STACK Magazine April 2015 Issue 126

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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.
03/ How difficult was it making your first
English-language film?
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!
05/ Spain has produced some great horror
films; what do you think differentiates
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.
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.
APRIL 2015 JB Hi-Fi
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
visit EXTRAS