haineshisway
Senior HTF Member
Hi all. Don't know if this will be of any interest, but back in 1981 I wrote and directed a movie called The Creature Wasn't Nice, which featured Cindy Williams, Leslie Nielsen, Gerrit Graham, Patrick Macnee, and - me. 
The film only played three previews under that title - it was then taken by its producers and horribly recut and mangled into something that was retitled Spaceship, then Naked Space. It was terribly embarrassing to me personally because that version really had nothing to do with what we really made. It had horrible rock music inserted, stock footage from monster movies, a computer voice so bad (a hip disc jockey type, with dialogue written by a moron) that I wanted to vomit on the ground (our computer voice was Oscar-winner Broderick Crawford), and scenes just thrown in the air and then placed randomly in the movie, where they frequently make not a lick of sense. The original cut was completely linear and literally a musical comedy version of Alien and other monster on the spaceship movies. While the recut does have its fans, mostly people who came of age when it played frequently on cable, I've mostly been maligned and castigated for the travesty because, well, my name is on the film, not theirs.
But I had the foresight to have our 35mm answer print of the original version transferred to 3/4" video. While I'd intended to do more work on the film (and was not allowed to) at least I had that. I've thought about putting it out over the years, but didn't. But I've had so many requests from folks to see what we originally intended, that I thought - maybe now is the time. So, I went to my friend, the wonderful editor Marshall Harvey (he's edited many of Joe Dante's films) and I told him what I'd always wished I could have done - he watched it and their version, could not believe what they'd done to our little movie, and he went to work. We added music, sound effects, made trims, and by the end of it we came out with something that actually made me pretty happy.
As you know, doing all this work is not cheap, plus the DVD authoring and all the extras aren't either. We're doing commentary tracks, there's a trailer, a 24-bit version of the soundtrack and songs, stills, a four page color booklet and lots of other stuff. To that end, we're doing a little Indiegogo campaign to help off-set some of those costs. It's live now and we're already at 26% funded in just two-and-a-half hours! We've made a lot of fun perks, including signed DVDs, soundtrack packages, book packages, memorabilia from the film, associate producer credit in the booklet, executive producer credit in the booklet - well, if you have a moment and are so inclined just click on this handy-dandy link and there's a video to watch and you can read all about it and see if any of the perks are for you. Thanks for reading!
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/...Q5xQrDlexH1nid2dUC71j3sDVQttFq4i7cqIFs7fsa8#/
The film only played three previews under that title - it was then taken by its producers and horribly recut and mangled into something that was retitled Spaceship, then Naked Space. It was terribly embarrassing to me personally because that version really had nothing to do with what we really made. It had horrible rock music inserted, stock footage from monster movies, a computer voice so bad (a hip disc jockey type, with dialogue written by a moron) that I wanted to vomit on the ground (our computer voice was Oscar-winner Broderick Crawford), and scenes just thrown in the air and then placed randomly in the movie, where they frequently make not a lick of sense. The original cut was completely linear and literally a musical comedy version of Alien and other monster on the spaceship movies. While the recut does have its fans, mostly people who came of age when it played frequently on cable, I've mostly been maligned and castigated for the travesty because, well, my name is on the film, not theirs.But I had the foresight to have our 35mm answer print of the original version transferred to 3/4" video. While I'd intended to do more work on the film (and was not allowed to) at least I had that. I've thought about putting it out over the years, but didn't. But I've had so many requests from folks to see what we originally intended, that I thought - maybe now is the time. So, I went to my friend, the wonderful editor Marshall Harvey (he's edited many of Joe Dante's films) and I told him what I'd always wished I could have done - he watched it and their version, could not believe what they'd done to our little movie, and he went to work. We added music, sound effects, made trims, and by the end of it we came out with something that actually made me pretty happy.
As you know, doing all this work is not cheap, plus the DVD authoring and all the extras aren't either. We're doing commentary tracks, there's a trailer, a 24-bit version of the soundtrack and songs, stills, a four page color booklet and lots of other stuff. To that end, we're doing a little Indiegogo campaign to help off-set some of those costs. It's live now and we're already at 26% funded in just two-and-a-half hours! We've made a lot of fun perks, including signed DVDs, soundtrack packages, book packages, memorabilia from the film, associate producer credit in the booklet, executive producer credit in the booklet - well, if you have a moment and are so inclined just click on this handy-dandy link and there's a video to watch and you can read all about it and see if any of the perks are for you. Thanks for reading!
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/...Q5xQrDlexH1nid2dUC71j3sDVQttFq4i7cqIFs7fsa8#/
