Movies
Interview with ‘All Jacked Up And Full of Worms’ director Alex Phillips
All Jacked up and Full of Worms showed this year at Brooklyn Horror Film Fest under its “Head Trip” category. I genuinely can’t think of a better way to describe this movie. It was raunchy and disgusting, so definitely not for the faint of heart. BUT I’m always here for some good body horror, and All Jacked up and Full of Worms did not disappoint on that front.
One thing that I liked about All Jacked up and Full of Worms is that it often follows dream logic. Things don’t always seem to make logical sense, and the film moves from one sequence to another without fully explaining how we got there. I think this works well for a film in which worms are taken to the same effect as an ecstatic hallucinogen, or some other wild drug.
I was able to chat with writer/director, Alex Phillips, and special worm effects artist, Ben Gojer after the screening to get a peak behind the curtain.
Bash: Can you tell me about the meaning behind All Jacked Up and Full of Worms?
Alex: “It’s about being crazy and looking for love and meaning in a world where there’s a lot of different ways to replace that sense of love and meaning – drugs, religion, sex, or violence. And then also the terror that comes with confronting yourself and confronting the world around you.”
Bash: I feel like the dream logic fits well with the film’s subject matter. Can you tell me how you decided on utilizing it in the movie?
Alex: There’s an intellectual reason behind it, but also a very literal one. This is the way that I write, and the way that I want to tell stories. I don’t try to filter it through any top top-down structure until after I’ve conceived of the idea or written the script. The dream logic comes from wanting to convey raw emotions and feelings, and turn it into a narrative that still has a throughline and an upward trajectory and still has a resolution. I think it also mirrors the experience of living through certain traumas where experiences are condensed in time and space and there’s a rhyme to the way you experience the world.”
Bash: “There’s a lot of really great surrealist artists out there. Where do you draw inspiration from?”
Alex: “I really borrowed a lot conceptually from the Cronenberg adaptation of Naked Lunch. I found the text that I had written had a lot of rhyme in terms of content. And turning something that’s crazy into a plot structure is something he can do. In writing you can be more abstract, but in film you do need more of a beginning, middle, and end. So I was my own Burroughs and Cronenberg for better or for worse, to translate my own automatic writing and turn it into something that makes sense.”
Bash: The characters have their own monologues that get repeated throughout the film. I’m really interested in Benny and his approach to queerness. What was the purpose of his monologue?
Alex: “I wanted to approach that monologue and also that character from how a dumb mammal of a man would feel around, blindly confronting his desires and landing at an openness that is actually almost progressive, but also comically stunted. I see him as having broken down the walls of right and wrong by ramming his stupid head against them, and by reluctantly accepting himself he can therefore understand how other people might also have a similar interiority. It’s not in a way to validate any of his desires, but there’s a real rawness and openness to experience.
Bash: All Jacked Up and Full of Worms has some pretty sexually explicit moments. What’s your purpose for showing this on film?
Alex: “I want to be sex-positive and represent desires, good and bad, on film. For the challenging moments, we have literal distance from the bad stuff. It’s a performance, it’s fiction, and it’s on a screen. There should always be freedom to play with transgression in art. That’s why art exists, to explore the depths of human experience. If you don’t want to engage with the film you don’t have to. I’m confident in my relationships with the actors and also what they’ve consented to do. They were down to be naked on film, and were down for the sexually explicit moments. I wanted to show that in a way that is uncanny, and blatantly horny, and run it up against horror to discuss or at least dramatize our repressed approach to sex. Instead of coming up with a thesis statement about sexuality, I wanted to represent the anxieties and horrors associated with sex.
Bash: “I think that’s part of the merit of surrealism – learning through experience rather than being told.”
Bash: “Can you tell me a little bit about the character that repeatedly appears on the TV in the motel?”
Alex: “I wanted to create a world of this motel where someone is piping in fundamentalist Christianity, crossed with Mediterranean paganism, but it’s like worm Christianity: propaganda basically. The TV also operated as a formal device to move in and out of rooms and through people’s heads and dreams. That stuff is borrowed from my childhood. I’d watch a religious talk show after Saturday morning cartoons. But in the film, it was all meant to lend to a wider sense of the worm conspiracy, that these worm drugs could offer salvation and Godly truth.
Bash: I’m interested to hear about the special effects in the film. What were some of the challenges you had to overcome?
Ben: “Figuring out a way to have people vomit worms was tricky because a lot of times a vomit rig just has fluids and not also solids in it, so getting something that wouldn’t be clogged up once it had something flowing through it took experimenting. Also, doing that in the wintertime in Chicago is hard because a lot of liquids don’t flow the same way in near-freezing temperatures. Then once Covid happened, we got shut down in the middle of production, and we had to finish shooting the movie using Covid protocols which makes everything harder, especially when you have liquids involved that are kind of gross looking. It doesn’t make anyone feel comfortable.”
Bash: “Can you talk a little bit about the prosthetics at the end of the film?”
Ben: “That was a couple of different prosthetics. That also was tricky, and getting worms to flow through that was tricky. That didn’t even end up working totally right on set. It was a lot of trial and error.
Alex: “Both Ben and I wore masks for some shots. That helped solve some problems.”
Ben: “There’s some stuff we ended up shooting with us because we wanted to get as much good coverage as we could. It’s always tricky doing an interview about effects stuff because it’s like: do you want to be a magician who tells how you do your tricks, or do you want to let people enjoy it?”
Alex: “I always tell Ben to err on the side of: Biff’s face did transform, and it did explode with worms. It was a documentary.”
Bash: “Finally, what’s next for your team?”
Alex: “The next thing is called Anything that Moves. It’s an erotic thriller, or as I call it a “himbo giallo”. It’s about this guy who works as a bike delivery driver and is a sex worker on the side. All of his clients come from different walks of life, and it’s chill, almost magical at first. He can provide to them their deepest desires. But then the clients start to get brutally murdered. He’s got to run for his life, clear his name, and figure out who’s doing the murdering.
If you love surrealism and watching people’s lives get out of hand. This movie is a wild, funny, and chaotic ride. Buckle up!
All Jacked Up and Full of Worms will be available on Screambox starting November 8th and will have a limited run in theaters which can be found here.
Movies
The Best Horror You Can Stream on Shudder in February 2025
The Shudder February lineup is after my heart. Obviously, the app is adding more 2024 titles like The Dead Thing and Little Bites. However, they are also adding so many cool movies I have been dying to make my friends watch these last few years. There are some films guaranteed to make some heads roll alongside some cute vampire rom-coms hitting the horror streamer this month, and I cannot wait to revisit each title. Check out the five movies I’m highlighting this year, and I hope you enjoy them as much as I do! So here are the best movies to stream on Shudder this February!
The Shudder February lineup is after my heart. Obviously, the app is adding more 2024 titles like The Dead Thing and Little Bites. However, they are also adding so many cool movies I have been dying to make my friends watch these last few years. There are some films guaranteed to make some heads roll alongside some cute vampire rom-coms hitting the horror streamer this month, and I cannot wait to revisit each title. Check out the five movies I’m highlighting this year, and I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!
The Best Movies to Stream on Shudder This Month
The Coffee Table (2022)
A couple of new parents experiencing a rough patch decide to buy a coffee table, not knowing that the decision will alter their lives forever. The Coffee Table was one of my favorite movies of last year, and it is one of those titles you want to know as little as possible when you hit play. It is the bleakest and most stressful comedy I have seen in years, and I love it. This one goes out to my fellow sickos (complimentary). Please watch it the day it hits Shudder before the internet can ruin it for you.
You can watch The Coffee Table on February 24th.
Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2024)
A young vampire who is too sensitive to kill for her supper meets a young loner with suicidal tendencies. What starts as a transactional relationship soon blossoms into an unexpected friendship. This movie is much cuter than I like my vampire movies. However, it is still a nice time for those looking to fill the void left by What We Do in the Shadows ending. It’s also not the worst romantic horror movie we have ever seen. I had very few notes for it in my review, and I know it made it onto quite a few top 10 lists of last year.
You can watch Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person on February 10th.
My Animal (2023)
An outcast falls for a new girl in her small town, which makes it difficult to keep her darkest secret hidden. My Animal is a severely overlooked lesbian werewolf tale. It has been stuck in streamer purgatory for years, so finally finding a streaming home is a big deal. This moody story stars Bobbi Salvör Menuez and Amandla Stenberg and deserves your attention. It belongs somewhere between Ginger Snaps and Good Manners in the women werewolves we must celebrate. Make this feral love story a date night this winter, preferably during a full moon.
You can watch My Animal on February 1st.
Nightsiren (2022)
A woman returns to her birthplace, searching for answers to questions about her childhood. However, she is met with ancient superstitions and a community accusing her of witchcraft and murder. Nightsiren has been on my radar for a couple of years and is the only movie I have not seen. I love that Shudder is letting me find out if it’s as good as it looks this February. Worst-case scenario, I can say that I watched a Slovak-Czech feminist psychological horror this month, and that feels like a win.
You can watch Nightsiren on February 10th.
Tiger Stripes (2024)
An 11-year-old discovers the body horror of puberty as her body begins to change. Gothic horror is out, and menstruation is in because Tiger Stripes is the kind of period horror we need more of in the world. I fell for this cute little movie during a festival a couple of years ago and am so glad it has finally made its way to Shudder. It’s funny and very relatable. It is also a new genre entry destigmatizing the menses, and we need more movies in this subgenre. So, while you should watch it with as many people as possible, it’s also a delightful brunch body horror moment.
You can watch Tiger Stripes on February 24th.
It seems like Shudder has read my diary and added titles that I need the rest of you to see. I hope you check out these tales of lesbian werewolves, fun period horror, and everything between this February. You truly deserve cool new stories by cool new filmmakers, and that is exactly what the streamer is giving us almost weekly this month. What a time to be a subscriber!
We all have one person in our lives who carries everything on their backs. It could be a family member whose work ethic shocks everyone around them or a friend juggling dozens of projects at once and still managing to get everything done just right. Thankless individuals who go unrecognized, but sometimes, that person ends up getting the spotlight they deserve.
To me, the Stepfather series is the perfect example of that in cinematic terms.
The Stepfather, directed by Joseph Ruben in 1987, is the first in a small franchise of horror films that feels pretty forgotten in the grand scheme of 80s slashers and thrillers. But the film is a really interesting study of how one actor can take a role and make it their own, in a way that’s so compelling it makes you want to see more of that character even when the movies he’s in are kind of mediocre.
ODDLY MEMORABLE FOR A FORGOTTEN FRANCHISE
As the cultural conversation of the era has turned into a lot of circular discourse about how much better effects were back then and how unproven concepts made it to the screen more often, it should be easy to forget a psychological horror film with such a simple premise: what if your stepfather you hated was actually a freaky serial killer who was going to take your family out? From that premise sprung an unexpectedly great film, carried entirely by its lead actor.
I have a weird connection to The Stepfather because it was written by Richard Stark, who wrote one of my favorite crime stories of all time: The Hunter. I didn’t even know Richard Stark was only a pseudonym until I watched The Stepfatherand discovered it was writer Donald E. Westlake’s pen name. And Westlake’s proficiency with crime fiction translates here smoothly, because he took a horrifying real-life story of absolute evil (straight out of Westfield, New Jersey) and brought it to the screen with a true-to-life character.
THE CRIMINAL BEHIND THE STEPFATHER SERIES
The real-life killer behind The Stepfather films was John List. To most people, he was a family man, living the dream with his wife and three children. He was a banker, hard-working and clean living, on the outside at least. He had a close relationship with many of the people in the Lutheran church he attended every Sunday, and was well-liked. But in reality, List was about to become one of the most infamous mass murderers in American history.
Behind the scenes, List was struck with financial trouble after financial trouble that exacerbated his already worsening mental health problems. A number of layoffs and setbacks left him and his family teetering on the brink of poverty despite the fact they lived in a 19-room mansion (I couldn’t even begin to explain how that works, don’t ask). List’s relationship with his wife was damaged by her spending habits, alcoholism, and deteriorating mental state due to untreated syphilis.
He was left to “raise” three children, whom he was verbally and physically abusive to; his daughter Patricia even warned her drama coach that she was certain her father was going to kill her. Then her father actually sat all the kids down and told them they should prepare to die. And eventually, Patricia, her mother and grandmother, and both of her brothers became List’s victims in 1971.
List left his car in long-term parking at JFK International and disappeared with almost nothing in his name. Leaving a confession for his pastor behind in the form of a letter, it took weeks for neighbors to report the family’s disappearance, thanks to List’s meticulous planning. He had already slipped through the hands of the police by running from state to state, before eventually settling down into a new persona: Robert Clark. He eventually “fell in love” with a woman named Delores Miller, and the two moved to Virginia together soon after that.
Their relationship ended abruptly after an episode of America’s Most Wanted aired, in which famous forensic artist Frank Bender made an incredibly accurate sculpt of what List looked like at the time. After years of close calls and narrow captures, List was discovered. It took 17 and a half years for List to be caught. He was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences and died in jail in 2008.
THE ACTOR WHO GAVE LIFE TO THE STEPFATHER SERIES
Now, I mention all of this above to punctuate one thing: The Stepfather isn’t the only fictionalized retelling of List’s story, but it is the most effective. Its opening scene is a gruesome recounting of List’s disaffected disappearance, how he slipped off to freedom, to an alternate life of his own design for nearly two decades, with little emotion at all. It opens on a mystery—what kind of man is he, if he is human at all? How does one simply walk away from a crime scene so calm and collected?
Because at the heart of the List case is the intensely intriguing and horrifying persona that is John List. To adapt that kind of personality, that deeply unhinged and deceptive person, is the kind of acting challenge many actors would pounce on immediately. And for horror fans, an unlikely hero stepped up to the plate: Terry O’Quinn. He’s best known for playing John Locke on the show Lost, but he’s also a quintessential “that one guy” character actor; he’s been in so many films and television shows you can probably throw a dart in any direction and hit his filmography.
I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call the first two Stepfather movies iconic (entertaining, definitely). Still, our main man Terry O’Quinn is incredibly iconic in his performance of Jerry Blake. O’Quinn really does enthrall you, and he’s an actor to beat when it comes to depicting someone slowly unraveling and releasing bursts of madness along the way like solar flares on a star’s surface. And I don’t just say that because he bears a bizarre resemblance to an older Anthony Starr.
He even almost tricks you into thinking Jerry’s moments of manufactured sweetness and maudlin family-man aesthetic are genuine, but then you remember what you’re watching and go right back to hating him with a passion. He is a quintessential horror movie villain because you despise him, but you’re transfixed by him.
He’s an emotionally disturbed con man, a parasite who can worm his way into a new skin with sociopathic ease. And when it all comes crashing down, to the point where even he isn’t sure what role he’s supposed to play for his fake family, its fantastic. With a line as simple as, “Wait a minute, who am I here?”, O’Quinn cemented himself as the definitive depiction of the character.
WHY EACH OF THE STEPFATHER FILMS IS WORTH WATCHING
As I said, these films are far from perfect, but each one brings something a little new and different to the table. It’s fun to see O’Quinn return to the role in Stepfather 2, playing opposite of the legendary Caroline Williams and Meg Foster; a psycho-slasher finale at a wedding is just hard to beat. Stepfather 3 brings a surprisingly good changing of hands to the title role, though, since despite O’Quinn being replaced by Robert Wightman, Wightman brings just the right kind of energy to the role; he’s the perfect fit for the much campier and goofier tone of the 3rd film, and I was honestly very impressed with how he brought the role to life. But be warned: don’t bother with the remake. It is borderline bloodless, and incredibly boring. You can put a million Penn Badgley’s in that film, I’m not watching it again.
The Stepfather films aren’t anyone’s favorite of the many horror fans I’ve met and spoken with. But they are a capsule of how one artist can have enough staying power to keep them in your mind. So, for all my people out there who are going to check the trilogy out now thanks to this article: happy watching horror fans, and have fun!
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