Interview: Dick Dale

Dick Dale.

The premise for Ribspreader is a riot.

The hard to stomach, laugh-out-loud, blood-soaked gorefest follows ex-tobacco icon Bryan (Tommy Darwin) who’s transformed into the violent and grotesque Ribspreader – a masked crusader on a mission to hunt down smokers and violently extinguishing them.

Without going too deep, Ribspreader is an exploration of addiction and tobacco use told in the most insane way possible. As an example, Bryan is taunted by an evil cigarette named Sigmund to do these heinous crimes which includes turning his victims’ tar stained lungs into a smoking jacket.

Ribspreader is the creation of Adelaide-based writer, director, festival coordinator and musician, Dick Dale.

In 1997 Dale established the Trasharama a Go Go touring film festival, Australia’s largest short film program of trash, horror and comedy short films which were a major inspiration for Ribspreader.

Ribspreader is about to hit the local festival circuit with screenings set for Adelaide Film Festival and MonsterFest.

Tommy Darwin as Ribspreader in Ribspreader.

“I put Tommy Darwin through the absolute wringer on this film. He went to hell and back both on screen and off screen I made him a producer on this film due to the incredible amount of effort he put into it.”

Interview by Matthew Eeles

The film is gaining momentum on the festival circuit with upcoming screenings at Adelaide Film Festival and MonsterFest. Having the film screening at Adelaide Film Festival in its hometown must be a real thrill for you.
I am absolutely stoked. I’m very happy, and it means a lot to me because as much as I’m an outlaw independent filmmaker it’s good to be given a chance in your own home where you live. And I thank Matt Kesting* for that, among others. But Matt in particular. When I used to screen Trashorama at the Mercury Cinema quite a few years ago, I used to just hang out at the bar during the festival when the movies were playing. Matt Kesting was the program manager at The Mercury, so I used to hang out with him at the bar and drink beer and talk movies. I think Matt knows my worth. Ribspreader delivers everything I promised it would deliver. It’s not everyone’s taste, but for fans of Trashorama it delivers.

Ribspreader has taken seven years to complete. It must be a relief to finally have the finished project out there in the world.
It is. It really is. It feels like it has taken twenty years. [Laughs]. From conception through to completion. I started filming scenes before I’d completed the script. I knew I needed to make a trailer to raise money and to get some interest in the film. Laurence Harvey from The Human Centipede 2 shot his scene during that earlier shoot. He came onboard through my connections with MonsterFest. He was in Australia at the time, and I’d already met Laurence previously when I hosted an interview for The Human Centipede 2. As soon as I heard he was in town I thought, I gotta get Laurence in my movie! I arranged to get Laurence in the film and his yellow raincoat, as you may have noticed. The late, great Spencer P. Jones was coming to town so I also included him in the film. He was also a friend of mine. So I shot scenes with those two to include them in the trailer. It worked. In 2019 I launched a Kickstarter campaign off the back of that trailer which raised twenty five thousand dollars.

You’ve been working in horror and bad-taste comedy since the early 90s. What draws you to this particular genre of cinema?
I’ve always loved it. It truly is over-the-top comedy with strong elements of horror. I don’t expect anyone to be scared. There’s certainly some grotesque moments in Ribspreader, that’s for sure, but to me those moments are hilarious. I think it’s funny. But maybe I’m a bit weird. I used to love reading Tales of the Crypt, Creepy magazine, Eerie magazine, and a lot of horror comics. They are like storyboards too, actually. A lot of the things that I remember reading in those comics, I still visualise as storyboards today. So I grew up as a horror comic fan, and I used to have a fantastic secondhand comic shop around the corner from me. I managed to get a lot of these comics for around twenty cents each. Whatever I could afford as a child I bought. I lived in the little country town of Rockhampton in Central Queensland. We only had two channels, ABC and Channel Seven. So nothing was really on there that I was interested in watching other than the occasional Hammer Horror film. My imagination ran wild reading those comics and magazines. I’ve always been a horror fan. I love trying to freak people out. I also love music, and I’ve played in bands. Music is such a big part of my life, just as much as comedy and horror are. When I was about fifteen years old someone played me the Sex Pistols, and that was it. I was hooked on punk and got right into punk rock music and eventually formed my own bands. I’m not playing now. I’ve retired from music. I’m just happy to be making films instead of nearly killing myself on a stage for people’s entertainment. [Laughs]. Making movies is a lot less painful. Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles and Brain Dead are also very, very influential for me.

You mentioned playing in bands. I was very excited to see Fred Negro’s cameo in Ribspreader. Fred is having a bit of a renaissance at the moment.
I have played in bands supporting Fred. I’ve loved Fred’s band I Spit on Your Gravy since I was a teenager. I first heard about Fred and I Spit on Your Gravy in a Melbourne fanzine. I was like, What’s this band? They’re crazy! [Laughs]. I tracked them down and the rest is history. I’ve known Fred for quite a few years now. I was actually properly introduced to Fred through Andrew Leovold who has just made the Fred Negro documentary, Pub: The Movie. When I started making the film I knew I had to have Fred in it. I knew he’d make a great cop. Fred knows a lot about cops. [Laughs]. He has been arrested many times. [Laughs]. Fred did his audition in a full cop uniform that I had. When Fred came to Adelaide for one of his I Spit On Your Gravy gigs, we teed it up. That was a great adventure. I don’t want to give too much away, but one of Fred’s scenes involves him in a helicopter hunting down Ribspreader. Fred was in a real South Australian police uniform, but it was one of the older ones. We were in Port Adelaide and we’re shooting a fake crime scene with blood all over the footpath and up the walls. There’s crime scene tape and syringes laying around. That’s where Fred was going to be doing his scene. A real police car drove by and we all hid behind our car because we didn’t want Fred to get arrested for impersonating a police officer. He’s a pretty good impersonator. [Laughs].

A scene from Ribspreader.

Ribspreader has quite a firm anti-smoking message embedded within it. Why did you want to explore this as a theme?
Even thought the theme itself is very prominent throughout the film, I don’t think I really set out to explore anti-smoking intentionally. Smoking is a dirty habit. I’m on the vape myself, which I wish I didn’t do. The idea for this film came to me about ten years ago. I think it was more about the idea of an anti-smoking billboard taunting an ex tobacco icon and telling him to go around making a smoking jacket out of smoker’s lungs. That story really appealed to me. But yeah, I don’t like smoking, but it just sort of accidentally happened that the anti-smoking message in the film is so strong.

Explain the real life conspiracy theory behind The Hand of Death cult who are featured in the film.
Ottis Toole was one of America’s worst serial killers. Henry Lee Lucas was also one of the worst. They made a movie about Henry called Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer which is one of my favourite movies. I absolutely recommend it to anyone. When they caught Henry and they interviewed him, he claimed to be part of this Hand of Death cult which is connected to serial killers all around the world. Henry claimed that he delivered the poison to Jim Jones at the People’s Temple. So it’s claimed that a lot of serial killers and mass murders are all connected. Whether it’s true or not, I don’t know, but I like the idea of it and I put it in my film. [Laughs].

There’s this group of actors who play the cult and they all drive this amazing fleet of cars. Were they part of a local car club in Adelaide?
They are, yes. And they’re amazing in the film. They add a real quality to those Hand of Death scenes. There are a bunch of cars and Hot Rods in the film, and motorbikes. We shot those scenes down on the docks of Port Adelaide. I just put a call out and lots of people come down to be a part of it. I had friends who have got Hot Rods so they all came down. I told them to tell their other friends to come down as well, so we had more than enough. They looked amazing.

The Hand of Death cult leader is played by Chantal Contouri who is no stranger to Ozploitation. Tell us about working with Chantal.
I’m friends with Matthew Bate from Closer Productions, and Matthew writes for Aftertaste on ABC. I saw Chantal on Aftertaste playing someone’s mother, so I asked Matthew to put me in contact with her. I had originally asked other actors like John Jarratt and Nicholas Hope, but they couldn’t get here for one reason or another, or it just wasn’t feasible because it would have cost too much money. I realised that we’ve got our own Ozploitation icon right here in Adelaide in Chantal. Chantal was Australia’s first vampire in a feature film. She was Australia’s first serial killer on television. She was the Panty Hose Strangler in Number 96. They’re my two favourite roles that she’s played. I called Matthew and I said, “Matthew, is there any chance I can get Chantal for my film?” Contact was arranged and I had a very nervous coffee meeting with her which turned into a really long coffee meeting. She was fantastic and made me feel so at ease. We went on to shoot my most epic scene in the entire film which features about ten Hot Rods and eight motorbikes, Chantelle, and five cameras on the docks of Port Adelaide. The giant muscle man in that scene, and Chantal’s bodyguard in the film, is Wayne Mattei who played Sergeant Slaughter in the American television show Young Rock.

Ribspreader.

I’m a huge fan of practical effects over CGI which seems to be getting worse in more mainstream cinema. Why were you so determined to use practical effects when CGI would have been the easier and cheaper option.
I love practical effects, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. CGI to me is just lazy. Some movies you watch with a lot of CGI and it feels like you’re watching a giant cartoon. I don’t like superhero movies. They’re just giant cartoons. Maybe Deadpool, or something like that I’ll watch. I’m an eighties child and I was brought up on eighties horror with practical effects, so they’re the kind of films I want to make. Movies like Re-Animated and Hellraiser which are all practical effects. Even the Alien movies are another example of the kind of effects I want in my movies. I love that stuff so I had to have it in my film. Now in saying that, there is CGI in Ribspreader, but it’s only to enhance what we were doing, or the fact that we couldn’t do practical effects for a particular scene.

The miniatures in this film are awesome by the way. They looked unbelievably cool.
Durand Greig and Leith Greig, two absolute legends, made those. They both worked on Danger 5 doing helicopter scenes. Durand spent a week building that giant miniature set of that car park featured in the film. I don’t want to give too much away about that scene, but anyone who knows me will know it always ends in tears. [Laughs]. Durand is currently in Sydney working on the new Mad Max movie. He’s a genius. Both Durand and Leith will be down for the Adelaide screening.

There’s a great shot in the film where a man is set on fire. Describe shooting that scene on such a tight budget.
There was a heat wave coming up, so we had to get onto that scene quick because there would’ve been a complete fire ban. We took it very, very seriously. I had never shot anything like that before. We had stunt legend Dean Bennett who has worked on films like The Thin Red Line and Ned Kelly. We got him just before he retired. He had one of his apprentices working with him. We rehearsed that scene over and over and over again. I wanted that wide shot, so it was all about timing. We only had one take to get it right. I couldn’t afford to do anything more than once. I wanted Tommy Darwin to hit the middle of the screen just at the right time that the burning homeless person comes running out on flames, screaming, running down the street on fire. Off screen everyone was standing by with fire extinguishers and put him out. I am so proud of that scene and how it turned out. It was perfect.

It’s one of the best shots in the film.
Thank you. Tommy is so skinny and dry looking. I’m amazed he didn’t go up in flames himself. [Laughs]. I might be an outlaw filmmaker at the moment, but I don’t always want to be. I’d like to be on the books, and I’d love to get some funding for a movie at some stage. Filmmaking is really hard work, so when you pull off a scene like this, on such a tight budget, it’s a real thrill. I’d love to have money to be able to pay people, so we can get things done a lot quicker and make something just as crazy again.

I’d love to know more about Tommy Darwin.
I put Tommy Darwin through the absolute wringer on this film. He went to hell and back both on screen and off screen. [Laughs]. Tommy has been right beside me making this film. I made him a producer on this film due to the incredible amount of effort he put into it. There’s a scene in the film where all these punk rockers are going crazy during a gig, stage diving and crowd surfing. We had to build a stage and Tommy helped build that stage right after he had surgery on his neck. He was on Oxycontin, and that stuff is meant to make you lethargic and tired. But not Tommy Darwin. It turned him into a superhero. [Laughs]. He’s running around carrying pallets and helping to build this stage. It was massive work. So Tommy did stuff like that. He always throws himself into everything he does. You’ll see that in the movie. He’s running around screaming like a maniac. He has so much energy and he’s no spring chicken. Tommy put everything he into Ribspreader, both on and off the screen.

Can you describe the punk rock cinema community?
I’ve never known another community like it. A lot of them are a rowdy bunch. I encourage people to have a few drinks at the bar. Screenings of these kinds of films are never a formal affair. It’s encouraged that everyone has a laugh at what’s happening on the screen. I expect that’s what the premier of this film is going to be like in Adelaide.

Ribspreader will screen at the Adelaide Film Festival on Saturday, 22 October at 10:30pm. Details here.

Ribspreader will also screen nationally via MonsterFest which runs 24 November until 11 December. Details here.

*Matt Kesting is the CEO and Creative Director of the Adelaide Film Festival.