The two part post you were so anxiously waiting for – Part Deux.

Gog was just going to ask if the new found success and notoriety has brought about any requests to star in other’s works or collaborations. When I posted the first part of my two part contribution to the ongoing discussion. This new notoriety is leading to new things, yes, we’re getting word of some awards looming in the future, as well as interest in festivals and calls for more interviews in international magazines and blogs.

We’re expanding and I think it’s a good thing because it gives all of us the opportunity to do more. Amy is the leading lady on this, of course. But the rest are not far behind.

The work now is centered on the release of Dead But Dreaming. I know that Jac is going through a difficult time putting it together because it is a very special film, with a very particular style, a narrative that is very much Jac’s way of telling a story.

There’s a date of release and that creates a lot of stress, which is also good.

Life is changing as well, in many different ways, professionally and personally. We’re evolving.

Ralphus Gog: “Amy Meets the Creature from the Black Lagoon“…Now, I would pay to see a movie like that! (…) Now, Amy Hesketh would likely be game enough and athletic enough to take on a role like that, but now that she’s become a serious actress and her company is making prestigious films about writers and vampires that are written up in top magazines, I’m not sure she would go back to her roots and make a complete bondage romp, even though a production like that could have serious cult appeal.

Actually, what is happening now, the attention Amy and Jac are getting is BECAUSE of the bloody boundaries they are breaking. A jungle scenario, with tons of GIMP, it’s what they are all about. What brought all the attention in the first place was Maleficarum and what is bringing the attention now is Barbazul.

As I was typing this words, Amy was tagged in a post by none other than the director of a famous Hollywood horror film festival, describing her enthusiasm after discovering Amy in Fangoria. Her words.

Amy Hesketh’s Bolivian horror film BARBAZUL (BLUEBEARD) got some coverage in Issue 323 of Fangoria Magazine, and I’m super pleased because I was not aware of her amazing filmmaking career.
Her extensive list of horror-and-historically-inspired films reads like a 1970s Spanish horror film collection, or maybe like the accumulated works of a darker, more sadistic Anna Biller. (…) Like Karen Lam, Catherine Breillat, Lisa Hammer, Anna Biller, and Heidi Lee Douglas, Hesketh is taking fairy tales and retelling them as darker, more sensual tales.

What is very, very nice and intriguing is that these gimpy films are written up about in top magazines.

There’s not doubt in my mind that when someone sees, as Bill K points out, Amy’s Maleficarum dungeon torture scenes and her long spit roast and her bats scene every other gimp movie they’ve seen in the past is forgettable. I don’t think that was Jac’s intention when he started shooting the movie, but looking back into everything he did in the past, it was inevitable.

And as Ralphus points out the kind of stuff an independent company like Pachamama Films is producing is actually pretty rare in this day and age. You’re sure not going to see Maleficarum 2 made in Hollywood any time soon. These are not the kind of movies that are made with multiplexes in mind, even if they are shown, at least here, in multiplexes, which is kind of unique. We’re not about to taper off, on the contrary, Amy and Jac are eager to explore darker, even more twisted, scenarios where GIMP reigns supreme.

There’s a Maleficarum kind of movie in the works, one that will certainly try to outdo Maleficarum.

Daniel The early productions were sort of “meat & potato” GIMP! At this point I remain supportive of Amy and her crew! Its just so many times these folks are consumed by the “growth” monster.

I don’t think our growth is monstrous. Even if we reach a wider audience, we don’t think we’ll be so mainstream that we’ll forget what made us in the first place. It’s nice to have more production values, more equipment, more of everything to create movies with quality and it’s even nicer to be able to have all that to make the movies we love to make.

Thomas Chaser Falstaff, thank you for raising an interesting topic. I remember watching the original Red Feline film and admiring the creative artistry the makers were trying to achieve, tempered by my thoughts of “Damnit, why is the lighting so dark?” And “Shit. She didn’t shave her pits.” Still, it was a good first effort and the follow-on films showed improvement. The “tortures” were certainly demented and believable, helped by the good acting of Camille.

In the old days of Red Feline, Jac had to work with analog equipment that had a tremendous limitation when it came down to work with lights. There weren’t enough lights and the camera was not sensitive enough. In addition, once Jac set the camera he had to go in front of it and act. Never knowing if what he was shooting was coming out ok. There was one TV set working as a monitor, but as you might know, you can’t trust the monitor.

The other point is that Jac was creating some atmospheric scenes. And they work as far as what he was working to achieve. The support material wasn’t good enough to capture that.

So, he had to live with the results. It’s different now. Very, very different.

While the new RF.films are good at storytelling, I do miss the simplicity of the earlier films. They told a basic story and told it fairly well without worrying about getting censored by a film festival committee. The problem with trying to go mainstream is precisely what is seen in “Texas Chainsaw” – trying to appeal to the masses at the expense of the story because the filmmaker tries to cover too wide of a population of viewers. Oh well.

Amy and Jac won’t try to appeal to the masses. Maleficarum, the big hit, was never conceived as a production for the masses. Neither is Dead But Dreaming, with its lengthy whipping and rape scenes… not to mention all that nudity and blood. As the editor of Fangoria said recently in a facebook post:

Amy Hesketh’s BLUEBEARD is fantastic….full of the same meandering longing and sensuality of the best of Jess Franco, with beautiful languid scenery, creepy and earthy latin flavored music and a great central turn by the Bolivian Al Pacino, Jac Avila, as a romantic psychopath. I am now an Amy Hesketh fan and so should you be. Just a jumping off point…this is very erotic and breezy …again, think sunny daylit Franco or Jean Rollin….cheerful and depraved…

I think Jac and Amy are very happy to be doing what Jess and Jean Rollin did in their time with tons of eroticism and depravity… and GIMP.

Falstaff: Its great to see the leap they are making into the main stream market, but from a purely selfish perspective I miss the production output of the “old days.” Just as an aside, the similarity between all Jac’s beautiful leading ladies kind of reminds me of John Derek, with Ursula Andress, Linda Evans and Bo – each seemingly a younger version of their predecessor – and all amazing. It has been, and continues to be a joy to watch the continuing evolution of the Red Feline Family.

I think Jac prefers a comparison to Roger Vadim. The similarities are striking. There’s the French leading ladies: Brigitte and Carmen, Catherine Denueve and Vero, and of course the North Americans Jane Fonda and Amy. The Red Feline family continues to evolve, however, so there’s always room for more to come.

Dead But Dreaming, a GIMP filled vampire movie, is going to turn people’s heads. I’m sure of that. Recently, when Beto contacted the programmer of one of the multiplexes, to let him know that we have a new release coming, he asked. How many lashes of the whip does this new movie have?

While we work on the release of Dead But Dreaming, we’re beginning the work on Amy’s next disturbing film Olalla. Check the first promo poster.

Jac plays Olalla‘s uncle Felipe, Amy is Olalla and Mila plays Ophelia, Olalla’s sister. One happy family. Felipe and Ophelia have a cozy and kinky relationship while Olalla wants to break free. It is Felipe’s role to keep Olalla in line, he doesn’t want her to repeat her mother’s history. The woman was whipped and burned at the stake for her transgressions. So, Felipe is obligated to punish the niece.

Girl interrupted Amy is not thinking of the ching ching you twat, plugin’ her wares. We don’t think about the money, we do what we do because we love doing it. If we loved something else, we would be doing something else. We could be making movies that do pay very well for less effort, like the National Geographic documentary we made, to mention only one. It’s not nice to make assumptions about Amy or anyone else.

We love our fans, we also love the subject matter that our fans do, if money were the issue we would have jobs that pay well and on a regular basis, not to mention health insurance and a 401 K. Amy is very good at many things, specially math, she could very well be an engineer, but she loves the art of making movies, and she loves the type of movies she makes.

Amy and everybody else in our team had to make sacrifices to do what we do. We’re not about to give it up for fame or some sense of security, or anything else. The fact is that we, and specially Jac and Amy, took risks to do what they do. It’s very easy to attack or dismiss their hard work, to label it and them.

If our films were not sexy and a turn on, they would not be good.

I’ll have more exciting news soon. Until then!

Reine Margot