Every filmmaker has had the moment in time when they have seen somebody else’s work and were inspired. For me, it was in 1985, when I saw a movie called, “The Galaxy Invader.” I was amazed at the entertainment value considering the very low budget. It proved that it’s not the bankroll, but the creativity and ambition of the filmmaker that counts. It’s very fair to say that “The Galaxy Invader,” and more appropriately, the late Don Dohler, were inspirations for myself.

Don Dohler and his brand of low budget horror and science fiction movies came along at the right time to reach a large group of people, thanks in part to the creation of the video store. Prior to his filmmaking, he would create “Cinemagic,” a magazine dedicated to the science fiction realm and it proved successful in not only sales but also in making connections in the movie world. He would get a cast and crew together in 1979 for the movie, “The Alien Factor.” It paved the way, as he grew an underground following. Fiend, Nightbeast, Galaxy Invader, and Blood Massacre followed and the legend of Don Dohler was set in stone. He became the King of the no budget, quality movie.

GM: Your father was known to many as the King of the no budget movie. Was he content in that role or was he positioning himself for investors and a budget to make a film with a bankroll behind it?

Well, I was very young. The only real memory that I have of the film was when they would get filming really late at night, and I remember one night, just begging my dad to let my sister and I come down and just watch him filming. They had turned part of the basement into the Sheriff’s office and so, I remember sitting on the stairs in my pajamas and just watching this whole spectacle in front of me and thinking, “what is all of this,” and really having no idea.

GM: In your opinion, what was the biggest obstacle for your dad creating a no budget movie in the late 70s and early 80s considering that there were no computer programs to make editing easier and no Internet to spread the word.

Well…that’s a tough question. Money is obvious when you think of the cost of film and just how expensive if you were to make a mistake and had to retake something. Dealing with pyrotechnics on some of the films and there was so much expense on everything…there was very little leeway for mistakes. The cost of processing…renting the flatbed editor…doing all that himself and then there was the time just to do it. Family was really important to him and I think that is why he included my sister and I and my mother to some extent, to combine what he wanted to do with being with his family. It’s tough to put the time in to make a feature film and to have time with the family as well. So, time and money are the two things that immediately come to mind.

I don’t think so, no. I think that he just pulled those characters out of the air. I don’t think that they were based on anyone in particular.

Don Leifert in particular…we socialized quite a bit with him. We’d have pool parties on the weekends and he would come over. He was really funny. He’d crack me and my sister up all of the time. We looked forward to him coming over and hanging out on the weekends.

From my experiences as a kid, it was very fun to have all of these interesting characters coming in and out of the house. It wasn’t your typical upbringing to be sure.

GM: Did your father do the make up and costumes for Galaxy Invader and your father’s other films or did he bring people in for it?

He would definitely rely on the contacts that he has made. He got to the point where he could do basic stuff himself. If somebody got slashed on their arm, he could do that wound…the basic wound…basic gash kind of thing. But yeah, he brought people in for make up. If he could find somebody that specialized in something and was willing to work under the set up…for a percentage or whatever…just wanted to work on the films. He really preferred bringing people in who knew what they were doing. He had enough to deal with without worrying about those things.

No catalog…always individual. Each costume had a different history but it may have been that somebody had made a mask or a costume with some other purpose in mind and that fell through and they spoke with my dad and he said, “well I’m making this film…” and I think that’s how it happened with The Galaxy Invader. John Cosentino that made the big thing on the stilts in The Alien Factor and I’m pretty sure that he was just interested in doing a less cumbersome full body costume, just because it was so difficult to maneuver around in that thing in Alien Factor.

I think that he made that costume on his own without any purpose other than just to do it. it just so happened that he had this made and my dad asked if he could use it and he said, sure, and sometimes it just worked out that way.

GM: Your father went on to direct Blood Massacre a horror film that was similar to the Last House on the Left. Your father focuses primarily on Sci-Fi. Was it his intention to switch to horror films since they were more associated with the no budget or low budget movies and typically more successful than no budget science fiction?

Well, yes. It was a combination of that. It was more of a hassle to deal with science fiction because of the special effects, and with all the success of the slasher films like Friday the 13^th, he was influenced by distributors were telling him to do in order to have a marketable film. His first love was science fiction but he was willing to bend things to what he was being told what needed to be done. I think before he died, he had said if he had made more films, he would stick with sci-fi because that is what he really loved.

The thing to remember about my dad is that he went through different phases. I got used to him saying that he would never do it again, and then the next year, he’d say, “well, I’m going to do it.” He had a pretty classic artist temperament in a lot of ways. He was going through phases and he didn’t really realize it but he’d just go through them. I learned to just take it with a grain of salt that he would never do something again.

Well, I think to some degree. You mentioned Blood Massacre and that was such a fiasco for him. He originally shot that movie on video. He realized that he could do video and do it cheaply and video rentals had started to become more of a common thing and so he had this idea to shoot Blood Massacre on video and do a direct to video deal. He thought he could do this cheaply and make a deal. I won’t have a lot of investors to pay back. He did it on video and showed it to some distributors and one of the people said that they really liked it and asked how much it would cost to shoot it on film and he gave them a number and they agreed to it and shot it on film.

He had gotten most of it completed and they insisted that he ship out what he had done, but it wasn’t completely done. They said that they wanted to show it to some investors to show the progress and he sent it out to them and never heard from them again. As he liked to say, he made Blood Massacre twice and has nothing to show for it. At that point, he just decided to get out of it and I think too that he would, from time to time, think that he was missing out on day to day aspects of life and it seemed like it was a time that he would like to enjoy just hanging out with his wife and family and enjoying life.

GM: Was Harvesters another shot at Blood Massacre? The two films are very similar, following very similar plots.

I didn’t have any hand in it other than being interviewed. I think that John did a good job. I am impressed by the many aspects of my dad’s life that he was able to work into the film and to make it cohesive and entertaining and I think all in all that it is a very solid portrait of the various accomplishments of my father. Not just the filmmaking but the work with underground cartooning, and so I think that it’s nice that it shows everything that he did and it shows what it’s like to make a low budget film…the day to day hassles and problems.

Well, Fiend is my favorite and of course it’s very hard for me to be objective, but I’m definitely influenced by the fact that it was the most enjoyable filmmaking experience for me once I started working with him and helping him out in film. He did Fiend after the first attempt at Nightbeast that completely ended in disarray with everyone unhappy and the whole thing just blew up. It was a much larger cast and crew that he worked with and it just spiraled out of control until my dad felt that he wanted to work with a much smaller cast and crew and a far less ambitious one. So he came up with Fiend and ninety percent is shot in our house. He directed, Richard Geiwitz was on camera, I helped out with some sound and my dad did some of the sound recording. Mark Supensky did make up. It was a really small crew and because it was shot at our house, he was able to set up lighting the way he wanted to and really plodding out the scenes. It was probably the most satisfying experience to him as a creative person and he involved me in it and bounced ideas off of me.

All in all, it was a really enjoyable experience working with my dad on that film and it was the happiest that I have ever seen my dad working on a film. He had a lot of contacts in Hollywood…former Cinemagic contributors that went on to do big things like Ben Burtt, the director of sound effects for Star Wars, Rick Baker that did make up on King Kong and has gone on to do other things, J.J. Abrams who did music for Nightbeast and obviously has moved on to create Lost and did Mission Impossible.

A lot of people wonder why he didn’t go out to Hollywood and do something out there and I think that the answer is that he preferred to stay in Baltimore and do things on his terms. Rather than go out there and be a small piece of a big Hollywood film, he wanted to stay here and do things his way and on his terms and I think that Fiend is an example of that…doing what he wanted to do.

I think that it’s his least successful film. I think that it’s the one that you see mentioned the least on line, but he was most happy with it. It was his most personal film.

It’s interesting. I think a lot about my dad and why he did what he did. It’s so unusual. I just keep coming back to the fact that he was just an incredibly driven person. I have gone back and forth and have tried to imagine myself doing something like that. He quit a full time job that he was doing well. He was a payroll manager for a string of sandwich shops and he decided to make a movie. Me, personally, couldn’t imagine doing that. At the same time, I also admire him for doing it.

A lot of us are afraid to do what we really want to do in life and he did it and you can’t really argue with someone devoting their life to something that they are passionate about and that makes them happy.

(Interviewer’s Note: I want to thank Greg Dohler for the time. This was a special interview for both Scared Stiff Reviews and myself. I have been a Don Dohler fan for quite some time, and I completely admire his work and his ambition as a filmmaker. I hope that you have enjoyed this candid interview and hope that if you haven’t seen any of Don Dohler’s work that you give it a chance.)