Berm-Tech Industries and its staff of cubicle-dwelling vampires are once again open for business. Just out on DVD this week is NETHERBEAST INCORPORATED, the quirky horror/comedy feature debut of the Phoenix-based filmmaking team of Dean and Brian Ronalds.
Based on the brothers’ short film THE NETHERBEAST OF BERM-TECH INDUSTRIES, INC., produced in 2004 and a favorite on the festival circuit, the full-length adaptation (scripted, like the short, by Bruce Dellis) stars Darrell Hammond as the company boss who kills an employee with a stake through the heart, forgetting he’s a vampire himself. Steve Burns, Jason (THE TRIPPER) Mewes and Dave (POSTAL) Foley play three of the undead employees, while Amy Davidson and Judd Nelson are two human outsiders who discover the company secret; Robert Wagner also appears (in a flashback) as President James Garfield. The movie enjoyed a limited theatrical run in the Phoenix area last fall ahead of its disc debut from Well Go USA, with audio commentary and other special features.
“The story was born out of the corporate office environment that Brian and I and Bruce Dellis all come from,” says Dean Ronalds, NETHERBEAST’s editor and director. (Brian produced the film and appears on screen in a small role.) “Bruce works for the electric company, and Brian and I were with the phone company. We came from cubicles and offices, so the movie’s setting is relevant for us. The boss that Darrell Hammond plays is like all the bosses we’ve known, put together into one. He’s a nut! And on top of that, he’s a vampire. We loved the twist.”
While the film’s comedic elements represent something of a departure for the brothers, they have always been drawn to the horror genre. “We’ve seen just about every horror movie ever made,” Brian says. “The NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET movies are huge, we love them. FRIDAY THE 13TH, too.”
Their very first project was WHEN DARK FALLS, a short Dean directed in which Brian played a mass murderer who killed his wife. But the film didn’t satisfy them on a basic visceral level, so in 2004 they made SPLIT, which made up for those deficiencies. “We were so disappointed with the lack of blood in WHEN DARK FALLS that we wanted to make something where we could get really bloody and pull the guts out of people,” Brian says. “So we did. SPLIT was really gory.”
NETHERBEAST INCORPORATED also has its grisly moments—there’s a lot of blood-drinking, as well as finger-eating, stab wounds and a head on a plate—but the film goes more for laughs than scares. “It blends horror with comedy and the office environment,” he says. “It was the perfect project to be our first full-length feature film.”
Screenwriter Dellis agrees with the director’s assessment. “NETHERBEAST has both laughs and scares, but I would say it’s funnier than it is frightening. The template for the movie’s tone was something like AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, where the scary stuff was legitimately scary and the funny stuff was hilarious. Even a movie like SHAUN OF THE DEAD, which I love, falls more into the comedic realm than the horror realm. NETHERBEAST is like that.”
While the original five-minute version ended with the surprise punchline that everybody in the office is a vampire, the subsequent NETHERBEAST feature essentially begins with that revelation. Dellis explains: “That kind of punchline would have taken too long to set up in the full-length movie. It would open up too many questions. So when I wrote the new script, I basically made the short film into the new pre-title sequence. We establish right away that there’s this whole office full of the undead, and then we go on to explain how they got there and what they’re doing. That leads us to the confrontation they have with someone from the outside. So it was really a matter of coming up with a whole original story based on the premise of the short. The boss is a vampire now, too—and he’s got the vampire’s version of Alzheimer’s.”
NETHERBEAST INCORPORATED also manages to serve up a love story, as lead office worker Otto Granberry (Burns) falls for the new human employee, Pearl (Davidson). “I approached the character without factoring in his vampirism,” says Burns, best known as the original host of the children’s TV program BLUE’S CLUES. “For me, it’s a love story first and foremost, where I just happen to be a vampire. It’s kind of like a Romeo and Juliet thing, where she’s from the wrong team. Meanwhile, Otto is trying very hard to work on his career. He’s earnestly attempting to advance himself within the company. He’s a responsible employee who just happens to be a 108-year-old vampire. And then, basically, the job goes to hell.
“We all played our parts straight,” Burns adds. “It was obvious from the first time I read the script that it would never work unless we all played it that way.”
That’s not to say Burns doesn’t find the film amusing. “It’s hysterically funny,” he remarks. “It treats gore with intelligence. Much of the humor is derived from how seriously we all take our lives, even though we happen to be vampires. This movie is not your run-of-the-mill, in-your-face, bloodsucking-vampire B-film. When Dave Foley and Darrell Hammond signed on, it was a no-brainer for me to join in, too. I’ve been a huge fan of Dave’s for a long time. Plus, Bruce Dellis is such a good writer. I was flattered to know that someone who writes so well actually had me in mind to play the part of Otto. Halfway through the NETHERBEAST shoot, I took Bruce out for a bad sushi dinner and encouraged him to keep writing parts for me.”
NETHERBEAST was Burns’ first opportunity to work with the Ronalds brothers, whom the actor calls “wildly enthusiastic people. It’s refreshing to see. They have a long-term goal to develop a Phoenix film scene. That’s pretty ambitious, and I have a lot of respect for that. I would be happy to work with them again.”
Phoenix’s resident insect population would not be as enthused. According to Burns, the NETHERBEAST set was frequently beset by crickets. “We were on this big old warehouse set and we had to chase the crickets away constantly with loud, distracting air horns before every shot,” he recalls. “It worked until the crickets developed a tolerance to the horns. Then I felt strongly that we should introduce scorpions into the building, to kill the crickets. But then we would have had to introduce rattlesnakes to kill the scorpions, and alligators to kill the rattlesnakes. Eventually it would have become a very different horror movie.”
The Ronalds brothers had never worked with such an experienced and well-known cast before, and just thinking about it makes Dean perk up. “It was delightful,” he says. “Every second on the set was surreal. I remember there was a scene where Dave Foley, Jason Mewes, Steve Burns and Darrell Hammond were all in it. Brian and I looked at each other in amazement, thinking, ‘We’re in heaven. Is this real?’ It was a great set. There were no problems, we all gelled together and had an awesome time.”
“We were always on our toes,” Brian adds. “We had to be willing to compromise, but we also had to stick to our guns occasionally. Dean had a lot of responsibilities to juggle. It was tricky, shooting the movie in 18 days. The craziest stuff with the actors came when we had to juggle scenes, swapping stuff around on the shooting schedule.”
The two young filmmakers emerged from the NETHERBEAST experience unscathed and ready for greater challenges. “We got a chance to finally make a feature-length movie, to become men!” Brian laughs. “Most moviegoers don’t even know that shorts exist. People go to the movies to see feature films, not shorts.”
Adds Dean, “Every step of the way, making NETHERBEAST was exciting. Any day that we have the opportunity to do this for a living, instead of doing this and working for the telephone company or anyone else, is a good day. When we were making the shorts, we had full-time jobs during the day and were filmmakers at night and on weekends. When you have families, as we do, that becomes quite an arduous task. Fortunately, our executive producer, Kevin Berman, made the financing possible for us to take some time off from our day jobs and concentrate on making movies.”
The duo has no plans to relocate from Phoenix to Hollywood. “We will never move,” Dean states flatly. “We will always make movies here. There are soundstages here—we shot NETHERBEAST at Arizona Film Studios. We don’t like the way Hollywood treats young filmmakers outside that community. Anyone new who tries to do something is treated like, ‘Sure, kid, you and everyone else on the block. Next!’ ”
“Besides, we’ve found success in Phoenix,” Brian says. “We’re able to do what we’ve dreamed about doing, right here. Filmmaking is still kind of a novelty in this city, and that makes things easier.”
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