“Nightmare Man” is a Dream Come True

Sometimes it takes 20 years to be an overnight sensation in this town. I fell in love with cinema at the age of four when my father introduced me to the world of Abbott and Costello movies. When I received my first video camera at 13, I was hooked. Luckily, my parents, Victor Kanefsky; an acclaimed editor in the documentary arena, and my mother, Alice Glenn; a singer and dancer on Broadway, were very supportive of my dreams. When I turned 20 years old, we all got together to produce my first feature film project, a horror/comedy cult flick entitled There's Nothing Out There. With some private investors and a little mortgage on the house, I was able to live my dream. Luckily, I had the talent to pull it off, and I created a cult film that became known over the years as the little film that inspired Wes Craven's Scream. But that's another story.

Well, Nothing opened some doors for me but didn't really get me into the studio system. So I moved from New York to Los Angeles to further my career as a writer/director. French producer Alain Siritzky was the first person to give me a break, and I went on to direct multiple projects for him, including the teen comedy series Pretty Cool and Pretty Cool Too! and a thriller entitled Tomorrow by Midnight starring Alexis Arquette and Carol Kane. Unfortunately, these films never got a great distribution in the States, so I returned to my horror/comedy roots with The Hazing, starring Brad Dourif, Brooke Burke and the actress who would quickly become my muse, Tiffany Shepis. A decent hit on video and cable, The Hazing opened the doors to continue in the horror genre, but I was quickly becoming frustrated with producers who didn't really understand the horror genre.

Taking matters into my own hands, I decided to start producing as well. My first venture was a sexy horror thriller entitled Jacqueline Hyde, a female take on the famous Robert Louis Stevenson novella. Made for around $100,000 on HD, the film was picked up by Warner Home Video. Getting my first produced flick released by a major studio gave my parents and myself the confidence to try once again to make a little flick.

Nightmare Man started as a fun idea that became a script written in seven days, filmed in the summer of 2005 in 15 days and completed in May of 2006. This horror thriller starred my favorite actress, Tiffany Shepis, the lead of Jacqueline Hyde, along with Blythe Metz; introduced aspiring scarlet Hanna Putnam; and featured Richard Moll.

Once we had a finished film, we realized there was a glut of horror movies hitting the markets and it was getting harder and harder for a little horror film to stand out from the pack. We took a chance and decided to let the public decide. We screened the film for horror fans, website and magazine reviewers. Luckily, they embraced the film. We started to receive glowing reviews and win awards in film festivals. Nightmare Man was becoming the little film that could. Now, we just had to sell it and release it to the general public. That turned out to be a lot trickier than we thought.

With so many horror films, distributors were looking for names, and even though Richard Moll has his following and Tiffany Shepis has established herself as the leading scream queen in the business, they weren't considered big enough. The thing is, horror films have never been known for needing names. Just look at Firday the 13th, The Blair Witch Project and hundreds of other films. People like to watch good horror movies no matter if anyone big is in it or not. But most distributors can't tell a good horror film from a bad one because they don't really like the genre in the first place. They just like the money those films bring in.

For a year we tried to sell the film. Our producer's rep became very disappointed and quit the project, saying that horror is dead and nobody wants the film. Out of frustration, I went down to Comi-Con last August and saw a booth for After Dark Films advertising Horrorfest 2007. Now, last year they had started the first nationwide horror film festival that opened for a weekend on 500 screens nationwide and even cracked the top ten box office. This was a first for a film festival. It was so successful, they decided to do it again this year but even bigger - opening for a full ten days, from November 9 - 18. So, out of curiosity, I walked over to Sara Finder, who was manning the booth, and asked her how they select films for Horrorfest. She told me she was the director and they just screen a lot of films. She then asked if I was a filmmaker and did I have a film? I replied "yes" on both fronts and handed her a DVD screener of Nightmare Man. I didn't expect much, but if you never try, you'll never succeed, and at this point there was nothing to lose. Well, two weeks later I got the phone call. After Dark Films in association with Lions Gate loved the film and wanted it for Horrorfest this year! It was like winning the lottery.

So here we are, about to watch my little horror film, financed by my family and produced by Esther Goodstein, Frederico Lapenda, my father and myself, coming out theatrically on more than 350 screens for ten glorious days. After which it will hit DVD through Lions Gate and play on Sci-Fi Channel next October. It's like a dream come true. After making 15 films and writing 26 produced scripts, it was a long time coming, but you sometimes have to be patient in the business. And twenty years later, I can now say it's finally paying off.

Up next: Caller Unknown, a horror flick produced by Marc Frydman and Alain Siritzky, and the start of a new company with Esther Goodstein and my good friend Tiffany Shepis. We're calling it Nightmareworks SKG (Shepis, Kanefsky, Goodstein). Kind of catchy, don't you think?