Sonny Boy

Sonny Boy originated in the mind of writer Graeme Whifler, a music video director residing at the time in San Francisco. He lived across the street from a biker house whose residents inspired the motley crew of criminals in the film, and they also told him a true story about a kidnapped child raised by a car thief in Indiana who tortured the youth and trained him to be a killer. Though the character of Pearl was always intended by its creator as a cross-dressing man, the script makes no mention of his gender confusion. In his original script, Whifler even had the character sporting prosthetic black mammaries, which were slightly adapted for the finished film and almost completely censored out of most prints. The screenplay of Sonny Boy was picked up by Ovidio G. Assonitis, an Italian producer and occasional director best known for his shameless cash-ins on U.S. box office hits like Beyond the Door (1974) (an Exorcist [1973] imitation), The Visitor (1979) (a delirious mish-mash of films like The Fury [1978] and Close Encounters of the Third Kind [1979]), and Tentacles (1977) (Jaws [1975] with a octopus). At the time Assonitis was busy cranking out numerous films for Trans World Entertainment, who were simultaneously mounting a sequel to his successful H.P. Lovecraft adaptation, The Curse (1987). However, when Whifler approached the producer about directing Sonny Boy himself, the producer balked. "You've got to let me direct this movie," Whifler argued. "If I don't, it's like Blake Edwards directing Blue Velvet [1986]." Assonitis responded, "If Blake Edwards had directed that, it would have made some money." Instead Assonitis decided to use a director with even less experience, Robert Martin Carroll. The director viewed the project as "a complex film with lots to explore. I knew it was troubling while I made it. I kept asking them what audience they were going for. When they told me not to worry, I didn't. I just went for it. I always like to make complex characters that keep the audience guessing as to what they will do." The script underwent some cosmetic changes including the appearance of Sonny Boy himself, who was a disfigured monster on the written page but in the film became a wide-eyed, normal-looking young man. "I felt it was more of a tragedy if he was beautiful, but being isolated," Carroll explains. "He felt he was ugly because he wanted to look like his parents and they (to us) are hideous." Sonny Boy was shot entirely in Columbus and Deming, New Mexico. For the climactic conflagration sequence which leads to Sonny's "rebirth," last-minute difficulties arose with the main house location, which was set to be demolished by fire but was saved at the last minute – with considerable ensuing script difficulties -- when the owner changed his mind. "They couldn't burn down the house," Dourif explains. "The pyramid is what they burned down and it just didn't make any sense. They needed to burn down the house, because if they burned it you could see him surviving. But no-one could see him surviving that fire. It was just absolutely ridiculous." Dourif also remembers the affable Carradine as one of the highlights of the shooting experience, terming him "hysterically funny. That was one of the funniest things I've ever seen him do. He was too much and he really did it just right. The thing was, he had false teeth and when he would take them out it was just really funny. And, you know, he's a wonderful musician and he's just fun to be around." Carradine himself referred to the film as a cross between Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Bringing Up Baby (1938) and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and used his wigs and costumes to convey the passage of time - a Joan Crawford wig for the sixties to a granny bun in the eighties. As Carradine himself notes, "I made the ugliest woman imaginable, except for the old broad, to whom I lent a certain venerable, statuesque beauty." Paul Smith chose the pivotal role of Slue after seeing the list of actors signed to the project despite having no fondness for the script, simply terming it "really weird." Smith and Carradine were offered the roles of either Slue or Pearl, with Smith obviously opting for the former. According to Dourif, Smith and Carroll did not get along, resulting in significant tension on the set. Just as Assonitis had cut off the screenwriter from the filming process, the same happened to Carroll after shooting when he was removed from the editing room and his final cut was trimmed down before its limited release. "[After] About a year and a half, I finally got into a screening," recalls Whifler. "I kept whispering 'I'm going to kill this f**king director.' But it was actually the producer's fault; about five or six years later, out of the blue, I got a letter from the director, and he basically said, 'Graeme, I'm really sorry, it wasn't my fault; they told me if I ever tried to call you, I'd be fired.'" A similar process had already occurred in 1981 when Assonitis sidelined director James Cameron on his first film, Piranha II: The Spawning, and completed the film without the director's input in the editing room. The initial critical response to Sonny Boy was extremely harsh, and audiences proved no more receptive, with theater owners pulling it off screens after only a few days. "Sonny Boy essentially stopped my career," Carroll laments. "While a few people loved it such as Dennis Dermody of Paper Magazine in NY who voted it the Best Film of the Decade in a Village Voice critics poll, many were just disgusted. My agent actually let me go because a famous producer she worked with said she hated it so much that she wouldn't work with her again if she represented me. Wow, that hurt." Home video editions of Sonny Boy have been very few and far between over the years, and even a fleeting laserdisc release failed to recapture the film's original 2.35:1 scope presentation. A slightly longer version appeared on VHS in the United Kingdom with a handful of additional and extended scenes, most notably Sonny's bloody, teeth-chomping escape from the angry townspeople. However, additional scenes shot by Carroll involving the character of Rose have yet to surface in any release prints. by Nathaniel Thompson Sources: Psychotronic Magazine, Brad Dourif Interview with Dennis Daniel The Unknown Movies (http://www.badmovieplanet.com/unknownmovies) Fangoria, "Graeme Whifler's Warped World" by Michael Gingold Endless Highway, David Carradine (Journey Editions) "Paul Smith: The Reddest Herring," video interview for Pieces (Grindhouse DVD) Internet Movie Database

David Carradine also wrote and performed the closing credits song for Sonny Boy, "Maybe It Ain't." Carradine lost his upper teeth shortly before filming Sonny Boy while shooting a Mexican film, Open Fire (1988), and had to wear false teeth. During filming he would hang out at a local motel bar with truck drivers and federal agents, often while still wearing his nail polish. According to his autobiography, he also joined the American Legion in New Mexico and helped with a charity shoe drive for the Federal Order of Police, "mostly in various stages of drag." Actors Sydney Lassick and Russian-born Savina Gersak also appeared together in Curse II: The Bite, another Ovidio G. Assonitis-produced film from the same year. That film also shares the same shooting locations and music composer. Gersak primarily worked on films with Assonitis, whom she was dating at the time, and retired from the screen in 1990. Paul L. Smith is most famous for his role as Bluto in Robert Altman's critically-slammed cult favorite Popeye (1980) and as a brutal jailer in Midnight Express (1978). He got his start as an actor at the University of Florida at the urging of Faye Dunaway and was discovered by one of Otto Preminger's talent scouts for a role in Exodus (1960). After serving in the Israeli army, he appeared in such diverse films as David Lynch's Dune (1984), the made-for-TV classic 21 Hours at Munich (1976), The Protector (1985) with Jackie Chan, Sam Raimi's Crimewave (1985), and Euro-cult favorites like Pieces (1982) and Gor (1988). Playing the role of kidnapper Weasel, actor Brad Dourif had already mastered the art of colorful supporting characters including his acclaimed breakthrough role in Milos Forman's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and an underrated but masterful turn in John Huston's Wise Blood (1979). "I thought it was the first real heavy-metal fable," recalls Dourif in a Psychotronic Magazine interview. "It was just wild... I didn't really quite understand it but I was drawn to it." Still in demand, Dourif went on to cult film immortality as the voice of killer Chucky in the popular Child's Play (1988), along with memorable supporting turns in such diverse films as Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Dario Argento's Trauma (1993), Alan Parker's Mississippi Burning (1988), and a genuinely searing turn in William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist III (1989). Michael Griffin, who plays the adult Sonny Boy, had never made a feature film before and was mainly known for appearing in commercials for Chevy and AT&T. He later changed his screen name to Michael Boston and wrote the screenplay for the 1997 film Little Boy Blue, starring Ryan Phillippe. The film's screenwriter, Graeme Whifler, directed many music videos for such bands as Oingo Boingo and The Residents. He later pursued a career as a feature director, most recently with the 2005 horror film Neighborhood Watch, which was retitled Deadly End for its DVD release. Whifler also wrote the original screenplay for the late-entry slasher film Dr. Giggles (1992), which was considerably changed by director Manny Coto and given a much higher body count. In 2000, Robert Martin Carroll released his second (and last to date) feature, Baby Luv, which was subsequently issued on DVD under the title Babies for Sale. by Nathaniel Thompson Sources: Psychotronic Magazine, Brad Dourif Interview with Dennis Daniel The Unknown Movies (http://www.badmovieplanet.com/unknownmovies) Fangoria, "Graeme Whifler's Warped World" by Michael Gingold Endless Highway, David Carradine (Journey Editions) "Paul Smith: The Reddest Herring," video interview for Pieces (Grindhouse DVD) Internet Movie Database

"Repulsive, socially unredeemable waste of celluloid... Filmed for no apparent reason except to offend and appall." – Leonard Maltin, Movie and Video Guide "An oddly compelling study of family pathology with blackly comic undertones, in the tradition of Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes [1977] and Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre [1974]...Carradine and Smith make an unexpectedly engaging couple, and the supporting work is all strong. Sonny Boy is a heady, offbeat mix of myth, social drama, and psychological thriller that is added testimony to the creative vitality to be found in the B-movie fringe." – TV Guide "Sonny Boy is one of the most demented, sick minded, and just plain bizarre movies I have ever seen. I loved every minute of it, from the warbling of David Carradine during the opening credits, to the final freeze-frame... Maybe the movie is a mess, but if it is, everything is messed up in a way so that it comes together brilliantly. At the very least, I consider the movie a flawed masterpiece." – The Unknown Movies "A completely unique art-sleaze masterpiece that should be remembered as the cult film of the decade...falls somewhere between Paris, Texas [1984] and Pink Flamingos [1972]." – The Cutting Edge "A demented lo-fi tumble into dark surrealism... Perhaps best described as a dark fairy tale, Sonny Boy's skewed approach to its frequently unpleasant subject matter keeps viewers off-balance. Filtering action through Sonny's childish, warped perspective and bits of abstract narration, the most vicious of acts are lent a dreamlike, idyllic quality very much at odds with reality... the sort of considered, artful filmmaking people should have the chance to experience without trekking to the ends of the earth, or at least the grotty corners of swap meets." – Twitch "All of the actors are excellent. Not just a sick exploitation movie, Sonny Boy has many inspired, funny, and surprising moments. Even the simple desert set is great and could have been inspired by old Krazy Kat comics." – Psychotronic Magazine

SONNY BOY: Father cut loose my tongue. A present for my birthday. The gift of silence. Pearl put my voice in the freezer for safe keeping and then ate a sweet cake. WEASEL: I'll tell you everything you wanna know about the monster. I knew him when he was a little baby, okay? I watched him grow up and become a man. SONNY BOY: These bars are stronger than bone, colder than death. Now I have tasted the blood of a man. I have pleased by father. CHARLIE P: We're simply going to borrow the creature. It wants some air, don't you? WEASEL: That boy's got some set of choppers! WEASEL: Let's just call him "it," okay? It grabbed my thumb, man, took it off clean as a goddamn whistle. DOC BENDER: You oughta let me have a look at it. WEASEL: What, and let you put a monkey's dick on it? WEASEL: Tell you one thing, he ain't no goddamn vegetarian. PEARL: Mama's gonna take care of you. I won't let them hurt you. SLUE: This f**kin' suburbia gives me the creeps. DOC BENDER: I'm still a drunk. And he's still crazy. ROSE: Everybody's crazy. His just shows more.