Retina Burn in the Sunshine State

“Retina Burn in the Sunshine State.” byNWR (2019). [Essay by Karim Hussain, photos by Clint Enns.]

This essay by Karim Hussain, accompanied by my photos, appeared in Monstrous Extravagances, volume 5 of Nicolas Winding Refn’s byNWR series. Monstrous Extravagances was curated by Kier-La Janisse, and consists of essays and artworks accompanying Bob Clark’s She-Man: A Story of Fixation (1968), Joseph Mawra’s Olga’s House of Shame (1964) and Stephen C. Apostolof’s Orgy of the Dead (1965).

Blinding sun… Heat that nurtures and embraces the gift that is skin fungus… A land down south, a land of contrasts. Where politics are at war, much like lukewarm, expired skin cream attempting to soothe a searing, reddened sunburn. There’s sand in Florida’s bathing suit. At least that’s how I remember it. And how the flickering light of the past, now transferred to the constant glow of the present, helps sow the truth of history, a history of conflict and morality, all under a blinding light, where fairness isn’t the winning card, but sometimes difference can be embraced and survive.

Florida…

A J.G. Ballard vision only with more beef jerky and a different flavors to its surrealism.

Like everything in an era, you just have to look at that era’s exploitation movies to see what’s actually going on. Thinly veiled (or thickly exposed) metaphors or downright loud screams, hit with the hammer of a camera and lens, will speak truths under the guise of the taboo and forbidden.

Today, one wonders what the true inheritor of the exploitation movie is; the production of such cinema is in a rather confused realm now. With anything remotely “controversial” hit with a wave of social media reactionary hate, perhaps support – but not always where you want it from – where everyone can have an instant, published opinion without the luxury of waiting a moment to reflect upon the issues at hand, how could movies like Bob Clark’s She-Man: A Story of Fixation (1967) be made today?

If so, they would be made under very different contexts, of course…

But that doesn’t rob She-Man’s power, one that grew under the steaming, charged light of a land they once called, and still do, one supposes…

Florida.

I’ve only been to Florida once. Cinema takes me back there constantly. The memories are very cloudy now, and clouds are the enemy of Florida. But much like the scar of a gator’s bite, the smells, the looks, and the relentless light exposing the truths of skin color, lifestyles and sweat stains, come back to me every time a motion picture tickles my memory of when one crosses the border to try on a new existence…

Down below.

In the United States.

In Florida.

I’m a Canadian, and the instant a Canadian crosses the threshold into the United States, there’s an immediate difference. Everyone feels it in their own manner, but for me, it’s an immediate sense of tension. Canada definitely has its hearty share of darkness and tension, but American-tinged tension is… unique.

Thankfully, when my very dark-skinned Pakistani father and blindingly white mother decided to take my sister and I on an extended road trip from Ottawa Canada to Florida, driving lower and lower on the planet to culminate in the state that proclaims sunshine as its property, it was in the late seventies or early eighties, if memory serves.

We were kids. The Gulf War and September 11^th, 2001 hadn’t happened yet. My father and I weren’t seen as an instant threat then, one where you would have to jump through various hoops to prove you’re “alright”. Saying my name wasn’t a question to consider then; it was a droll, confusing novelty in Florida.

However, the pressures the characters in She-Man had to live with back in 1967 were way greater than simple novelty.

Here’s the basic brief: Albert Rose is an ex-military ladies’ man. There’s a blurry war desertion story in his past, where the blame fell on someone else. A dominant woman named, with reasonable appropriateness, “Dominita”, threatens to expose his dark secret if Albert doesn’t become her French Maid for a year. Cue Albert accepting reluctantly, being fed hormone pills daily and becoming Rose Albert, as well as the love interest of a lesbian fellow slave, who seems to be mostly into Rose and not so much Albert. Dominita has a whole household of slaves with supposedly “dark secrets” that she holds over them, exerting her control in exchange for keeping their truths silent.

A different time, for sure.

Today Dominita would have trouble coming good on her manipulations thankfully, as many have fought and made sacrifices since then to be accepted as they are and the guilt associated with movies like She-Man are a thing of the past… But a very recent past from a legal standpoint, if one studies Florida’s current laws.

She-Man is presented under the guise of a psychological case file, for educational purposes, a typical trope of its era. “Any facet of our lives that is left unexamined is a potential source of danger,” proclaims our bespectacled doctor in the opening, warming us up to what he proclaims is “deviation”. Yet the movie is rather sympathetic to its characters, despite its exploitation underpinnings. And in the grand tradition of most proper exploitation films, it’s quite ahead of its time and left-leaning. A veiled contrast to the framework that holds its artistic content.

Is the world a better place because of She-Man: A Story of Fixation? That question is up for debate. But perhaps Florida is…

Bob Clark, a rather distinct director in cinema history. Actually not a Canadian as some might think, but an American born in New Orleans who started his career in the Sunshine State, as so many of his era did. The director of such notable pictures as Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things (1972), Black Christmas (1974), Deathdream (1974), Porky’s (1981), A Christmas Story (1983) and so many more, got his start doing smaller exploitation pictures in Florida. And despite its status as a Canadian film, the drama of Porky’s unspooled in Florida, having been shot there.

He had his stock players and collaborators in Florida, including noted writer-director Alan Ormsby (their collaboration on the much troubled, Reggae-drenched and Jamaica-shot Popcorn in 1991 proved to be their last time in the field together), Jeff Gillen, Jack McGowan and many others.

As if it was in the Floridian air, Ormsby would a few years after She-Man also explore the world of cross-dressing in his much more zany and burlesque directorial debut, Murder On The Emerald Seas (1974), also transpiring under the bleached gaze of the Florida soul.

Our She-Man author, Mr. Clark, later moved to Canada due to its newfound, attractive Tax Shelter incentives, to become a staple of higher-brow Canuxploitation classics and mainstream Hollywood pictures. Later in life, the director of She-Man: A Story of Fixationalso brought to the world Baby Geniuses (1999), Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (2004), and his swan song, The Karate Dog (2004). These movies were NOT shot in Florida.

Can you prove that it didn’t happen?

So the realm that gave birth to She-Man continues to shine, even to this day. Many independent genre filmmakers still reside and operate out of Florida, dark melodrama, the occasional splash of corn syrup hitting prosthetics and excessively exposed flesh resounding into its night.

But back when I was a kid – though a rather large horror fan from the start – due to my tender age, some of the most luscious cinematic fruit birthed from Florida was out of my grasp at that time.

But the reality of how I experienced Florida was not.

As a child, the idea of a massive summer road trip in my father’s Thunderbird, lack of air conditioning and all, with my mother and sister in tow seemed exciting to… well, my father. The nuclear family had to be maintained at all costs. He’d fought for it, and now he was going to have it. And fair enough, to his credit, I got to visit Florida.

But the trip from Ottawa, Canada was relentlessly lengthy, driving straight down the continent, down south, where things are hotter and the nights don’t know their strength.

I was more interested in what movies I could see than most other aspects of family travel, tourism always being a tricky proposition when I’m involved. It’s not my thing, but I embark on it when prompted by loved ones, or I have no choice. Travel for work is great, but back then I wasn’t working. I was just a child that fit into the surreal gift wrap of a massive Thunderbird motor vehicle that was a peg in the board game of the Pakistani-Quebecois mixed race family package of going on holiday no matter what.

Like moths, starving for the salacious, glowing light of the east, enterprising independent filmmakers would flock to Florida in the 60’s, 70’s and early 80’s to push boundaries. A kind of east coast Las Vegas only with more reptiles that want to kill you, reasonable swamps and beaches to roast your flesh on, it has been an attraction for those looking for a good time, a few extra wrinkles on their skin and to push the limits of the human experience.

For my father, a perfect place for a family vacation. But for others, long before, something else…

Herschell Gordon Lewis, the pioneer of American exploitation gore was born in Pittsburgh and lived primarily in Chicago in the early 60’s. But when it came time to give birth to his seminal drive-in gore picture Blood Feast in 1963, along with early nudie cutie/exploitation cohort David F. Friedman, they decided to go to their favorite winter vacation spot.

Where the seasons know no boundaries, where the light is so bright, every torn limb, sheared tongue and bullet bra will be welded upon the ocular paths of the audience.

Florida.

The remainder of the infamous “Blood Trilogy”, Two Thousand Maniacs (1964) and Color Me Blood Red (1965) were also children of the Floridian psyche, along with its oddball follow-up The Gruesome Twosome (1967). Of course, these halcyon years had to take a bit of a pause when Lewis was convicted on fraud charges in the 1970s and served three years time in the pokey, only to be resurrected as an advertising and marketing guru and going back to where the sun must shine for his retirement and unexpected return to filmmaking with the Non-Floridian Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat (2002), the happily Floridian The Uh-Oh Show (2009) and an anthology film he co-directed called Herschell Gordon Lewis’ Bloodmania (2017).

At the wondrous age of 90, he died.

In Florida.

A bit like the characters in Two Thousand Maniacs who drove into the seemingly happy Floridian town of Pleasant Valley only to discover the joke’s on them, as a child when our Father would drive his Thunderbird into the tiny back road gas stations of Florida, a more subtle human transaction would take place.

The Floridian gas station attendants were mystified, not only by our eclectic family, but also the fact that my father’s Thunderbird had a plug sticking out of its front grill, to keep the battery warm on a cold, Canadian night. I have a distinct memory of a baseball-capped, sweat-soaked Floridian bewildered that Canadians plugged their cars to run them.

A prophetic rejection of the electric car? One will never know…

But with true Floridian hospitality, they just let us leave, and didn’t invite us to participate in one of Two Thousand Maniacs’ fine touristic traditions, such as the Barrel Roll – namely, rolling the tourists down a hill in a barrel pierced with sharp nails.

One seminal exploitation artist was the amazing Doris Wishman. Initially a New York staple, born and bred there, she started as a film booker in the Empire State. After her first husband died of a heart attack at the ripe old age of 31, she decided to get into filmmaking to apparently have something to “fill her hours with.”

Nudie films, innocent visions of bare-skinned volleyball games and excessive suntanning sessions were in vogue at the time, and no better place to load up a camera with film and embark on these pseudo-documentaries than…

A land where sun knows no bounds.

A land that truly comprehends the gifts of leisure and exposed flesh.

Florida.

Wishman’s first few nudist movies – apparently kick-started with $10,000 borrowed from her sister – such as Hideout In the Sun (1960), the sci-fi extravaganza Nude On The Moon(1961), Blaze Starr Goes Nudist (1962) and various others, were exposed in the Sunshine State to great success.

Of course, Nude On The Moon ended up in a bit of trouble with the New York State Censorship Board, which claimed movies taking place at nudist camps with nude scenes were permissible, but lunar nudist camps did not fit within their exception. A painful example of New York, with its pale complexions and comprehension of snowfall not bowing to the solar superiority of the land spoken of in story and song… Florida. It’s too bad, because Nude On The Moon featured both story and a rather charming musical number.

Wishman then returned to the glories of New York filmmaking, notably giving the world the Chesty Morgan action hits Deadly Weapons and Double Agent 73 (both 1974). Only after the failure of her slasher picture A Night To Dismember (1983), which exists in two versions, one rescued video transfer and the released version cobbled together with new footage after a disgruntled lab worker destroyed her original negative, did she go down south again.

Florida gave her steady employment in a sex shop as a senior citizen, and also brought her back to filmmaking…

In the land where it all started.

She returned to filmmaking in Florida with a semi-remake of her 70’s pornographic movie Satan Was A Ladyin 2001 (more infamous for its DVD extra of her giving direction as an 89-year old during a whipping scene), the ambiguously titled Dildo Heaven (2002) and the posthumously completed Each Time I Kill (2007).

She died after an admirably long life, at 90, the same age as HG Lewis, ironically enough. Death found her not in the land where she was born, but in Florida… the land where her filmography was.

Doris Wishman was someone, by proxy of her filmography, who knew how to stretch a dollar. And since we were on a budget for our family vacation to Florida, I got to experience America through one of the most honest mirrors it has: its cheap motels.

Sometimes, as a lark when a cot wasn’t available, I had to sleep on the floor, though those moments were few and far between. Mostly it was cots, as my parents and sister got the beds.

The diet was certainly endearing for a dumb child who would embrace the gift of junk food. The reality is that what we ate at the truck stops on the voyage to our Valhalla, our suspicious light at the end of the tunnel, was rather horrific. But children were tough then. Parents would let you out on your own. If you died, you died, if you didn’t, you learned. Certainly it was the first time I saw truck drivers sit down beside us at the local diner with visible handguns in their belts, steel, gunpowder and lead squeezing out between their layers of compressed, folded gut flesh.

On that trip to Florida, I certainly learned what come stains on cheap motel wallpaper looked like. It was a revelation, the type that is best brought to light in a place like Florida. I remember asking my nervous sister what those white, crusty stains were on the walls, and how did they get so high (indeed a good question).

Oh Florida and your strong prostates…

I don’t really remember too many off kilter remarks due to our mixed-race family in Florida. People, for the most part to my distant memory, were pretty nice. But I was a bloody kid. And people lie to children, much like children love to lie to adults. A comprehensive transaction to most, I can’t really say what was on people’s minds when they saw us. Perhaps nothing, or perhaps something rather ugly. I only felt the truth of racism later in life.

Rene Martinez, Jr. is one particular filmmaker who certainly stirred the Floridian pot in his era, with a brief filmography that definitely wouldn’t pass the political correctness test today. Not exactly a master of the art of cinematic mise-en-scène, yet someone who firmly fit into the wild world of 70’s filmmaking, he started with the 1973 biker epic Road Of Death starring Carol Connors of Deep Throat and Erotic Adventures of Candy fame.

But Martinez truly found his raison d’être in bringing gritty ultra-shoestring Blaxploitation to Florida, with the detective action romp The Guy From Harlem (1977) and the one that will resonate with the ages, Supersoul Brother (1978).

Starring comedian Wildman Steve Gallon, Jr., Supersoul Brother is sort of a take on The Six Million Dollar Man, only here the six thousand dollar man is injected with a serum that turns him into a zany Blaxploitation super hero. The hijinx that ensue are, as they say, unique to themselves.

Was THIS the Florida I was visiting, as Supersoul Brother was made not too long before my childhood trip?

Once our family arrived in Florida, we did the typical tourist activities that one would expect the nuclear family to do.

We saw some gators, who seemed bored by the oceans of children and their nervous parents, perhaps wishing that some suicidal teen would jump into their jaws for a fetishistic, agonizing death that the world later proved is actually a thing.

But was it a thing, then, in Florida? Perhaps only the gators knew…

Someone who undoubtedly knew more than most about what the gators knew, was William Grefé, probably the closest Florida has come to a proper Roger Corman of the land.

Much more technically proficient and professionally successful than many of his contemporaries, Grefé’s specialty in animal-sploitation pictures such as Stanley (1972) led him to do the Florida-shot shark sequences in Live And Let Die (1973) and to continue along that line with Mako: Jaws Of Death (1976), but not before he cut his Floridian teeth on various early pictures about the most exploitative animal of them all: the human being. Notably, the junkie drama The Hooked Generation (1968) and the Rita Hayworth-starring murder-lust drama The Naked Zoo (1970).

Other memorable titles in Grefé’s filmography include the William Shatner starring Impulse (1974), the teens-vs-Indian Medicine Man zombie opus Death Curse Of Tartu (1966), true crime, partially “lost” drama The Devil’s Sisters(1966), biker picture The Wild Rebels(1967) and many more.

His innovative camera work and edgy everglades locations, where danger seemed to be at every step, set his productions apart. And his sheer proficiency along with professional veneer certainly brought him success and kept him in that comfortable zone that once was profitable but is now more of a struggle to accomplish: the low budget, yet professional indie exploitation movie that provides much production value on screen, and even some stars; but all done regionally, without the need to go to Hollywood and work entirely in the system. As the market changed, however, his output dwindled, his last significant feature being Whiskey Mountain (1977), a bikers-vs-hillbillies picture that wasn’t even shot in Florida.

But unlike others, Grefé was actually born in Florida. His blood knows the soul of that hotbed of coke-dusted pastel, Miami. His output truly does earn him the title of the Everglades Corman, ultimately.

And despite undoubted temptations to leave, the majority of his filmography is Florida-based. As it should be.

While it’s not quite Grefé’s birthplace (Miami), we knew another Floridian city was a necessity for any family vacation stringing along children within said state…

Orlando. Or at least near it: Lake Buena Vista.

We did the horrific pilgrimage to Walt Disney World. Like most children I was plagued with this enforced, inherent social pressure to love Mickey Mouse and his cohorts at all costs. That American childhood imposed upon you, no matter where you were from.

Even then, deep in my guts, I knew not to trust the mouse and his Nazi-sympathizing creator, who taught the world the glories of sticking it out after death in the form of a hopeful popsicle.

I remember sitting on the lap of a poor, underpaid Disney World employee sweating in the gelatinous humidity of the Lake Buena Vista afternoon, dressed in the flagship uniform of the falsetto American rodent for a paid photo op. Yes, Mickey.

As the Disney employee diligently donning a Polaroid camera framed our family and the mascotted actors up, I remember achieving great joy by suddenly pinching Mickey’s leg really hard as the camera was about to capture this idyllic snippet of the American dream. In true professionalism, and to his credit, the unfortunate masked performer screamed in pain in the unmistakable high-pitched tone of Mickey. Then told me to stop.

In character.

I did, but not after testing the waters a couple more times, and despite the agony, Mickey Mouse didn’t falter from being Mickey for a moment, or smack me, which I certainly deserved.

That Floridian resolve was impressive. He would preserve the American dream for this foreign, mixed-race family, no matter what pain he suffered.

Sunshine and saltwater have always been lubricants to help supposed morals slip comfortably away. The filmmakers mentioned previously are but a small sliver of the individuals who decided to practice their art in the heyday of exploitation cinema at the East Coast hotbed of flickering sin…

Florida.

Orlando auteur R. John Hugh’s output didn’t pay much attention to the corporate beast of the mouse that would descend shortly near his home. Though born in the UK, Florida is where he thrived. Hugh’s brief, yet eclectic filmography included the 1955 war drama Yellowneck about a group of Confederate soldiers on a quest to reach Cuba; Naked In The Sun (1957), not a love letter to the glories of sunbathing, but a Western; the abortion melodrama You’ve Ruined Me Eddie! (1960); action picture Fall Girl (1961); and ending with The Meal in 1975.

While obscure today, The Meal – aka Deadly Encounter – notably featured cinematography by Robert Caramico, who shot Tobe Hooper’s gorgeous Eaten Alive (1976), Richard Blackburn’s excellent Lemora: A Child’s Tale Of The Supernatural (1973), Blackenstein(1973), Spawn Of The Slithis (1978), even the Ed Wood-scripted Orgy Of The Dead (1965).

Barry Mahon led a storied life, a war hero and pilot whom Steve Mc Queen’s character in The Great Escape is supposedly based on. He also has a whopping 71 directorial credits to his name, mostly in the erotic and exploitation genres, with such pictures as Forbidden Flesh (1968) and Fanny Hill Meets The Red Baron (1968), a film that combined two of his favorite topics, orgies and war planes.

Towards the end of his filmmaking career, Mahon, who also worked in New York City and Las Vegas, provided the world with a few Florida-based opuses, including some psychedelic children’s films like Thumbelina (1970) and Jack and the Beanstalk (1970), shot at the trippy-looking, short-lived Pirates World Amusement Park in Dania, Florida. Pirates World would have been, by all evidence, a prime candidate for what is termed “American Surrealism.”

A collaborator of Mahon’s on The Love Pirate (1970) where he was an actor, Brad F. Grinter also birthed many notable Floridian enigmas, such as Flesh Feast (1970), an oddity about Floridian Neo-Nazis who try and revive Hitler’s corpse with a rejuvenation technique involving maggots. It is also notable for being Veronica Lake’s last screen credit.

He also made Devil Rider! (1970), another addition to the biker genre, before very memorably co-directing a picture called Blood Freak (1972) with Steve Hawkes. A completely surreal oddity, Blood Freak is well worth a look – a tale of a pot-smoking boy turned into a turkey monster by a mad scientist through a super-joint, who then turns into a blood junkie of sorts, but there’s so much more…

Grinter also appeared as an actor in Florida auteur Joseph Adler’s Scream Baby Scream (1969), a movie that has the distinction of being an early Larry Cohen feature film script, here credited as Laurence Robert Cohen. Adler continued on the Florida exploitation train with Revenge Is My Destiny (1971) – penned by Mean Streets and Raging Bull co-writer Mardik Martin – the drama Sammy Somebody (1976) with Zalman King and Susan Strasberg, Convention Girls (1978) and ending with the little-seen Doubles (1991) starring Dan Hedaya.

Small world, that Florida…

Florida was also the home to Romano Scavolini’s infamous Nightmares in a Damaged Brain (1981), a motion picture that retained the sulfurous, sticky sleaze that we have all come to know and love from the Floridian sphere. So many artists streamed to the Sunshine State to turn sweat into celluloid, and there are so many more out there, beyond the spectrum of this article.

And I as well, was drawn to it. By familial force, way back then…

Despite its violent history, I didn’t witness any particular aggression in Florida as a child. Perhaps things are different now. But one memory strangely sticks primarily in my mind when I think of Florida, a land I now know mostly through hazy memories and cinematic truths that are born from Floridian dreams.

In Florida, waiting outside the solitary bathroom of some digestively challenged diner, somewhere in the sunshine state, a large man – large in stature but also in belly weight – saw me standing alone, sheepishly, awaiting the toilet to free up.

It was occupied.

I was waiting.

I was a child.

He was a man.

Who had eaten the food of a man. The kind of food you find in Florida.

A man with a pistol holstered in his belt, of course. At least what you could see of it through his stretched T-Shirt and bubbles of flesh, struggling to escape from their prison of clothing.

The door opened and the previous restroom client exited, an elderly individual.

The large, armed man just stepped ahead of me once the Rest Room vacated, then promptly turned around and leaned down, to the best of his capacities, staring me straight in the face.

“Kid, I’m going to take a huge shit now. Okay?” he enthusiastically proclaimed to me.

I could smell the cooking grease on his breath. Sweat and stubble rippled from the seams of his face. Yet I wondered why he wanted to communicate this to me, a little brown-ish child who simply wanted to lessen the tension on his bladder.

Was it an invitation? Was this some sort of Floridian tradition, I wondered? A ritual with roots in the old country? Or was it an excuse to barrel in front of me in the line?

My lack of response wasn’t enough.

We weren’t communicating.

“Okay?!” he insisted.

Trying to prove I could not be phased by his Floridian dominance and gusto, I simply responded with the only thing I could…

“Okay.”

He then waddled into the toilet and proceeded to take quite a long time in there. I decided I would test my bladder and hold it in.

Saunter back to the Thunderbird, discomfort and perhaps something new learned about the Floridian spirit.

What that is, I cannot tell you.

I CAN say that Florida, despite the turmoil that it may go through, has a spirit. A dark, yet enthralling one, one that is curious, yet angry at the same time. So much sunshine and heat has been the bait for so many cinematic greats, for boundary-pushing cinema that crested the previous century and throttled forth with sometimes blind gusto, and other times visionary boldness.

Nothing is fair, ultimately. There seems to be a fair shake of contrasts and intensity in Florida today.

Certainly in my career as a cinematographer, these over-exposed Floridian landscapes have always stuck with me.

And one day, I still hope to head down there, perhaps when the political landscape hopefully changes, and add my two cents to those who flock to Florida to photograph the human and environmental drama within, draped with tan-lines, a light dusting of stimulants, socio-economic extremes and saltwater.

The past always reflects the present.

But as long as the filtered light of movies like She-Man: A Story Of Fixation can hit a screen, perhaps we will know something more not only about Florida…

But ourselves.

And as for Florida… The sunshine state…

I would say this.

Remember, the moon has never killed a child.

The sun has.

And Florida has both.

A member of the Canadian Society of Cinematographers, Karim Hussain, C.S.C., was born in Ottawa, Canada in 1974. A cinematographer who loves to work in all genres, he is particularly passionate and knowledgeable about the horror, sci-fi and action genres. He has photographed such films as Brandon Cronenberg’s Antiviral (Cannes Film Festival Official Selection – Un Certain Regard), Jason Eisener’s Hobo With A Shotgun (Sundance Film Festival), Ted Geoghegan’s We Are Still Here (SXSW Film Festival), Steven Shainberg’s Rupture (Fantasia Film Festival), Deepa Mehta’s Beeba Boys (TIFF Gala), Paul Gross’ Hyena Road (TIFF Gala), Isaac Ezban’s Parallel (BIFF – Brussels), Blumhouse / Universal’s Seven In Heaven, directed by Chris Eigeman, Random Acts Of Violence directed by Jay Baruchel and many others.

For television, he has done such shows as Hannibal and Canal Plus France’s Madame Hollywood amongst others. As well he directed and photographed the film Subconscious Cruelty, directed the “Vision Stains” episode of The Theatre Bizarre and has won the New Visions Award at the Sitges International Film Festival for his 2nd feature Ascension, the BUFF Director’s Award for his 3rd Feature La Belle Bête and was nominated for a CSA for best cinematography on Hyena Road.

Florida images by Clint Enns.

Retina Burn in the Sunshine State

Beyond the Burn