Profile: Douglas McKeown

Douglas McKeown: The Deadly Spawn’s Misanthropic Master. By Brian Kirst

Douglas McKeown, the writer and director of the beloved creature classic The Deadly Spawn, has always admired the authentic outsider. His inspirations include such misunderstood, significant artists as Charles Laughton(The Hunchback of Notre Dame) and James Whale(Bride of Frankenstein). “They were emotional survivors,” McKeown notes. “Laughton’s depth of pain was amazing.”

Indeed these anti-traditionalist values eventually conflicted with other parties working on the space monster oddity that became The Deadly Spawn. “They insisted on nudity and eventually got Elissa Neil into a see through top. I protested. I said instead lets add curse words, let’s rip the mother’s face off!”

Filming male lead Tom DeFranco (whom McKeown admirably notes did all of his own stunts on the climatic roof top scenes) in his underwear also produced onset grumbling.

“One of the camera men mumbled, the girls are going to love this,” McKeown recalls.

But McKeown, indeed, wanted to work some feminine perspective in the film. “Jean Tafler as Ellen was very feminist. I had her moving in on the guy – not the other way around. I also love that the audience is so sad when she is killed off. I truly wanted to comment on the randomness of the universe. How the world is not a safe place.”

Just as filming The Deadly Spawn was often hazardous to McKeown’s continuity. Upon doing the second day of shooting for the film’s legendarily funny vegetarian massacre, McKeown discovered that one of the principals had completely changed her hairstyle.

Still, McKeown, who grew up with “a mom who loved horror films and a dad who didn’t mind them”, worked all the disadvantages to the best of his ability and created a film whose loyal, vocal appreciators surprise him to this day. ‘It’s even been chronicled in Nightmare U.S.A. – the definitive book on low budget, grind house filmmaking,” he states.

But McKeown, who spent years terrorizing his New Jersey neighborhood by dressing up and prowling the woods as elaborate monsters as a child, truly allows his love for fantasy and the sanctity of youth to shine throughout the picture. This is the beacon that carries the audience along – even despite the fact that McKeown believes the final product relies “too much on effects” and not the “tightened pacing” he had originally envisioned. This emotionality ultimately seems to be McKeown’s true strength as an artist – allowing every horror geek viewing The Deadly Spawn to feel at home and like, somewhere in the universe, they finally have an understanding friend.