For decades, Full Moon Features has been delivering cult classic films and what are often considered "B movies" in the form of Re-Animator, Ghoulies, Puppet Master, and many others. While chatting with the mastermind behind Full Moon, director Charles Band, we learned that the production company plans to revisit many of those titles.
The news broke several days ago when we initially recorded this exclusive interview, which revealed that Full Moon Features was working on a new Lovecraftian project in Miskatonic U: The Resonator. Charles explained the initiative in more detail and revealed which of their past titles and characters they will be reviving.
It seems as though the plan is to release 18 short films in 2021, and some of the franchises that will be resurrected in the films are Puppet Master, Re-Animator, Evil Bong, with many others in contention for the spotlight. The plan is to focuse on their most popular titles to see which franchises are best to pursue afterward.
Listen to our exclusive chat with Ghoulies and Re-Animator director and producer Charles Band by clicking the podcast player below. Full Moon Features fans can also check out our interview with actresses Robyn Sydney and Cody Renee Cameron (Corona Zombies, Area 51) along with the transcript.
Literary Joe: Are there any more plans for Barbie and Kendra in the future?
Charles Band: Everyone's been asking me that because they're hilarious, and people have been enjoying them. It all depends on the next event that we can make fun of or introduce the girls to. It's got to be tied to something current that people are talking about, but not politics cause that's never been my thing. We'll see what happens next in the world.
For now, we have an aggressive slate to the core of Full Moon Features that people will recognize as inspired by movies I've made since the seventies and from the eighties. For example, we announced that we're doing the first installment of eighteen shows. I don't know how we are going to do them all. It's called Miskatonic U The Resonator. It's a Lovecraftian inspired idea, borrowing somewhat from From Beyond, one of the movies I made in the eighties with Stewart Gordon. I made ReAnimator and From Beyond. So this is a good product. Miskatonic U The Resonator was worked on by Billy Butler, a super talented dude who wrote and directed it. This will be the first of eighteen movies we have planned, which seems insane. We'll be making two a month starting at the beginning of January.
Everything will be across the spectrum: puppet movies, doll movies, haunted movies, harlequin romance movies, everything. If you think of the work of Empire and Full Moon, we're going back to everything that we enjoyed the most that have stood the test of time. Miskatonic U is just one of them. Lovecraft created a fictitious university in a lot of his work called Miskatonic University. Even though there are no Lovecraft story columnists, Miskatonic University is part of the Lovecraft lore. If this does well, or any of these eighteen shows do well, and fans think it's cool, we're setting them up so we can go back and make sequels.
We have a great character from one of the Puppet Master movies that will headline in a film, much like we did with Blade without revealing it. We are tapping into everything that I feel we've done pretty well over the years. Some of these are original ideas, but hopefully, they always feel like they're either an Empire movie or a Full Moon movie. As an example, years ago, I directed a film called Meridian with Sherilyn Fenn. That was a harlequin romance of beauty and the beast. It's not similar to Radian, but it's another harlequin romance, a haunted ghost story with a little dose of romance, love, and sex.
Literary Joe: What film of yours has the most significant cult following? Do you think it's Re-Animator?
Charles Band: The biggest is still the Puppet Master. We've made twelve Puppet Master movies in thirty-one years. There are some older ones like Ghoulies; I've made three of those in the early eighties. Our most successful franchise in streaming, other than Puppet Master, is Evil Bong. There are eight Evil Bong movies. That's a big underserved audience who would like more. Without revealing what we are doing, an off-shoot character from the Evil Bong franchisees will have his own film.
The way we will release these is that they are all being prepared and shot as two-parters. We find that 60% of the people watching our movies on both streaming sites are watching them on their phones, and their attention span is less. These will start coming out at the end of January or early February. It'll be satisfying to watch that half-hour with a little bit of a cliffhanger and then be able to watch the second episode the following Friday. We will shoot two a month; therefore, we'll be releasing those two in four installments once we get caught up with production. Each one will have a two-parter.
We hope that we'll be making movies like all those early eighties until the mid-nineties, cool movies that we look back at as great independent Horror films. They would never have happened if the world was only a theatrical release world like it was in the sixties and seventies. It happened because of the direct to the video world, where you can make a movie, and if it were halfway decent, thousands of video stores would put it on their shelves, and people would go and discover movies at their local video store. Think of any movie from the eighties or nineties that is cool; those movies would not have been made if the world was only major studios back then.
*This interview has been edited for clarity.*
Rediscover the movies that freaked you out as a kid! Full Moon's entire collection of mondo bizarro movies is now available on Amazon Subscription Service. Plus, new movies added every week! It's like Netflix for lunatics!
You can check out Re-Animator along with the rest of Full Moon Features titles here.