Interview by Lou Radon

An independent filmmaker receives a request for a screener copy of their movie. It's a request to be reviewed on "SCREAMING STONER VIDEO" (SSV), officially founded in 1998 by the main man, "Baal-Peor". The review site itself is well structured, concise, graphically slick, and most importantly... serious about it's movie reviews. Read on and find out more about what's behind SSV in this candid interview with the founder of what is surely one the finest independent movie review sites on the web.

GD- So, tell us about your site SCREAMING STONER VIDEO. How and when did it all begin and what were your original goals in starting it?
Screaming Stoner Video actually started in about 1994 on the Xoom.com servers. The idea came out of personal hatred towards biased and idiotic "critics" like Leonard Maltin who use Hollywood as their basis of comparison. Having grown up in the heart of pornland (the Los Angeles valley) I have always had a deep hatred towards mainstream television for tons of reasons. They don't call it television "programming" for nothing.
SSV eventually got deleted by Xoom and sat comotose while I developed the treatment for The Official GWAR Game using the new Quake II engine and after all contracts were on order I relocated to Richmond, VA and lived at The Slave Pit for the duration of the project. Being the project leader and head programmer I got quite a bit of noterity in the gaming communities so most of my time was spent working on that.

My girlfriend at the time got some strange idea that I was banging Slymentsra Hymen (aka GWAR Woman) during this process and popping up at home to surprise her one day I found her face-down and ass-up getting gangbanged doggy-style by her ex-husband and his drinking friends on our bed. Needless to say I beat her ass in addition to a few bystanders in a bloody rampage. I returned to Virginia wanted for attempted murder and The GWAR Game got shelved. Refusing to go to jail for something I was justified in doing, I hooked up with my number one admirer, Kelly and moved to Las Vegas to dissapear and Screaming Stoner Video was reborn with a new "crew" consisting of a newly re-named Baal-Peor, HuntressK (Kelly) and the infamous Schwagmaster Bob who was my growing partner. Crazy, huh? In Neveda you can go to jail for life for any amount of herb and in 1998 I became the number one seller on the Las Vegas Strip in order to survive because I couldn't work on paper. Isn't it ironic, don't ya' think?

GD- What are some of your favorite movies and why?
Hands down, my all-time favorite film is now known as Beyond The Darkness by Joe D'Amato. When I first saw this movie at eleven years old it was released by Gargoyle / Medusa Video as Buried Alive and I was instantly hooked on horror movies and began seeing them all in the theaters. Anybody who has grown up in LA knows that as a minor you're never even carded for liquor and cigarettes much less horror films! My second favorite movie of all time is DellaMorte DellAmore (a.k.a. Cemetery Man) by Michele Soavi and my current favorites are Cannibal Holocaust by Ruggero Deodato and Cannibal Maniac by Annette Martinez & Lou Garcia.

Looking back every movie I love features a guy who kills his woman, stuffs her or is generaly tortured because of it. My mother thinks I'm totally postal but I gave up apologizing for my tastes a long time ago. To this day I watch three of those four films at least once a week. Cemetery Man was stolen by Kelly in addition to hundreds of other titles so if anyone reading wants to hook me up with a copy, please do!

GD- How did you decide on the name for your site/how did you come to be known as the Screaming Stoner?
Initially the site was simply known as "SS Video" but due to the fact that I had ties with GWAR people started questioning its racial agenda. I was sitting in my apartment on the Vegas Strip watching Schizophreniac: The Whore Mangler by Las Vegas director Ron Atkins. There's a scene in this movie where Harry Russo murders a crackhead (played by Ron himself) for shits and giggles and a Sony tapedeck. I thought to myself as I was smoking a bowl, that dude's a "screaming stoner" huh? Bam! There it is. SS Video suddenly became called Screaming Stoner Video.
I covered all his work (at the time) and he contacted back the rest is history. Ron is still supportive of SSV to this day and he's a great (but nutty) guy. Oddly, I became known as The Screaming Stoner over time. After Ron came our authorized Jeff Vilencia section in which most of the titles were "stoner movies." In our news section the site is called eveything from SSV to The Stoner. Eventually people started calling me The Stoner (with good reason) so I stepped to the plate and I must say I dig the nickname, LOL.

GD- Besides the SSV site, what are some of your other interests and/or trades?
As far as trades I've done it all. I graduated from Hollywood High School (transferred from San Fernando High) with a 4.0 GPA so I've always managed to land cool jobs until recently. My interests are pretty broad. I will say this in defense of what most people might think about my interests. To this day, I've never done a synthetic drug in my life. Not one aspiran, not one ibupropen and I've never done a drug in my life. I do smoke herb however and have sampled the greens from Humbolt County to BC and have since about 1986. The best herb is what you grow right around the neighborhood and under freeway overpasses! I am living proof that there is no such thing as a "gateway drug" in mary jane.

GD- Tell us some of your thoughts about Marijuana in general. Should we legalize it in the U.S.?
With me it's a really touchy issue. I don't agree with legalization because I don't feel that any man, much less an entire government, has the right to deem a natural healthy herb as illegal. Man has no power over God and no matter what they do they can't succeed in destroying anything he has created. The whole idea behind prohibition has always been about a government trying to control every aspect of their people. Billions of dollars in revenue are made on 76% of the American People monthly due to fines, property seisures, probation fines and so on. Sicker still, is the fact that we live in a country that has people in power who can try to take your children for smoking Ganja. Doesn't it make you feel good to feel so loved? The bottom line is this country is not a democracy, it never has been. For those that want to believe it is, I'll remind them that it was also a democracy that consented to the death of Christ and shouted "we have no King but Ceasar" so what's so good about the term? Proof: here in Georgia they just passed a law that if your insurance laps for one day you will be fined and your license is revoked if you don't promptly turn in your car tag. I wonder how many of the voters actually checked "yes" on a ballot for that great idea? None. I would promote anarchy and a complete absense of man's government before I gave them the right to tax me on what I can already grow on so-called government land by myself! I grow my own tabacco and chickens also. Why? Because Uncle Scam hates it.

GD- What do you think about the argument that if you legalize one drug, you should legalize them all?
I think it's total bullshit. Weed is an herb and still is. Fuck the crackheads! I'm a stoner, not a hippie!

GD- What's your basic process in cranking out movie reviews? For example, do you take notes during the viewing, etc.?
Good question. Every film review ever written at the Screaming Stoner Video website is based on at least two opinions, usually more. The process is more or less a group of potheads passing the bong or serving knife hits while the movie in question is being watched. After (and most times during) the movie we'll discuss it and come up with a score based on entertainment. This is how a majority of the reviews are graded. Plain and simple, we like bad movies so we don't add or deduct points for good scripts or bad acting even though it will be stated in the review itself. Right now, it's mostly me and my current dope man, Professer Coldheart. Even though he's a slack bastard and I do 95% of the writing while he sits smoking herb watching my Tina Krause DVDs, he still gets me fat sacks for old-school prices, God love.

GD- What are your favorite movie genres?
Exploitation. I am amazed at how many people have issue with Cannibal Holocaust over at IMDB forums. For one, it's a banned movie so viewers would have to hunt high and low to find it. Secondly, it's from the exploitation genre so what did viewers expect when renting a bootleg of a film by that title, a happy love story about a troll? The fact of the matter is when I sit down to watch an exploitation film I better see someone or something being exploited. That's the point. It's amazing that so many people had issue with the piglet being shot and I felt a sence of total joy at seeing it. I wasn't impressed with the fact that they had ham for dinner after the shoot, rather that they murdered a nasty swine for my enjoyment! Good going, not to mention a very kosher idea!

GD- You're originally from Southern California, how did you end up clear across the U.S. to live in your current location in the state of Georgia?
Remember that Assault 1 warrant I was talking about? Well, the irony is that I ditched and dogged the feds for over five years managing to make a bit of money flagging traffic for the state union (seriously). I spent two years in college at the liberal arts Evergeen State University in Washington State growing weed for half the teaching staff on campus. I also became an ordained minister during this time to attack the govermental churches and use their own Bible against their own teachings, they hate when you do that. They really hate it when you show them herb in the scriptures… Needless to say, my original warrant was issued in Seattle, Washington and you can't get any further away from there than Georgia! Last year I was driving with my friend to pick up a quarter ounce of herb and his foot slipped of the clutch and we bumped into the tail end of another car. One of the many sects of cops (I think this time it was the "accident investigation team") showed up and ran me by fingerprint. I got arrested and sat in jail for three months here in the dirty south smoking cigarettes and watching Blind Date until the state got a governor's warrant to extradite me back to face the murder charges. Needless to say, by the time I got back the case was so old I just payed a lawyer (which I narrowed down to the judge's golfing buddy) and I got a time served. Case dismissed. Irony? Not really. Nothing's changed except the fact that I have a hole in my resume and I'm 40k poorer.My advice to all? If the man comes around, run for it. Every time. I'd do it again if I had to.

GD- Between the time that you started SSV and now, what are some of the changes you've noticed on the WWW? How many years has it been since you started the SSV site?
Wow! Cool question. Screaming Stoner as it stands started in 1998 but I've been on the 'net since '88 in some manner or another. I've noticed a lot of changes since back in the day both good and bad.The bad points would have to be to the lack of freedom. Initially the Internet was pretty expensive with mostly CompuServe as the ISP but the access to BBS's and backdoors were pretty easy. Tons of ISPs popped up over the years and apparently America Online has become the #1 ISP in America. Sad thing. They're also the most communist ISP with the biggest homosexual agenda on the 'net. For example, the AOL search engines sends SSV about 300 hits a day alone but I have to get clever to work around their e-mail servers because they chose to "blacklist" certain websites that don't fit in with their agenda. For over four years now my site has been banned from e-mailing my URL to any @aol.com e-mail address. My point? Many film directors, actresses and crew aren't getting their mail. They're not only trying to hurt me, they're also hurting the independent film industry! Remember Napster? 'nuff said… On a positive note there have been mass improvements on tons of levels. In addition to DSLs, LANs and cable modems came the home digital video camera. This in addition to DVD burners and the internet now makes it possible for thousands of new independent filmmakers to produce films at alarming rates right under Hollywood's (AOL, Time, Warner, Etc.) noses. Thousands of copyright-infringement breaking films have been released and unlike most sites, obtain higher ratings with SSV. Why? That's what "independent" means. Want a list? Yeah, right. I will throw props to some of the better and proper filmmakers I've seen this year on the web. The Stoner suggests almost anything by Georgia filmmaker Andrew Shearer of gOnZoRiFFiC, work by Eaton Harriman of Razor Sharp Productions and anything by Jason Santo at Mindscape Pictures. I would also like to throw a shout out for the awesome Allen Richards of b-independent.com for hooking The Stoner up with support and helping us to grow! Overall, I think the Internet is better, though. Look at all the banned movies you can buy on DVD to play on your region-free DVD players!

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