THE CREEP BEHIND THE CAMERA THE STORY The Creep Behind the Camera was an actual filmmaker named Vic Savage; a real scumbag whose only real skill was in his uncanny ability to convince the residents of 1960 Glendale, California that he was making “the biggest, the BEST monster movie ever made!” The true story of Vic Savage, aka AJ Nelson and the making of his monster opus The Creeping Terror (1964) is told in the narrative dark-comedy The Creep Behind the Camera. Psychopath director AJ - with his battered wife Lois in tow - travels from a bakery in Connecticut to sleazy underground Hollywood with the dream of making monster movies... encountering desperate actors, drugs, prostitution rings led by old ladies, murder and even Charles Manson along the way. A hilarious and wholly disturbing look at human nature and delusional demagoguery, The Creep Behind the Camera is a rollercoaster ride that takes a nostalgic but cautionary look at the era of drive-in cinema at its very worst. The monster was BEHIND the camera. DIRECTOR BIO Pete Schuermann is a well-established Emmy-award winning filmmaker with numerous film festival acceptances for narrative feature, documentary and short films that affirm his credibility as a solid visual storyteller. Pete was born on Long Island and is currently a resident of Monument, Colorado. In 2005, Pete was approached by Disney to direct and edit Disneyland: Then, Now and Forever, a retrospective piece celebrating Disneyland’s 50th anniversary. Following that, he completed the national-acclaimed documentary HAZE (featuring Robin Wright-Penn), which graphically examined the beer-soaked party scene that permeates the national University and College environment. Next up was the narrative feature The Creep Behind the Camera, an edgy dark comedy/docudrama and told the story about the making of The Creeping Terror, arguably the worst monster movie ever made. DIRECTOR STATEMENT When I first saw The Creeping Terror, not only was I entertained by the extraordinary ineptitude of the film, I was in awe of the fact that I had not at least heard something about it. Being an avid fan of the genre I felt I had comprehensive knowledge of pretty much every monster movie ever made, which of course was not so hard at that time. Not until Harry and Michael Medved’s infamous book “The Golden Turkey Awards” was I able to learn at least some bare-bones insight into the production. The book told of the infamous AJ Nelson, the scam associated with the film and insights from some of the disgruntled  participants. In fact, in their book there is a picture of the monster stuffed into the back of a pickup truck driving down Hollywood Blvd as part of a publicity stunt. It was this iconic image that first gave me the idea for The Creep Behind the Camera. That part of the production history makes for one of the funniest sequences in the film. The final pieces of the story for The Creep Behind the Camera was provided by AJ Nelson’s first wife Lois Wiseman who discusses in graphic detail her life with the psychotic director in her autobiographic book “Hollywood Con-man”. As it turns out, the real monster was behind the camera! WE'VE SEEN IT This is something that really came out of nowhere. Who would have thought that this little seen monster movie, the worst ever made, would have this kind of treatment one day ? Lucky us, we who have loved this little gem, this incredible creeping mess that made me laugh so hard when i saw it for the first time is now a must see entertaining movie and a lesson in bad cinema. Be warned, the title is not just a joke about the 1964 movie, the director A.J. Nelson aka Vic Savage, is really a grim man and the more we learn about him, the creepier he gets. Thanks for the wonderful direction of Pete Schuermann and the over the top performance of Josh Phillips and his screen wife, portrayed by the lovely and dramatic Jodi Lynn Thomas. Between an animated version of the original script, interviews with the original producer and many artists involved like the one and only Richard Edlund, we meet the real first wife of  Nelson, giving us a revealing glimpse into the mind of a sadistic drunk macho. This is not pretty, but we always come back to the horrid making of, we finally understand why the lady in gold pants has so many shots in the movie and why it had almost  no live dialogue. This is the stuff of nightmares, dark and funny nightmares with the likes of Charles Manson thrown in. Where we learn that Nelson stalked none other than Mamie Van Doren and Lucille Ball and we meet the weirdest monster maker who kidnapped his own carpet alien when he wanted money. Of course, i won't tell you the whole story, but this is a must see docu-fiction, a piece of cinematic history that can now be told expertly by a dream team. www.CreepFilm.com www.fantasiafestival.com Fantasia 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 |  2000 | 2001 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014

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