BRIAN YUZNA'S FAUST

An interview for Shivers Magazine by Alan Jones. All copyrights are with the author. Shivers #85, December 2000

Director Brian Yuzna introduces his new movie Faust and explains why this could be the start of something big

It was the worst day of Brian Yuzna's life. Thursday, 12th October, at the Sitges Fantasy Festival 2000 to be exact. That was the day the producer, director and key mastermind behind Spain's Fantastic Factory Horror label débuted the first of his productions in front of an expectant world première audience. Those who saw Faust that evening were Barcelona government officials, European distributors, bankers, the cast and crew and the owners of Filmax, the company responsible for financing the ambitious idea. And, of course, the critics. What made it even more fraught day for Yuzna was the fact the film, based on the erotic comic strip by Tim Vigil and David Quinn, wasn't really ready to be shown. Some of the special effects hadn't been completed, the editing was rough, the digital finessing had yet to be added and it was a video transfer that unspooled on screen at the Auditori, the largest cinema in the Sitges area. Faust wasn't due for release in Spain until February 2001, but Julio Fernandez, the head honcho at Filmax, had to show it at the festival for numerous political reasons even though Yuzna begged him not to, and was convinced it wouldn't be ready in time anyway.

Political Scheme The next day the reviews came out in the newspapers and they were virtually all devastating and negative. "It was a miserable thing to have to do," Yuzna told me the same afternoon. "The problem is Faust isn't a movie anymore, it's a whole political and financial scheme to inaugurate a studio. It's the first of a production line." For those hot up to speed on the whole Fantastic Factory concept, Reanimator producer Brian Yuzna relocated from Los Angeles to Spain two years ago in order to set up a Hammer-upon-Barcelona studio for Filmax (the Iberian Miramax). The idea is to produce one genre release every three months, create their own in-house stars and personnel and provide distributor Fernandez with the type of exploitable Horror titles that the international market is gagging to buy. Next in line are Jack Sholder's Arachnid (currently in post-production), Stuart Gordon's Dagon (shooting now), Jaume (The Nameless) Balaguero's Darkness and Yuzna's second sequel to his most popular hit, Beyond Reanimator. Yuzna continued, "Until I moved to Barcelona, I'd bounced around different companies making stuff like The Dentist, Progeny and Crying Freeman. The Fantastic Factory is on a whole new different level. There are not enough visionary people out there who can navigate the minefield of subsidies, government offices and the Euopean film industry, or get a major city behind them to develop a new studio. But Julio Fernandes is driven enough to say "lets do it!" I can't praise Julio enough for all the enthusiasm and support he has provided me with for this risky venture. Yet last night felt very much like the emperor has no clothes. I begged him not to show Faust in such an incomplete form, but too much was riding on it for that to realistically happen."

Above: The "Faust" movie poster. Click on picture to see bigger version.

Future Faust A futuristic update of the Faust legend, Yuzna's $6 million action Horror finds John Jaspers (Mark Frost) making a pact with the Devil in order to get revenge on the Satanic cult responsible for murdering his girlfriend. But the power-crazed Mephistopheles (Andrew Divoff) turns him into a caped killer armed with long metal claws - one who will eventually play an important role in an upcoming prophesied black magic ritual. Only Doctor Jade de Camp (Isabel Brook) can see the man behind the monster Jaspers has become and tries to unlock the deep torment fuelling his murderous rages. Meanwhile, Captain Margolies (Jeffrey Combs) investigates Jaspers past and inexorably gets lured into the demonic twilight world that will cause Armageddon unless Jaspers separates his ominous hallucinations from the harsh reality of his fractured existence. I can clearly recall the manic state Yuzna was in at the prior Sitges Fesival. He was only days away from Fausts six-week shooting schedule yet he still hadn't cast the key John Jaspers role and was hastily rewriting the script. The lead eventually went to the unkown British actor Mark Frost who appeared in Blue Juice and can currently be seen on British daytime TV in Doctors. Yuzna remarked, "I saw loads of actors but none of them were star material. I needed someone I could take a chance on and transform into a Fantastic Factory regular, like Hammer did with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. I wanted someone crazy, sympathetic and athletic enough to rise to the John Jaspers occasion. Frankly I was at a complete loss until my 12-year-old son watched Mark's show-reel and jumped up and down at his manner and charisma. It has become something of a joke between Mark and I that my son chose him."

Script Doctored He continued, "The script was a problem for two main reasons. The original comic strip was highly erotic and extreme, but we couldn't commercially make a near-porno action adventure. I also encompassed three genres in one. The John Jaspers story is a horror movie pure and simple. The Devil is fighting God for his soul and if he isn't beaten the whole world will die. Horror - from Frankenstein to Scream - has a rigid formality to it that's quite hard to achive and make believable. Jade's story is the thriller element because evil to her is a sickness and she tries to cure the monster in the man - a cliché from Psycho onward. Her mysterious nightmares, about a "Smooth Man" abusing her, fits the thriller context too. Evil to Captain Margolies is bad guys doing bad things because they want money, sex and power. When he's put in jail and busts out, Faust becomes an action adventure. Juggling those three strands together was hard, but necessary, because I didn't want to make a traditional horror movie. That's the reason why heavy metal music accompanies the horrific scenes."

He added, "All these problems were identified by Stuart Gordon when he was writing the script to direct years ago. Nothing much of Stuart's script remains which is why he doesn't get a credit. Nor did I want to piss off  the original comic strip writers, the reason why I pulled in David Quinn for the final polish. What none of the script versions had was Faust transforming as I couldn't handle the idea of a suit and I've always felt capes were silly. Superheroes that work well on screen don't have a cape, like The Crow or Blade. I mean, how do you get to any point in a story where superheroe dons a cape? It doesn't make any sense to me. The whole cape thing drove me crazy for months until someone in the costume department said, Just give him a red silk one and be done with it!".

Faust actually plays like a Greatest Hits package from Yuzna's past producing catalogue: the sado-masochistic punk imagery from Return of the Living Dead 3, the Society over-load of prosthetic effects, the cynical shocks from Bride of Reanimator, and, of course, Jeffrey Combs - the Yuzna mascot of menace. He said, "I think I did that just to make the film as entertaining as possible. I don't care what the movie is, I always get bored at some point. There's always this midway letdown and I wanted to get over that by suddenly shifting in tone from comedy to gore, from sex to burlesque, from silly monsters to rock video stylishness. I also did as much fast editing as possible to disguise the action that I thought clearly didn't work. Faust is not simply an investment risk, it is also an artistic one." So has the shine gone off the whole Fantastic Factory enterprise for Yuzna? Or is he still just as gung-ho about the opportunities on offer as he was two years ago when he moved lock, stock and two barrels of Screaming Mad George's stage blood from Los Angeles to Spain? "*It's peculiar because the problems I've had I never thought would become ones and vice-versa. I've spent the last year making mistakes that the whole world saw last night blown up to 35 mm. Every day has contained a surprise and baffling logistics like sets not being built on time for me to shoot on. I guess that's just what happens why you start a whole new studio from scratch. I'm glad I'm just producing the next three films to be honest. Directing and producing Faust was a mistake in retrospective. But hopefully by the time we get to do Beyond Reanimator we'll be ok and the Fantastic Factory will be the force to be reckoned with we all want it to become".

Above and below: Jeffrey Combs as Captain Dan Margolies