“STOMP! SHOUT! SCREAM!” (2005)

Starring: Claire Bronson, Mary Kraft, Cynthia Evans, Jonathan Micahel Green, Travis Young, Adrian Roberts, Bill Szymanski, Christopher Hines & Ned Hastings
Written & Directed by Jay Wade Edwards
Official Website

Polly Staffle Rating: ***

Inspiration can come from the strangest places sometimes. Two documentaries about pedophilia, a 1954 classic about giant killer ants and a song about a sexually transmitted disease got the wheels turning for filmmaker Jay Wade Edwards. He had just watched the brilliant, but gut wrenching documentaries “Stevie” and “Capturing the Friedmans” at a film festival. At about the same time he had a song titled “Syphillis” by the all-girl band Catfight! in his head. Then he saw “Them!” at the drive-in and everything clicked. Edwards wanted to make a good independent movie that had a compelling story with characters you care about, but most of all it had to be fun to sit through. He knew that if he was going to write, produce, direct, edit and promote the project, he really needed to like the content. So Edwards decided to make a rock-and-roll movie and included all of his favorite things - 60’s girls in short skirts, garage rock and monsters. The result? A beach party rock-and-roll monster film.

“Stomp! Shout! Scream!” is a groovy movie. It has so many elements going on that just about any movie buff of the late 1960’s will enjoy it. Fans of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello beach movies like “Beach Blanket Bingo” (1965) will dig it, as will fans of the Herschell Gordon Lewis film “Blast-Off Girls” (1967) or the “man in gorilla suit” movies like “The Beast That Killed Women” (1966).

Set in 1966, “Stomp! Shout! Scream!” centers around the all-girl band The Violas breaking down and getting stuck in a southern beach town. Theodora, Jody and Carol have no money to get their car fixed, but the local mechanic Hector is willing to do it for free, if the girls provide a service for him. No, not that kind of service, this is a family film. He wants them to play at a party in front of his garage. But will there ever be a party? It just so happens Merriville Island is currently being terrorized by a monster. We soon learn about the legend behind this beast from biologist John Patterson. His suspicions are it’s the Skunk Ape, which is the Florida Everglades’ version of Big Foot. We follow along as John, Deputy Bob and the local police try to close down the beach and catch up with the vicious killer. John and Hector both fall for Theodora, but something hidden in her past keeps her from getting involved. What is her secret? What is the creature on the loose? Who will live and who will die? Does Deputy Bob like bologna? Will the girls ever get their car fixed and hit the road? For the answers to all these questions and more, you’ll just have to watch “Stomp! Shout! Scream!”

The most amazing thing about this film is also what seems to hurt it the most. In so many ways this seems like a movie actually made some time between the three films I mentioned earlier. While this is cool, it also moves a little slow for today’s standards. “That’s not slow,” Edwards protested when I mentioned I had a slight problem with the pacing. “That’s homage.” This is more than a homage piece though. It feels like it actually is an old drive-in movie and even features a carnival that seems straight out of David Friedman’s “She Freak” (1967). Edwards wanted the film to come off as a lost classic without intentionally making it campy.

“The whole concept was to make the film as if it was produced in 1966,” said Edwards, who watched every 50’s and 60’s rock movie he could get his hands on preparing for the film. “So a lot of effort was made to make it as period as possible.”

Most of the costumes are from thrift and vintage clothing stores around Atlanta. The girl’s stage dresses were custom made, but the outfits worn by John Patterson were actually cool duds out of Edwards’ closet.

The cinematography also has an extremely retro feel to it. I don’t mean it’s of the crackle and pop variety you see when a company releases an older movie without first cleaning it up. It looks quite well. It was shot in 35mm and everything is bright and vibrant in that feel good 60’s and 70’s kind of way. College professor Evan Lieberman of Emory University and Cleveland State was the film’s cinematographer.

“He has a great love of beach party films, monster movies and b-movies in general, so he really got what I was going for and made it look stunning,” Edwards said. “He also put together the great crew and taught the actresses to play their instruments or at least fake it.”

SHOUTING OUT!

The songs performed by the band in the movie were actually written and recorded by Catfight! The self proclaimed “Atlanta/Athens-based all-girl rock n’ roll explosion” is made up of Jennifer Leavey, Katy Graves and Susanne Gibboney. They sound like a fusion of 60’s girl bands with 70’s punk. Basically, think Ramones playing backup for The Ronettes and you get the picture.

“In those beach party flicks Annette always gets pissed at Frankie and sings a lonesome lament,” Edwards said. “The song ‘Syphillis’ was perfect for that moment in the movie in my mind, so I set out to write a script that got to that moment at about page 60. After about nine months of writing, I showed it to Catfight! They loved the script and offered to write original songs for the band in the movie to play.”

More than just sounding and looking the part, a lot of the acting here seems stuck in a time warp. Jonathan Michael Green was terrific as John Patterson. He was directly out of an older movie or television show all the way, playing the smart and attractive guy that always seems to have an answer for everything. He comes off as a cross between a young William Shatner and Rod Serling.

“He walked into the audition and nailed that character right off the bat,” Edwards said of Patterson. “I didn’t have to direct him on-set hardly at all. I gave him my VHS tape collection of 50’s sci-fi and we both especially liked Peter Graves in ‘It Conquered the World,’ so we modeled much of his performance from that film, even the stiff, upright running style.”

Claire Bronson as Theodora and Christopher Hines as Deputy Bob were my other two favorites. These two didn’t have the same effect as Green, who I swear Edwards used a time machine to find. They just seem to really make the roles they were playing their own. Bronson is an obvious modern-day girl dressed in 60’s clothes. She has a Melissa Joan Hart quality to her as she plays the Annette Funicello part. Hines on the other hand, I’m not quite sure where the hell Edwards got this guy from.

“Deputy Bob was completely under-written in the script,” Edwards said. “I wasn’t really sure who that character really was. I had Chris go though the script and think up lines that he could add into scenes where he was just standing around. He really made Deputy Bob who he is.”

STOMPING GROUND!

Edwards says “Stomp! Shout! Scream!” was shot for about $100,000 in 11 days with five in Atlanta and six in Florida. Another $60,000 has gone into pre/post-production and marketing costs. I was a bit surprised at how well it was done from a debut director, especially on that type of budget. Edwards had only done three short movies known as the Monster Trilogy and a documentary about South Carolina’s Hell Hole Swamp Festival before this. But he has also been working as a producer and editor of what I consider one of the greatest cartoons ever - “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.” That in itself should sell many on the movie. Before the current gig, he also worked on “Space Ghost Coast to Coast.” Perhaps the cartoon background would explain why I felt a bit of “Scooby Doo” and “Josie and the Pussycats” in the film, though Edwards says there aren’t any conscious references.

As for working with Meatwad, Master Shake and Frylock, Edwards says he’s been with the show since the pilot episode and may very well have the best job in the world. He has a lot of creative input into “Aqua Teen Hunger Force,” but it’s still the baby of Matt Maiellaro and Dave Willis, who write the scripts and supervise the voice recordings. They then hand things off to him and he puts it all in Final Cut Pro and makes a rough cut.

“I work mostly unsupervised, but they come in to fix what I’ve done and make the show better,” Edwards said. “All in all, it’s about 12 weeks to get one 12 minute episode done, but I do love it.”

Edwards has been working on editing “Aqua Teen Hunger Force - The Movie” for the past year and a half. He says it is nearly complete. “I can tell you that it’s amazingly funny and I’m not just being self-congratulatory,” Edwards said. “It’s easily the best thing I’ve ever worked on.”

SCREAMING FOR MORE!

Not surprisingly, Edwards cites directors Roger Corman, Quentin Tarantino and Russ Meyer as influences of his, as well as the early works of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson. Corman has always been seen as a king among b-movie directors and producers, Meyer was an exploitation pioneer, Rami and Jackson jump started their careers in the low-budget horror genre and Tarantino is a huge 70’s fanatic that now makes expensive homages to grind house features.

“It’s in these b-movies where most advancements in filmmaking and storytelling really happened and still happens,” Edwards said. “Studios have always been only interested in exploiting whatever the current money-making formula is. Smaller budget films where writers and directors can take chances have the really interesting stuff in them. I think people get tired of super polished Hollywood stuff. These type of films, especially the low-budget stuff from the 50’s and 60’s, offer an alternative.”

If you are in need of an alternative fix, “Stomp! Shout! Scream!” is currently available on DVD at Stomp!Shout!Scream! and Amazon.com. Edwards is also taking it to film festivals and selling DVDs out of the trunk of his car.

“That will take up most weekends for the next year, but I’m hoping to write the next movie in the ‘Skunk Ape Trilogy’ soon,” Edwards said. “Part two finds Theodora stuck in the mid-west in the early 70’s. This time she’s in a country band and it’s an animal-attacks/nature gone wild movie like ‘Day of the Animals,’ ‘Empire of the Ants,’ ‘Night of the Lepus,’ and ‘Kingdom of the Spiders.’ In part three, it’s the late 70’s and she’s in a punk band in Los Angeles. I haven’t figured out the genre there yet since I really hate slasher movies.”

I’ll be looking forward to them Jay. I’m sure I won’t be the only one.

- CCF, June 2006