JA Kerswell talks to director Kyle Schickner about his 2006 slasher movie PARADISE LOST. He has some fascinating stories to tell about the difficulties of filming in the tropics - including how the army had to protect them from the local police. He also talks about having a lesbian Final Girl, Queer film-making, his love of classic slashers, the importance of good gore fx, the surprising voice cameo by a future genre star and more …
Q:
PARADISE LOST is obviously an affectionate tribute to classic slasher movies. How did it come about?
Paradise Lost came about from a very cynical place I’m afraid. I had finished a film called “Strange Fruit” a murder mystery about a gay black man who gets lynched in the bayou out in Lousinanna. It was a hit at every queer and black film festival out there. The reviews were great, including one from the LA Times, and yet with all that going for it, it took over a year and a half to sell. I kept hearing the same thing. “The hero could be gay, the hero could be black, but no one wants to see a movie with a gay black hero.”
My frustration with that line of thinking, despite sold out theaters all over the country at the festivals, it really consumed me. So at one point I just said, “Fuck it, I’ll just make a slasher film, those sell”.
One of the things I always found silly in slasher films was the way they got the victims naked or in their underwear and I thought well, if it took place on a beach, everyone would be in their bathing suits already. At the time I was obsessed with Survivor, I auditioned a few times, never got called in (If you are reading this Jeff Probst, I’m ready!) All these knock off reality competitions started coming out and the story took off from there. Of course my company, FenceSitter Films only make movies about women, people of color and the LGBTQ community so initially a slasher film didn’t fit in that mold. But if I made our hero, our Final Gir,l a lesbain, then it made sense.
So like I said, it initially came about from a cynical place, but soon I was on board and excited to pay homage to the films I grew up with.
Q:
I know you are a fan of 80s slasher movies. What are some of your favourites?
To me, Halloween is the North Star of slasher films. Everything is done so perfectly. The music, the pacing...and for my money, no killer is more menacing than Michael Myers. The way he just walks towards his victims, like he knows he is going to get you, it’s inevitable. Terrifying.
Of course Friday the 13th has one of the most brilliant last scenes ever. And Nightmare on Elm Street’s whole premise is horrifying because you can't escape Freddy. You have to sleep. Add the image of the heads covered by sacks squirming just about the ground in Motel Hell tht still haunts my dreams…These films made a lasting impression, clearly.
Q: The climactic battle between the killer and your Final Girl has her beating him to death with a severed head. It reminded me of the end of the 1981 movie JUST BEFORE DAWN, when the Final Girl offs the killer by forcing her fist down his throat. Was this a deliberate tribute?
I wish I were that clever. No it was originally written that the Final Girl, the amazingly talented Maxine Bahns, was to bash the killer with the coconuts, but we had to reveal the death of the poor soul whose head she finds among the coconuts first, and then I imagined what it would feel like to have a skull being swung full speed into my face … and we had our ending.
Q: Paradise Lost features some impressive practical gore effects. Was it important to you to feature practical effects?
Absolutely! Because this was a throwback to the 80’s slasher films I fell in love with as a teen, and those filmmakers didn’t have CGI. They had to do it all organically and there is something very fun about that. To set up a gag and have it pay off in real time, it’s exciting.
Q:
You feature in the film as the entitled presenter of the reality show. It’s a fun performance and the film features some great snarky comedic lines. Even with these comedy touches the film still works as a slasher thriller. What are your thoughts about how comedy works in the context of making a scary movie?
Screams and laughs all come from the same place, it’s a release of tension. With horror you have the fun of deciding which release you want. The audience might be expecting a scream but instead gets a laugh, but the result is the same, a release…and a set up for a real scream. Plus I knew there were a lot of folks out there who would love to see me dead, so I figured I’d grant them their wish.
Q:
I know you are a Bisexual rights activist. As a gay man myself, I wondered if you had any thoughts as to why the slasher subgenre remains so popular with the queer community?
I’m old. I came out as Bi in the early 90’s, back when it was just the G&L community. Being Queer back then, you were very much an outsider. You had to find your family. Your people. We were considered “less than”. That’s kinda how slasher films were seen, as kind of not as valued compared to more “serious” films. I think we gravitate to the outsider aspect of slasher films. Plus slasher films have hot people running around in their underwear. What’s more queer than that?
Q:
Was it shot on film or hidef video? 2006 is listed as the production date. Is that correct?
We shot in hi Def. It was early in the technology, the camera was huge. Yes, 2006 was when we filmed it.
Q:
You shot the film in the Dominican Republic. It looked idyllic, but I understand there were some challenges filming there. Can you elaborate?
Where to begin? We were considering shooting in Bali and not the DR at first but at the last minute I got worried about flying halfway around the world with a cast and crew of 30 people. It seemed so far. I should have stuck to my original plan.
Before filming began there were issues. Apparently, Michael Mann had shot a few scenes for Miami Vice on the island a month before. Reportedly, he paid $700k for one or two days to film in a banana grove. So when word got out another production was coming, and spending a month there, people assumed we had Michael Mann money. We did not, our whole budget was what Mann paid for one banana grove.
On arrival our equipment was held up in customs for days. Department heads had to travel three hours back and forth to the airport each day to try and get our stuff released. One day they arrived at the airport and the equipment was just sitting there at baggage claim.
Everyone we worked with demanded more money than what we agreed on. A few days into shooting the shakedown from the local police got so bad that the amazing woman who made up the entire Dominican Film Commission called in the country’s military. The next morning a truck full of highly trained soldiers along with a helicopter arrived on set and ousted the police and remained on set 24/7 to insure we were not bothered. The soldiers were amazing! They became part of the crew.
We’d come to the set each morning to discover spent rifle shells and bullet holes in the sets we built. We had to hire a full time doctor to be on set. Between all being bitten half to death by these little bugs call “noseeums” (get it), heat stroke and actors passing out on set from not eating (remember everyone was in bathing suits so many of them were doing all they could to look as good as possible), the doctor was the busiest man on set.
We had perfect weather until three days before we completed principal photography and then the heavens opened up for two days. We were stuck inside waiting for the rain to end. We adopted the phrase “continuity is for losers” because needless to say, the huts built were not waterproof. Everything was waterlogged.
This is the stuff I didn’t block out for sanity sake. I didn’t mention our producer being airlifted out of the country after he lost his medication for his recent kidney transplant or one of the crew members taking a turn on a ATV too fast scraping up his entire left side of his body.
We had an on set videographer documenting it all and we planned on putting out a companion film about the making of Paradise Lost called “The Pancreas of Darkness”.
Q:
The Dominican Republic Army turn up at the end of the movie. Were those real soldiers?
Yup, those guys were actually members of the Dominican army. In fact, we came up with that ending involving the army showing up on the island during filming. In the script, no one discovers Rebecca, the Final Girl. She’s just stranded and going crazy. But we figured, shit we have these soldiers, let’s have them discover her and the horrors of what she has become. It was a bump in production value for sure.
Q:
For a long while, Paradise Lost was considered as something of a lost slasher before appearing on Tubi in 2022. Are you able to say something about why the film didn’t get a wider release soon after it was made?
I made two films, Paradise Lost and Steam starring Ally Sheedy, Chelsea Handler and Kate Siegel (Midnight Mass, Hush) in the span of 18 months. We were editing one film while filming the next. In retrospect it was too much. Add to that producers with conflicting ideas as to what direction to take each film…it got bogged down. I then started working on a documentary called “A White Man Walks Into A Barbershop” so it kept getting pushed aside. First Steam, then I was hired to direct a doc about the historic annual lesbian festival the Dinah Shore Weekend, then back to White Man…so finally the dust cleared I went to Tubi who were releasing my doc and they snatched it up right away.
Q:
Do you have any other fun or interesting stories from the production of the movie?
Like I said, we have a whole feature’s worth of stuff but I also want to stress that the people of the Dominican Republic were amazing. The crew and cast all still tell me what an amazing month they had filming in paradise. From a producers stand point, there were obstacles you don’t have filming in Sherman Oaks and we were not prepared, but that was on us. The movie came out better than it had any right to, and the location, performances add to the uniqueness of Paradise Lost. I had an investor ask how I was gonna build the atmosphere of a slasher film in a place with constant sunshine. I think the group we put together did an amazing job and the fact that you have asked us to be a part of Hysteria Lives confirms that.
Another small nugget is we have a scene where Delia is in shock and wandering the jungle right before she encounters the killer. We were doing a final sound mix in one studio and the scene wasn’t working. It was just too silent. In the studio next door, we were doing ADR for my other film Steam and Kate Siegle was there doing some looping. She overheard our concern and volunteered to do some kind of dreamy humming while Deila wandered in a daze. It gave the scene this ominous vibe. So the giggling and musing you hear is actually scream queen and brilliant actress Kate Siegle. This was before she met her creative partner to become an integral part of the Flanaganverse. The films and shows they have make together are just perfect!
Q: Did you ever consider a sequel to the movie? If so did you have any ideas of what direction that would have taken?
I did have a sequel in mind. With Paradise Lost, we lampooned reality competition shows.. With the sequel, we were going to attack TV Drs. and therapists. Idiots like Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz. PL2 was going to pick up years after Rebecca was rescued. Her story made headlines and she was infamous, but had been locked up for years in an insane asylum. A Dr. Phil-like celebrity decides to gather a number of well known victims or witnesses of some kind of violence or trauma, take them to a secluded lakefront house in the northeast and set up cameras and film a show as he “heals” them. Rebecca is one of the patients. The big get. Needless to say, people start to die…I’d still love to do it. Maxine Bahns is game …
Q: I know you are still making films. Can you tell us something about what you are currently working on?
My next project is something I’m really excited about. It’s an R rated romantic comedy called Breaking Up Is Hard to do. I wrote the script a while back and initially the lead character was a cis gendered female. When we started early discussion about the film, I was watching a show, this was during the Covid lockdown, it was called Dispatches From Elsewhere. It is this amazing indescribable show starring Sally Field, Jason Siegel, Andre 3000, and this actress Eve Lindley who blew me away.. Eve is trans and she was mesmerizing. She just recently starred in a film called National Anthem which I implore everyone to watch. It’s the best “queer” film I have seen in well over a decade. Anyway I immediately thought how great it would be to cast Eve as the romantic lead? And more importantly, I did not change a single line. Her being trans is irrelevant to the story. She is another person looking for love. Hard stop. And don’t worry horror fans…there are zombies! Seriously, we have zombies. I reached out to Eve and she loved the script and is on board. Filming begins early 2025.
Thank you to Kyle Schickner for his time and for the kind use of photos from the set of PARADISE LOST. To find out more about Kyle and his production company visit
Fencesitterfilmstudio.com.
Read the Hysteria Lives! review for PARADISE LOST.
PARADISE LOST is currently showing on Tubi in some territories.
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