Gregory Lamberson
January 23, 2005
Horror, defined in the dictionary, amounts to something like “excessive fear accompanied with shuttering,” or otherwise described as “extreme dread”, “extreme depression”, or something producing “great disgust”. Okay, that’s all well and good for a clinical diagnosis, but isn’t it all a bit, shall we say, deflating? Horror, to me, can indeed induce a shutter or two, at the expense of something of great dread or disgust, but, from a filmgoers point of view, isn’t the very definition of horror to squeeze out an entertaining, somewhat pleasureful, thrill (translation: fun) from a fictional story of fright, be it campy, realistic, supernatural, or splatter-tastic. I guess one man’s “extreme depression” is another man’s cinematic diversion, but in a world filled with real horrors, from wars, to avalanches, to mudslides, to Presidential inaugurations, to tsunamis, when I think of horror, I think of something to escape into- King Kong’s dino-infested island, Dr. Frankenstein’s lab, Dr. Jekyll’s beastly transformation, Regan’s haunted bedroom- and any film buff worth his salt in ticket stubs knows that a truly good horror film is more cathartic than nerve shredding. Thus, we come to my point, that even months after Halloween, buried in snow and bitter temperatures, anytime is a good time to explore the thrills of the cinematic macabre, and who better to guide us into the dark depths of filmdom’s dirty dimensions than local horror maestro, Gregory Lamberson, late of Fredonia High, 80’s cinema, and current author, critic, and manager of the great Amherst Theater.
If anybody knows the joys of a splattered brain, oozing intestine, and a possessed monster-inducing “yogurt” drink, it’s Lamberson, whose career includes everything from writer/director of his own “no budget” horror comedies, to recently published novelist, and through his powerful position as the head of Buffalo’s best art-house, he’s put together an impressive horror film festival of classic “midnight movies”, the kind of films that would make the strongest stomach churn, and the queasiest soul chuckle in delight. Gregory Lamberson is a local man; born out of Gowanda, he grew up in Dunkirk, idolizing comic books, monster model kits, and the movies that inspired them. In high school, as a Fredonia Hillbilly, he moved onto more sophisticated, yet equally frightening obsessions in the genre, collecting precious memories of the great George Romero zombie classics, and more social conscious, quintessentially 70’s, epics like “Carrie”, and “The Exorcist”. After graduation in ’82, Lamberson moved to the Big Apple to study filmmaking, and after a year of film school, served as production manager on a very low budget horror spoof called “I Was a Teenage Zombie”.
Call it what you will, unglamorous or not, but a man’s first job on a film set is something to remember to the day he dies, and Lamberson remembers his early NYC days vividly. “I didn’t get paid anything,” he tells me, “but I learned more about production in four weeks than I would have in three years at film school.” With a foot in the door of independent filmmaking, Lamberson went on to write and direct three of his own splatter comedies, and after years of management positions in New York movie houses, he and his wife, Tamar, moved back to the area (Cheektowaga to be exact), where he currently spends time writing horror stories, essays for horror and sci-fi magazines (fascinating essays on Richard Matheson, Romero, “Dark Shadows” producer Dan Curtis, and the history of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” can be found on his website), presenting the best in independent and foreign films at the Amherst, and prepping for his Midnight Movie Madness film festival, which gets underway tonight at midnight.
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Recently, while promoting his first novel, an intense and well written noir/monster mystery titled “Personal Demons”, as well as the film festival, Lamberson has stopped by “PM Buffalo”, local radio, and “Offbeat Cinema”, and is slowly on his way to becoming a Buffalo celebrity. Early talks have been set in motion about a possible book signing at The Book Nook in the D&F Plaza, and he’s already set a date, Friday, March 18th, to sign copies of his novel at Talking Leaves on Main St. in Buffalo, that great independent bookstore of UB Students and literature fans alike. As a frequent visitor to the Amherst, I recently talked with Lamberson about his history, the joy of horror, the future of the genre, cinema in general, and those Dunkirkian days of double features at the Regent. Here now are some excerpts from a quintessential convo between two hopeless film buffs:
Adam Suraf: Do you have any early childhood memories of film going, or the inspiration for the horror bug?
Gregory Lamberson: When I was four years old, and my mother and I lived in Dunkirk, she took me to the Regent to see movies (my first experience was a double feature of “Bambi” and “Pinocchio in Outer Space”). On our way home to Canary Street, we’d stop at a cigar shop where she bought me comic books. Those comics featured ads for the Aurora line of glow-in-the-dark monster model kits. I cut out the ads, and moved the pictures around the screen of our black and white TV, creating stories. Then I collected the models, and then I watched the movies that inspired them, and I was hooked.
AS: “Pinocchio in Outer Space”, nice. How was it directing independent horror comedies, and is there a future for your films?
GL: I wrote and directed three “no budget” horror films: “Slime City”, “New York Vampire”, and “Naked Fear”. They were garage horror flicks, like garage rock bands, and I financed them with friends who helped me make them. I’ve never had as much fun in my life; we worked hard, sometimes 20 hours a day, and we were always fighting the clock because we never had enough money to get through the week. It was a real adrenaline rush. All three films played as midnight movies in NYC, and two of them were released on video. We sold “Slime City” around the world, and it should be available as a special edition DVD by the end of this year.
AS: And now you’re back in Western New York, how did that come about?
GL: My wife Tamar and I moved to Cheektowaga almost two years ago, after I’d decided to focus my creative energy on writing novels instead of making no-budget horror films. With novels, I have no budgetary restrictions! I managed a lot of movie theatres in NYC, between film gigs, and when we were house hunting, I saw the Amherst Theatre and knew that I’d work there. I prefer independent art films over commercial movies, and independent art theatres over corporate multiplexes, so it was fate. The Amherst shows the best films in Buffalo, and I get to see them for free!
AS: Personally, I think the horror genre is in decline. I know these modern day horror flicks, like “Darkness”, or “Jeepers Creepers” come out, get awful reviews, and still somehow make money, before fading away into obscurity, but will there ever be another ‘Exorcist’, something truly grand and scary that can be both cinematically interesting and a box office success? Most modern day horror films seem like either dime-a-dozen retreads, or jumbled bloodsploitation hack jobs like “Saw”; give me “Bride of Frankenstein” or “Nosferatu” any day.
GL: I don’t enjoy most contemporary horror films; I prefer those from the 70s, like “Carrie”, “The Exorcist”, and “The Omen”. Freddy, Jason, and Chucky ruined the genre, as far as I’m concerned. Horror isn’t about some boogeyman making wisecracks before he kills his victims; it’s about the breakdown of society by supernatural forces, and the efforts of the protagonists to restore order to that society. It has to grab you by the gut and refuse to let go of you.
AS: Is there a future for horror?
GL: I actually have hope for the genre. The studios seem to be realizing that they can’t keep making films solely for teenagers. I see the influence of Asian horror films like “Ringu” and “Ju-On”, remade as “The Ring” and “The Grudge”, as a good thing. These films aren’t about body counts—they want to challenge, disturb, and frighten the audience. I recommend “The Eye” and “Battle Royale” to anyone interested in something different.
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Lamberson’s Midnight Movie Madness film festival kicks off tonight, and will run for five weeks, and continue in early March with three special, rare screenings of his feature films. Tonight’s film is the local premiere of Richard Kelly’s new cut of “Donnie Darko”, a modern day cult classic starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a delusional high school student frequently visited by a demonic, un-Harvey-like 7-foot-tall rabbit. This extended cut will be released on DVD February 15th, but why wait when you can see it as it’s meant to be seen; on the big screen, deep into the night, surrounded by fellow cultists.
On February 5th, writer/producer Roy Frumkes will personally introduce James Muro’s slime feature “Street Trash”, and the following week, the fest gets more mainstream with Sam Raimi’s hilarious log-cabin spoof “Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn”. Both these films were made in ’87, and offer good lessons in camp, gore, and independent comedy. Similar in vain to ED2, the following week on February 19th, Lamberson will screen “Dead Alive”, an early splatter classic from ‘Lord of the Rings’ auteur Peter Jackson. The 1992 New Zealand zombie comedy is notable for its buckets of slime, deadpan comedy, and a dinner table sequence involving face melting zombies that is so funny, and so disgusting you may never eat vanilla pudding again. Less refined, and less serious than Jackson’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ masterpieces, “Dead Alive” is as good an intro into his early, pre-Rings, career as “Heavenly Creatures”, and “Bad Taste”.
Finally, on February 26th, the festival concludes with one of the most famous of all modern horror films, William Friedkin’s 1973 Oscar winner, “The Exorcist”, a film almost unmatched for spooky atmosphere, shocking obscenities, and demonic religious symbolism. Everybody has seen “The Exorcist”, but hardly anybody has seen it in a theater at a midnight screening, which makes this film festival a special happening for local film fans. As an added bonus, on Friday, March 4th, and Friday, March 11th, at the Screening Room in the Northtown Plaza on Sheridan Avenue in Amherst, Lamberson will screen his own “Slime City” (4th), “New York Vampire”, and “Naked Fear” (both on the 11th), capping off a successful three months of horror mania courtesy of that little Dunkirk boy who started with “Pinocchio in Outer Space”, and continues to relish in the fantastic today.
For more information on Gregory Lamberson, his novel “Personal Demons”, his movies, and the Midnight Movie Madness horror film festival, visit his website at www.slimeguy.com. Beware, it gets a little gooey, but who would have it any other way.
by Adam Suraf