Welcome to the Vault!

Cory is a newcomer to film making,  but has started his career of strong by Directing and writing Insect Death Squad and Incest Death Squad 2.

I'm Cory J Udler, a writer and filmmaker, a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king.

I don't really know if I'm yet even IN the business.  I went to school for multimedia arts and video production and got out and wrote a screenplay for a production company in California, and from there just kept writing my own stuff, doing some shorts (which will never see the light of day because they're terrible) and then starting writing for Ted V Mikels, his last 2 films, and through an interaction with Lloyd Kaufman I decided to make my first feature Incest Death Squad.  Why I got in, basically I just love to create things.  I spent 12 years in radio-theatre of the mind, I've played music and in bands since I was 12, did a 5 year stint in pro wrestling, so yeah, I just like being creative, and I've always loved weird fringe-y film, so with the schooling and the writing background I finally, at the ripe old age of 32, found my way into making my own features.

To not fail miserably.  I'd like to someday be able to just sustain my meager lifestyle through making films or writing films or being involved in the horror film realm.  I've never had delusions of grandeur when it came to money or fame, I just want to not have to shlep into a job I don't like-I'd like to just be able to make a few bucks doing what I love.

My wife is my main influence in life.  As far as film goes, it'd be Ted V Mikels, and John Waters, HG Lewis, Lloyd (Kaufman), Charles Band, Frank Henenlotter, Ed Wood, Al Adamson, Andy Milligan, Bill Rebane, who I have learned so much from about the business end of the film world.  I discovered a tv show called "The Incredibly Strange Film Show" when I was around 12, and saw profiles on Ted and John and HG, and up to that point I loved the usual stuff, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, but that show changed my life forever.  From that point forward, the weirder the movie, the more I enjoy it.  And not that I do it to be different, I just always found that the fringe filmmakers and films spoke to me more.  They all just seem more real and honest-which you just don't get from major budget movies.  Otherwise, my other idols and heroes are Howard Stern and Batman.  I'm 34 but obviously have the brain of an 11 year old..like a man child.

The only thing I set out to do with Incest Death Squad 1 and 2 was to just make, what I called, "a weird movie".  I'm not a huge fan of what horror has become-not that I think the people making them aren't talented, I just think they're boring, that's just personal opinion.  So I wanted to go back to movies that you couldn't categorize.  I don't consider the 2 Incest movies horror.  They're exploitation.  They're drive-in, grindhouse.  The best way to watch those movies is in a delapitated old theatre with drunk people.  Maximum viewing pleasure.  I wasn't influenced by one filmmaker or one film in particular, it was 20 years of watching shit like "Deranged".  With my movies you can expect low budgets, great acting, a damn fine script and honesty.  I don't have any money to make these movies.  Believe me, I've tried to get financing.  I can't.  Nobody gives you money to make movies called "Incest Death Squad".  So I focused on what I did have-a good script, a passion for the story and a love of the genre, and amazing actors.  The IDS movies aren't gorefests, that costs too much money to do right.  I don't have Transformers transforming or any CGI.  What you see is what you get.  They're down and dirty-they're weird-and I think if people actually watch the movies and listen to the words and just don't come in with expectations that these are your typical "horror" movies, I think you can find something in them to enjoy.  On the other side of the coin, I knew making them that it was either going to be a love or hate thing-and that's ok.  They're not for everyone.  But the people they are for seem to love them, and I have some great supporters and I'm very grateful for all of them, around the world.

On the first Incest movie, the first scene we shot was the boardroom scene with Lloyd and Scarlet Salem and Elske McCain and George Kosana.  That set the tone.  The script, intitially, had comedic moments, not comedic but campy.  Camp is super important in these movies, in my opinion.  Not slapstick, just camp.  I mean, with the first one when you have Lloyd Kaufman screaming about "butchered hookers" and "grandma blowjob", I can't go from that scene to a super dark, David Fincher movie.  It had to stay in that realm.  And, it was my first feature, so I was learning on the move.  I still am.  And that's good.  But, the script to begin with was a bit darker than what came out on screen.  But like I said before, I like those movies.  Is it funny, is it disturbing, is it sexy, should I feel bad for taking any pleasure in enjoying this?  I like that.  I loved the fact that we had the super over the top stuff with Lloyd, the love story with Aaron and Andrea's characters, and then the really freaky shit with the "blood sex orgy" scene, and Amber raping Aaron at one point.  It was all over the place.  Now, for the second one, I knew right away when I sat down, even before I sat down to write it, that it had to be darker.  Super jet black.  Tone down the camp and up the creep, up the violence.  I was more comfortable with refusing to be influenced by anyone or anything on the second one.  On part 1, having Lloyd in the movie was my hook in.  When we shot with him, it was before he was in every single low budget sleaze pic ever made, so I knew that having that stamp, having him in the movie did lend a dose of, I guess, legitimacy to the movie and what I was doing.  I didn't feel I needed that on  part 2, and I'd already made part 1, no sense in making it again.  I also think it's super important when you make a movie like this that you can't sit and "wink" at the audience.  These characters have to fully believe in what they're saying, who they are and the situations they're in.  It's a fine line to walk and I see so many indie horror films that are "in on it" with the audience.  I don't like that at all.  I like to have characters and actors who fully believe in this f*cking strange world, and believe that what they're saying and doing is right.  When you start being in on it with the audience, you remove that vibe of creating a world that these characters live in.  I think you create the world and make everyone exist in that world, not in the real world.  As ridiculous as these stories are, I think they work because I'm not winking at the audience.

Well, like I said before, it's much darker, it's more streamlined, it never stops, it's moving the entire time.  When we were shooting part 1, the cast were always asking when are we doing part 2?  I had zero interest at that point.  But once it was done and in the can, ready to roll, I knew that it lent itself to a sequel.  It was custom made to be 2 movies.  And nobody gave me money to make it, so it wasn't like I had a distributor or an investor saying, "hey, I gave you the money, make the same movie again".  So I had total freedom to do whatever I wanted.  And I did.  Every character is completely fucked up, totally warped from what happened in part 1, you see completely different sides to everyone.  The movie, part 2, the way it starts I think shocks people who saw part 1, because it starts with Aaron Burg (Tom Lodewyck) picking up a hitchhiker, and you can tell he's damaged goods from what he went through in the first one.  And Tom is such an incredible actor and friend that he went all out for me on it.  I think he read the script initially and thought I'd lost my mind, but once he got into it, I know he had a great time and totally blew everyone away with his performance.  I really feel like I found my "voice", to be cheesy, on part 2.  It was a very hard shoot to do.  A week before we started shooting I got stuck back in a job that I wasn't super stoked about and I lost one of my favorite people in the world to cancer.  Not to mention I had a scathing review of Incest 1 hit Fangoria.  All this around my birthday, and then I had to shoot the movie starting the following week, which I had put a ton of expectations on myself to top the first one.  It was hard on everyone and really almost killed me, I still feel like I'm recovering from it.  But I think that lent itself to what hit the screen.  It's much harder, angrier, and even a bit sadder than 1, and I think with everything I was going through, and everything the cast was going through, it showed and probably made it a better movie. 

No.  I've had people ask me that recently at screenings and I say flat out no.  It's not that I don't love those characters and love the cast and crew, I do.  They're my family now with all we've done.  I did tell Greg Johnson (Jeb Wayne) that Incest 3 would be the easiest movie to do next, I could bang out a script in no time and everyone's still here and still alive and still on board, but I'm ready to move on.  There's more story to tell, but I just don't know that I want to tell it, not because it wouldn't be a good story for the fans, but just because I'm completely over the whole thing.  I want to make something else, expand, grow.  If someone comes forward with some decent money to invest, I'll do it, but that's the only way I'd do it right now, because I feel like I've totally exhausted the artistic end of it.  If I could reap some money for me and the cast and crew and the budget for the movie-then that would be the only reason I'd do it, and I just don't see that happening.

Very unconventionally, actually.  I said with part 1 that I was catching "lightning in a bottle" with it and that's exactly what happened.  Carmela came to me via a local horror host who was having tryouts and auditions for his co-hosts of his show, and when he didn't use her he put her in touch with me, and just from talking to her on the phone I knew she was in.  She auditioned, and it was her first audition, and she wasn't used to that forum, so I don't think she had an amazing audition, and I think she'd tell you the same thing.  But I just knew, she just had "it".  And this was the first thing she had EVER done, and she completely and totally killed it, she IS Amber in those movies, and I love her for everything she gave to the movies.  She was incredible.  She brought Amber to life for me.  Greg is a veteran theatre actor, the man has done it all in theatre around the world, and he's done some very edgy stuff, he's a true artist in the purest sense of the word.  So he had a starting point, he was an actor.  But, with theatre actors mingling in the world of film actors and people who have never acted, they tend to really stick out and be quite stagy, but Greg was not.  Greg should be in every movie that gets made, because he's that amazing to look at and to listen to.  With Greg, we had already started shooting IDS1 and I had not yet found my "Jeb Wayne", I had a few ideas, and some people who were willing to try it, but I didn't like any of them.  So I asked Tom Lodewyck if he had anyone in mind.  He sent me Greg's picture and all I said was "if he can speak English, he's in".  And Greg blessed me with his talents and the rest is sleaze movie history I guess.

The best is the creation.  From the words on the page to the movie on the screen, just the entire process is the best.  It's hard, and it sucks most of the time, but I wouldn't change it because creating these films is what I love to do.  Going to screenings and conventions I love so much, meeting fans, talking to people, man, that's the thrust, that's so awesome to do.  The worst part is working with no money.  That is hands down the worst part.  I hate doing it. Ebay has become my close and personal friend over the last few years because I've basically sold everything I've collected and loved to make these movies.  No investors on either of them.  The hardest is working with no money, struggling with people who can't commit.  You get so many people "hey, I'd love to help", then you ask them for help and it's not "sexy" enough for them and they're gone.  I had a guy with a dolly track and a 12 foot crane who said he'd be at any shoot I needed.  I got the dolly track for the first shoot, and then the guy just ignored me the rest of the shoot.  Never came back.  Not even the courtesy to say "hey, this ain't my bag", he just ignored me.  I even gave him money to go eat at the end of the shoot.  I didn't have money to eat at the end of it, but I made sure he did.  So that's the hardest part, trying to find people who share the same passion for what you're doing.  And so many people get into making indie films who think they're going to revolutionize the way films are made. Making $3,000 grindhouse movies is not what they want to do. 

Oh man, the entire process of these two movies was unique and interesting.  Shooting them the way I did was so quick and so down and dirty that I didn't have a ton of time to really sit back and enjoy the nuances of what was happening.  I think shooting with Lloyd was the most interesting, but the most unique was shooting the bar scenes for Incest 1 at a small place in the middle of nowhere.  I don't think they were prepared for what we were shooting and they were not happy. Neither was I because I had entrusted a guy to basically be my assistant director who had worked on major budget stuff with permits and, you know, like REAL film sets, not down and dirty sleaze movies, and he took for-f*cking-ever to get a few like, nothing insert shots, and the entire time the owners of the bar are getting drunker and drunker and angrier, and my cast is sitting around with nothing to do, and it's midnight and I have 20 pages left to shoot because I'm not coming back here and asking them if I can shoot there again, they were already pissed off.  So yeah, that shoot was interesting, and it was at that shoot that I decided it was time for me to start being the Goddamn director, and the general, and from that point forward our shoots went smoothly, never did more than a 6 or 7 hour shoot, and it was fun after that one shoot.  I've never even said publicly where that bar was because they scolded me and said that I better not use the name of the place anywhere in the movie or the promotion.  I was ok with that.  Luckily I got what I needed and got the hell out of Dodge before they kicked us out.

Well, next up is a film titled "Mediatrix" which I have Debbie Rochon verbally attached to, she will be playing The Virgin Mary in it.  It's loosely based on a true story, and it's not a horror film in any way, but it's just pure exploitation.  I have so many people attached to it who want to work with me on it, but funding fell apart on it, I was going to shoot it this month, but now with Wisconsin's brutal winter on the way, it's on the shelf until April.  That is if I can get the meager funding I need for it.  I would have funded it myself but I had to get a new roof on my house, and needless to say, that's more important than making an exploitation movie.  I'm out of shit to sell on Ebay-and donation sites suck and I hate begging for 10 bucks.  So, hopefully I can come up with $5,000 to shoot "Mediatrix" in April, and if I can, that's next.  If I can't, I have no other film projects in the hopper.  I don't like the idea of doing the movie you CAN instead of the one you WANT to do.  Mediatrix is next for me, and that's it.  I'm a stubborn Irish bastard. Otherwise, I'm writing a script for Ted V Mikels, the 4th Astro Zombies movie, and I have a really personal script that I'll be writing-a period piece with an old west plot, another one that's actually a 100% true story.  Kinda like Ed Wood meets Little Big Man.  Maybe once that's done I can sell it off, I don't ever see me getting the money to make a period piece, but maybe one of my movie making friends can get it to someone.  It's going to be a tremendous story and one that I think people will really enjoy.  I'm really looking forward to having that written so people can see it.And I write a weekly column for BrutalAsHell.com.  It's just super honest and almost like my diary tossed up online each week.  It's all about indie filmmaking, in the horror genre, the pitfalls, the disappointments, the struggles.  It's super honest and I really enjoy writing it.

Tim, thank you, and I really love Vaultofobscurity.com and I think I speak for the other filmmakers when I say we really appreciate you covering our films and being a champion for the indie guys.  And I thank you for the interview, I'm always blown away that anyone would care what I have to say!