If you follow the film industry as much as I do, then you'll know how often directors clash with studio executives when determining the final cuts of big-budget films. Such conflicts between the artists who create the art and the people who fund the art and mistakenly think that they are artists too have resulted in a long, long list of expensive failures. (Alien 3 (1992) and The Invasion (2007) immediately comes to mind.) Of course, it continues to happen--so much so with Hollywood productions that it's almost inevitable at this point--but how would you feel if the same thing happened with the theatrical release of a low-budget, fan-made film?
Such was the case with Equinox. It began as an amateur horror fan film made in 1967 (its original title: The Equinox: Journey into the Supernatural), and then it was re-edited, partially re-shot and distributed theatrically by Tonylyn Productions in 1970. For a long time, the Tonylyn version of Equinox was the only version that was available to the public; when Criterion released their two-disc set of Equinox back in 2006, they included both the original 1967 cut with the theatrical cut on the same disc (both with commentaries) for direct comparison. While neither cut are examples of horror filmmaking at its finest, the differences between the original edit and theatrical edit are astonishing and reflect how much the fans got right--fans who meticulously studied the craftsmanship that went into their favorite movies--and how much the so-called professionals got wrong.
Read on for my complete comparison of the two versions of Equinox, and how no movie is too small for creative differences between creators and producers.
In both edits, Equinox is about a group of college students who travel to the cabin owned by college professor, Dr. Arthur Waterman (Fritz Leiber Jr.), to check up on him because of his recent absence from their campus. They arrive to find that the cabin has been torn apart and Waterman is missing. Their search for the professor leads them to a mysterious text called the Book of the Damned that is filled with ancient inscriptions and spells intended to open a portal to a demonic parallel world--a portal that Waterman has already opened....
What Equinox is widely known for is that it features the early work of three special effects artists who would later work on some of the most popular films of the 70s, 80s, and 90s. These artists were Dennis Muren (Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, A.I., War of the Worlds), Dave Allen (The Howling, Willow, Ghostbusters II, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, The Arrival) and Jim Danforth (Clash of the Titans, Creepshow, The Thing, The Neverending Story, Day of the Dead, Prince of Darkness). Muren produced the film for only $6500 and he co-directed the original cut of Equinox with Mark Thomas McGee, who also wrote the film's script. Muren and Allen worked on the stop motion effects, while Danforth provided the cel animation and matte paintings.
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A forced perspective shot from Equinox.
Essentially, Equinox is a demo reel for the early effects work of Muren, Allen and Danforth; that the demo reel also happens to have an intriguing and creative story--albeit a poorly acted, poorly scripted and somewhat disjointed story--is simply a bonus. Considering that the film was shot on a tiny budget with amateur talents, the end results are very impressive.
Many aspects of Equinox echo the influence that the horror and sci-fi fan culture of the early-to-mid 20th century had on budding young filmmakers; depending on how you look at it, Equinox is a love letter of sorts to the creature features of that era. Muren and Allen were devoted fans of pioneering stop motion animators Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen, and several of the effects scenes in Equinox are clearly influenced by O'Brien and Harryhausen movies such as Mighty Joe Young and It Came from Beneath the Sea.
Forrest J. Ackerman makes an uncredited cameo in Equinox by lending his voice to an audio recording that plays early in the film (he also provided a video introduction for the Criterion Equinox set). Ackerman's contributions to the horror and science fiction genres were numerous, and his biggest legacy to the fans of those genres was a magazine he published called Famous Monsters of Filmland. Famous Monsters differed from other entertainment magazines of its time by focusing on the artistry that's performed behind the scenes, such as special effects and creature costume designs. Muren and his production crew must've been devoted acolytes of Ackerman's magazine and the movies it covered, because their love of classic creature features and the techniques that brought them to cinematic life is on display in each frame of their original cut of Equinox. Such open affection provides a sort of charm that offsets some of the amateur film's more uneven aspects.
The theatrical release poster for Equinox.
Dennis Muren and Mark Thomas McGee
were not credited on this poster.
All I can figure is that Woods thought that Equinox would be his big break as a writer and director (hint: it wasn't), so he tried to put as much of his stamp on it as possible. It should also be noted here that the theatrical version of Equinox lists Woods as director and co-writer, while Muren's credit went from being the co-director and producer to just associate producer. Woods even put himself in front of the camera as a new character named Asmodeus, a demon who assumes the guise of a park ranger and exerts his sinister influence over young ladies by making funny faces at them before feeling them up (no, I'm not kidding). Considering that Harris made a name for himself by producing The Blob in 1958 for only $120,000, it's a shame that he was willing to let Woods run roughshod over the work that was so passionately and cost-effectively made by Muren and his crew.
Asmodeus (Jack Woods), as he grimaces, puckers, clenches
and frowns his way into the soul of an innocent victim.
The way I see it, Equinox and The Evil Dead are low-budget bookends of sorts to the changes that horror cinema went through during the 70s. Equinox reflects the heavy influence of O'Brien, Harryhausen and Ackerman on one generation of horror film fans, whereas The Evil Dead reflects the heavy influence of George Romero, Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven on a later generation of horror film fans.
Because Equinox at its best is a cheap fan-made film, your interest in seeing it will greatly depend on how much you would like to see this kind of film from another time in film history. In other words, you don't watch Equinox to see a classic horror film; instead, you watch it to see an example of how fans from a particular era applied what they learned about the crafts practiced by their movie idols to a film they financed and produced on their own, and how that film was later changed for the worse by someone else for theatrical release.
I've seen plenty of movies that were released on DVD and Blu-ray as both a theatrical cut and a director's cut, but this is the first and only time I've seen this situation occur with a fan film. For that reason alone, I highly recommend Criterion's release of Equinox for anyone who is interested in horror and sci-fi fan culture. You should also try to see Criterion's Equinox if you believe that modern CGI-based special effects lack the creativity and finesse of older special effects techniques such as matte paintings, forced perspective and stop motion animation. Click here to read Glenn Erickson's review at DVD Talk of both discs that are in Criterion's set; however, if you are interested in seeing both versions of Equinox but have no interested in buying it, the first disc of the Criterion release is available for rental through Netflix.
In 1985, Equinox was distributed on VHS by
Wizard Video under the title The Beast.
took a novel approach by depicting a threat from beyond the stars that was neither an animal nor a plant but a mineral. The movie's titular menaces are crystal-like rocks from space that grow to gigantic heights when they're exposed to fresh water, which then shatter into fragments when they hit the ground after they become too large. This cycle repeats itself every time the rocks are exposed to water, until they threaten to crush a small town. Did I also happen to mention that the rocks' ability to absorb moisture allows them to drain the moisture from the bodies of nearby people, thus turning them into stone? With such a unique kind of horror, a remake of The Monolith Monsters would be an amazing science fiction disaster movie that leaves 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow looking very subdued by comparison.
looks like one of those movies that ran out of money for special effects in the middle of production--which is a shame, because it was one of the last movies that employed the talents of Willis O'Brien, the stop-motion animator who brought life to the titular ape in King Kong. To make the most of what little effects money it had, Scorpion reuses some of the same scorpion effects shots over and over again (much like how cheap cartoons save money by reusing the same footage). Nevertheless, the story about gargantuan scorpions that rise from a forgotten, subterranean world to tear apart victims with their mammoth claws and impale them on their giant stingers should be brought back as a remake with a better special effects budget.
is a fascinating B-movie that was directed by Albert Band. It depicts a man who may (or may not) have the power to kill people simply by rearranging the colored pins on a cemetery map. While this movie tells a very creepy tale, it avoids answering one of the questions that it raises: If someone had the power to kill others by manipulating a cemetery map, could that same person also raise the dead through the same process? I've heard quite a few rumors that scenes were written for this film that answer this question in the affirmative, but they were never shot; thus, I would love to see a remake of I Bury The Living that pushes the story into gruesome world of corpse reanimation.
is in a bizarre class of its own. Instead of ants that get bigger or more bloodthirsty due to some kind of atomic or natural disaster, the ants in Phase IV become smarter as the result of a mysterious cosmic event. With its minimalist, surreal script and astonishing insect cinematography make Phase IV a fascinating film, its maddeningly suggestive yet vague ending (which director Saul Bass has said was imposed by the studio) put this film on my remake list just so we can see this story told again with a more satisfying conclusion.
is one of the many Jaws rip offs that appeared during the late 70s, although it's one of the few that has nothing to do with water, fish and swimming. In spite of its derivative nature, ;">The Car is still a creepy little film about a possessed automobile that terrorizes a small desert town. With its pitch black windows, eerie sounds and animal-like behavior, the titular vehicle is a unique movie monster that deserves a tune-up for a second trip on the silver screen. With a bigger budget and a more nuanced screenplay, I could imagine a remake that has a driverless car isolating another small desert town by running down supply trucks and toppling power lines and cell phone towers, and then bumping off the remaining citizens who try to escape.
has a remarkable pedigree: It was directed by Irving Kersher, co-scripted by John Carpenter, and featured Faye Dunaway, Tommy Lee Jones, Raúl Juliá and Rene Auberjonois. Yet for a film about a photographer who receives psychic visions that allow her to see through the eyes of a serial killer as he brutally murders his victims, something just doesn't work. It could be because of the film's rushed "twist" ending, or that it fails to explore in greater detail the true nature of the visions (such as when they really started, not when the main character began to accept them as visions), or that the romance subplot doesn't feel as compatible with the rest of film (no matter how logical the relationship is within the context of the complete story). Regardless, I'd love to see a creepier and better-paced remake of this movie, just so this story can reach its full, frightful potential.
(which was produced by Charles Band, son of the aforementioned Albert Band). Tourist Trap is an uneven, hit-and-miss affair, a blend of House of Wax, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Twilight Zone. It's got enough mannequin-centric scares and shivers--particularly the final shot--to merit a second chance on the big screen, perhaps with less imitation of House of Wax and Chainsaw Massacre and more holy-crap-mannequins-are-out-to-kill-me shocks. With the current state of practical effects and CGI technology, I'm convinced that these murderous, on-the-move mannequins will generate a few weeks' worth of nightmares for movie viewers of all ages.
was the fifth film directed by bestselling sci-fi author Michael Crichton, who also wrote the film's script, it is not the best example of Crichton’s talents as either a director or a screenwriter. The finished film is an unmistakable mess, with a story that meanders through several different plot points (including some vague conspiracy involving subliminal messages in TV commercials) without ever adequately connecting them into a coherent, compelling whole. In spite of its shortcomings, Looker has an intriguing, eerie central concept: professional models who go through plastic surgery to correct very specific flaws--down to the millimeter--in order to achieve a specific standard of beauty and in turn gain employment, only to be systematically murdered as they are replaced by computer-generated duplicates who actually are "perfect". In the right hands, Looker could be brought back to the big screen as a high-tech, giallo-esque mash-up of The Stepford Wives, S1m0ne and Blood and Black Lace. 
has preposterous yet entertaining plot: To change the future to suit his nefarious agenda, a "psychic vampire" from the year 2247 travels back in time to 1985--with a police trooper from the same era hot on his trail. While its idea of a mind-controlling serial killer is handled better than most other films with a similar premise (such as God Told Me To), Trancers is too busy ripping off Blade Runner and The Terminator to explore this creepy concept in greater detail. Thus, a remake that goes into greater ghastly detail about what a "trancer" is and its ultimate purpose would be a fun, action-filled flick.
, although this super-sized, sea-faring cephalopod appears to prefer suburbia over the San Francisco bay.
