Cory Udler summons the Incest Death Squad
Jeb (Greg Johnson) and Amber (Carmela Wiese) in a family moment.
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Cory Udler recently finished shooting a horror feature called Incest Death Squad, and as wildly trashy as that sounds, he sums up his first outing as a writer-director rather ambitiously. The Columbus-based filmmaker hopes folks see "some shades of Deliverance and some shades of Buffalo Bill from Silence Of The Lambs all in one scene" in the film, which leads viewers to a rural area where, suffice to say, an unconventional family commit murders in the name of God. Currently in the post-production phase, Incest Death Squad boasts some enviable B-movie credibility: Udler sent the script to Troma Entertainment president Lloyd Kaufman, who eventually took a small part as a raving newspaper editor who demands more stories about dead hookers. The film features many Madison-based actors and music from such local bands as Helliphant and Buried Future, both of whom are set to play the Incest Death Squad wrap party Sunday at The Frequency. Udler recently spoke with Decider about the film's message and a weird effort to derail the project.
Decider: One of your cast members is Greg Johnson, who's been in a lot of Broom Street Theater plays.
Cory Udler: What was going on was initially the character hadn't been cast yet, and Tom Lodewyck—if people saw Tom, they'd know exactly who he was—he goes, "I got the perfect guy for this." He just sent me a picture of Greg and I said, "If the guy can speak English, he's in." I think coming from Broom Street was huge because those guys are pretty fearless down there. They'll do anything for the sake of art, for lack of a better term. For a film, we had a lot of theater people, but they really embraced the film aspect of doing this. We shot everywhere, but the one place we didn't shoot was Madison. We shot in Baraboo, up by Spring Green, Evansville, out by Chicago. The movie was a rural-setting kind of movie, so we had to go out of town for that stuff.
D: Can you say a bit more about what's actually going on in the movie?
CU: It's about an incestuous brother and sister who kill tourists in the name of God. I wrote it—it's gotta be six years ago now. I sent it to Lloyd about a year and a half ago. I was thinking, "Maybe he'll, if nothing else, get a kick out of it, whatever." But he actually called me on the phone and said, "Cory, I love this script. It's fantastic. If I had a million dollars to make any movie I wanted to make, I would, but we're heavy on Poultrygeist right now, and just keep at it." I met Lloyd probably about six months later, and he kinda looked amused and said, "I called you?" He recalled it, and he goes, "If you ever do the movie, just let me know. I'll come and I'll be in it. No charge." I wasn't thinking of ever directing anything. I've written some stuff for Full Moon and for Ted V. Mikels, who did The Corpse Grinders, but I never thought of directing anything. But I just got a wild hair up my ass and said, "Let's do it." Lloyd was kind of the catalyst to make the movie. His final words to me after we shot were, "Make sure that I'm the first one to see this." We're basically making a Troma movie without working under the Troma umbrella.
D: Didn't your shooting get interrupted by some Christian group?
CU: One guy just basically said, "Your movie's a stinkpot of filth," and I'm like, "Where the hell do you even know anything about the movie?" The only thing I can think of is we did have a casting call, and there were a few people that showed up, which was so weird that people would show up to try out for a movie called Incest Death Squad and then inform me, "Well, I'm kind of a born-again Christian and I don't like swearing and things." I'm like, "Well, that's fantastic. More power to you for doing what you do, but I don't think this is a really good fit for you." It was really weird. We lost a couple of crew people and locations over the whole thing. I don't know what the hell is going on, but it came out that, oh, the director made this up. I'd have to be a complete buffoon to make something like that up. We got some serious backlash, not only from these Christian people, whoever they are, but also some Madison folks, who were pissed off, and rightfully so, thinking, "Oh, these people are breeding some sort of hate." How much damage can I do to Christianity, for God's sake, even if I did make it up? The last thing I heard from the guy was, "You'll be hearing from us, and we'll make sure this movie doesn't get made." I'm like, "Well, okay, We're wrapped with shooting. I don't know what kind of damage you're going to do now."
D: Well, right at the end of the trailer, you hear someone say, "Lift your tail for Jesus." How is that supposed to come across?
CU: When I wrote it, it was around the time that Bush had sent us into this ridiculous war, and listening to Bush talk, you get the sense that he had a pipeline with God. Jeez, I've tried, and the guy won't talk to me for some reason. I guess I'm on hold or something. Everything that Bush was doing was in the name of God. I would think that Christian groups probably don't like a lot of the content in the film, but my point is that people that are using God and religion as a tool for their own personal gain, that was really what it was. The two main characters in the movie are Jeb and Amber, and that's what they do. This is their family business. They think they're saving God the work by killing these people who are coming up here to pollute their lakes and litter all over their land and ruin their heaven on earth. Trying to weave that into a movie with copious amounts of blood and boobs and bad words was a little bit of a challenge, but I don't think now that the movie's done, that that's lost. Maybe it sounds a little pretentious to say, "It's called Incest Death Squad, but boy, there's a real point underneath!"
