Larsen tells the tale of how Nigel The Psychopath developed from a series of shorts into a hidden gem of shot-on-video horror
Teenage productions are a rite of passage for aspiring underground filmmakers, and the horror genre has proven the most fertile realm for such adolescent experimentation. This is the proving ground, the realm where mainstays like Tim Ritter and the incomparable Nathan Schiff got their starts and developed unlikely yet highly respected and influential bodies of work. Shot-on-video horror itself reserves a special place for features produced when the cast and crew were just barely (or not even) out of high school. Essential and obscure works such as Mark and John Polonia’s Splatter Farm (1987), Chris Seaver’s Friday the 13th: Halloween Night (1994), and countless European (especially German) offerings litter the history of the SOV cycle’s most prolific years. In approaching these films, there’s the obvious pull of their naïve charm, where the rudimentary construction of many SOV works can be further excused due to the creators’ inexperience, as well as the relative wholesomeness on display. These are films that disarm with their pubescent sincerity, not to mention their general confusion regarding serious adult matters and the emphasis on juvenile splatter as a means to an end. What remains most remarkable, perhaps, is the sheer fact that many of these films saw legitimate and even relatively successful commercial releases upon completion.
Among the teenage SOV efforts, none strikes as strong a chord with me as Jim Larsen’s Virginia-lensed Nigel the Psychopath, released in 1994 by Todd Jason Cook’s Cemetery Cinema.1 Shot between 1986-1989 as a series of five shorts, the feature began as a five-minute super 8 short, portions of which are included in the released version as a dream sequence. Cobbled together from these disparate but thematically linked segments, the At Large cut of Nigel is a fragmented opus of suburban expression that thrives on its disjointedness, and arguably couldn’t function any other way. As a result, this scattershot construction hardly matters when the released version has come to define the film for almost 30 years now. It’s also why it’s so rewarding to visit other versions years later thanks to Larsen’s extensive documentation of the film’s production.
The plot, as it stands, is that deranged teenager Nigel is on the loose and killing his peers. Nigel’s mind broke when his pet dog died and he was told that death was when people became happy; in his mind killing is actually helping free people from the burdens of life — quite an existential slant for such an unassuming film. The cops are on his trail as the murders continue, while his older brother, Chubby, along with his friend Joseph, try to save the misguided killer. Forced to team up with the one surviving cop in town, Chubby is put on the spot and must think fast to talk sense into his brother. This he does by donning a dress and wig and pretending to be their mother (‘Where are you, Nigel? It’s your mommy’). Before he can complete his mission, he gets mistaken by Artie the drunken bum for his lost love, Elizabeth and is shot dead in a drunken rage. His death is avenged by Nigel, who is promptly arrested.
As the above summary as well as the film’s stitched-together nature make clear, this is hardly a plot-driven film. It often bounces between ideas with little regard for linear logic. The entire project was filmed in a public park and playground, with detours into Larsen’s own high school as well as some wooded areas and suburban streets. Pure utilitarianism in effect. As far as slasher villain mythmaking, Nigel does bear a distinctive appearance in his camo jacket, baseball cap, and gas mask, not to mention his staccato cackle. Throughout the film, Nigel’s size, shape, and even race change from scene to scene, based on who was playing him for that particular installment. Similarly, Larsen himself plays Bubba, Deputy Covina, and one incarnation of Nigel, while Rob Hayward performs seven roles in all, also including Nigel. Down to its very construction, Nigel demonstrates the on-the-spot impulsivity and reckless joy of juvenile creation. If it makes no sense to us, that’s because it was never meant to, and its contents function just as ably as a time capsule capture of Larsen’s Virginian adolescence as they do an amateur cinematic statement.
Of course, these matters also lend themselves to some surprising moments of onscreen abandon that make it stand out from other good-natured gorefests. In one now-shocking but still comical moment, Sheriff Alderman mistakes a boy returning from the bathroom for Nigel and shoots him dead. His partner, Covina, reassures him that it’s not a big deal and they continue on their search. In the background, a mother in a pink coat is visible walking her happy toddler home from the park. Filming was such an instantaneous and naturalistic act that pockets of the real world bleed into the insular universe of Larsen’s creation, providing fascinating glimpses at what existed just beyond Nigel’s own diegesis. Later, Alderman shoots Joseph while aiming for Nigel but is let off the hook because Nigel would have killed him anyway. In these scenes, as well as others, the child-killing taboo is strangely undercut, largely as a result of the general lack of gore. There may be severed limbs and occasional oozing wounds, but Nigel is free of the prurient bad taste of Splatter Farm. Rather than lacking an edge, there’s something refreshing in such a polite approach to serial killing. The film’s goofy humor may not always land, but it fits perfectly within its narrative fabric because every tonal element falls into place, creating a cohesion that could not have been intended during the scattered production.
Too often we look at teenage SOV projects with a tint of nostalgia, a sense of putting ourselves in the cast and creators’ shoes or trying to recapture years long past in our own lives. In many cases, the inspiration of commercial horror cinema kneecaps amateur films, rendering them as spirited imitations and little more. This is not true of Nigel, which resolutely refuses to play by any logic other than its own. It’s a film that exists and succeeds because it is so skeletal and unadorned. The brief glimpses at character and plot development are results of its various original sources, but in the context of the assembled At Large cut, they make it stand out for what isn’t there and for what is accomplished in its stead. It’s a film that rejects any sort of ironic reading strategy, because if we even try to undermine it with this baggage the joke is on us — what’s more pathetic than making fun of some kids in a rural area working creatively?
SOV horror movies are often made the butt of a joke, as if those who watch them and bother to write are offended by the quality, as if it’s an imposition on their time despite their election to do so. At the other end of things, the 1990s saw an increase in self-aware humor, as if the directors themselves felt the need to head off lowered expectations and show they were in on the joke themselves. Larsen’s work on Nigel provides plenty of laughs and clues us in without obnoxiously distracting from the charm and sanctity of the narrative itself. Ultimately, my affection for Nigel is indicative of the very possibility of the SOV underground — the film has minimal gore and little of the transgressive edge increasingly displayed to set these films apart, dealing instead in pure energy and naivety. By most standards, it’s a disjointed mess. And yet it saw a genuine release, large enough that tapes circulate to this day where other amateur efforts hardly ever surface beyond file sharing, and DVDs can still be purchased. The film made an impact and can be tracked down unlike so many other novelties and one-offs, and has carried on a life of its own that can’t be denied.
I interviewed Larsen via email in February 2020. His responses were so much more detailed and entertaining than I was expecting, and I was thrilled to share the full story of Nigel the Psychopath and his various other endeavors. This interview originally appeared in the fourth issue of my own Experimental Kindergarten zine later that year, which is now long out of print. Larsen’s story is fascinating and covers a huge amount of ground, in both print and on video. I urge anyone interested to check out his website, his published works, and of course his YouTube channel.
Split Tooth Media: What were your beginnings in filmmaking, and what initially attracted you to it?
Jim Larsen: I remember being really, really young, like two, three, four years old and I would watch TV. I would watch whatever my parents had on — Happy Days comes to mind, and whatever other sitcoms were on TV in the early ’70s. I also remember watching Hanna-Barbera cartoons on the weekends, stuff like The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Yogi Bear, all that stuff. I would watch these shows, and of course, I was very young, so I did not give much thought to the process that went into making them. They were just there. You turned on the TV, and [as] if by magic, a show was on.
The fact that there was a process that went into making these shows — writing, producing, directing, acting — all that never crossed my mind. I just totally took them for granted, like any kid would do, I’m sure.
Then I started school. I remember in my early years of elementary school there was this guy who came to the school to show us his travel movies that he shot on his own. He would set up his projector and a screen, and he would show us these movies he made from his travels all over the world. These were silent movies, and he had a microphone hooked into an amplifier and would narrate them. I would spend as much time watching him narrate as I did watching the movies, because I was fascinated by him. It hit me — this guy made these movies we are watching! These movies didn’t appear out of nowhere, somebody actually made them! People make the movies and TV shows I watch! That changed how I watched TV at home, and movies when I started going to the theaters. I became very interested in the process that went into production. When I learned to read, I liked to read the credits at the end of the shows just to see what the jobs were.
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That planted the seed in my mind that I wanted to make movies, too. I wanted to be like that guy at school and have my own movie camera. For years I wanted one and thought about the kinds of movies I would make when I finally got one. Then, on my 16th birthday, my mom got me a Super 8 movie camera. This was 1986, before video cameras were a thing yet for consumers, so a Super 8 camera was the coolest thing I could ever dream of owning. It was silent, of course, and each film cartridge only gave three minutes’ worth of film that I had to send away to be developed, but it was enough to get me started and get me hooked on filmmaking.
My early works consisted mostly of taking shots of the farm animals that we had, and my friends and family just acting goofy. I took it on some scout camping trips and filmed the goings on. The camera also had a stop motion feature, so I dabbled in clay animation, creating the character Omar the Dog and did a series of films about him. Omar is a dog who is very territorial and will kill or mutilate anybody who sits on his favorite park bench. I made several of those movies, including one where he falls in love with a lady dog, and one where he kills Santa Claus.
Can you explain the original inspiration with the story of Nigel the Psychopath?
Nigel the Psychopath came about as my answer to Friday the 13th, which was very popular when I was in high school. I wanted to do my own version of a crazy killer attacking people. The original Super 8 film was shot in the woods near where I grew up on a piece of land owned by Jimmy Dean, country music singer and sausage mogul. What happened was, there was some drifter who wandered back there and chopped down a bunch of trees and made himself a log cabin. He was trespassing, and when lunch trays started going missing from the local elementary school (somehow, they tracked the theft down to him) the police informed him that he needed to move on. This left an empty log cabin, and I thought, ‘Wow! What a great location to film a movie.’
The original Nigel movie was the only film to be shot there. Unfortunately, there were other teenagers on the road who thought it would be fun to go knock down and destroy the cabin, so it didn’t last long enough for any sequels.
What inspired you to expand the short to feature length? Was the decision to work with video instead of Super 8 purely budgetary? Did you have any plans for a home video release, or was it just some fun with friends?
The thing is, Nigel was originally a five-part series with each part having its own distinct beginning, middle, and end. By the time I shot Part 2, I had saved up my money and bought myself a VHS camcorder. Upgrading to VHS was just the next logical step. By then, it was 1987 and I was in the 11th grade and taking a TV production class at a vocational education school where I had access to video editing equipment. The idea to create a feature length film didn’t come to me until a few years after making the last in the series. In the early ’90s, I got the idea to combine footage from all the Nigel videos I shot into a single film.
The thought to release it to the public in any way was never on my mind. It was just some fun I was having. I remember my 11th and 12th grade homeroom teachers used to let me play them for whoever wanted to come in and watch them before homeroom started. In the ’90s, I was a Fangoria magazine fan. I thought it would be cool to sell Nigel in the classified ads. There was a lot of copyrighted music in the original versions, because as I mentioned, homeroom was my audience up until then, and I could get away with that, but I didn’t want to run into any trouble trying to sell anything I shouldn’t. So I decided to combine the footage into a new movie with original music and called it Nigel the Psychopath at Large.
Apart from your high school short Class of 1986, did you work on any other movies before making Nigel?
My first film I ever made that told an actual story was months before Nigel. I was in the ninth grade and had a project to do about Romeo and Juliet. I made a movie about the fight scene between Mercutio and Tybalt. It turned out awesome. I brought my projector to school and showed it to all of my teacher’s classes. I only got a B on the project though, because I was late finishing it. I needed extra time to get the film developed.
Who were some filmmakers who inspired you going into the movie? Additionally, were there any underground or non-mainstream filmmakers you admired at the time?
Back then, I was really into the slasher genre. I loved the Friday the 13th and the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, so it is fair to say those influenced me. At the same time, Police Academy was pretty popular too, and I liked those just as much. The one movie that has had the greatest impact on me though was Back to the Future. I was 15 when that movie came out, and I loved it. I really dug each and every character, the setting, the plot, and the music. It was exciting, it was funny, it was ironic. I think that was the movie that really opened my eyes to how powerful music can be in a movie. I’ve seen that movie more times than any other.
To be honest about underground filmmakers, at the time, I hadn’t really discovered any yet. The only movies I was watching aside from what I saw at the theaters were what I could find on VHS at the local video store, and they weren’t carrying anything too crazy. I lived too far out in the country to get cable TV, and satellite TV subscriptions weren’t really a thing yet. I was quite fascinated by David Lynch though. Blue Velvet remains a favorite movie of mine.
Are there any good stories from making the movie? About how long did production take specifically — or were you shooting piecemeal on weekends?
The first three Nigel films were each shot in a day. They were all pretty simple. Parts 4 and 5 took more than one weekend to make. That scene that takes place in the park where those two people are at a table talking about how much they hate ‘that stupid kid, Sid’ had some reality to it. Sam was a friend of mine from school, while the kid was my cousin. The thing is, Sam really did not like Rob [Hayward, who played Sid]. He found him to be annoying. Sam channeled his dislike into the scene, even goofing up and calling Sid ‘Rob’ at one point. It was really easy for Sam to go on about how stupid Sid was and how he hated his guts.
Of course, a number of different actors played Nigel, each with a different shaped body. It’s something the audience just has to accept with a suspension of disbelief. Who played Nigel in any given scene depended on who was available that day to play him. In all, seven different people played him. Five of the people were white, one was black, and one was albino.
There a few nods to Sylvester Stallone in Nigel, me being a lifetime fan as I am. I may be the only one [who] gets them, but they are there. One is where Rob and Joseph are preparing to hunt Nigel down and those children run behind them. That was a nod to Rocky II when all those kids run behind Rocky while he trains. Another is that fight scene between Rob and Nigel — total homage to Rocky. And finally, when Alderman and Covina are looking for Nigel in the park, Covina says, ‘Psychopathy’s a disease, and I’m the cure.’ That was a take on Cobra where Stallone says, ‘Crime is the disease. Meet the Cure.’
Rob Hayward steals the show as Chubby (not to mention a score of other characters), and is probably my favorite part of the movie, as well as in Buttcrack. What was it like to work with him on both movies?
Rob is funny in these movies. The thing about Rob is that he was super eager to be a part of these productions. I met Rob in high school, and I wasn’t really friends with him at first. I started getting attention as ‘The guy who makes movies’ after showing my first few projects to my classes, and Rob wanted that kind of attention, too. I remember he told me as much, and I figured, if this guy wants to be an actor for me, I’m sure I can use him. And of course, he went on to play multiple roles in Nigel. And he was always willing to say any line and do pretty much anything I asked him to do.
He’s fun to watch in Nigel because he really isn’t an actor. He’s just a guy saying lines and reacting to the situations, and in every scene, he’s just himself. His own self was the character he played every time. It’s fun to watch because that lends a quality [of] surrealness to his roles. He’s not the only one, I know. Nobody in the movie is a true actor, which is part of what makes the entire production entertaining.
I liked coming up with lines for Rob to say, because I knew he would say them as Rob, whatever character he was playing. That’s why he has the best lines in the movie: ‘Man, you be illin’ when you should be chillin’.’ ‘Oh my God he’s dead!’ Even the scene where he is driving the car and tells Joseph to get in has some bizarre quality to it, ‘Come on, get in! Go!’ It’s not with the urgency you would expect somebody to react to a kid who says, ‘There’s a crazy killer after me!’ Which of course wasn’t delivered with the urgency you would expect from somebody who is being chased by a psychopath. If you look closely, you will see Joseph is chewing gum in that scene. Rob and I got to be friends and when Buttcrack rolled around, it just seemed right to cast him, given that Nigel history.
Would you mind talking a bit about the various versions of the movie? From the Super 8 short, to the five-part series, the originally released At Large, and the current Director’s Cut?
The first one was shot at that log cabin near my house way out in the country. The cast of that one consisted of three of my cousins who lived down the road — all three of the females in the movie. The rest were friends from school. The thing is, I lived 20 miles from my school. I lived on a dirt road that existed between the two tiny towns of Arcola, Virginia, and Aldie. I went to high school in the town of Leesburg, 20 miles away. Everybody else in the movie lived in Leesburg and had to drive all the way out to where I lived and try to find my house. By the time I was ready to shoot Part 2, it made more sense for me to drive to Leesburg and shoot it at locations there. It was a way more central place to meet up with everybody.
Every one of the movies in the original five-part series had their own story. These stories all got blended in the recent Director’s Cut, but in At Large, footage from Parts 1-3 all get jumbled up in the opening dream sequence. Part 1 introduces Nigel, but the audience doesn’t learn anything about him. He’s just a Jason-esque killer attacking teenagers who are hiking through his territory, which, of course, ends with a ‘he’s not really dead’ ending.
Part 2 gave Nigel a little more personality, and with the addition of sound because it was shot on video, I could have more fun coming up with dialogue for the actors to say. At this point, I realized that what I really wanted to do was make my own kind of a slasher film that went against the conventions of a normal slasher film, which is a style of doing things I really like — going against conventions. That is really evident, I do believe, in Buttcrack [with] the zombie genre. Anyway, with Nigel it is more about the reactions the characters have to this crazy killer out there. I still love the lines in that movie, ‘Jesus Christ, what happened to him?’ and ‘Goddamn, I wonder if he’s all right!’ And then the completely ridiculous plan to catch Nigel. ‘You sit here, and if you see him coming, scream, and I’ll come running and help you out!’ ‘Oh, OK!’ While shooting that one, I told Sammy, who was playing Nigel, ‘OK, now stand there and laugh, and then walk away.’ I didn’t have a particular laugh in mind, but then he did that goofy ‘Nigel laugh’ that I use over and over again in all Nigel movies thereafter.
Part 3 was made around the same time that Stand by Me (1986) was in the theaters, and I wanted to parody the ‘Want to see a dead body?’ idea. Of course, the dead body was a result of Nigel. And again, the main focus was more on the characters’ reactions to the killings than the killings themselves, with those kids deciding to ‘Get the dude who did this!’ Part 3 has what to me is the funniest scene in the entire series — where Rob checks Todd’s pulse and jumps back exclaiming, ‘Oh my God, he’s dead… this killing has got to stop!’ It’s the way he said it. It still cracks me up. That one ended with Rob and Joseph celebrating Nigel’s death, but then Nigel gets up, grabs the camera and shoves it away — another ‘He’s not really dead’ ending.
Then came Part 4. I remember starting to shoot Part 4 over Christmas break [during] my senior year, on New Year’s Day, 1988. I don’t remember how many days we got together to shoot that one, but it was more than one. This is the one where the story really starts to take shape. This is where the two police officers — Sheriff Alderman, played by James Kirk, and Deputy Covina, played by me, Jim Larsen — get involved to track Nigel down. Why are they tracking him down? Not for the public’s safety, but because the police chief, also played by James Kirk, wants the reward money. This was a more involved shoot than the first three, as I wanted to utilize new settings, such as the two different parks, and the walking trail and that creek. This is also the part where, I think, the weirdest fight scene that has ever been shot takes place. There is that scene where Nigel and Rob are fighting, but you will notice, as brutal as the beating Rob takes, Nigel never actually lands a punch. You just have to accept and go with the idea that Nigel is beating the shit out of Rob. This part ended with Nigel placing the mask on the Chief’s dead body and Alderman and Covina falsely believing the Captain is really Nigel the Psychopath.
Part 5 was shot later in the spring when the weather was getting warm. It picks up where Part 4 left off, which was shot in winter. So, in the anniversary edit, I left in the shot where we take our coats off and say, ‘It’s getting kind of hot.’ What I remember about this one is that it took a very long time to shoot, partly because I had a bigger story I wanted to tell. I wanted to explain Nigel’s origins and show a human side to the character, again, going against traditional trappings of the slasher genre where the killers are always truly evil and psychotic. Nigel’s motivations to kill are anything but evil. They are the exact opposite of evil. I wanted to have fun with that idea, so I had the reunion of Nigel and his brother, Chubby, where they actually hug, and the ending with Nigel and his ‘mother.’ That scene with his mother was, of course, my own take on Friday the 13th with [the relationship between] Jason and his mom. Part 5 ends with Nigel being stuffed into the back of the police car and being hauled off to jail. Most slasher films probably would end with the killer being hacked up and killed by a survivor who watched all his friends die, but that would have been boring. I could have ended it with some twist where Nigel breaks out of the handcuffs and kills the driver and steals the car, but nah. I wanted to end with people thinking, ‘Hmm… I guess Nigel really did get arrested. I wonder what will happen next?’
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When I put together At Large back in 1994, I focused on telling the story of Parts 4 and 5, since that was the true heart of what Nigel was all about. I still wanted to use some footage from the first three, and since I needed a dream sequence anyway, I used the footage from the first three for that. But in 2019 when I did the Director’s Cut, what a waste of footage it would be to limit it to a dream sequence. There is some good stuff in Parts 1-3. But it also seemed extemporaneous. If the story is really what happens in Parts 4 and 5, all that 1-3 stuff is a long build up to it. That’s when I got the idea to add narration and sort of put the focus on Joseph, although that was kind of a stretch, I think it worked out OK.
The Director’s Cut is essentially a different movie and makes a lot more sense of things, so why the order of the At Large edit? Where did all of the extra footage come from/go initially?
With the Anniversary edit, I had all that footage to use, and I wanted to keep a good pace for the movie and hopefully not let it drag. I decided to just sort of blend it all together, introducing story elements early on instead of waiting to put it in later. There is a lot of extra footage in there that has never been seen before. The reason for that is because I tried on two separate occasions to film a sixth part, which was never completed, but I got some interesting footage from both attempts. The first attempt was shot after high school graduation when I was [a college] student at Montana State University. All the footage with the Cowboy and Sheriff Stinky after the credits of the Director’s Cut came from that shoot. That was never finished due to lack of interest from the people I was trying to get to act in it. After shooting what we shot, people just didn’t want to do it anymore. The second attempt was kind of the same. I was back in Virginia, trying to make another Nigel film with the old crowd, and after we shot some stuff, life was just too much in the way with jobs, college, other friends and relationships, and other interests. By then, the old crowd was drifting apart, and we just couldn’t seem to motivate ourselves to finish it. There is still a lot of footage that has never been seen from these shoots, which I may put together as an ‘extra footage reel‘ for YouTube.
When I did the At Large edit, I was still using analog VHS editing equipment, which was nowhere near as cool or sophisticated as the computer editing I can use today. Zipping through a digitized video file is so much quicker and easier than fast forwarding and rewinding through VHS tapes to find the shots I want, so it was more fun to do. Computerized editing today gives you a lot more bells and whistles to play with too, especially when it comes to transitions.
Todd Cook’s Cemetery Cinema ended up releasing Nigel in 1994. How did you become aware of Cook and his company?
When I advertised At Large in Fangoria, Todd saw it. He contacted me about releasing it on Cemetery Cinema, and I didn’t see any reason to say no. He promised to pay royalties via PayPal, and I got a few bucks for it. It was pretty cool. I was not familiar with him before that, but have since seen some of his work. It’s entertaining.2
Did you have any screenings before the Cemetery VHS was distributed?
No public screenings or release. Just selling in Fangoria.
Like I mentioned, the original intention behind these movies was to entertain my friends and to show it in my homeroom at school. I didn’t have a wide audience in mind yet. It wasn’t until I realized I could probably sell a few copies via a Fangoria classified ad that I decided to release it. My movies have always gotten positive responses from people who have seen them, so I thought it would be cool to offer Nigel on a wider scale.
Was there any mention of the film or coverage in fanzines or magazines of the day? If so, what types of notices did you attract?
There was none. It’s gotten all its attention via the internet in these modern times. Every so often, I do a search on Nigel the Psychopath and have found a number of forums discussing it. It’s found its niche. People are talking about it. I think that is pretty cool.
Do you have any thoughts on the video market and fan climate that enabled so many shot-on-video features to see release and find their way into the hands of other like-minded fans? Any notable experiences with other shot-on-video movies yourself?
I think it is cool that people can not only make, but market their stuff so easily these days. The internet makes it so easy to share your stuff, not just posting it online, but advertising it if you want to sell it. The tricky part is standing out. You have to come up with something truly unique that will capture people’s attention — something original, something to make people say, ‘Yes!’ I think YouTube has enough cute cat videos. It’s time to make YouTube videos about cute cats clawing people’s eyes out or something.
I got back into making homemade videos to share with friends in 2008 while living 11 years at a retreat center on the Big Island of Hawaii. I lived at a place called Kalani Oceanside Retreat which was run by a community of volunteers. I had a friend named Hsini, and thought it would be fun to cast her as a killer, so I created ‘Hsini the Psychopath.‘ It’s very different from Nigel, and is filled with in-jokes about volunteer life at the retreat center. This turned into a six-part series culminating in 2016 in which I depicted Kalani being destroyed. It was kind of prophetic, that movie. We got together to watch it for the first time the same day the Kilauea volcano eruption began in Leilani Estates, just a few miles from us. That volcano was a factor in Kalani closing down very soon after. The whole series is posted on a Facebook page called The Coalition for a Safe Kalani, along with a number of short videos I made there. Anybody who wants to is welcome to find me on Facebook and friend me and find that page. There are several other videos I made with a good friend of mine at Kalani that are on YouTube on the In Touch With Kalani channel.
Clearly you don’t take Nigel The Psychopath too seriously — both during its making and today — and a lot of this spills over into how much fun it is to watch. What do you think of the movie’s lasting cult appeal to younger fans?
Can you imagine Nigel if I had tried to make a serious horror movie? It would have sucked. Unless you have a truly kick ass original idea and a knack for presenting it, I think horror is hard to pull off. I for one don’t claim to have that knack. If I had tried to make Nigel a straight-up horror film, it would have been just another wannabe slasher film that was an obvious rip off of the ones that were popular in the ’80s made by a wannabe teenage filmmaker who thinks too much of himself. Why do that? I’ve always had a good sense of humor and a knack for finding absurdities in common conventions and situations. I decided to play into that strength, as I have continued to do with other things I have done. That’s what made Nigel what it is.
That fact that it’s out there and people are liking it flatters me. I hope it inspires young people to get out there and make videos of their own, and that they will endeavor to be unique and creative. I hope they will do more than just imitate what’s already been done, but come up with their own twists on things, create their own characters and stories.
The reference to Nigel at the end of Buttcrack is a nice call-back to your earlier film. It also points to some sort of regional pride or identification. Was this intentional?
It was intentional. Of course, it was an in-joke for whoever caught it, but also a self-congratulatory nod to my own progress, saying, ‘Look how far I’ve come — from those old VHS movies to this.’
How did you come into contact with Troma and get them to release Buttcrack? What kind of response did you get after its release?
We bought an advertisement in Fangoria to announce the completion of Buttcrack to see if anybody would express an interest in it, and Troma did. It’s a perfect addition to the Troma cinematic universe. When it was released, the internet was still fairly new, so there wasn’t any social media yet like there is today, but I’d do searches on the title to see what came up and found various discussion forums talking about it. Die-hard Troma fans loved it. Other people either loved it or were confused about it. Not sure what they were expecting: the title is ‘Buttcrack;’ it was released by Troma, which is known for really schlocky, really ridiculous movies; it has a no-name cast and Mojo Nixon. Were they expecting Gone With the Wind? I also get a kick out of reading reviews on Amazon and IMDb and other places. The bad reviews are even more entertaining than the good ones.
Any future plans for your movies? I know you’ve uploaded the Director’s Cut of Nigel to YouTube recently, and the tape/DVD can be bought from Screamtime Films, but are any other editions forthcoming? Any new projects you have or would like to work on?
I don’t plan on any other editions of Nigel. The Anniversary Cut is my idea of the definitive version. I read a few things people were saying about At Large in some discussion forums and noticed some stranger took it upon himself to upload it to YouTube, which is fine; I’m glad it’s out there. Having Screamtime sell it on VHS made sense twenty-some years ago, but in these modern times, it’s too antiquated a format to expect too many people to still use. It was never intended to be a money maker anyway, so I’m glad it’s easy to find and easy to watch. But I wanted to have the definitive version of it for myself. That’s when I decided to do the 33rd Anniversary Cut. I had digitized all the footage and was able to do it on my computer. It gave me a chance to reimagine the story and tell it more completely.
I do see a future for the characters. I’ve written an outline for what I imagine as a big screen remake. It’s important to me to stay true to the original version and the story it tells, so it will take place in the same time period and have the same characters and will stay logical to what is already established about the story. What do we know about what happened to Nigel after the end of the movie? He was arrested and hauled off to jail. At the end of Buttcrack, which was released in 1998, mentions of his grave were made, so he’s either dead or faking it by then. If you watch the Director’s Cut all the way past the credits, you know he was let out of jail and shipped to a mental institute in Texas where he was eventually released and made his way to Montana. How does all this connect? I want to answer that question with the new screenplay. I can’t say I have aspirations to make this movie myself, but I would be very happy to sell it to the right production company who can do it justice, should an interest be there.
Another thing I have been working on is a novelized version of Buttcrack that takes the original story and includes the ideas I had for Parts 2 and 3. It’ll be called Buttcrack and Beyond: A Novel of Epic Proportions. Once that is done, I will self-publish it like I have my other books.
You’ve clearly been very busy since then, writing a ton of books and covering various bases. Would you mind telling me a little more about your many endeavors and interests?
Sometime in the early 2000s I started having some rather mystical experiences that put me on an esoteric path. This led me to move to Hawaii and left me with a deep interest in meditation and understanding tarot cards, particularly how tarot cards can be viewed to represent pieces of ourselves. I’ve written three books on that subject so far, with the next one in the works. I’ve also written a four-part series of books containing tidbits of wisdom that have come to me while meditating. I call them, Knowings from The Silence: Simple Wisdom for an Enlightened Life. I’ve written a few screenplays since Buttcrack, including Buttcrack 2: Crack of Dawn, the story of which will be incorporated into the Buttcrack novel I mentioned. I also wrote All my Chitlins which is a spinoff from Buttcrack all about Hank the Redneck’s family and his brother, Sean Wayne Payne. There was another I wrote about some people in Washington State who have their own religion where they shoot dead cows so the cows will carry their sins to Heaven. The name of that one is Jesus Cow.
I write a lot of poetry, mostly dark and humorous stuff and perform it in Hawaii. I’ve published two books of that, and so far have read one as an audiobook for Audible.com. And then there is Spoony. Spoony is the name of a kid who ruins things for everybody that I have been writing stories about. So far, the first two are available for Kindle. The third story will be done within a day or two of this interview. It’s very close. I’m going to get an Audible version of all three once that one is done. These stories were inspired, in a roundabout sort of way, by the six months I lived at a Buddhist monastery in India with Tibetan monks. I also keep a tarot card blog at foolspathtarot.com.
What else? Oh yeah, there is a movie out there called Action USA. Somehow, I got to be friends with the producer of that movie and he asked if I wanted to write a screenplay for a new movie he wants to make. He gave me a brief outline of what he wants in it. I’ll see if I can find inspiration to write that.
I’m particularly interested in amateur cinema, and I noticed you describe Nigel as an amateur film. What does this description mean to you? Is there any unifying aspect of your filmmaking or overall goal when making a movie?
Amateur, to me, means just grabbing a camera, getting a few friends to act for you, having at least a basic script, and going out and shooting your movie. Keep it fun. If you’re having fun making it, that fun will come through to your audience. Make the movie you want to make without worrying about what you think people will want to see. Make a movie you’d like to see and like-minded people will appreciate it. This is what unifies all my projects — the longer stuff and the short films. They are all about me having fun. They have found the audiences they have because other people like that sort of thing, too.
For more on the history of SOV Horror, seek out Albarano’s new book, Aesthetic Deviations: Shot-On-Video Horror, 1984-1994. Purchase a copy from Headpress or Amazon
We also recommend checking out Albarano’s Experimental Kindergarten zines here
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- The Cemetery release bore the full title Nigel the Psychopath: At Large and represents a distinctive cut of the material.
- Larsen makes a memorable appearance in Todd’s 1995 feature The Dummy (aka Bloody Anniversary).
