The 1950s Live Again: DVD Verdict Interviews Marius Penczner, Director of "I Was a Zombie For The FBI"

Appellate Judge Mac McEntire

August 30th, 2005

In 1982, director Marius Penczner crafted a half-nostalgic, half-satiric throwback to the sci-fi classics of the 1950s with I Was a Zombie for the FBI. The film features two manly FBI agents battling evil alien threats. These include the Z-Beast, a stop-motion animated monster, and the "Zomball," a mischievous flying sphere that turns ordinary folk into mindless zombies.

With the movie making its debut on DVD on August 30, 2005, Penczner sat down with us a few days earlier to talk about it. Our thanks to him for taking time out of his busy schedule, and also to Matthew Kiernan of Ryko Disc for arranging the interview.

DVD Verdict: Let's start at the beginning. Where did the original idea for I Was a Zombie for the FBI come from?

Marius Penczner: I've always been a fan of 1950s films like The Thing, Them, and I Was a Communist for the FBI. In 1981, I won a collegiate Emmy for a short film I had made, and won a $4,000 prize. I got some friends together, and we decided to see if we could parlay that into a feature film. We wanted a long title like those movies from the '50s, so we came up with I was a Zombie for the FBI, which was a take-off of I Was a Communist for the FBI. A lot of people have loved the title over the years.

Verdict: It's certainly an attention-getter.

Penczner: The tone of the film is very different. These are not the kinds of zombies you see in a Romero film; they're closer to Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Verdict: It's interesting that you should mention tone, because it's a very specific one. The movie's a comedy, but it's a dry, subtle, satirical kind of comedy.

Penczner: We originally thought of doing it like Blazing Saddles, but that's a difficult thing to do without winking at the camera. When we were auditioning, all the actors were just so Dragnet. So we had them play it straight. They fell into it naturally, in keeping with the Jack Webb approach.

Verdict: Was it difficult to keep that tone consistent throughout the entire film?

Penczner: Yes and no. As you get farther into the movie, things get sillier. Especially one that is shot mostly linearly, like this one was. But the actors pretty much got it, especially the zombies. They were the easiest to cast. Everyone wanted to be a zombie. And they were all great at it, too. They were all experts at having blank looks on their faces. That must be because we filmed it in the South (laughs).

Verdict: When you mention "1950s monster movie" to someone, one of the first images that many people will think of is a guy in a rubber suit. What inspired you to create your monster with stop-motion animation instead?

Penczner: Ray Harryhausen was very prominent during that period. One of the first films I ever saw was The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. I had the opportunity for some stop-motion animation through a friend of ours, Bob Friedstand. He had just gotten off working on Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and he wanted to do a stop-motion segment for a movie. He showed us some of the work he had done, and given his skill, we just let him do it. That model was only about 10 inches tall.

Verdict: It's definitely one of the standout scenes in the film.

Penczner: Everyone talks about it. We had to plan a lot of it out beforehand. It was state of the art at the time. Stop-motion animation was the number one special effect before computers. They even talked about using stop-motion for the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park if they couldn't get the computers to work.

Verdict: Where is the Z-Beast model today? Does someone still have it?

Penczner: I'm pretty sure Bobby still has it. They were inseparable. It came back in a music video for ZZ Top, you know.

Verdict: You also directed that video ["TV Dinners"], didn't you?

Penczner: I did.

Verdict: How did that come about?

Penczner: We used to have a music studio, and that's where ZZ Top cut all their early albums. They're a great bunch of guys. So it was a natural thing to do the video. It got a lot of play on MTV. This is back when videos were actually made on video.

Verdict: Another one of my favorite concepts from the movie is the "Zomball." Where did that idea come from?

Penczner: For many years, there's been an old magic trick called the "zomball" or "z-ball." It dates back to Houdini, but you still see magicians using it today. It's a small silver ball that floats out over the heads of the audience and then back into the magician's hand. I thought, "Wouldn't that be something fun to have in the movie?"

Verdict: It's almost as if the Zomball has its own personality.

Penczner: Maybe we should have used it more. We did all the effects we could with it. We shot it through pipes, and threw it with Jai Alai scoops -- everything we could think of. I would still like to do more with it.

Verdict: If you were to say to me, "We're going to make a retro '50s sci-fi movie with aliens, monsters, a plane crash, and a big finale inside a cola bottling plant," I'd have no idea where to begin. How does a zero-budget filmmaker go about finding the locations and resources to bring his or her crazy ideas to life?

Penczner: Given our resources, we tried to find a genre that we could do. We knew that if the film looked low budget, then that would be consistent with the period, because those films from the '50s had low budgets too. Sometimes in music, songwriters write what they like, and it turns out fairly well. We had no particular agenda on this film; we just did what felt right at the time. A lot of it was made up on the spot.

Verdict: The movie first gained a cult following after it aired on the USA Network's "Night Flight" block in the '80s. How do you get from there to today, with this new DVD?

Penczner: The most we ever hoped for was a showing on cable, and maybe a release on home video. Some people write to us and tell us that they want a copy of the VHS, or that they found one on eBay. It's had an amazing amount of legs for what it is. Now, there's a section on the DVD with Bobby talking about the Z-Beast. That footage was found at the bottom of somebody's closet. It was so deteriorated that we had to send it off to a special place to get it restored.

Verdict: The behind-the-scenes featurette was also made at the time the movie was in production. Was it in similar shape?

Penczner: The kid who made that just did it to have fun on the set. He's saved it for all these years, and he let us have it for the DVD. He's an editor now.

Verdict: What is it like to record a commentary track?

Penczner: It was the toughest thing I've ever done. It's tough to talk and be interesting non-stop for 75 minutes. My wife says I can't be interesting for even a minute and a half (laughs).

Verdict: This is a director's cut, and a lot of footage has been removed. Why rework the film all these years later?

Penczner: A mistake that many young filmmakers make is that they fall so in love with their own work that it's hard to get rid of stuff. 105 minutes is pretty long, and it felt slow. A lot of people have commented on that over the years. If you look at those movies from the '50s, they were paced much slower than what we're used to. Our movie was horribly slow at the time. So we tightened everything uniformly, and to our surprise we cut it down to 75 minutes. It's basically the same movie, only faster. We also added some new special effects, stuff that we couldn't do at the time. But in keeping with the low budget, we didn't spend a lot on these. We did them all on an old Avid system we have here at the office.

Verdict: You directed quite a few music videos after Zombie, correct?

Penczner: A lot of music videos and commercials.

Verdict: Do you prefer a short-form format?

Penczner: I do have an affinity for commercials, but I enjoy long-form films as well.

Verdict: Your bio shows that you did some filmmaking regarding President Bill Clinton's reelection campaign. What was that like?

Penczner: I did commercials for them in the 1996-96 campaign, for Gore in the 1999-2000 campaign, and again for Edwards in the last campaign.

Verdict: And now for the big question directors always get asked: What are you working on now?

Penczner: These days, we're spending all our time trying to get a Democrat back in the White House. Anyone will do.

Verdict: Someone like one of the FBI agents in the movie?

Penczner: (Laughs) Now, those guys are American heroes. Larry Raspberry [who played one of the agents] was in the rock 'n roll business in the '60s, by the way. He was a member of the band the Gentrys, who had a big hit with "Keep on Dancing." He's still out in LA where he does southern rock with his band Larry Raspberry and the High Steppers. They're a great, great band. A funny story about Larry: We had these tall director's chairs for the actors to sit in when they got their makeup done, but Larry always insisted on a shorter chair. We later learned this was because the makeup lady was very well-endowed, and she had to lean over to work on him.

Verdict: Anything else you'd like to add about I Was a Zombie for the FBI?

Penczner: It's kind of an acquired taste. We changed the music track, you know. The old music was meant to represent the '50s, but it just wasn't working. So we went with some more modern music for this version. It's the only time we really took some liberties with the time period.

Verdict: Do you think there will be any backlash from purists, who will want to see the movie the way they remember it?

Penczner: I hope not, but if they do, then that's OK. I think the fans will be cool about it.

Verdict: Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today.

Penczner: No, thank you. You've got a great site.