2016 - Death Machines gets it first wide-screen Blu-ray release off the original 35mm Technisope negative in 4K. I do the director's commentary.
How it got made and premiered in 50 theaters in Southern California.
When I met Ron Marchini, a champion karate tournament fighter, he had starred in a movie in the Philippines and was now looking to produce and star in one in America.
Ron had seen my first feature The Tournament and some of my 16mm karate dramas and decided to take a chance on me to direct his movie.
My first movie, about three Japanese samurai in England, had failed to get a large distributor, so I had vowed to myself if I ever got another chance I would make my next movie so commercial that a distributor would have to take it.
Ron and I came up with a story that had three hitman, one white, one black, and one Asian, working for a Japanese Yakuza woman. That would take care of three markets, as the black exploitation films were all the rage then and Bruce Lee had recently become a star with Enter the Dragon. We also included a cop, a love and revenge story.
We then added some bizarre action scenes, such as the three killers crashing through a window into a karate dojo with samurai swords and wiping everyone out. This was inspired from Kurasawa's Sanjuro. Also an escape from a police department by Marchini using karate. This was five years before Stallone did it in Rambo. On his way outside Ron steals a police car and crashes it into another car.
I was driving the other car, as I didn't want to risk someone else. What the hell, I was only the director. I could be replaced, unlike the actors. We had to do the crash twice. Stupid me, no seat belts in that car, so I was tied down with a rope. What if the gas tank exploded and I'm tied down?
Well, shows you how dedicated I was to making the best movie I could. I remember it was Mother's Day, and hoped that no one would be calling my mother with bad news.
Another scene had a banker handcuffed to a cabinet as a time bomb ticks off in front of him. He struggles for two minutes to tries to get to it to turn it off, but it explodes.
We also added a bar room brawl, the three killers fighting bikers in a cafe, and finally, using a bazooka, the killers blow up a real piper cub airplane.
Mixed in with all those big scenes were minor action scenes such as a Mafia hitman being thrown off a tall building and landing on his own car that is being ticketed by a meter maid. Another hitman is blown over his car by a bazooka. And still another hitman has his phone booth crushed by a tractor with him in it.
I figured that with all these different types of action scenes and people, there would be lots of exploitable things for a distributor to put on the poster. Little did I know that none of these things would appear on the poster.
We shot in 35mm Techniscope that shot half frame, saving film, and developed at technicolor, giving us a wide-scope screen. This would help fool audiences and distributors that the budget was bigger than we had.
We had a six week schedule and decided to use Ron's home town of Stockton, California to film in. He was a businessman there and the city was trying to attract movie makers. So the town was wide open to us with full police co-operation.
Casting was done all in the town using a local casting agent that had a list of actors and extras from other movies that had shot in town. The Asian killer and black killer, Mike Chong and Joshua Johnson were brought in from out of town.
The original Asian killer was to be Kung Fu kata champion Eric Lee. He had been on many covers of Inside Kung Fu magazine and that would have helped selling the movie. But wouldn't you know it, Sam Peckinpah invited him to work on Killer Elite shooting at the exact same time. So, four our movie, Eric took the smaller part of the karate instructor who's dojo is raided by the killers.
Later Eric starred in my movies Weapons of Death (1980) and Ninja Busters (1984).
To replace Eric we hired Mike Chong who was also on martial arts covers. He told me on the phone, "I don't know if I should do the movie. It's all happening too fast. I thought I would have to struggle to get a starring role."
I told him, "Well, star in this one, and struggle later." Mike went on to work in my movie Weapons of Death, then study acting in London and work on William Friedkin's To Live and Die in LA' and work with Johnny Depp in Nick of Time.
It was lucky that we found people that really looked the part of cops and gangsters. The gangster who is thrown off the building was actually a 3rd grade teacher. But he really looked like a gangster. The part of the lead cop looked like Barney Miller a top TV show at the time, giving the audience someone to relate to.
Finding the hero, who has his hand cut off by the killers, and then pursues them, was difficult. We needed a handsome leading man type in his early 20's who was good at action. But could only find one that had was not an athlete, though he tried his best. So I had to stage the bar fight that he gets into with him getting beat up and losing. But he gets the sympathy of the girl that way.
Instead of fighting the samurai sword swinging dragon lady, I had him falling down stairs away from her and the cop shooting her. So basically the hero survives by his luck rather than by his action.
My crew were all 25-year-old ex-Air Force buddies who were in the movie department with me for four years. I just about had a heart attack when two of the crew arrived with the giant grip truck towing a generator. It was a visual example of what a large operation this would be compared to my first smaller scale movie.
It was then that I learned that a movie company is really a moving company. Moving actors and equipment to the right place, at the right time to get the scene shot.
The big choice for us was what to do about the many bullet hits and explosions in the movie. To do squib effects you must hire a licensed powder man, as they are called in Hollywood. He would be $250 a day, plus the explosive materials. We called a few effects men, but they gave us little time on the phone.
Then we called one named Dick Albains. He was in his fifties and had his own effects shop. He was the effects man on the Karen Black thriller Trilogy of Terror. He made the Zuni doll and was under the floor of the set with a knife, when the doll was cutting its way out of the suitcase he was trapped in.
He spent a lot of time on the phone with me explaining how to fake bullet hits. "What about using firecrackers", I asked him. "Oh, that would look so bad." he said.
Finally Ron, and I figured out a schedule with the effects scenes all together, to save money, and hired him. I told him later, "We hired you because you spent so much time on the phone with us." He replied, "I try to help all producers out because maybe one day they will use me."
So now we had realistic bullet hits and could actually blow up a Piper Cub airplane, that we bought minus the engine. A duplicate was flown and then we pulled the other one by car and just before it lifted off, it was blown up.
Even though it was an ambitious project, thanks to the actors being local and showing up on time, good weather, and no accidents, we finished on schedule.
When I viewed the dailies of the bar room brawl scene I was shocked to see that when the hero is knocked out and lying on top of the bar, from the camera's viewpoint, the beer spray coming from a broken beer tap, looked like it was coming right out of the tip of the hero's nose. Why hadn't my camera man told me? However, it looked so perfectly lined up that the audience thought that it was on purpose as a comic touch. So I kind of got away with it.
Howver, I was disappointed with the thin beer spray. I was hoping from a giant spay with foam, like in the barroom brawl in John Wayne's North to Alaska. But we didn't have the time or money to redue it. I never told the effects man what I wanted, so I was stuck with what he gave me. Recently, I got my big beer spray on Forbidden Power. That's because, this time, I asked for it.
We started the editing on our own, but Ron got anxious about being able to sell the movie, so he had me take it to Crown International Pictures. I went to there with no appointment. I approached the very old woman at the reception desk and said, "I have a completed movie that I need distribution for."
The old woman asked, "Is this sex or violence?"
I held back from saying one of the five jokes that came to mind, and simple said, "Action'.
I showed them about 70% of the movie, including the airplane being bazooka and blowing up. The president of Crown wanted the film immediately. But this meant turning it over to him at once for their editors to finish the final 15 minutes.
On one hand I wished I could have finished with all the editing. But on the other hand, I was relieved and excited that a mini-major distributor was taking the movie.
I had told Ron that we could sell the movie, if it had all those marketable things in the story, so he invested all the money he had available, plus took out a loan.
So I was off the hook, once Crown took it. Looking back now, I realize what a risk taker Ron was and how he had faith in me to pull off that kind of movie, with that small budget. Also Ron was a true movie fan. We watched many movies together at that time, to learn and to encourage ourselves for the task at hand.
At that particular time, the Sci-Fi movies Rollerball and Death Race 2000 were big hits, so Crown decided they wanted to present Death Machines as a Sci-Fi movie. They asked us to shoot a new scene to tack onto the beginning.
Well, Ron and I were game to do it. Anything to get our picture in to the theaters. So they gave us this scene where this mastermind man told the dragon lady that a special hypnotic drug would make her men killers on demand, "Death Machines", as it were.
Crown gave us the modest budget to film in Stockton for one day. I staged the scene like when the henchman goes to visit Dr. No and picks up the spider. So I had a single chair in the middle of a large event room in the dark. A light goes on over the chair and the Yakuza woman is told to sit down and then listens to the mastermind criminal talk. We were told to keep the mastermind in shadows in case there was a sequel and could use another actor.
Once that was added to the movie, Crown made posters of a tower building with teeth, with people falling off of it giving it a sci-fi look. Similar ads were made for the newspapers.
Six months later it was released in 50 theaters at once in southern California. It ranked #14 in Variety's weekly top grossing chart. Still the movie didn't do as well as expected because the sci-fi fans felt gypped that it wasn't science fiction and lots of the action fans didn't go because they thought it was sci-fi.
The theater owners complained about this, so Crown had to make a new add for the newspapers showing the karate killers faces, saying White Killer, Black Killer, Asian Killer.
When I saw the film in the theaters, I was excited and proud of it. But even with the extensive bizarre action scenes, it did drag a little at the fifty minute mark, when it got into the love story.
Also I had too many shots of the killers getting in and out of their car and walking into the house. I guess this was because I had the use of Ron's Jaguar and the house looked cool, and the killers were the best part of the story, so I showed them even doing boring things.
Ten years later, on the first day of shooting Omega Cop the same producer/actor Ron Marchini asked me how I wanted him to drive his jeep into the scene. He yelled across the way, "Do you want me to come in fast or slow."
I answered back on my bull horn, "Fast! We did it slow in Death Machines." I could here him laugh in the distance.
I also got some disappointing surprises when first seeing Death Machines in the theater complete with music and sound. Crown hired a low budget post-production company. They put in the sword swishes for the big dojo fight scene (the 3 killers used samurai swords), but they didn't put in body sword hits, so to me, it sounded like they were missing with their swords.
This movie was made before samurai movies became main stream, so the effects men didn't know about this. Also the body falls were not loud enough. Still people have told me what a strong scene that dojo raid is.
The worst part of the movie was the music. Crown used the same low budget company to do the music. It ended up being an irritating, repetitive, electronic score. Many people have mention how much the music hurt the movie. On my next movie, I made sure to take it all the way to the end using full sound effects and closely edited music from a good music library.
I was happy to get a fairly good review in the LA Times on Death Machines, saying "Director Paul Kyriazi captures a dusty petty ambience." I'm still not so sure how good that is, but they spelled my name right and used the word "captures" and "ambience", so I was happy with it.
Seeing the movie recently, I think that is was great for the budget, and some audience members loved it for what it was. Somehow they really got into the movie and took it seriously.
I think if I could cut the Death Machines down to 70 minutes, it would really be a wild ride, just by shortening all the scenes thusly putting all the action scenes closer together.
But of course, 70 minutes does not make a feature film. It had to be 93 minutes, so that other counties could cut out what they wanted for censorship problems and still have 90 minutes.
I'll always have found memories of making Death Machines with Ron Marchini. Many of the martial artists from that movie, worked on my other movies and full-cast audio-books.
Because Death Machines played everywhere in many theaters in the big cities, I used that as a springboard to my next feature and others. I guess the best part was being able to 'do it right' on the next picture with Ron Marchini, Omega Cop.
March 2014 - Death Machines has been released for the first time in Wide Screen DVD from a 35mm print. I did a scene specific director's commentary. It's available on Amazon.
My new movie Forbidden Power is on Amazon Video Direct. Link below for trailer.
Winner of 39 first-place international awards.
All awards at IMDB sanctioned. Here's six of them:
2018 - Best Picture out of 1,000 entries at the BITB Hollywood Film Festival.
2019 - Best Original Screenplay - New York Film Awards
2019 - Best Science Fiction - Oniros Festival St. Vincent, Italy
2019 - Best Thriller - London Flicks Film Festival.
2019 - Best Feature Film - New York Cinematography Awards.
2019 - Best Original Screenplay - Florence Film Awards Italy
After a one-night affair with a mysterious woman, a young man wakes up alone with sexually transmitted powers.
