Last updated at 16:33, Monday, 18 January 2010

He’s survived a weird plague that wiped out most of the world’s population, fought strange sea creatures and he’s tried to kill Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood.

Ian McCulloch
© 2009 Gareth Walters - The Amazing Movie Show

But Ian McCulloch is best known for his battles with zombies.

He starred in a series of cheap and not-so-cheerful Italian-produced horror movies that splattered cinemas in 1979 and 1980.

They were made in a matter of weeks to scripts that stole from Hollywood and given a makeover of gory mayhem that earned them a ‘video nasty’ ban.

But the banning order was the best possible thing that could have happened to them.

It gave the films an underground value and a sense of contraband that was irresistible to teens and twenty-somethings at the time.

Ian admits that he has his wife’s uncle to thank for that, at least partly.

“He was on the government committee that banned all three films,” explains Ian.

When he admitted his part in all three, the relative’s response was: “Oh Ian, how could you?”

The first film was called Zombie Flesh Eaters, hurriedly made by director Lucio Fulci in 1979 to cash in on the success of George A Romero’s Dawn of the Dead.

This was quickly followed by Zombie Holocaust and Contamination which featured interplanetary invaders in an Alien rip-off.

Zombie Flesh Eaters enjoyed some success on release, despite editing, but only became more interesting following its video ban for gore in 1984.

But something even stranger has happened since then.

The films, like the slavering flesh-eating creatures in them, have developed a weird, world-conquering life of their own.

They have made hundreds of millions of dollars in video and DVD sales and regularly feature in sci-fi and gore festivals and conventions around the world.

Zombie Flesheaters is now officially a cult classic, revered for its grim but great special effects, including a zombie battling a real shark underwater and a woman getting her eye poked out.

“There is still quite a lot of life in them. Quite a lot of people laugh at Zombie Flesheaters I’m afraid,” says Ian.

“It was shown at the Dead By Dawn Festival at Edinburgh recently and they clapped at certain points and knew some of the lines off by heart.

“They find the film full of double entendres that I never knew!”

Although he is from Glasgow and for the past 30 years has lived on a country estate near Castle Douglas just across the Solway, he speaks in beautifully clipped English which is just this side of posh and without a hint of a Scottish burr.

Ian was asked to attend different conventions and screenings of the movie last year to mark its 30th anniversary.

“In all honesty, I had forgotten about it.

“I was asked to go to four conventions in the US and Europe and I set up a little tour doing Q&As.

“I think it is a very silly film, but people love it and it has made close to $100m and is still making money.

“They are trying to sort out a Blu-ray DVD version.”

Does he still make money from it?

“Oh no, no, no, no! I did a voice-over on the DVD for the first film for £200 and was not asked about Zombie Holocaust or Contamination.”

As part of the 30th anniversary of the release of Zombie Flesh Eaters, the University of Cumbria recently screened the film with an introduction and Q and A with Ian.

Darren Connor, senior lecturer at the University’s school of media and performing arts, organised the screening.

He thinks there are several reasons for the enduring popularity of Zombie Flesh Eaters.

“I think the title helps. It’s not something you’re likely to forget.

“Also, people have seen things like Shaun of the Dead and they’re going back to where it started.

“It’s a film that people know about, but haven’t necessarily seen.

“It’s nowhere near as graphic as was first thought. Horror films have got more graphic since then, although you’d be a hard-hearted person if you didn’t squirm at the eyeball scene.

“It does have strong production values. It’s not the cheap slasher exploitation movie of legend.

“All in all it seems quite quaint now. I think students will watch it and be surprised by the controversy that has followed it all these years. It is of its time and it should be seen in the context of the censorship debate of the early Eighties.”

Ian’s involvement in the film started on April Fool’s Day, 1979 when his agent called him to say an Italian production company wanted him for a film.

There was no audition, no interview, but there was guaranteed filming in the Caribbean, New York and Rome.

The fee was $6,000 with $1,000 a week living expenses and they would fly his girlfriend out to all locations.

“I was doing a play in Plymouth which no one was coming to, which no one would review, the digs were terrible and out of the blue came: ‘do you want to be in a zombie film?’

“It was more money than I would earn in a year.”

Although the film was shot in a matter of weeks, it still receives critical praise for its effects and make-up.

“The look of the film is fantastic,” says Ian, “and I was treated like a prince.”

When they filmed in Rome he was mobbed by fans who recognised him from the cult BBC series Survivors which had made him a TV star.

Just days after completing the film, he was offered a part in Zombie Holocaust and shortly after that, he made Contamination

Three films in the space of half a year.

“The second film lasted five weeks and the last film was made in six weeks on a very strict budget,” he recalls.

After Contamination, he wasn’t offered any more film roles.

“One of the bizarre things about doing those films was that when I finished, despite their success, I never had another interview for a film ever. Not one interview.”

He says he has no idea why and when pushed offers: “Casting directors are their own sort of people.”

Instead, he found TV work with appearances in The Professionals, Dempsey and Makepeace, Taggart and Bergerac.

He starred in three episodes of Dr Who in 1984 titled Warriors of the Deep alongside Peter Davison as the Timelord.

“I have made more money out of Dr Who than anything else I have done because of the repeats and the DVDs.

None of the programmes had the impact of Survivors. He played the lead role of Greg Preston in 26 episodes of the series between 1975-1977.

The apocalyptic story line about a man-made virus snared a massive nine million viewers every Wednesday night.

It caught a wave of growing public paranoia and general uneasiness at developments in the world, caused by the cold war and nuclear fears.

“ There were a lot of things worrying people from a disease point of view in those days,” reasons Ian.

“Strange things happened like green monkey disease in Africa and I thought it was fairly up to the minute when it was done.

“They say the new series is even more up to date now.

“I have only ever seen the first episode of this new version and I did not like it too much.

“It was a bit too politically correct, the cast was huge, with every age, ethnicity and hair colour represented.

“It was not as effective as the first episode of our version and I’m not just saying that – I wasn’t in the first episode.

“But it is obviously popular because they have now started a second series.”

Ian wrote to the BBC some years ago suggesting that the series should be revived but has heard nothing since.

He quit the series after complaining about the quality of the scripts and has no regrets.

They did lead onto his zombie work after all...

Ian happily admits he doesn’t like to watch himself in films and only saw Zombie Flesh Eaters for the first time in Dumfries last May.

“You notice all the bad things about your performance.

“I saw Contamination for the first time the other day and I’ve still not seen the other one.”

He dislikes the horror genre and says of his films: “They are not my cup of tea. I would not pay to go and see any of them and my wife (Mary Clare Cornwallis) walked out after watching 10 minutes of Zombie Flesh Eaters.

“I prefer romantic comedies. I like all Hugh Grant’s films.”

But Ian is just as dismissive about the ‘mainstream’ films he has appeared in.

Admittedly, they were blink-and-you-miss roles, but they were in the classic Where Eagles Dare with Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood and Cromwell with Richard Harris.

“In Where Eagles Dare I played a German officer and I know I was not very good.

“My son wanted to know why my German officer had a Scottish accent.

“Burton complained I was too tall and they had to dig a hole in the snow for me to stand in. Clint Eastwood didn’t have to.

“Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were very generous people. Burton was drunk for most of the time. Day after day he would not show up.

“Clint was very nice and friendly and I saw quite a bit of him.

“But I spent three weeks in Salzburg.”

He spent a month in northern Spain for Cromwell as producers thought it looked like Medieval England.

“Richard Harris was fine, he’s a wonderful storyteller.”

Ian remains baffled about the fan base enjoyed by the Zombie films.

Ian goes to the conventions and festivals and you get the impression he actually quite enjoys them, but he freely admits he doesn’t understand the people – his fans – who attend in their thousands.

He will soon be packing his bags for a trip to Cleveland, Ohio, for another convention and is aiming to appear at more across Europe this year to talk about zombies.

“When I did them, I thought they were Hammer House of Horror – fun to do, but had no long life.

“It is honestly astonishing that 30 years on, people are still actually buying them and want to go and see them.

“I don’t know why things become cults, but the first film especially is regarded as iconic.

“The people who go to the conventions are really nice. You fear the worst, but they are absolutely charming and they know their stuff, they know every film backwards.”

There is talk of him appearing as himself in a new British film, with an actor starring as his old director Fulci who died in 1996.

Proving that there’s still life in the old zombies.

First published at 09:01, Saturday, 16 January 2010
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk