I interviewed B-movie writer-director and actress Katt Shea in a hotel room during the 1992 Sundance Film Festival.
By DONALD PORTER
Standard-Examiner staff
PARK CITY - Katt Shea opens the door to her hotel room, just far enough to reveal her head.
"Hi," she says, smiling. "Wait just a minute, while I put on my pants."
Once clothed, she ushers her guest inside, sits cross-legged on one of the two beds, petting a rather large canine she insists is a puppy, and chats about her new film, "Poison Ivy." Shea directed and co-wrote the $3 million psychological thriller with her husband, Andy Ruben. It stars Drew Barrymore, Sara Gilbert ("Roseanne"), Cheryl Ladd and Tom Skerritt, and deals with a scheming teenager (Barrymore) who hastens the demise of a dysfunctional Los Angeles family.
After a Sundance Film Festival screening the night before, which was in January, Shea and Ruben took to the front of the auditorium and fielded questions: Does the film constitute male-bashing? Why is the poor girl depicted as the evil character? Is the sex between the older man and the under-aged teen proper? Is the film politically correct?
When I was growing up in Wyoming, the cool thing to do on Friday nights was to go to Jimmy Royal's house, stay up real late and watch "Nightmare Theater" on one of the Salt Lake channels. I remember, vividly, that the logo dripped what looked like blood, and the announcer's voice was creepy enough to give me chills.
The movies on "Nightmare Theater" were rarely well-made, but they were always good. This is not a contradiction when you're 10 or 11 years old, up way past your bedtime and eating your way through the refrigerator. As I recall, there was usually a double feature, and we especially liked anything with Vincent Price, vampires or nearly bare female breasts. "Nightmare Theater" must have shown a lot of Roger Corman movies, because we saw many more scantily clad women than Price or blood-sucking bats -- combined.
I got to thinking about those old movies after seeing "Tremors," a new Universal creature feature that opened last weekend. It's a lot like the monster movies that were made by the studio in the '30s, '40s and '50s. Back then, you saw the monsters in the movies -- much of the time in broad daylight. Sure, it might have been only a spider or praying mantis blown up to look 20 times the size of a Cadillac, but the monster was right there in front of you -- a force to be seen and reckoned with.
