My first brush with the flick came through the pages of Gorezone magazine, which back in the day, interviewed him on his work on Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers. Within the pages were glimpses of Night Angel and there were some amazing looking creature and make-up FX from Steve Johnson and KNB FX. I also noticed a visual flair that I liked because I am a big lover of horror drenched with eye candy.

This was around the same period of time that I was starting to broaden my horror horizons with more European and Italian cinema from the likes of Lucio Fulci, Dario Argento, Ruggero Deodato, Mario Bava, Lamberto Bava, and Luigi Cozzi. Most of the films were low on plot and logic, but they made up for it with lush designs and baroque setpieces that opened my eyes to sights I had never seen before.

Dominique Othen Girard talked to me about his criminally underrated Night Angel, and I  really got an education from an intelligent man who has a strong passion for the art of filmmaking.

Jason Bene: When you were growing up were there any filmmakers that you admired and looked up to?

Dominique Othenin Girard: I didn’t know filmmaking existed until I fell upon film school in London at ninteen years old. I knew films existed and I loved them, but I was brought up in the really backwards countryside of Switzerland where until I was fourteen years old I didn’t have a television. There was no television. The television came in and it was black and white and it had only eight hours of programming a day. At midnight it would go blank with white snow. I was an exchange student in a program in Detroit where I was able to go to movies more often because it was Detroit. I discovered Robert Altman who was a director where I felt, fuck, the story is well told, the characters I understand, and I enjoyed that.

Coming back to Switzerland at seventeen was my refuge to go and see movies because I was really unhappy to be back in Switzerland after a year in the United States. I took refuge and I went to see quite a lot of films. There is another filmmaker who really purturbed me but I loved was Andrzej Zulawski. You may have heard of him. He is a Polish director who did great films. He is similar to Polanski in his style and his storytelling ways. He did big films at the time with the stars of Europe.

Jason Bene: You directed Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers for producer Moustapha Akkad. After that you did Night Angel, what intrigued you about the script?

Dominique Othenin Girard: Small correction. I wanted to come back to the states to live and work. I had done two films in Europe. My first feature film was a psycho-drama with John Hurt called After Darkness. Then I did a television film that got outrageous press and ratings because it was really shocking and provacative material. It was my little showpiece in Los Angeles because I knew there were a lot of stunts, action, sex, and money. I came to Los Angeles with my wife and we both had two suitcases in our arms, we rented a car at LAX, and visited Los Angeles for the first time in my life knowing absolutely nobody in town. I saw a sign that said apartment for rent and we went to ask the building manager Mel about the place. We had no bank account, no social security number, absolutely nothing. They said, “Can you pay one month in advance as a deposit?” We said, “Sure, fine, let’s do it.”

He said to me your a filmmaker and I happen to have a script in my drawer. He shows me this script and said, “There are these young guys who you might want to meet.” I met Walter Josten and Jeff Geoffray, and Night Angel was my very first experience in the States – way before Halloween 5. I met those two guys and they wanted me to read their script because they wanted to make Night Angel. I said sure I went home with the script, and it took me two days to read it. I didn’t understand much. I was like, what is this? I told them this is really interesting, but I don’t quite understand all of the story, and I don’t understand the horror genre. They said, “Why not?” I spent the whole afternoon with them, and then a week later I had a contract. Within a month of being in the States, I was getting in. It was those two guys who gave me my first chance in the States.

Jason Bene: Did you make any alterations to the script or did you shoot it as is?

Dominique Othenin Girard: The four of us were working on the script together and we got along so well. With all of my naive and inappropriate questions not being a fan of the genre, it put a lot of light onto the weaknesses of the script. It helped the script to get off of the ground. It came from my ignorance. I got educated and they bettered the script.

Jason Bene: The backstory of Lilith is she appears as a night demon in Jewish folklore, and it developed more in the Middle Ages. It seems like the screeplay sticks really close to her history.

Dominique Othenin Girard: Thank you. Absolutely. We went back to the Torah which very clearly states that man was made out of clay, and God created man and woman, but God did not have enough clay to make the head of the woman. So he took some clay from the belly of the woman and created her head. The final result is Lilith has sex on her mind, which means with Adam she was not submissive. She was sexually controlling and she wanted sex. She got punished and was sent out of the Garden of Eden. She was before Eve. She copulated with demons because it was her need to copulate, and that was done at the Red Sea coast. She gave birth to demons who were really hurting they were full of claws and they were passing through her vagina, which was making her bleed terribly. It’s the real legend. I thought this is so great to use it because at the beginning Lilith is only the seductress, but as I look she is more than that. If you look at the fable she is making a pact with Satan and she becomes his archangel to seduce the souls and to bring them back to him. We are in the fashion of glamour and in a time where looking good is so important. I thought this would be a good attack on society within a horror film. We want to look pretty, but for what? We are attracted by it.

Jason Bene: It is very unique to have a horror thriller take place in the fashion industry. The movie is ahead of its time because there is a really popular American show called Ugly Betty that deals with a magazine that is run by the evil Wilhelmina Slater [Vanessa Williams], whereas in Night Angel it is a magazine that is being taken over by a horny demon.

Dominique Othenin Girard: Absolutely. Thank you! I never saw it this way but I appreciate it.

Jason Bene: Steve Johnson and KNB FX were your main make-up artists. How much of a hand did you have in the design of Lilith and the creature FX?

Dominique Othenin Girard: It was a collaborative effort between Jeff, Walter, Joe and I on what they could do for the little amount of money we had. What happened was we prepped the film and raised the money. Basically Walter Josten interrupted all of our meetings because he took his little bag and said, “I’m going to go play basketball.” In fact, he went to jail for doing something fishy in the commodities market. I already knew my producer was going to jail. They raised the money through a group of Orange County lawyers, small investments, doctors, and dentists. I was pitching the film to seven guys who where the potential investors and we raised about a million. We did nineteen days of shoot and then we interrupted the shoot for eight months. We then edited the film for those eight months because it was cheap. We understood that the story was lacking elements with what we shot, and what we didn’t shoot was six days of special effects. We had the time to prepare them and to raise the money after the nineteen days because that is why we stopped shooting.

We used some of our money to distribute Kevin Tenney’s Night of the Demons. They raised enough money to do the six days of shooting and we were able to add some elements in many scenes. We shot six days in this fake studio cave on location. Steve Johnson was more with us than KNB. KNB was more for Halloween 5. I don’t remember correctly their involvement on Night Angel. They gave all they could with the very little money we paid them. They had to create the monster, and the bursting and everything else.

Jason Bene: The highlight of the film is the surreal orgy party scene where the woman has faces on her breasts, and there are all kinds of acts of debauchery.

Dominique Othenin Girard: A lot of them were personal inventions. I’m an expressionist film director, and I have been compared to Fellini for the outrageous elements that I include in normal scenes. An assistant came to me with this porn magazine and he said, “Dominique, you know what? I can get in touch with her, she’s got the biggest breasts in the world!” He shows me a dick between two breasts, and I was like wow. I was a little bit shocked. I was like make her come, make her come. I meant the lady to show up, and there were five guys behind the door were like oh my God. With this lady I said, “What can we do with you?” It’s a scene of Hell, it’s seduction. I wanted to put her in a pool and shoot her from below, I had these huge things floating in the water. It was too expensive of a deal. It was Steve who had the idea to have the laughing and crying faces and so on. I wanted to illustrate what pain could be, what nightmares could be. I tried to create images with the very little money we had.

Jason Bene: Long before he hit it big with the Hellboy franchise, Doug Jones had one of his earliest roles in Night Angel. Watching him here you could see he was a star in the making because he showed great range from going from this nerdy character who turns evil in a blink of an eye.

Dominique Othenin Girard: Love it. Love it. He was immediately taken into cast. This guy is weird, I was like come on in and get into the movie. He was so open and flexible. He was a real actor’s technician where he knew the impact of some of his expressions and it was lovely to work with him. He was simple. For a director it’s a gift.

Jason Bene: In the film there is the old woman, who is kind of a mystic who had the asnwer on how to destroy Lilith with a magic dagger. Ironically, the same device is used in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday to destroy Jason Voorhees. I believe someone on that film might have seen Night Angel before.

Dominique Othenin Girard: My very feature film, After Darkness, with John Hurt and Julian Sands has a scene where Julian killed John in the exact same way. It’s a ceremonial dagger and you can imagine why it is there in Night Angel. In my very first film I already killed a character with a dagger in the heart. I had no idea Friday the 13th used that device.

Jason Bene: The lighting by David Lewis is professionally done. Were you going for a certain look for the film?

Dominique Othenin Girard: Definitely. Always a lighting concept is very strong with me. It’s part of storytelling. They are elements that the audience perceives but don’t think about. They get it in their heart and in their gut: the colors, the lighting, and the speed of the camera movement. It doesn’t hit the brain. I forget now what the concept was but we wanted a very rich, saturated feel to the movie. We wanted to have beauty with Lilith. It was not easy to find Isa Anderson. We wanted an entrance to the movie with classic photography in the sense not to be weird, but to implant into the story realism. From there when we allow ourselves to go into horizons of mystical and fantasy, then we can give the images some real dimensions. I loved working with David Lewis. He’s fantastic. He’s really wonderful.

Jason Bene: I would love to buy Night Angel on DVD. Have there been any discussions about getting it released?

Dominique Othenin Girard: My God! I don’t have a DVD. I made a DVD from my tape. I’m still in touch with Walter and Jeff. I saw them two years ago on my last trip to Los Angeles. They are easily reachable. They are called Blue Rider productions and are around the Santa Monica airport area. Tell them we have had a conversation and you’d love to have a DVD. Write to them.

I want to tell you one antecdote. During the eight months came to real questioning between the writers and I, and I was really wanting an introduction to the movie. The birth of Lilith was missing in the script. How did this animal come to be on this Earth? Let me get her hand coming out of the Earth and she come out of all this plasma. She’s going to be naked and this is going to be beautiful. This sets the mood for the audience. I said, “Let’s do a screening and do some questioning.” They said ,”No, Dominique, your film is not finished, you don’t have the special effects. It’s unfair to the film, you can’t do that.” I said, “Let’s show it to a director who knows what he is doing like Paul Verhoeven.” Paul comes in with the four of us and the movie starts with the car scene where the publisher is picked up by Lilith, and makes an offer to go sleep with her. She puts him off. He goes home to his wife and from his bedroom he looks out the window and sees a llama, and from behind her Lilith appears. She guides him to the matrimonial bed and she starts to hump him sensually. The wife wakes up, she slits her throat and blood squirts everywhere. Then she plunges her fingers into him. That was the first scene. Please, look at the scene again and look at what Paul Verhoeven did with his next film with a ice pick.

Jason Bene: Basic Instinct.

Dominique Othenin Girard: Look at the scenes with the mirrors. He had much more money. He robbed our scene. His scene was longer and it had more shots. We had to censor that scene because it was too strong. Everyone who has seen Night Angel and then Basic Instinct right after understands it’s the same scene.

Hopefully Night Angel receives a DVD release sometime in the near future. You can still buy VHS copies of it on Amazon and eBay. Killer Film would like to thank Dominique for taking the the time to talk about his rare film from 1990.

Jason Bene: The opening animated credits set the tone for the entire film, who came up with that idea?

Kevin Tenney: the writer (Joe Augustyn) actually had it in the script and I balked at it because when we went and checked with the FX place to check the cost, and we had such a tiny budget it was like I can get another day of shooting for what we’re talking about spending on these credits. Joe really felt strongly about it and you know the film is all about working together. We got a place and they did a test for us and they showed us rough sketches in black and white and I saw that and I was like okay I’m sold. It’s funny because the executive producer (Walter Josten) was on Joe’s side and completely wanted it, and when he saw the test he thought this doesn’t look very good and he was then against it. I saw it and said this looks amazing, so Joe and I both said to Walter your looking at a rough sketch, but now that I see what they have in mind I think it’s going to work and it did. I think it’s a beautiful opening, which I just remember seeing it now on the big screen again – holy cow this looks amazing.

Jason Bene: Linnea Quigley had already established herself as a “Scream Queen” with her roles in Silent Night, Deadly Night and Return of the Living Dead, was it important to put a recognizable face in the film?

Kevin Tenney: I didn’t know who she was because I had not seen either one of those films and I wasn’t a big fan of those kinds of films yet. When I made Witchboard and Night of the Demons I had mostly seen the big studio horror films like The Omen, The Exorcist, and Jaws. I had not seen Halloween and Friday the 13th, actually my first lower budget horror film was the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, and that was because after I made Witchboard I was afraid it wasn’t scary enough because I didn’t know that much about horror. The acting and the story is good but maybe I didn’t get enough scares. I rented the video and took it home and popped it in the VCR, and my girlfriend (now his wife) at the time were watching it and I was sitting on the floor studying it and she was on the couch behind me. About halfway through I said I think I’m okay because this was a big hit and it doesn’t look much scarier than my film, so, I think I’m fine. She goes, “You don’t think this is scary”, and I said no why. I said are you scared and she went “Holy crap, yes” and I said oh good, that means Witchboard would scare you too.

Jason Bene: The two defining moments are the “Lipstick Scene” and Linnea bending over in the convenience store. From all the fans, thanks alot for that. Growing up as a teenager, those scenes were the biggest deal.

Kevin Tenney: (Laughs) Probabaly one of the best entrances to a movie ever.

Jason Bene: Steve Johnson did a tremendous job with the make-up FX, how much input did you have in the design of the demons?

Kevin Tenney: At the time The Exorcist was the big demon film, so we didn’t really go with the horns and all that, it was more like just make it look all gross and possessed. He just came to me with his designs and they looked great. I did kind of lobby for horns because I thought they would be cool, but the producers were like no horns. We have them on the new “Demons” (Adam Gierasch’s remake), if everyone loves them then I was right and they were wrong, and if everyone hates them then I was never for them either.

Jason Bene: The remake was all set for a Halloween ’09 release, where does it stand right now?

Kevin Tenney: The last I’ve heard is February 2010, but being just one of the producers I’m told even less than if I were the Director.

Jason Bene: Did you ever think that 21 years after its release that you would be in a packed theater on Halloween night watching Night of the Demons?

Kevin Tenney: No, I thought after this film came out I would have no career and that nobody would ever hire me again, and I would be working construction somewhere. I really thought this film was going to end my career before it started, and the fact it became this huge cult thing just amazes me.

Jason Bene: Bigfoot was recenty released on DVD, when are we going to see the movie you directed before that, Braindead?

Kevin Tenney: Braindead is now going to be a Midnight Show at the 4-Star Theater in San Francisco every Saturday night indefinitely. We’re talking to a DVD distributor right now about bringing it to DVD soon.

Killer Film would like to thank Kevin Tenney for finding the time to do the interview, and also for giving us his his favorite scary films with his Halloween Watch List .

Trick ‘R Treat: skyrocketing to the #1 spot is Michael Dougherty’s directorial debut, a film that might not ever be knocked off its perch at the top. Never has a movie captured the unholy spirit of All Hallow’s Eve so brilliantly. This anthology has its vignettes weaved together in Pulp Fiction fashion. Werewolves, zombies, a badass imp, and a gothic atmosphere that adds up to an enchanting experience.

Halloween: John Carpenter’s seminal slasher still feels fresh after all these years. The Gone With The Wind of the genre still packs a wallop with an incredible score, beautiful cinematography, and a boogeyman who scares just as well in the day as the night.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch: Hated by critics and fans upon its release in 1982. I never understood this – it’s hands down the best sequel of the series, dropping Myers completely, and adding Silver Shamrocks, bugs, snakes, killer robots, and pimp daddy Tom Atkins!

Night of the Demons: man, Kevin S. Tenney sure hit this sucker out of the park. One of the best opening credits in movie history, Steve Johnson’s impeccable make-up work, a hot Asian chick, Linnea Quigley’s butt in the air, and the infamous lipstick scene. Trash classic!

Trick or Treat: Being a 80′s child, I went to school with people like Eddie Weinbauer – guys who were Metal Heads, who were told that they would burn in hell for listening to Iron Maiden and AC/DC. It’s great to see this picked on teen exact revenge with the help of a befallen rock idol.

Honorable mention: