Fangoria, Birth.Movies.Death sever ties following damning exposé of parent company Cinestate

Over the weekend, those who closely follow horror movies experienced a disappointing rehash of the headiest days of #MeToo, as an article in The Daily Beast laid out how Dallas-based production company Cinestate—which also owns a trio of websites, Fangoria, Birth.Movies.Death, and Rebeller—had enabled and failed to report a predatory producer named Adam Donaghey in its ranks. Dubbed by writer Marlow Stern to be “the Harvey Weinstein of indie film,” anonymous sources confirmed that Donaghey’s reputation as a sexual harasser who blatantly flouted safety and labor regulations on Texas film sets was well known, even before he was arrested on suspicion of sexual assault of a minor in mid-April.

That reputation is supported by audio recorded by a woman named Cristen Leah Haynes, who’s worked on a number of indie films shot around the region. In 2014, when Haynes was 21 years old, she was working on a film called Occupy Texas with Donaghey, and surreptitiously recorded him using his influence as a line producer to pressure her into sex. She tells The Daily Beast that she first played the audio for a group of colleagues in December 2016, and since then it’s circulated throughout the Texas film community—going so far as to reach Cinestate head Dallas Sonnier and producer Amanda Presmyk. In the article, Sonnier and Presmyk claim they’ve never heard the audio. But 10 other sources say they’ve approached the duo about Donaghey, and, as one filmmaker puts it, “they completely swept it under the rug.”

Regardless, the company continued to employ Donaghey as a line producer on its films Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich, The Standoff At Sparrow Creek, Satanic Panic, and VFW—all but one of which were released under the “Fangoria Presents” banner—long after Sonnier says he heard “the gist” about the producer in mid-2017. (He also produced David Lowery’s A Ghost Story in 2016, among other projects. Lowery denies knowledge of the allegations.)

Those last two films also experienced on-set incidents that are detailed in the article: Three crew members from VFW say they were told to implement a “buddy system” after reporting aggressive groping and harassment from co-star Fred Williamson to Presmyk. And a crew member on Satanic Panic says that actress Ruby Modine was coerced into performing a sex scene with what’s described as an “obsessed fanboy” that made her uncomfortable. (Donaghey’s alleged response? “I don’t care what she says, we’re going to shoot our movie.) The directors of both films, Joe Begos and Chelsea Stardust, deny knowledge of the events.