Welcome back, Blood Babes, to Direction Dissection! It’s the series where I, Giallo Julian, talk to your favorite cult movie directors about a selection of films from their cinematic library.
This time, things get a bit steamy as we talk with the one-and-only Adam Simon about his second directorial effort, which is part of a tetralogy of erotic thrillers produced by Roger Corman—Body Chemistry 2: The Voice of a Stranger!
Before we strip this film down, I just want to tease my brand new website—www.giallojulian.com—where you can find the full transcripts of the Direction Dissection interviews, including this one right here. Trust me, we talked for well over two hours, so there’s a lot we won’t be able to cover here. Swing on by, say hello, and get the whole picture on these films by checking out those full interviews.
With that said, let’s talk Body Chemistry 2: The Voice of a Stranger!
“Pain defines pleasure,” preaches Dr. Claire Archer, the talk-radio sex therapist who captivates listeners each night with her popular call-in show. Seeking her advice is Dan Pearson, an ex-LA cop whose abuse as a child has left him with a violent nature—an insatiable appetite for rough sex. Fearing his girlfriend, Brenda, will leave him if he doesn’t get help, Dan accepts Claire’s offer to treat him in person. But her prescription of dark, dangerous sex spirals sadistically out of control, pitting doctor and patient in the ultimate sexual powerplay that will either cure Dan—or destroy him!”
Dread Central: Alright! Round two! This time, we’re talking about Body Chemistry 2: The Voice of a Stranger. And I found the connection to Carnosaur! There’s a point where Morton Downey Jr.’s character is talking to someone named Gene on the phone. He’s like, “Hey Gene, what’s up?”
Adam Simon: He’s always talking to Gene! Every time you see Mort in that movie, and he’s on the phone, it’s always Gene.
DC: Yeah! I’m sure a lot of that’s just improv because he’s a radio host.
AS: We’ll talk about that. Morton did a lot of really fun improv in that, yeah.
DC: But at a point in Carnosaur, a doctor— I believe his name is Sterling Raven [Ed Williams]—he gets up and goes to the phone, and calls someone in the state [government], and he’s like, “Hey Gene, do you mind if …” And I’m like, “Ah! There it is! That one connection!”
AS: It’s Gene!
DC: It’s Gene!
AS: It is. He’s the connection between all of them. It’s true.
DC: [Laughs] Yeah, it’s all making sense now. I got my board up [on the wall] with all my lines going everywhere.
Alright, first, let’s get some background on this. Any background, honestly. Compared to Brain Dead and Carnosaur, there’s zilch about this film on the internet. So I’m really excited to hear all this. How did you get involved with this feature? I know you were offered to direct the first one, but declined.
AS: Well, it was more than that. After the [Sylvester] Stallone movie, Lock Up, I was supposed to do three pictures for [Roger Corman]. So while I was doing Brain Dead, he was already talking to me a lot about what do we want to do now.
So the first Body Chemistry, in Roger’s mind, was going to be my next film, and was going to be shot on the same sets that we had built for Brain Dead, and we would’ve gone right to it. Then the whole kerfuffle happened where the sets got “accidentally” destroyed. And when he got over that, he’s like, “Okay, but still, you’re going to do Body Chemistry, right?”
But right around that time, one of the people who saw Brain Dead and really loved it was John Landis, who I have never met before then. He invited me to come meet him in his offices at the time at Universal [Pictures]. [Landis said] “Yeah, Bruce [Davidson] and I want to do a revival of Willard. What happened to his character and all that.” So he and Bruce and I got together, and we came up with this whole idea for it, and I wrote this pitch.
DC: Does the sentiment “direct the first one, or be doomed to direct the sequel” still hold weight? Do you feel like it’s still true to this day?
AS: No, it’s a lot different…in so many ways. And that’s probably more true for low-budget stuff than it is for bigger movies, though. So, who knows? Do I think that rule still holds? Probably not. I don’t think any of the rules hold anymore. Everything is so different.
DC: So then, let’s go ahead and talk about the fantastic cast you had to work with, like Gregory Harrison of Razorback fame, Robin Riker of Alligator, Morton Downey Jr., Lisa Pescia, Frank Novak, and Clint Howard. It’s not the same caliber as it was in Brain Dead, but how was it working with the cast? Did it go smoothly? Were there any standout moments?
AS: It was great! Greg is the still center of [Body Chemistry 2]. You know, a lot of silence. He doesn’t say a lot. He’s not an improv guy. Whereas, with Mort and some of the other actors in there, we could just have fun doing so, but with him, with Robin, with Lisa, it’s just what’s on the page.
Robin’s great. She says, “I had almost forgotten you. I was waiting 15 years.” So if you do the math, she hadn’t seen him since she was, like, 18. She’s still dressed like the high school girl, she’s living with her dad, who’s dying there on the porch, you know?
DC: She’s also stuck in her glory days. They’re both stuck in that point in time in their life. The difference is that Dan tried to escape it and got pulled back in, while she had settled into it.
AS: That’s right, versus Lisa Pescia in her red dresses, and her blond ‘do, and all that. Who knows what would have happened if she hadn’t come to town?
DC: Out of the three films we’re talking about, this one is the outlier. While Brain Dead and Carnosaur are psychological and sci-fi horror, respectively, this one is an erotic thriller. How did this affect your approach? What challenges did it present, and did you have to think differently when directing this film?
AS: The sci-fi horror thing, that’s true in different ways. The sort of sci-fi horror, kind of brain teaser, mind puzzle, whatever version is Brain Dead, and the Carnosaur kind of horror sci-fi thing. The heart of those is always going to be an idea. An idea plus a body, right? That’s David Cronenberg, you know? It’s got body horror. Both of them have body horror. And they have big ideas, big concepts. What they don’t have is what comes in between those things, which is heart. Now, there are masterpieces in those genres that also have some emotion, but generally, that’s not what you’re watching those movies for. They also can have a lot more humor. And tonally, yes, they can be very, very different.
But the erotic thriller is a branch of noir. It’s a combo of noir and melodrama, so that’s going to be much more character-driven and much more emotional. Look, the very word “melodrama”—which is what those things are—is about drama plus music. The “melo” part of melodrama is music. This is why the score is so much more important in this film than it is in others. It’s not just a lot of spikes, and this, and that, right? It’s this evoking of emotion, and it has to have a more unitary tone to it.
DC: What particularly interested me were the flashback scenes because they seem to be from different movies.
AS: They are. Did you recognize them all?
DC: Not all of them. I actually didn’t watch Naked Obsession until I watched Body Chemistry 2. I was surprised by how good it was.
AS: But again, remember, those [flashbacks] came about specifically because the movie [Body Chemistry 2] didn’t have enough sex, especially for the European sales that [Corman] watched… also for the success of those films on VHS.
This is still mostly the pre-DVD era. It’s the VHS era. Blockbuster did not carry X-rated movies. It was a very “apple pie” kind of corporation, and even a quite conservative one. The erotic thrillers were the sexiest things you could get away with in a Blockbuster, and in most towns, that’s all you have. So the goal was to make them as sexy as possible, and Roger knew what that meant in terms of how much fronted—upper frontal nudity—whatever it was going to have… So the whole task was, How am I going to provide those sex scenes without shooting more sex scenes?
DC: And that’s where the company sex vault comes in.
AS: That’s right. That’s where the forbidden sex vault comes in.
This is but a sneak peek of the 139-minute interview, which you can read in its entirety right here!
In it, we discuss:
- Roger Corman’s forbidden sex scene vault.
- The literary inspiration for the Body Chemistry franchise.
- The connection between film noirs and erotic thrillers.
- Simon and Corman’s workaround for writing the Body Chemistry 2 script.
- The state of sequels in modern cinema.
- The uncredited movie star who steals the scene.
- The film’s subversion of the action movie hero.
- The inherent sexism of the noir and erotic thriller genres.
And much more!
Next time, Adam Simon and I will finally tread the “dinosaur highway” to confront the film we’ve all been waiting for (especially me)—Carnosaur!
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