In 1987, Joe Amodei decided to foot the bill for a bunch of friends who wanted to make a movie. The film was Mad Ron’S Prevues from Hell, a tribute to the horror films of the 1960s and 1970s.
Shot in the historic Lansdowne Theater in the Philadelphia suburbs, the film centered on a group of flesh-eating zombies who crash a decrepit theater while a ventriloquist (Nick Pawlow) and his ghoulish dummy Happy crack jokes, a mad projectionist named Mad Ron (Ron Roccia) gets madder while chained to a movie projector and trailers of classic—and not-so classic horror movies—unspool.
“We filmed the movie late on a Saturday night and straight through the night,” recalls Amodei, now president of indie DVD supplier Virgil Films. “We had to finish the whole thing in 24 hours because the theater was opening for business the next day.”
There was also a surprise when Amodei stopped by the set with his partner at the time: He was turned into a zombie by makeup artists who applied an hour’s worth of gruesome stuff to his face. “It was my first and last acting job,” jokes Amodei. “I used the Stanislavski film for my big scene. I had to eat an eyeball.”
The film came out on VHS, was packaged and was sold mostly in the Philadelphia area where it turned a small profit. “Our biggest buyer was Erol’s Video,” recalls Amodei. “Thanks to their order, we broke even.”
But then, Mad Ron’s Prevues From Hell disappeared—until now. Amodei’s company has resurrected the film like the ghouls in the movie, adding nifty extras and reworking the original antiquated master as best as possible.
Today, Mad Ron’s Prevues from Hell plays like a blast from the past, especially for horror hounds. Featured on it are the complete trailers for such opuses as Three on a Meathook, I Spit on Your Grave, I Drink Your Blood, Africa—Blood and Guts, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, plus 40 other films. Among the highlights, according to Amodei, are scenes in which the zombies eat human parts rather than sweet treats from the candy stand.
Working his first makeup job on the film was a teenager named Jordu Schell. Twenty-three years later, the kid did quite well for himself, designing characters and creatures for such efforts as Planet of the Apes, 300, Alien vs. Predator and, most recently, Avatar.
From made-on-pennies zombies to super-sophisticated creatures on Pandora. Imagine that!