Halloween Countdown: Nude and Dismembered (1989)

"Blood and guts never tasted so funny." - Satan

With just two weeks left till Halloween I realize that I've mainly been concentrating on horror movies during my Halloween Countdown. Horror movies were a big part of my teenage years. My friends and I would watch them constantly – the more low budget and gory the better. We were influenced enough to make our own horror movie – Nude and Dismembered – during our senior year of high school. At the time, I was also taking a media class where we studied the works of Alfred Hitchcock so we dedicated Nude and Dismembered to our teacher, Mr. Rice.

Here's the quick plot...two kids, while experimenting with witchcraft, conjure up Satan and become his minion to carry out his bidding – gathering souls. And that's about all we had when it came to a script, too. We then just thought of different ways to kill our friends and improvised scenes around the killings.

Now one thing to keep in mind...this was 1989 so cameras and editing equipment were not readily available to an 18 year old kid, like they are today. Since Final Cut Pro wasn't invented yet, we shot Nude and Dismembered in sequence using only first-takes. If you screwed up a line or someone laughs or looks directly into camera that's it...that's part of the movie. But that just made it more fun. The heavy metal soundtrack was accomplished by having a boom box playing next to the camera as the scene played out. In addition some primitive overdubbing of music and sound effects was acheived by connecting a walkman and microphone directly into a VCR.

At 30 minutes long, Nude and Dismembered became a cult phenomenon...at least in my home town on Long Island. But enough set up...here's part 1 of Nude and Dismembered...



What's truly amazing is that after uploading Nude and Dismembered to YouTube a little over a year ago it's gotten over 5460 hits (as of today). Now I'm not stupid...it has everything to do with the word "Nude" in the title. That just goes to show you how perverted people really are.

Here's part 2 of Nude and Dismembered...



Are you still with me? Besides the people I went to high school with? I know the plot is riveting and you must be on the edge of your seat in suspense so I won't drag this on any further. Finally...here's part 3 of Nude and Dismembered...(my cameo death scene starts off this chapter)...



Well there you have it...Nude and Dismembered.

Starring...

Steve Zielinski as The Evil One
Kevin Purcell as Noxious
Joe Kollar as The Voice of Satan

Directed by Frank Fusco & Joe Kollar

©1989 Bubjunior Productions


Here's 20 fun facts (and goofs) you might find interesting about the production of Nude and Dismembered...

1 - When Steve and Kevin are conjuring up Satan, one of Steve's flash paper pieces fails to ignite which causes Steve to start laughing.

2 - Joe's dialogue as Satan in the possession scene is totally made up off-the-cuff. He had to stretch the monologue out long enough so Steve/The Evil One could hit his mark – to lip-sync screaming when the singer screams in the song playing in the background. Pretty impressive.

3 - When The Evil One chops off Vic's hand, after nailing it to a 2x4 board, director Frank Fusco's laugh can be heard very loud.
4 - After shooting the first two death scenes Steve's video camera busted. For blood we were using grenadine (the red syrupy stuff you use to mix cocktail drinks with) and Steve put his camera in the same bag as the grenadine – not a good mix. We continued shooting about two months later when my mother bought me a camera – the thing was about the size of an eyewitness news camera.

5 - In one of the biggest goofs...you'll see Matt living it up at party just after he was stabbed and killed in the boys locker room. Hey, it could be his twin?








6 - The song the Evil Wombats are performing is a direct rip-off of Motörhead's Orgasmatron.
7 - The backyard party scene, with Led Zeppelin's Living Loving Maid playing in the background, was filmed on "Senior Cut Day". We should've all been in school that day.

8 - When John exits the backyard party he's wearing white shorts but when he arrives in the front of the house he's wearing blue shorts. John learned in between those two shots that the fake blood would ruin his shorts so he asked for a different pair. BTW...the guts that were pulled out of John's belly after being sawed open by The Evil One, was Italian sausage links.








9 - You can hear Mike's bag of fake blood squish around under his shirt as he walks down the stairs before his death by pruning shears.

10 - In homage to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (which we studied in Mr. Rice's media class) we had our most masculine friend wear a pair of fake boobs in the classic shower scene. So technically naming our film "Nude" and Dismembered is totally legit. Also, in lack of the original Psycho soundtrack, The Evil One reproduced the sound effects with his mouth.
11 - As a group we enjoyed surrealism so we decided to throw in some non sequiturs: The Evil One and Noxiuos enjoying the classical arts and The Evil One and Noxiuos dancing for Satan – all improvised on the spot.








12 - In Frank's death scene (my death scene), we fashioned a fake bed where my torso and legs would lie underneath a board. We then filled a garbage bag full of Kool-Aid (we switched to Kool-Aid because grenadine was too expensive) to act as my body and added some fake legs. When The Evil One took his first swing the axe split the board in half. I was supposed to spit blood out of my mouth and scream but my scream is delayed because I was busy repositioning half the board to cover my chest so the second axe swing wouldn't actually penetrate my body. The tip of the axe did nick my chest and it left a slight mark. One more swing and I might not be here today writing this stupid blog. I still can't watch this scene without cringing a little. But the way the Kool-Aid garbage bag kind of rolls to one side as a big mass is pretty funny, though. It took a lot of paper towels to soak up all that Kool-Aid and it left my carpet a little sticky (we didn't think that one through).









13 - When Hoff calls Carmela suspecting Steve and Kevin are behind the killings The Evil One bursts in a punches Hoff to death. The punching sound effects were recorded later by holding a microphone up to Steve's chest as he beat it in a "King Kong" like manner. The end result was way too fast and repetitive compared to the picture...but made it even more funny so we kept it – one of my favorite moments. Also in this scene, you'll hear Satan refer to Carmela as "the blown haired girl".









14 - In the scene where The Evil One is serenading Elaine...the girl in the cage...Noxious is not actually playing the guitar. Kevin doesn't play guitar so Joe (co-director) pre-recorded it and it was played on a boom box. (We also accidently left Elaine's name out of the credits – sorry Elaine.)
15 - There were two scenes that we needed to overdub some dialogue due to technical difficulties. The first was at the beach during the "Mod Squad" death scene. It was very windy so the camera mic only picked up the sound of wind...the dubbing is pretty poor. Even poorer was the overdubbed dialogue of Noxious and Bob right before the "Batman" scene – also due to wind. Bob was not available for the overdub session so Joe (a.k.a. the voice of Satan) filled in and it just isn't a good match.

16 - Actually...there was one scene where we cut and rewound the tape a little in order to shoot a second take. It's the scene where Rachel finds The Evil One playing a Casio keyboard in her bathroom. Unfortunately, by doing so it cut off the ending to the prior scene – where The Evil One runs Bob over with his Mustang (Steve's sweet ride was later stolen in real life). We had made a fake "Bob dummy" and ran it over – pretty hilarious. Since that ending was accidently taped over, for a quick fix we improvised and created a Batman "Blam!" card to cut in and overdubbed the theme to Batman – hence becoming the "Batman" scene. (You'll see the picture gets a little static-y in that spot.)
17 - We realized we needed an ending so we gave some dialogue to Carmela pleading to The Evil One that his actions "are not him". During this scene she begins to laugh and makes an "oops" face. I'm surprised there weren't more goofs like this being that we used only first takes with non-actors – I've seen Burt Reynolds flub more lines. After the strangling, and after breaking the fourth wall by looking directly into camera like Mr. Roper, The Evil One shakes and trembles, regretting his actions – now we can finally end this movie.








18 - When we shot the ending on the beach it was very cold and brisk, especially for early June. Steve braved the weather and walked right into the ocean when The Evil One commits suicide. (That Black Sabbath song may be from one of Sabbath's lowest points in their career but it sounds great during this scene.)
19 - Nude and Dismembered took three months and cost $73.42 to make – that's a lot of bread for high school students.









20 - Not many people know this but during our freshman year of college we shot one scene for a sequel...Nude and Dismembered II: Electric Boogaloo (back then the boogaloo reference was still relatively new and funny). The scene picks up with Satan incarnate (Joe with horns and a cape) driving his yellow Cadillac to the beach to take the knife from Noxious' chest and to summon The Evil One from the ocean depths. The funniest shot was Satan having to pay the toll booth clerk to enter the beach – you can't script that sort of stuff. For some reason we never got around to shooting the rest of it . And unfortunately, the tape with the one scene was lost a long time ago.

Here's a compilation of the soundtrack to Nude and Dismembered. It's been close to 20 years but I was able to track down all the songs but one. I couldn't find the version of "Nola" that we used in the movie – the song The Evil One and Noxiuos danced for Satan to – but I found a different version so I included it instead. (This compilation is worth the download just for Satan's Trial By Fire alone.)

[DOWNLOAD] Nude and Dismembered (Soundtrack)
01 Stonehenge -- [Black Sabbath]
02 Into The Fire/Trial By Fire -- [Satan]
03 The Twilight Zone -- [Jerry Goldsmith]
04 Be All, End All -- [Anthrax]
05 The Dark -- [Black Sabbath]
06 Final Scream -- [Grim Reaper]
07 Satan's Bagel Nosh -- [Evil Wombats]
08 Living Loving Maid (She's Just a Woman) -- [Led Zeppelin]
09 Danse Macabre -- [Saint-Saens]
10 The Mod Squad -- [Earle Hagen]
11 Nola -- [Felix Arndt]
12 Hollendaise Sauce -- [Steve & Joe]
13 Batman -- [Neal Hefti]
14 Trashed -- [Black Sabbath]
15 Born Again -- [Black Sabbath]