In the late 1950s and early 1960s, fans of old science fiction and monster movies were a fringe group. Today, the latest news from "fandom" circles such as the San Diego Comic Con are flashed across mainstream media and the internet; earlier generations of fans - made up of the type of kids who would rather stay home on Friday and watch a rare Universal horror movie from the 1930s than go to the local football game - had a more difficult time finding each other. When like-minded monster fans got together, they often compared notes, traded issues of monster magazines, comics, and trading cards, and the more ambitious among them might screen movies in 8mm or 16mm formats. This early fandom was also an artistic bunch - they were encouraged at the very least to build and paint Aurora models of their favorite monsters, including Frankenstein's monster, Dracula, and Creature from the Black Lagoon. Other "Monster Kids" (as this generation dubbed themselves in retrospect) were interested in makeup, and might have attempted to recreate the Hollywood makeups of their favorite monsters, or come up with their own designs. Monster Kids lucky enough to have a movie camera in the house might spend weekends making their own monster home movies; those with a penchant for makeup would cast friends as monsters, while those interested in models and the films of stop-motion master Ray Harryhausen might stay indoors and create tabletop miniature scenes to film.
One meeting place for these kids was within the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, edited by the legendary Forest J. Ackerman. The magazine began in 1958, shortly after the classic Universal horror pictures were first syndicated to television. Heavy on photos, including behind-the-scenes pictures of makeup artists like Jack Pierce, effects artists like Harryhausen, and directors like James Whale, Famous Monsters was a friendly focal point for the kids that were absorbing the classic movies on TV. Dennis Muren and his friend Mark Thomas McGee were both featured in stories in the magazine (McGee as a writer and Muren in a feature focusing on his collection of memorabilia), and through an ad proclaiming "Kalling all you King Kong lovers!" they met David Allen, a young stop-motion animator. In 1965 the three Los Angeles-area friends began work on an ambitious project for a group of students: a feature-length special effects film shot in 16mm.
McGee built his script around a couple of the animation models that Allen already had created, including an alien-looking simian called Taurus. (Models for stop-motion animation are very intricate and consist of a ball-and-socket metal armature covered with foam latex skin). Using the British classic Night of the Demon (1957 aka Curse of the Demon) as inspiration, McGee's script concerned a group of teenagers who must do battle with monsters and demons from another dimension for possession of a mystical book.
The actors were gathered from a variety of sources. The male leads, Edward Connell and Frank Bonner (aka Frank Boers, Jr.) responded to an ad. Female lead Barbara Hewitt was a classmate of Muren's and, as he later admitted, "the prettiest girl in school." For the key role of Dr. Waterman, Forry Ackerman suggested the writer Fritz Leiber. (In addition to his editing duties for Famous Monsters and other magazines, Ackerman was a longtime agent for Leiber and other authors of horror and science fiction). Ackerman himself provided the voice for a scientist heard on a tape recorder. In the most touching bit of casting, Muren cast his grandfather (whose money made the film possible) as a crazed hermit in a cave who hands the book over to the teenagers. Muren later said that his grandfather could not remember the dialogue, so he just recited "Mary had a little lamb" instead, knowing that dialogue would be looped in after.
The filmmakers used a 16mm silent Bolex camera and Ektachrome film. The wind-up camera limited shots to only 30 seconds for each take. According to Muren, the footage was shot cut-for-cut, meaning that scenes had no real "coverage," or shots of the same scenes taken from different angles to provide a variety of footage available for editing. The special effects were cleverly done, and Muren and animator Allen took pains to avoid image degradation during effects shots. For a sequence in which a blue-tinged giant enters from an inter-dimensional portal, the effects were done in-camera using forced perspective; the actor playing the giant stood on a picnic table placed several feet closer to the camera than the other actors - the tabletop was disguised to match the background. Muren also called on Jim Danforth, a professional who had worked on such films as Jack the Giant Killer (1962) and 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964), to execute some matte paintings for Equinox. These were also shot in-camera, by painting on glass situated between the camera and the real background - a technique that dated to the earliest days of filmmaking.
Through perseverance and hard weekend work, the 16mm film The Equinox... A Journey into the Supernatural was completed, including all post-production dubbing, foley sound effects, titles, and an original music score. The two-and-a-half year project was screened for family and friends, following which Muren and Allen brought it around town to show to studios and independent producers. Muren walked into the door of low-budget producer Jack H. Harris, famous for his independent horror and science fiction films The Blob (1958), 4D Man (1959), and Dinosaurus! (1960), to tout his skills in special effects. Harris asked Muren if he had a sample reel, and was astounded when Muren handed him a feature film as his "sample." Harris immediately saw release potential; he admired the effects work and he felt the simple teenagers-duel-the-devil story was marketable.
Harris set about reshaping the film for theatrical distribution. He reassembled the main cast of four teenagers and brought in Jack Woods to discuss how to flesh out the film. Woods' experience was primarily in editing, on films ranging from the exploitation of Beach Ball (1965) and Out of Sight (1966) to such highly-regarded independent productions as John Cassavetes' Faces (1968) and Husbands (1970). For the Equinox film Woods took on scriptwriting, directing, and even acting duties. He also shot in 16mm to match the previous footage, and added a major character - a more human representation of evil that arrives in the guise of a park ranger named Asmodeus who encounters the kids. Perhaps in a bid to match the non-actors already on view, Woods cast himself in the role despite Harris' initial desire to hire Robert Lansing for the part. (As it turned out, Woods is easily the worst actor in the film).
The resulting reconfigured project was blown up to 35mm, given a new music score, a title shortened to just Equinox, and clocked in at 80 minutes long. Jack Woods is given sole credit as writer and director. Harris' version of the film was released in October 1970, fully five years after Muren and his friends had begun to shoot the original project. Not long after, ads appeared in Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine offering 8mm condensations of the film for home viewing, alongside ads for 8mm versions of the classic Universal horror films and 1950s science fiction and fantasy epics that inspired Muren, McGee and Allen in the first place.
Muren would later say, "In the 1960s and 70s, a number of us, with the advent of 16mm film equipment... made these little films that represented what we grew up watching on TV, and that's certainly where Equinox came from, and John Carpenter's Dark Star (1974), John Landis' Schlock (1973), and George [Lucas]... on THX-1138 (1971), and it's all kind of the same sort of thing... It wouldn't have happened if the gear hadn't gotten cheap enough that we could do it, and if we hadn't grown up and been able to watch TV and see movies over and over again and figure out how they were made - we wouldn't have known how to do it. Some of us were pretty impatient and impulsive or whatever and actually took our dreams and did it."
Muren went on to work on effects for Lucas' Star Wars (1977) and its sequels while becoming a mainstay at Industrial Light and Magic, earning Oscars® for E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), The Abyss (1989), and Jurassic Park (1993), among others. David Allen (1944-1999) provided stop-motion animation to many projects, including When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970), Laserblast (1978), Caveman (1981), Q (1982), and Young Sherlock Holmes (1985). Of the actors, Frank Boers, Jr. changed his name to Frank Bonner and went on to fame costarring in WRKP in Cincinnati (1978-1982) and other series, and the assistant camera operator on the added footage was the son of Hollywood character actor Ed Begley, who was concurrently starting his long acting career under the name Ed Begley, Jr.
Producer: Jack H. Harris
Director: Jack Woods; Mark Thomas McGee (co-director, uncredited); Dennis Muren (uncredited)
Screenplay: Jack Woods; Mark Thomas McGee (story)
Cinematography: Mike Hoover
Music: Jaime Mendoza-Nava (uncredited)
Film Editing: John Joyce
Cast: Edward Connell (David Fielding), Barbara Hewitt (Susan Turner), Frank Boers, Jr. (Jim Hudson), Robin Christopher (Vicki), Jack Woods (Asmodeus), James Phillips (Reporter Sloan), Fritz Leiber (Dr. Arthur Waterman), Patrick Burke (Branson), Jim Duron (Orderly), Sharon Gray.
C-80m.
by John M. Miller
SOURCES:
Backyard Monsters: Equinox and the Triumph of Love, by Brock Deshane, Booklet essay from The Criterion Collection DVD release of Equinox, 2006.
Commentary track with Dennis Muren, Mark McGee, and Jim Danforth from The Criterion Collection DVD release of Equinox, 2006.
Commentary track with Jack Woods and Jack H. Harris The Criterion Collection DVD release of Equinox, 2006.
