Rejuvenatrix

Rejuvenatrix
File:The Rejuvenator 1988 Movie Poster.jpg The Rejuvenator movie poster
Directed by	Brian Thomas Jones
Produced by	Steven D. Mackler (producer) Bernard E. Goldberg (executive producer) Robert Zimmerman (line producer)
Written by	Brian Thomas Jones (story) Simon Nuchtern (screenplay and story)
Starring	Vivian Lanko John MacKay
Music by	Larry Juris
Edited by	Brian O'Hara
Production company	Jewel Productions
Release dates	1988
Running time	90 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$230,000

Rejuvenatrix (aka The Rejuvenator) is a 1988 horror film starring Vivian Lanko and John MacKay, and directed by Brian Thomas Jones. The film was partly inspired by the 1959 science fiction film The Wasp Woman, which had been produced and directed by Roger Corman. The original title was Rejuvenatrix, although it has become more popularly known as The Rejuvenator, this included the UK and Brazil.

Plot

A rich actress, Elizabeth Warren, who has gotten too old for leading roles, hopes to restore her youthful beauty. For a few years she had been financing a scientist, Dr. Gregory Ashton, who is working on a formula for eternal youth. This formula involves withdrawing certain fluids from the human brain. Although Ashton had found a serum that reverses the aging process, it was not yet complete. However Warren threatens to cut funding if Ashton won't give her the serum. Despite the warnings of danger, she willingly volunteers to become a human laboratory rat and takes the serum. The operation was successful and the rejuvenated woman regained her beauty, dubbing herself Elizabeth. However she didn't realize that Ashton has to rob the brains of dead bodies to get the chemical needed for the formula, which she must continue being injected with, and this leaves a limited supply shortly after. The experiment have unforeseen side effects, and turns Warren into a monster, who resorts to murder in her lust for human brains.

Cast

• Vivian Lanko as Elizabeth Warren/The Monster
• John MacKay as Dr. Gregory Ashton
• James Hogue as Wilhelm
• Katell Pleven as Dr. Stella Stone
• Jessica Dublin as Ruth Warren
• Marcus Powell as Dr. Germaine
• Roy MacArthur as Hunter
• Louis F. Homyak as Tony the Guard
• Irene Fitzpatrick as Nurse Jones

Production

The film originally came about through director Brian Thomas Jones and Steven Mackler, who would produce the film. Jones attended New York University Film School in 1976, until he decided to drop out during the summer of his junior and senior years, and soon worked for a TV commercial production company. Jones began freelancing after two years as a production assistant on indie and studio features. In order to help start his directing career, Jones returned to the university to make a narrative film. At the same time as finishing his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, Jones also made a fifty-eight-minute film called Overexposed about photojournalists on assignment in El Salvador. This film became the semi-finalist in the North Eastern US region of the 1984 Student Academy Awards. Although Jones lost, a few days after the awards, he received a call from someone named Steven Mackler. Mackler had been on the jury for the student awards and revealed he was impressed with the film (especially as it had been done on no budget). Mackler made a deal with the Overexposed producer, Robert Altschuler, to take the film out to try to raise money to shoot another twenty minutes to sell it as a feature. This plan never came to fruition and instead both Jones and Mackler started looking for other projects to work on together. Jones received a call during the summer of 1987 from Mackler, who had made a recent deal with Sony Video Software - SVS Films. The agreement involved the creation of three feature films, and each were due to get a theatrical release before being released within the home video market. This was at a time when Sony began manufacturing their own VHS players, after losing the VHS/Betamax format war. The idea behind the deal was to make low budget genre movies, release them theatrically, and then sell them to video store owners as a 'straight to your store from the theater' deal. The films would then cross-market with the company's video players.

Mackler handed Jones a script titled Skin, which was written by Simon Nuchtern, specifically as a vehicle for special effects make-up artist Ed French. Skin was set to be the first SVS film, and Mackler wished for Jones to direct the film because of their relationship. In an interview with Matty Budrewicz for UK Horror Scene, Jones stated "I read the script and, when I finished, I said to myself "I can't direct this script, but I know how to make this movie. It's Bride of Frankenstein meets Sunset Boulevard! I pitched the concept to Mackler and he let me rewrite it." Although much of the structure was kept the same, including the special effects, Jones performed a full page-one rewrite in order to work in numerous ideas of his own. He stated "Like I said, I've never really been a true fan of blood, guts and gore so when I was writing I tried to weave in all these themes of vanity, addiction, obsession and greed. I really wanted to make it my own movie—something really heartfelt and dramatic."

The filming of Rejuventrix had an original schedule of twenty days, however the shoot went over by approximately two days. On one of these days, the cast and crew recorded a number of pick-ups in a studio to get some missing transition shots once a rough cut of the film had been created. The entire project's expense came to approximately $230,000 after post production, and the crew shot on re-cans and short ends too. When speaking of filming, Jones recalled "The first thing that pops into my head is the beautiful fall day we started shooting, Day One. It was the mansion where the Ruth Warren character lived and I was stood on the second floor balcony, just watching all the crew unloading the trucks and setting up lights and scrims. I had this rush of excitement and just thought to myself, "Wow! This is all mine." It was this incredible property in New Jersey and we shot the first four days of production there. It was wonderful, a beautiful place. Ashton's lab, though, that was more difficult to come by. My favorite memory of the shoot itself though, is the night we shot the scene outside the nightclub." Jones found the lab to shoot part of the film while he was in one of the production offices. He noticed two Polaroids on the production manager Bob Zimmerman's desk, and these were of an old abandoned tuberculosis hospital on Staten Island that had been scouted by Zimmerman and the location manager, Phil Dolan. However neither Zimmerman or Dolan had planned to show Jones the location, however Jones decided it was the perfect setting, describing it as one of the scariest places he'd ever been to when he did a crew scout. The lab was later used in the film Jacob's Ladder, released in 1990. The main filming location was in New York City, USA. Within the film, American all-female heavy metal group Poison Dolly's made an appearance performing live at a nightclub. The group performed two songs; "Turn Out the Lights" and "Nice Boy" - both of these tracks exclusive to the film.

Speaking of Vivian Lanko and John McKay, Jones remembered "Oh, she was committed. She endured hours of effects application and removal. I'd only really ever considered her for the part, in truth. She was part of an experimental theater company - La Cucaracha - that I was also involved in so I was familiar with her talents from there. She was fascinated by the character and the transformation but a little uncomfortable with the nudity required for the role. Still, we cast her and her chemistry with John McKay, who plays Ashton, was just great. Now, I would never have thought John right for Ashton if I had just seen his picture, but when he came in... He just was Ashton! He and Vivian were two of the best things that happened with the movie and I think the movie works as well as it does because of them."

On its initial release, Rejuvenatrix played theatrically for one week in New York. The original idea by Jones and Mackler was to use the first round of positive reviews and good word of mouth it received in the local press to help re-market it as a modern midnight movie. However SVS began to interfere, and they initially decided that the film would only be booked into theaters for a week, as the SVS executive felt the film "didn't have legs". Jones believed "It had real cult potential but it just never ever got the opportunity." SVS also interfered with the film's title, and this was by the same SVS executive. Originally the film had a couple of working titles throughout filming, and Jones was glad that the titles, one of which was "Scream Queen" never took off. At the time, a friend of Jones, Mark Carducci, came up with its original title "Rejuvenatrix". Jones remembered "To me, that title had the perfect 'psychotronic' feel but this idiot executive decided to call it "Rejuvenator" instead - probably attempting to cash in on the excellent Stuart Gordon film Re-Animator." Rejuvenatrix debuted within America during July 1988. On 31 October 1988 it had its video premiere in the country, released by Sony/Columbia-Tristar under title The Rejuvenator. In West Germany it had a video premiere within May 1989. On 19 July 1991 it was released in Portugal. In the UK the film was given a VHS release as well. This was released via Castle Home Video. The Brazilian VHS release was issued by Taipan Vídeo. For many years the VHS releases were out-of-print. In 2013, CMV Laservision issued the film on DVD in Germany - the first DVD release of Rejuvenatrix.

In the early 2014 interview for UK Horror Scene, Budrewicz described the film as "A film I love dearly, "Rejuvenator" is a marvellous, Gothic sci-fi frightener - a kooky and ever-so-slightly-kinky hybrid of Cronenberg, The Wasp Woman and Billy Wilder's noir classic Sunset Boulevard." Jones stated "It's never been released on DVD sadly. Nobodies ever contacted me to do a release either. Do I look back on it fondly? Of course! It was my first feature film and probably my best. It's certainly the one I'm most proud of. It was so much fun to make - we had some crazy times!" In response to Budrewicz's description of the film, Jones stated "I'm mentioned in the same sentence as Cronenberg and Corman!! I'm glad you caught the Sunset Boulevard reference though. Ironically, I'm not really a horror fan. I've seen a lot of horror films of course, but it's not my genre - I'm more of a Film Noir kind of guy. There are some classic horror films I like: all the Universal Monster movies, which are really tame by today's standards, "Halloween", "Evil Dead" one and two and the first "Saw". I've never been a fan of the 'gorno' type stuff though." Jones also noted "It's not a brilliant movie, but I do think it's a good one. I've always been quite disappointed it never got the exposure or recognition I feel it deserved, even though it has developed its fans from those lucky enough to have seen it. The reviews and the fact it did OK on video... I probably should let it go but I'll always hold a grudge for that SVS guy who didn't understand the genre or its fandom and realise the potential of what he had. I still enjoy watching "Rejuvenator" every once in a while though. Those were the days, man! Shooting on 35mm film and editing on Moviola uprights and Steenback flatbeds, mixing in an actual mix studio. These days, filmmakers don't know what they missed."

The film was Vivian Lanko's debut appearance. Married to actor Martin Donovan, she would only appear in two other films The Refrigerator (1991) and Simple Men (1992).

Reception

As quoted on the American VHS cover, Variety magazine noted the "Elaborate make-up effects". On the UK VHS cover, Variety were quoted again, stating the film was "Designed to appeal to connoisseurs of contemporary horror". Allmovie writer Dan Pavlides gave the film two and a half stars out of five. He stated "The special effects are excellent."

Jones later recalled some of the critical reception of the film at the time of its release, in relation to his attempt add a more heartfelt and dramatic side to the film; "The reviews of it in NY Daily News, Fangoria, Variety and Cinefantastique all mentioned the characters and story, saying that it really set it apart from the crowd of low budget horror films. One of the nicest compliments I got was from a professor of mine in grad school, who taught critical theory for art. He watched the film and said that I elevated the movie above the genre with a genuine affection for the characters."

External links

• Rejuvenatrix at IMDb
• Rejuvenatrix at AllMovie
• Rejuvenatrix at Rotten Tomatoes