STACK #126 Apr 2016

EXTRAS

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02/ Nick Damici is great as the blind senior citizen turned action man... He is. Not only was he playing a blind person, Nick is much younger than the character, and he’s in great shape. I hope I look as good at 70 as Nick’s character does [laughs]. I think that was very important because it helps in the action scenes; an older actor could not have achieved what Nick did. He is also a writer, so he comes with great ideas and details. He’s always questioning the script, but in a good way. English is not my language, so it was great to have him looking at lines and saying, ‘this doesn’t sound right, let’s try something else’. He was very creative and had a lot of input. If it’s not the language you speak every day, it’s always going to be very difficult. There are so many little details and things that can go unnoticed. I was lucky that I had Nick always on the set, and I had a great editor [Aaron Crozier] who is also an assistant director on other films, and he was very supportive and let me know if the action was not good and we needed to do things again. I don’t think you can make a film in a different language if you don’t have a good editor who knows that language well. 04/ Late Phases features a practical werewolf, not a digital one, in keeping with the ‘80s horror movie feel. That was a decision the producers made; I think at some stage they regretted it because it’s more expensive, takes a lot more time to do, and is difficult and complicated. It’s not like you can change the VFX over and over in post-production – you have to see it now and in the moment, and if it doesn’t look good, it’s not going to be good. It was difficult but if they had wanted to make it CGI, I would probably have passed on the film. I wanted to do a monster movie with a real monster! European horror from the rest of the world? I can’t explain what it is. It is something different to everything else. When I grew up in Spain, that old school of horror was over, and there was a gap where no one wanted to approach horror, and then fantastic films started being made again. To me, the thing that the best horror films have is that they are difficult to predict, and I think that European horror films have that. 03/ How difficult was it making your first English-language film? 05/ Spain has produced some great horror films; what do you think differentiates

Spanish director Adrián García Bogliano has contributed to The ABCs of Death and also made the fantastically creepy Here Comes the Devil . His new film, LATE PHASES, is an ‘80s-style horror set in a retirement community being terrorised by a werewolf, and it falls to a blindVietnam vet (Nick Damici) to stop the creature’s bloody rampage. Scott Hocking spoke with him. BAD WOLF

Late Phases is available on April 22

01/ A werewolf in a retirement community is an idea we’ve not seen before. Is that what attracted you to the script, or had you always wanted to make a werewolf movie? ADRIAN GARCIA BOGLIANO: I never thought I would make a werewolf movie – I’m not a big fan of them, but there are some that I like. I received the script and I thought it had some amazing ideas. The fact that it takes place in a retirement community was one of the main factors I did the film. I like the idea that it’s more of a drama – a relationship between a father and a son is one of the main elements of the film. I always like films I can somehow relate to, rather than a crazy horror film. To me

[ Late Phases ] is about somebody who is going to die, and preparing for that situation and what he is leaving behind. It’s a powerful idea. The film actually starts with the guy looking at headstones – he knows he is going to die.

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