Of Mice and BATTLEDOGS
On Friday, April 5th, the world premiere for Battledogs was held at the Market Arcade Film and Arts Center here in Buffalo, one day ahead of its national broadcast on SyFy. I was the First Assistant Director on the film back in September and October of 2012 (we had an 18 day shooting schedule), and I wrote about the experience in my blog for Killer Reviews: http://www.killerreviews.com/forums/entry.php?860-Werewolves-R-Us-BattleDogs-on-SyFy. The premiere was great fun, and I said I'd withhold commenting on the film itself after people had a chance to see it. SyFry repeated the film tonight, and I'm sure there will be other airings before the DVD comes out June 25th.
I'm currently co-directing Dry Bones, which I also wrote, with Michael O'Hear. It's the twelfth feature film I've worked on, excluding publicity assignments. When I write or direct a film, it's impossible to judge the finished project except by my own expectations. In the case of a film like Battledogs, in which I was brought on board after the screenplay was written, and other people made all of the creative decisions, it's a lot easier to evaluate the finished project. It's still impossible to be totally objective, because this film was a lot of hard work, and watching it in the theater I could remember what emotions I was experiencing during almost every shot.
The film begins with Donna Voorhees (played by Ariana Richards, formerly the little girl in Jurassic Park) exiting an aircraft. She walks through JFK airport (in reality Niagara Falls airport) and experiences superhuman hearing while feeling sick. She goes into a bathroom stall, where we see a bite wound on her arm, and transforms into a four legged werewolf that goes on a rampage. Every person she bites is instantly transformed into another werewolf, and panic ensues, with cops, Homeland Security, and a SWAT team battling the canines. General Monning (Dennis Haysbert, who will always be President Palmer to me) dispatches Colonel Falcons (Wes Studi) and a special forces team to stop the attack, The cavalry arrives by helicopter and gasses the werewolves, who revert to (mostly) naked human beings. End of teaser.
This entire sequence rocked, even with some shady CGI. The producer, Chris Olen Ray, and director, Alex Yellen, shot the film in Buffalo so they could use the Niagara Falls airport, which is tiny. We had to deal with a lot of FAA regulations, but Yellen did his best work here, capturing a real big budget quality. It's a fast paced action sequence that delivers the goods, and it's the best part of the film.
The "infected" humans are transferred to Ward's Island in New York City, which is hastily transformed into an internment camp. The script called for a "tent city," ala the refugee camp in Scarface, but we ended up shooting inside the Central Terminal (the tower is seen several times in my film Slime City Massacre because we shot in the ruined buildings surrounding the terminal). Joel Resnikoff, the production designer, did a great job with a limited budget. Most of the film takes place at this location, and while Yellen did good work there (and look at all those extras milling about under my command!), I grew a little tired of seeing the place and was relieved when our heroes (Craig Sheffer, Kate Vernon and Ariana) bolted. The film is about what happens when the werewolves break loose from Ward's Island and cause havoc in Manhattan. Yellen did a good job finding Buffalo locations which matched the Manhattan establishing shots. There was only one shot in the entire film during which I thought, "Hmm, those buildings look a little low for Manhattan, and there sure is a lot of sky visible."
The screenplay was written by Shane Van Dyke, Dick Van Dyke's grandson, who also wrote Chernobyl Diaries. I give it high marks. The script has a solid structure, and while there were no classic lines of dialogue, there were no groaners either. It's important to note that Chris Ray produced this film (through his own company) for The Asylum, aka The Global Asylum, which is notorious for releasing ripoffs of big studio releases ahead of those releases. Battledogs isn't a ripoff of anything, and it's played straight. Equally of note is that the film premiered on SyFy: those SyFy "originals" are horrible. While this is an unabashed high concept B movie, it's far better than what people have come to expect from those companies. The CGI is exactly what you would expect, ranging from acceptable to terrible. The helicopters look like they flew out of a video game, but once you accept that as the film's motif, the cheesy flavor of the effects adds to the fun. The scene where a werewolf causes a chopper to crash into 30 Rock echoes both King Kong and Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and was a real crowd pleaser at the premiere. Bill Duke, "as the president," brought a real gravitas to his scenes. In one clever scene, Sheffer's character Brian Hoffman visits the airport and observes a holographic security tape which projects full size recreations of the airport patrons around him.
I have only three beefs with the entire film: the first is the naming or Ariana's character as Donna Voorhees, which is just dumb. When Ernie Hudson's character Max is killed, it's unclear how he died. What we shot was Max getting shot; what was broadcast made me think DonnaWolf had killed him (Hudson's death also left the film without its most likeable character). The boat chase that ensues when our heroes escape from Ward's Island was lame in the script and is even more lame in the finished film: there's some racing, some yelling, some shooting... and then the pursuing villains just kind of veer off, allowing our heroes to escape, as if they got tired of bullying the good guys (it reminds me of the ending of THX 1138, when the robot cops stop chasing Robert Duval because they've exceeded their budget). It serves no purpose except to provide some meaningless action. A stronger payoff would have helped, but we only had one day to shoot what amounted to one minute of screen time.
Chris (and his production manager, Alison Goser) did a first rate job producing this film on a tight budget, and Yellen did a solid job as director. Of the twelve films I've worked on, it's only the third I would classify as an actual B movie, the others being Frank Henenlotter's Brain Damage and Phil Gallo's crime drama West New York, starring a bunch of The Sopranos. The rest have been what I call C and D movies, mostly because of their non-existent budgets (I would be thrilled if anyone considered Slime City Massacre a B movie). I definitely enjoyed the finished work and am proud of my association with it; congratulations to everyone involved!
I'm currently co-directing Dry Bones, which I also wrote, with Michael O'Hear. It's the twelfth feature film I've worked on, excluding publicity assignments. When I write or direct a film, it's impossible to judge the finished project except by my own expectations. In the case of a film like Battledogs, in which I was brought on board after the screenplay was written, and other people made all of the creative decisions, it's a lot easier to evaluate the finished project. It's still impossible to be totally objective, because this film was a lot of hard work, and watching it in the theater I could remember what emotions I was experiencing during almost every shot.
The film begins with Donna Voorhees (played by Ariana Richards, formerly the little girl in Jurassic Park) exiting an aircraft. She walks through JFK airport (in reality Niagara Falls airport) and experiences superhuman hearing while feeling sick. She goes into a bathroom stall, where we see a bite wound on her arm, and transforms into a four legged werewolf that goes on a rampage. Every person she bites is instantly transformed into another werewolf, and panic ensues, with cops, Homeland Security, and a SWAT team battling the canines. General Monning (Dennis Haysbert, who will always be President Palmer to me) dispatches Colonel Falcons (Wes Studi) and a special forces team to stop the attack, The cavalry arrives by helicopter and gasses the werewolves, who revert to (mostly) naked human beings. End of teaser.
This entire sequence rocked, even with some shady CGI. The producer, Chris Olen Ray, and director, Alex Yellen, shot the film in Buffalo so they could use the Niagara Falls airport, which is tiny. We had to deal with a lot of FAA regulations, but Yellen did his best work here, capturing a real big budget quality. It's a fast paced action sequence that delivers the goods, and it's the best part of the film.
The "infected" humans are transferred to Ward's Island in New York City, which is hastily transformed into an internment camp. The script called for a "tent city," ala the refugee camp in Scarface, but we ended up shooting inside the Central Terminal (the tower is seen several times in my film Slime City Massacre because we shot in the ruined buildings surrounding the terminal). Joel Resnikoff, the production designer, did a great job with a limited budget. Most of the film takes place at this location, and while Yellen did good work there (and look at all those extras milling about under my command!), I grew a little tired of seeing the place and was relieved when our heroes (Craig Sheffer, Kate Vernon and Ariana) bolted. The film is about what happens when the werewolves break loose from Ward's Island and cause havoc in Manhattan. Yellen did a good job finding Buffalo locations which matched the Manhattan establishing shots. There was only one shot in the entire film during which I thought, "Hmm, those buildings look a little low for Manhattan, and there sure is a lot of sky visible."
The screenplay was written by Shane Van Dyke, Dick Van Dyke's grandson, who also wrote Chernobyl Diaries. I give it high marks. The script has a solid structure, and while there were no classic lines of dialogue, there were no groaners either. It's important to note that Chris Ray produced this film (through his own company) for The Asylum, aka The Global Asylum, which is notorious for releasing ripoffs of big studio releases ahead of those releases. Battledogs isn't a ripoff of anything, and it's played straight. Equally of note is that the film premiered on SyFy: those SyFy "originals" are horrible. While this is an unabashed high concept B movie, it's far better than what people have come to expect from those companies. The CGI is exactly what you would expect, ranging from acceptable to terrible. The helicopters look like they flew out of a video game, but once you accept that as the film's motif, the cheesy flavor of the effects adds to the fun. The scene where a werewolf causes a chopper to crash into 30 Rock echoes both King Kong and Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and was a real crowd pleaser at the premiere. Bill Duke, "as the president," brought a real gravitas to his scenes. In one clever scene, Sheffer's character Brian Hoffman visits the airport and observes a holographic security tape which projects full size recreations of the airport patrons around him.
I have only three beefs with the entire film: the first is the naming or Ariana's character as Donna Voorhees, which is just dumb. When Ernie Hudson's character Max is killed, it's unclear how he died. What we shot was Max getting shot; what was broadcast made me think DonnaWolf had killed him (Hudson's death also left the film without its most likeable character). The boat chase that ensues when our heroes escape from Ward's Island was lame in the script and is even more lame in the finished film: there's some racing, some yelling, some shooting... and then the pursuing villains just kind of veer off, allowing our heroes to escape, as if they got tired of bullying the good guys (it reminds me of the ending of THX 1138, when the robot cops stop chasing Robert Duval because they've exceeded their budget). It serves no purpose except to provide some meaningless action. A stronger payoff would have helped, but we only had one day to shoot what amounted to one minute of screen time.
Chris (and his production manager, Alison Goser) did a first rate job producing this film on a tight budget, and Yellen did a solid job as director. Of the twelve films I've worked on, it's only the third I would classify as an actual B movie, the others being Frank Henenlotter's Brain Damage and Phil Gallo's crime drama West New York, starring a bunch of The Sopranos. The rest have been what I call C and D movies, mostly because of their non-existent budgets (I would be thrilled if anyone considered Slime City Massacre a B movie). I definitely enjoyed the finished work and am proud of my association with it; congratulations to everyone involved!
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