Sleepwalking through dreams with William Malone

In the hands of a capable artist, the canvas of horror can be a beautiful sight to see. Given the right talent and material something can be polished and clean, yet still hold on to the essence of the macabre. Films like Suspiria and Inferno are prime examples of cinema that, if frozen in time, is like a painting that would be behind lock and key at the finest museum in the world. Filmmaker William Malone has given modern cinema some of the most sumptuous pieces of celluloid since Dario Argento left me breathless in 1977 and 1980.

Parasomnia played at the Screamfest Film Festival a few years back, and since then, William has been clawing his way to getting his most personal movie to date released to the masses. I had the distinct pleasure to see it early and have a nice, lengthy talk with a director whose work is underrated, to say the least.

Jason Bene: You are a huge devotee of the 1920 silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. How much of that style and vision can be seen in Parasomnia?

William Malone: I think it is probably more sublte than it is overt. I certainly love that film, but I think the influence is more about themes and probably the way that angles were shot at and some things like that. Stylistic things I would think. It’s kind of hard for me to put a finger on it because I am so used to seeing those things, that they don’t even register with me anymore.

Jason Bene: This was a true labor of love for you. You put up half of the budget with your own money. That is a pretty ballsy move in an industry that is so corporate and studio controlled.

William Malone: [Laughs] Probably stupid would be a better word. You know, it’s just one of those things. I made a movie years ago called Scared to Death, which was a really terrible monster movie. It was a lot of fun and I kind of wanted to go back and do something like that again. Something that you just go do and you don’t have to answer to a lot of people. It was kind of an interesting experience because I found out it was a double-edged sword because yes, you don’t have anybody to answer to, but then you don’t have anybody to answer to. Things take a lot longer just because of the time schedule.

Jason Bene: In your last three feature films and your episode of Masters of Horror [Fair Haired Child], I noticed your work has a sort of black and white, almost like a painting come to life bleached look to it. Were there any artists that this imagery was derived from?

William Malone: Probably, not specifically. I started out getting into photography when I was a kid. My parents bought me a 4 x 5 Graphic. I asked for a camera and for some reason they gave me this press camera and I started shooting pictures. I’ve always developed my own black and white stuff and I just love black and white imagery. A lot of times you see films that have been colorized and you realize how much it takes away from the movie. Some movies are better in black and white or a monochromatic scale. It’s difficult to actually make a movie in black and white anymore for a lot of different reasons. You can make movies that have sort of the same tone and quality to them.

Jason Bene: The character Danny Sloan is an artist as well as a music buff. Is it safe to say you projected yourself onto him?

William Malone: When you are a director or writer the movies you make end up being psychotherapy. You’re totally exposed. I thought if you are going to make a movie you’re financing yourself, you might as well just be self indulgent. I did put a lot of myself in that. I’m also part Byron Volpe and probably part Detective Garrett and all of the rest of those characters as well.

Jason Bene: You cast the great Jeffrey Combs as Detective Garrett. You both worked together on the remake of House on Haunted Hill and Feardotcom. What sort of working relationship do you two have?

William Malone: I first met him on a show I did called Perversions of Science [The Exile], which was a spinoff of Tales from the Crypt. It was going to be a science fiction spinoff. I think they did about eight or nine episodes, I forget exactly how many they did. I did an episode and his name came across the casting role, so I said, “Jeffrey Combs, I got to have him.” We wound up working really well together. I really like Jeffrey. I always try and find something for him to be in with my films. He’s just a good solid actor. I think because all of the genre stuff he’s done, people probably don’t take him as serious as they should. He’s really an excellent actor. I just saw him in a stage production playing Edgar Allan Poe and he was sensational.

Jason Bene: I haven’t seen it but I hear it’s a one man show.

William Malone: It’s a one man show and he’s genius. Because he plays these sort of mad characters and a lot of these movies have used him that way. I tried to give him roles where he wasn’t the mad scientist, but he was playing some sort of tragic figure, or in the case of Feardotcom, kind of a slimy detective. He’s a great fan of film noir, as I am as well, so I tried to find things like that for him to do.

Jason Bene: Patrick Kilpatrick and Timothy Bottoms. Need I say more? They do a great job in the film.

William Malone: I never worked with Timothy before and I fell in love with him on this movie. He’s just a super guy. I was struggling with who could play a role [Dr. Coso] that didn’t have a lot of screen time. He’s somebody when you saw him you immediately liked him and who carried a lot of things with him already. I think Timothy has that quality when he is performing. He’s sort of like the ground under your feet in the story.

I worked with Patrick on a show called Sleepwalkers, it’s the second time we worked together. He played a psycho in that. He was so good I thought, well, I need somebody who can really pull this off. Besides having the physical presence that is rather imposing, he’s also a very smart guy and very well read. That was sort of the character of Byron Volpe anyway, so he sort of fit the bill really good. I think he delivers a really excellent performance.

Jason Bene: Especially when you consider there’s a good part of the film that you don’t see his face. It’s all about his emotion and his voice projecting himself.

William Malone: His presence is felt throughout the film even though you don’t really see him until about the last third of the film.

Jason Bene: Having a killer who uses hypnotism as a power to control people’s actions was brilliant and original. Where you a fan of illusion and that kind of unknown?

William Malone: As we talked about before, I watch a lot of silent films and early ‘talkies’, and one of the films I screened was Svengali with John Barrymore. It’s kind of an over-the-top silly movie, but there are moments in it that’s something people haven’t really played with in a long time. That was kind of the origins of that.

Jason Bene: Parasomnia is perhaps your most violent film to date, but it’s also with a heavy dose of the fantasy world. I’d describe it as an adult version of Alice in Wonderland and Sleeping Beauty. How do you see it?

William Malone: I’ve always thought of it as a dark fairy tale when I starting to make it. That was really the approach I took to it. I never really intended to make a film that was based in real reality. I’ve done those kinds of films and those are fun and I would do them again. I’d love to do something that was sort of different. When I did my Masters of Horrors [Fair Haired Child] it had a little bit of that quality to it I think. I wanted to play with that just a little bit more before I went on to something else. Parasomnia was an opportunity to really sort of expand on those sort of themes.

Jason Bene: There is a creature in the dream landscape that could be a sibling of the twitching, ghoulish figure from Fair Haired Child. Is there a connection?

William Malone: There is a connection actually. I had designed the creature for Masters of Horror. I did a whole bunch of different sketches, and one of them was the one that wound up in Parasomnia. It was much more eleborate than the one that was in Masters of Horror, and it was actually four or five sketches down the road from that. I really wanted to do it, but I realized the schedule we had with Masters of Horror that KNB wouldn’t have been able to have the time to do it, so we went with a more simplistic design. I thought they delivered a really an excellent job on it. When it came time to do Parasomnia I had to drag out this other version. He’s kind of that character’s sort of nastier, more evil brother. My movies always sort of have a slop-over, there is always something from my previous movies. I don’t know why that is. Maybe I’m just lazy. I get attached to characters or things in my movies and I go, “I’ll use that again”.

Jason Bene: We catch a glimpse of Byron Volpe’s psyche come to life and it’s kind of a pseudo-Victorian mechanical ‘steampunk’ style. Is that a historical sub-genre that you were trying to bring to life?

William Malone: I don’t think they even had a name for it back in the late 80′s and early 90′s. In the late 80′s I started really getting into a lot of Victorian things like that. Mixing it with sort of dark, gothic sort of imagery – which I like. I think I was sort of on a similiar path with several other people, including some rock videos that had that same direction as well. It was sort of a cumulation of a bunch of different things that sort of happened. Later on I had heard the term ‘steampunk’, I guess that probably defines it to some degree. It’s a lot of the things that I like personally and want to use in film. In Parasomnia, Billy, who is Danny’s drugged up friend, is an artist who creates these mechanical devices and art. What Byron Volpe does is when he goes over to Billy’s he just takes advantage of all of the stuff that Billy had already created. If you actually look in the film you see that Billy is actually working on those devices when Danny comes over and tells him about the murders and all that stuff. Everything you seen in the end of the film is in that room actually. Byron didn’t have time to create all that stuff, he just took advantage. He’s a guy who works with whatever he comes across. He’s an opportunist.

Jason Bene: Parasomnia has played film festivals everywhere. On July 13, E1 Entertainment is releasing it on Blu-ray and DVD. Are you relieved that this chapter of your film career is coming full circle and people can finally get to see it?

William Malone: It’s been a long battle. It really took a lot longer to do it than I really anticipated. I’m very anxious for it to come out and people see it. Also to move on because its consumed so much of my life. I really was not intentional. I didn’t really think I was going to be working on this for three or four years, which it turned out to be. It has a life long after you make it and then you have to promote it and take it to all of the festivals. It’s a lot of work. I love the film, but I’d rather go on and make something new. You want to go on and make your next thing.

Killer Film thanks William Malone immensely for this interview! His film resume consists of Scared to Death, Creature, The House on Haunted Hill, Feardotcom, and Parasomnia. Make sure to check them out. He also directed two episodes of Tales from the Crypt [Only Sin Deep, Report from the Grave].