Horror-on-Sea Interview with ‘Pandamonium’ writer-director MJ Dixon

Pandamonium (2020)

Director: MJ Dixon

Writer: MJ Dixon

Starring: David Hon Ma Chu, Oriana Charles, Dani Thompson, Will Jones, James Hamer-Morton

The guys on Level 6 like to work hard and party harder, and that means the best booze, the finest drugs and hottest women money can buy. Unfortunately for them, the strippers they’ve just hired have come with an unwanted guest. Jacob Jakushi, the infamous ‘Stripper Ripper,’ with an oversized panda mask and a taste for exotic dancers has these girls in his sights and he’ll stop at nothing to get what he wants.

It’s now Strippers vs PandaHeaded Serial Killer as they fight to survive the office party from hell. The 9th feature from Mycho Entertainment Group and prequel to SLASHER HOUSE 2 and its infamous Panda-headed Killer.

In a new interview in the series leading up to Horror-on-Sea Film Festival, I got a chance to ask Pandamonium writer-director MJ Dixon a few questions about what we can expect from the film.

Q. Your latest ?lm Pandamonium has been selected to play at Horror-on-Sea. Can you tell us what we can expect from the ?lm?

PandaMonium is our 9th feature set in the Mycho Independent Shared Horror Universe, and although it’s connected in a lot of ways to what we’ve done before, we’ve, as always, worked hard to make it stand on its own two feet. It is its own movie with its own narrative and complete story, but for people who’ve seen the other stuff, there’s plenty of nods and winks and tie-ins to our other movies.

I really wanted to make something that leaned into comedy a bit more than usual. I write a lot of comedy stuff, and there’s always been a good deal of humour splashed throughout our ?lms, but I’d never really focused on making our movies funny before, so there was focus on making sure that, although the ?lm was a horror, I embraced the ridiculous nature of it a little more.

Q. The ?lm brings back the Panda Headed killer who we were previously introduced to in Slasher House 2. What made you decide that he would be the next character to get a standalone film?

I didn’t really know when we created him. He was, very much as Cleaver was supposed to be, a throw away villain. They were both characters designed to be a shorthand reference to allow people to know they were serial killers without having too much exposition, but they were just very popular when the movies came out and so you really want to just give people what they enjoy.

I think I knew Jacob was a bit deeper than I ?rst wrote him when Dave (David Hon Ma Chu) put on the mask and did the voice for the ?rst time on set, he was a late replacement after we dropped the original actor and he was supposed to be dubbed and subtitled, but Dave smashed it on the ?rst line with a totally amazing take on the idea. At that moment I knew that he needed his own movie.

Q. What were your in?uences when writing the screenplay for the film?

I watched anything set in an office building I could get my hands on, dramas, comedies, horrors, romance movies, EVERYTHING!! I really wanted to get the feel of that down in the script and of course my wife works in a corporate law ?rm in her day job, so I took a lot from just day to day tales she would bring home and then she corrected me on terminologies and such.

At first I wasn’t sure if we’d go down the comedy route and we had two different pitches that I really liked. One was a VERY Troma-esque OTT Comedy and one was a striped back small cast Thriller, but they were essentially the same story just with different tone.

I put it to our fanbase to vote and the result came back 49/52. The Brexit of stylistic direction. So, we decided to combine the two ideas and it really came out as something unique.

Q. The ?lm brings together a talented cast; some of which you have worked with on previous ?lms and others where this is your ?rst collaboration. Did you have any of the cast members in mind when writing the script?

Sometimes. I knew that we had Dani Thompson from the get go. We’d be hanging out for years at Horror-on-Sea and kept talking about doing something together. We mentioned the film to her at the CleaverS (2019) Premiere and she was like “Yup, I’m in!!”. Which was really awesome, and it meant that I got to write Jasmine speci?cally for her.

Obviously, we knew we wanted Dave back and I always have some people in mind as I start to write other characters, but you like to keep it loose until you get down to ?nished script. Then you start looking at who you like working with and who will do something justice. You start to bring in people who you know can work with the characters like Derek Nelson, Will Marshall and Chloe Badham who all had incredible comedy timing in our previous stuff.

And then you have people like Lee Mark Jones who I’d seen in a variety of productions and he really brought a new dimension to his character ‘Dick’ and really sold one the ?lm’s best kills that was thrust upon him last minute after we had some set change issues.

But I should mention that everyone brought their A game, it’s really hard not just to write a list of every actor and just say “THEY WERE ALL AMAZING” but it’s true. Every single person nailed their characters.

A lot of the cast came from people who expressed an interest early on and so you sit down and work out if they will work in any given role whilst trying to give them something challenging to do. Being no budget I think that your focus should instead be on writing interesting and challenging characters for your actors so they get something out of it.

Q. What were some of your in?uences regarding the look and style of the ?lm?

The ?rst few days I really wanted to go for something almost simple looking, to match the location and keep the kind of corporate attitude to the ?lm intact. I realised quickly that it could look boring if I wasn’t careful and so our signature colour started to drift back in as we moved into the night stuff, but that actually added a great depth to the ?lm which separated the corporate world from the world of sleaze that we enter as the doors close.

By the end we were right back to our power primary colours and low lights. It was dif?cult to draw any kind of ‘look’ out of the building as it was essentially just white walls and the lights were on constantly. We had to get up into the ceilings to unhook bulbs just to give the scenes some depth, which in some sets, we’re talking like 60 bulbs. Then we had to reset it all ready for the of?ce during the day as it was a real working office building.

Q. Were there any elements of the original script which were adapted during ?lming?

A few, you obviously write with the perfect location in mind and then its all downhill from there. Mostly it was just making adjustments to where things happened. At first we’d planned to use an open office and so it was written around that, but when we got there it was mostly smaller rooms with corridors and so we had to adapt, but it was easy enough to work around.

However, shooting out of order meant that we had to shoot the ending on Day 3, and then the scenes that led up to that a week later. We shot the end with an established dead body on the ?oor and then shot the ?rst half of another scene a week later in the same room.

The next night we returned to pick up where we left off, only to ?nd that the location had built A WALL!! Right in the centre of our set turning it into two rooms. Because we were shooting in the middle of the night there was no one there to explain to us what was going on. We wrote around it so that we could continue the scene in the corridor but then we realised that big problem. We had already established Lee Mark Jone’s body in there.

Some quick thinking meant that we changed the death of character leaving him free to roam the halls to his ?nal resting place, and that thanks to Lee’s comedy timing, he made it really work and it stands out as one the ?lm’s best kills. It also meant that our make up artist Cameron Blumer suddenly found himself making a male appendage out of whatever we had laying around, which turned out to be pizza crusts and balloons.

Q. Did you experience any issues whilst filming?

Mostly the usual stuff. Scheduling is always the biggest problem on a ?lm like this, you want to make everything as efficient as possible, but that sometimes means shooting way out of order, which sometimes results in a wall being built in the middle of your set.

But in all honesty, as is often the case, it was a very pleasurable experience for all, we made some great friends and we had fun, which is what its all about.

Q. What were some of your favourite moments during the ?lming of PandaMonium?

I really loved the day Derek Nelson and Will Marshall did their ?rst scene with Tatiana Ibba. I’d cast Derek and Will from separate productions, but I knew they would have great chemistry and they did, it was really heartwarming to watch them become instant besties, but what I didn’t expect is how well Tatiana really gelled with them too, they were a great trio and it was a really awesome moment to just stand back and see everyone having a great time together.

I have a lot of fond memories from the set and Anna (my wife) was pregnant at the time which really felt quite magical, but also we had the boys from Level 6 and killer panda living in our house for 2 weeks and we became the best of friend. It was a really amazing time for me just to surrounded by such amazing talented people for all that time and its part of what drives me to do it all again.

Q. What makes PandaMonium stand out as something different in the horror genre?

I guess I don’t really know how to answer that. Apart from a panda headed, suit wearing serial killer stalking strippers during an after hours party for a group of high ?ying lawyers, I guess it’s very much your standard slasher fare to a point. There is more to it than that, but to say any more would give away too much.

I think it really just is its own thing, it follows the rules of the slasher, but it knows when to do something different with them and it certainly knows when to break them. I think the temptation with a movie like this is just to throw ridiculous things in and hope that it comes off as ‘schlocky’, but we worked hard to make sure it stayed fun whilst at the same time being entertaining as a tighter told story.

Q. What do you hope people take away after watching the ?lm?

The thing I’m the most proud of with Pandamonium is the the message is carries about exploitation, I had a bunch of strippers and an office junior who is treated like ‘just a piece of skirt’ and I couldn’t resist using that as the ?lm’s theme. There’s a strong message of female empowerment in there (as is usually the case with Mycho stuff), but not in the way you’d expect and I hope that it changes some people’s outlook on how they view various professions in some way.

Q. Are there any other characters in the Mycho universe that you would like to bring back with a standalone film?

All of them!! I’d love to have the time to make movies for every single one and hopefully in the the future we’ll have space to do that. Our next ?lm Slasher House 3 rounds out our killer roster at 25 and I hope that, at some point, every single one of them will get their own ?lm or series or something.

We do have plans for more spin offs down the line, but I think the reactions to Slasher House 3 will help us decide who that will be. I have some ideas, but I think we’ll wait and see what people want us to make. That’s the reason we have Jacob and Cleaver movies so I always like to think our fan base knows best.

Q. Do you have any other projects which you are currently working on?

Slasher House 3 is our next big one, we’re currently in Pre-production and due to start ?lming in spring, but its such a big project with 25 Slashers and so much costume and prop stuff to be built that its gonna take months just to get it all together.

We have a couple of other things in the pipeline too. Our Patreon is currently producing two extra exclusive short ?lms every year and we’re on our way to our next goal of making 4 every year with our end goal being that we can also make some smaller features with our less ‘make up and vfx’ heavy characters like Corben, Drill Kill, Campus Killer and Hollower.

We’re also in early talks of making our ?rst, modestly budgeted ?lm, which is very exciting and HUGE in scope, especially for us. It’s a project I’ve been trying to get off the ground for about 10 years and, thanks to the success of CleaverS and Mask of Thorn (2019), it looks as if this year might be the year with a bit of luck. I’ll be able to talk more about that in the next few months, though, but we’re really excited about announcing what that is later this year.

Q. If someone was looking to write and direct their own ?lm what advice would you give them?

I’ve had to re?ne this advice over the years. People for ever say ‘Just go and make movies’, but I think it’s more complicated than that. It takes a commitment that has to turn into a lifestyle to do this. So my advice I give now is this.

Just Make Movies. No. Matter. What.

You’ll meet people who try to discourage you, but remember this. Most people don’t want you to do something because they are afraid you’ll succeed.

Pandamonium will be playing at Horror-on-Sea on Saturday 18th January at 20:00 hrs

You can find out more about Horror-on-Sea and purchase tickets for the festival here:

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