Blood Boobs & Beast (2007)

Blood Boobs & Beast (USA, 2007) 75 min color DIR-EDITOR: John Paul Kinhart. MUSIC: Christian Brown. DOP: John Paul Kinhart, Dan Pittore, Patrick Wright. (videokitchen.tv)

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This 75-minute documentary is a compulsively fascinating look at Don Dohler’s work, generously featuring his publishing history in tandem with his filmmaking, as the Maryland filmmaker was already a DIY legend in self-publishing before his film career. Filmmaker John Paul Kinhart had seen Dohler’s breakthrough feature, The Alien Factor, and discovered that Don Dohler was likewise residing in Maryland, so approached him about making a movie about him. The timing could not have been more dire. Kinhart managed to film Dohler at work on what would be his final feature, Dead Hunt, another of his partnership with Joe Ripple and their company, Timewarp Films.

Upon its release, this documentary was commended for bringing some long overdue recognition to Dohler’s career on and off camera, and hopefully would turn on some new viewers to his work. Since then, innumerable “cult film” documentaries have been made. For my money, Blood Boobs & Beast remains the best of them, and I don’t say this out of bias because this one is about Don Dohler. Too often, these “cult film” documentaries are limited to the repetitious cycle of talking heads and film clips. As valuable as they are for renewing an interest in their subjects, as a whole, they aren’t very cinematic. To be sure, Blood Boobs & Beast has lots of great movie clips, and interviews with fans and Dohler’s stock company of actors. (Kinhart even has J.J. Abrams on camera. Abrams’ first film credit was in his teens- as a musical contributor to Dohler’s Nightbeast!) But it digs much deeper than that.

This film is gratifyingly thorough, aptly portraying a deeply complex man. Dohler is surprisingly candid in his life off-camera, in sequences with Dohler’s mentally handicapped sister, and his resignation that he wouldn’t win the battle with the cancer that eventually took his life in December 2006 at the age of 60. (Ironically, his first wife Pam died from the same type of cancer.) It is fitting that you come away knowing even more of Don Dohler as a person. The films are secondary, much as they were in Dohler’s own life.

Because his body of work, in print and film, inspired others to “do it themselves” as well, one could rightfully call Don Dohler a trailblazer or an innovator, but he would have probably balked at the idea. One senses that his body of work was created for the love and not financial gain (which is the true DIY spirit). The diary-like coverage of the Dead Hunt production is a funny, sad, and true portrait of how unglamorous independent filmmaking remains after going at it for thirty years, even with an off-handed remark about the “one” order from the Timewarp website.

There’s always something: squeaking in the time to shoot footage whenever everyone’s day jobs or full-time lives jive; security alarms always going off, and unpredictable Maryland weather alone turn this chronicle into another Burden of Dreams. Even more, because an actor couldn’t make the shoot, director Joe Ripple assumed his role, to avoid further holding up production. And then, shortly thereafter Ripple took a full-time job which affected the schedule, so once again Don Dohler assumed directorial chores. Dohler says to the camera that this would be his last film “for a while”, as once again the frustration of such a production had taken its toll. This would be sadly prophetic statement- however, it’s fitting that Dohler would direct one last time, after letting Ripple assume the director’s chair in their previous films together.

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Originally published in Vol. #1, Issue #22, “Cheap Horror Movies …and Why We Love Them”.