New Review and Atlanta Horror

I just thought I'd drop in and let everyone know that Bad Lit just published a review of FBN and also I can confirm that FBN is playing October 29th at the Atlanta Horror Fest.

Fango Article and ifilm

Fangoria published a nice news article about my film today, allowing me another opportunity to do some Anger namechecking and get some more press for this New York show. Speaking of Pioneer Theater, their October 2006 schedule really has some incredible films - Bad Ronald from 35mm? Phantom of the Opera (Chaney) and Argento's Opera from 35mm? And The Haunted Palace? Amazing stuff.

Ifilm also posted my trailer in their Indie Film section where you can watch it and vote.

FBN playing Spooky Film Festival

I also recently found out that FBN is set to play The Spooky Movie Film Festival in Fairfax, Virginia which is running from October 27-29. It's being held at the Cinema Arts Theater, which looks like a very nice establishment.

Super 8: A fun new format for you and your friends!

I think my obsession with Super 8 began in the early nineties when a small number of horror, cult and generally weirdo arty titles which originated on the format began to appear on home video. Of course today people know the work of Super 8 film himself, Nathan Schiff (Weasels Rip My Flesh, Long Island Cannibal Massacre, etc.) but I had no idea about his films then and I had a very vague idea about all those other cinema punk movements of Kern, Zedd, Jarman, etc. Later on I found some Kenneth Anger VHS titles for a buck at Camelot Records but that was much later on. No, it was really the S8 horror that did it for me, titles like Leif Jonker's Darkness and J.R. Bookwalter's Dead Next Door. On the more eclectic side of things I began to read about films like Nekromantik and Age of Insects in the"underground" section of Film Threat. On the magazine front there was of course that Chris Gore publication I just mentioned along with tiny little rags like Independent Video and even old issues of Cinemagic and Super-8 Filmmaker, two early eighties publications devoted to the Super 8 lifestyle.

So after I did all this reading I decided I wanted in on all this stuff. I began to rummage through garage sales like a lunatic, buying any crappy projector or camera I could find. I ended up with a number of cameras, three projectors, a screen and a viewer which I used only as a prop in FBN because I think most cheap viewer screens suck and are only good for their rewinds. Around this time I also found a gigantic stash of vintage kodak splice tape at this strange arts and crafts store in Burlington, Vermont but by the time I was ready to make this Frankenstein film nearly a decade and a half later all of this crap had broken down or had been extensively broken apart by one of my screwdrivers; also those projectors kept dying on me and instead of buying a new bulb it was just cheaper to find a newer one but it was nightmare for a while - my Monkey Wards projector died, then that Kodak one and then I finally discovered this DeJur El Dorado projector which is still holding up after many years of abuse. So after all these years I took that one projector that survived along with essentially the one Chinon camera which had survived and began to think about production on FBN.

Director John R. Hand Interview

I guess it also might be a swell idea to post the article that Independent News did on my film a few weeks before the local premiere of FBN. You know to me, I find publicity to be a kind of double-edged sword in the sense that I like talking about my film and I like read about others who share their experiences making their own films but in another way there's something about this total "opening up" in a sense which kind feels wrong to me sometimes, especially when you're trying to make a film like I am that kind of exists within it's own strange little world. To me, once you start going "oh yeah, we made that this way and we did this such and such..." it's kind of demystifying the whole thing in a way. I've never really refused to talk about the film because I just don't think that's very polite and often when you're making such a low-budget film as mine essentially by yourself this whole whirlwind of promotional nonsense is kind of thrust upon your very person, so if you don't stand up for your film who really will? I'm still a big fan of promotional nonsense but I've also gained a certain amount of sympathy and respect for people who are little hesistant to divulge behind-the-scenes information because I've become slightly hesitant myself. Also there's that big gigantic issue of talking about a film's "meaning" which in the case of FBN is a very present matter because, well, it's a film that's very open to interpretation in many ways.

FBN to play Atlanta Horror Fest

Though I'm not sure of the exact time it's showing, Frankensteins Bloody Nightmare is now on the schedule of the Atlanta Horror Fest on October 27th along with other films such as Point of Fear, The Passing, Livelihood, Moon In Your Blood, The Bridge, Witch City, Die You Zombie Bastards, The Slaughter, Come Get Some and a bunch of other neat short films. I think the features and the shorts are going to play in the background around all these other bands and fun Halloween events so it should make for a really interesting event for people in the Atlanta, Georgia area. It's fun to be screening in the town where they shot Cannibal Apocalypse.

FBN Trailers

Since I'd mentioned the trailers in my first post I thought I'd save everyone the trouble of hunting around for them and just post them here:

FBN New York Flyer

Another weirdo FBN flyer for the showing in New York. Someday I will get it right. Tell your friends! Tell your enemies! I feel like next week I'm going to strap one of those P.A. systems atop my car like The Blues Brothers and just wander around the Best Buy parking lot, shamelessly advertising my show.

FBN - A Timeline

I think I'm going to update this posting as I remember certain details but for now here it goes:

Thursday, January 12, 2006

The last bit of Super-8 that I had transferred to video by Cinepost finally arrived on my doorstep today. Basically the transfer was everything I'd already expected given the good quality of the footage; no big surprises really. So I've been checking all that video today along with shooting and editing some odd shapes and patterns which will somehow be projected during the Avant-A-Go-Go art show that's going on this friday the 13th.


Thursday, December 29, 2005

Last night we filmed the beginning of the whole fight scene sequence where I start out wandering around in "the bad part of town" (AKA Downtown Pensacola) and then I end up in "the worse part of town" which in the film is supposed to be a very bad place. It's worse than bad, which is pretty bad in my book. I think the shot worked out well.

I also sent off the last bit of super-8 for film-to-video transfer yesterday as well. It was just as melancholy an event as last time, watching the package with the film slip under the counter, possibly never to be seen again...gives me nightmares. The only thing which cheered me up today is that I recieved my weirdo brain prop in the mail, but that's another blog.


Wednesday, December 14, 2005

I picked up some more of the processed super-8 today. As with the other rolls, I rip open the package in the store and unspool a few feet of the actual film onto the floor and hold it against the light like I'm some retard who's amazed at the concept of individual pictures all strung together in a moving sequence with sproket holes on one side. Usually it looks quite good (all tiny miniature pictures look good) and then I happily run home where I then actually project the footage and suddenly happiness or disappointment or some uncomfortable mixture of the two sets in. With this 100 ft of celluloid I was generally happy; a few things didn't work as I'd planned but some other things came off perfectly. Ultimately the chaotic nature of the finale combined with the extreme coloration of the kodachrome will work to my advantage.


Sunday, December 04, 2005

Last friday I shot one of the last scenes in the film, a scene involving a certain amount of running, blood and general outdoor chaos. I can't wait until I get the footage processed from this scene...I mean it was one of those days where every element seemed to just click. Even if there was some disagreement or misunderstanding about what I wanted in a scene it just all felt like we were really getting some good material. Anyway, on to the next few scenes...


Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Last night (well really this morning) we "created" the gang scene in Frankenstein's Bloody Nightmare. It was cold...that's all I really have to say. I just hope all that coldness shows up in the finished product.


Saturday, July 2, 2005

The day of live 8 on television also became a day of shooting for me. On Super 8. Alone.


Friday, July 1, 2005

This was essentially the first "real" day of principal photography on FBN, real in the sense that I had some cast and crew and other people wandering around. The real talent before the camera was the great Chester Delacruz who played the role of Andrew Milligan the administrative asstant to perfection. I shot most of his


Tuesday, February 14, 1979

I was born, I think around 11:11. Anyway, just thought I might note this.

Welcome to My Nightmare

Hi, I'm John R. Hand and unless someone tells me different this is the official blog for my film Frankensteins Bloody Nightmare. Now I'm of the philosophy that if you're going to go make something you should go and do it so I guess this blog is a little late - the film has already been completed, it's already been licensed by Unearthed Films for US DVD release sometime in 2007 and it's playing at New York's Pioneer Theater for a week of shows in October. But I guess it's never too late to try, so here I am.

You can find out more about FBN and what it's all about at my main website but if I had to describe the film myself I would just say that it's simply an odd little movie. It's genre is ultimately oddness, though I guess I will play along with people and pretend that it's a horror film. I like the term "fantastic film" because that really encompasses what I was going for, something that looks not of this time or this world really. FBN was shot primarily in Super 8 Kodachrome, at first because I was getting into Jean Rollin and Jess Franco and I wanted to make a kind of vintage-looking film in the chromatic spectrum of things (as opposed to going with plus-x and tri-x and risking infringment onto Mr. Lynch's territory) but halfway through filming I decided that I just wanted it to look different, like just a ride through this strange broken emotional world of this one character, though I don't believe most viewers would characterize it as that kind of cliche of a one-man film which I myself dislike as well. I think the trailers on my website give one a good idea of where I'm coming from more than any of this other crap I'm writing because I believe this film is ultimately a very strange visual experience.

Yes, Hand really is my real surname and yes, I really did intend to spell Frankensteins Bloody Nightmare without that apostrophe, not for any really pretentious reason other than the fact that the words just look prettier without that stupid character getting in between all those other nice letters. Is there anything so wrong with that? For a long time I spelled it correctly and then when I was making the FBN poster design the words just didn't look very pretty with that stupid apostrophe. Now the title FBN is an "homage" of sort's to Paul Naschy's Frankentein's Bloody Terror and if you see the photoshopped version of the FBT logo on the new FBT DVD they definitely make the apostrophe work by kind of distorting the title but with FBN I wanted a kind of weird, RED-colored Euro font and it didn't good with the apostrophe so I didn't use it, and then I found out that no matter what font I used I found the whole title just looked cleaner as "Frankensteins Bloody Nightmare." but it's really just a personal and an academic thing; it's like how many exclamation points are there in a Russ Meyer film title or how many S's in Sweet Sweetback's Badassss Song? Most people misspell these things without knowing it, and I'm not enough of a pretentious asshole yet to really ask anyone to start using my spelling of the title so pretty much every document related to this film, everything that's been printed about it, and the Pioneer website all list it the old way, which is fine by me. So there's one in the title of the blog but just try to ignore it, for me, okay? Pretty please?