Fred Olen Ray: The Mr. Skin Interview

What got you started in movie making?

Probably the Famous Monsters movie magazine. If you go back to that mag you find articles about kids who were making movies in their back yard with 8-millimeter cameras. Some of the photos and stuff they were running were pretty exciting looking, but the whole concept of as a kid that you could make your own movie drove me in that direction. I started making little horror films at home.

How old were you?

Fourteen, I think. It was fun. When you grow up in Florida and your dad's an electronic engineer and your mother's a nurse, you don't really think you're going to become a real filmmaker. It seems too far away-the whole concept of Hollywood and studios and movie stars seems so impossible.

I got an engineering degree and I went to work in television in Orlando. I did that for five years, and you have to renew your license every five years, and it came in what it seemed like overnight. So I quit my job and packed up my car with my brother and we had 800 dollars and we drove to California to try to make our way in the movie business.

All I had to do was buy the film and figure out how to make films. I had never made a sound film before, so I literally, I tell people, there was a paperback called Guide to Filmmaking, and I held that in one hand and the camera in the other and that's how I made Alien Dead and those early movies.

I had no clue what we were doing, and how it happened is beyond me. We kind of learned by making terrible mistakes because I never went to film school, so it was really a baptism by fire. But even then the worst thing I could make had a home; it's been distributed by five different labels.

We put out a DVD ourselves a few years ago and it (Alien Dead) sold like 5000 units, which for us is a lot. That's double what our normal sales would be on a good title. It has an audience, as bad as it is.

Do you think that's because of your name?

No. There's something about those early films, those films shot in the 1970s. The color and the way people dressed and the sort of naivet?bout what's good and what's bad and what's acceptable and what people think they could get away with. Things are worse today with the advent of the home video camera. I mean things are so low! The bar is set so low; at least back then if you wanted to be able to make a film you had to be able to load a film camera, process it, cut the negative, and cut the sound. You had to know something, it wasn't like now when you pick something up and you push the red button and all of a sudden you have a picture with sound. And now you are a director based on how long the show is, not based on the quality or if it has a story. There's a sort of weirdness to those. Like Scalps, Scalps has a large fan base that always eluded me, but when you watch it, it does give you an uneasy feeling. There's something creepy and lonely about the film, as crappily made as the film was. Some of those early films, even though they are not that well made, they do have a weird vibe that they give off.

Did you think you were going to be a mainstream director? Did you want it and at one point think you might make it?

Sure I'd love to pull into Universal and have my name on one of the parking slots. It would be one of my big dreams. But I came along at the time of home video, and a lot of directors were made in that era because there was so much product needed in the mid-to-late '80s.

It's a job. I didn't want to make one film a year; I wanted to make four films a year. You've got to make a living. I don't want a day job. I haven't had one in twenty-seven years. Last thing I wanted to do was be somebody's employee again. Everybody has to answer to somebody, but I'm as high up as I can get on my movies.

What would you tell a new filmmaker, someone who wants to make it as a director?

To learn the craft of directing is easier than ever because you do have the advantage of not having to load film and pay all these lab costs. You can get a pretty decent DV camera and you can do all the same kind of shots. You can learn an awful lot without spending hardly anything. It's making that step away from mini DV cameras to something else where it pays that's tough.

I told my own son if he wanted to make a profit first don't come to me or anyone else for money and then lose their money. I told him he should do some T&A stuff for Direct TV like we do here.

We made a deal to do six of those just recently. They are one-day gigs, and we are going to try to do two in one day, and I flip through these after they're done, I'll watch them to make sure they don't hurt my reputation.

It's a "make money first" deal, because you'll meet people along the way. You start making money for that guy and he'll come to you and he'll bring you one of these Torch Light movies or one of these bikini movies. You'll move up to a feature unless you have some driving vision and nothing less than your vision will satisfy you.

But if you want to be a working filmmaker who doesn't have to bag groceries on the weekends, you need to find something people are willing to buy. As I always say it's like baking a cake: Don't bake the cake that you want to eat, bake the cake that that guy wants to eat.

Why do you think your bikini films do so well?

People say, "Fred why would anybody watch that when they can just rent a porno?" I've been asked this for years, and I'm not sure that I completely understand. I think the two types of films serve two different purposes. You can't look at them and say that they are there for the same things.

We did Inner Sanctum, (Picture: 1) which was a million-dollar erotic film, it made a ton of dough. A guy can put that down on the counter with his girlfriend standing right there and he doesn't feel like everyone's looking at him. Maybe she'll watch it with him and they don't have that same stigma that you might feel if you were watching Rump Rangers 45 or whatever it is.

I think that these kind of erotic films are much more couples friendly, even more than couples-friendly porn. For porn, I don't think anyone sits and watches the whole thing. I think they get to whatever scene they like and that's it.

But I think a bunch of guys can get together and get some pizza and some beer and sit down and watch Bikini a Go Go (Picture: 1) and just laugh and have a good time. I like what goes on between the sex, and there's so much freedom to do what you want to do cause as long as you deliver those six scenes you can do whatever you want.

What are your favorite sexy scenes in movies?

One memorable one would be the girl-girl scene in The Hunger. (Picture: 1) At the time I had never seen anything like that before I saw it in the theater.

And then Videodrome. (Picture: 1) Is that the movie with the ice cube and the girl and the guy was piercing the girl's ear with the ice cube while he was doing her? Those are what I would consider memorable.

Catholic High School Girls in Trouble, the trailer in Kentucky Fried Movie-that's memorable. Corinne Wahl in Amazon Women on the Moon. (Picture: 1) She was hot in that.

Maybe Kitten Natividad in the Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens. (Picture: 1) I got to hold her breasts once. Yeah, she was great. She said, "Oh, my back hurts. Could you hold my tits?"

Wasn't she in one of your movies?

Kitten was in The Tomb. (Picture: 1) She replaced Mamie Van Doren, (Picture: 1) who I had a row with.

Who are your favorite sexy actresses?

Rebecca Love. (Picture: 1) She's in like three or four of our things. As a person she's okay, and I like looking at her. I don't really know her well enough as a person. But as far as looking at her naked, she has about everything I've ever been looking for.

Dana Bentley, (Picture: 1) she has dark hair, the body-everything I was looking for in a girl. I thought she was incredible.

At the top of my list would be Michelle Bauer. (Picture: 1) When I first met her it was a session similar to this and it was after hours.

Michelle had to bring all the different costumes that she was going to wear in The Tomb, and she had to try on each outfit, walk out and show them to me so I could approve of them. I thought I had died and gone to heaven!

She was just perfect. And she's a wonderful person. I can't say enough about her.

Do you still talk to her?

Michelle and I have lunch all the time.

images all courtesy of FredOlenRay.com