Matthew McPhee (Director of Hackjob, Housegeist, Devil’s Night) Interveiws Filmmaker Dakota Bailey, Director of Satan’s Coming for You
Fresh from campaigning his first film, Scumbags: A Day in the Life of a Drug Dealer, underground filmmaker Dakota Bailey jumped back into the director’s chair to bring to life his sophomoric effort, a gritty throwback to the coarse video nasties of the 1980s.
I got the opportunity to pick Bailey’s brain, as he talks growing as a filmmaker, shredding guitars, and the video nasties of yesteryear.
Matthew McPhee: How did you come up with the concept for Satan’s Coming For You?
Dakota Bailey: Matt [Marshall] and I were coming hot off the heels of Scumbags in October 2014 and we’d just found out that it was going to get to play at the Oriental Theatre in Denver, and then I said “Well we need to get on with the next one.”
My mindset after the completion of Scumbags was that Matt and I needed to make a more extreme movie. I already had the idea in my mind about a movie of two crazy druggie white trash guys that have an acid trip and see Satan and exhume a corpse from a cemetery. Kind of a horror movie that was a throwback to the video nasties of the 80’s. We started filming in late March of 2015 (I would have started sooner, promoting Scumbags is why there was such a delay). As time went on, I just kept adding little parts to it, shooting sporadically, and the film was completed in late April 2015, and I was lucky enough to get Denver death metal band Cattleist to let me use two of their songs, and thanks to them! This film was shot way faster then Scumbags was too. Shooting for Scumbags lasted March to October 2014.
MM: Satan’s Coming For You is not your typical story, even for a short film. How has it fared with the general public so far?
DB: Well here’s the thing: we didn’t release it yet. When one of my films is done, I show it to friends and family and get opinions on it. Satan is already booked to play at the Oriental Theatre in September, but I contacted Horror Society just to see what’d happen, and I was not expecting them to reply, but they did, and they did a little feature on it and put the film up on their page. So I guess you can say it’s been streamed.
But anyway back to the question. The response has been excellent! Underground and extreme horror fans embraced it. I knew horror fans would because I’m influenced by the 80s extreme horror scene, not modern horror like Paranormal Activity-esque films, or what’s popular, and you can tell when you see the film. So I think that originality may be why horror movie fans gravitate to it. It was a big deal for Horror Society to do the feature* on it.
However, it did cause a little controversy and upset some people, but we like that because these days there aren’t any films like Cannibal Holocaust that get banned, cause controversy, and become notorious. It seems to me that horror films these days have to be pretty extreme to make people upset because people have become desensitized by violence in horror films. So we wanted to push the boundaries and it worked. But at the end of the day, Satan’s Coming for You is 100 per cent fiction. No animals or people were hurt in it.
MM: Short films are a great and (sometimes) inexpensive way to be experimental, but do you see yourself bringing stories like these into feature length run times?
DB: Yes, I do. Matt and I are supposed to star in a movie by a first time director pretty soon, and then after that we are making a full-length feature. The reason why I made two short films as opposed to full length is because no one really knows who I am and people’s attention spans are usually short when it comes to unknown actors or directors, so I’d figured that if our films were only 20 minutes long, people would be more likely to give us a shot, as opposed to a two hour feature. The only drawback is that there is not really as much a market for short films as there is full lengths.
MM: You seem to blend crime elements with horror into your films. Are there any other genres you’d like to explore?
DB: I’d like to say the only styles I’m gonna stick with are the styles you’ve seen with Scumbags or Satan, but you never know. Who knows, maybe I will do a comedy ten years from now.
MM: What mistakes have you learned from after making your first short, Scumbags: A Day in the Life of a Drug Dealer, that you’ve employed, or were able to avoid, when making Satan’s Coming For You?
DB: I learned that you to just cut straight to the point. In Scumbags, I’ll admit some scenes carry on a bit, but in Satan, I avoided that mistake. Case in point would be at the start of Satan, when the viewer is only about two and a half minutes into the film, the most violent and brutal scene of the movie occurs. That’s why it’s upsetting, you just start watching the film and BAM, out of nowhere, the most violent part of the film comes. Matt and I kind of knew stuff that we weren’t going to do before we shot this movie, like not rush a shot and not put so much filler in this film.
For this film I used a digital camcorder instead of an iPhone (like on Scumbags) and I think it turned out great. The camera quality looks nasty and grittier.
MM: Scumbags: A Day in the Life of a Drug Dealer premiered at the Oriental Theatre in Denver, is currently streaming on Denver Open Media and has recently been released on DVD through Amazon.** What plans do you have for handling the release and distribution of Satan’s Coming For You?
DB: Well, it’s not really having an “official premiere” until September, but fuck it, we are going to release it on DVD before then. I’m 90 per cent sure that Satan is gonna play at some film festivals and we may try to get it to play at some different theatres as well, but I’m not 100 per cent sure. But we will be having a more epic release than Scumbags did.
MM: What do you feel are some of the advantages and disadvantages when both directing and acting simultaneously?
DB: I feel like it’s a 100 per cent advantage. I’m the one that writes the film and I’m the one with the vision of what I want the film to turn out like, and I feel that if I’m acting in it, I’m in full control, and what better person than me – the creator of the film – to act in it and do what I really want, instead of trying to get another actor to try to bring the vision I have to the screen. Plus, I’ve always been fascinated by directors who star in their films, like Jose Mojica Marins and Jim Van Bebber. I like the approach of being the director and getting to be on screen, instead of being the guy you never get to see on screen.
MM: Your characters Johnny and Alistar both shred some riffs in Scumbags and Satan’s Coming For You. Would you consider this your trademark, in the tradition of Hitchcock’s walk-on cameos or Sam Raimi’s Oldsmobile Delta 88 appearances?
DB: Yeah, I think it may be. In Scumbags, I had a seven-string guitar and a whammy pedal, and in Satan, I had a regular six string with only two strings on it, and I was just bending the strings and sliding up and down the guitar neck. What started out as a filler scene has become a signature! Ha ha!
MM: Your films incorporate strong violence and some brutal images. Is there anything too taboo for a Dakota Bailey film?
DB: No. When I make a movie and I have a scene in mind and the resources to pull it off, then I will. I’m not afraid to do anything.
MM: What are your views on censorship and artistic expression?
DB: I think there should be no censorship and I think artistic expression should not be restrained either.
MM: What can we expect to see in the future from Dakota Bailey?
DB: You’ll see full length features and short films that will be bigger and badder than Scumbags or Satan. I won’t change my style any, but the films will get better as I have more experience.
Additional Info:
Matthew Mcphee is an independent Canadian filmmaker. He has directed several short films including ”Hack Job”, ”Housegeist”, ”Devil’s Night” ‘, ”Playmate” among others. He is currently in pre production of his full length film ”Forgotten Nature”.
Dakota Bailey is a Denver underground filmmaker who is the writer, director & star of ”Satan’s Coming for You”, he also has another short film entitled ”SCUMBAGS: A Day in the Life of a Drug Dealer”.
