VOLCANO GIRLS – Following models from Film Noir as well as the proliferation of socially-conscious American action/exploitation films from the late 1960s/early 1970s, I wanted to examine the plight of two very different half-sisters. One is fatalistic, philosophical but a strongly-principled and responsible schoolteacher, the other is an unredeemed drug addict/musician. Their involvement with two very different kinds of men will interwine and mesh not only with each other but the violent crime and corruption in their small California town. In the end they find out what is most important to them - both find transcendence in an apocalyptic nightmare, bonding in emotional chaos and bloody destruction.

TIGHTROPE ON FIRE – Once again, drawing on the same cinematic models as VOLCANO GIRLS (especially the violent neo-noir films from the USA and Europe of the late sixties/early seventies), I wanted to follow the trajectory of a burned-out, emotionally-numb, thirties-something, corrupt female cop in a small desert town. Having lost her husband and child years before to a mysterious house fire, she is complacent, resigned and on automatic pilot - until her twin, teenage, bad girl cousins start being sexually victimized by their psychotic, crime boss father (and our anti-heroine’s uncle). From this - coupled with her love/hate romance with a newly-arrived cop investigating her complicity in corruption - she finds a new reason for going on. She becomes an unstoppable force devoted to saving the ones she loves, even though it means her own death.

TATTOOED BLOOD – This was influenced by the Japanese yakuza films of the 1960s as well as many quirky, surreal and violent Japanese moviesfrom the 1990s by such directors as Takashi Miike and Kiyoshi Kurosawa. I was interested in following the plight of a spoiled, rich American girl suddenly dropped into the nocturnal demi-monde of Japanese nightclubs and the yakuza underworld, stripped of her wealth and reduced to working as a bar hostess. Her fight to win back her legacy from the underhanded yakuza that fleeced her late Japanese stepfather makes her grow up and embroils her in a downward spiral of sex and blood-drenched carnage. Once again, the protagonist grows in strange directions and is a quite different person from her original self by the saga’s end.

NO EVIL STAR – This is an epic crime story, influenced by several detailed dreams of mine, of the interaction of two Viet-Nam vets with the New York mafia in the late 1980’s. Drug dealing, drug use and drug rehab subculture, deep friendships made in high school and at the battlefront, the World War 2 theft of valuable European art treasures, the complicity of Catholic clergy, the vendetta of an ex-Viet-Cong-turned-hitman all figure in this tapestry of diverse, violent characters inadvertently thrown together and into conflict. The main, tormented, lone protagonist struggles to protect his few friends and his peace of mind, as well as find some kind of meager redemption from his previous drug-addled and self-obsessed life. In the vein of such films as STATE OF GRACE, GOOD FELLAS, AT CLOSE RANGE, MEAN STREETS.

DEAD FLOWERS – I wanted to write a vampire ghost story that would not spring from artificial story elements, but issue naturally from an exploited social class, rural environment and a twisted, sexually-sick family dynamic. I was initially influenced by the mushrooming number of serial killings in America’s Pacific Northwest in the late 1970s – 1990s, specifically the victimization of teenage highway prostitutes in Washington by the Green River Killer. I wanted to present the virulent spirit of a girl dead by the hand of her incestuous father, outraged at the hypocrisy of her small California coastal hometown. Her vampiric ghost is bent on avenging herself on the hypocritical middle class men who present a face of God-fearing respectability to their community but behind the scenes use up and discard poor, runaway teenage girls as if they were subhuman garbage. She also has strange, unbreakable ties to the main protagonist, a young man returning to town from New York after the death of his alcoholic wife.

DRAGON WHEEL SPLENDOR – A minimalist story about a talented, young but cynical woman unable to find her place in the artist/musician subculture of Los Angeles. She inadvertently becomes emotionally involved in helping a totally different kind of woman, a Japanese American girl who has been shanghaiied into prostitution. Her caring for this victimized woman entangles her in a web of escalating intimidation, then murder and dreamlike terror. This was heavily influenced by various Italian giallo thrillers from the 1970’s as well as many L.A.-based neo-noir movies such as THE NICKEL RIDE, NIGHT MOVES, INTERNAL AFFAIRS, etc…

copyright © 2006 Chris Desjardins pka Chris D.

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