We've been following the release of The Landlord a low budget American horror / comedy movie and have caught up with its creator, Emil Hyde for an interview.
The Landlord DVD can be bought here.
Hi Emil, as writer, director, producer of the Landlord, what inspired you to come up with the idea?
It began as a joke, which I suppose is a good way for a horror-comedy to begin. My friend Derek Dziak, who plays Tyler - the titular landlord of a demon-infested apartment building - and I were brainstorming concepts for horror movies, trying to hit upon one we could produce cheaply. At one point Derek asked me "What's your favorite horror movie of all time?" to which I replied "Roman Polanski's THE TENANT... Hey, how about we make THE LANDLORD?"
I guess what I'm asking is, have you had any bad experiences with landlords in the past?
Most of my landlords have been perfectly fine. I prefer to live in small, two- or three-unit buildings where the owner lives downstairs - just like the building in THE LANDLORD - so whenever there's a maintenance issue that affects the whole building, they tend to resolve it quickly.
Still, as my home town of Chicago has grown from a mostly industrial town into a center of culture and commerce, the landlords are always jacking up the rents, hoping some naive out-of-towner will pay way too much to live in their family's dilapidated old flat. We satirize that a bit in THE LANDLORD. All of Tyler's victims are from out of town, and we modeled Tyler and his sister Amy - a policewoman - after your typical (affect nasal working-class accent) "Shuh-CAW-go" types who tend to own these buildings. However Michelle Courvais, the actress who plays Amy, is from the East Coast, so her accent ends up being a bit more South Boston, but whatever - they could just as well be East Enders.
Do you think landlords see tenants as harvestable flesh that feeds their desire for power?
Perhaps that's true of the bigger property management companies, but I think that a lot of small landlords wind up viewing their buildings as burdens, as Tyler in THE LANDLORD certainly does. He'd love nothing better than to sell the place and move far, far away - if only he could. Granted, the burden of being a landlord usually doesn't involve an ancestral curse... or perhaps it does, consider how many people inherit their properties.
The landlord in the movie was really just an agent for the demons, do you see the demons were in some way a metaphor for the greed of the financial sector?
If anything, the demons are a metaphor for all the problems a landlord conveniently neglects to inform you about - for instance, that the basement floods when it rains, or the neighbours scream at each other all night, or the rats in the alley take refuge in your pantry when the weather turns cold. Of course, as is the case with demon infestation, the signs are of trouble are usually there if you look, but at some point you get so tired of searching for a place that you overlook the omens.
Have you got any tips for landlords on removing blood stains from carpets or walls?
There's no trick to it, just a lot of elbow grease. We didn't have time to re-paint the apartment set after we splattered the walls with "blood", so we made sure to use washable finger paint as our base for any blood that would end up on a wall. Nonetheless, it took four people about five hours of continuous scrubbing to clean up the living room after the first murder scene. By the time we were done, we shook our heads and said "No way could Tyler (the landlord character) clean this crap up overnight... no effing way." But of course it's fantasy, so whatever.
The UK Government is looking to introduce a mandatory licensing scheme for landlords, do you think that might have stopped the tenants in the film been eaten?
No. Tyler proves pretty adept at hoodwinking the authorities. Throughout the film he's hounded by a pair of detectives who are convinced he's responsible for the disappearance of his tenants, but can't quite prove it. Which goes to show, no matter what measures the government enacts to protect its citizens from price-gouging or demonic possession, there will always be those cunning enough to circumvent them.
Post the sub-prime property collapse in the US, what lesson would you pass to us in the UK?
Don't loan money to people who can't pay it back?
Seriously, my wife and I kept renting while our friends were buying condos and houses during the real estate bubble, because we knew we couldn't afford it and that the terms the banks were offering weren't favorable. But now that the government is using our tax dollars to bail everyone else out of their ill-advised mortgages, I suppose the joke's on us. Still, the real estate collapse made it cheap for us to rent a very nice apartment to shoot THE LANDLORD in, so I shouldn't complain.
When vetting tenants do you think the 'landlord' in the film should of been more proactive in finding fatter ones to give the demons more of a feast?
Yes, I suppose if you're managing a property on behalf of flesh-eating demons, you need to consider how your tenants will taste. Based on what I've been told about how diet affects a person's - ahem - flavour, your ideal tenant is a non-smoking, tea-totaling vegetarian who exercises occasionally, but not too much. There's actually a scene in THE LANDLORD where the demons complain about how yuppies spend too much time in the gym, and it makes their meat tough.
Do you see landlords as 'parasites' or as 'vital service providers' ?
I just see them as people, trying to survive and thrive in an imperfect world. Some of them will harm others in order to better their position, while others treat their neighbours decently in hopes that their neighbours will return the favour. That's how I see pretty much everyone, including demons.
Do you see home ownership as vital in avoiding been feasted on by demons?
Not really. If you rent a haunted apartment, you can always break your lease and run away screaming. But when you own, it's harder to do that.
What films are you working on now?
We have two projects in development. One is a horror-comedy set in a prison, while the other is a straightforward horror movie set at a university. Hopefully professors and prisoners will prove equally intriguing characters as THE LANDLORD.
Can we expect to see a "Landlord 2 - Revenge of the Tenants" movie?
A rough outline for "THE LANDLORD 2 - EVIL GOES CONDO" exists in my head, but I don't think enough people will see this film to warrant a sequel.
Currently, my wildest fantasy is that THE LANDLORD will be remade in Korea. As anyone who's seen THE HOST or THIRST knows, Koreans love horror movies, and maybe when THE LANDLORD is released in Asia, Park Chan-Wook will pick it up from the bargain bin at his local video store, watch it, and decide to option the story. What I love about Korean horror movies is that the characters usually have friends and families, the way real people do, whereas in American horror, the characters are usually college kids away at some summer camp, without any relationships or responsibilities to complicate matters. Insofar as THE LANDLORD deals with Tyler and Amy dealing with the demon situation as a family, I think Korean audiences might dig it... if they can first forgive the shit (shite?) production quality.
THE LANDLORD will be playing at the "28 Hours Later" film marathon in Fareham on October 30th.
The Landlord DVD can be bought here.
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