John Oak Dalton

"Not 'Hollywood Independent' - writer John Oak Dalton is the real Real Thing." --Cinema Minima."Very weird and unpopular b-movies and comics."--Blogalicious. "After watching the film I am left to wonder if he had some childhood trauma he is not telling us about."--IMDB user review. "Screenwriter John Oak Dalton wanted to be in Hollywood. Instead, he's in the rustic kitchen above the Germania General Store, stirring a pot of boiling hot dogs." --The Harrisburg Patriot-News.

Friday, December 31, 2021

Sunday, October 31, 2021

To Get A Jolt From My Electrodes

Happy Halloween, all. If you haven't picked a movie for tonight, you can find several I have worked on, on various platforms, for free.

THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE (writer/director): https://tubitv.com/movies/512259/the-girl-in-the-crawlspace?start=true

SCARECROW COUNTY (writer/director): https://www.amazon.com/Scarecrow-County-Iabou-Windimere/dp/B096VR4G62/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=scarecrow+county&qid=1633130749&sr=8-2

AMITYVILLE ISLAND (writer): https://tubitv.com/movies/566011/amityville-island?start=true

SHARK ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (writer): https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B08HMVS445/ref=atv_sr_def_c_unkc__24_1_4?sr=1-24&pageTypeIdSource=ASIN&pageTypeId=B08HMX1KGV&qid=1633130933

JURASSIC PREY (writer): https://tubitv.com/movies/525848/jurassic-prey?start=true

RAZORTEETH (writer): https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B08W8DHVHX/ref=atv_sr_def_c_unkc__8_1_8?sr=1-8&pageTypeIdSource=ASIN&pageTypeId=B08W8Q94W6&qid=1633130872

PETER ROTTENTAIL (writer): https://tubitv.com/movies/581566/peter-rottentail?start=true

Bonus movie I wrote if you don't like scary movies, CALAMITY JANE'S REVENGE: https://tubitv.com/movies/455264/calamity-jane-s-revenge?start=true

Enjoy!

For my own viewing, I didn't get to see a lot of new ones, but I did finally face my childhood fears and watch PHANTASM. When I was a teenager, my friend Eric Mayse (who would later, famously, be sculpted as this action figure), described the plot to be in such a way that I was too terrified to watch it. And that was a terrible oversight, as it is a crazy, dream-like film that would have appealed to my teenage sensibilities back in the 80s.

Along those lines I also watched CENSOR, which is about a British censor in the early 80s watching "video nasties" and recommending cuts, even as her personal life starts to unravel.

And even more along those lines, my old b-movie pal thought I would like BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW, and he was right, a movie set in the 80s about a young psychic being held prisoner in a weird institute.

So if you like my movies, any of these three are worth a look.

A movie I wrote, NOAH'S SHARK, is supposed to street next week, so I will report back when I see it, though I assume it is crazy. My good friends at Film Scene screened it a few weeks ago, but I unfortunately had car trouble on that very day and couldn't make it. I would have liked to have known how it played.

Have a good Halloween!

Sunday, August 15, 2021

Talking in Our Bed for a Week

This post first appeared in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP.

I was as surprised as anyone when my new film SCARECROW COUNTY hung on for four straight weeks in the Amazon Hot New Releases in Horror. Thanks to everyone who picked up a copy or has seen it on some other platform.

And I was extremely flattered by this interview and review of a film I wrote, SHARK ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, by the British website The Schlock Pit. I am appreciative that the people there give thoughtful attention to the b-movie world, and are good writers to boot.

They used just a few snippets of an interview about the writing of SHARK ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, so I thought I'd share the whole of what I wrote back when they asked a few questions via email, probably more than they wanted to know.

Mark had asked me to write all the scripts for a three-movie deal with Wild Eye that all already came with titles and basic descriptions; the caveat being is that he needed all three in six weeks. I'm to the point in my career where if I write something for somebody, there has to be a reason; and I have always been interested in director Thomas Carr, who once shot 6 b-westerns in 30 days (I wrote about it here), which I think not enough has been made of. So I thought this might be a neat challenge.

I had NEVER written this fast in my life; typically I can write a full script in three weeks, if I'm pushing it. I think I worked on these an average of 10 days each. They were written at a fever pitch and honestly I didn't remember a lot of detail until I saw the final product, and even then wasn't sure what I thought up and what Mark added.

Rewind to when I wrote my first movie for Mark, AMONG US, and he had a three-picture deal afterwards and asked me to write all three in a year, and I wasn't sure I could write three movies in one year! In that case I rewrote two and then wrote a third from scratch.

The first was PSYCHO CLOWN, which was turned into PETER ROTTENTAIL. I took John Polonia's handwritten script and rewrote it as I was typing it into a screenwriting program. Next I did a rewrite of RAZORTEETH, then my original script was DEMONS ON A DEAD END STREET which remains one of my favorite scripts but didn't get made.

PETER ROTTENTAIL has been rated one of the worst horror films of all time by Nerdly, and Fangoria did a whole podcast dedicated to it; as well as all the people who watch it on Easter every year. RAZORTEETH disappeared almost without notice; and frankly, which is worse? To me, at least, it's the latter.

So for this new trilogy of scripts: AMITYVILLE ISLAND was the easiest of the three for Wild Eye; I had written a movie for Mark a few years before called DOCTOR ZOMBIE that had not been made, but I noticed had a lot of similar beats as the Amityville premise. It was heavily influenced by Mark's love for ZOMBI 2 and TOMB OF THE BLIND DEAD with my own interest in LUST FOR FREEDOM thrown in. So I knocked that together quickly and it has been noted by reviewers that it has a little of everything, and all of it crazy, as I intended. I wrote another one whose title I will hold back as it hasn't come out yet, but it was full of time travel and dinosaurs and alternate timelines and I had a blast with it. My favorite script of the three. I hope it streets yet this year.

ALIENS VS SHARKS (the original title) was the hardest to get my mind around for some reason so I saved this to write last. But once I got going it started cooking, and again I don't exactly remember writing it. In fact I went back and read the outline before responding to this email. It came with a four-page outline with a lot of the beats, mostly the effects that were going to be made or on hand, and a little bit of story. I made the Jenni Russo character a therapist when she was a photographer in the original, because I wanted to include an alien abduction storyline; I think the other characters were pretty much as presented in the outline. I thought the treasure hunters were a neat touch in the original. I thought the movie was very ambitious, but especially the third act, which I thought was going to be too much to get on screen in a workable way, so I toned it down quite a bit. My ending, which featured a group of teens on the beach Frankie Avalon-style inadvertently re-starting the whole mess, was not used, and I think the whole part with Dave Fife was created so that Mark could work with Dave before he moved. I think I had somebody quoting a lot of Shakespeare which was cut out, understandably enough. Otherwise, by and large what I wrote is up there, for better or worse.

It's funny now, but I can see the seeds of my own later movie, THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE, in this script, including the therapist and the character obsessed with westerns. I always try to hang my stories on things I was interested in, and one in this case is a lawman who is basically on his last day on the job and isn't going to be a lawman any more, and what that means. Honestly, I had also buried a family cat in my back pasture and thought it might be a good set piece for a movie, and that's in there, too. Just all the flotsam and jetsam you pick up through life, interest in culture, interest in other people. Whether people see it or not, I try to put in elements that might resonate with someone besides aliens shooting rayguns or whatever. I think Jennie Russo and Titus Himmelberger are both enjoyable in this. I thought Titus gave his lines an especially eccentric read and it turned out like I hoped. Jeff Kirkendall is good as always. I try to write for the people I know Mark is going to use, but sometimes he changes it up or introduces somebody new, so it's always a nice surprise.

I think when you have a movie titled ALIENS VS SHARKS you are either in or out when you hear the title, and the rest doesn't matter. You are going in it to have a good time. So for this kind of movie, or all three of these movies, I like to try to make them funny, with a lot of nods to horror fandom, lots of energy and outlandish situations and characters. I'm not sure every viewer is in on the joke, but that's what I hope. I think the biggest thing to note is that I have never been involved with a movie that comes from cynicism; these kinds of movies are made by people that love the genre for people that love the genre. Horror fans, by and large, are the most loyal and devoted and will follow you where you want to go, whether you have the money to make the trip or not.

I badly want to see THE SUICIDE SQUAD for my upcoming birthday but I think I'm not going back to the movies quite yet. I will, however, watch the Mooreland Fair Parade, which leaves tomorrow from my large side yard (as agreed to when we bought this place) and shoots straight down the road a mile to the fairgrounds. It's always fun to tailgate with the grandkids and check out the fire trucks, floats, and horses from up close.

It seems like we took one step forward and two steps back; hope all is well with you and yours, and thanks for reading.

Saturday, July 10, 2021

Blackbird in the Barn

This post first appeared in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP.

My second film SCARECROW COUNTY hit DVD on Tuesday, and as I have always done when something I wrote or directed comes out, drove around looking for it. I am still working from home in a pretty rural area, so I didn't have any luck at local stores, but pictures from all around of my movie in WalMart started showing up, which was flattering to see.

And thank you to everyone who has purchased it from Amazon. It has cracked the Top 50 New Releases in Horror, which is great since some Godzilla movie and some movie about being quiet are perched at the very top.

My movie's producer Henrique Couto has a fun podcast called WEEKLY SPOOKY, and he hit me up last week to write about that long-ago ancient world before air conditioning called the 1980s, during which time I was alive and a teenager, so I knocked out a quick one in that grand old style of a bunch of counselors under siege by a nutcase at a ramshackle old summer camp. You can listen to it here.

I'm going to leave you with this curiosity; a custom action figure by MCWF Customs based on a movie I wrote called SHARK ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, which had the more introspective title SHARKS VS ALIENS when I wrote it. If you missed the trailer, check it out here.

Until next time, thanks for following along and let me know if you see my movie SCARECROW COUNTY in the wild.

Wednesday, June 30, 2021

Four Walls

This post first appeared in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP.

Timehop showed me this image just the other day; that brief, shining moment when I had four movies I'd written in Family Video at the same time; especially memorable to me in that writing HAUNTED HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW and JURASSIC PREY is what coaxed me back out of self-imposed exile, because I really wanted to write a movie called HAUNTED HOUSE ON SORORITY ROW and I really wanted to write a stop-animation rubber dinosaur movie. Working with friends Henrique Couto and Mark Polonia was also a bonus.

My latest for Mark is DUNE WORLD, which I wrote in quarantine and is already out. One of my favorite things is when I write a script that gets turned into a movie that gets turned into a tee shirt, and it's happened more often than one might think.

It is obviously a mockbuster, but it's more Philip K. Dick and Samuel R. Delany than Frank Herbert, with a coda from the Strugatsky Brothers. I finally had a chance to see it, and was happy to see director Mark Polonia really leaned into the psychedelic sci-fi elements. Who knows what the world will think of this one. The trailer is here.

It is leaking out there that I wrote a movie for Henrique Couto called JESSE JAMES UNCHAINED and after a few COVID-related fits and starts over the last year or so it finally wrapped in Ohio. I worked as a Production Assistant two days on set--one very cold, one very hot--and it was neat seeing it come to life. I got to be there to see scenes with John Hambrick and Rachael Redolfi, who appeared in both of my films, and work with some people who crewed mine as well, Eric Widing and Buck Marinara. I had forgotten it is more boring to PA than to direct but it was fun to hang around anyway.
There's more coming. I believe three more I have written over the last few years are in post or completed. One is going to be announced pretty quickly, I think, and is for an established b-movie director I had not written for prior and always wanted to. Could be a big year for releases.

As the doors slowly open up again everywhere, I was happy to see my old friends at Film Scene back at it. I hope to return to Iowa City one day with another film but until then will happily rep this shirt they sent me.

The Midnight Hour live horror podcast invited me to be interviewed on their show which I only agreed to when I learned it started at 10 p.m. and not midnight because I'm in bed by then. They said they have a lot of questions for me, which actually worries me a bit. You can check it out here July 25.

After a year of driving the highways and byways hunting Little Free Libraries to stave off the isolation, somebody went and put one in my town, just a half mile away. Check it out if you are ever around.

Our summers on the Back Five are full of projects and weekend trips. Hope you are enjoying yours, and thanks for sticking with me. More soon.

Wednesday, March 10, 2021

Somebody Holds the Key

Timehop and Facebook Memories are showing me production photos of both THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE and SCARECROW COUNTY, which I shot in the same week one year apart in 2018 and 2019 (which happened to be spring break from school). It's like looking at vacation photos, you remember all the fun parts and forget the parts where your feet hurt and you were hungry or tired or you were crabby with someone.

But tonight at 11 p.m. EST I am really going to have to pry out some more memories, as I was asked to join Film Scene's Late Shift at the Grindhouse for a virtual screening of SCARECROW COUNTY with running commentary from me, right here on Facebook Live. SCARECROW COUNTY debuted at Film Scene in Iowa City in 2019, so I am so glad to be asked to be a part of their programming in some fashion.

I did live commentary with them for THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE about a year ago, back when I thought I was going to be working from home for a few weeks, now coming up on a year March 13th. I thought it was a fun idea to patch us over to when we could be there in person again, and here we are doing another one. But my number came up in the vaccine lottery in Indiana, so it won't be long now before the mind turns to new things.

Just grabbed some new pullets Monday to add to the flock, so spring is in the air, and hopefully more good things. I hope all of you are well and thanks for reading.

Thursday, February 04, 2021

Crossroads Seem to Come and Go

This blog post originally appeared, in a slightly different form, in my e-newsletter I WAS BIGFOOT'S SHEMP.

It was a year ago today that my debut feature THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE hit WalMart and Family Video nationwide. It was such a memorable day that has obviously been eclipsed by the smoldering dumpster fire that was just on the horizon.

Just the day before that, I had been driving back from Chicago for my day job and had decided to visit Family Videos along the way to introduce myself and ask if they were carrying the movie. The people there were to a person very kind and excited for me. I'm sorry to see Family Video go. Even at the time, it seemed as if they were closing faster than they could stock my movie. But it was always fun to find movies I wrote there--I once had four I had written in Family Video all at once--and it was especially a thrill to see one I directed there.

Since THE GIRL IN THE CRAWLSPACE had already hit streaming, I didn't think it popping up at WalMart would be that big a deal, but my social media went crazy that day with people from all over the country sharing photos that they had purchased it somewhere. I'll never forget that.

It didn't hurt that my friend Henrique Couto, who DPd my movie, had his own effort OUIJA ROOM street the very same day at WalMart, with some of the same people in both. Check it out, if you haven't.

And if you didn't catch mine yet, people are now sending me pictures of it at Dollar Tree, or if a dollar is too steep, you can see it for free on Amazon Prime and Tubi. I'm glad it's still out there and still getting seen and reviewed--no less than Film Threat, a magazine I have read for many years, gave it a look recently.

I think I used to recommend a book every month in my newsletter, and I don't know if I am exactly starting back up again, but I've got one for January I just read: it's Zero Zone by Scott O'Connor, which is the kind of book I like; it takes place in 70s LA, and is all about art and movies and sort of a doomsday cult.

I've been reading and also giving books away, after seeing an article about Little Free Libraries. I found a map of them online, and now on weekends my wife and I have been driving all around Indiana and parts of Ohio seeking them out and leaving books.

I've lost track, but I'm guessing we've visited more than 50; we had one long day we hit 15 and then the last time we went driving we hit 16. It's something to go out and do safely that might help somebody else, and helps fight cabin fever--we were both sent home from work for a couple of weeks almost a year ago, and are still hanging in from home.

Hope you all are safe and well, and thanks for reading along. Talk soon.