If you’re a fan of old-school slashers, you owe it to yourself to check out Dylan Reynolds’ 4/20 Massacre when it arrives on VOD platforms on April 3rd. The film doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it’s not too goofy, either. It’s a lot of fun, and so was my chat with Reynolds about the movie and his career.
Give us a little bit of your background as a filmmaker.
I didn’t go to school for filmmaking. I went for marketing, actually, but I always wanted to work on movies. And soon after I graduated I started going on Craigslist to see what kinds of jobs were out there, and eventually I started working for a production company. But mostly mostly doing $350 a day PA or grip kind of stuff. Then I started a location sound business with another guy and did location sound work for a while. After that, I made my first movie, which was Chain Link. It won a couple film festivals. From there, I made another movie, and 4/20 Massacre is my fourth film.
Where did the idea for the world’s first “stoner slasher” come from?
Well, besides the obvious herbal inspirations, I was sitting around brainstorming movie ideas, and I knew I wanted to make a horror movie for my next film. At some point 4/20 Massacre, the title, came into my head first. I knew that was a good exploitation title.
I did a little research and found out that besides being a pothead holiday, there was a bunch of tragedies, from the birth of Hitler to the Columbine massacre, that occurred [on that day]. And then I found some stories related to illegal marijuana grow operations out in national parks and growers that set traps or shoot at hikers that wander across their plants. And the growers steal amongst each other. So at some point I was like, “Okay, marijuana slasher on 4/20,” and I just went from there.
Where did the idea that you were going to have five female leads as the core of the movie come from?
Well, initially I wrote it with the more traditional male / female kind of dynamic. It was actually the Donna character, the stoner chick, who was the first one I gender switched. I figured you had seen the stoner guy a billion times over. And I’ve known girls who like to smoke weed a lot too, so I thought it’d be something a little different, at least. As soon as I did that, it became interesting and then I was like, “Well, what if they’re all female?” And I didn’t really write them any differently, keeping in those slasher trope dynamics. But by having them all played by women, it gave it a different dynamic.
The killer’s costume is pretty unique. How’d the development of that go?
The costume was designed by James Gregory, who also played The Shape and was our stunt coordinator. Everything related to The Shape was James’ territory. We went back and forth on the design. Everything from the motorcycle guys from Mad Max: Fury Road to those creatures in The Village were referenced. So we went back and forth with design ideas and references and he put the suit together using different elements.
We wanted to do something kind of unique. Everything in the movie we tried to go, “Well, the obvious thing is a big guy in a mask, so what’s a different thing you can do with that?”So that’s what we did.
One of the things I liked about the film was that it starts out how you would expect, with the two goofy stoner types, and then it gets a little serious in the middle, but at the end it seemed to shift to more of a 70’s grindhouse aesthetic. Did you plan on these shifts in tone?
Yeah, in general. We describe it as an indie drama, and then a slasher shows up. The challenge with writing these things is, can you make a slasher movie and care about the characters? And also I took inspiration from the earlier proto-slashers from the late 70’s – early 80’s, where you actually did have more character development and dialogue scenes. More than when the genre evolved and got more cookie cutter and you had to have a death every five minutes. So, yeah, I tried to approach it like we were making a slasher movie in the original cycle. I wanted to take it seriously, as if we were making a movie during that time.
In a sense, it was designed to be more straightforward with the campiness. We knew that it was a campy horror film, but we also wanted to approach it with more of a straight face, rather than meta or self-referential. Which I think accommodates the tonal shifts that you’re talking about.
I expected from the preview for it to be more of a straight comedy.
The trailer was a little difficult to do. I think because of its campiness. But we do it earnestly. So when you take out of context moments and put it in a minute and a half trailer, it comes off more campy and goofy.
I thought that made for a nice surprise, though!
Well, hopefully that draws interest to it!
So tell us a little about the casting process. How’d you find the five leads?
It was a combination of doing casting calls, using friends who we’d worked with, and people they knew. Jamie Bernadette, who was the lead, I knew her from a bunch of indie movies, and I’ve met her at screenings before. She saw my last movie and really liked it, so she was one of the first people I approached when I put this project together. I knew with her scream queen status, she would be good for the kick-ass final girl. The stoner girl [Stacey Danger] was a friend of ours. My wife worked with her at their old bartending jobs. She came in to do a reading for it early on and I really liked her. She really shaped that character in really fun ways.
Everyone else was through the casting process. We just tried to put together the best dynamic that we think would work. I’m very happy with how the cast came together.
Stacey Danger was probably my favorite character because, having known my fair share of stoners, she actually portrayed it pretty realistically.
That was what we wanted to do with the project overall. Usually when you say stoner movie or stoner comedy, it’s this over the top, goofy kind of thing.
They always have too much energy!
Right! I wanted it to be more realistic. These aren’t slobby losers. They actually have wishes, dreams, and are creative and intelligent. It’s still the goofy stoner character a little bit, but between our discussions and Stacey’s approach to it, we tried to keep it more realistic. One of the characters I referred to was [Rory Cochrane’s] stoner character from Dazed and Confused. That’s a goofy character, too, but it’s also grounded. I guess the opposite example would be Half Baked.
You also have veteran character actor Jim Storm, who’s just wonderful as Ranger Rick.
Jim Storm was in my first film, and he played a grizzled junkyard owner. I really enjoyed working with him. He has a fantastic presence on camera. So I basically wrote Ranger Rick for him.
You edited the film yourself. Sometimes that’s a dangerous thing because you don’t have an objective, separate pair of eyes. How were you able to keep that distance from your material and make the cuts that you needed to make?
At the end of the day, I don’t know if I quite had that objectivity. You do lose it very quickly. All I can tell you is I’ve done it with my other projects, where I’ve been involved from the script to the final edit. Maybe that’s something I want to change eventually.
What’s ironic about this production is that I was almost done finishing the movie, and the cut was around 90 – 92 minutes. I’m like, “I think the movie’s done,” and it’s time for sound design and all that, and we had a break-in at our house. They made off with the electronics, including the hard drive. I had all the backup footage, and I had a backup drive from backing up editing sessions, but basically I had to go back to square one. Basically I had to go back and re-do the movie.
Do you think that helped in a way?
Yeah, I think so, because the final cut was shorter than the original. I saw it from a different perspective. It also made me tighten scenes a bit more and look at how things can be approached differently.
It was devastating, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy, but there’s something to be said for having to go back and redo it from square one. It’s like doing your second draft. So I think that forced me to have a little more objectivity.
The lesson is: backup all of your stuff!
What are some of your favorite stoner films?
Dazed and Confused is probably the best, since that’s more of a coming-of-age dramedy. It’s not a completely goofy stoner comedy. That said, I like the Cheech and Chong movies. Nice Dreams is my favorite. Those are the major ones.
Looking ahead, what’s next for you?
Obviously, getting this baby out into the world, and hopefully it does okay. Hopefully I make some money back, or the budget back, and I can flip it over to the next movie. If there’s enough interest, I definitely have ideas for 4/20 Massacre part two.
I want to take it in a different direction. My general idea is to do each one in a different subgenre of slasher movies. So this one was a backwoods slasher. The idea for part two is to make more of a giallo slasher/mystery kind of thing, taking place mostly at night and in the city. So we’ll see!
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