Director talks The Legend of the Psychotic Forest Ranger

Camp fires. Horny teenagers. A killer in the woods. It must be a 1980s slasher…but wait, it’s 2011? Grabbing a camera is as easy as it is going to Best Buy now days, but to make a good movie, instead of something someone would rather hit the delete button, takes a little more than pressing the record button. Writer/director Brad Mills talks to Killer Film about his Canadian DIY slasher The Legend of the Psychotic Forest Ranger, that has something else placing inside of your head other than an axe – tongue planted firmly in cheek.

Jon: Picking up a camera and shooting a movie seems so easy to non-film-makers, so tell us about the origin of The Legend of the Psychotic Forest Ranger and how did you get it funded?

Brad Mills: There are a few dream crushing assholes, out there – but thankfully there’s a lot more creative types. If you have great ideas, if you want to pick up a camera and shoot a movie, quit flapping your vagina and do it. It might be the shittiest thing since Birdemic, but at least you’re learning.

The trick is writing or finding a great script. A filmmaker bud of mine Ashley Young (Toilet Love) loaned me a copy of this book “From Reel To Deal” by Dov Simens. It gives you the formula or making low budget movies. If you want to make movies, read that book! That book taught me a lot.

Once I started writing a movie about a satanic forest ranger, someone downstairs must have been paying attention, because the pentagrams started to line up for us.

We just started making plans and moving forward with pre-production, with blind faith that nothing was going to stand in our way to getting this movie made. My sister Jacquelyn had just graduated from film school and her short For Wendy started winning all these crazy awards from huge festivals, and we got some interest from National Lampoon – so everyone was excited.

We ended up raising 50k on Facebook, and shot it over 23 days in Cape Breton Nova Scotia, with only 2 crew members burning alive on set. Did I mention it was a “green” film? That’s cool, if you’re into that.

Jon: You mentioned Psycho Cop as a favorite bad movie and a source of inspiration. Why?

Brad Mills: Psycho Cop, for me, was the epitome of hilarious B-horror because bless their rotten souls, they were seriously trying to make a good movie. They thought they were doing a good job, and that’s why it’s funny.

We all like to laugh at bad movies – it kinda contradicts the dream crushing asshole comment I made above, but all through history, humor has come from failure…just look at Perez Hilton – he’s rich, because people suck.

In the basic common sense, logic and continuity departments, Psycho Cop scores a 0 out of 10. Scenes magically switch from day to night, cans of soup go missing and cause more alarm than friends getting murdered, and – although there’s no nudity – characters bathe together for unknown reasons.

It has all the classic elements of a hilariously bad 80s horror movie. Major plot holes, glaring continuity errors, a killer that defies logic with a back story that makes no sense, terrible acting, stereotypical shallow characters.

Everyone’s got that movie that you love to hate on, and have to hold initiation screenings of it for all your friends – for a lot of people that’s Troll 2 – for me it was Psycho Cop.

Jon: There’s such a fine line now days in purposely making a bad movie. Uwe Boll makes bad movies, maybe intentionally, but they’re not as fun as a Troll 2. Larry Blamire’s The Lost Skeleton of Cadavera is a rare example in making it work. The Legend of the Psychotic Forest Ranger is certainly much like that film. How hard was it to find actors to successfully carry the tone?

Brad Mills: It’s funny you mention Lost Skeleton, that gem was actually the 2nd biggest inspiration for me. I saw that movie and was laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe at points.

Ranger is an authentic genre send up like Lost Skeleton, not an in your face parody of itself like Scary Movie. We were very aware of that during the entire process. We had to resist the urge to ham it up, we didn’t want to cross into Wayans’ territory.

The actors had a lot of fun and did a great job with it. The key to getting a great awkward 80s performance out of good actors is to make sure they resist the urge to make the clumsy lines sound natural.

Every actor has laugh out loud moments and memorable lines. Michael G. MacDonald does an awesome job as the Ranger – I hope this role elevates him to cult status among horror fans. He’s he perfect horror killer actor, willing to do anything, and just a little bit deranged.

Jon: The Dude Designs created another bad-ass poster for The Legend of the Psychotic Forest Ranger, as they did with Hobo with a Shotgun. Did they watch the film prior to creating the poster or did they do it on blind faith?

Brad Mills: Tom Hodge is the man behind The Dude Designs, and he literally is the coolest dude to work with.

He’s not inexpensive, but he’s worth every pence, I’ll work with him again for sure on all future projects. He didn’t see a copy of the film because it’s not finished yet, we’re going into the mixing studio later this month and it will be ready for screening at the beginning of August.

We told him all about the project, showed him the trailer, and some set photos and stills. Lucky for us, he’s a big fan of 80s horror, and the illegal drugs we sent him.

After he came out of the peyote coma, he sketched out some poses for Michael MacDonald, and we did a photoshoot for the poster – then he worked his black magic. The poster is a classic, we’re psyched with the buzz and good vibes coming from fans loving the poster.

Jon: What’s the plan on a release for The Legend of the Psychotic Forest Ranger?

Brad Mills: Once it’s finished we are going to start taking it to festivals and holding screenings where we hope to get roofied by a distributor. We’d love to get in bed with Magnet Releasing. They’ve been ejaculating awesome films lately like Hobo With A Shotgun, Rubber, 13 Assassins, and Troll Hunter.

I’d love to seed it on Piratebay or Demonoid, I just want fans to enjoy it. It’s going to get ripped eventually anyway and I don’t give a shit if college kids download it for free. I was in college once, I remember only being able to afford slushies, cheap pizza & Mr. Noodles.

We’re starting to build up a following on Facebook, so make sure to like us there and go to the official site, since we’re giving away some posters there.