On the Blood Red Carpet with horror host, UFO expert and the producer of DRILLER: A Sexual Thriller, Mr. Creepo.

B-MOVIE: Who the hell is this Mr. Creepo anyway?

MR. CREEPO: According to legend – he is the offspring of a human woman and a devil from Hell. Others insist at one time he was merely a man. . .a man who sold his soul to know the ultimate pleasure of the universe. Whatever the case, he has known the pleasures and pains of the world. He has experience every deviancy and perversion known to man and demon alike and has reveled in it. His name is whispered by those who fear his awesome powers. Others simply know him as The Beast. He walks amongst us now often confined to the darkest backroads of the human consciousness. But now he is free. . .free once again to bring his nightmares and passions to the unsuspecting. There is no place to escape him. . .he is here at last. . .he is MR CREEPO!

Other than that most people – demons and mortals alike – know me simply as Tim Beckley. Writer, publisher, UFO expert, globe trotter (not associated with the basketball team), music and seminar promoter and frequent guest on radio and TV talk shows – most of all I am the THE KING OF ALL UNPAID MEDIA.

B: WHAT IS A B-MOVIE TO YOU?

CREEPO: Bet you most B movie producers don’t know the real definition. Its not such just a second rate, schlock, indy film with a cast who might still be developing their talents. The term refers originally to the second feature on a double bill. The movies that played the grindhouses along 42nd Street and Time Square. You would get two movies for a buck and the popcorn was only 75 cents. Films like I Piss On Your Grave played for months and months. Most B movie producers got paid a flat fee for their efforts – like $500 a week regardless of whether there was a full house or no body showed up. Considering that a lot of the B movies cost so little to make it was possible to turn a handsome profit and invest in your next project – I Jerk Off On Your Grave! Today, a B movie would be a film shot on a shoestring probably with an embarrassingly small crew and pizza for catering (if that).

B: TELL US WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE FILMS. . . WHAT ARE YOUR INFLUENCES?

CREEPO: If it wasn’t for Nancy Reagan there would be no Mr Creepo!

B: You mean the late President’s wife?

CREEPO: Well a lot of people don’t know that Nancy Reagan before her marriage to Ron was Nancy Davis, star of such B movies as Donavan’s Brain circa 1953. This was long before she became the First Lady. It was being broadcast on TV while I was growing up but I couldn’t stay up long enough to see it. Mr Creepo’s mom wouldn’t let him. Anyway, I was in bed in the next room and I could hear the sound of the brain in a jar being kept alive by a hypnotic sounding pump. He gave me the creeps, thus Mr. Creepo. I had to sleep with the lights on for a long time and to a little monster growing up it scared my psyche deeply.

As for films that have inspired me – as a kid Plan Nine From Outer Space as you could tell since the title of another Mr Creepo film is Lesbian Vampires: The Curse Of Ed Wood (just re released by Chemical Burn). Also, Invaders From Mars, The Day The Earth Stood Still, mainly because I have a fixation on UFOs and am widely known as MR UFO around the world. In the horror genre Bloody Sunday, Psycho, Three On A Meat Hook, in general most of the stuff put out by my friend Sam Sherman who proudly did dozens of B movies for what later became the Drive-In crowd.

B: TELL US THE STORY ABOUT HOW DRILLER: A SEXUAL THRILLER CAME TO BE.

CREEPO: My background in films goes back to my days of being a critic for Hustler magazine – 1974-75. I got to review just about every sleazy adult film that came out. Hung with some of the greats of porn. Later on I became a columnist for a couple of trade papers service the film industry, worked as a free lance publicist for a number of small film companies and ended up doing a stint as editor of Adult Cinema Review. While at ACR I had an on going feud with the editor of a rival publication Cinema Blue edited by the infamous Joyce James. Eventually, we decided to put aside our pornographic differences and teamed up to create a very unique motion picture that would, we hoped, cater not only to those who enjoyed (i.e. “got off on”) adult movies, but were looking for something a bit more hip and unusual to quench their pandering tastes. We wanted to do something totally “outside of the box” (a phrase not coined yet, of course). Michael Jackson’s Thriller was the talk of the town. Zombies were the monsters of the day. MJ was swinging his hips and moon walking and being a bit hypercritical in his scandalous mannerisms on stage, as opposed to his off stage self righteous attitude toward morality and sexuality. We didn’t do it in to be cocky or put him down. We liked his songs to a degree, though I am a rock and roller and not a particular fan of disco or house music. And of course I loved horror as did Joyce. We just thought a good natured parody of Thriller would be cool and would enable us to feature our own talents, talents that for the most part were sadly lacking in most of the adult films we had watched. We wanted to do something a bit different. Something unique. Something that featured a cast outside of the porn industry, but with a strong adult hook.

B: DID YOU FEEL ANY REPERCUSSIONS FROM THE MICHAEL JACKSON CAMP WHEN YOU MADE THE FILM?

CREEPO: We joked about how if they sued us it would help promote the film. But not really. Parody is protected by the Constitution. How else could Weird Al be able to keep spoofing hit after hit, decade after decade???

B: SO THEY NEVER TRIED TO STOP YOU?

CREEPO: What because of a couple of “wardrobe malfunctions?”

B: WHAT WAS THE BUDGET OF THE FILM, AND HOW LONG DID IT TAKE TO SHOOT?

CREEPO: Well that’s a hard question to answer properly. I mean this has to be the ONLY adult film that had rehearsals. We had to find ourselves a real singer – our Pop Star – who resembled MJ and we had to locate dancers. We actually had auditions. We also were the first film to include animation, and than of course there were the special effects of the werewolf and makeup that did not include just the use of eye shadow and a curling iron – which I don’t think most adult films even included in their budget. We even went out and got an award- winning cameraman. Most of the non-porn cast and crew had their reputations to think of, they didn’t want us to use their real names for fear of reprisal. Wish I could tell you who they were, many have gone on to become very well established in the motion picture business and I don’t want to blow their cover.

As for a budget. I think it was the first porn film to cost well over a hundred grand to produce. Frankly, it cost way too much. We had figured on capturing the Rocky Horror midnight audience crowd. We even had a few bookings for midnight shows but they were cancelled because some asshole DA down south started to bust not only the producers of porn, but actors, actresses and even theater owners and no one wanted to be part of a national perp walk. We did play whatever drive-ins were left in the mid 80s and we actually had our opening at the Eighth Street Theater in Greenwich Village.

B: YOU SHOT DRILLER ON 35MM FILM DURING A TIME THE ADULT BUSINESS WAS NEARLY ALL TURNING TO VIDEO, WHY?

CREEPO: Well we wanted to get into the theaters and we thought maybe some cable TV like the Playboy Network would pick it up. But it was too hard for them or they were offended by screwing zombies and a werewolf with a very large appendage. Video looked like crap in those days if you recall. It was VHS. In fact, the colors in the 35mm version were so rich but by the time our video distributor made one of the most horrible transfers onto VHS in history we realized we were screwed every which way come Sunday. The nearly released version of Driller has been completely re-mastered by our distributor Devil’s Den and it looks absolutely wonderful, not to mention all the added features.

B: WHERE DID THE IDEA FOR ALL THE GENERAL HORROR ELEMENTS, THE GOLD GIRLS, THE GUYS WEARING THE PRESIDENTS MASKS, THE WEREWOLF AND ZOMBIE DANCERS COME FROM?

CREEPO: From the demented minds of Joyce James and myself. Hey, also remember we featured the first squirting girl. A lot of the critics thought we had faked that scene as there had not been another film featuring a lady of porn hitting her G Spot to cause such an eruption. Now a days squirting porn actresses are literally a dime a dozen – and a lot of the squirters of today ARE faking it! Our actress never did a scene before and never appeared in any more films after Driller.

B: HOW WAS PRODUCER/ DIRECTOR ROGER WATKINS (LAST HOUSE ON THE DEAD END STREET) INVOLVED IN DRILLER?

CREEPO: We hired him to be production coordinator and he single handedly tried to sabotage the film. The reason? He had friends who were pissed because we didn’t hire them and used a non-porn crew for the most part. He even threatened to steal our audio tracks. Called up in the middle of the night and tried to blackmail us. We were working long hours. We weren’t interested in doing a mediocre job. We wanted to get the right shots. In porn you shoot one to one. We were maybe shooting three to one in some of the scenes. I think our efforts paid off.

B: SOME ONLINE REPORTS STATE THAT HUGH GALLAGHER OF DRACULINA MAGAZINE FAME WAS INVOLVED IN DRILLER – IS THAT TRUE?

CREEPO: That’s absolutely absurd. He did do a really long interview with me in long issue four of his magazine when the first was just about to be released and we kept in touch for years. Later on, years later, he featured our Mr. Creepo videos in a glossy edition of his magazine, where before it was typed on a typewriter, had no color, etc. But as an investor or contributor in any other way? Just shows you how a lot of stuff on the Internet can be misleading.

B: FINALLY, WHY HAS DRILLER BEEN SO HARD TO SEE FOR ALL THESE YEARS?

CREEPO: We didn’t want to re release what had been a pretty terrible VHS transfer to begin with. Ran off a few copies on my own, but I yanked them from the market when I saw how bad they looked. When Devil’s Den expressed interest I told them they could put it out on DVD if they agreed to re-master it – which they did and so Driller is now back on the streets and available to an entirely new audience.

To find out more out Mr. Creepo, Tim Beckley, see some stills from DRILLER, and also find out the secrets of the universe – please visit www.mrcreepo.com