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[INTERVIEW] Talking ‘Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire’ With Stuart Ortiz

There were many big premieres at Fantastic Fest this year, which continues to solidify the ‘Fantastic’ in their name. Of all the premieres, one stuck out to me more than any: Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Emire. Grave Encounters and Extraterrestrial are two exceptional pieces of horror, and when I learned that one-half of the Vicious Brothers was debuting his solo directorial debut, I was sold.

I was speechless as the credits rolled. Strange Harvest is one of the most frightening, bone-chilling, and all-around fascinating mockumentaries I’ve ever seen. Ortiz’s commitment to authenticity makes Strange Harvest stand out as the best mockumentary this side of Lake Mungo. I was granted the opportunity to sit down and talk with the writer/director about his astounding solo debut and a possible connection it has to one of his earlier films!

An Interview with Strange Harvest Director Stuart Ortiz.

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There were many big premieres at Fantastic Fest this year, which continues to solidify the ‘Fantastic’ in their name. Of all the premieres, one stuck out to me more than any: Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Emire. Grave Encounters and Extraterrestrial are two exceptional pieces of horror, and when I learned that one-half of the Vicious Brothers was debuting his solo directorial debut, I was sold.

I was speechless as the credits rolled. Strange Harvest is one of the most frightening, bone-chilling, and all-around fascinating mockumentaries I’ve ever seen. Ortiz’s commitment to authenticity makes Strange Harvest stand out as the best mockumentary this side of Lake Mungo. I was granted the opportunity to sit down and talk with the writer/director about his astounding solo debut and a possible connection it has to one of his earlier films!

An Interview with Strange Harvest Director Stuart Ortiz

Brendan Jesus: I cannot tell you how excited I am to be talking with you right now! Strange Harvest: Occult Murder in the Inland Empire absolutely blew my mind. It was everything I wanted it to be. When people think of alien-related horror movies, they think Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Whitley Strieber’s Communion. To me, Extraterrestrial is one of the greatest alien-related horror films of all time. The scene in the cop car gave me nightmares; it paralyzed me.

Stuart Ortiz: Nice, nice!

BJ: Toward the end of Extraterrestrial, we see Kyle (Freddie Stroma) get a symbol laser etched into his chest. It’s a very triangular-like symbol. Is there any connection between that and Mr. Shiny’s symbol? Mr. Shiny’s symbol is a more minimalistic version of it, but is there a connection between them?

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Stuart Ortiz: That is a fascinating question, and my answer would be there is a connection, actually. Albeit a weird one, but yes there is.

BJ: In any of your later works, will that become apparent? Or will that be more of a context clue, like the more you dig, the more you find?

Stuart Ortiz: It’s more for future things. The whole thing with Strange Harvest that I would love to do is, well, I have a lot more ideas for these kinds of stories that can be told in a similar manner. I kind of have a notion for a cinematic universe where I’d love to bring in some of the other things I’ve worked on in the past. All could maybe have a place.

BJ: Strange Harvest is your, unless you count Far West, which is 60 minutes so I don’t know if you consider that a feature–

Stuart Ortiz: No, no, I do not.

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BJ: Okay, so then Strange Harvest is your singular feature directorial debut. After you made one of the greatest found footage movies of all time, you guys (Vicious Brothers) took a step back and did more “traditional” filmmaking with Extraterrestrial and It Stains the Sand Red. What made you want to go back to found footage/mockumentary for Strange Harvest?

Stuart Ortiz: I just always thought it was a cool way to approach a story, in particular a horror story. Grave Encounters is a found footage movie but we have this quasi-documentary element about it with interviews in the beginning. I love that stuff and had fun writing it. The experience of working on that always stuck with me and was always in the back of my head. It was a cool approach that no one had done justice to in that way. It lived in my mind for the decade-plus since we made that movie. I knew I would like to do something but didn’t know quite what it was. I’d always been a true crime nerd but felt like I was the only weirdo who liked these weird stories about horror, mayhem, and murder and whatnot. During COVID, Tiger King came out, and it was a big phenomenon. It was basically a true crime story at its core. That’s when it occurred to me that true crime was huge and had gone mainstream. It seemed like maybe the timing was right, and that this could be something people would get. We were at a point where there was enough of this stuff in the culture that people had the media literacy to get. If I played it totally straight, like that was the whole thing. I didn’t want to play this as a farce or a parody, I wanted to play it totally straight. That was the part that worried me. I just felt that the timing was right and there would be an appetite for it.

BJ: You’ve crafted this killer from the ground up. You created his motives and crimes, then thrust him into this world. The majority of evidence we see from Mr. Shiny comes from crime scene photos and it’s incredibly effective. How did you go about crafting these crime scene photos?

Stuart Ortiz: It was such a weird, unconventional approach to a movie. Usually, when you shoot a movie, you spend all this time beforehand setting up the scene, doing art direction, props, get the actors and cameras, move lights around. It takes a lot of time to set up the scenes and shots. Then you go into the second part where you’re shooting and that takes up a lot of time as well. It takes hours and hours. For us, we just had to do one part of that and it was the first part. We spent all of our time, budget, and resources on creating these sets basically. We spent a lot of time focusing on attention to detail. We were able to work with this makeup artist Josh Russell who’s a genius. He’s worked on stuff like The Ritual, the new Hellraiser, he’s incredibly talented. I don’t know how we got him, we got lucky! He was able to craft amazing makeup effects and some dummies for us. What you see is what you get. He did amazing work and it wasn’t hard to make them look creepy.

BJ: With the exception of a few mockumentaries, most don’t do a good job of continuing throughout their air of authenticity. Strange Harvest is one of the most authentic feeling mockumentaries I’ve seen. If you just uploaded this to YouTube, I think you’d dupe a lot of people into thinking this was legitimate. Was there anything you did specifically to create and keep this level of authenticity?

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Stuart Ortiz: That’s a good question. Attention to detail, across the board, on all the aspects–something like the news. We have archival news footage, little snippets of news programs, you know a lot of that blows my mind to this day. I’ll watch a hundred-million-dollar superhero movie and they’ll cut to the jankiest, shittiest news footage you’ve ever seen. It’s like you have all that money and it’s annoying. Everyone knows what news footage looks like. Everyone has seen it. You see it every day! Everyone has an understanding, so it never makes sense to me why that kind of stuff is missed. Sometimes it’s just because it’s an afterthought. With our shoot, those things weren’t an afterthought. Some days we would go shoot something somewhere, and then the other half of the day would be six or seven hours in a studio shooting newscasters. By most movie scheduling standards it was bonkers and ridiculous, but that’s just how we had to do it. I knew that’s what was necessary to get it right. It’s all in the details.

BJ: The mask design. It gave me nightmares for two nights. Could you talk about the design of the mask?

Stuart Ortiz: I like to hear that. That mask was designed by Jessee Clarkson, who was our production designer on the film. Brilliant guy. He also plays Mr. Shiny. He wanted to do that. He’s played killers before, like in The Vault. He had a real vision for it and was inspired by Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Really, the mask is very simple. It’s a creepy-looking face, but it’s the symbol. The sigil motif of these three dots–which is a thing that plays throughout the film.

I’m super thankful to Stuart for taking the time to talk with me, as well as KWPR for setting it all up. If you missed Strange Harvest at Fantastic Fest, you need to keep your eyes peeled for the next showing of this film.

Whether you’re a fan of true crime or not, Strange Harvest is a diamond in the rough–a terrifying true crime tour de force.

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Make sure to keep your doors locked, lest you find yourself the next victim of Mr. Shiny.

Brendan is an award-winning author and screenwriter rotting away in New Jersey. His hobbies include rain, slugs, and the endless search for The Mothman.

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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!

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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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! 

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Revisiting The Stepfather Films (And The Insane Real Crime Spree That Inspired Them)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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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