Hi everyone!
Welcome to Reign of Terror 2019! 31 straight days of horror movie reviews and interviews with yours truly, our team of critics, and a host of other podcasts. That’s pretty much it. I’m sure since we’ve pre-loaded this episode weeks ago that nothing has happened to me, or that I’ve been kidnapped or anything horrible like that.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to say how excited I am to feature today’s review of “Rock, Paper, Scissors” or “Rock, Paper, Dead” depending on your region. This film features a veritable who’s who of horror films from the mid-70s through the late 80s. I’m talking directed by Tom Holland. No, not that one, the director of “Child’s Play” (1986). I’m talking co-written by Victor Miller, the brainchild behind the “Friday the 13th" franchise. I’m talking featuring John Dugan, or Grandpa from “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” (1974), in an equally chilling role. And while I don’t get to speak with any of them, I do get to speak with Kerry G. Fleming, co-writer of “Rock, Paper, Scissors”.
We’ll have a bit of a format switch for today. Instead of the usual trailer segments, we’re going to run the whole trailer audio for “Rock, Paper, Scissors” prior to the review. Throughout the review, I’ll be interspersing segments from our interview where appropriate. And if you want to hear the full interview, it will be available in two parts in October as another pair of Patreon exclusives. Unless someone has accidentally made all our Patreon media free while I’m stuck in the aforementioned hypothetical kidnapping situation.
We will be publishing weekly exclusive content going forward, which you can only get by signing up with a monthly donation at patreon.com/onemoviepunch at any level. You’ll also be invited to request one movie review from yours truly, as long as we haven’t reviewed it yet, with just a few exceptions. All support goes to pay our expenses and to help us grow with our audience.
Here’s just a taste of what you’ll be missing:
KERRY: “If you feel natural doing that, then I think you look natural on the screen. We’ll see. Out of all the reviews, no one’s hammered me, so..."
JOSEPH: *laughs* “I guess that’s a certain kind of praise.”
KERRY: “If everybody said, ‘Oh my God, I loved everything, but who the hell is that knucklehead in there? What was he doing in there?’ I’d probably have second thoughts, then.”
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Here we go!
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<< ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS TRAILER >>
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Today’s movie is “Rock Paper Scissors”, the slasher horror film directed by Tom Holland and written for the screen by Kerry Fleming and Victor Miller. Peter Harris (Luke MacFarlane) was locked away by Doyle Dechert (Michael Madsen) for a string of brutal serial killings earning him the title “The Doll Maker”. Ten years later, he’s released after completing treatment at an asylum, and now he’s being stalked by Doyle and Ashley Grant (Jennifer Titus), the sister of one of Harris’ victims.
No spoilers.
In an age where Hollywood is diving deep back into the well of classic horror franchises, anyone who loves horror films should be excited by a project that includes Victor Miller, Tom Holland, and John Dugan. This year, we saw the debut of another “Child’s Play” reboot, the announcement of a new “Friday the 13th" reboot despite the legal quagmire involving the franchise, and another “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” film in 2020. So, when I heard about this film, I was excited.
The absolute strength of “Rock, Paper, Scissors” is its story. Anything that can pull Victor Miller out from his retirement is definitely worth considering. I can’t imagine being lucky enough to work with Victor, so I had to ask Kerry about the process.
KERRY: “It was a really interesting and unique process. Many years ago, I was introduced to Mr. Miller through a mutual friend. And, at first, he started off as my writing coach.
KERRY: “It was about... now, probably about five years ago, where I came up with the original concept for what was to become ‘Rock, Paper, Dead’, and we just started out with throwing ideas back and forth at each other through e-mails. There was no commitment from Victor because he had been officially retired from all writing and working, actually. Then one day we had a moment where we connected some of the scenes together that we thought would be really interesting to include in a screenplay and Victor said that he was in.”
Their combined passion for the project shows. I love hearing about their shared commitment. The writing process can either be frustrating or fun, and in this case, it seems like it was mostly fun. The beautiful part about the writing process is that the sky is the limit. Then imagine finding out Tom Holland wants to be involved.
KERRY: “Through our main producer, Amy Williams. She had a friend who connected her to Vince Gaustini, our special effects guy. She might have known him prior to that, but I don’t think so. And Vince read the screenplay, and then he sent it to Tom Holland’s son, and said, ‘You need to get this to your dad!’ And then Tom read it, and next thing, Victor and I know, Tom’s calling us up wanting to have a script session to talk character arcs, character development, and he had some really good ideas of some of the minor character arcs behind the story. That was a lot of fun. You get to have a Skype session with a legend like Tom, and just knowing that everything he’s telling you is based on his experience, and his success.”
A finished script linked with two horror film legends seems like a perfect sales pitch to take around the industry, which eventually leads to funding. However, in the case of “Rock, Paper, Scissors”, this is where things begin to go wrong.
The film industry can be divided into tiers based upon the amount of money which can be invested into a project by a studio. Top-tier studios like Marvel Studios can invest up to $500 million dollars into a single feature. Below that colossal level, there’s the standard mainstream features, anywhere between $10 million and $50 million. Below that, your independent films between $1 million and $10 million, and so on, all the way down to the most guerilla cinema, which we’ll be covering later in the month with our interview episode on “Blood on the Reel” (Episode #612).
“Rock, Paper, Scissors” is in that nebulous area of low-budget cinema that has surprisingly high production values, the kind where you can afford to capture high quality video. However, independent, lower-budget cinema is a process, usually heavily constrained by funding. If you want high production values, other choices have to be made, as Kerry found out early on in the process.
KERRY: “But from the finished script product to even the shooting script, had changed because we kept getting feedback from our line producer and our first assistant director that for scheduling purposes, some things weren’t working, and they couldn’t get locations that were in the original script, so they wanted to get that changed, and Victor and I actually wrote through all those changes.”
KERRY: “We got to the end, but even Tom would tell you to this day if we shot the script that we wrote, it probably would have done even better in terms of user reviews and critics’ reviews. It was on another level. So we were somewhat hamstrung by the budget and availability of certain locations in and around Los Angeles.”
KERRY: “Even to this day, there are a couple of edits that I don’t like. I have to ignore it, or look in the other direction. And it was worse. We actually got to clean some of it up well after post, right before they went to the distributor, and we were able to fix some of it. But I think if we had those extended scenes in there, that would have laid out more of the opening, and it would have given the audience much more understanding of where we were at.”
Sometimes constraints can work to the favor of independent cinema, but that wasn’t the case with “Rock, Paper, Scissors”. The film opens very well, with the FBI raiding Harris’ basement, just after a restrained woman has been killed. And then within five minutes, there’s a trial, confinement to an asylum, and ten years later, he’s being released. Key scenes to build character development were cut completely, which derails the remaining picture from being anything more than another low-budget slasher flick. And as often happens with lower-budget cinema, when higher-budget cinema comes calling, unless you’re contractually obligated, you have to take those opportunities.
KERRY: “But also there was some special effects visuals that we had to pull at the very end, because they couldn’t get them to look right. We had a money crunch, and our special effects genius had to go to South America for another shoot, and we just couldn’t wait for him to come back, so we had to make some really difficult choices in cutting some of those out.
Of course, there are still many strengths to this film. Luke MacFarlane is good as Harris, bringing his classical training to a difficult role on an underfunded project. The cuts to Harris’ character development hamstring the audience’s ability to appreciate his deceptively complex performance. MacFarlane’s performance is almost too much for the character without the additional development. The same cuts also affect the performance of Jennifer Titus as Ashley Grant, who seeks revenge against Harris. However, what Titus brings to the role seemed to fill in the gaps of Ashley’s story, which is why she is probably my favorite character in the film.
Between these two poles, the rest of the cast is a mixed bag. Michael Madsen is underutilized as Doyle Dechert, who originally busted Harris, and is now harassing him after his release looking for his own revenge. Tatum O’Neal is pretty lackluster in her role as Harris’ doctor, Evelyn Bauer. The best supporting performance, by far, was John Dugan, who plays the abusive Uncle Charles that helped make Harris’ the way he is.
KERRY: “I will also say that John Dugan blew everybody away. He was friends with Victor, and he was a relative unknown because prior to that, most people just knew him as Grandpa from the original ‘Texas Chain Saw Massacre’. But he also was classically trained, and I knew that it was a role that he could easily handle. In the beginning, Tom Holland had some doubts, but after speaking with him on the phone, his doubts dissipated. And first day on the set, when they said, ‘Roll!’, what John gave us as Uncle Charles was incredible. People were stopping what they were doing and watching him in the monitor in total disbelief that this nice, Irish guy who you want to go and have a beer with, and he turned into a monster.”
So, does this mean “Rock, Paper, Scissors” is a bad film? I don’t think so. I think we have to be forgiving of budget constraints, particularly when it comes to this tier of cinema. However, I do think that it is a film that has unrealized potential. Ideally, I think the film should be reshot with a sufficient budget to match the story. I can’t see how it doesn’t turn a major profit when given the correct funding, if not domestically, then definitely overseas. However, we’re also seeing the beginnings of the great content contraction, so perhaps that’s thinking too much. But that doesn’t mean there might not be hope.
KERRY: ”We have extended scenes that were supposed to be added to the US English version Blu-Ray, and Lionsgate... uhh... forgot.”
JOSEPH: *laughs*
KERRY: “I mean, they literally said, ‘Oh, we forgot to do that. We’re sorry.’"
JOSEPH: “Geez.”
KERRY: “But now I can tell you that Japan will have those extended scenes as part of their DVD.”
JOSEPH: “That would be nice to see.”
KERRY: “And I’ve talked to Tom since, and we’ve discussed the possibility down the line of making a director’s cut which would put the extended scenes back in.”
“Rock Paper Scissors” is a slasher brought to you by a few horror legends, and the lucky writer who got to work with them. The film definitely has its problems, but those problems are outweighed by its quite visible potential. Lower-budget horror fans, especially slasher films, should definitely take a look at this film. Just be ready for a few rough spots.
Rotten Tomatoes: NR
Metacritic: NR
One Movie Punch: 5.4/10
“Rock Paper Scissors” (2017) is rated Rand is currently playing on VOD.
