In 2007, I was contacted by author and filmmaker Greg Lamberson about contributing to a new horror publication called FEAR ZONE. Lamberson and I briefly discussed five people that I was interested in interviewing that brought something unique to the genre of horror. The first name out of my mouth was Chas. Balun-- the guy was a journalistic legend in the eighties and his whole existence was shrouded in rumors and mystery. He started DEEP RED magazine, a publication that was responsible for turning me on to countless Italian exploitation films and numerous gore fests. He told it like it was in his articles and never held back, exercising his profound talent for profanity and sarcasm.
In the mid-eighties, his name appeared in the local magazine published in my hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. The bizarre article featured Charlie Sheen, the F.B.I., the MPAA, a snuff film, and a short movie called GUINEA PIG. There was never any resolution or follow-up and the rumors of Chas. Balun seemed to escalate. Was he directing snuff films? Was he responsible for distributing actual murder on videocassette? Was he to blame for Charlie Sheen's affinity for hookers, booze, and cocaine? Nobody seemed to know and twenty years later that part of Balun's life continued on as an urban legend, so to say.
I became quite friendly with Chas. in his final years. When this interview was conducted, I knew cancer had become the one big challenge in his life. We continued correspondence through emails. I still remember making his day by having my editor over at FILMS IN REVIEW, Roy Frumkes, send Balun a signed copy of STREET TRASH. That was a good day. Sadly, after battling oral cancer with tenacity-- Chas Balun passed away on December 18, 2009. He was 61 years old. He is continually missed. The world lost one of the true pioneers of published horror film journalism that day. Balun's work continues to live on through his art and published books. Here is a horror icon all fans of the genre should familiarize themselves with.
Bryan Layne: When did you realize that movies were going to be a big part of your life?
Chas Balun: Well, that's easy enough. Probably when I went to see a double-bill at the Anaheim Drive-In, as a kid, of JAILHOUSE ROCK and 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH. So, there was a great introduction to both rock-and-roll and monster movies, which were true passions of mine, forever. I saw the magic of both of those mediums and they've sustained for decades and decades and decades. I still hold their appeal. I wish monster movies were better, but there's always great rock-and-roll to plow back into and it's hard to be disappointed by that. It's easier to be disappointed by the lack of progress in crap-ass monster and horror movies, but rock music seems to survive pretty well.
CB: Yeah, they just had the fiftieth anniversary for that one and I saw it when it first came out. I must have been about nine years old. What a killer combo of that and Elvis Presley. Being a young Catholic boy, JAILHOUSE ROCK was the first objectionable movie I ever saw. The Catholic Region of Decency was raiding it because Elvis played a killer, went to prison, and eventually got famous. You're not supposed to profit or gain any manner of fame or acceptance through a heinous act like murder. So, the fact that he rose above his convict status and became a rockstar was objectionable for all. That was my introduction to rock-and-roll, monster movies, and sin all at the same time.
BL: Where were you raised?
CB: I was born in Compton, home of N.W.A. and all the other hardcore rap groups. I was raised in southern California. You know, Huntington Beach. I moved to Anaheim before Disneyland was built, so that's where my roots are.
BL: When you started DEEP RED magazine, was that before FANGORIA came out or just before Anthony Timpone took over that publication?
CB: No, FANGORIA has been around forever, man. They've been around since before DAWN OF THE DEAD, which was 1978 or '79. I think the first issue of DEEP RED was probably July of 1986. DEEP RED was more in response to FANGORIA, as much as some of the other horror magazines. I didn't think they were covering the scene in a way that fans could respond to on a local grassroots sense. They were missing out on a lot of titles that fans knew about. We were based in Hollywood because one of my friends that helped co-found DEEP RED worked at Hollywood Book and Poster, so we had cool connections. You know with Hollywood if we could tap into that, why not? That's where they were making the movies. They weren't making them back in New York where FANGORIA was, they were making them out here. That's where all the directors and F/X artists and all that was.
BL: I'm guessing you got the magazine's title from the Dario Argento classic of the same name?
CB: That's a very good guess, but also like red alert. Red always seems to be associated with horror from the blood and it's just a good title. I mean, let's face it, it's a great title for a horror magazine and a horror film. That was back in the days when not everybody was familiar with Dario Argento. So, it wasn't naming it something obvious like E.T.- THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL or INDIANA JONES or something extremely common. It was more of a cult thing. It identified us as a cult item. It was based on Italian horror films and not everybody was familiar with those. If they were familiar with Argento, they're more familiar with SUSPIRIA than DEEP RED.
BL: You started the magazine with Chris Amouroux?
CB: She was really only involved with the first issue, that I can recall. It was mostly my thing after that. We both chipped in an equal amount of money to have the first issue printed. She was the one who worked at Hollywood Book and Poster. She got Joe Dante to write an article for our first issue because they were right on Hollywood Boulevard and all the directors and people were always stopping into the shop. So, that was an ideal connection for us. We were always hooking up with people there. She was mostly involved with the first issue and then I kind of did it on my own.
BL: How did the skull rating system and the gore score come about in DEEP RED?
A fan wants to know how wet, gory, and messy it is too. They want to know if it's just all talk and no-show. So, I thought they were being helpful, these ratings. You could find out a movie was a psychological horror film that gets three skulls, but a zero or a one on the gore score. You could find some Italian cannibal zombie movie that gets one and a half skulls, but it gets a ten on the gore score. It arms you with a little more information about what you're getting into. So, if you are renting a one-skull movie and it's a ten on the gore score, at least you know it's going to have something in it and it's not going to be a total dog. It's going to be a kind of dog with a lot of blood and gore in it, so that's saying something. I thought that was just an essential bit of information to help horror fans make a good decision about what they were watching.
BL: What film do you seem to watch over and over on your own time?
BL: What about genre film?
BL: How about a regular movie?
BL: What happened between you, the F.B.I., and one of the GUINEA PIG films?
CB: A whole lot of that is just an apocryphal story. No one really knows the total source of it, except for me, I guess since I'm the horse's mouth.
BL: That whole thing actually made you more famous didn't it?
CB: ...or infamous, I guess. I never squelched any of the rumors. I just kind of let it play out.
BL: Was it DEVIL'S EXPERIMENT or FLOWER OF FLESH AND BLOOD?
Somebody had sent me a couple of episodes from the GUINEA PIG series. I tacked on the FLOWER OF FLESH AND BLOOD. I pulled out some video font that someone else had used on some other interview I had done and in type, on the screen, it said, "Anything worth doing... is worth overdoing," that was the quote and it had my name underneath it. That's how I formatted the GUINEA PIG stuff. So, my name was on the video and he showed it to his friends. It was a big hit at the party.
During this time, he was trying to write for some other magazines, I think FILM THREAT was one of them. I think he must have shown the video to Chris Gore at FILM THREAT and somehow it ended up getting into actor Charlie Sheen's hands. I imagine Charlie was all drunk and coked-out one night and he decided to watch the video, I suppose, without any context to what the video truly was. I would have to guess, to view it like that; it would be kind of alarming, given the subject matter. I think Charlie must have known somebody in the F.B.I., or whatever the fuck it was, and they thought it was a genuine snuff film.
It just kind of had me laughing at the ridiculous nature of the whole thing because one of the other GUINEA PIG episodes I had was the making of FLOWER OF FLESH AND BLOOD. I always kept the making of episode separate from the actual movie. I had the attitude over GUINEA PIG 2 that if I heard any arguments about this movie, these fuck-wads who could possibly come up to me and say, "Oh yeah, I saw that, it's a snuff movie and she's really dead." I figured I would just put the making of tape in and not even have to say anything, just look at them like the idiots that they are, you know. Watch the actresses audition for the role because they wanted to do this. Watch the outtakes where they have bubbles in the blood tubing. Watch where they are cutting off the girl's hand and have to say "Cut" and then the actress gets up and she's laughing.
One day I came back to my house, it was on my birthday. I came in from having a good 'ole time. There was a call from the same DEEP RED staffer I made the video for and he told me not to be surprised if I received a call from an F.B.I. agent because they think GUINEA PIG is a snuff film. I was fine with it. I was hoping they would fly all the way out here to my office and spend endless amounts of taxpayer's money. I figured it would be just great to put that making of tape on and go, "You fuckin' morons, look at this. You're all idiots."
BL: So the F.B.I. never actually came to see you?
CB: No, they probably found somebody who was Japanese and got them to translate some of the dialogue. They also probably wondered why there were previews for coming attractions at the end of a supposed snuff film. You know, why is this guy's face shown fully, without a mask? Why are there sound effects, multiple camera angles, and different editing cuts? Why didn't the woman simply bleed to death? Seriously, how about asking the people who made the movie, instead of coming to me? It was all a moot point because I had the making of video, so all you had to really do was watch that; there's your answer and you can't refute that evidence.
BL: Have you seen the AUGUST UNDERGROUND movies that seem to take FLOWER OF FLESH AND BLOOD to the next level as far as simulated snuff films go?
CB: No. I've heard about those videos and the movie MURDER-SET PIECES and I have to say no thanks. To me, there's no skill in showing people tortured, butchered, and murdered in the most explicit form. That's for geeks. That's for guys that are twenty-eight years old, still living in their parent's basement without a job. They're getting off on that kind of stuff because they never had a girlfriend and they're like, "Oh good, I want to see this girl get her nipples cut off with a pair of pliers, have her hair set on fire and then have an ice pick shoved into her eyeball," or something to that effect. It's similar to pornography, is what it is to me. It's not scary. Stephen King always said that's the lowest form of horror, the gross-out genre. It's much easier to do that kind of film than it is to thrill or scare you. Anybody without skill at all can go, "Hey look, I'm going to torture this animal in front of the camera." Well, of course, it's going to gross you out, but does it scare or terrify you? No, it's just the lowest form of titillation. There's no drama, no dramatic art to those kinds of horror films.
BL: Do you think we'll ever see another Peter Jackson gorefest like BAD TASTE or DEAD-ALIVE again or is he simply Hollywood now?
BL: I'm looking at your website where you list over fifty horror titles that you feel people need to see. I'm just going to name some off the list and you go ahead and comment however you like on these titles. How about JACOB'S LADDER?
CB: I liked it. I thought it was troubling enough and I liked how it reminded me so much of The Twilight Zone episode An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, which had such a profound impact on me when I was a kid. I used to watch that episode and just go, "Whoa!"
BL: That episode didn't have any dialogue at all, did it not?
CB: I don't think so. I think it was one of those episodes where you were just impressed by the profundity of what transpired and boy, what an ending. So, when they finally show you what's going on in JACOB'S LADDER, it's not quite as shocking because you've kind of been down that road before, at least if you saw that Twilight Zone episode. The same is true with THE SIXTH SENSE, even though it was a really well-done film, that theme had kind of been used before.
BL: How about STREET TRASH?
BL: Is the EXORCIST still your favorite horror film?
BL: How about the original TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE?
CB: I saw that one numerous times when it first came out. That one always worked for me. I dragged so many people to go see that one. You would go see it at the drive-in and it would have all the scratches in it. I mean the film was in a complete mess when you saw it from the wear and tear of the projector, but it always seemed creepier because of the shape the film was in.
BL: What about JAWS?
CB: Now, that's a great monster movie. It's got to be one of the best monster movies ever made. I mean, that's what it boils down to, it's simple and direct. Here's a monster, here's the people, the monster eats the people, the people go after the monster and the people triumph over the monster. There's also that whole fear of the unknown thing going on where what you can't see is scarier than what you can see. That film is played out so expertly that you don't even realize you are being dragged through the recycled exploitation formula and I think it's because it is so masterfully done.
BL: You had some of the best horror films come out during your career as a journalist, from the early eighties on to about 1989.
CB: Yeah, I'd say so. I'd say from, maybe, 1974 to 1987, or so, there were some really great ones. I think DEAD-ALIVE was an anomaly that sort have just came from out of nowhere and nobody followed-up anything like that one. There was a summer when RE-ANIMATOR, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, and DAY OF THE DEAD all came out around the same time. After that, I felt like there was nowhere else to go. They moved on to every slasher film over and over again. Those three titles opened up doors that got closed again, apparently right after they were made. It seemed to be kind of a last gasp.
BL: Which do you go with, EVIL DEAD or EVIL DEAD 2?
CB: I guess EVIL DEAD 2 because it was a little more fun and they used more effects, but they were both kind of stupid. From the era we were just talking about, if I had to pick the greatest, low-budget horror film, that still holds up today and I would heartily endorse to anybody as being as good as anything you're going to see, I would have to pick THE HOWLING. That film is one of the greatest werewolf movies ever made. The effects were great. That was one badass looking werewolf. THE HOWLING didn't cost that much to make, either. It was just so skillfully done. Joe Dante is a great movie fan, turned great director. I like just about all of his films.
CB: I feel like I have one more book inside of me somewhere. The last book I did was Beyond Horror Holocaust that Fantasma books out of Florida published. It was kind of a follow-up to another one I did called Horror Holocaust
BL: Did you ever want to write or direct a horror feature?
CB: Yeah, but that never happened. I was going to do something with Gunnar Hansen at one time and this lawyer was going to finance it. I wrote the story and was going to direct it. Gunnar was going to star in it and write the screenplay, but these things don't always pan out. I wrote some other scripts that they made the trailers for, but they never made the movie, so I optioned off. I basically just got tired of dealing with it.
BL: How's your graphic design and artwork going?
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