Exclusive Interview by Geno McGahee
“I just hope that it’s something that gives everybody a fright or a smile or both.”–Paul Ehlers, the Madman
I have been saying basically since my first viewing of MADMAN that a sequel was in order. After his house burned to the ground, he was homeless and just having him looking at real estate would make for a good movie. Unfortunately, this didn’t come to pass, but the recent string of terrible horror movies are forcing the young and old to return to the 1970s and 1980s, in search of a gem that they may not have seen. Ehlers knows this better than most and sees the looks of the people as they approach him at horror conventions, inquiring about the interesting character that he once played.
In the 1980’s, three horror icons ruled: Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, and Michael Myers, but they have ran their course. For a time, it seemed that perhaps the Creeper from JEEPERS CREEPERS had the potential to make a run as a new horror franchise, but the horrible sequel to the 2001 entry made that impossible. Now, we have a horrible franchise known as “SAW.” I will be the first to admit that I enjoyed the first one but the rest have been complete garbage with a character that can not carry the series, nor the writers that can make it interesting. It has followed the trend of fluff torture movies.
In this second part of this Exclusive interview with Scared Stiff, Paul Ehlers, will discuss the direction of Hollywood, the horror remakes and how MADMAN will differ, as well as his love of boxing and what he deems to be entertainment that insults the audience…
GM: There have been a lot of bad remakes lately…
Yes there have been.
GM: You had the remakes of THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, BLACK CHRISTMAS, PROM NIGHT, and THE HITCHER. They are examples of Hollywood watering down and destroying good films. How is MADMAN going to be different…can it fight this Hollywood crap machine that has destroyed so many good films?
We are very aware of that. I am also very aware of the fan base and I’m very aware of what people expect and want to see. One of our goals, as I said, was to bring the story to the screen the way that we are able to do it today with the intensity that we are able to bring to it today and to satisfy the fans. What we have done with this in a way was that we have given Marz a little more dimension then he had originally. You see him do some action and things that are a little different then what you have known him to do in the past. So we start to get more of a picture of just how sick this guy is. Some of that is going to be poured out on the screen. He’s a pretty dark character and when he gets summoned, you don’t want to do that. What we have done with this is that we have made a very big deal out of saying the name “Madman Marz” and why people do not say it and especially why people in that town, that region do not say that name.
Now we have several new characters to kind of flush it out a bit. We have a character who works for Max, who’s a local boy. Sort of the strong, silent type. He brings to it a history about his own growing up in that area and what Madman Marz meant to them and why they never said the name. So, there is a lot of that brought in. Once he’s called, it’s like JAWS. He does his work and he does it quickly and he does it pretty viciously and then it goes from there.
As I was saying earlier, I always liked what Joey and Gary had written about him leaving his house, driving to that tavern and putting his axe on the bar and ordering a beer…that whole sequence. I thought, gosh that’s some great stuff there. So what we’ve done is expanded on the scene of him arriving at this tavern and the town’s reaction and what they do to him. It’s going to be a lot more graphic. It’s something that I look forward to doing. There’s a lot more meat to that. You can see just how brutal he is and just how brutal the town was to him after hearing the result of what he had done to his family, and we are returning to the camp concept. We hope to be more frightening. I feel good about it. It scares me and I’m not afraid of nothing. We’ve been thinking about it for a very long time. We are not resorting to the torture aspect that is so popular in so many movies. I’m not doing that. I’m not shoving an egg beater into somebody’s eye and strapping them down…not that kind of thing. There will be some lovely things that will be memorable…pretty twisted actually, but not out and out torture. Kind of just doing people in wonderful artistic ways.
GM: Hollywood has just killed the horror films. It seems that everything is released watered down and PG-13. Is there some concern on your part that they are going to come to you and say, “you know what. We love it but we want to make it available for 13 year olds as well and we want to do this and that and this.” What’s going to be your answer to them should they present a deal like this?
Well, we’re planning on shooting it two ways. One will be the standard script and the other variation we will use is that I will be carrying with me that I will be carrying with me will be several large white teddy bears, which I will be speaking with during the film and we will be singing…doing little songs, talking about love and death. It is going to be a meaningful film for little kids to watch. Actually, NO, I am not concerned about it. I’m hoping that we can stay where we need to stay. I’m not trying to do a film for a little kid to watch, but then again, think about it. All of you that saw this when you were kids and were frightened were all under age. Every guy that I have ever spoken to and I ask: “How old could you have been?” The guys were like 6, 7, 8, 9 years old, when people were really really impressionable. So, they are going to get in there anyway. They’re going to see it. They’re going to see it on DVD. But what we’re striving for the best of what we can give an audience. I hope that the rating thing really does not become an issue. I really do.
GM: There was a documentary called “The Rise and Fall of the Slasher Film.” Now, why do you think that this genre of film went away? There aren’t many horror slasher films that come out and the only recent one of note that I saw was HATCHET and that was just horrible. It seemed more comedic than what it was advertised to be. Why do you think that the real slasher film has gone away?
It’s a good question. I think that maybe we were more naïve in terms of what we could frighten people with back then. Maybe the world itself has become so dark and complicated and frightening in itself that you almost need a more twisted type approach to affect an audience. It’s very hard for audiences who have seen so much on the screen…so much of everything on the screen…so much CGI on the screen that for them to accept a good old fashion horror movie, it’s a tough call. I think that you can entertain them. If you can draw them into that film and get them into that movie, and that’s the thing, and get them a little frightened early on, which I’m hoping to do so they are intrigued enough to stay with the film and give the film a chance. I’m not against humor in a film.
When you get to superhero stories…we see the difference between all the BATMAN films. I love the original Tim Burton’s look…the dark, gothic look that he gave to BATMAN, but in time that series became so tongue and cheek in a way also that I couldn’t take it seriously and then something comes along like BATMAN BEGINS and these guys have great actors and they are taking this very seriously. I think that that is why it works.
If you do a horror film. If you do a slasher film and you try not to make it into an Abbott and Costello Meets The Slasher…not that there is anything wrong with that, but humor is fine, but to relieve some tension, but not for it to seem like it’s a group of guys from a comedy club looking for a shot. I know in HATCHET that everyone’s heart was in the right place for that and they did have a great love for the genre and they wanted very much for that to happen on the screen. The opinions were mixed about it, but I know that the original intention was to do their best with it and the reception may not have been the best with everyone. It’s hard. I had fun with it. How many remakes can you even think of? I can’t think of many things tougher than a remake. What remakes do we have that actually work? We have the original THE THING (1951), a fabulous film, and John Carpenter’s THE THING (1982) is fabulous, taking the same story, but using more of the book. There are just not that many remakes that very rarely rise above the original, and that would be an interesting challenge. That’s the tough part.
Don’t forget that all of you that were impressionable young people at the time would probably go and see the remake of this after everything that has come before. It’s really an interesting stage to walk out on. It’s so drenched in blood to begin with. I’m very curious to see if we can do scary and there are a few moments of humor in there, of course, and I think that there were some funny things the first time that weren’t meant to be funny.
You know what killed me? Here we have this poor little girl running away from me and she jumps into a refrigerator and everybody says that it is a funny scene with her hiding in there. And people say: “How did you people ever think of that?!” I’m not sure how Joey and Gary did think of that, but then look at the new INDIANA JONES film. He hides in a refrigerator! I cracked up! I think I stood up and said: “Hey, what the hell are you guys doing?!”
There are those people that are demanding that we do the hottub scene will not be disappointed. In fact we are afraid of their reaction if it is not included.
GM: You are probably coming back into the horror world at the right time. We don’t have any good horror villains anymore. Jason, Freddy, and Myers have all sort of gone away and the Creeper seemed to have a shot but he blew it in JEEPERS CREEPERS 2, and so, realistically, if MADMAN hits the younger generation and my generation that grew up with it, it has a chance to be a series of movies.
Well, if we get a character that the people can get behind. Certainly in the first film there was a lot of speculation about just what happened to him. You never saw him really die. He does get stabbed and Gaylen (Ross) says that line that nobody can ever figure out. She actually says: “Son of a bitch!” And then stabs me. That’s what she says, but yeah, I think that we are one of the few films of this type that didn’t have a sequel. We always felt robbed. If I were Freddy Krueger, I’d still be bopping around. The funny thing is that, I’ve continued to stay with doing Martial Arts and all the things that I do in my madness, and I have been drawing and designing all of these years and the funny story is that if I return in the film as the character…if I come back as Madman, what I’m hearing from everybody and many of my friends are horror enthusiasts…we cannot think of another horror character that has come back to the same part and play pretty action again 28 years later.
People get made up and show up on variety shows, but to come back and play the role? The big joke is that everybody says that I don’t need the make up now. God love them all! The reason that I can do this is if I had remained in acting from 1980 on, today I would be a very serious actor and I would look back on my original role and buy all of the copies and get rid of them and say, which is the Hollywood trend: “What? I never did that movie!” But I’m in the art field, which makes me available, so I figure, why the hell not. I figure that this could really be cool because I have had 28 years to think about this guy. I know him by now. I think that it’s going to be great fun.
GM: There are a lot of horrible horror films out there right now. Have there been any recent horror films in the last five years or so where you have been impressed and thought that they did a great job for the genre?
Well, not truly horror, but I think that THE SIXTH SENSE was creepy in the sense of what I remember creepy to be. In the last several years, there hasn’t been anything that has truly frightened me. If I go back more than that, I found EXORCIST III very scary. I liked the third film. There are some really creepy moments in that and I thought that Brad Dourif was brilliant in that. I thought he was just great as a demonic character. In recent years, films like THE SIXTH SENSE…I can’t say that there are any other films that are screaming out to me right now, but probably once we finish the interview, I’ll think of three of them. Right now, they are not jumping out at me.
I got so fed up with so many that were bad and like many other human beings, I get taken in by the visual and walk around the Blockbuster and see a great cover and go “Ah-hah!” I take it home, and you know in five minutes. I will not say that a film is great if it has one or two good kill scenes, or one incredible CGI sequence. It’s not enough to carry the movie. Give me an entire story…an entire film that I can remember and it’s very hard to do that. It’s amazingly hard to do that. I keep coming back to what have people not seen? I don’t think that there is much that they haven’t seen. You have get them with something that goes back to something more primal, which I hope we can do, and it makes a difference if you have good actors and even if they are only good players, but if they can do a good job, that makes a difference too.
GM: With movies like DATE MOVIE and SUPERHERO MOVIE coming out on a regular basis…movies that are dumbed down completely and geared toward what I see as complete idiots, what does that say about Hollywood’s view of the audience?
I think that they are really dumbing them down and I think that they think everyone out there is an imbecile and everybody is just a bunch of beer drinking, dope smoking idiots. They have dumbed it down, but here is the terrible part of it. It comes down to the dollar. They make the money and as long as people come to see these movies and pay to go see them, the box office is good on them, the DVD sales are good, they are going to keep on making them. You don’t see many art horror films and if you can even see one and maybe if I won the lotto and had millions of dollars, I could do a really artistic nightmare of a movie, I would do one, but there is that commercial pressure and it’s tough. So many things get changed by so many hands. Everybody that the script passes by, they change it. So very rarely do we see the original intention of the writer. It is so watered down and yeah, I think that they think that the audience are a bunch of clowns and it’s insulting. I find it insulting.
GM: I read an interview with Robert De Niro and he had said something to the effect that he can read ten screenplays, and nine of them are great, but the one that is horrible is the one that the men with deep pockets will finance.
I know. It’s terrible! And for actors, it must be rough because they have to eat. So a lot of times, you may be stuck doing a show that is really going to be crap, but you have to do it.
GM: I think that a lot of people will be surprised to find out that you are such a fantastic artist. I checked out your website and the knives you have designed and they are all great. Can you talk about that?
I always did a lot of fantasy illustrations…barbarian type illustrations…Conanish stuff. Even when I was a little kid, I would draw soldiers and barbarians and Hercules. Somebody always had a sword or an axe or a weapon at their side. When I got older, I got my things to be a little bit more elaborate. I was a little bored with how I was drawing standard swords and I would curve it a certain way and back in 1982, I had ordered a custom knife…a fighting style knife from a gentleman by the name of Gil Hibbens, who was a very radical knife grinder. He took a lot of chances at the time with trying to do stuff out of the ordinary and I had read about Gil in Martial Arts Magazines and I went to him when I ordered this knife, and the story is that I sent him a sketch of something that was a little more fantasy that I had done. I called him and said: “What do you think,” and he replied: “Well, I already made it and sold it.” So I said: “I think we need to talk.”
So, that started it and pretty much not being a knife manufacturer or a knife maker, I designed whatever came out of my imagination and I have told people that if I actually made knives, there are actually things that I would have never designed because you look at it as a maker and you say, “that’s impossible.” Coming just from the design aspect, I would let my mind go wild and Gil at the time, was brave enough to take chances, because all the hooks and all the things that you put on these knives are made out of sharpened steel. Don’t forget that they are being ground and buffed on very fast equipment and any hook that sticks out of this thing and they can grabbed and throw the blade right through the guy making it.
So, there is that grave danger in making the more elaborate knives and we had a very good run for almost 20 years with it. We were doing many pieces that many have never seen the likes of before, which was very satisfying for me as a creative artist. All the years that I had been doing standard illustration, cartooning and drawing, it was the knives that actually got me the recognition. It is so funny that former slasher becomes knife designer. Somewhere in there folks, you must know that I did design plush toys and I did some dolls and things like that for different companies. Somebody did give me the assignment to design the world’s cutest bear. There’s Madman trying to design the world’s cutest bear. That’s more scary to me than any of the other stuff.
GM: It’s nice to see that Madman has a soft side. Out of all of your designs, what is the favorite one that you have done?
Well, I was fortunate that Sylvester Stallone back in his RAMBO days was a knife collector. He bought three of my designs which is really kind of neat. I did something called the “Saint George’s Axe,” which is basically a battle axe and when I would design it, I said: “Wait, if you had a dragon in the middle, and the body is coming down, and you’re holding the tail section, why can’t the wings be blades?” At the time that I did it in 1984, I said: “God, it’s so obvious.” What happened now is that everything that I have ever designed, I see everywhere in the world. I mean, you can’t help it. They take it and they embellish and they expand on concepts that you may have had originally. What was one time unique is now very commonplace.
You mention fantasy knives and people will say: “Yeah, I saw ten of those for one hundred dollars on some cable station.” Well, that’s not the same ones, really. Back when we made these knives, it was during the hay days. It was during the 1990s. These were all one of a kind, hand made pieces that took months and months and months to make. They would sell to collectors for thousands of dollars. The knives you can get today from the far east are relatively inexpensive.
I was approached not too long ago by a company called “Master Cutlery” and they are in New Jersey and they wanted some of my stuff. They have put out my designs based on my original stuff at very affordable prices.
GM: I saw that. I was shocked to see them so low…
Yeah, I know. It’s something too. The funny thing is that I actually own some of those compared to the original knives because what happens with the original pieces, Gil would take two to four months to make one piece and what we would do is to go to a special knife show with these and we had to sell it at that show to make up. I got a percentage, Gil had his…and we made money to live on. He could never really give me one. He couldn’t take four months and just give me the piece.
The one cool thing, for me, about doing the low end stuff is not only do I have these on me, but just for fun, I give them to friends and family and they know the original pieces that they are based on.
GM: Just to have something by the guy who played Madman must be great, especially when you are a horror fan…
Thank you. That’s so cool. I will say this. You will be the first. Nobody has heard this yet. People have said to me: “Of course you’re going to design your axe for this film, aren’t you?” And I said: “That’s the plan,” but then I thought about it and I thought basically that the guy has a basic woodsman style axe. There’s not a hell of a lot that you can do with that. If I make it too funky looking, it’s going to look like Madman from Venus. We want people to believe it, not a fantasy piece. So, what I’m going to do is sort of do the best of modern and do you know where some of the most interesting designs come from? It’s from the 18th to 19th century, early American farm tools.
I am probably going to modify something from back in the day and make it a bit more evil and a bit more ominous and that is what I will be using in this film and probably do a limited edition of these things, which we never did before. So, it’ll be fun. You’ll actually be able to get Madman’s axe.
GM: Let’s talk about Boxing a little bit.
I have always been a fan of Sugar Ray Leonard and loved his fights with Duran and Hearns, and I always considered George Foreman a sentimental favorite. Every time that he got into the ring, I’d say: “George, what are you doing?!!!” Personality wise, I really liked Big George. My family were huge fans of boxing, following it when Muhammad Ali was young and had all of the style and technique in the world.
I loved to watch Sonny Liston go in there and destroy his opponents and I remember watching Floyd Patterson defend the heavyweight title. As a kid, my Uncle taught his son, David, who is my cousin, how to box and he had trained him for like two months and he bought some boxing gloves and we were pitted against each other when we were like ten or so. My Uncle was a tough Irish guy…a scrapper and had trained his son to beat me, and the bell rang and David was down and I was so apologetic. It was pretty amazing.
I have followed boxing in years past more than I do today. I still get very caught up in Martial Arts stuff that I can catch on television. Part of what inspired much of my design work has been Martial Arts styling and Martial Arts technique and style. The blades are based on actual styles of various forms of Martial Arts. I have pieces that I have designed specifically for use in Martial Arts. I had done a lot of work with just sword…growing up with weapons. I actually worked out using a double bladed axe when I was young in the woods for technique…to be able to aim and focus. So when they had me in MADMAN, what came along with it was that I was able to use this axe, and we didn’t have stunt people. We had one or two people that came in for a few gags, but pretty much, Joey relied on me taking this axe and getting pretty close to people when I swung it, which I did do. We only had one phony axe in the movie and it’s the scene where Dave raises up his lantern with just the flame on it and you see behind him this axe and you hear the music. That’s the axe that I bring to the shows, but other than that, we had basically a really really heavy axe.
In the new one, even a nastier axe. Hopefully I can still be fairly accurate or it’s going to be the first snuff movie slasher combination. So that could happen. If we talk about boxing. I want ask you about that. How are you involved with boxing?
GM: Well, I’ve been doing it for somewhere around five years and I am the Managing Editor for Ringside Report.com “The Heart of Boxing.” I occasionally do interviews and cover events as well as edit articles and other various responsibilities that go with being the Editor for the site. Boxing and Horror man…my two loves.
You know, I think that that is open for a concept. I think that there is some way to bring boxing and horror together. I’m not even kidding. That is something that people should think about or perhaps you. Bring horror and boxing together into one concept. It’s certainly been brought into science fiction with the Twilight Zone and things like that. Maybe there is another way to handle that that could be very very interesting. I don’t think that that has been touched on very much at all…boxing and horror together. It could be great.
I don’t know…at a loss for words at a moment.
GM: Any words in closing?
I got to tell you that I am so appreciative of fans. When we did the film, of course for me, as a horror enthusiast, it was a great thrill to have it open on Broadway when it did in the theater. All my friends who grew up with horror that could come to that opening were there and there I was sitting there with this love of horror watching this character on the screen. That was wonderful. I will be forever grateful to Joey Giannone and Gary Sales for giving me that to opportunity.
When it came out on VHS, that was kind of neat, and for a time it was in Blockbuster Video and that was always cool, and then it kind of faded into obscurity. The producer and director were not aware until very recently that there were people that really loved it and that it had this cult following. I’m so appreciative of all the guys and girls that have really liked this movie. I think its what inspired us to really push this remake. We felt that it needed it. We felt that we needed to return there in either a sequel or a remake. Return to this character and do him some justice and I thought why not a version of MADMAN written by Madman himself and his son, and all of us brought together by the original producer, Gary Sales, who is also slated to direct. Here we are, everyone getting together and trying to bring this out to you guys. I just hope that it’s something that gives everybody a fright or a smile or both.
(Interviewer’s Note: I want to thank Paul Ehlers for his time. I have been a huge fan of MADMAN, once buying it on Beta for 30 bucks and spending another 20 bucks to have it transferred to a VHS when it was out of print. I cannot recommend the original enough and I also cannot be happier that there is a remake on the way. It is time for the Madman to return and maybe when it debuts, I may stop complaining about the direction of horror nowadays. I doubt it, but you never know.)
