Hey folks, it’s Evan again, here to reminisce a bit about the second story in our anthology, Rappaccini’s Formula. This is one that I co-wrote with our dear friend Justin Bloch, I directed, and Jenn dp’d. Our take on the body horror genre, it’s the story of Carson Wordsworth, a tightly-wound executive who is given an experimental stress-reduction drug, which has the unfortunate side effect of turning his sweat into a highly corrosive acid, ultimately lethal to anyone he touches.
The title is a reference to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” which was adapted as part of the 1963 anthology film Twice Told Tales, starring Vincent Price.
Although Rappaccini is the second segment in the movie, and was scripted pretty early in the process, it was actually the fifth segment shot. We knew there were going to be some tricky practical effects involved, and we wanted to wait until we had somebody capable of pulling off what we needed (and doing so on a tight budget).
Fortunately, while prepping for Lisa the Vampire, we had the good fortune to meet Joel David Reed, who did great work on that segment, was enthusiastic about coming on board for Rappaccini as well, and had a ton of great ideas for how to make it all work. Joel was an essential component to this segment. His assistant on Rappaccini, Celine Hoppe, would go on to handle the hair and make-up for our wrap-around scenes, too.
The role of Doctor Rappaccini – probably the mostly broadly comic character in any of our segments - was tailored specifically to Matt Kelly from the get-go. Indie horror fans might know Matt from the horror-comedy Bloodsucka Jones, the sequel to which is coming soon. Matt and I had been working together on-and-off in the boring day job capacity for several years, and he’d played a couple of small roles in prior projects of ours, but I’d been dying for the opportunity to give him more of a showcase.
The lead role of Carson went to Glen Ratcliffe, who brought a lot of nuance and a surprising vivacity to a role that might in a lesser actor’s hands have come off as just a stick in the mud. Though the script for this segment was only about 14 pages long, Glenn found a wide variety of emotional beats to play, and with his remarkable range as an actor he was able to make all of them work.
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