As far as making a movie goes, it’s something that can take up a significant chunk of your life and have a profound bearing on it – but if it’s going to take you 15 years and you’re never even going to end up seeing it, that’s something of a tragedy rather than anything else.
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Nevertheless, that’s the story of Andrew Getty who spent 15 years of his life obsessively making his feature film debut, a horror movie entitled ‘The Evil Within’. Getty inherited millions from his oil tycoon grandfather, and pumped every penny into the production of ‘The Evil Within’, to the tune of around $6 million or something.
He began shooting it in 2002, working on and off on principal photography for five years before labouring for the next ten on post production. It took five years to initially shoot it because Getty was obsessed over minor details and insisted on building his own camera rigs and building his own animatronic robots and expensive sets.
Unfortunately Getty was never able to complete his masterwork, instead succumbing to a fatal brain ulcer as a result of many years of crystal meth use. The movie’s producer Michael Luceri was able to complete it – all it needed was some minor colouring and editing – and release it and finally unleash Getty’s vision on the world.
This is what we got:
Yeah, that’s what I thought. For something that someone spent 15 years of their life making, it looks decidedly kooky and low budget and ultimately stupid. The Guardian compared it to Ed Wood’s ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space’ which is hardly a great endorsement, but Christopher Bickel from Dangerous Minds calls it a ‘minor masterpiece’ and says that it didn’t disappoint him at all and was certainly ‘original’ if nothing else and never dull during its runtime.
Not sure if that’s convinced me to actually sit down and watch it, but as Bickel says, something that someone spent a third of their life working on is going to at least be ‘interesting’. It’s up to you if you wanna watch it, but it’s certainly a great story if nothing else.
If you’re into more conventional horror movies, check out some of the treats we’ve got coming up for us this year. Can’t wait.
