By Paul McVay, It Came From Hollywood
The following interview was conducted on January 20, 2009, and aired on the Drive-In of the Damned radio show a week later. It later appeared in Drive-In of the Damned Magazine (Issue #1/FEB 2018) which has long been OOP. This is the first time it has been shared online.
Of all the interesting people involved in the business of show that I have been fortunate enough to interview, either in print or on the radio, hands-down, the most interesting was Ted V. Mikels. Talking with this genre giant was akin to having an entire day of fun in just two and a half hours. He literally elevated your mood just by listening to him talk, and his personality immediately puts one at ease. The usual anxiety of how well an interview will go, especially one that will be broadcast, disappeared seconds into this discussion. After a two-and-a-half-hour talk that included the decision by both Ted and me to hang up and take a bathroom break mid-way through (this bit was excised for broadcast, but is definitely a piece of the recording I have gone back to listen to just because it still makes me laugh!), Ted and I kept in touch. He delighted me and my radio show audience once again on Halloween 2010 with a live phone-in that lasted over an hour. He was a true Showman even when he had nothing to show. You couldn’t ask for a better interview subject. Ted V. Mikels departed our realm on October 16, 2016.
Paul McVay– One of the best loved packaging of films was the triple bill of The Corpse Grinders, The Undertaker and His Pals and The Embalmer. Can you share any stories about how that all came about?
Ted V. Mikels– I was absolutely, deeply involved with them every day on a seven day a week basis. When you make a movie, you’ve got to market it. If you don’t tell the world, you’ve got it, and let them see it, you’ll never get off the ground. This thing about building a better mousetrap, that people will come to you, it doesn’t work on movies. Not only did I make a movie, I [had] re-cut Undertaker and released it for those guys previously. For The Embalmer I had a good production sales manager in my distribution company, and he arranged for me to have a deal with Allied Artists. We paid them a stipend, a heavy one at that, and got their prints for this Italian movie. Then I put the package together. Bob had a friend in Kansas City that worked for Commonwealth Chain, and he put together what we called “The Final Dimension in Shock.” We then prepared a book. It was actually a twenty-page booklet, eight and a half by eleven, which had the ad slicks and everything for the movies. This we sent to every theater that booked us. Every theater then was given a criterion to follow: on Wednesday night this is the ad you placed, on Thursday night this is the ad, which is always smaller, then Friday the big ad. The biggest one was Friday. We would specify this. Also included in that package was a certificate and then they had to order however many thousands of certificates they wanted, which everyone who saw the package had to sign before they entered the theater.
PM– That was the Certificate of Assurance?
TVM– Yeah, the Certificate of Assurance. We had a nurse in the lobby taking blood pressure and an ambulance out front. We designed all that stuff. I grew up in the business on stage, so showmanship was my forte. We had a lot of fun with that.
PM– People had a lot of fun going to see it. I think that’s a little bit of what’s missing today in the movie going experience. It’s not so much just seeing a movie to be entertained, but, specifically with that triple bill, it was an event.
TVM– I’m going to tell you a little funny [story]. I was judging a beauty contest in Topanga, just outside of Glendale, CA. I lived thirty years in Hollywood before I moved here [Las Vegas]. Anyway, I was a judge and there were three of us judges on the panel. The announcer would say [a little bit about each of us]. When they got to my name they said, “Ted V. Mikels, he’s a film director, producer, cinematographer, whatever, and he made The Corpse Grinders.” This was not long after The Corpse Grinders came out. The judge next to me jumped up and said, “Oh, my god!” This is in front of a huge crowd and everything. “You made The Corpse Grinders! Oh, my god! Wait till I tell my kids. That’s their favorite movie! Wait till I tell them I met the man who made it!” That was funny. I was writing The Doll Squad in the mountains at Lake Arrowhead, outside of Hollywood. I usually have to get away from everything and everybody if I’m going to do any deep writing of scripts. I rented an A-frame cabin way up in the mountains. A realtor was showing the cabin while I was writing The Doll Squad and he asked what else I had done. It was the same thing. “The Corpse Grinders! Oh, my god, my favorite!”
PM– Everyone knows The Corpse Grinders.
TVM– Yeah, everyone knows The Corpse Grinders. My friend in New York said, “If you ask any ten people walking down the street if they ever heard of The Corpse Grinders movie, nine of them would say, ‘Yes we have!’”
PM– Even kids today have heard of it. Maybe they haven’t seen it. Although it’s easier now to see The Corpse Grinders and The Undertaker and His Pals and movies like that than it was years ago.
TVM– Oh, yes. I was doing the casting on Monday [for Astro Zombie M3: Cloned], where I was interviewing a lot of people, and a lot of people, a lot of young people that are working at making their own films- several of them mentioned The Corpse Grinders.
PM– Yeah. It’s one of my favorite films. Since we’re talking about The Corpse Grinders, how did the idea for the film come about?
TVM– Arch Hall was a talented writer. He had written a script. It was not called The Corpse Grinders. He had written this script. It was supposed to be done in a fish cannery. In any event, I had no money, as always, but he did come into my offices. It was the first time I had met him. We became good friends later, but I glanced through this script, and I can’t tell you why, but I liked it. I said, “How much do you want for it?” He said, “Eighteen hundred dollars.” Of course, at that time Roger Corman and everybody [were] paying fifty dollars for scripts. You never went over five hundred. He said he wanted eighteen hundred. I said, “Come with me.” We walked right across the street. I was right next to Paramount then, right at Raleigh Studios. I walked into the bank and said to the bank manager, who I knew- I had an account there- I said, “I want to give this man eighteen hundred dollars. Can you arrange that?” So the banker had me sign a note. We peeled off eighteen hundred dollar bills for Arch. But it took quite a while, over a year or so, before I could put together any possible way to shoot it. I liked it. It had several re-writes after that time, but the basic thing was Arch Hall’s story. He was a talented writer.
PM– It turned out to be a great film, if I may say so myself.
TVM– We added an awful lot to the story. There were no undertakers, that sort of thing. It was some good people. Landau (Sanford Mitchell) was a relative of Dustin Hoffman. Most of these people had never done a film before. I looked for unusual characters. People that were different. I think I found them.
PM– I know you’ve been executive producer on at least two films I’m going to mention that are pretty well known. I would say one of them is right up there with The Corpse Grinders as far as being a favorite of horror fans around the world, and that’s Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things, as well as The Worm Eaters. How did your involvement in those two films come about?
TVM– Well, it’s a long story. The same man who came to work for me as my distribution sales manager had friends in Miami and they wanted to make Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things. There was enough cash flow going through that was mine from The Corpse Grinders, so we made an arrangement and I advanced some money for them. I didn’t think [executive producer] was a meaningful credit. Credits that were important to me were always director, producer, writer, cinematographer sometimes, always the editor and then the releasing company. In any event, I flew into Miami Beach where they had started shooting. They picked me up at the airport and said, “Let’s take you to the set where we’re shooting.” I said, “No, I want to go to the lab. I know the labs are open all night long. I want to see what you’ve shot this last week.” We went to the lab and the lab screened everything. When we left I said, “I’m sorry, you have to throw it all in the trash. It is worthless and I will not be a part of this movie. We start over and shoot everything properly.”
PM– Really?
TVM– Yeah. They had been messing with 16mm. They brought in good people from New York to shoot and so forth. I went to the set and I saw they had a big light on two people sitting on a tree trunk, supposedly gnawing on the flesh of a body. I asked, “What’s that?” They said, “That’s a moonlight shot.” Remember, I was a cinematographer as well as a director, producer and writer. Since I was a kid I’ve been shooting and I was a union cameraman too. I said, “That is not night. That is not a moonlight shot.” So I told them where they had to put the lights. I stayed for two weeks. I had blackboard drawings for the grips and the lighting people. I taught them how to light the hand coming out of the ground and so on. Then I had to approve the cuts. I bought from the guy who wrote and produced (Alan Ormsby)- he made a lot of masks for me that I bought and paid for. Every time we opened the film at a theater, we had people walking around in masks. We did that as a promo. I don’t know why, it didn’t have the same appeal to me as when I’m director, producer and all that. I didn’t even put my name on it, other than my distribution company name. In any event, the backers in Miami tried to get the theaters to pay faster. They sat in my office, and I didn’t like that too well. I told them they couldn’t force the theater chains to pay faster than they do. Sometimes they take six months to pay you. The money people didn’t want to hear that. I said, “I owe the laboratory sixty-two thousand dollars. I’ve been paying them down for the prints of the movie. I’ve got receivables a little more than that from theaters. Tell you what, let’s exchange positions because anytime it’s good for both parties it works best if either one can exchange. I’ll give you the movie back, you take the lab bill and we’ll go our separate ways.” Which is what we did. That’s why I didn’t have more involvement with it.
PM– And The Worm Eaters?
TVM– Herbie Robbins had been working for me. He was working on The Doll Squad and he bugged me to let him direct a film. I told him to come up with a story that I liked and we’d find a way to do it. So he wrote The Worm Eaters. I flew into New Mexico and visited with him. I said, “Herbie, look, if we have real people eating real, live worms, I will make the movie.” I think I borrowed a hundred thousand dollars from various sources; twenty-five thousand from here and there, got a laboratory deferment for seventy-five thousand dollars. I had to fly to New York to get that. It was more than being executive producer. It was very heavy hands-on involvement. I was already editing another movie I had directed and produced called Alex Joseph and His Wives. I was editing that and couldn’t really break away, but every day around three o’clock I’d go on the set. Poor Herbie, working with all those people. God bless him! He was one heck of a talented actor and so on, but sometimes at three o’clock they hadn’t even shot a [scene] yet. I would then take over and make sure we got the shots before dark that we needed that day and then go back to my editing bay.
PM– Sounds like executive producing those two films turned out to be more hands-on than what an executive producer would normally be involved with.
TVM– Absolutely! A lot of executive producer situations mean only that you lend your name to it. That’s not the case with me. I got deeply involved, deeply involved. We had worm eating contests around the country. In Kansas City, at a show, Herbie and I ate worms for the press and they put it on the front page of the newspaper! It said, “Paramount, MGM, 20th Century Fox- Eat your heart out!” We got the promotion.
PM– That’s a dedicated filmmaker.
TVM– Yeah, but you know, the funny part about it is that a lot of my sub distributors said that unfortunately, worm eating at the time wasn’t a popular thing to do. Some of them felt the title kept people out of the theaters. That was sad. That was a heavy lesson to learn because my indebtedness was heavy.
PM– It may have kept the general, movie going public out, but there’s always that fan that is going to want to go see a movie called The Worm Eaters.
TVM– Well, you know, in Seattle, at the University, they said it was their favorite rental because all the kids would go around after the movie- and when someone would do something wrong- all the kids would go, “Worm him! Worm him!” They got such a kick out of it. When you make these movies, you don’t know what the future will hold. Some of them take hold and really go, like my original Astro Zombies. I kind of got deprived of any results from that, even though I spent a year and a month, thirteen months of my life, making it. I never got a dime out of it. To this day it’s a biggie. People remember it. I can’t tell you how often, during the week, how many emails I get from people who tell me that’s their favorite movie of all time. That’s why I did the second one, Mark of the Astro Zombies. I shouldn’t have called it Mark of the Astro Zombies because on the Internet it isn’t found. People don’t look for an Astro Zombie named ‘Mark.’
PM– Right. They’re looking for Astro Zombies II.
TVM– That’s why I’ve named the newest one Astro Zombie M3: Cloned, so it can be found easily. This is my third. Jack Harris has owned the original since ’72 or so. They could actually be put together as a trilogy.
PM– On Astro Zombies, how was it working with John Carradine?
TVM– He was an absolute delight. Over the year I think I had four projects with John Carradine. I remember we were in Des Moines, Iowa, sitting at a bar. They brought us in early because the company we were doing the movie for, The Hostage, were telling everyone, “We have a Hollywood expert here!” They were selling stock to raise the money to do the movie. So John and I were sitting at the bar before shooting started and he said, “What in hell are we doing in Des Moines, Iowa?” Anyway, he was an absolute delight. He was so highly, highly powered and professional. He would take on the character roles so beautifully. On the Astro Zombies, which was two or three years later, he said, “I’d like to tell you about my son (David Carradine). He wants to be in movies.” Can you believe? And what a career he had.
PM– Listed in the credits for screenplay was Wayne Rogers (M.A.S.H 1972-1978).
TVM– Right. I had written a story in 1960, right after Strike Me Deadly. So, Wayne got invited to a private screening in Hollywood for Strike Me Deadly. He loved it. He had his attorneys send me a contract. I was up in Oregon still. With the contract they said they would finance everything, but it would never be mine, it would always belong to them. They had an exclusivity built into it that I did not go for. I couldn’t do anything with or for anyone else, so I didn’t sign their agreement. We got involved in a little educational film. He gave me a couple bucks and we pulled that off. Then we did another little silly thing called Dr. Sex, which has no sex in it! Then he asked, “What else do you got?” I pulled out this little story I had written. It was supposed to be sci-fi. I wanted it to be serious. “Astro Zombies. That’s a great title! What’s it about?” He said, “Let’s make it into a real campy thing. I’ll sit with you and we’ll see if we can make a campy script out of it.” We sat in my offices. I did all the typing and he and I bantered back and forth. We turned Astro Zombies from the story I had originally done as a serious sci-fi [film] into the campy thing it is.
PM– Was that something you were okay with at the time?
TVM– I really wasn’t at the time, but as we got into it, he was finding people to come up with a few dollars here and there. I was not uncomfortable with it because they were coming up with enough money for film, and so on like that. They restricted me heavily. In any event, I wasn’t comfortable doing it as a camp at the time, but it turned out it was campy anyway.
PM– All of us Ted Mikels fans know that The Doll Squad was the inspiration for the TV show Charlie’s Angels. Did you ever hear anything from Aaron Spelling when they decided to do the show?
TVM– I never heard a word from anyone, although Tura Satana did invite Aaron to our screening. Every time I finished a movie in Hollywood, I would make an arrangement to screen it somewhere, have wine and cheese. You know, have a premiere celebration. Francine York, I believe, also discussed something with Aaron Spelling, but Tura is the one who invited him to the screening. I thought Francine gave him a copy of the script. Aaron Spelling was at the screening. I probably met him. I may have even shaken his hand, but I don’t recall because there were hundreds and hundreds of people there when we screened it. In any event, four years later and then they come out with Charlie’s Angels. Sabrina is the leading lady.
PM– Just like in The Doll Squad.
TVM– A lot of people said I should have sued. I even had an attorney from New York who had known about my movie The Doll Squad- and knew it well- call and say, “Ted, you’ve got a straight shot here. I’ll take it on and it won’t cost you a dime. Just split it with me fifty-fifty and we’ll go after him.” I said, “No, I don’t sue people.” He said, “Ted, you don’t realize what you’ve got.” Anyway, I said I could come up with an idea every six seconds. So, I elected not to say anything and I didn’t, but it has come up again and again. I have even had people say that I finance movies by suing so and so and I have never sued anybody in my life. I make most of my movies with zero financing, mostly on my ability to put together credit at banks and all that because I always come through.
PM– So if Aaron Spelling was at the premiere of The Doll Squad, and got the idea and took it to TV, so be it.
TVM– I’m sure that’s where the seed came from. And then to call the leading lady the same as from The Doll Squad!
PM– If he had named the character something other than Sabrina, maybe the connection wouldn’t have been made so quickly. But there doesn’t seem to be any bad feelings between you and that show.
TVM– No. The fact is, whenever Francine shows anyone her copy of The Doll Squad, they always say, “That’s Charlie’s Angels!” When I think of the various things I’ve instigated, like Astro Zombies and The Corpse Grinders, I’ve always tried to make them light. In other words, they are not serious. They are not and usually cannot be taken seriously because they are campy. If there’s going to be any violence in it, let’s make it something that could never really happen. It’s surreal, to me, and it is fun. I never want to influence anybody to do bad, evil violent things. I try to keep my movies so far-out as to be unrealistic.
PM– Having just said that, does it ever surprise you at the level of the fans of your films how detailed they get in their questions or how seriously they do take your films?
TVM– What is so ironic is that people, many times, will either email and or in person, tell me lines they remember from my thirty- and forty-year-old movies, like, “No money, no meat!” Stuff like that. How many times this happens, I can’t tell you, but again and again I hear from people who know the actual spoken lines in my old, old movies. A lot of people say, “I’m forty-eight now, but when I was a kid my father took me to this drive-in, I saw this movie and I never forgot it.” I have a lot of people tell me the first movie they ever remember seeing was The Corpse Grinders.
PM– When they quote dialog to you, do they expect you to quote back the next line of dialog?
TVM– I always do! When I write the darn words down, I know everything that’s said. The fact of the matter is, if I happen to be watching any of my movies with anybody else, and somebody is about to say a line, I say the line out loud just before them. I give people lines arbitrarily when I’m shooting. I’ll say, “If you don’t like this line, what feels comfortable to you?” [The performer] will say, “Can I say this?” “Yeah, sure, lock it in.” That’s the way I prefer directing, as long as the actors keep the same thought and meaning of what I wrote. Go for it.
PM– Not too many independent filmmakers either forty years ago or today, would allow their cast to do that because of budgetary and time restraints.
TVM– Let me explain my feelings on why that happens. What happened over a period of years, one person was called in and given the job to direct. Another person was called in and given the job of producer. Another was involved being a cameraman and another person was being involved as a money person who is trying to find an outlet for the movie. And that person has gone to someone with the script and [they] said, “Yeah, we’ll do this.” So [all] these people get terribly uncomfortable about making a single change of any kind because it may undermine the structure that was put together for the creation of the movie. At a studio, when somebody okays a script, it has to be done word for word or else somebody’s head flies. And that’s the reason they don’t [film] that way. I’ve always been autonomous.
PM– Why didn’t you issue an official soundtrack for The Girl in Gold Boots?
TVM– It’s because there are too many people involved. Howard and the guy in New York, Larry Cartell, all these people come up. Even Jody Daniels created two or three of the songs for the movie. It’s too huge a collection of the input of various song writers and singers. Really, it would be a big thing to make a production soundtrack out of that, so I’ve not done it.
(NOTE: The Girl in Gold Boots finally got an official soundtrack release in July 2020)
PM– Has the Internet made the business end of filmmaking easier? Has it made it easier to connect to audiences quicker and get your films distributed, or has it not made much of a difference?
TVM– Actually, the Internet allows communication- more often just people talking about how much they enjoyed this movie or that movie. The sales [generated from the website] really don’t even amount to the gasoline it takes to drive everything to the post office. I have a friend who made a martial arts movie and he took out a five-thousand-dollar ad in a martial arts magazine. He printed one thousand DVDs and he never sold one. With the Internet, I don’t think it really does matter because, like I said, by the time you drive five, six miles to the post office each way, wait in line, which I do myself- the only advantage is for the person who orders this way, I can put my name on it when they ask. How do you tell people to go to your website? How do you tell them how to spell your name right? You don’t sell that many. The greatest satisfaction comes from knowing somebody does enjoy what you have created and tells you.
PM– You really have made a difference in people’s lives with your films, and what you’re doing now is allowing people to come work on your films and the next generation- maybe the next Ted Mikels- is in this group of people. I think it’s great that you continue to do that.
TVM– That’s very kind of you to say. I guess I do think about that. I’ve got twenty-five grandchildren. As of today, twelve great-grandchildren. One thing that is inspirational to me- there is a new generation that finds my movies and likes them and yet, they were done twenty years before these people were born. I [also] enjoy lecturing. I lectured at Carnegie Mellon on filmmaking. I’ve enjoyed that maybe more than the shows.
PM– Let’s talk about Astro Zombies M3: Cloned. What can you tell us about it?
TVM– I was talking with this young writer who had met me at a couple of shows since, and he did the basic story for Demon Haunt. What we do is talk on the phone- I give him my ideas of what I want it to be and he will take it from there and give me a presentation. I read it by way of email and say, “Okay, we need to change this, change that, add a character here, I want to show this or that.” He does another draft and we’re getting closer. We chat back and forth that way. When it’s done, I print it out. You should see the new one. He came up with some great ideas. I told him I didn’t want a lot of chopping heads off or anything too gory. So, we went the other route. Maybe we went too far making an Astro Zombie read and write from a child’s book- identifying the dogs and cows. Maybe it is a little too campy. I haven’t decided how much of that to take out yet, but I’ve added an enormous number of scenes and sequences. We share the screenplay writing credits. One thing I take pride in, for all the years I’ve been making movies, not one person has done anything but said, “I want to be in your next one.” I try to make it so much fun for everybody. My shoots nowadays, when I’m working with a tiny, miniscule crew- sometimes two people- whereas in Hollywood I’d have crews of thirty and forty people- my shoots are about four hours. That’s about average. The real secret is I don’t have money to feed them.
PM– So when they ask, “What’s for dinner?” you tell them they’re done for the day.
TVM– Absolutely correct! They tell me they just got off a shoot working nineteen hours straight. When I send them home in four hours, they’re dumbfounded and don’t want to go home!
PM– That’s a great compliment.
TVM– It is. There isn’t anyone who doesn’t say, “I want to be in your next movie.” Even Sean Morelli, who has been involved with me since Corpse Grinders II. He’s a busy, busy guy, but he’s been in every movie I’ve done since I met him.
PM– Does that make for a happier experience for you to have that circle of people that you know will be there and always give one hundred percent?
TVM– Absolutely. And I’ll tell you why. I always tell people, “Temperament is always more important than talent.” Attitude, dependability, personality, when you’re between scenes, their temperament- that is all terribly important and even supersedes their talent. If they’re dependable and I know I can count on them I can get a performance out of them. I am always confident that I can get a performance out of anybody, whether they have had any experience or not. So, the big thing is temperament is more important than talent to me. Now, when someone in one of my productions proves to be that way- accountable, dependable, punctual on a call, never unhappy, always happy, helping the atmosphere, enjoying it, no complaining- when you have these people it is an absolute pleasure to have them back.
PM– Do you have a shooting deadline for Astro Zombie M3: Cloned?
TVM– I’m not a one-week movie maker. My movies usually take a year. Shooting takes place over two and sometimes more, months. I shoot until I get what I want, what I need. I don’t try to shoot everything in a weekend- I don’t do that. I do not have a deadline. I have no one to answer to, except my bills. So, I just take it as I’m able. I’ve got three edit systems, and I’ve got a man at my studio who has been working for me a total of sixteen years. He did the edit and all the CGI for the last movie [Demon Haunt]. I sit with him and we work out every detail, every cut. He uses the latest edit systems on several computers.
PM– Because you can use the people you want and film when you want, do you enjoy this time in your life making films versus forty years ago when you made The Corpse Grinders?
TVM– Well, I worry a lot less about time restraints. When I did The Corpse Grinders, [the worry was] “How much time do I have in the studio?” You are limited. You have to shoot everything in five days. Even on Astro Zombies, I had two weeks in a small studio with a full crew. But I only had half of the movie to shoot there. The rest of it was on location. The restraints that were put upon [me] in the prior periods usually had to do with how long you could hold the people, because they were on a minimal pay scale. You know, I’ve never had the money to buy new film for a movie. All the while I did 35mm, I shot everything with short ends, which means sometimes by the time you turned the camera on and had it marked and slated, you were out of film. Most people would never understand now because with a video camera you can turn it on and run an hour on one line of dialog if you had to.
PM– With the digital cameras you can practically film forever, or just back up and record over what you just filmed.
TVM– Yeah or put in a new cassette. I never erase anything. I never go over anything again. Now I’m shooting high-def digital. Everything has changed, whereas, at the time of Astro Zombies and The Girl in Gold Boots, I think I used short ends from Paramount. I think it was a nickel a foot at the time. Then I found some of the camera people who were getting the short ends. They would get to keep the leftovers out of a roll of film. They were splicing them together and those splices don’t go through a camera. You get a jam-up or they’d fall apart at the lab. It’s ugly to do it that way.
PM– It’s a lot easier today. Anybody can make a movie. There’s positive and negative.
TVM– Unfortunately, distributors have rooms full of DVDs from wannabe moviemakers who are looking for distributors. These distributors never get around to looking at them. Several of them have told me they’ve got rooms full of them. They just have not got time to look at them. And when they do, it’s nothing marketable. It’s sad. It’s made a big change in our industry for sure.
PM– One last question. Not to put you on the spot- what is your favorite Ted Mikels film?
TVM– That’s a tough question to answer because I’ve enjoyed making every movie I ever made. Strike Me Deadly, for instance, my kids tell me that is my best movie. I made that in 1959-60! It is an outside action adventure, and it has a lot of dear memories for me. The Girl in Gold Boots was fun- it was a whole different world. Good people, good music. The Corpse Grinders was fun. Of course, for Blood Orgy of the She-Devils, I locked myself away for two weeks and wrote a screenplay and never changed a word from [it]. I still have deep, warm friendships with everyone who has even been in any of those movies. The Doll Squad, Alex Joseph and His Wives, The Worm Eaters, Ten Violent Women, Mission: Killfast, they are all my favorites. I really cannot point to one and say that is my favorite of all.