Filmmaker and horror stalwart Larry Fessenden has dedicated an extensive career to independent horror. Fessenden continues to deliver unique interpretations of familiar movie monsters, from the vampiric Habit to a modern Frankenstein retelling with 2019’s Depraved. His latest, Blackout, brings a contemporary horror drama centered around a Wolfman.
Blackout, which just debuted at Fantasia International Film Festival (our review), follows small town artist Charley (Alex Hurt), a tortured man whose drinking binges blur with his sneaking suspicion that he might likely be a werewolf.
After the film’s premiere, Bloody Disgusting spoke with the multi-hyphenate writer/director/editor/producer about his love of monsters, his old-fashioned werewolf, and what he’d love to tackle next.
Blackout may be modern in storytelling, but its werewolf harkens back to the bipedal Wolfmen of the ’30s and ’40s. That was always Fessenden’s vision.
He explains his werewolf design, “Ever since I was little, that’s how I would draw a werewolf. That’s how I think of it. I mean, the truth is, I would defend myself by saying it’s a wolfman. That’s what I’m really doing. In fact, in the movie, they keep saying Hombre Lobo. That means wolfman. It doesn’t really, I don’t know what the word for werewolf is, but it’s a specific thing, and that’s my new way of talking about it. But the fact is that that’s just the aesthetic I always liked.”
Fessenden continues, “Of course, it was thrilling in the ’80s to see An American Werewolf in London and The Howling, and everything since. But I was a little old-fashioned about it. It was like, ‘Well, okay, guys, I know you can do that with the makeup, and you’re making special effects advances. But I actually liked the other werewolf better.’ So, that was always in the cards. I’ve often referenced in these talks that Werewolf By Night is a comic book that was very influential to me. That’s from the ’70s and, ironically, from Marvel, which has ruined cinema. But they did have a really cool sideline of monster comics, which I loved, and many of them were drawn by Mike Ploog, who I just responded to his way of doing the physicality. And it’s so beautiful what Alex Hurt brought to that because I almost have a Mike Ploog werewolf in a couple of frames, and it makes me happy.”
Charley may struggle with his animalistic impulses, but Blackout is frequently more interested in how his rampaging inner wolf affects his small town.
“When you’re thinking about a werewolf, part of the question is how would it affect a community?” Fessenden explains. “Because it’s not just their drama. I wanted it to be a portrait of a community that, unfortunately, is very vulnerable to division. I feel like this is the story in America right now. We’re literally ripe to turn on each other, and any number of bad actors can affect the conversation and seize on something that’s happening and use it for their own good. So, there’s this element of propaganda and misinformation that we’re all suffering from in the current environment. It’s not that I’m trying to make propaganda films, but I want to explore where we are in society as I enjoy these older, deeper myths about duality, our relationship to nature, and guilt and every other thing hopefully that is implied by these stories, which I didn’t invent. I’m just hopping on board, giving my two cents, and trying to find truth in these old tales. It’s an odd activity because I’m working with certain modern mythologies.”
From this journeyman film that drifts in and out of these characters’ lives comes an unexpected but welcome sense of absurd humor. How much of that humor comes from Fessenden as a person versus tenured experience, instinctually knowing where to add levity to a dramatic horror film?
Fessenden answers, “I really appreciate the question because most people who know me, I’m such a silly person, they say, ‘Why aren’t you making comedies?’ And it’s because I feel so sad and hurt by the way the world is. But ultimately, I see life as absurd, and people are funny, and they say contradictory things. Human relations have all these microaggressions that hopefully are funny for an audience because they can recognize them. When you’re in it, it’s not as fun. You’re like, ‘Oh, they hurt my feelings.’ But when you see two people talking, my favorite is seeing the cops, and the guy just always has to put the woman down. She says, ‘I had this idea.’ He’s immediately, ‘Oh boy, what’s it going to be?’ And you’re yelling, ‘Oh my God, dude.’ But these things are in life, and you know, you could get outraged by them. But as an observer, you can be amused by them and say, ‘God, isn’t that just the way people interact?’
“I think of life as just endless power struggles and like endless little, tiny people envying other people, and the way they comment and interact is actually what interests me as much as telling stories of werewolves. Hopefully, I mean, I don’t know, I have my place in the genre. I would like to think that that’s refreshing to see that. I don’t think that’s what every horror viewer is looking for, but that’s what I have to offer. And I’m so appreciative that you noticed it because I think the movie’s funny.”
With Fessenden having tackled vampires, Frankenstein’s monster, and now the werewolf, could we see a potential creature from a certain lagoon in his future?
“First of all, I’m going to get sued by Universal eventually,” the filmmaker cracks. “No, and thank God you said the Creature, at least you said the Creature. Everybody asks if I’m going to make a mummy movie. And I’m like, ‘What are you talking about? Why would you ever make a mummy movie?’ Even though apparently George Romero wanted to make a mummy movie, which bless his soul. Okay, George. And if you ever see a movie called Diary of the Dead, it’s found footage in the beginning. I am actually very fond of that. It’s a late zombie movie, but the beginning is an independent crew making a fucking mummy movie. So, whatever about that.
“No, what I’m more interested in, I could just say this, is doing a mashup, and that would probably end my business of recreating the Universal Monsters. I want to see them all together, and what would that look like? So, that’s actually what I’m thinking about, and I don’t know who would finance that.
“I got to get on with it because everybody’s getting older. We’ll see what happens.”
