When I was in Miami for WrestleMania XXVIII earlier this year, I walked by an old Art Deco movie theater one night called the Colony Theatre. The theater’s retro stylings and bright white lights were enough to catch my eye, but when I looked closer I realized had I arrived in Miami the previous night I could have attended the world premiere of Girls Gone Dead, a Girls Gone Wild spoof that incorporates cheesy ’80s slasher horror with the cheesy ’80s T&A comedies from USA Up All Night. It looked great on its own, but then I realized the WrestleMania weekend tie-in was that it starred Jerry “The King” Lawler as a sheriff, a perfect fit for such a campy boob-fest since he has a reputation to uphold (he would often express his excitement for “puppies” when doing wrestling commentary during WWE‘s Attitude Era).
Even when he's doing his sheriff duty, Jerry Lawler can't help but be distracted by some puppies.
Aside from Lawler, Girls Gone Dead stars Beetlejuice and Sal “The Stockbrocker” Governale from The Howard Stern Show, Penthouse Pets Ryan Keely and Janessa Brazil, and the relative unknown Katie Peterson, with cameos by Iron Maiden drummer Nicko McBrain, veteran character actor Asbestos Felt, adult film stars such as Jennifer Worthington and Ron Jeremy, and scream queen Linnea Quigley. Following the exploits of a group of spring break-bound girls who end up facing a masked killer out for gore, Girls Gone Dead has all the makings of a cult classic. Thankfully, an Unrated and Exposed edition with lots of extras was recently released on DVD, with plans to release an R-rated version as WrestleMania XXIX approaches next spring. A full-time film editor for Bongiovi Entertainment by day, Michael A. Hoffman co-directed, produced and edited Girls Gone Dead, living out a teenage fantasy of combining schlocky gore with gratuitous nudity. Hoffman talks to Wrestling with Pop Culture about the filmmaking process and having Lawler involved in the film.
The title Girls Gone Dead, and the DVD cover art featuring a sexy girl removing her bikini top with blood on her hip, confuses my libido. What was your intention when making this movie?
It’s a throwback to those T&A flicks I grew up with in the ’80s and it’s got a lot of references to those movies, including a lot of the cast members from those movies. If you don’t know about that stuff or like it, you’re not going to like this. I’m surprised how well it’s done. Supposedly the horror/comedy/slasher thing is dead, but we’ve sold out at Best Buy twice and we’ve been a top rental. I think the title helps. The idea was someone could go, “I could watch Girls Gone Wild or rent this, that has something of a story, and still see the boobs and gore.”
You mentioned that this film features appearances by some of the cast members of the films that inspired it, but it also features a lot of other odd cameos. Why did you choose to cast such a variety of cameos?
Linnea Quigley was the biggest scream queen of that era. She starred in all the David DeCoteau and Fred Olen Ray movies, and she’s the bartender at Wyld Wylee’s. The guy who does the “Hammer Smash” rap at the bar is Asbestos Felt. He raps in a classic cheesefest movie called Killing Spree directed by Tim Ritter, who was one of the first people I worked for and made one of my favorite movies when I was a kid called Truth or Dare. It was a really huge hit and one of the first movies ever made directly for video back in 1985. Joel Wynkoop, who plays the TV evangelist, has been in God-knows-how-many of those movies, and he was just the star of H.G. Lewis‘ The Uh-Oh! Show. Jennifer Worthington, who gets sacrificed at the church, was in a lot of adult movies and did some modeling when she was younger.
Our casting director was Brad Davis and he cast half of those movies in that vein like Porky’s 2, Porky’s 3, Police Academy 5 and stuff like that, and a bunch of Corey Feldman T&A comedies like South Beach Academy and late-night USA movies. I wanted to put a lot of references and homages in there, so I did some subtle things like the Quigley Down Under joke where Linnea Quigley has a fake Australian accent. And at the beginning of her scene, the first thing she’s doing, before she turns around and walks up, is using the same lipstick and compact she had in Night of the Demons. There are some scenes that are direct references to things like Slumber Party Massacre, when the killer enters the house during that dubstep fight scene in the living room. I didn’t want to make a straight spoof, so what I wanted to do was actually write a film that knew it was bad, then deliver it pretty straight. If you choose to laugh at it, that’s awesome. If not, no problem.
Jerry "The King" Lawler as Jackson "The Sheriff" Cole.
I worked with Maurice Smith a couple of years ago on a film called Forget Me Not. He produced a ton of those low-budget Roger Corman flicks between half a million and five million bucks in the ’80s and ’90s. Then I got the biggest compliment when Maurice was actually in Florida and came by my house and watched Girls Gone Dead. He was like, “Oh, shit. For what you guys spent, you got a lot of content.” He was impressed with it, which is good because he gets it.
It’s kind of like Rob Zombie‘s movies, where he makes subtle references to all the stuff he grew up watching.
Yeah. He does these more hardcore grindhouse things, but he’s got Bill Moseley, Michael J. Pollard and the strangest cameos. But House of 1000 Corpses was a low-budget film, but it’s really polished for what it was. With Girls Gone Dead, my take on it is it’s something people can laugh at if they want to, or laugh with, which is what I hope will happen. If you rent this movie, you should expect cheesy gore and nudity.
How did Jerry Lawler get involved with the movie?
Jerry Lawler doesn't mind investigating crime scenes when they're at "Crazy Girls Unlimited" filming locations.
Executive producer Paul Tarnopol is friends with Jerry’s agent and we were looking for people for that role. We had actually looked at two bigger-name celebrity actors for the role, but when Paul mentioned he was friends with Jerry’s agent, I turned to my wife, who was writing it, and was like, “We’ve got to change the ending and put Jerry in there.” The way the movie is so random, with people like the drummer from Iron Maiden singing country, we were like, “This has to work.” When we first wrote this, we didn’t have any celebrities. For the Crazy Girls Unlimited emcee, I wanted somebody who had always emceed those parties, like a washed-up celebrity. I always wanted Ron Jeremy or Vanilla Ice. Vanilla Ice lives in Florida, so I was like, “It’s got to be one of those two. It’s got to be somebody you would see at that shit.” Vanilla Ice has done two Girls Gone Wild parties and Ron has done six. A friend of mine who is a makeup artist had just had Ron in his movie Bloody Bloody Bible Camp, so he called Ron and Ron was like, “Yeah, I’ll come down and do it.”
There are weird cameos that are just bizarre. [Al Spaienza], who plays Missy’s father on the split-screen phone call, the guy at the strip club, that’s Mikey from The Sopranos. He was on a Prison Break and he’s a pretty big TV actor and had a supporting role in Saw V. The girl who played the dumb one, Kelly, she was in Sex Drive. That’s the only other movie she’s been in and I was a big fan of Sex Drive because it’s a T&A comedy. Her casting agent had gotten her for Sex Drive, but she hadn’t gotten her SAG card yet, so her agent was like, “I think I can get her to do your movie.” And I was like, “That would be great if we could be her last non-SAG feature.” We wanted one Penthouse Pet and we ended up with two, and this has got to be the only movie with Beetlejuice, Jerry Lawler and a gorilla waiter ever made. That was my goal. I’ve worked on several films, but this one is so crazy compared to everything else I’ve worked on that I wasn’t sure how it was going to be digested. With all the horror movies coming out lately, we had to do something different and fun.
Is there any chance of it being released in theaters or was that only for the world premiere in Miami?
The King is determined to get to the bottom of this killing spree.
We never intended to go anywhere but straight to video and TV. We did a theatrical screening in New York sponsored by Fangoria the day before it came out in July. But the only thing I’d like to do is enter the film into some festivals and horror conventions because we never had a chance to play any. I’ve never worked on a film with any budget that had distribution before it was done being shot. We had foreign distribution locked the week after we finished shooting, then we had our domestic distribution confirmed either weeks into final post.
Do you think the film lends itself to a sequel or do you have any other plans to continue this story in any way?
I would love to flesh it out more. The initial idea for the movie was to be a Crazy Girls Unlimited type of thing about the company. But we ended up taking that concept and working it into a script we were already in production on, which was a throwback to Slumber Party Massacre. I need to see how it ends up performing, but I would love to do something bigger with this film. But producing and directing is something I would never do again. Even if I developed the project, once it turned over to production I would either not direct the sequel to this, if we do it, or I would drop off producing once we started to get into severe pre-production. I know guys do that all the time, but they must be doing it with studio resources. We don’t have that structure, so it’s a nightmare when you’re directing a film and not sleeping for 30 days.
As you know, Jerry Lawler suffered a heart attack on Raw recently. Are you still in touch with him at all since the film has come out?
Jerry Lawler saves the day (and provides some comfort).
Paul, our executive producer, has been talking to his agent. I’ve been trying to promote the movie, but the last thing I’d want to do is exploit that situation at all. The day he had the heart attack, he had randomly contacted our executive producer and said, “Hey. A ton of people have walked up to me and said they really liked the movie. Would you send me a copy of it? I don’t have one.” Then he had the heart attack that night. I know WWE has moved more family friendly, so as much as Jerry wants to support this, I don’t know how much he can. I was really excited about the fact that he was excited about it because at first I think he was a little concerned. I know Jerry likes the puppies, but I certainly didn’t want to get him into any trouble. He was so awesome to us and it was such a relief that day to get that phone call that he wanted a copy of the movie. Then that happened later that night and I couldn’t believe it.
And it happened on live TV.
Now he’s going to have two notorious TV moments between Letterman and the Raw broadcast. But it’s so good that it happened on TV because if it had happened to Lawler in his hotel room and he couldn’t get to a phone, he’d probably be dead. It was a blessing in disguise. But Jerry’s a super tough guy. When we’d go out for beers, he was like, “I don’t drink alcohol, I’ve never smoked.” We were originally going to have him smoking cigars, but he wouldn’t even do it.
www.girlsgonedead.com
If you like Skid Row, you’ll like Warrant and if you like Warrant, you’ll like Skid Row. So it’s a great package and a great night of ’80s rock ‘n’ roll.
We all have side projects, but I’ve become interested in the wine business over the last few years. I live in Temecula, California and there are about 30 wineries down here. I’ve put out three wines through South Coast Winery and I released a wine in July called Warrant, I Saw Red. “I Saw Red” was a top ten hit single for Warrant and now it’s a cabernet. In the last couple of weeks I released a syrah called Erik Turner: Rocker Red. So I work on that during the week and we’re all writing songs for a new record hopefully to come out in June of 2013. So it’s wine and music for me, but everybody’s got different stuff going on.
Last year we released Rockaholic and we shot two videos for “Life’s a Song” and “Home”. I was actually excited to see “Home” on VH1 Classic when they do Now & Then, and it’s been played a few times on Palladia. We’re proud of that record and anybody that comes out to the shows this weekend will hear two or three new songs from Rockaholic. But we mostly play the stuff everybody’s familiar with from all the singles and videos we’ve released like “Down Boys,” “Heaven,” “Sometimes She Cries,” “I Saw Red,” “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” “Cherry Pie” and some other deeper tracks from those records like “Mr. Rainmaker,” “Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich” and we’ll dabble into the Dog Eat Dog CD, as well. It’s a nice mixture of mostly the classic songs everybody knows us for, then we mix in some other familiar tracks and a few new ones. It’s a nice set of rock ‘n’ roll, in my opinion.
