My friend Rand Herbert (Bill's brother) and I were in charge of special effects, make-up, sets and general grunt work for this movie, which Bill financed by scraping up the 25K from family and friends (like me) when Bill was at Cal, Berkeley. Considering the budget we had to work with - even in 1972 when most of the movie was shot, I'd say we did a reasonably good job. Rand and I use a variety of aliases for our jobs - as did Bill. My favorites were Jeff D. Dodat and Don U. Dodat ("did you have to do that?" and "Dont you do that" - shades of the Car Guys)
We especially liked that we had a "false" ending (in 1972 - pre-Brian DePalma)- and that the movie continued through the credits. We were trying to get people to stay for the credits). We liked the scene where the axe-man looms behind the glass door then crashes through it.
It's true that Edna McAfee played the role a little over-the-top, buts just what we wanted - this wasn't Shakespeare after all. Did anyone recognize the "Hunter"? Harry Bauerr was also in Woody Allen's "Take the Money and Run".
We all had visions of eventually working in Hollywood, but after small company in LA "bought" the movie at interlock stage and invested another $75 grand to reshoot a few scenes, score it, blow it up to 35mm and (unfortunately) re title it, it went nowhere.
For REAL trivia buffs - one of the titles we originally wanted was (for a movie that depended on cannibalism as a theme) "The Last Supper". This - of course - was vetoed by the folks in LA.
As I understand it, the principal of that small company was murdered - there was talk of mob hits and all that. The company immediately went bankrupt and the negative for our film was held hostage as collateral for the company's debts by the film processing company.
It took several years of negotiation to "free" our film by which time we were all so disgusted with the whole deal we had each gone our separate ways. Bill sold the now completed film to a film syndicator, which is why you only see the film on late night TV. Other than the "premier" in Livermore where it was shot, and a few test runs in drive-ins in Spokane and somewhere in Georgia, thats the only place its ever been seen. It was "designed" as a drive-in" movie actually - somewhat scary scenes to have your girlfriend want to snuggle - no complicated plot to interfere with the smooching.
Bill went on to a career in real estate, I went to law school after having spent much of the 1970s in Africa and the Middle east and South Asia, some of it with Rand and his then girlfriend, now wife. Rand owns a historical research company in Davis.
Glad to see this film got some sort of cult status eventually.
My absolute favorite story about this film is, when i was working for Thelton Henderson at U.S. District Court in San Francisco, he pointed out a story in the SF Chronicle that two prisoners were suing a local TV station for cruel and unusual punishment for having switched their listed playing of "California Split" on late night TV for a showing of "Warlock Moon". I am conflicted about whether they should have won or lost that suit.
Enjoy the film folks.
