William Lustig: The Mr. Skin Interview

Where did your ambition to work in film come from?
The lightning bolt hit me around 1969 when I was about 14 years old. There were a barrage of films at that time that were really incredible: The Good, The Bad And the Ugly; The French Connection; The Wild Bunch; Midnight Cowboy; The Godfather films.

That same era also produced a massive amount of classic exploitation films, of which you were obviously a huge fan. Correct?
When I was in high school, I would frequently cut out of school and hang out on 42nd St. in NYC and catch double features all day long. It was dangerous, but that was half the fun of it. You'd a lot of leg exercises because of the rats running around in the theater. Below your feet you'd hear a bag of potato chips and you'd hear wrinkling and crunching. There was a little rat down there.

The 42nd Street grindhouses are legendary for action in the audience matching, and often surpassing, the outrageousness on screen. Do you have a favorite story?
One of my favorite moments of 42nd Street history was seeing the movie I'm about to put out next year, Fight for Your Life. I remember going on a date, it was sort of a Travis Bickle moment. I went with this girl I'd just begun seeing and took her to 42nd Street to watch a double feature of 100 Rifles and Fight for Your Life. So during the movie Fight for Your Life -- I don't know if you've ever seen it, it's kind of a Desperate Hours, but a racially charged Desperate Hours. This black family is being tormented by a group of escaped convicts led by the white trash Bill Sanderson. He torments the family, rapes the daughter, beats up the father -- you know, just every sort of atrocity. During the movie the audience got angrier and angrier as the movie went on and I kept saying, "Oh, please, don't let the last reel be missing." They need the catharsis of that last reel or else I'm dead. I think the girl knew what she was in for. Actually, I ended up seeing this girl for a couple of years after that. I guess she didn't take it too bad.

I've heard that you frequently haunted 42nd Street with the one-and-only Joe Spinell.
Oh, yeah. I'd go there with Joe Spinell to see such things as Hollywood Hillside Stranglers. He was pretty much an insomniac. I'm not really a late night person, but frequently he would call me and every now and then I would join him and we'd catch movies in the middle of the night on 42nd St. It was a wonderful, wonderful place to see movies.

How has 42nd Street shaped and affected Blue Underground?
If you start asking me about the genesis of Blue Underground, it really comes from 42nd Street. Because what I try to do with Blue Underground is, each month, to give DVD fans kind of a dose of what I got on 42nd Street: surprising, provocative, interesting films. And also a variety of films, because 42nd St. didn't just only show horror and Westerns. I saw Fellini films down on 42nd Street at The Apollo Theater.

Can you tell us about your history with Anchor Bay Entertainment?
I produced about 90 percent of the Anchor Bay DVDs and even some that have been released this year. In July of 2001, there was a corporate decision made not to acquire any more films at Anchor Bay. It was clear that the parent company of Anchor Bay, a publicly held company called The Handlemen Company, wanted to change directions with Anchor Bay. We didn't know what it was -- it was either close up the company or sell it. I had a great team of people who had gone through a tremendous learning curve in making DVDs and I said it would be a shame [not to work with them]. There were titles I would have licensed to Anchor Bay but I decided to keep them to myself. That was the start of Blue Underground.

There are some amazingly shocking films in the Blue Underground catalogue. Do you anticipate any legal issues arising from content?
The most extreme so far are and Goodbye Uncle Tom. I don't see a problem legally, there may be a question of morally [laughs]. But legally I don't see anything in these films that really goes into being illegal. Distasteful maybe.

Nothing at all?
The point is, I actually think the movies have value. Uncle Tom as an example. Goodbye Uncle Tom is by the same people who made the Mondo Cane films. They made that film, whether you agree or not, they very sincerely made the films as an indictment of America's treatment of black people. And the fact that American's treated black people in such a despicable manner is not the fault of the filmmakers who were trying to honestly depict what it was that Americans were doing. It wasn't made as an exploitation film. It wasn't made to make fun of, to find it titillating. It was made by the greatest of sincerity by these filmmakers. You might say they were misguided in some ways, but I honestly these guys were really sincere in what they were doing.

How do you find these films?
That is the talent of what we do, seeking out the rights-holders and then gaining access to the best materials available. That's the challenge that we're faced with on a daily basis. I must tell you my research and development department is actually the bootleggers. When I go to places like the Chiller Show and the Fangoria Convention and the bootleggers see me coming. I go, "Oh, there's my research and development department." Very often, I get my leads from those guys, find out what are the movies that consistently sell well and are not available and I'll go seek them out. Emmanuelle In America and Goodbye Uncle Tom are probably two of the most sought after bootleg releases of the past 20 years. I call it 'the keen sense of the obvious.' You see what the people [fans and collectors] are buying; if these people are buying it, then there's a big audience out there.

What about your friendship and work history with Quentin Tarantino?
I was the first guy to buy one of Tarantino's scripts [True Romance]. I worked a year on that. It's kind of a painful experience. I read the script. Liked it. Optioned it for about a year, developing it with Quentin and Roger Avery. I was kind of surprised by the ending on the finished film which was quickly written in my living room by Roger Avery because we needed to have a happy ending to sell it at Cannes. Really, we wrote that ending as a joke. That was written in 20 minutes. We never thought anybody would ever shoot it. We had no intention of ever shooting it. We thought let's do something that would be so ridiculous, you know, they have a child named Elvis. It's so sappy and stupid that nobody would ever shoot it and, lo and behold, there it was.

Weren't you slated to direct True Romance?
I got bought out. I own a percentage of it that I've never seen.

Did you start out by working in adult films?
I did direct some adult scenes prior to [Hot Honey]. I guess I'd say that adult gave me more hands-on experience. It taught me in a very practical manner how to make a 35mm movie.

How so?
Probably the least erotic experience is being on the set of an adult movie. It's just not very conducive to feeling very erotic. It's very mechanical, it's very stressful. You try to get a lot done in a very short period of time. And the women aren't very attractive. Most of the girls have something not right. They're attractive, there's something not attractive to them. It's a little too much makeup, a little too something. I'm very grateful to the adult films because but for the adult films I wouldn't know how to make a money. I wasn't going to get that experience in film school.

Okay, let's talk about your masterpiece, Maniac.
I made a determination to make the movie Maniac with the star of the film and we put all our money together to make a movie. It was a very low budget film that became enormously successful. It was a little bit kind of the Blair Witch of its day.

Tell us about Maniac's leading lady, Caroline Munro.
Here's the story about Caroline Munro (Picture: 1): Caroline had co-starred in a movie with Joe Spinell called Star Crash. We were shooting Maniac. Caroline had come to New York. We had a small role in the movie that Joe offered Caroline because she happened to be in New York. Her then-husband helped us in raising some money that we desperately needed to finish Maniac. He requested and we conceded to expand the small role for Caroline. We knew Caroline had celebrity in the genre world and it was kind of a misuse of her talent and celebrity just to have her come in for a brief role. It worked to expand it. She's one of the nicest people you'll ever meet. I kept thinking of Julie Andrews and Mary Poppins. When you look at Caroline, she's like a teenage wet dream. When you meet her your first impression is just how strikingly beautiful she is. But when she starts to talk and you get to know her she has this Mary Poppins [quality]. Next thing you know all your dirty thoughts turn to … . Before you ever met her, you wanted to tie her up and all kinds of nasty thing, want to see her in her leather boots.

Any new Blue Underground projects we haven't heard about yet?
Thinking about putting together a Black Emmanuelle box, but we're still in the process of getting clearances, the rights cleared.

What about other erotic films?
We are looking for more erotic movies. Here's something we're working on, but again we don't have the deal closed, it's one of the projects that we'd really like to do: a David Hamliton collection. He's a photographer who shot very young girls and made movies [such as Bilitis]. In January 2004, we have two more Jess Franco films, one of which, Sadomania, has got to be the most perverse film I've ever seen in my life. Let me put it to you this way, what Emmanuelle in America does for horses, this one does for German shepherds. At the same time, it's very sexy, because the girl in the lead --well, he really has a way of picking the girls I'm attracted to, like the girl in Eugenie. I mean, she's really cute. This girl who plays the lead in Sadomania, she's really this very sexy girl. She's really hot.

Are you happy in your work?
How could I not be? I'm surrounded by sex and violence, and it beats heavy lifting. I just got delivered a 16x9 TV for my bedroom and it's tax-deductible. I get to indulge in all these kinds of pleasures, and I get to deduct it!