It's rare that you get to speak with such an enigma seemingly portaled from ancient times, yet living and breathing on our plane. Richard Stanley is an artist in every sense and we are fortunate to have a glimpse into his vision of the other world where he exists on a daily basis. Brilliant, abstract and child-like in wonderment, he offers a new perspective on reality. He's intent on a new feature film, and this time it's horror. We could not be more excited.
Body Count Rising: Your Mother practiced witchcraft, and she was a feminist and anthropologist. In “Hardware” you had a strong female character who was the heroine. Do you share the same feminist views as your Mom?
Richard Stanley: Well I certainly did when I was younger because it was the only thing my mum had taught me. By the time I grew up I was of the opinion that men were either useless or dangerous. (laughing) Clearly Stacy Travis’ character, Jill was the only competent one in the movie. At the time of that film I was a teenager and carried that point of view.
Body Count Rising: So which would you consider yourself then: useless or dangerous? (laughing)
Richard Stanley: Well with regard to “Hardware” a bit of both. The character I identify most with in Hardware was Shades, the next door neighbor. Shades was pretty useless. We’ve all had that kind of situation though, where you think you’re going to settle in for a nice quiet evening having some drinks, and not realize you’re going to be propelled into a nightmare set of circumstances that you’re just not prepared to deal with. (laughing)
Body Count Rising: So you identify with the neighbor… the voyeur? (laughing)
Richard Stanley: Oh no, not the voyeur… no! (laughing) I said Shades from next door. Lincoln was the creepy voyeur.
Body Count Rising: (laughing) That would have made for such a better interview! OK Shades… the fella with the sunglasses. That makes sense. Shades. Got it!
Richard Stanley: Actually all of the lines in “Hardware” were inspired by real life. The character of Lincoln was inspired by this big pervy fat guy who was trolling the midnight movie theaters. Many of his crazier lines in “Hardware” come directly from real life. While smoking joints outside in “Hardware”, one should assume this is some sort of sexual thing. Lincoln inquired “You smoke a lot of dope don’t ya… Does that get you hard or what? I give dope to people sometimes when they come over to my place and it gets them hard.” That was taken completely from real life. (laughing) Ironically Harvey Weinstein took the character personally. He felt that Lincoln Wineberg Jr. was some sort of caricature of himself. I had to explain that this was based on a pervert from my home town.
Richard Stanley: Well, “Dust Devil” was kind of a mutant movie, like most movies are, because of the tradeoffs and the crisis of getting it from the script to the screen. Miramax was opposed to me using black South African actors because nobody could understand their accents. This was during a time when they were still dubbing “Mad Max” and they were still dubbing “Trainspotting” so one could kind of see it from their point of view. But in the course of me fighting to retain actual African actors in the role of Africans in the film, “Boys in the Hood” had just released and they wanted to put American rappers in the roles of African natives. I just could see that this wasn’t going to work. Plus American actors are much too cock sure about their ability to master the South African accent.
Note: My mind wandered to the opening of “Chappie” at a local Vegas theater and the stupid women in the bathroom talking about how Ninja and Yolandi (who are from South Africa) didn’t have real South African accents after the film was over. Richard’s right. Americans have a skewed view of what we think a South African accent sounds like, to say the least.
Richard Stanley: I’ve seen a lot of people stumble over that one. They think it’s a really easy thing, but it’s actually quite hard to speak like you’re a local. I could see that was going to be a problem. As a result, in the course of that trailer I lost control of the female lead. The deal in the end included the casting of Chelsea Field who had just finished “The Last Boy Scout” and for some reason Harvey really liked her. He insisted that Chelsea be the female lead, and if we have Chelsea then I can cast the rest as I wished. So we have this tradeoff which unfortunately robbed “Dust Devil” of some feminist potential. Chelsea and I never quite saw eye-to-eye all the way through the process. I had just met her on the set about a week before we started shooting, trying to establish at least some degree of empathy or an effect of discourse kind of got in the way of me developing her in a way that I would have preferred.
Richard Stanley: A change was going on in the outside world as well. To me "Hardware" was heavily influenced by…
Body Count Rising: “Terminator”?
Richard Stanley: “Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2”. I have a soft spot for this movie because it was the first movie I ever got laid in. (laughing)
Body Count Rising: Nice! (laughing)
Richard Stanley: Thank you. I was a teenager at the time, but I was super impressed by Caroline Williams and thought she did a much better job than Marilyn Burns in the first one.
Body Count Rising: I think that given what was happening, it was impressive that you actually watched the movie. (laughing)
Richard Stanley: Yeah! (laughing) So… with Linda Hamilton in “Terminator” and Sigourney Weaver in “Aliens” we were seeing a number of heroines emerging from Hollywood. Many of them since have an out-an-out warrior vibe, but dressing them up in the accouterments of the previous male leads seems to be the mistake. I never got the chance to do a “Hardware” sequel to show how Jill might develop.
Richard Stanley: Well, there’s always been a “Hardware” sequel, which has existed now for about 20 years. It has been effectively blocked due to corporate and legal skullfuckery surrounding the first movie. Because the first movie made so much money, it ended up being partially controlled by Miramax, Buena Vista and MGM. Getting all of the powers that be to synchronize to do a video game, comic book or anything to do with a second film has been thus far impossible. So the sequel has been ready since the late eighties / early nineties and then has been smoldering for a number of years. It never died. Fortunately it’s still relevant after all these years.
Body Count Rising: You were only about 20 then, huh?
Richard Stanley: The average age on set for “Hardware” was probably about 16.
Body Count Rising: Wow…
Richard Stanley: They put one adult on as the assistant director to make sure the rest of us behaved. Essentially the film was achieved on such a low budget because they were using kids… extremely enthusiastic kids giving 150%. The effects were done on a school computer.
Body Count Rising: That’s impressive, especially considering the computers that we had back then! (laughing)
Richard Stanley: (laughing) True!
Body Count Rising: I’d like to speak with you for a bit about your documentary “L’autre Monde” and specifically the Woman in White that you saw as an apparition in the Pyrenees at the caves by the Château de Montségur. You were passionately adamant about the fact that you loved her and you were willing to give your life for her, but this was only the second time you saw her. Did you feel that way about her the first time you saw her?
Richard Stanley: I think the first time I saw the apparition by the castle I was so confused that I was stunned by everything and I was struggling with the idea that I was crazy or was struggling with some sort of drug flashback. I was talking to the other person there, Scarlett (Amaris) at the time and verified that we saw the same thing at the same place before I was influenced that it wasn’t just me or my brain chemistry. It took me a couple of years of research to accept that this was genuine supernatural phenomena. It’s one of those things that you’re always looking for in life to find some sort of proof beyond what we can truly comprehend. I think by the second time around I was receptive to the idea that she was actually real. The situation has grown vastly since the making of “The Other World”.
Body Count Rising: Yeah? Have you seen her again beyond those two times?
Richard Stanley: We essentially have a siege going on in Montségur…
Body Count Rising: And you want to save those historic, sacred lands… but… you haven’t seen her again?
Richard Stanley: Not in such a graphic way, but a lot of bizarre stuff has happened over the years. There have been a number of people wanting to come to see the White Lady of the castle. It’s a rather odd story that the lady of the castle was a 17th century sorceress. She actually shows up in historic record. According to the rules of chivalry the second time I saw her I got down on one knee and swore my allegiance to her and that I would protect her. That debt is now being called in because insanely the castle has now been taken over by a French military industrial complex directed by Robert Finance.
Body Count Rising: And you will step forward to protect her. So… when you saw the apparition, could you feel her energy?
Richard Stanley: Yeah…
Body Count Rising: You did…
Richard Stanley: Yeah. There was a change in the whole atmosphere. I mean it was electric. My hairs were standing up and I could feel her on my skin. It became very warm and there was a smell in the air like roses. The scent was very sweet and very identifiable.
Note: I have had a similar experience, feeling such things physically. That’s why his encounter intrigued me, and why I just keep hammering away with these questions. I don’t fully understand the whole of it, but I believe him. He must be sensitive to energy too. I also empathized with why he became absolutely enthralled. The being behind that energy becomes part of you, etched into your soul. She indeed chose him.
Body Count Rising: Since that experience has she been on your mind a lot? I mean… do you still love her?
Richard Stanley: Yeah. She opened the door to some very complicated things. If a 17th century sorceress can open a portal and step through time, it raises questions and forces me to go back and analyze the subject.
Body Count Rising: And you’re polytheistic, correct?
Richard Stanley: In my own experience I saw the Lady on the mountain and I believe she is a manifestation of a warrior goddess related to Minerva or Artemis. I think she’s reflected in the French revolution and in the Statue of Liberty as a strong woman who protects freedom and guards the country. If this is a regional deity, then how many others are there in the world? It would be insane hubris to think this is the only one on the planet. That opens the door to other ultradimensional deities that have an influence on all of us. It seems to me that there indeed multiple forces at work.
Body Count Rising: Your Mother had similar beliefs. Did your Mom get to go to the castle while she was alive?
Richard Stanley: She did. She got a terminal form of lymphoma about 10 years ago. This affected her optical nerve and caused her to be blind. I tried to treat her eyes with the bleeding meteorites from the Otto Rahn story.
Body Count Rising: Yeah? Have you seen her again beyond those two times?
Richard Stanley: We essentially have a siege going on in Montségur…
Richard Stanley: Not in such a graphic way, but a lot of bizarre stuff has happened over the years. There have been a number of people wanting to come to see the White Lady of the castle. It’s a rather odd story that the lady of the castle was a 17th century sorceress. She actually shows up in historic record. According to the rules of chivalry the second time I saw her I got down on one knee and swore my allegiance to her and that I would protect her. That debt is now being called in because insanely the castle has now been taken over by a French military industrial complex directed by Robert Finance.
Body Count Rising: And you will step forward to protect her. So… when you saw the apparition, could you feel her energy?
Richard Stanley: Yeah…
Body Count Rising: You did…
Richard Stanley: Yeah. There was a change in the whole atmosphere. I mean it was electric. My hairs were standing up and I could feel her on my skin. It became very warm and there was a smell in the air like roses. The scent was very sweet and very identifiable.
Note: I have had a similar experience, feeling such things physically. That’s why his encounter intrigued me, and why I just keep hammering away with these questions. I don’t fully understand the whole of it, but I believe him. He must be sensitive to energy too. I also empathized with why he became absolutely enthralled. The being behind that energy becomes part of you, etched into your soul. She indeed chose him.
Body Count Rising: Since that experience has she been on your mind a lot? I mean… do you still love her?
Richard Stanley: Yeah. She opened the door to some very complicated things. If a 17th century sorceress can open a portal and step through time, it raises questions and forces me to go back and analyze the subject.
Body Count Rising: And you’re polytheistic, correct?
Richard Stanley: In my own experience I saw the Lady on the mountain and I believe she is a manifestation of a warrior goddess related to Minerva or Artemis. I think she’s reflected in the French revolution and in the Statue of Liberty as a strong woman who protects freedom and guards the country. If this is a regional deity, then how many others are there in the world? It would be insane hubris to think this is the only one on the planet. That opens the door to other ultradimensional deities that have an influence on all of us. It seems to me that there indeed multiple forces at work.
Richard Stanley: She did. She got a terminal form of lymphoma about 10 years ago. This affected her optical nerve and caused her to be blind. I tried to treat her eyes with the bleeding meteorites from the Otto Rahn story.
Note: We touch on his documentary about Otto Rahn later in the interview. In the film there are many intricate and beautiful anomalies in nature touched upon. One of these is the bleeding meteorite thought and accepted by the locals to have healing powers.
Body Count Rising: The meteor is mostly iron right?
Richard Stanley: Yes, it’s pure iron.
Body Count Rising: So when you rub them together you make iron oxide, or rust…
Richard Stanley: After I treated her she went into remission.
Body Count Rising: Wow…
Note: As an ex-science teacher my mind was screaming and I had at least 200 more questions, but instead I moved forward.
Richard Stanley: She lived for an additional ten years, but she was never quite the same. That was the unfortunate part. She could no longer draw or express an interest in art or music. The creative part of her brain no longer seemed to be functioning or maybe her creative juices had dried up at a certain age. She also developed problems with motor control and eventually over time was unable to even swallow.
Body Count Rising: Did she pass at the castle?
Richard Stanley: No. She was in a hospital.
Body Count Rising: I’m sorry… Would you say she has been the biggest influence on your life?
Richard Stanley: She gave me the tools I needed to influence me to be the person I am today.
Body Count Rising: We should all be grateful for that. You’re a great artist and you’re also bringing awareness to the world of a part of history that is happening now at Montségur.
Richard Stanley: The Inquisition and the Church spent 700 years rewriting the history books to make certain that people did not know what was going on before they got there. So much of what we know of the occult, science and sorcery was prior to the dark ages. There is utter destruction of the religion that came before the Inquisition. Now there is a new attempt to pacify history.
Body Count Rising: The French military industrial complex?
Richard Stanley: The castle now no longer belongs to the village. They are claiming it will become a grand historic theme park for France, but they’re being very unclear. We don’t know what’s true and what’s not. It’s involving essentially building on the site where the mosques were burned back in 1244. They’ve positioned themselves in the mountain to keep people from approaching the castle 24 hours a day and are armed with machine guns. So they’re sealing off the place where I’ve had the only true supernatural experience in my life. They’ve also barred access to the church in the village and the town square. There’s been a lot of time and trouble put in to assure that human beings do not go to the top of that mountain. I’ve learned that there is a meeting scheduled to organize vigilante committees.
Body Count Rising: Oh you should go to that!
Richard Stanley: Well it’s the enemy, so I probably should. There are many endangered species also being threatened by them and there is no accountability.
Body Count Rising: Do you consider yourself an environmentalist or an environmental activist in your attempts to preserve nature?
Richard Stanley: I’m trying to preserve my life. They’re trying to destroy the place that I am living in. I have the choice to fight or to leave. The fact that people are allowed to get away with this stuff is terrifying. This is Europe’s last great wilderness area and it would be a shame to let it go. It’s on parallel with the destruction from fracking in the US and poisoning the water supply, on the basis of pure survival and the prospect of what will be left to future generations.
Body Count Rising: Do you have any plans to make a documentary to expose those who are destroying the earth?
Richard Stanley: No. I suspect I’ll be in one. I’ll leave the filming to someone else. A confrontation will happen soon. There will be a full moon on the Summer Solstice this year, so both will draw people to the mountain. Meanwhile guards are armed and barring those from the castle, mountain and from worship. The extra forces of vigilantes will be there for a standoff. I, however, will be Ghandi-esque. My plan is to plant a laurel tree at the top of the mountain as a symbolic gesture of peace. When the documentary “L’autre Monde” shows up on DVD in the US later this year we will include a half hour of this footage, exposing those on both sides of the conflict.
Note: Since this interview, and actually it was announced today that the siege at Montségur is over and the considerable powers withholding the castle at the mountain have withdrawn.
Body Count Rising: The meteor is mostly iron right?
Richard Stanley: Yes, it’s pure iron.
Body Count Rising: So when you rub them together you make iron oxide, or rust…
Richard Stanley: After I treated her she went into remission.
Body Count Rising: Wow…
Note: As an ex-science teacher my mind was screaming and I had at least 200 more questions, but instead I moved forward.
Richard Stanley: She lived for an additional ten years, but she was never quite the same. That was the unfortunate part. She could no longer draw or express an interest in art or music. The creative part of her brain no longer seemed to be functioning or maybe her creative juices had dried up at a certain age. She also developed problems with motor control and eventually over time was unable to even swallow.
Body Count Rising: Did she pass at the castle?
Richard Stanley: No. She was in a hospital.
Body Count Rising: I’m sorry… Would you say she has been the biggest influence on your life?
Richard Stanley: She gave me the tools I needed to influence me to be the person I am today.
Richard Stanley: The Inquisition and the Church spent 700 years rewriting the history books to make certain that people did not know what was going on before they got there. So much of what we know of the occult, science and sorcery was prior to the dark ages. There is utter destruction of the religion that came before the Inquisition. Now there is a new attempt to pacify history.
Body Count Rising: The French military industrial complex?
Richard Stanley: The castle now no longer belongs to the village. They are claiming it will become a grand historic theme park for France, but they’re being very unclear. We don’t know what’s true and what’s not. It’s involving essentially building on the site where the mosques were burned back in 1244. They’ve positioned themselves in the mountain to keep people from approaching the castle 24 hours a day and are armed with machine guns. So they’re sealing off the place where I’ve had the only true supernatural experience in my life. They’ve also barred access to the church in the village and the town square. There’s been a lot of time and trouble put in to assure that human beings do not go to the top of that mountain. I’ve learned that there is a meeting scheduled to organize vigilante committees.
Body Count Rising: Oh you should go to that!
Richard Stanley: Well it’s the enemy, so I probably should. There are many endangered species also being threatened by them and there is no accountability.
Body Count Rising: Do you consider yourself an environmentalist or an environmental activist in your attempts to preserve nature?
Richard Stanley: I’m trying to preserve my life. They’re trying to destroy the place that I am living in. I have the choice to fight or to leave. The fact that people are allowed to get away with this stuff is terrifying. This is Europe’s last great wilderness area and it would be a shame to let it go. It’s on parallel with the destruction from fracking in the US and poisoning the water supply, on the basis of pure survival and the prospect of what will be left to future generations.
Richard Stanley: No. I suspect I’ll be in one. I’ll leave the filming to someone else. A confrontation will happen soon. There will be a full moon on the Summer Solstice this year, so both will draw people to the mountain. Meanwhile guards are armed and barring those from the castle, mountain and from worship. The extra forces of vigilantes will be there for a standoff. I, however, will be Ghandi-esque. My plan is to plant a laurel tree at the top of the mountain as a symbolic gesture of peace. When the documentary “L’autre Monde” shows up on DVD in the US later this year we will include a half hour of this footage, exposing those on both sides of the conflict.
Note: Since this interview, and actually it was announced today that the siege at Montségur is over and the considerable powers withholding the castle at the mountain have withdrawn.
None of us will ever fully understand what happened today. We turned up at the town hall with relatively low expectations but were received with surprising courtesy. They say a knight that is true at heart can never fail in single combat and so perhaps it is, the numerous obstacles and outrages seeming to melt before us as if they had never been anything more than mist and cobwebs to begin with, although powerful forces and numerous complex factors had undoubtedly been at work behind the scenes to help bring this happy resolution about. -Richard Stanley, Terra Umbra
Body Count Rising: You indicated you’d like to move to the US in an interview with Lloyd Kaufman. Has that been put on hold because of this conflict?
Richard Stanley: Somewhat, but I still would like to make a movie in the US. I’d like to do H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Color of Space”, which at this point is affiliated with Elijah Wood’s company, Spectrevision. It seems like an ideal time for this to be made since it concerns the contamination of an entire water table from an element beyond space.
Body Count Rising: What made you want to tell this story specifically since it’s already been made into a film, and what will you bring to this new version that wasn’t addressed previously?
Richard Stanley: H.P. Lovecraft himself said that throughout all of these stories he wanted to maintain an atmosphere of cosmic horror. If that was his intent, I don’t think a single film being made so far has nailed it. I have yet to find a cosmic horror or a fight for man’s position in the cosmos in the Lovecraft adaptations. I’d like to see the Lovecraft movie as made by Ingmar Bergman or Andrei Tarkovsky. I think you apply this approach to any of the stories in the canon. I’d like to see “Dunwich Horror” done this way as well.
Note: Ingmar Bergman is my favorite director, so at this point I was doing a little happy dance on the inside.
Richard Stanley: “Color of Space” takes place on one farm in New England, which makes it much more accessible and a budget more within reach than some of his other films.
Body Count Rising: Your films are ethereal and bold with colors that just blast at you, so that definitely plays into that theme…
Richard Stanley: Color has always been very important to me and I always think very carefully about the colors I use. I have never liked the desaturated style and have always pushed the opposite direction like the opulence of Dario Argento. “Color of Space” will be an endeavor to find a color beyond the human spectrum, which is technically impossible. The human spectrum runs from ultra violet to infra red. So something I will be working with is the new generation of Flir cameras, which would be infra red cameras seen in color. This would be similar to the reds used in “Hardware”, which was a first at that point in time.
Also we’ll be delving into the realms of sound and ultrasound. We’ll be exploring frequencies of sounds that were previously inaudible to imply the presence of something that can’t be perceived, like the sweet smell of roses that had come from the apparition. I’d say we have an olfactory range with, say, sulfur on one side and sweetness on the other. In “Color of Space” we never see the thing that’s in the well, so we have to imply its presence through scent. Basically we’ll be making a psychedelic movie. It will be quite an arsenal of the weird, taking some good old fashioned psychedelic stuff and throwing a monkey wrench in it.
Body Count Rising: When you create your color effects, is it done while filming or during editing?
Richard Stanley: While filming. Prior to the filming of “Hardware” I looked very carefully at “Susperia” with regard to color and tried to improve on it. Argento was my influence. During the first two movies I employed Steve Chivers, who is a total genius. The light sources were shifting around within the plane instead of staying static. At times we had a tray of dust that would be thrown into the fan to promote the shifting of light. I prefer the organic effect of color on set. Always keep CG with regard to color to a minimum if you can. I don’t like the texture and I’m very old school so the CG stuff jumps out at me. I hate it when a creature pops up and it’s just a cartoon. The best thing is to get it right on set.
Body Count Rising: When you say “psychedelic” will this still maintain your ethereal feel, or is it meant to be shocking?
Richard Stanley: Well “Color of Space” is a horror movie. I’ve never made a pure horror movie before. “Hardware” is a sci-fi hybrid and “Dust Devil” is an African western movie/ drive-in movie hybrid. I have an obligation with “Color of Space” to be as scary as possible, deeply unsettling and downright terrifying. Some very dark and negative things happen to all of the characters in true Lovecraft fashion. There are no happy endings, and it wouldn’t be a proper Lovecraft movie if there were. Part of our problem right now is trying to get the movie made.
Body Count Rising: Is funding coming through a little bit more now that Wood is attached?
Richard Stanley: There are more and more people working in the same direction. If it actually gets made and I relocate to the states I’ll spend a couple of years there working on the film.
Body Count Rising: As far as feature films versus documentaries, where does your passion lie?
Richard Stanley: Feature films absolutely.
Body Count Rising: Really?
Richard Stanley: The powers that be control the magic cookie kept in the invisible jar so to speak. Documentaries are the things I make when I can’t do anything else. You also don’t make money off of them and it seems like you have to almost pay people to watch them. It’s essentially impossible, so it’s a tricky one. But idle hands make for the Devil’s work.
Body Count Rising: In your documentary “Secret Glory” Otto Rahn was depicted as an ideologist on a quest for spiritual meaning. Are you searching for your own spiritual meaning through these documentaries, or are you simply wanting to raise awareness of the subject matter?
Richard Stanley: Well I certainly felt that Otto’s story needed to be told, from his involvement with the SS from a historical, cultural side. Trying to establish the facts around the case seemed necessary with such a shadowy, murky area. It essentially was parallel with Raiders of the Lost Ark. I was hired to research this for a show for Channel 4. When Channel 4 backed out and decided they didn’t want to do the show I found myself with a great stock of all of these stories and details. I have tried to capture it as accurately as possible. Nothing is scripted. They are just real accounts. There is not one word of the documentary written by me. Most of these people now have unfortunately died… all except for Rahn’s housekeeper.
Body Count Rising: You truly took the viewer on a trip from the Holy Grail to the SS to the Ark of the Covenant. It’s amazing that this wasn’t scripted in any way. It was exceptionally well put together. I know you’re a strong proponent of the thought that you create your own reality, and in your work you also create realities. In your life how do you keep out those forces that you do not want to be part of your reality?
Richard Stanley: I just tried to escape reality when I moved here to Montségur. I love it here. It’s been as much fun as “The Island of Dr. Moreau” was before I lost control of the island. Unfortunately these things are temporary by nature and then material reality comes back hard. That’s why it’s difficult writing horror. By virtue of writing those stories, one my attempt to bring them into existence.
Body Count Rising: Really?!
Richard Stanley: Well it’s natural when you’re concentrating on an idea for years while staying interested and motivated. It’s important to think twice before taking on a project of questionable subject matter. In the years of the Otto Rahm doc I’m sure I was a bit paranoid and depressed. It brings that subject into your life for that period of time.
Body Count Rising: Speaking of the Island of Dr. Moreau doc, in “Lost Soul” you said that you don’t have a license. Do you drive around without one, or do you just not drive at all?
Richard Stanley: I’m wary of cars and airplanes.
Body Count Rising: Do you ride a bike or walk?
Richard Stanley: I use a walking stick and walk everywhere, but now that I’m getting older my knees are starting to complain.
Body Count Rising: I also understand you’re a cannabis enthusiast…
Richard Stanley: Caffeine is my drug of choice. I don’t like to get too stoned because it messes with my work. Most of the commercial marijuana available is so insanely strong it just takes me out of the game. I can put up with anything else, but when they take the coffee away we will have problems.
Keep up with Richard’s latest projects on his IMDb or follow him on Facebook.
Richard Stanley: Somewhat, but I still would like to make a movie in the US. I’d like to do H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Color of Space”, which at this point is affiliated with Elijah Wood’s company, Spectrevision. It seems like an ideal time for this to be made since it concerns the contamination of an entire water table from an element beyond space.
Body Count Rising: What made you want to tell this story specifically since it’s already been made into a film, and what will you bring to this new version that wasn’t addressed previously?
Note: Ingmar Bergman is my favorite director, so at this point I was doing a little happy dance on the inside.
Richard Stanley: “Color of Space” takes place on one farm in New England, which makes it much more accessible and a budget more within reach than some of his other films.
Body Count Rising: Your films are ethereal and bold with colors that just blast at you, so that definitely plays into that theme…
Richard Stanley: Color has always been very important to me and I always think very carefully about the colors I use. I have never liked the desaturated style and have always pushed the opposite direction like the opulence of Dario Argento. “Color of Space” will be an endeavor to find a color beyond the human spectrum, which is technically impossible. The human spectrum runs from ultra violet to infra red. So something I will be working with is the new generation of Flir cameras, which would be infra red cameras seen in color. This would be similar to the reds used in “Hardware”, which was a first at that point in time.
Also we’ll be delving into the realms of sound and ultrasound. We’ll be exploring frequencies of sounds that were previously inaudible to imply the presence of something that can’t be perceived, like the sweet smell of roses that had come from the apparition. I’d say we have an olfactory range with, say, sulfur on one side and sweetness on the other. In “Color of Space” we never see the thing that’s in the well, so we have to imply its presence through scent. Basically we’ll be making a psychedelic movie. It will be quite an arsenal of the weird, taking some good old fashioned psychedelic stuff and throwing a monkey wrench in it.
Body Count Rising: When you create your color effects, is it done while filming or during editing?
Richard Stanley: While filming. Prior to the filming of “Hardware” I looked very carefully at “Susperia” with regard to color and tried to improve on it. Argento was my influence. During the first two movies I employed Steve Chivers, who is a total genius. The light sources were shifting around within the plane instead of staying static. At times we had a tray of dust that would be thrown into the fan to promote the shifting of light. I prefer the organic effect of color on set. Always keep CG with regard to color to a minimum if you can. I don’t like the texture and I’m very old school so the CG stuff jumps out at me. I hate it when a creature pops up and it’s just a cartoon. The best thing is to get it right on set.
Body Count Rising: When you say “psychedelic” will this still maintain your ethereal feel, or is it meant to be shocking?
Richard Stanley: Well “Color of Space” is a horror movie. I’ve never made a pure horror movie before. “Hardware” is a sci-fi hybrid and “Dust Devil” is an African western movie/ drive-in movie hybrid. I have an obligation with “Color of Space” to be as scary as possible, deeply unsettling and downright terrifying. Some very dark and negative things happen to all of the characters in true Lovecraft fashion. There are no happy endings, and it wouldn’t be a proper Lovecraft movie if there were. Part of our problem right now is trying to get the movie made.
Richard Stanley: There are more and more people working in the same direction. If it actually gets made and I relocate to the states I’ll spend a couple of years there working on the film.
Body Count Rising: As far as feature films versus documentaries, where does your passion lie?
Richard Stanley: Feature films absolutely.
Body Count Rising: Really?
Richard Stanley: The powers that be control the magic cookie kept in the invisible jar so to speak. Documentaries are the things I make when I can’t do anything else. You also don’t make money off of them and it seems like you have to almost pay people to watch them. It’s essentially impossible, so it’s a tricky one. But idle hands make for the Devil’s work.
Body Count Rising: In your documentary “Secret Glory” Otto Rahn was depicted as an ideologist on a quest for spiritual meaning. Are you searching for your own spiritual meaning through these documentaries, or are you simply wanting to raise awareness of the subject matter?
Richard Stanley: Well I certainly felt that Otto’s story needed to be told, from his involvement with the SS from a historical, cultural side. Trying to establish the facts around the case seemed necessary with such a shadowy, murky area. It essentially was parallel with Raiders of the Lost Ark. I was hired to research this for a show for Channel 4. When Channel 4 backed out and decided they didn’t want to do the show I found myself with a great stock of all of these stories and details. I have tried to capture it as accurately as possible. Nothing is scripted. They are just real accounts. There is not one word of the documentary written by me. Most of these people now have unfortunately died… all except for Rahn’s housekeeper.
Body Count Rising: You truly took the viewer on a trip from the Holy Grail to the SS to the Ark of the Covenant. It’s amazing that this wasn’t scripted in any way. It was exceptionally well put together. I know you’re a strong proponent of the thought that you create your own reality, and in your work you also create realities. In your life how do you keep out those forces that you do not want to be part of your reality?
Richard Stanley: I just tried to escape reality when I moved here to Montségur. I love it here. It’s been as much fun as “The Island of Dr. Moreau” was before I lost control of the island. Unfortunately these things are temporary by nature and then material reality comes back hard. That’s why it’s difficult writing horror. By virtue of writing those stories, one my attempt to bring them into existence.
Body Count Rising: Really?!
Richard Stanley: Well it’s natural when you’re concentrating on an idea for years while staying interested and motivated. It’s important to think twice before taking on a project of questionable subject matter. In the years of the Otto Rahm doc I’m sure I was a bit paranoid and depressed. It brings that subject into your life for that period of time.
Richard Stanley: I’m wary of cars and airplanes.
Body Count Rising: Do you ride a bike or walk?
Richard Stanley: I use a walking stick and walk everywhere, but now that I’m getting older my knees are starting to complain.
Body Count Rising: I also understand you’re a cannabis enthusiast…
Richard Stanley: Caffeine is my drug of choice. I don’t like to get too stoned because it messes with my work. Most of the commercial marijuana available is so insanely strong it just takes me out of the game. I can put up with anything else, but when they take the coffee away we will have problems.
Keep up with Richard’s latest projects on his IMDb or follow him on Facebook.