Ep#210 Anthony DiBlasi Part 1 of 2

Kevin Lane's Spill Your Guts

Remakes and reimagining’s get a bad rap. Though there have been many lousy ones (people still puzzle over Gus Van Sant’s shot-for-shot “Psycho” remake) there’s also many that are now classics.

John Carpenter’s "The Thing", David Cronenberg’s "The Fly", Philip Kaufman’s "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", Gore Verbinski’s "The Ring, William Malone’s "House on Haunted Hill" and Zack Snyder’s "Dawn of the Dead". All inspired takes on classic films.

What makes these examples work whereas others (here’s looking at you Elm street remake) feel like tired retreads? It seems like it has a lot to do with a filmmaker who has a new lens to see the story through. Carpenter didn’t just rely on the special effects (though they sure are special) for his take of “The Thing”, Cronenberg wasn’t content to just rely on a cooler looking fly, Kaufman knew it would take more than bigger body snatcher crowds. You get where we’re going with this. There’s a connection between the filmmaker and the material for all these films that’s evident in the movies themselves.

Our guest today can be added to the list of filmmakers whose reimagining works because there is a clear connection between the filmmaker and the world he’s creating.

PLOT TWIST… he’s reimagining his own movie.

In 2014, a film about a rookie cop’s night at a soon-to-be-shuttered police station that becomes a descent into hell became a sleeper hit. The film was “Last Shift” and it has just been reimagined in the form of the new film “Malum” by its creator, our guest in this episode, writer/director Anthony DiBlasi.

When I asked him about returning to the world he created with “Last Shift”, Anthony told me “I think the remakes that work are the ones that are really treated like reimaginings. They took the core of what was cool with the original and expanded on it. Almost as if it were a sequel to the original. What Aliens did for Alien. That’s what we wanted to do with Malum. Explore what we couldn’t in the first one because of resources, but also dive deeper into a mythology we barely touched on in the original. Build on the elements that work while also improving on the ones that didn’t.”

Anthony also delves into the years he worked closely with horror icon Clive Barker, how dealing with MPAA interference and studio meddling is basically trial by fire and adapting one of Barker’s stories for his film “Dread”.

Our talk with Anthony is a proper deep dive covering all his genre films so we will be dropping it in two parts.

So remember, nothing is what it seems and the darkness is going to be staring right back at you while we explore the work of Anthony DiBlasi.

★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★