Dead Horses, Predatory Old Men, and Nazi Puppets

How a pair of local documentarians are using fantasy films from the 1980s as a way to discuss why we are the way that we are.

Conan the Barbarian. Legend. Labyrinth. The Princess Bride. All classic fantasy films, all from the 1980s, a decade in which filmmakers Drew Hunt and Chris Soucy first fell in love with movies.

“It’s unapologetic storytelling,” said Soucy of the genre, which he and Hunt are exploring in their new documentary feature ‘The Fantastic Fantasy Films of the 80s,’ “Fairytales of [the past] were to warn kids not to go out into the woods…not to talk to strangers. Fairytales are dark. For some reason in the 80s they were like, ‘Let’s go back to that peril. It’s your very life that’s at stake.’”

“The movies were just made different” during the decade, added Hunt.

“That horse was sad.”

Hunt and Soucy have been involved in the film and television scene in Savannah for decades. The former is a longtime director, producer, and cameraman, who counts television station WSAV amongst his professional stops. The latter, meanwhile, has a resume filled with acting, writing, and directing gigs too long to list, alongside extensive experience working in improv and storytelling.

The two are also close friends, and it was while marching side-by-side on treadmills at the gym that the idea for ‘The Fantastic Fantasy Films of the 80s’ first came to light.

“We’d just talk about the movies we’d seen,” Soucy explained. “Or something would be playing on the TV and we’d be like, ‘That reminds me of…’ And it got to this point where we were talking about growing up, and the movies that were really influencing us.”

Having previously collaborated on film projects, it wasn’t long before their informal workout chats had them inviting their movie-loving friends, people like local actor Thomas Houston, writer and influencer Enocha Edenfield, and film festival organizer Shiela Bolda, to jump on camera and give their thoughts on the fantasy flicks that had molded their childhoods.

[Local actor Thomas Houston (above) discusses one of the fantasy films featured in 'The Fantastic Fantasy Films of the 80s’ Photo Credit Drew Hunt]

Amongst those films they chose to delve deeper into for 'The Fantastic Fantasy Films of the 80s’ was The Neverending Story, and their contributors, just like everyone else that they spoke to about the film, all had one scene that they kept coming back to: The death of Atreyu’s horse Artax.

“So many people have this visceral response to it,” Soucy noted of the moment where the hero’s companion drowns in the swamp. “That movie is full of amazing imagery, amazing storytelling, incredible devices. But man, that’s what a lot of people walked away with: That horse was sad.”

“Atreyu is roughly the same age as you are when you’re watching it,” Hunt pointed out. “For me [it wasn’t until] I was an adult and I saw it again, that I realized that they’re telling me that this horse is sad. And that this horse had sorrow, and that it wouldn’t let it go, and that it wouldn’t fight for it’s own life.”

“That’s another thing that these films taught us as kids, is how to deal with loss,” he added.

According to pair, it was common for fantasy films of the era to delve into darker subject matter, even when they were ostensibly marketed to children. Labyrinth, for example, builds it’s storyline around an abducted baby and the inappropriate pursuit of a young girl by a much older man; while the fellow Jim Henson-directed puppet-centric production, The Dark Crystal, says Hunt, is “clearly dealing with Nazis and fascism.” And in the world of animation, a number of smaller studios were offering the kind of content that would make Disney blush.

“You have Don Bluth pumping out The Secret of Nimh, An American Tale, Land Before Time, All Dogs Go to Heaven, and none of these movies are lighthearted,” Hunt added, noting that adult-oriented animated fantasy films like ‘Heavy Metal’ and ‘Fire and Ice’ were also released during this period.

“You’ve got all these people [saying], ‘There’s shadows; there’s darkness,’” Soucy related. “We need to enrich the palette.’”

[The 1981 film ‘Heavy Metal’ (above) changed the way that society looked at animation]

Scaling Up

Hunt and Soucy are creative professionals, but, like many who work in the arts locally, they also end up doing a lot for free. In its current form, ’The Fantastic Fantasy Films of the 80s’ is much the same: A passion project by two movie junkies and their friends, done on a shoestring budget by people working for little to no money.

For this documentary, however, the pair is hoping to raise the funds necessary through an indiegogo campaign to reach a wider audience, an audience they believe is as interested in these fantasy classics as they are.

“We could cobble together a feature length thing, but that’s just on our own gumption,” remarked Soucy, who possess gumption in spades. “You can make anything you want if you’ve got time and friends. So that next step is, ‘How do we get it to a good distributor. How do we polish it so it doesn’t look like a group of friends got together to talk about movies?’

“In so many ways we have a very professional and solid spine,” he continued. “But what we’d like to do is pursue connectivity beyond ourselves, beyond our little group. And that requires approaching producers, approaching people in the industry, that can help us get away from shear fan-power into a professional arena.”

As indie creators, Hunt and Soucy are hoping that, should they be successful, other local writers, filmmakers, producers, cameramen, and more will be able to use what they’ve done as a template for their own future creative endeavors. The arts are “essential,” said Soucy, and he and Hunt are not only looking to get their film finished for themselves, but to prove that Savannah supports it’s creatives with more than just kind words and likes on Facebook or Instagram.

“It’s too difficult for artists to create when they’re balancing [their hard work] against the bleak prospects of what they create,” he opined. “Am I creating a film so that I can sit in my living room and watch it with a small group of friends? Or am I creating a movie…because I want to talk about themes and ideas on a larger scale? There comes a point where the self-satisfaction of creating art needs to meet the purpose of creating art.”

“There are artists living in every town,” he went on to say. “And every town should have some way to celebrate those artists.”

You can support Drew Hunt and Chris Soucy’s ‘The Fantastic Fantasy Films of the 80s’ via their indiegogo campaign at https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/80-s-fantasy-films-feature-length-documentary#/. Find the pair on Instagram @filmtattoo and @soucywriter respectively.