But there were a few exceptions. William Lustig’s Maniac was an unpleasant sleazefest, while Lucio Fulci’s Lo Squartatore di New York (aka The New York Ripper) was guilty of the kind of misogyny that most slashers were accused of. Then there was Romano Scavolini’s Nightmare…
What these three films share in common is their portrayal of serial killers; Caucasian males, sexually confused and often directing their anger at women. But Nightmare (more commonly referred to as Nightmare in a Damaged Brain) took its violence to a new extreme, most notoriously with the shot of a young boy butchering his parents during sex with an axe. Unsurprisingly, Nightmare made its way onto the Directors of Public Prosecutions (DPP) list, along with seventy-three other titles, which were to be censored, prosecuted or taken off the shelves.
Many of the films that were featured on the list were of Italian origin (Cannibal Holocaust, The House by the Cemetery, Twitch of the Death Nerve), some contained strong sexual violence (The Last House on the Left, I Spit on Your Grave, Love Camp 7), while others were just showcases for impressive effects (The Burning, Dead and Buried). Nightmare managed to fall into all three of these categories.
“The main idea rose from an article which I read in a weekly magazine at the time, but I don’t remember which one. The article dealt with “MK-Ultra,” a code name for CIA’s mind control research program that began in 1950,” explains Scavolini. “The article was explaining the story about the evidence that the CIA’s project involved the use of various types of drugs in order to manipulate people’s mental state, behaviour and brain functions. And those experiments were done giving such drugs to mental patients and convicts without them knowing the risks involved."
Project MK-Ultra was a program run by the Office of Scientific Intelligence, founded in the early 1950’s by the CIA and eventually abandoned in the late 1960’s. The scandal was first brought to the public’s attention in 1975, when the U.S. congress and the Rockefeller Commission launched an investigation. Two years earlier, CIA director Richard Helms had ordered for all files on the project to be destroyed.
In December 1974, The New York Times ran an article on the program, which had a profound effect on an aspiring Italian director by the name of Romano Scavolini. It would be somewhat ironic that this newspaper would be the main influence on what would become known as Nightmare, as seven years later one of their writers, Janet Maslin, would express her disgust at the movie.
The premise of Nightmare attracted the attention of New York broker David Jones, a man who had recently made a fortune on the gold market and had formed a production company, the aptly named Goldmine Productions. Originally titled Dark Games, Scavolini was given a budget of $400,000 to produce a movie that would take its action from Times Square to Florida.
Nightmare made its debut in New York on October 23, 1981, but it was not until its UK release that it would begin to make itself known. Thanks to the introduction of VHS, for the first time ever horror movies could be viewed at home for the whole family. Prosthetics and makeup effects had progressed immensely over the last few years, allowing filmmakers the chance to show their audiences what had only been hinted at previously. Horrified at what had been unleashed in their living rooms, parents and spokespersons such as Mary Whitehouse waged a war against exploitation films, aided by fear-mongering publications such as daily newspapers.
Succumbing to public pressure, the government updated their indecency laws to accommodate for the new medium (home video), resulting in the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) having full control over what the public were and were not allowed to see. To make matters worse, The Sunday Times ran a piece entitled ‘How High Street Horror is Invading the Home.” Those selected films, dubbed video nasties, were subsequently seized during police raids, with Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead repeatedly being brought before the courts.
In an effort to capitalise on the newfound paranoia, VHS distributor VIPCO published a full-page ad to promote The Driller Killer, which featured a drill being forced into a victim’s forehead. After the Advertising Standards Agency received numerous complaints, they were forced to take action. Eventually, the government passed a new bill, the Video Recordings Act 1984, which was unleashed upon artistic freedom on September 1, 1985.
The witch-hunt went to such extremes that when one company released a version of Nightmare in a Damaged Brain that was sixty seconds longer than the BBFC-approved cut, the company’s owner, David Hamilton Grant, was sentenced to eighteen months in prison. He was released after six.
“I didn’t and I still don’t feel anything. I’m only sorry for the distributor who suffered for it, but the controversy on Nightmare – all over the world – moved mostly against me. I was the first and only person ferociously attacked by the types of hypocrites, including film critic Janet Maslin, who wrote an article in The New York Times that a demon or devil – me – was walking free on the streets of New York!!!” the director says. “She couldn’t even imagine how much horror there is inside any Catholic church, in which is present – in any possible way – the slaughter of Jesus Christ, under the innocent eyes of children and babies. I think that nightmare has opened a dramatic door… the door of perception.”
Nightmare was an attempt to humanise a serial killer, as apposed to the cardboard cut outs that usually populate the genre (there were never any attempts to flesh out the likes of Jason Voorhees). It also seemed to have something to say about medical experimentation and forced conformity, just like Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange had ten years earlier.
The story focused on George Tatum (Baird Stafford), who had been held in psychiatric care since he murdered his parents as a child. After years of being subjected to MK-Ultra-style experiments, George is released back into the world. Waking up each night screaming from visions of that night, he sets off back to his old family home, indiscriminately killing on the way.
Scavolini spends the first act showing George wandering aimlessly through Times Square (the same sleazy one that was depicted in Taxi Driver and Basket Case), allowing for scenes of gratuitous nudity (including a dildo scene featuring Tara Alexander, who once held the record for most penises in one sitting, before Annabel Chong’s sex marathon took the title).
As well as the graphic nature of the film itself, Nightmare has become a topic of much discussion for other reasons. Firstly, renowned director Joel (Fargo) Coen spent two weeks on set as an assistant editor, before being fired for constantly being late. The following year he would perform similar duties on two other horror films, Fear No Evil and The Evil Dead. His directorial debut, Blood Simple, was as influence by splatter movies as it was by film noir.
Other talents to emerge from Nightmare include special effects artist Ed French (who, after working on another notorious slasher, Sleepaway Camp, as well as Amityville II: The Possession, C.H.U.D. and The Stuff, hit the big time with Terminator II: Judgement Day), editors Robert T. Megginson and Jim Markovic would later write the ‘80’s hit F/X: Murder by Illusion and direct the as-yet-unfinished Sleepaway Camp: The Survivor, respectively, and production manager Carl Clifford, who would later work on Apollo 13 and Armageddon.
But perhaps most notorious of all is who exactly supervised the special effects. “I answered several times to this questions: the only thing I can say is, look at the picture – Tom Savini is holding an axe to teach the boy how to chop his mother’s head!!! As you can see... the boy-actor in action, what more to say? No comment.”
Tom Savini had first come to the attention of horror directors when he provided the groundbreaking effects for Dawn of the Dead, promptly followed by Friday the 13th (many attribute his work as the main reason the latter was a success). Over the next couple of years he became the most sought-after makeup artist in the business, each one of his projects becoming a drive-in favourite (Maniac, The Burning, The Prowler, Alone in the Dark). When Nightmare was released in 1981, it proudly declared ‘Makeup by Tom Savini.”
Savini threatened to sue the filmmakers unless his name was removed from the credits. After much negotiating, a black box was placed over his name on the poster, yet the director still states that Savini worked on the movie. “I was not involved with that film in any way I want to talk about. They keep using my name and I did not do the effects on that piece of shit,” states Savini angrily. “The guy who did do the effects, Lester Loraine, killed himself. He was a friend and they gave him no credit but tried to steal my name to promote this trash.”
“Tom Savini was greatly involved in the making of Nightmare’s special effects. The only thing he didn’t do was work on prosthetics, which were done by another group of young people – the two heads (father and mother), one arm and the babysitter’s back shoulders – but all the main effects of the film were done personally by him,” insists Scavolini. “Actually he pushed the blood’s pump when the boy chopped his mother’s head. Tom Savini was there – he himself pumped the blood!!!! He denied being involved in the making of Nightmare’s special effects for various reasons; mainly because he wanted more money if his name was used. But I know at least two other reasons, mainly psychological, but I will not release them to anyone.”
One can’t help but wonder why Tom Savini would deny any involvement with the movie, especially as he had been involved with almost every other significant movie of that era. He had already provided extremely gruesome effects for several other productions, so why would he claim to not have taken part? Surely the director is making up stories? But what about the photographic evidence that quite clearly shows Savini on the set, working alongside the young actor?
“I was just a consultant.... nothing more,” Savini replies. “They put my name in a big box on the posters as having done the special make up effects.” Yet Scavolini claims different; “Nightmare fans discussed this topic on their blog. Years ago, Tom Savini, interviewed on tape by some journalist from France, said all sorts of things against Nightmare. They went back to Paris and edited a documentary. A weekly or monthly magazine published a three-page article filled up with Tom Savini’s close-up. But when they discovered the truth, they went back to him very angry asking what it was all about, and it seems that he babbled something because he couldn’t deny the evidence. It’s a very sad story for him, not for me. He tried to minimize Nightmare’s success, and in the end he is the only victim of his ego. If only he could accept the truth – for him and his profession – a much better credit card than any other movie he worked on.”
Which version of events should fans believe? Both seem adamant that the other is lying, for whatever reason. On hand to assist in the special effects was Edward French, who has since gone on to make a name for himself in the industry, yet at the time of joining the crew of Nightmare was making his first steps into the business.
“I’m surprised that anyone remembers let alone cares about this vapid piece of exploitation. I recall a review in the New York Times or the Post saying something to the effect that if the police wanted to round up all the perverts and psychos running around the Big Apple they could find them at the midnight screening of Nightmare on 42nd Street. Of course, in these cynical times that’s about the best advertising a Grade Z producer could hope for,” states French, who only vaguely remembers working on the feature. “Nightmare had already wrapped in Florida but the producers in New York wanted to make it more of a Grand Guignol number with an on-camera decapitation, heads rolling and much spraying of stage blood from fire extinguishers. I think there may have only been three or four days of shooting after at least a month of prep. I recall that the make-up effects guy in charge was a man named Les Lorraine or Larraine. I had never heard of him before this movie and I never heard of him again after that.
There was a shop set up in a large cellar studio in lower Manhattan which might have actually been Les’s apartment. The crew was making prop weapons and fabricating the female body that was decapitated with a fire axe. Les started to take an impression of somebody’s body or neck one day by applying Ultracal 30 plaster directly on the skin and I refused to help him with the life-cast unless we used alginate. Lab squids realize that you don’t do life-casts with plaster – especially Ultracal 30 gypsum which will fry your skin off when it sets. I remember Tom coming in, perhaps twice, to give the crew advice, direction and impetus to finish the preparations on time for the first day of shooting. I have no idea if this was a favor to Les or if he was a paid consultant. Tom didn’t do any hands-on work but he definitely influenced the techniques, style and game plan for staging the blood gags. Obviously, he was the coach. The splatter coach, if you will. Anything else I could tell you would be pure speculation.”
So it seems that this debate, that has been a source of speculation for over twenty-five years, may never be resolved. Unfortunately, Lester Lorraine committed suicide shortly after the film’s release, so what he would have had to say about the making of the movie will forever remain a secret. But it is worth noting that Savini later allegedly claimed that he regretted working on Maniac, a movie that was greeted with a similar hostility to Nightmare. Whether or not he actually had any involvement in the movie, there is no denying the bloody legacy that the film has left behind… a video nasty, a distributor jailed, an ongoing debate!
As for Romano Scavolini, he followed Nightmare with the war movie Dog Tags, before disappearing for fifteen years, returning with the 2004 Che Guevara documentary (his career before Nightmare consisted mainly of documentaries) Le Ultim ore del Che, before the dramas L’ Apocalisse delle scimmie and last year’s Two Families. But will he ever return to horror and, more importantly, how does he feel about Nightmare all these years later? “I still receive a lot of email from all over the world from lovers and fans of Nightmare. That alone answers your question. And if a producer wants to come up with a remake of Nightmare, well, I’m ready.”
