INT: Dan Palmer

Last Updated on July 28, 2021

The Arrow
interviews Dan Palmer

If
there’s one actor who stole most of the scenes he was in when it came to
the genre laughfest that was “Freakout”,
Dan
Palmer was it. With his cocky smile and attitude, he has the
making of a Steve Guttenberg for the new millennium. Not only that, he
also co-wrote and co-produced the movie! Dan and I put on our
boxing gloves and duked it out for a couple of rounds and here’s how
it went down. DING DING! FIGHT!

NOTE: Since I’m a firm believer in all that ‘full disclosure’ crap, it
should be said that I have a voice-over in the film as the “Looney
Doll”. Do with that bit of info, what you will.

ARROW: What’s
your favorite horror movie tough guy and tell me why, while you’re at
it!

DAN: ‘Show Girls’!
HA! HA! HA! HAAAAAAAAA! Did
you see what I did? Y’see, the funny thing about that is; you asked me
what my favorite horror movie is and I said a film that wasn’t a
horror film denoting that it was so BAD I mistook it for a horror
film! Ohhhh, my aching balls.. Sides! I mean my aching sides! My
favorite horror movie? Well it’s not that simple. The horror movies
that have had the biggest affect on me would most probably be  ‘Freddy’s Revenge’ and ‘Halloween III: Season Of The Witch’

– I know most gore-heads view those
two particular movies as all-time lows in the annals of horror
franchise history but I saw them both at an impressionable age and
they majorly fucked me in the melon.

I mean if you really think about
the ending of ‘H3’ it’s pretty damn bleak.  And as for ‘Elm
St 2’? Well, I stand by
that movie. I really think Jack Sholder did some great work within
that film. If you go back and take a look at it now, with hindsight,
it really does kick the asses of Parts 4,5 and 6. Freddy’s still a
figure
of fear, he’s still a slime-faced wacko pouncing from the
shadows (or your belly) – he’s not a stand-up comic made out of Silly
Putty like he is in the later installments. But overall I’d have to
say; ‘Near Dark’, ‘Elm Street’, ‘Evil Dead II’, ‘Day Of The Dead’,
‘The Thing’ , ‘Martin’ and ‘Jason 6’ for shits and giggles. If we’re
talking tongue-in-cheek trash; ‘Return Of The Killer Tomatoes’ is an
undiscovered classic, as well as ‘Killer Klowns’, ‘Monster Squad’ and
‘Vamp’.

ARROW:
Groovy. Now what’s
your favorite skin flick and give us the skinny as to why?

DAN: Well, I’ve only seen the
first 30 seconds of every porn I’ve ever watched, for obvious
reasons. But I do remember that me and my pal Jim (who made Freak
Out’s  Looney Doll) were watching this one porno at his student-house
and there was this guy taking some girl from behind and no one could
believe how hairy this dude was, I mean he was hairy! He had hair on
his arse, hair on his back, hair on his butt, hair on his neck –
everywhere he had hair.

Everyone that came in the room just
couldn’t get over how hairy this guy was. THEN the second Captain
Hairy shot his load he looked up at a cardboard full-moon and howled,
this scene was then followed by a vampire-chick riding Frankenstein’s
Monster. It turned out we were watching a PORNO-HORROR and this
‘hairy’ guy was actually a really weak attempt at a dirty Wolf-Man!
So, I’ve never really been a fan of ‘themed’ porn.  Anything with
Nikki Nova gets my vote, oh and Veronica Zemanova. I’m actually hoping
that ‘Tru-Calling’ gets 0.0 ratings and Eliza Dushku will have to make
a flick with those gals.

ARROW: How close would you say you are to your
character of “Onkey” in real life? Did you play yourself? Are you that
loveable asshole we all love to hate?

DAN: No, but I’ve GOT a loveable asshole
that I’d hate you to love.

ARROW: GOOD
ONE!

DAN:
The BIG difference between myself and
‘Onkey’ is that I wear my baseball cap the right way round – you have
to be of a certain caliber to be able to pull off the backwards cap
maneuver (like your
good self, per example). Y’know some scientists
reckon that it’s the actual backwards turning of the baseball cap that
twists your noggin thus turning you into the ‘wacky sidekick’. Onkey
was actually an amalgamation of this creeptastic guy who used to work
at our local bowling alley who’d swipe money from the till to buy
under-age girls booze – and your clichéd movie wise-asses. 
Y’know, the guys who only the screenwriters of the actual movie think
are cool; Guttenberg in everything, Dean Cameron in ‘Summer
School’ and ‘Ski School’, Corey Feldman post ‘Lost Boys’.
These guys are cracking the shittiest jokes, wearing the lamest
clothes yet they’re getting laid by Penthouse Pets?! How is this
possible?!! We just wanted to subvert that notion – plus it’s even
more absurd when the character’s English.

ARROW: Be
honest, how many cast members did you shag during the shoot?

DAN: Just the big-boned chick
that did the voice for The Looney Doll.  Always in the dark though,
always in the dark.

ARROW: Touche a-hole, touche! You acted,
wrote and produced “Freak Out”. Which field of the movie biz do you want
to focus on the most in future projects?

DAN: Fluffing. As well as
writing and acting.

ARROW: As an actor, what was the most fun scene
to do in the film for you?

DAN:
A lot of the most enjoyable stuff was
scenes that I’m not even in. For example, the credits sequence where MERV is riding around on his girly bike. Throughout that sequence, I
was just lying in a tow-trailer zooming around the coast on one of the
hottest days of the year watching James Heathcote
cycle about
300 miles. As an actor; the bowling alley was fun, as was pretty much
everything in the finale, The DOYLE TV SHOW stuff was neat ‘cos we had
full reign of the local TV studio.

The Cherry seduction scene wasn’t
much fun, we were filming in my sister’s bedroom and she didn’t know
so we had to reset her room exactly the way we found it everyday. It
didn’t help matters that Chris put a 10 Billion watt lamp on her CDs
and melted them. I haven’t shown her the movie yet ‘cos she’ll tear me
a new A-hole. Also the Cherry stuff was Hell ‘cos at the time I was
working nights then filming in the morning, so I’d already feel like
puking then a huge-breasted nympho would straddle me and bounce up and
down. Fighting a raging morning- boner whilst trying to keep your
breakfast down and remember your lines is something I don’t think Sean
Penn has to worry about.  Charlie Sheen maybe…

ARROW: How much did it cost you guys to get
that sexy nurse in the film? And why did she keep her top on?

DAN: Ummm.. Well she’s
actually Christian’s lady-friend, Louise, so it didn’t cost nothing.
If you go back and watch the lesbian bar scene you’ll also spot her in
that sequence in a bikini, I think she plays almost all the
girls in that scene! As for boobs? She’s got a whole titfolio of
saucy pictures that I’m sure she’ll be more than happy to show you. Chris and I have discussed that if we did get a bit more cash from
somewhere, we may go back and up the boobs and blood, so you never
know.

ARROW: What’s next on your plate, movie biz
wise?

DAN: I’m making ‘The Arrow’
movie with Kevin Dillon as Fallon and Johnny Galecki as JoBlo.

ARROW: Sounds like the making of a hit to me!
Dillon rocks!

DAN: Seriously though, we’re doing
all we can just to get FREAK OUT to the masses. It’s been a five year
struggle to raise the cash and make it, and now? Now we have to sell
the damn thing! We’re having screenings which have been going really,
really well and a lot of horror-nuts seem to be really taking to the
flick, ‘cos they can tell that we’re horror-nuts too, so we’re just
trying to pursue the right avenues and find someone to find
FREAK OUT. Who knows? Maybe a Raimi or an Eli Roth will take it under
their wing. Progressing from F.O, we’re currently working on something
a little different, something a little more structured, yet
left-of-center, sort of approaching it like; what if Kathryn Bigelow
and Eric Red had made a comedy? I’m just praying that it doesn’t take
another five years to make AND that we get paid.

ARROW: I can’t explain
it, so maybe you
can. Why are gay jokes so funny to heterosexual men?

DAN: I don’t know, maybe you
should ask one. I don’t know, it’s not as if any of the humor in F.O
is
homophobic, unlike ‘Scary Movie’ which I think is one of the laziest
pieces of crap ever made. I just think that the humor evolves
from the prejudices that emerge from certain characters. Damon Wayans
once
said ‘If you can take a dick, you can take a joke’, which is a
freaking funny one-liner, but perhaps not the actual truth. I lived in
Brighton for awhile which is the UK version of San Francisco and me
and my pals would now and again get into those ‘Blue Oyster’
situations that we’ve all been in when you realize that you’re in the
‘wrong’ kind of bar. The humor of those situations comes from the
misunderstanding…and the running down the road screaming.

ARROW: Which horror personalities would you
love to work with in the future?

DAN: Well, if I can get out of
this ‘Golden Hand-Cuffs’ (and showers) deal that Christian tricked me
into signing…Bruce Campbell, Uwe Boll (so I can kick him in the nuts
and tell him to respect my authoritah), Joss Whedon, Eli Roth ( I
wanna be in ‘Cabin DISCO Fever!’), Cronenberg, Carpenter  (‘cos I
know he must have ONE more good movie in him), Lynch, Elvira (before
she sags), John Fallon (before he sags) and  Eliza Dushku (‘cos she
needs a spanking). Oh and James (FREAK OUT) Heathcote, of course, he’s
the future of horror.

Freak Out gang “trashed” after the
premiere of the film

And
there you have it, guys! Muchos gracias to Dan Palmer for taking the
time to kick it with yours truly. I hope a Freak Out Part 2 comes into
play one day because I’d love to see Onkey do his thing again. That
bloke had me in stiches!