Rick Sloane (born August 22, 1961) is an American
cult filmmaker. He is credited as writer, director, producer, Film editor and
cinematographer of much of his own work. He directed the
B-movie film ''
Hobgoblins
A hobgoblin is a household spirit, typically appearing in folklore, once considered helpful, but which since the spread of Christianity has often been considered mischievous. Shakespeare identifies the character of Puck in his ''A Midsummer Nigh ...
,'' which was featured on an episode of ''
Mystery Science Theater 3000''.
Early life
Rick attended
Hollywood High School in Hollywood, California. At the age of 18, Sloane was inspired by the ultra-low-budget film ''
Hollywood Boulevard
Hollywood Boulevard is a major east–west street in Los Angeles, California. It begins in the east at Sunset Boulevard in the Los Feliz district and proceeds to the west as a major thoroughfare through Little Armenia and Thai Town, Hollywoo ...
''. This film was also the directorial debut for ''
Gremlins
''Gremlins'' is a 1984 American black comedy horror film directed by Joe Dante, written by Chris Columbus, and starring Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Polly Holliday, and Frances Lee McCain, with Howie Mandel providing the voice ...
'' director
Joe Dante, another of Sloane's inspirations.
Mary Woronov
Mary Woronov (born December 8, 1943) is an American actress, published author and figurative painter. She is primarily known as a " cult star" because of her work with Andy Warhol and her roles in Roger Corman's cult films. Woronov has appeared ...
, one of the stars of "Hollywood Boulevard," agreed to take the lead in Sloane's first feature, ''
Blood Theater'', made when he was 21 years old.
Sloane also produced fake trailers for non-existent Grindhouse style films such as ''Chainsaw Chicks'', ''Amputee Hookers'', ''Nightmare of the Lost Whores'' and ''Clown Whores of Hollywood''. Sloane was working with 20th Century Fox to promote ''
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
''The Rocky Horror Picture Show'' is a 1975 musical comedy horror film by 20th Century Fox, produced by Lou Adler and Michael White and directed by Jim Sharman. The screenplay was written by Sharman and actor Richard O'Brien, who is also ...
'' and these short films were first shown at The "Third Annual Transylvanian Convention" held in Anaheim, California. It was also the launching of the Rocky Horror sequel "Shock Treatment". Sloane himself organized and produced one of the earliest of these cult conventions in 1981. The event was videotaped and aired on syndicated television that same summer as part of the syndicated special "Rocky Horror Treatment" and later that fall in a segment on NBC, in one of televisions original reality shows, "Real People".
Career
His lesser-known but bigger-budget films include ''Marked for Murder'' and ''Good Girls Don't''.
Sloane fulfills many of the roles in his filmmaking; he is a writer, director, producer, editor and cinematographer. Rick retains creative control over his films by self-producing them. He has never directed a film that he didn't write the script himself. By 25 years old, he directed his first three feature films,
Blood Theatre
''Blood Theatre'' (also known as ''Movie House Massacre'') is a 1984 American independent slasher- horror comedy film directed by Rick Sloane and starring Mary Woronov, Johnathon Blakely, Jenny Cunningham, and Joanna Foxx.
The film includes many ...
, The Visitants and
Hobgoblins
A hobgoblin is a household spirit, typically appearing in folklore, once considered helpful, but which since the spread of Christianity has often been considered mischievous. Shakespeare identifies the character of Puck in his ''A Midsummer Nigh ...
.
On August 13, 2014, Rick appeared on
Ken Reid's TV Guidance Counselor Podcast.
Hobgoblins
Sloane's third feature ''
Hobgoblins
A hobgoblin is a household spirit, typically appearing in folklore, once considered helpful, but which since the spread of Christianity has often been considered mischievous. Shakespeare identifies the character of Puck in his ''A Midsummer Nigh ...
'' is in the genre of such films as ''
Gremlins
''Gremlins'' is a 1984 American black comedy horror film directed by Joe Dante, written by Chris Columbus, and starring Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Polly Holliday, and Frances Lee McCain, with Howie Mandel providing the voice ...
'' and ''
Critters,'' albeit on a far lesser budget. The plot consists of a young security guard who must track down diminutive creatures who kill people while making their fantasies come true.
''Hobgoblins'' also received attention when it was later shown on ''
Mystery Science Theater 3000''. The episode, as usual, made unrelenting fun of the movie and of Sloane in particular, with
Tom Servo
Tom Servo is a fictional character from the American science fiction comedy television show ''Mystery Science Theater 3000'' (''MST3K''). Tom is one of two wise-cracking, robotic main characters of the show, built by Joel Robinson to act as a com ...
attempting to use
time travel
Time travel is the concept of movement between certain points in time, analogous to movement between different points in space by an object or a person, typically with the use of a hypothetical device known as a time machine. Time travel is a ...
to assault Sloane for making the film—only to give Sloane inspiration for making the movie—at the episode's conclusion. ''MST3K'' writer Paul Chaplin later commented on Hobgoblins, saying, "It shoots right to the top of the list of the worst movies we've ever done."
Critics lambasted the film, with ''efilmcritic.com'' calling it "Jim Henson's worst nightmare.". A sequel, ''
Hobgoblins 2'' has been released by Shout Factory in June 2009, wherein the same puppets and costumes are reused from the first film, and the cast is composed of new actors who resemble the original cast.
The original Hobgoblins is simultaneously being re-released on DVD in widescreen, including director's commentary, and a new documentary, "Hobgoblins: The Making of A DisasterPiece." The documentary includes interviews with original cast members Tom Bartlett (Kevin), Kelley Palmer (Daphne), Steven Boggs (Kyle), Billy Frank (Nick), Tami Clatterbuck (Fantazia), Darran Norris (Club Scum M.C.), Kenneth J. Hall (puppet fabricator), and Rick Sloane (writer and director).
Vice Academy
The 6-part
Vice Academy series, which aired on the
USA Network
USA Network (simply USA) is an American basic cable television channel owned by the NBCUniversal Television and Streaming division of Comcast's NBCUniversal through NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment. It was originally launched in 1977 as Madison ...
throughout the 1990s, was intended as a sexy spoof-on-a-spoof of the popular ''
Police Academy
A police academy, also known as a law enforcement training center, police college, or police university, is a training school for police cadets, designed to prepare them for the law enforcement agency they will be joining upon graduation, or othe ...
'' movie series. Sloane replaced the usual mixed group of odd-ball
characters
Character or Characters may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
* ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk
* ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...
with a sexy cast of females, including
Ginger Lynn Allen
Ginger Lynn Allen (born December 14, 1962), known professionally as Ginger Lynn, is an American pornographic actress and model who was a premier adult-entertainment star of the 1980s. She also had minor roles in various B movies. ''Adult Vid ...
,
Linnea Quigley
Barbara Linnea Quigley (born May 27, 1958) is an American actress, film producer, model, singer, and author. She is best known as a B-movie actress, and is often referred to as a " scream queen" due to her frequent appearances in low-budget horro ...
and
Elizabeth Kaitan. The plot features female police cadets in training to join the Hollywood vice squad. Their assignments include infiltrating a child porn operation, and going
undercover
To go "undercover" (that is, to go on an undercover operation) is to avoid detection by the object of one's observation, and especially to disguise one's own identity (or use an assumed identity) for the purposes of gaining the trust of an ind ...
to join and break up a prostitution ring.
As usual,
critics
A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as art, literature, music, cinema, theater, fashion, architecture, and food. Critics may also take as their subject social or governme ...
were
savage: Sandra Brennan of
Allmovie said, "This tale wavers on the fine line between
erotic comedy and
soft-core porn with a definite leaning toward the latter." However, Sloane contends that there is no actual sex and only ten seconds of
nudity in the entire film.
Critic Nathan Shumate commented, "Knowingly insipid to the point of being grotesque... It's a bad, bad, stupid movie, but somehow it fails to grossly offend, mainly because it doesn't try that hard."
Reviews
Reviewers have been ruthless in their criticism of both Sloane and his films. J.P. Harris writes in his review of Hobgoblins:
"Aside from the no-talent acting, everything else in Hobgoblins can be blamed on Rick Sloane, who wrote, produced, directed, edited and photographed this weak comedy."
Filmography
*''
Blood Theatre
''Blood Theatre'' (also known as ''Movie House Massacre'') is a 1984 American independent slasher- horror comedy film directed by Rick Sloane and starring Mary Woronov, Johnathon Blakely, Jenny Cunningham, and Joanna Foxx.
The film includes many ...
'' (1984)
*''
The Visitants'' (1987)
*''
Vice Academy'' (1988)
*''
Hobgoblins
A hobgoblin is a household spirit, typically appearing in folklore, once considered helpful, but which since the spread of Christianity has often been considered mischievous. Shakespeare identifies the character of Puck in his ''A Midsummer Nigh ...
'' (1988)
*''Marked for Murder'' (1989)
*''
Vice Academy Part 2'' (1990)
*''
Vice Academy Part 3'' (1991)
*''
Mind, Body & Soul'' (1992)
*''
Good Girls Don't
"Good Girls Don't" is a 1979 hit single written by Doug Fieger and released by the rock band The Knack, off their album '' Get the Knack.'' It was the follow-up to the group's number-one hit single, "My Sharona". "Good Girls Don't" was a No. 1 ...
'' (1993)
*''
Vice Academy 4'' (1994)
*''
Vice Academy 5'' (1996)
*''
Babe Watch: Forbidden Parody'' (1996)
*''
Vice Academy Part 6'' (1998)
*''
Hobgoblins 2'' (2009)
*''
Hobgoblins: The Making of A DisasterPiece'' (2009)
References
External links
*
Unofficial Rick Sloane websiteInterview in Film ThreatInterview in Bad MoviesInterview in Agony BoothInterview in Dread CentralVideo Interview on HobgoblinsVideo Interview with Hobgoblins cast and director
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sloane, Rick
1961 births
Living people
Film directors from Los Angeles