The Landlord is perfect example of accomplishment in low-budget, independent filmmaking, made under the banner of Massive Ego Productions. Hyde explains its origin: "Massive Ego Productions is a company I created to serve as a shield against lawsuits, in case we burned down the apartment we were filming in or someone got crippled doing a stunt. Thankfully, nothing like that happened while we were filming The Landlord -– in part because we had professional effects and stunt people hanging around supervising -- but if it did, at least it would have been between the insurance company and Massive Ego, and not me, personally. Since then, however, Massive Ego has become more of a real production company, working to get my other projects financed and produced."
Dziak also works with the growing company. "I do a lot of odds and ends," he says, "networking for future projects and helping Emil work out the skeletons of scripts."
Everyone involved in The Landlord is able to see the virtues of this kind of filmmaking. Hyde faced some criticism for the appearance of Rabisu's much more evil female counterpart, but he is proud of the way he handled her character. "My major in college was history, so I'm all about research," he says.
"The Landlord's arch-villain, Lamashtu, comes from Babylonian myth, where she's the crazy daughter of the sky god, responsible for creating violent storms. Lamashtu so enjoyed the suffering that her storms caused humans that she invented the black plague, just for fun. To top it off, her favorite hobby was killing infants in their cribs, so she could listen to their mothers scream. Compared to that, modern monsters like Jason, Freddy and Dracula sound like underachievers. Granted, the traditional description of Lamashtu as having the head of a lion, the face of a dog, the body of a woman, snakes for fingers, and the feet of an eagle proved a bit of a mission impossible for our makeup department, especially on our budget. But while some critics have said our version of Lamashtu looks weird or dumb, as a Doctor Who fan I'm fine with having a cheesy, but interesting, monster -- as opposed to Tales From The Crypt: Bordello of Blood, where the evil madam was supposed to be Lamashtu, but they just made her look human."
"As an actor you've got to bring the same level of performance to the table no matter what the budget is," Barkhordar says. "If you're doing a low-budget production, you have to be prepared for unforeseeable problems to come along and f**k things up a bit, but you still have to approach everything professionally. I think low budgets can give the actors and others involved the freedom and incentive to be more creative than if somebody just throws a giant bag of money at you and says, 'Here, make a movie with this!'"
Courvais agrees. "Even though you have to deal with challenges working on a low budget, you learn very quickly to focus on the important stuff and let everything else slide. In the age of remakes, I'm a huge fan of low-budget writer-directors who are coming up with original ideas. As an audience member, I'm much more interested in seeing something like The Landlord over, say, Nightmare on Elm Street 2010," she says.
"Low-budget is a blast to do," says Dziak. "The freedom to get out there and shoot whatever ideas come into your head is an experience like no other. The biggest problem, though, is finding people to come along for the journey, because it is a long trek."
Hyde adds, "What people don't realize is that most of a Hollywood budget goes towards paying people for their time. Fake blood and silicon and weapons and cameras and lights cost money, but not nearly as much as hiring skilled makeup artists and cinematographers and effects supervisors to use those materials. The hardest thing about no-budget productions like The Landlord is simply getting all the necessary people in the same room at the same time. And if you screw something up that ruins a shot, well, you either have to live with it or go crawling to your cast and crew, begging them to come back for a re-shoot."
It helps, of course, that an interest in horror was present on set. Barkhordar, for example, is "a sucker for zombie movies," while Dziak prefers "the 'trapped in a spaceship with a monster' scenario," and Courvais is a fan with a "selective" taste.
Hyde experienced horror differently than many of us may have, but he has an obvious passion for what he does and a strong desire to create something new that will stand the test of time. "I grew up in a strictly religious household, so horror movies –- especially ones with occult themes -- were not allowed. Fortunately, my parents tolerated sci-fi action flicks, so I'd spend my Saturday afternoons watching movies like John Carpenter's Escape from New York and Sam Raimi's Darkman on television. It wasn't until college that I finally saw all the horror movies by those same directors, but by then it was too late for me to form the deep nostalgia that most horror fans have for flicks like Halloween," he says.
"Don't get me wrong; I love horror movies, and watch at least two or three per week. Dellamorte Dellamore, The Shining and Nightbreed rank among my all-time favorite films. I just don't get warm fuzzies for toy Freddy Krueger gloves the way horror fans who grew up on the genre do. But, honestly, I think that kind of works in my favor as a horror filmmaker; I'm less concerned with paying homage to old favorites than with making a great film that can stand on its own and become someone's new favorite."
You can definitely look forward to more new favorites from Hyde and Massive Ego. "We have many projects ready to go, if we can find the money. They range from horror-comedies like The Landlord to sci-fi horror to completely serious horror/suspense flicks. Some day we might try something that's not horror-related, but for now we're really liking the horror movies. It's one of the few genres where the audience just wants to rock out, and will forgive you for not having money as long as you have ideas and attitude," he says.
And attitude -- the right attitude for the horror world -- is something Hyde has plenty of.
