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Who Thinks This Stuff Up?!?!
Secret Origins of Vampirisa's Velvet Vault of Horrorby Director Joe Sherlock
Inspiration is a funny thing - it come from the most unlikely places. Take my campy sci-fi/horror anthology, Vampirisa's Velvet Vault of Horror. The first tale, Mars vs The Pope started a just a wacky title. My friend Tom was working on his first video feature, Shadows of Dread, and came up with the name for a late night TV show to be on in the background of one scene. We shot a couple of goofy segments for it and that was that. But I couldn't get that title out of my head - it was so bizarre that I had to do something with it. There was an actress I had just worked with who was dying to do some more stuff, so with her (and her vast array of sexy clothing) in mind, I fleshed out the tale of a seductive Martian Queen, her skull-headed henchmen and the military vet-turned-Pope who led the fight against them.
While on vacation visiting some friends who lived in Arizona, there was one day when our wives and kids would be busy for several hours. With time to kill, a closet full of camoflague shirts and junk and a desert location just two blocks away, my friend Mike and I set about shooting what would become the second story, Artifact. Based on an idea I had come up with a while back, we chased each other around in the sand, battled with fighting staffs and did our best post-apocalyptic action posing. I shot a few insert shots back home in my garage and the short was complete.
A visit to Mike was also the catalyst for Look! UFOs!, the third part of the anthology. I had long thought of doing a parody of UFO documentaries and when Mike took me out to some military aircraft graveyards, I know I had to do something with them. Over the course of about two years, I periodically shot silly abduction accounts, sometimes with actors at the end of other shoots. I collected the stories from the government expert, the de-bunker, the hot housewife, the hillbilly, the drunk, etc. and wrapped them up with a suitably strange narrator.
The idea of a horror hostess was obviously inspired by Elvira, Vampira, etc., but also my my love for Dr. Shock: a Philadelphia monster movie show host whose double features I watched religiously on Saturday afternoons as a kid. When shooting the wraparound segments with Tami playing the part of the beautiful and busty movie hostess, Vampirisa, I came to a dellemma. I wanted to have four stories, but at the time had only shot three. I tried to come up with a goofy title for her to say, just so I could finish her segments, and what came out was The Eyeball of Fear. Now I had to actually come up with a part of the movie with that title!
It wasn't too hard after all. I had always liked the image of a man or creature with a giant eyeball for a head and hadn't yet tried my hand at the mad slasher genre. I put the two together and created a Friday The 13th ripoff with a eyeball-headed killer. The shoot was a blast - I basically invited everyone who had worked with me before to drive up to a nearby park and play teen campers who get picked off one by one. We shot as we went and everyone had a great time. Having seen my fair share of cheap European rip-offs of American horror movies successes, I wanted to make my little spoof seem like a foreign work, so I gethered everyone together in my living room and we dubbed all the dialogue and sound effects on two takes...and very poorly at that, but of course that was the point! I added some cheesy music and The Eyeball of Fear was complete.
With that, Vampirisa's Velvet Vault of Horror was complete. An odd mix of sci-fi, horror and all out goofiness, inspired from an equally odd mix of sources.
Vampirisa's Velvet Vault of Horror is available for $24 (shipping included) from Joe Sherlock, PO Box 856, Corvallis, Oregon 97339. VHS only. Check out the website for tons of pictures from the movie at Dr. Squid