Truly Ulli!, Part II
July 1, 2008

Here’s the second part of my recent talk with filmmaker Ulli Lommel!

VB: The Boogeyman’s release in 1980 was the beginning of a very prolific Hollywood output.
LOMMEL: I was very busy, yes. Then we did Brainwaves (1983) with Tony Curtis, and The Devonsville Terror (1983) with Donald Pleasence, and one movie after the other. The last few years, we’ve been doing all these Lionsgate movies. I think I must have done more than a dozen in three years.

VB: And you launched your own production company a couple of years back, Hollywood House of Horror.

LOMMEL: In Marina del Rey. We have a whole group of people, a repertory group, and a crew of people who make the movies. In November of 2006, we were in production on four movies at the same time.

VB: Is this the kind of moviemaking you anticipated doing at this point in your career?

LOMMEL: I always wanted to do something like this. Before Fassbinder, I spent some time as an actor with the Living Theater and then other repertory companies. I always wanted to do something like that: have my own company, where we would all eat together, travel together, work together, create together. I come from a theater background and it’s the way I like to work. I really don’t have any hobbies or anything—all I do is make movies.

VB: And of late, you’ve been making a whole bunch of serial killer and stalker films that are being distributed by Lionsgate, most recently Borderline Cult (2007), Curse of the Zodiac (2007), Black Dahlia (2006), Green River Killer (2005), B.T.K. Killer (2005), Zodiac Killer (2005) and the upcoming Dungeon Girl (2008). Is it fair to say that you’re fascinated by serial killers?
LOMMEL: I don’t think I’m fascinated by them, but I like the fact that we’re never able to figure out exactly what drives serial killers to do what they do. It gives you a lot of room to explore the topic from different angles. And it’s so much fun shooting all this violence, with the special effects and all, and everybody’s laughing and having a ball on the set. But I don’t like to watch the movies when they’re done—I just like to make them. But when they’re done, they have a life of their own and I find them disturbing and scary.

Posted by Laurence Lerman on July 1, 2008 | Comments (0)