Confessions of a 'Thriller' maker

Director John Landis has no guilty pleasures--at least not when it comes to movies. The unabashed filmmaker who directed such low-comedy classics as "Kentucky Fried Movie," "Animal House," "The Blues Brothers" and "¡Three Amigos!" not to mention "An American Werewolf in London," Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video and the ill-fated segment of "Twilight Zone: The Movie" during which actor Vic Morrow and two child actors died.

He spoke Sunday at a Festival of Books panel led by Tim Curry. Landis is an unabashed geek who grew up in a house behind the L.A. National Cemetery cemetery in Westwood began indulging his predilections early. At age 12, he would bicycle to nearby UCLA to catch movies at Melnitz, the building that houses the university's film school. "I remember sitting next to this guy who always smoked dope while he watched movies," Landis said. "That was Jim Morrison."

He dropped out of high school and worked as a mail boy on the 20th Century Fox lot, where he remembers watching Bruce Lee practicing his high kicks and teaching martial arts to James Coburn. "Film was only 100 years old, so I was able to seek out and meet people who had created the language. Most of them thought I was weird because I wasn't French."

With a voracious movie-going appetite that spans everything from Walt Disney's "Pinocchio" to Federico Fellini's "La Strada" to Russ Meyer's "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls," Landis still recalls the landmark moment he first realized he didn't have to see every movie that came out. "I was on Hollywood Boulevard with Joe Dante watching an awful movie, and he turned to me and said, 'You know, life's too short.' "

Not too short for "The Brain That Would Not Die," which comes about as close as Landis has to a guilty pleasure. The 1962 picture stars Jason Evers as a doctor whose fiancée gets decapitated in a car crash. He saves her head and then spends the rest of the film trying to find the perfect body, which, of course, necessitates trips to strip joints, beaches, nude modeling classes and the like. Says Landis approvingly, "It's very tawdry."

PS: One of the funniest moments came when Landis was asked he got involved with the "Thriller" video. His response: "Michael Jackson called me up and told me he wanted to become a monster." Long pause. Panel moderator Curry: "Boy, did he."

Elina Shatkin

(Photo: John Landis in New York on Thursday by Will Ragozzino/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival)