When Ebenezer Scrooge talks about “keeping Christmas in your own way,” even he probably didn’t envision spending it with a guy who kills his wife, chops her up and eats her.
But that’s the plan for South St. Paul’s Craig Muckler.
Muckler, 65, is an insurance broker. But if you flash back 33 years to 1983, he was making shocker movies in Hollywood, including “Microwave Massacre,” in which all of the above happens.
“Massacre” is enjoying a mini-renewal of interest, with a screening in Hollywood Friday and a Blu-Ray recently released.
That’s partly because it has a connection to the holidays. Sort of.
“Microwave Massacre” is a 1983 low-budget horror comedy. The original script actually was written for a class called Low-Budget Film Producing. It was not a huge hit — Box Office Mojo has no report on its grosses and its rating at the Internet Movie Database is 3.7/10.
It might have disappeared were it not for a cult of moviegoers fascinated by the fact that it stars Jackie Vernon as the guy who does the massacring and the microwaving.
Vernon’s name may not mean much to today’s moviegoers but his voice does, because he’s the instantly-identifiable speaker behind the title character in the animated holiday perennial “Frosty the Snowman,” a movie that features neither microwaves nor massacres.
Vernon was not the first choice for the part.
“We talked to Rodney Dangerfield, but he was way out of our league, money-wise,” says Muckler, who pegs the budget at about $100,000. “The next best thing was Jackie Vernon. I was a fan of his comedy.
He was on the Johnny Carson show all the time.”
Muckler’s original script, which tended toward dark comedy, was rewritten by Thomas Singer to incorporate Vernon’s stand-up style, a shift Muckler credits with helping the project become an underground movie.
“Part of the reason I think it became a cult film is Jackie Vernon’s deadpan performance and, obviously, ‘Frosty.’ Kids in their 20s, for Pete’s sake, enjoy this film and watch it over and over and over,” Muckler says.
Vernon wasn’t even the biggest star hanging around the set.
In the process of looking for costly studio space, the filmmakers learned that Monkees drummer/singer Mickey Dolenz was having trouble selling his house. He charged the production $1,000 to rent it for the month — they shot most of the interiors there, including Vernon’s house and a psychiatrist’s office — and occasionally popped in to see how things were going.
“Microwave Massacre” was part of a career that originated in Virginia, Minn., where Muckler grew up. Like lots of children, he loved movies, a fascination that was encouraged by a couple of things: Rock Hudson’s mom was a family friend and, to overcome his stutter, Muckler took acting classes.
“It actually helped. When I was acting, I didn’t stutter,” says Muckler, who studied theater, film and journalism at the University of Minnesota before moving to California, where he took courses at UCLA, worked at a movie theater and got his big break with the 1979 sex farce “Malibu High,” on which he was a co-producer.
Ultimately, Muckler returned to Minnesota for family reasons but he has kept his hand in show business. He was involved in the NBC Sports show “Curling Night in America,” which was filmed in Eveleth, and he signed copies of “Microwave Massacre” at the Crypticon event in Bloomington last fall. He has several new projects in the planning stages.
The first to reach an audience may be “A Taboo Identity: Kay Parker’s Journey,” about a former adult film actress who has become a New Age therapist. Narrated by former horror actor Jill Schoelen (“The Stepfather”), “Taboo” should be ready early next year, which is also when Muckler hopes to shoot “Ripped to Shreds,” a horror movie he’d like to film in Virginia, with Schoelen in the cast.
Anyway, “Ripped to Shreds” is a horror movie now. One has to be flexible in the world of low-budget filmmaking. Just as “Microwave Massacre” shifted during production, Muckler notes that “Malibu High” was originally intended to be about a high school hooker/hitwoman but, through the magic of editing, it became a fun-in-the-sun comedy after it was sold to a distributor.
Whatever becomes of “Ripped to Shreds,” Muckler would like to have so much work on the Iron Range that he can become bicoastal — if you consider the Pacific one coast and Lake Superior the other.
