April 4, 2005

•    Directing "Death Machines" 

  
  

  It was 1974 when I met Ron Marchini, a champion karate tournament fighter. He had starred in a movie in the Philippines  and was now looking to produce and star in one in America.  He had seen my first feature "The Tournament" and some of my short 16mm karate dramas and decided to take a chance on me to direct his movie.

  
  

   

  
  

  My first movie, about three samurai in England, had failed to get a large distributor, so I had vowed to myself if I ever got another chance I would make my next movie so commercial that a distributor would have to take it. 

  
  

   

  
  

                                   Writing the Script

  
  

   

  
  

  Ron and I came up with a story that had three hitmen, one white, one black, and one Asian,  working for a Japanese Yakuza woman.   That would take care of three markets, as the black exploitation films were all the rage then.  We also included a cop, a love, and revenge story.

  
  

   

  
  

  We then added some bizarre action scenes, such as the three killers coming into a karate dojo with samurai swords and wiping everyone out. This was inspired from Kurasawa's "Sanjuro".   Also an escape from a police department by Marchini using karate.  On his way outside he steals a police car and crashes it into another car. I was driving the other car, as I didn't want to risk someone else. What the hell, I was only the director. I could be replaced, unlike the actors. We had to do the crash twice. Stupid me, no seat belts in that car, so I was tied down with a rope. What if the gas tank exploded and I'm tied down? Well, shows you how dedicated I was to making the best movie I could. I remember it was mothers day, and hoped that no one would be calling my mother with bad news.

  
  

   

  
  

  Another scene had a banker handcuffed to a  cabinet as a time bomb ticks off in front of him.  He struggles for 2 minutes to try to get to it to turn it off, but it explodes.  We also had a  small bar room brawl, a the three killers fighting bikers in a cafe, and finally, using a bazooka, the killers blow up a real piper cub airplane.

  
  

   

  
  

  Mixed in with all those big scenes  were minor action scenes of Mafia hitman being kill by the three killers who were about to shoot someone, such as throwing one off a tall building and landing on his own car that is being ticketed by a meter maid.  Another one is blown over his car by a bazooka. And still another has his phone booth crushed with him in it by a tractor.  I figured that with all these different types of action scenes and people, their would be lots of exploitable things for a distributor to put on the poster.  Little did I know that none of these things would appear on the poster.

  
  

    

  
  

  Ron could only come up with $70,000 to make the movie. But it seemed enough to get us through production. We shot in 35mm Techniscope that shot half frame, saving film, and developed at technicolor, giving us a wide scope screen. This would help "fool" audiences and distributors that the budget was bigger than we had.

  
  

   

  
  

  We had a six week schedule and decided to use Ron's home town of Stockton, California to shoot in, as he was a businessman there and the city fathers were trying to attract movie makers. So the town was wide open to us with full police co-operation.

  
  

   

  
  

  Casting was done all in the town using a local casting agent that had a list of  actors and extras from other movies that had shot in town.  The exception was for the Asian killer and black killer, Mike Chong and Joshua Johnson. The original Asian killer was to be Kung Fu kata champion Eric Lee.  He had been on many covers of "Inside Kung Fu" magazine and that would have helped our selling cause. But wouldn't you know it, Sam Peckinpah invited him to work on "Killer Elite"  shooting at the exact same time.  So Eric took the smaller part of the karate instructor who's dojo is raided by the killers.  Later Eric starred for me in my movies "Weapons of Death" (1980) and "NinjaBusters" (1984).

  
  

   

  
  

  My first concern was that in his fist movie "Murder in the Orient" Ron Marchini, though natural in his action scenes, had a wooden delivery of his lines.  At the time I didn't realize that it was mostly bad staging, dialogue, and directions that kept him from being natural. And me, not having the skill or confidence to fix this, we both decided that he and the two other killers wouldn't speak.

  
  

   

  
  

  Later on in "Omega Cop" (1985) both Ron and I had more experience in acting, directing, and dialogue writing so that his speaking scenes came off well.

  
  

   

  
  

  It was lucky that we found people that really looked the part of cops and gangsters. The gangster who is thrown off the building was actually a 3rd grade teacher. But he really looked like a gangster.  The part of the lead cop looked like "Barney Miller" a top TV show at the time, giving the audience someone to relate to.

  
  

   

  
  

  Finding the hero, who has his hand cut off by the killers and then pursues them was difficult. We needed a handsome leading man type in his early 20's who was good at action.  But could only find one that had was not an athlete, though he tried his best.   So I had to stage the bar fight that he gets into with him getting beat up and losing. But he gets the sympathy of the girl that way.  And instead of fighting the samurai sword swinging dragon lady, I had him falling down stairs away from her and the cop shooting her.  So basically the hero survives by his luck rather than by his action.

  
  

   

  
  

                                       Production 

  
  

                                            

  
  

  My crew were all 25 year old ex-Air Force buddies who were in the movie department with me for four years. I just about had a heart attack when two arrived with the giant grip truck pulling a generator.   It was a visual example of what a large operation this would be compared to my first smaller scale movie.  It was then that I learned that a movie company is really a moving company. Moving actors and equipment to the right place and at the right time to get the scene shot.

  
  

   

  
  

  The big choice for us was what to do about the many bullet hits and explosions in the movie.  To do squib effects you must hire a licensed "powder man", as they are called in Hollywood. He would be $250 a day, plus the explosive materials. We called a few effects men, but they gave us little time on the phone.  Then we called one named Dick Albains.  He was in his fifties and had his own effects shop. He spent a lot of time on the phone with me explaining how to fake bullet hits.  "What about using firecrackers", I asked him. "Oh, that would look so bad." he said.

  
  

   

  
  

  Finally Ron, and I figured out a schedule with the effects scenes all together, to save money, and hired him.  I told him later, "We hired you because you spent so much time on the phone with us."  Dick replied, "I try to help all producers out because maybe one day they will use me."

  
  

   

  
  

  So now we had realistic bullet hits and could actually blow up a Piper Cub airplane, that we bought minus the engine.  A duplicate was flown and then we pulled the other one by car and just before it lifted off, it was blown up. 

  
  

   

  
  

  Even though it was an ambitious project, thanks to the actors being local and showing up on time, good weather, and no accidents, we finished on schedule. 

  
  

   

  
  

  
  

  When I viewed the dailies of the bar room brawl scene I was shocked to see that when the  hero is knocked out and lying on top of the bar, from the camera's viewpoint, the beer spray coming from a broken beer tap, looked like it was coming right out of the tip of the hero's nose.  Why hadn't my camera man told me?  However, it looked so perfectly lined up that the audience thought that it was on purpose as a comic touch.  So I kind of got away with that. 

  
  

   

  
  

                                  Post Production

  
  

   

  
  

  We started the editing on our own, but Ron got anxious about being able to sell the movie, so we took it to Crown International Pictures  and showed them about 70% of the movie, including the airplane being bazooka and blowing up.  The president of Crown wanted the film immediately.  But this meant turning it over to him at once for their editors to finish.

  
  

   

  
  

  On one hand I wished I could have finished with all the editing. But on the other hand, I was relieved and excited that a mini-major distributor was taking the movie. I had told Ron  that we could sell the movie, if it had all those marketable things in the story, so he invested all the money he had available, plus took out a loan.  So I was off the hook, once Crown took it.  Looking back now, I realize what a risk taker Ron was and how he had faith in me to pull off that kind of movie, with that small budget.  Also Ron was a true movie fan. We watched many movies together at that time, to learn and to encourage ourselves for the task at hand.

  
  

   

  
  

                                     Marketing

  
  

   

  
  

  At that particular time, the Sci-Fi movies "Rollerball"  and "Death Race 2000"   were big hits, so Crown decided they wanted to present "Death Machines" as a Sci-Fi movie.  They asked us to shoot a new scene to tack onto the beginning.  Well, Ron and I were game to do it. Anything to get our picture in to the theaters.  So they gave us this scene where this mastermind man told the dragon lady that a special hypnotic drug would make her men killers on demand, "Death Machines", as it were.

  
  

   

  
  

  Crown gave us the modest budget to film in Stockton one day. I staged the scene like when the henchman goes to visit "Dr. No" and gets the spider.  So I had a single chair in the middle of a large event room in the dark. A light goes on over the chair and the Yakuza woman is told to sit down and then listens to the mastermind criminal talk. We were told to keep the mastermind in shadows in case there was a sequel and could use another actor.

  
  

   

  
  

  Once that was added to the movie, Crown made posters of a tower building with teeth, with people falling off of it giving it a sci-fi look.  On the tower were the words, "The Killers Of The Future Are Ready Now."  Similar ads were made for the newspapers.

  
  

   

  
  

  Six months later it was released in 50 theaters in the LA area. It ranked #14 in Variety's weekly top grossing chart.  Still the movie didn't do as well as expected because the sci-fi fans felt gypped that it wasn't science fiction and lots of the action fans didn't go because they thought it was sci-fi.  The theater owners complained.  So Crown had to make a new ad for the newspapers showing the karate killers faces, saying 'White Killer', 'Black Killer', 'Chinese Killer'.

  
  

   

  
  

                                  It Arrives in the Theaters

  
  

   

  
  

  When I saw the film in the theaters, I was excited and proud of it. But even with the extensive bizarre action scenes, it did drag a little at the fifty minute mark, when it got into the love story.  Also I had too many shots of the killers getting in and out of their car and walking into the house.  I guess this was because I had the use of Ron's Jaguar and the house looked cool, and the killers were the best part of the story, so I showed them even doing boring things.

  
  

   

  
  

  Ten years later, on the first day of shooting "Omega Cop" the same producer/actor Ron Marchini asked me how I wanted him to drive his jeep into the scene. He yelled across the way, "Do you want me to come in fast or slow."  I answered back on my bull horn, "Fast! We did it slow in 'Death Machines'."  He gave a laugh on that one.

  
  

   

  
  

  I also got some disappointing surprises when first seeing the movie in the theater complete with music and sound. Crown hired a low budget effects company. They put in the sword swishes for the big dojo fight scene (the 3 killers used samurai swords), but they didn't put in body sword hits, so to me, it sounded like they were missing with their swords. This movie was made before samurai movies became main stream, so the effects men didn't know about this. Also the body falls were not loud enough. Still people have told me what a strong scene that dojo raid is.

  
  

   

  
  

  Worse was the black police captain who has a sign on his door reading "Captain Green". Well, his makeup under the fluorescent lights turned him green on film, and he gives a long speech with his name sign in full view. I figured they would correct his face color in the timing of the final print using the right filter.  But they didn't and audiences would yell out "Look! Captain Green IS green." 

  
  

   

  
  

  The real disappointing part of the movie was the music.  Crown used the same low budget company to do the music. It ended up being an irritating, repetitive, electronic score.  Many people have mention how much the music hurt the movie.  On my next movie, I made sure to take it all the way to the end using full sound effects and closely edited music from a good library. 

  
  

   

  
  

  I was happy to get a fairly good review in the LA Times on "Death Machines", saying "Director Paul Kyriazi captures a dusty petty ambience."  I'm still not so sure how good that is, but they spelled my name right and used the word "captures"  and "ambience", so I was happy with it.  Another fun review.

  
  

   

  
  

  Seeing the movie recently, I think that is was great for the budget, and some audience members loved it for what it was.  Somehow they really got into the movie and took it seriously.  I think if I could cut the "Death Machines" down to 70 minutes, it would really be a wild ride, just by shortening all the scenes thusly putting all the action scenes closer together.  But of course, 70 minutes does not make a feature film. It had to be 93 minutes, so that other counties could cut out what they wanted for censorship problems and still have 90 minutes.

  
  

   

  
  

  Because "Death Machines" played everywhere in many theaters in the big cities, I used that as a springboard to my next feature and others.  I guess the best part was being able to 'do it right' on the next picture with Ron Marchini, "Omega Cop".  Still on a low budget, but able to make better use of the money through better scripting and scheduling. 

  
  

   

  
  

  It is disappointing that the current DVD release is not in wide screen and made from the 16mm print.  I don't know why they did that.  But still Ron and I were lucky that Crown picked up the movie and released it so fast.  Still, I cringe at the thought that no matter how the movie is formatted in the future, Captain Green's face will always be green.

  
  

   

  • 5:46 am
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