m like, “Well, that’s fine. We just won’t list you, but it means you’re not going to get paid. Because to pay you, it’s going to go through SAG. It’s a SAG movie.” He’s like, “That’s fine.” It would’ve been a one-day thing anyway. I’m like, “Okay, I’ll just take you out.” He said, “You’ll just take me out to dinner and buy me as many drinks as I want at the Formosa or someplace like that.” And I’m like, “You got it.”

“So this is — We’ll see if you recognized him. You may or may not have. This is… early in the film when Dan is coming back to town, he gets pulled over by a highway patrol guy.”

GJ: “Yes! I know who you’re talking about, but I don’t know the actor.”

AS: “That’s actually Jeremy Piven.”

GJ: “Really!?”

AS: “Yes! That was one of the very first film appearances of Jeremy Piven, but we couldn’t actually list Jeremy in it. But you go back and watch it, you’d be like, “Oh, duh! Of course it’s Jeremy! Of Entourage and a million movies!”

GJ: “Yeah! I was thinking, this guy looks familiar, but I couldn’t figure out who it was.”

AS: “That’s Jeremy! And we were — He both was in some shows here, but also, I think, the first of the plays I’d written with Tim Robbins and The Actors’ Gang. Jeremy was a part of a group of actors in Chicago, with John Cusack, Dave Sinaiko, and a bunch of others… And his sister is a great theatre director. His parents were great theatre directors. He’s a really great trained actor, and they had produced one of my plays there in Chicago. We got be really good friends.

“Then he moved out to LA, and he was just getting started, and I’m like, “Well come! Shoot this one part!”... It was meant to be a two-second scene, but because it’s Jeremy, and he and Greg got along, and he basically — That was a barely scripted, almost not-scripted scene. He completely improvised on the spot that whole thing when he’s saying to Greg, “Oh, you remember that time on the football field where you did this? And did whatever it was?” That was just Jeremy riffing right there.

GJ: “That’s a real testament to his acting, because that felt scripted.”

AS: “He’s great! When you watch that again, you’ll see.

GJ: “I got to watch it a seventh time now!”

AS: “We’ve talked before about the pleasure of these little character bits, which I always want to have, and I don’t think you get in Hollywood movies that much anymore.”

GJ: “Definitely not.”

AS: “Just little one scene parts, or two scene parts, but that somehow have something juicy happening in them. And that’s a great example, because Jeremy makes that a great little scene.

GJ: “He also put a lot of weight into that character, because if I’m not mistaken, that’s the guy who shoots him [Dan] at the end as well.”

AS: “Well, that’s what’s interesting, because I couldn’t break — It was supposed to be. That was my idea, but of course, because we weren’t crediting him, and that was shot much, much later — So, in fact [laughs] — So, you see two cops in the light. There’s another one hidden in the dark who opened fire on him. Yes, of course the whole point was supposed to be that his old high school buddy is the one who opens fire on him.

“But A. — I couldn’t bring Jeremy back because he was not going to be able to do that. The agent was not going to allow it, and he was cast in something. I don’t know what at the time.

“But also, because I’d done it without having to pay anybody, it was just going to be an extra’s pay because there’s no lines. I couldn’t really recast other than with extras.

“So, in fact, there’s two guys who pull it. One of them, Ben — I’m forgetting his last name. The one who’s kneeling and whose face you can see clearly, he was just my assistant. He was getting paid to be there as the assistant to the director.”

GJ: “You’re like, “You’re going to assist me in this scene! Get in there!”

AS: “Yeah! “Put on the uniform!”

“He looked a little bit like Jeremy — but then, also, in case he didn’t look enough like Jeremy, you could look at the guy standing there, who was also a dear friend of mine. Not an actor at all — Mitch Lasky. He’s actually a lawyer and a big tech guy who’s gone to make hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars… as a venture capitalist, and all that. [laughs] But his one and only film appearance is splattered… with Gregory Harrison’s blood in the shooting scene.

“In a perfect world, of course that would have been Jeremy, and we would have made much more of a point of that. But I’m glad that you even thought that maybe that was that character, because it’s meant to be.”

GJ: “It’s quick enough… and you do the flashback to his character, so that the audience — even if it’s not him — are going to put that connection together, and be like, “Oh! He got shot by that one guy!” 

AS: “Yeah, it would’ve been nice, because it would have made it even more poignant, you know? Because — I don’t know. A lot of people shit on the ending, I’m sure. They always do with these things.”

GJ: “It’s because people wanted a happy ending, and they’re like, “Oh, I wanted them to like — I wanted Claire Archer to get arrested, and he gets with Robin Riker’s character.” And it’s like, “Well, obviously you haven’t seen Adam Simon’s last movie.”

AS: “There’s a combo of things that we talked about last time, one of the things that I did learn from Roger — and one of the things you could do in a small movie or B-movie like that — is not give the “happy ending.” You could have a more complicated, emotional ending. You didn’t have to make everything okay. But also keep in mind, Roger’s already thinking that’s not the last Body Chemistry [movie], so he [Dan] couldn’t kill Claire.”

“So, in my mind, knowing going into it that Claire’s got to live at the end, it was pretty clear to me that Dan could not live. He had to die. But to me, the thing is — The thing I almost loved most in it is that that’s not the last shot.”

GJ: “Yeah, the last shot of the movie shows Robin Riker sitting there, waiting for her boyfriend who’s never going to come.”

AS: “He’s never going to come.”

GJ: “And it ends on a picture of Claire, who essentially won.”

AS: “Exactly! She’s heading to the big time now. She’s got a billboard!”

“So that moment with Robin’s character on the porch — because their last time together, they’re back on the old football field… and they’ve reconciled, and she said, “Let me put my father to bed, and then you come over.” And they’re going to finally have sex. Because they haven’t had sex the whole movie, right?”

GJ: “It’s going to be the score! There it is!”

AS: “He’s been waiting since high school, right? Because even he says, “But all we ever did was kiss.”

GJ: “Yeah!”

AS: “And the whole movie… It’s constantly delayed. For all we know, Robin’s character is a virgin. It’s never happened for her. She’s waiting for him the whole time, and he said, “Keep the porch light on.”

GJ: “Yep! Which she does!”

AS: “Which she does! And in the end, she’s wrapped in her blanket, and she’s sitting there, just thrilled at the thought that all her high school dreams are about to come true.”

GJ: “None the wiser! She doesn’t even get closure! She never finds out what happened!”

AS: “No! No closure! Never — I mean, she will the next day, presumably. To me, that’s so sad and beautiful. I just love that. And, of course, in part because we do want to set up Body Chemistry 3, or whatever was coming — Which there was no way I was going to do.”

GJ: “[laughs] You’re like, “I did my time. I did my part.”

AS: “I kept it going!”

“We came up to the billboard — Which is not a giant billboard, obviously, but is faked to look like a giant billboard.”

GJ: “Hey, you know what? It’s a pretty good forced perspective, because it looked big.”

And then — I don’t think Lisa came back for the next one. I think she got recast with somebody else.”

AS: “Did she get recast?”

GJ: “Yeah!”

AS: “I think she was determined — Look, often what you get with — Like I said, you’ll get actors who have done well, and have had a full career, and happy to get a good paycheck to some extent — That was also Greg, I suppose. Though, also, he continued to do — And I’d cast him in a heartbeat now, if he wanted. I think he’s just happy not to work, because he did plenty.

“But I think Lisa was hoping to burst into a bigger thing, and she’s a good enough actor. I think she could’ve if she ever did fully do that, but I think she didn’t want to get stuck — I forgot that. I assumed she had stuck with it. How many did they make, ultimately?”

GJ: “I think four? Because I’ve only seen yours. I haven’t seen — I know Jim Wynorski took over [Body Chemistry] 3 and [Body Chemistry] 4, so I can only assume what those movies are like. I’m sure those are a whole different animal. [laughs]”

AS: “[laughs] Yeah, exactly! God bless Jim. I love Jim.”

GJ: “Oh, I love Jim to death!”

AS: “Yeah, that’s when — Now we’ve moved off of Carnosaur into Dinosaur Island. You’re into a different world.”

GJ: “[laughs] We’ll get to that! Don’t worry!”

AS: “Now we’re into topless Amazons and a whole other world. But he’s a big-hearted, funny guy.”

GJ: “He loves what he does, and I love that for him.”

AS: “No, I agree! That’s what he wanted to do, and he loved it, and he still loves it.”

GJ: “Yeah! I think she [Pescia] could have done — She was really good. All the actors in this were really good, which you wouldn’t expect from something called Body Chemistry 2.”

AS: “Well, I mean, look — When I did Brain Dead, as we talked about before, I was also — Part of me was very terrified. I was very competent in the script and in the structure. It was all about the structure. And I had great actors, but I was not a director. I had directed little, or nothing. The plays I had written, or that I wrote with Tim, he directed those. I directed some shorts at USC, and made lots of little films, and I had spent a lot of time with actors. But I had not — I don’t think — Really, I just hadn’t — Whatever, I don’t know that in Brain Dead, I really — Like I said, I told you that story, I think, when we talked about Brain Dead, about going up to Bill [Paxton], going, “I don’t even quite know what I’m doing.” And he’s like, “Don’t worry, I’ll just keep nodding like you’re saying something profound to me.”

“But by the time — two years later or whatever it was — that we were shooting [Body Chemistry 2], I felt like I had a lot of confidence. I felt like I knew what I was doing, and I had a very specific model in mind. Again, like those 40s and 50s noir melodramas, and love stories, and I knew the tone it wanted to be in. And I did that trick that lots of directors do, of having the cast and crew get together up in my house at the time… and we watched some movies together.”

“We watched Caught by Max Ophüls, we watched Criss Cross by Siodmak, we watched Moonrise by Frank Borzage… to get a kind of shared language. Everybody was there. The composers were there, the cinematographers were there, the lead actors and other friends were all there to watch those things together. So I think that was part of it, and they got that mood, and that tone of it, and that is, you know, the array. That’s a huge part of… your job as the director. I heard that much, but that is — To do that and to keep them all — Some are going to be bigger and more out there, like Mort’s or Clint’s performances, and some are going to be more focused and dialed in.”

GJ: “Well, they’re all on the same page. It’s like, “Hey, we know what movie we’re making, so we know when to dial it up and dial it in whenever we need to.”

AS: “That’s right. And I think there are times — I don’t think that’s as true for Brain Dead. I think it’s almost like there’s a bunch of different movies going on there. Partly because there were too many movies going on in my own head, probably.”

GJ: “But it works! It worked for the movie! It’s called Brain Dead!”

AS: ”It worked for what it is! And because, yes, there’s all these different realities, right? And the different realities in it almost have different tones.”

GJ: “Yeah! There’s a lot of clashes in it that make sense, because we’re not supposed to know — What’s real? What’s not real? What’s going on? What’s doing this? So, it worked.”

AS: “That’s right.”

GJ: “Let’s see what I have next.

“Next question — Out of the three films we’re talking about, this one is the outlier. While Brain Dead and Carnosaur are psychological and sci-fi horror, respectively, this one is an erotic thriller. How did this affect your approach? What challenges did it present, and did you have to think differently when directing this film?

“And we talked a little bit about that already — and by “a little,” I mean “a lot” — but is there anything else you’d like to add to that? Because I know directing a sci-fi horror, directing a psychological horror, is really different from directing an erotic thriller. Did you take any inspiration from anywhere else? Like, you know, from other erotic thrillers at the time? Because I know it was a popular thing happening at the moment.”

AS: “Yeah, I mean, that’s really it. The beginnings of that — So yes, okay, let’s start this way.

The sci-fi horror thing, that’s true in different ways. The sort of sci-fi horror, kind of brain teaser, mind puzzle, whatever version is Brain Dead, and the Carnosaur kind of horror sci-fi thing. The heart of those is always going to be an idea. An idea plus a body, right? That’s [David] Cronenberg, you know? It’s got body horror. Both of them have body horror. And they have big ideas, big concepts. What they don’t have is what comes in-between those things, which is heart. They’re not emotional, for better and for worse. They’re not meant to be. Now, there are masterpieces in those genres that do also have some emotion, but generally that’s not what you’re watching those movies for. They also… can have a lot more humor. And tonally, yes, they can be very, very different.

“But the erotic thriller is a branch of noir, and — It’s a combo of noir and melodrama, and so that’s going to be much more — not idea driven, but much more character driven, and much more emotional, and it’s going to be much more — I mean, look, the very word “melodrama” — which is what those things are — is about drama plus music. The “melo” part of “melodrama” is music. This is why the score is so much more important in this film than it is in the others. It’s not just a lot of spikes, and this, and that, right? It’s this evoking of emotion, and it has to have a more unitary tone to it.

“So, certainly, I’m aware that it’s an erotic thriller, which in my own mind is like a neo-noir melodrama with emotion, but also with more eroticism. But the noirs themselves, the original ones, were quite erotic for their time, and they tend to be about this doomed, dangerous love and femme fatales, you know?”

GJ: “Yeah, they had to squeeze their way through the Hays Code… Imply it, and not actually show it.”

AS: “That’s right! But it’s felt in there. And my favorite ones, and certainly if there’s — So, I had certainly seen a lot of those erotic films, but particularly their reach — I mean, I think it kicked off with some of the [Brian] De Palma films from the late 70s. Or a film like Body Heat, for sure, is one of the ones that really launches it. Then it becomes this more low-budget thing that’s being done in the late 80s and into the early 90s. Obviously, there’s even a very direct nod to Basic Instinct in there when we’re having her [Pescia] crossing the legs… I was certainly aware of those elements.

“But if there was a choice I was making, it was not — I mean, it was going to superficially feel like a Basic Instinct-style — Because Body Chemistry was meant to be a Basic Instinct-style franchise of erotic thrillers, but my model for that was to go back to the films that had actually inspired those. These ones from the 40s and the 50s.”

GJ: “And you can feel that in the film. It’s definitely — I would argue Body Chemistry 2 is one of the more cerebral entries in the erotic thriller genre, because there is a lot more under the hood than normally [so]... I watched a couple to — certainly one I’m about to talk about in the next question — but I watched a couple [of erotic thrillers] to compare… and this one does have a lot more, for lack of a better word, thought put into it. The other ones, you know, there are some cool story [elements] — Very much as you said of sci-fi horror — Very much “idea with a body” stories, while this one’s more, as you said, coming from somewhere.”

AS: “Yeah, it’s like — It’s “the psyche and the heart” more than it is “the body and the brain.” Which Carnosaur and Brain Dead are much more “body plus brains.” They’re brain-y movies — in their own wacky way — but they’re also based on these bigger, crazy ideas.

“This [Body Chemistry 2] is not — Like you said, it’s much more like the tied-up tragedies of the psyche romance. Certainly, I had models, and I had three definite models in particular, for sure. I’ve mentioned two of them — I’ll mention the third — but they were definitely Max Ophüls’ film, Caught, which I can’t recommend highly enough. It’s a really beautiful movie… The other movie he made back-to-back with that — also with James Mason — called The Reckless Moment. Both of which are noirs, but really love stories. They’re women-centered noirs, not with the typical femme fatale thing. They’re really beautiful movies, and the cinematography, and the scores, and his direction.

“Then Frank Borzage’s Moonrise is another one. It’s about doomed love [and] small-town lovers. And then also — probably my favorite Noir of all time — Out of the Past by Jacques Tourneur, with Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer. Literally, you’ll see — If you watch Out of the Past, you’ll definitely see the nods to it in Body Chemistry 2. In that movie — without giving lots of it away, because you really should see it.”

GJ: “I plan on watching it!”

AS: “Whoever reads this should watch it! It’s really one of the greatest Film Noirs. Maybe, like I said, the greatest. It’s certainly amongst the greatest.”

“Robert Mitchum’s character, who has this whole criminal past, has escaped it by moving to this small town and just running the small garage. So Greg’s character and the scenes in the garage are homages. Now [it’s a] very different journey he [Mitchum] goes on then, as he’s forced to come back into being a gangster again in Out of the Past. But again, it has the same — That was my model for taking Jackson’s script of Body Chemistry 2, and turning it into my Voice of a Stranger.

“I kept hoping that if it was good enough, they would even drop the Body Chemistry [title] and just call it The Voice of a Stranger. That was never going to happen.

“This idea of the guy with a violent, big-city past goes to the small town with his sweetheart there, but gets pulled by the femme fatale into this other violent thing again — that’s Out of the Past.

“That’s what happens in Out of the Past, where he’s got the girl in the small town, and is just working at the garage and doing his thing. Versus Jane Greer, who’s the femme fatale, along with her husband and his old friend, Kirk Douglas — Got to see it, it’s great. But yeah, there’s a lot of Out of the Past in it.”

GJ: “Yeah, I’m planning on checking that out! And that’s interesting… From what you’re telling me, it sounds like Body Chemistry 2 is a modern adaptation of that movie, up to the point where it goes on different themes. Like, instead of the main character being a gangster, he’s a corrupt cop, which was more prevalent at the time, the 80s. Because gangsters weren’t really a thing [at that point], but corrupt cops were for a long time, but especially in the 80s. That kind of modernizes it to the new audience.”

AS: “Yeah, for sure! So it’s playing with the genre… but that’s also part of what was liberating in making it. You’re dealing with a said genre — I mean, what genre is Brain Dead? Who knows? It’s its own! It mixes a bunch of them!”

GJ: “It’s the Simon genre! It's its own thing!”

AS: “Yeah! Even Carnosaur. It’s like [looks around, acting confused] Is it a sci-fi movie? It is a plague movie? Who knows what that one is?”

GJ: “[laughs] It’s all of it, man! It fits so many. If you put all the genres in there, it can go in any sort of genre you want!”

AS: “That’s right! Whereas this one [Body Chemistry 2] was this specific thing. In a way, that was restricting, but sometimes restrictions are liberating… in that they allow you to just focus on the style, and the emotion, and the feeling. And yes, I was looking to those older films — If it’s got a Brain Dead kind of twist within it, it’s that what seems to be the story of the guy who’s gone to the city, had the corrupt violent thing, comes back to the small town, and then the violence of the big city comes back to him… that’s not actually the story, because, in fact, as he says clearly to Robin’s character on the football field, when she says, “What happened to you in the city?” He says, “It didn’t happen to me there. It happened to me here.” The terrible thing that happened to him was here in this small town. Not only that, it was within his own family. It was his own father. It’s within his own mind. So yeah, it seems to have that corrupt city vs small town [dynamic], but no. The most horrible thing that’s ever happened in his world happens in that small town, hidden behind the smiling face of his father.

“Who, by the way, if you look at the photos of his father, that’s Clint and Ron Howard’s dad, Rance Howard. The photo of… his dead father, in the past there. We didn’t use him as the actor when you see him [in the flashback].”

GJ: “That’s fun! I didn’t catch that! Again, due for a seventh rewatch, I guess. I’ll do that sometime soon!

“But you’re absolutely right. He was using the big city as an excuse, almost, but he wasn’t even using it as an excuse. People were using it as an excuse for him.”

AS: “Yeah! He just had no place else to run but to go home, back to where it started. He tries to just hide out there, but it all comes up… You can’t escape yourself. You said — I don’t want to be too pretentious about it — but you’ve brought in the Greek tragedy element… One of the two biggest messages of the Greek tragedies is that whatever you do to escape your fate, is what will bring that fate upon you.”

GJ: “Exactly! And we’re film guys — Be as pretentious as you want!”

AS: “So, that’s what happens to poor Dan Pearson.”

GJ: “Yup. Trying to run as fast as you can away from [fate], you didn’t realize you’re running towards it the entire time. It is what it is. Poor Dan — Not going to be in the sequel. At least, I don’t think he is, unless Jim Wynorski did some shit.”

AS: “No, no. I don’t think Greg — Certainly Greg never came back.”

GJ: “I didn’t say Greg, I said DAN. [laughs]

“Let’s see. So this one goes back to the downer ending we talked about a little bit. We’ll talk more about Carnosaur’s [ending] when we get to it, and Brain Dead’s more of a bittersweet ending than outright sad ending. And, as we talked about just a couple of seconds ago, this one ups the ante by being just tragic. Like, there’s no bittersweetness to it. It’s just, “Oh, my heart. Ow.”

“And I was saying, you love to end it on a somber note. I was going to ask — Was this your decision? Was this already in the script? From the way it sounds and what we talked about, it was your decision AND in the script.”

AS: “Well, it’s both. I mean, it’s because it’s built in — Look, part of what makes noir NOIR, and not just a murder mystery or detective story or crime story, is that they almost all have bad endings. Double Indemnity does not end well. Out of the Past does not end well. None of those films, those melodramas I was trying — But like, Caught does finally have — Because it becomes a love story in the end, and it does have a happy ending, which is why it’s not exactly a noir. But the ones we’re talking about, including Moonrise, they all are true, pure tragedies, right?

“We knew that was going to… be built in. But also where, because it is a franchise — That’s the horror element, in a way, and I would credit that [to] De Palma’s [work], one of his contributions, and Basic Instinct… Those movies do a good job of it, too. There’s something there — Or you might think of the Italian giallos, which are also, in many ways, erotic thrillers. Lots of things we say go with erotic thrillers are really stolen. Sometimes, it’d be [from] a De Palma [film], or from the Italian Giallos.”

GJ: “[perks up at the mere mention of Giallo] Oh yeah, for sure!”

AS: “The black-gloved killers, the sexy women, the sharp knives, the sexual fantasies.”

GJ: “The terrible sex crimes that happen in every other movie.”

AS: “That’s right, and one of the things that distinguishes the great Giallos is they also don’t tend to have particularly happy endings. I mean, maybe it’s a happy ending because the hero survived, but half the time, they don’t. You know?”

GJ: “Sometimes they don’t have endings!  Sometimes they just kind of stop!”

AS: “They just kind of stop! Exactly! But I did want — There was certainly an emotion, like I said — I mean, the… tragic noir element is built in, that Dan is not going to be able to escape the violence that is in him. And if he brings — He does bring it on himself, right? In the sense that he didn’t have to do to Claire what he’s on the verge of doing there… He weirdly set it up, because he’s assuming she’s coming for him, right? He knows she’s going to be coming for him at his house, so he’s called the police… He’s the one who said, “Yeah, there’s a break-in.” So why does he do what he does? The real question there is this — Is he committing suicide by cop?”

GJ: “I didn’t actually think of it that way. I just assumed he didn’t know she had a gun. But also, like, why wouldn’t he think that? Because, obviously, she’s there… She said, “Hey, I’m going to do some crazy shit because of this.”

AS: “I think my own personal view on it — And again, it’s a bit like Brain Dead, where it does have — whether you like it or not — a little puzzle aspect. Where you can take it this way, this way, this way. [pantomimes pointing to different choices] You can interpret it in different ways.

“My interpretation would be he’s actually committed suicide by cop here. That’s why when he says to her [Brenda], “Keep the porchlight burning.” He knows he’s never going to come back… he knows he’s too damaged. Remember, he says to Claire as the shrink at one point, “I’m afraid I’ll break her,” meaning Robin’s character. I think he knows he’s too damaged, and he’s never going to be able to do what she wants. And he’s probably right. There’s no evidence that, in fact, he’s in any way cured or improved.

“Still, if he’s going to start getting around, he’s going to get those violent impulses, right? And we’ve seen that when he’s with Claire, who he nearly killed in the bathtub before that.

“So he’s on his way back to his house, because before — He knows he needs to tie this up, right? On his way, he literally calls the cops to say there’s a break-in and gives his address, because he figures Claire’s coming to get him. He knows there’s going to be a confrontation, and the cops are going to be there. So, in my mind, he set that up in such a way that he’s not coming out.”

GJ: “Because he didn’t need to walk in there. He could have waited for the cops to show up.”

AS: “Even if he did walk in there, he didn’t need to get her down on the ground with the gun. He’s sitting there, he’s got the gun to her, the cops got their guns on him, the little boy is him looking back at it — It’s all kinds of shit, but I feel like — He’s just going to end it all within there. Then we got to go see where the porch lights are still burning, and that, to me, is really poignant for whatever reason. Sitting there not knowing he’s not coming back. And then, yes, we got to go to the billboard to say the monster’s still out there. She’s going to still do more damage out there, but this little, small town tragedy is over.”

GJ: “That does add an extra layer to it, because he knows, “Hey, I’m going to be hurting the girl I love, but I cannot stand to be with her and hurt her later on, so I want to end this cycle here. And that ties into the beginning, because he tries to kill himself — Well, he gives him a chance to kill himself… so that follows through into there.”

AS: “That’s right. I mean, he’s using — It’s like — Also, I ask you this — How did that — That must be his gun, right? Yeah, because it still has the fortunes in it.”

GJ: “Yeah, so he put it somewhere where it was easily found. He didn’t keep it on him.”

AS: “Right, so it’s not like she brought — Did she bring the gun, or did she find that gun? I mean, who knows? We’re just drawing up questions here. [laughs]

“But the point being… It does come full circle. The movie begins with him being on the verge of committing suicide, but in this way that’s like, “I’m going to leave it up to fate what my fortune is.” And then it comes full circle back to him, with the same gun and the same fortunes, but it’s with her, and she said, “You and I are the same.” I think he’s hoping it’s going to be both — He’s going to kill her, and they’re going to kill him.”

GJ: “Oh yeah. And again, he’s also leaving it up to the fate of the moment, because the cops might’ve just wounded him, and not actually like, you know, unload both cylinders into him.”

AS: “That’s right!”

GJ: “Unfortunately, those small town cops are a little bit trigger happy. They get bored. [laughs]”

AS: “Apparently! Plus, he’s holding a gun.”

GJ: “Oh yeah… Not only holding a gun to a woman, but a woman that’s on a billboard and is famous in this small town. It’s not a good look for him, so it makes sense.”

AS: “Though, you notice that billboard at the end is not only in this town… You remember, the whole story there is… that Mort’s going to make a syndication deal for her. He’s made this syndication deal, and if you go up and you look at what radio station is listed there, it says LA. She’s got the little station that they are looking at in the unnamed small town… That’s the billboard saying now she’s hit the big time. She’s out in LA.” 

GJ: “And this little thing that happened is just going to bump up her career because of all of the controversy.”

AS: “Yeah! Some crazy guy just tried to kill her… She got rid of the evidence, she got the film, Mort’s dead.”

GJ: “Mort was probably into some shady shit, probably.”

AS: “Mort’s had a heart attack. He’s dead. He’s got the only copy of the footage from Body Chemistry. Which, by the way, you’re seeing Body Chemistry when we’re in Mort’s office.”

GJ: “Yeah! I assumed so!”

AS: “Before that final confrontation, the film he’s watching of her is, of course, Body Chemistry.”

GJ: “Yep! I couldn’t help but notice that Marc Singer’s face doesn’t show up at all. Probably because Corman didn’t have to pay him [that way].”

AS: “That’s right! The Beastmaster himself.”

GJ: “Yeah, just see everything but his face. [laughs] But yeah, no, that’s a very interesting way of looking at it. I didn’t think about it until you brought it up now, and all the pieces are there. That makes perfect sense… I have to rewatch it again with that mindset, and see how it holds up.”

AS: “These Corman movies need to be seen many times, with most people being better off not seeing them at all.”

GJ: “Exactly. Well, you know what we call those people? Losers, first of all. [laughs]”

AS: “[laughs]”

GJ: “Are you really a true film guy if you haven’t watched Naked Obsession seven times?”

AS: “There you go! I think there’s more than a few bits of Naked Obsession in this.”

GJ: “We’re actually getting to that point right now!... We already talked a little bit about it, but what particularly interested me were the flashback scenes, because they seemed to be from different movies entirely.”

AS: “They are. Did you recognize them all?”

GJ: “Not all of them. I recognized — I actually didn’t watch Naked Obsession until I watched Body Chemistry 2, because I heard — That was the only one that had any sort of credit anywhere about, like, “Oh yeah, there’s some Naked Obsession stuff in there,” and then I watched it. Pretty damn good movie, honestly! I was surprised how good it was.”

AS: “I think that was one of Katt’s, right? That’s one of the Katt Shea Ruben ones?”

GJ: “Yeah, with Rick Dean and William Katt.”

AS: “Look, she was the most interesting — The best director along with Carl Franklin, who was in that… [time] immediately previous to my period with Roger at Concord, and she is a brilliant filmmaker. Those erotic thrillers of hers — I think — Did she do the original Stripped to Kill? And Naked Obsession. I forgot what other ones she did. And she’s one of the people who — I think along with Rodman Flender — are the people who protected Brain Dead, in a way, from Roger trying to recut it, because — And Carl Franklin, because they saw it and I think said — Or he showed it to them, and they said, “Yep, just leave it as is.”

“So those were, to me, the most interesting films being made there.”

GJ: “[after looking up the director] Naked Obsession was actually made by Dan Golden.”

AS: “Oh yeah! Dan Golden! Dan Golden and hers — But you got to remember… I hadn’t seen — I’d seen her movies. I think Stripped to Kill is hers, right?”

GJ: “Yes!”

AS: “Naked Obsession I avoided. That was not my thing, I didn’t really watch them. I was a monster [movie] guy.

“But again, remember, those [flashbacks] came about specifically because the movie [Body Chemistry 2] didn’t have enough sex. It was a nice, small town noir that all worked perfectly, but did not have enough sex, especially for the European sales that he [Corman] wanted.”

GJ: “Makes sense. Got to get those Italian dollars, man!”

AS: “Absolutely! But also for the success of those films on VHS. Remember, this is still mostly the pre-DVD era. It’s the VHS era. Blockbusters did not carry X-rated movies. It was a very “apple pie” kind of corporation, and even quite a conservative one. The erotic thrillers were the sexiest things you could get away with in a Blockbuster, and in most towns, that’s all you have.

“So the goal was to make them as sexy as possible, and Roger knew what that meant in terms of how much frontal — upper frontal nudity — whatever it was going to have. That was precisely what he was saying to me, “Okay, the film’s finished, but it’s lacking [enough sex scenes].” He had a specific number, which I don’t remember what that number was. “I need three more.” Let’s just call it three, whatever that was.”

GJ: “The fact that he had a specific number is just funny as hell.”

AS: “It’s built in! Some of it is math.”

GJ: “That’s a true business man, right there!”

AS: “I had a similar experience on A Haunting in Connecticut, where Lionsgate [Films] was like, “We need exactly X jump scares, but you’ve got X minus five. Add five jump scares to the script, so that we have them in there.” I was like, “Okay, I get it.” And they were right. They knew what they were doing, and Roger was right for his business. That’s why they needed — So the whole task was, How am I going to provide those sex scenes without shooting more sex scenes?

GJ: “And that’s where the company sex vault comes in.”

AS: “That’s right. That’s where the forbidden sex vault came in.”

“And the fact that what people miss when they say, “Oh, it’s got bits of Naked Obsession,” is — No it doesn’t. It’s got the shots that are not in Naked Obsession, the scenes that are not in Stripped to Kill.”

GJ: “And that’s why… I can’t tell where [some scenes] are from… I watched Naked Obsession, and I saw that scene, and I’m like, That’s not quite — I know what [the scene is like].”

AS: “No!... Those shots do not appear in any movie except Body Chemistry 2. They were precisely the — literally the — It was the physical piece of film, a celluloid, that the MPAA had said, “You can keep the scene if you cut here to here.” And those are hanging in little reels. We took those out, hung them in the bins, and that’s how we did it.”

GJ: “Holding them up to a light. [pantomimes holding celluloid to light]”

AS: “A hundred percent. [points to imaginary film] “Cut here.” Those are the exact — Those are the pieces that I’m like, “Okay, we’re not going to add any sex scenes. We’re going to sex up the flashbacks by taking the forbidden sex scenes from Roger’s own erotic thrillers.”

“So again, I think it can’t be said enough, for better or for worse, for the B-movie obsessives out there — No, there is no Naked Obsession in Body Chemistry 2. There are precisely the images that were cut from Naked Obsession, that were NEVER seen in Naked Obsession, and were NEVER seen in the other ones. I think it’s Stripped to Kill, but I might be forgetting what the other one is. I don’t remember, but whatever it was, they were precisely the shots that were excised from those movies — that were censored from those movies, because they were combining sex and violence too directly.

GJ: “Oh man, I can’t wait to go on the IMDb [Internet Movie Database] forums and be like, “Actually, these scenes WEREN’T in Naked Obsession. You guys are wrong.”

AS: “And we managed to get those very scenes that the MPAA had said, “Take those scenes out, they must not be shown!” And they approved every one of them to be shown here, because… it’s all about context.”

GJ: “Yeah… You put it in the right context, they’re willing to let things slide. That, or you just change the color of blood to green, and then they let you do fucking anything.”

AS: “[laughs]”

GJ: “But that makes a lot of sense as to why I can’t really find any other credits to what those scenes are from.”

AS: “No, you can’t.”

GJ: “Because they’re not from anything!”

AS: “Roger owned them outright. His deals with actors and others was he didn’t have to pay… that type of residual. I mean, you’d get residuals if the movie is sold, but those pieces of films? He owned that completely. That’s why he was so thrilled with that as a solution, because it gave him the extra sex he needed, it did not — It literally… did it not cost him a dime, because I did not do one additional day of shooting. Whereas, it would have had to be, at least, probably three additional days of shooting to give him the three new scenes he wanted.

“He didn’t have to pay those actors to come back. He didn’t have to do any of those things, AND he finally got to use shots that he had paid for and not been able to use.”

GJ: “You just opened a door that couldn’t be closed at that point. He’s sitting there, like, “My eyes have been opened. I’m going to be able to do this shit for years.”

AS: “I don’t think they ever got away with that again, but we got away with it then. I don’t think that happened in the later Body Chemistry movies, because it relies on that flashback structure to get away with it, too.”

GJ: “And no offense to Jim Wynorski — great director, love him — but I don’t think he would get that cerebral with it.”

AS: “[laughs] Well, that’s the case where the cerebral and the sexual work together, because it’s proving what Claire said about the, “Not between the legs, but between the ears.”... It was because those scenes are then, in effect, happening inside his head as part of his psychosis, and because it’s part of the theme that “sex plus violence is bad.”

“Which it is, kids! Don’t choke your girlfriends! I don’t care how many porn things you’ve seen. They don’t actually like that. Nobody likes that. Don’t do it!

“And, if you notice it, that’s what’s happening there. It’s those types of scenes where they’re like, “No. That’s why he has to die.”

GJ: “See? All that matters is perception. What they perceive to be the story, because they watch movies all the time. They’re not going to go in there and try to figure out all the little odds and ends of this fucking movie to see what’s going on. They’re going to see a surface value, and if it’s good enough, it’s good enough.”

AS: “The MPAA sensors look very carefully… Great Soviet and Eastern European writers in the 20th century had to work under heavy censorship, poets like [Osip] Mandelstam, Joseph Brodsky, or novelists like Milan Kundera. Kundera said, “The sensors were our best readers, because they would read really carefully to look for every subtext to see if they had to take it out.” And they would say to him, “Hey, that was really good. Sorry you can’t say that, but man, I really thought that was clever.”

“I always thought of that. In a way, this — not to compare myself or this situation to their “behind the iron print” situation — but there’s a funny way in which that’s also true here. That the sensors — They’re looking at your film super carefully, and at times, they’re going to tell you, “It’s okay up to this frame.” Then you can’t do that.

“Which it’s particularly satisfying to take… the scenes, the literal pieces of shots that were too taboo, too wrong to be allowed in the movie, and get an R-rating. To literally have those exact same shots put back in, and still get an R-rating. That made Roger happy, but it made me happy, too. There was something very interesting about being able to do that.”

GJ: “That’s an accomplishment to your ingenuity right there. That’s an accomplishment to your creativity and problem-solving, so put that on your resume.”

AS: “And it was the theme of the movie. Honestly… it was a really full moment, because I was sitting there going, “I’m going to break all my promises to Greg and Robin and have to somehow force them back. And then I’m going to figure out how to shoot [the sex scenes].” And I didn’t like to shoot sex scenes. I mean, Jim [Wynorski] loves to shoot sex scenes, because he likes to be around, you know, naked women and something. I don’t know.”

GJ: “Hey, him and Fred Olen Ray, man! That’s their bread and butter right there!”

AS: “Exactly! I have nothing against them, but… it’s not my jam. I don’t want to shoot those scenes. And I especially don’t want to shoot those scenes with actors who don’t want to be in them.”

GJ: “And that shows you integrity as a director, too. You’re sitting there, like, “I’m trying to look out for my actors.”

AS: “Or, at least, just as a person.”

GJ: “Yeah, as a person!”

AS: “It’s just not my thing. So the idea that somehow I could fulfill — Basically, paying the devil his due, while not.”

GJ: “Without having the victims of it. I mean, hey, it worked!”

AS: “It makes me happy.”

GJ: “It makes me happy, too, knowing that now. That is fabulous, dude. Fantastic!

“There were a couple of those scenes… I feel were in different movies, like the intro scene where the woman’s talking about a clock. Is that just another background scene you did?”

AS: “Oh no, I shot that scene. That actress, she’s also in — I think she’s in Carnosaur. She’s definitely in Brain Dead. So, she’s the other one who’s in all three.

“I think in the original script — and again, it’s been so many years, and somewhere I probably have the scripts. I should dig it out somewhere to see — I think there was more of that full scene. That was his girlfriend in LA, and there’s a scene there where he loses his temper, and is choking her, and then hits her. That’s theoretically the moment he realized, “I have to get away, or I’m going to hurt somebody.” That’s why he’s gone home, and I did chop up that scene.”

GJ: “That’s why he gets the gun and tries to shoot himself.”

AS: “Yes, that’s what leads to the scene where he’s going to kill himself, and instead decides to go home, right? Because “where there’s hope” or whatever the line is that he finds in the fortune cookie.

“But that line she says to him there, I always wanted that to be the opening. And it is, again, the whole movie right there. It goes back to this — We’re constantly seeing this dream of his with a little boy coming into the room, that ultimately — by the time we get late in the movie — we realize is him seeing his father sexually abuse his mother. Which is the little navel, the notable point that it all meets at in his psyche and his life.

“It actually begins with the girlfriend, and Cynthia Ettinger is the actor. She’s a wonderful actor, and she’s a great acting teacher. She’s been in tons of Seinfeld [episodes] and tons of movies, but she’s also in Brain Dead, and she’s in this, and I think she might be in Carnosaur, too, as the waitress. She says, “I had a dream last night, when I could just hear ticking, but there wasn’t a clock. And I couldn’t find the clock.” And she’s like, “Well, it was you.” Because he’s [Dan] the ticking time bomb.”

GJ: “Yeah, I was going to say, “It’s not a clock!” It’s all going to blow up.”

AS: “I do think, originally, that was probably a regular linear scene at the opening of it, than then became his suicide scene. And again, remember as we talked about last time, you also had a real strict length thing with [Corman]. So both for the sake of length and, for better or for worse, my own rule with the flashback structure, is if you’re going to do that kind of thing, if you’re going to stylistically say “this is part of the language of the film”... that has to happen within the first ten minutes, too.

“You have to put all your cards on the table and say, “This is the kind of story, and this is the type of storytelling I have to do.” If you wait, and then you’re thirty, forty minutes into something, suddenly you do that thing — That to me, at least, feels like cheating. Whereas if you say from the get-go, “This is my style, this is the language of the story.”

“So in both — in part to squeeze it into Roger’s required length, and in order to establish right from the get-go this more — and again, I’ll be pretentious — this more Alain Resnais, French New Wave, Last Year at Marienbad, avant-garde language that it was going to have with the flashbacks. Not the traditional noir flashbacks where you get full scenes, but this kind of Psycho flashbacks. I wanted to do that from the beginning, so I took what was originally a linear scene with Greg and Cynthia, and made that instead into the little, mini-montage scene sequence between that and his suicide attempt, that will turn into him driving back to the hometown.”

GJ: “I think it worked really well. Again, it gives a little bit more character, and it gets across everything you need to know within the intro scene. Then you can get to the stuff that you need to get to.

“Is that the case with the cop shootouts, in the locker room, and the football game, too? Was that all just other scenes that were shaved down?”

AS: “Nope. I shot all that. We shot all — Michalak and I shot all that stuff. There might be one shooting scene that comes [from another movie] there later, but I think not. I think the only things I took from the other movies was literally after the film was finished, when we went back to the vault and took the exiles, the censored sex bits.

“Now, we shot those — the locker room scene, the black-and-white football stuff, him doing the shooting with the cops, that weird scene where he’s in the cop locker, but wearing his football uniform — we shot those.”

GJ: “Okay, yeah, I was wondering because it had Greg in all of them.”

AS: “I always wanted to put his psyche on screen. I always wanted to shoot his dream scenes or his fantasy scenes. I didn’t necessarily always know how they were going to be used, but — So yeah, we had a lot of fun with those.

“I mean, I think they look interesting, and they also bring some of the subtext that she talks about, the homoeroticism of it, too. One of the things that I wanted to have some fun with was the fact that so-called “erotic thrillers” are all about the female nudity. But to me, a lot of those stories, and those films, and especially a lot of the Italian giallos — they have a very homoerotic element.”

GJ: “Oh, for sure.”

AS: “And I wanted there to be as much, or more, showing in the use of the male body as the female body, and make it more complicated that way. Show that’s part of the layer in what’s happening in Greg’s mind. He doesn’t know where he is — probably like a lot of victims of abuse.

“So you’ve got those piles of naked male bodies in the locker room, and the ways his own body is shot. You see Greg, and his back, and the sensuousness of that in the scenes with Claire as much as you see Claire’s — I mean, you don’t get frontal nudity on either of them, because it’s an X-rated thing.

“But no, that theme — to me— part of the idea was to say that the erotic imagination is not ever going to be just one thing. It’s not only just to be heterosexual, or just homosexual. It’s going to be all of the stuff together.”

GJ: “Well, it’d be disingenuous to just focus on one, you know? If you want to do a movie about sexuality, you have to see the whole spectrum, not just one part.”

AS: “Which was clearly not the case in your traditional erotic thrillers. Not only that, it’s the woman’s sexuality that’s always so dangerous in erotic thrillers.”

GJ: “Yeah, it’s never the man’s sexuality.”

AS: “It’s always the woman’s sexuality. That was also part of where I did want to subvert that genre. That here, it’s his sexuality that’s dangerous, and Claire’s not wrong. Claire’s actually right about him, that it would only be by him actually recognizing what’s in him, and not fighting it, and not running away from it, and actually maybe even embracing it in a controlled way — that might have been okay for him. But then he would have to accept what no small-town, football-playing, mid-century, good, American boy could accept, which is that he had all kinds of desires in him that were all mixed up together.”

GJ: “He’s like, “I can’t accept that I’m a little bit kinky.” That’s pretty much what it comes down to.”

AS: “And that kinkiness was about male bodies, and female bodies, and about violence, and about this, and about that, and was working out all his stuff.

“At heart, I didn’t want — Even though the franchise is based on the idea that she’s a dangerous woman, and that her eroticism is potentially contagious and dangerous — I still wanted to center it more on the idea that actually, within this story, it’s his arrows that are so dangerously explosive.

“We’re told right from the beginning, it’s him that’s a time bomb.”

GJ: “Claire doesn’t help things, but she’s definitely not the biggest threat of the movie.”

AS: “No! I mean, she’s killed a lot of people. She probably doesn’t intend to kill more. I don’t think that’s her plan. That just happens!”

GJ: “That’s true! She’s just trying to get even!”

AS: “I remember talking with Lisa, and one of the things that was important — and she does a really good job at — I was saying to her, “Look, from your point-of-view, you’re the hero of this movie. You’re right about freakin’ everything, and you’re going to be the one who survives, and has a happy ending, and goes on.”

“So she plays the whole movie with a confidence of, like, “I’m the one that actually knows what’s going on, and I’m the hero here, and I’m the one who’s going to triumph.” And she does. And she’s not wrong.

“I mean — I take that back. She says some things in there that are totally wrong. Like — When Robin gets fed up with her, when she’s saying to this girl, who’s clearly being battered by her husband, and she says, “Oh yeah, you should just endure it.” And Robin rightly says, “No, you should call the battered-wife-center.”

GJ: “Well, both things can be true. She is wrong in some aspects, and right in other ones.”

AS: “She’s wrong about the advice she’s giving other people. She’s not wrong about herself and about Dan. And, in fact, they might have been a good couple.”

GJ: “Yeah, honestly, they probably would’ve worked out pretty well. But again, that would require Claire toning it down a bit, at least as far as manipulation goes, and Dan having to come to terms with himself, which is — as you said, no small-town boy from the 60s or 70s is going to do that.”

AS: “But it’s the only — I mean, the only sex he has in the movie is with her.”

GJ: “It looks like they had a great time!”

AS: “As we said before with Robin, she remains the chasted [virgin], kissing under the bleachers.”

GJ: “Yeah, a lot more layers in this than people give it credit for, and I’m glad we’re exposing those layers.

“Going back to the first film — I actually haven’t seen the first film. I watched yours to see if it holds up on its own without any sort of precursor, and it does! It holds up really well. I feel like I don’t even need to watch the first film.

“I was just curious — Did you watch the first film before doing this? Did you take it into consideration at all?”

AS: “I didn’t. I mean, I watched through it to get the scenes… that we were going to use, but I don’t remember seeing it, no. I knew that they had started — Once it was not going to be the version I was going to do — Once I said I’m not going to make it — Because I had started on the path. I never wrote a draft of it, but I had notes for what would have been the Brain Dead follow-up as Body Chemistry. Even the titles, you can see, were connected in that way.

“I didn’t have any real interest to [see it]. Not to knock it, I think it’s probably fine. It did very well, and I know — If I saw it, I don’t even remember it. I certainly didn’t look at it for any — I mean, I had to know enough of that — Whatever I needed to know about its plot was in Jackson’s draft of the Body Chemistry 2 script, in terms of her [Claire’s] backstory, that there was a dead man. But I, in truth, never really did know what that story was. Who did she kill and why? I got no idea.”

GJ: “Honestly, I feel like it’s better not to know what it is. It gives it a little bit more mystery. I guess I can go back and watch it if I’m really curious.”

AS: “Now you made me curious. I might have to go watch it.”

GS: “Do a commentary of Body Chemistry. Say, “I’m going to watch the first movie of the sequel I did, and see what it’s all about.”

AS: “I wish they would have re-released this one. I’d love to do a commentary on this one, and have someone save it, but I don’t think this one’s ever going to get the Blu Ray treatment that the others do.”

GJ: “You know what? I’ll keep hounding Shout Factory. They know me on a first name basis now.”

AS: “Just be like, “That’s the one. Forget the other ones.”

GJ: “I got them on speed dial right now. [laughs]”

AS: “Yeah, tell them you and I can do the commentary together while they do it.”

GJ: “Perfect! I’ll let them know that! Like, “Listen, we’ll do it. We’ll give it to you. You just have to put it on the disc.” I would love that. That’d be amazing. As I said, I’ll pester them a little bit. I’ve been pestering about Carnosaur, but apparently they don’t own the rights to it. I don’t know. That’s a whole story.”

AS: “Carnosaur just had a big — a different big release. I forget from who.”

GJ: “The book had a release, but the movie hasn’t had a release as far as I know.”

AS: “Did not Carnosaur get the — just have — You might be — I have to go upstairs. I thought there was a new Blu Ray, but maybe there hasn’t — Has it not had a Blu Ray yet?”

GJ: “No, just DVD. Those three DVDs I have in my closet.”

AS: “The old three, the old DVDs.

GJ: “As far as I know.”

AS: “It’s probably because Roger[‘s estate] still owns it, and it’s still valuable to him.”

GJ: “Yeah, that’s what I imagine, because I remember they said they sold the library to Shout Factory. I’m assuming he left some out, because there’s some [missing] in there. I reached through to them directly. I’m like, “Hey, do you own the rights to this series?” And they said, “Nope, don’t have those ones.”

AS: “They don’t have the Carnosaur series. Interesting.”

GJ: “Nope. So I’m assuming it’s still with the estate, but that’s a lot more research. I’ll let you know about all that when I dive deeper into it.”

AS: “I would be shocked if it wasn’t still within Roger’s ownership, because it was too valuable. He just made too much money.”

GJ: “Oh yeah, it’s one of his highest grossing movies ever. I wouldn’t want to sell it, either.”

AS: “I think it was his number one. So when you find that out, we can dig into it and see.”

GJ: “I’ll let you know what I find out!”

AS: “Very good! I probably got to go. We got any final questions? I’ll give you a final question.”

GJ: “Okay, let’s see. We don’t have to worry about the reviews.”

AS: “Reviews? I mean, I don’t think it got reviewed very much, and I actually didn’t pay attention to them. I was moving on and other things. Like I said, it has a special place in my heart, but I don’t think — and I always hoped — It’s true that, in a way, I always hoped someday, someone would look at that and go, “Oh wait! This has got all this 1940s and 50s [style], and there’s so much more interesting psychological and narrative stuff going on there.” But hey, you just put things out there, like notes in a bottle, to see what people thought about it. I don’t remember at the time if it got any reviews at all.”

GJ: “I mean, there’s at least one, because I got a bunch of them off IMDB. I’ll read them off to you real quick if you want me to.”

AS: “I’m sure none of them were friendly. [chuckles]”

GJ: “Let’s see! So I took the liberty of getting a couple of these [reviews].

“The first one is — “The film is oddly unerotic…”

“The next one is — “Light on nudity for a sexual thriller. Must be one for the girls.”

AS: “There you go!”

GJ: “The next one — “The fact she can so easily handcuff her male companions is totally unbelievable… Her one dimensional performance goes from sashaying in up-to-here dresses, overly made in a whorish fashion and delivering what she thinks is sexy dialogue. Boring.”

“A little bit of nudity and sex scenes that lasted seconds.”

“Because it’s supposed to be an adult erotic thriller, the only person who appears to be naked is Lisa, and not Robin Riker who may have had a no nudity clause on her contract.”

“The front cover says “uncut version” and promises it is “even hotter than the original,” even though there are no sex scenes whatsoever.”

“Which leads me to believe that guy didn’t even watch the fucking movie.”

AS: “He’s not wrong. There’s barely — I mean, there’s one scene with her and Greg on the stairs that kind of becomes [a sex scene].”

GJ: “That’s a sex scene! That is a single sex scene. He said there’s NONE whatsoever.

“And then, of course — “Director Adam Simon… combines pretension with in-jokes in this introspective thriller.”

AS: “There you go!”

GJ: “Perfect! That’s the only good one.”

AS: “Well, in a funny way, those other early reviews you mentioned, they’re not wrong when they say it’s “one for the girls.” Yes, it was, in that sense.

“Look, my favorite two genres, book-wise, were always the horror novel and the romance novel. I’ve always loved romance, and the films I was most inspired by for this one were… Caught and the Frank Borsage melodramas. They were noir melodramas, not crime movies. So there’s no doubt that those reviewers are right.

“That was my intent, and it was frustrating to Roger. That’s why he demanded more sex scenes. My intent was actually not to do that, and to subvert that, and to make it more one of these noir/romance melodramas instead.

“And yes, as they say, it’s an erotic thriller that does not have sex in it, and the sex it does have is mostly inside his [Dan’s] head and is fucked up. So they’re not wrong. And yes, that last one about the pretentiousness plus in-jokes plus whatever. I’ll take — I’ll live with that.”

GJ: “That one sounds more like a compliment than it does a critique!”

AS: “What year was it officially released? Does it say that?”

GJ: “1991 was when the movie was released. I feel like most of these other reviews are just a bunch of guys who ran a movie that they thought was going to get their rocks off, and they’re like, “What the hell is this?” And they got mad about it.

“There’s one more review. I don’t have it on me, but I remember reading it, and it’s from TV Guide, I think. I’m guessing it came out when it was being syndicated on television. The guy who wrote it accused the film of being sexist, which I think is wrong… because they were saying, “A strong woman is the villain.” And I’m like, “Well, 1. — Women can be villains. That’s not, you know, a gender-specific thing. And 2. — It’s very much pro a lot of things.”

“If anything, it’s like you said — The man is the problem in this movie. He’s the bigger issue about this.”

AS: “That person is not necessarily wrong in a way, but I would say that’s the genre. And you’re right, the genre tends to demonize female sexuality. The erotic thriller, especially in the late 80s and the 90s version, explicitly demonizes female sexuality and desire, and some of that it picks up from classic film noir.

“And a lot of the great film noirs themselves also demonize female desire, or make that desire murderous. That’s as true for Double Indemnity as it is for Basic Instinct. That is sort of built into the genre. I very consciously looked to a counter genre, which doesn’t really have a name. I think we would call it today — “domestic noir.”

“And that, again, is films like Frank Borsage’s melodramas, Douglas Sirk’s melodramas, and these Max Ophüls films that he made here during the war, like Caught and The Reckless Moment, that purposely subvert that.

“So I still had to have that dangerous woman’s desire thing because it’s about Claire, her character is there, but most of the movie isn’t about that, and isn’t about her. It’s much more about HIS dangerous, masochistic, sadistic feelings, the fact that he can’t have desire for a woman without wanting to hurt her, and that’s wrong.”

“And it puts it much more into the context of this other kind of love story, this doomed love story that’s never going to happen, in part because of who he is, and because of what Claire does. So the thing that’s being complained about there in terms of its sexism, that is baked into noir, neo-noir, and especially the erotic thriller version.

“I think there are now versions being made by more subversive filmmakers. That genre is being rediscovered, and I’m sure being deconstructed and changed.

“There was one that just came out that had a — what’s-her-name from Twilight. You know?”

GJ: “Oh! Kristen Stewart! Love Lies Bleeding.”

AS: “Yes! I haven’t seen it, but I hear it takes that classic erotic thriller, and absolutely starts to play it in new ways. I think we’re going to see more of that, not least because we have simply so many more interesting — so many more female filmmakers, so many more female screenwriters, so many more female directors, but who also grew up seeing these same movies.

“So I fully expect some of them to completely subvert and transform that genre in ways that will transcend its fairly misogynistic and sexist origins. No doubt.

“But all I would like to say is — I hope that when they do that, some of them may stumble onto Body Chemistry 2: The Voice of a Stranger, and realize it’s the precursor of what they’re trying to do.”

GJ: “Yeah! Be there, like, “Listen, this is where it all began.”

AS: “I was certainly very hyper aware of the misogyny and sexism built into those genres. And while trying to be a part of that genre, I also was fairly consciously trying to deconstruct it and play with it in a more interesting way, for better or for worse.”

GJ: “You can also read this movie as a deconstruction of the action hero. Like, what happens after the action movie.”

AS: “One hundred percent!”

GJ: “A lot of the scenes are a bunch of action shots that you’d see in an action movie, and then it’s the aftermath.”

AS: “It’s like — Because I was also very certainly — Literally, even with the idea of the suicide scene in the beginning, that was my own personal — what’s the word — not twist on, but — a little bit of a raised middle finger to the action movie cliche of the 80s and into the 90s. Lethal Weapon being a classic example. Well, but also that guy [Dan], like the guy in Lethal Weapon, or for that matter, a Rambo figure in general — the kind [Sylvester] Stallone and that [Mel Gibson] and the others were always playing — was this tortured male guy always on the verge of suicide, right? When we meet him at the beginning of Lethal Weapon, he’s on the verge of suicide, but hey — he’s still the good guy, and we need him to go out there and kill all the bad guys.

“Well, this is like if that guy in Lethal Weapon instead actually went back to his small town. What would have happened to him? And let’s deal with how fucked up that guy actually is, rather than going, “Oh, well, the good thing would be if we could unleash him on criminals, and that would all work out well.” You would end up with all those very violent cop movies of the later 80s and into the 90s that Stallone and the rest of them were doing.

“And I don’t dislike those movies, but I definitely was having some fun with the specific cliche of the tormented cop on the verge of suicide. But in those movies, that always gets turned to the use of killing more bad guys. Instead here, it becomes, “Well, what happened to that guy’s love life?”

GJ: “The others go down like, “Oh, we need this guy back on the force. He’s a loose cannon, but he’s the best we got.” This one’s like, “He left town, so he can’t come back.”

AS: “No, you can’t come back to — You know what? The source of all those [movies] is actually a film I really love and admire, and I love all of them — the Dirty Harry movies. That whole 70s genre of vigilante/cop. I love those movies, and I love the Italian versions of them. I like the Charles Bronson versions of them. I especially love the Don Siegel/Clint Eastwood versions. Including the peak of them, and the ones that almost also gives birth to the erotic thrillers, are those later Eastwood ones like Sudden Impact. Tightrope, I think it’s called, is another one he did in that era. The other one that’s very kinky… I like those films.

“But definitely, to me, it was a matter of let’s take that character that’s on the verge of psychotic — male, violent, fucked up guy who were heroized in those movies, and let’s put him in this love story and see what he’s about in this different way. Yeah, I’d own that for sure, you know?”

GJ: “I think that’s a fantastic way to go about it, and I appreciate you for subverting the genre a bit. And I do think that once these directors and new writers look back for inspiration, they’re going to stumble upon Body Chemistry 2 and realize, “Hey, this is different. This isn’t like the rest of them. This isn’t like Body Chemistry 1, or 3, or 4, or any of the other ones.”

AS: “And as they say, it’s the erotic thriller without the sex scenes, EXCEPT it does have sex scenes.”

GJ: “It has one!”

AS: “Just not the way you want them. It doesn’t give them to the viewer the way the viewer thinks they want them.”

GJ: “It’s not “sexy.” It’s very much a visceral kind of thing.”

AS: “Really, it doesn’t — The sex is there, not to feed the audience’s fantasy, but to actually show what they did to the character.”

GJ: “Exactly.

“I think right there is a good place to end it, man. I appreciate you coming out here and talking Body Chemistry 2 with me!”

AS: “My pleasure! I’m sure there’s no other — most likely no other time in my life I will be able to have a two and a half hour deep, intellectual conversation about Body Chemistry 2. So if anything, I am truly grateful to you!”

GJ: “Of course, man! And my pleasure! Again, I’m going to be hounding Shout Factory so we can get that commentary up for Body Chemistry 2, the DVD or the Blu Ray.”

AS: “Let’s do it!”

GJ: “Next time, we’ll be talking about Carnosaur. So, we’ll see how that goes! I’m looking forward to that one. That’s the one I’m most excited for, this is the one I was most interested in. So I look forward to talking to you about it, man! We’ll schedule that at some point.”

AS: “Tell me when you’re ready. I’ll be around! I’m sure we’ll make the time whenever we need to.”

GJ: “Oh yeah! Sure thing, man! I’ll let you know soon.

“Take it easy, Adam Simon! Pleasure as always, and have yourself a great rest of your night.”

AS: “Thank you so much. Thanks for being into these crazy films.”

GJ: “Oh, I love them. One of my favorite movies now is Body Chemistry 2. I got to watch it for the seventh time!

AS: “Alright, brother. Will see you soon.”

GJ: “Take it easy, man.”