Short Film - The Diabolical Doctor Vysarius (2015)

The Diabolical Doctor Vysarius - Part 1

The Diabolical Doctor Vysarius - Part 2

ABOUT

A short film of Vysarius—now called The Diabolical Doctor Vysarius—was broadcast as part of Flux Factory’s STROBE Network in late-summer 2015. The Spectral Citadel Spooks set to work on the film immediately after the puppet show, shot entirely in a very hot living room in the Bronx, NY, over a month of madness, with no budget and no clue what they were doing. Yet, they persevered. Some say they never left that living room. But, on a cloudless night, when the moon is full, and the nightbirds all are silent in their nests, you may yet hear the extremely loud fog machine they borrowed from a friend, belching smoke into the night . . .

CAST & CREW

Directed and Edited by Margaret Powers and Steven Glavey
Written by Steven Glavey

Matthew DeCostanza . . . Doctor Oswalt Karll Leippoldt
Margaret Powers . . . Doctor Vallentin Vysarius
Michael Guardiola . . . Maximilian II, House of Fumfenhauer
Troy Schipdam . . . Lord Porkeo
Steven Glavey . . . The Noble / The Valet
Matt Ando . . . The Cardinal

Costume Designer . . . Margaret Powers and Steven Glavey
Puppets, Makeup, and Special Effects . . . Margaret Powers
Fabrication . . . Margaret Powers, Andrea Patsko, Steven Glavey, Troy Schipdam, Michael Guardiola, Matthew DeCostanza
Bubblemeister . . . Steven Glavey
Assistant to Mr. Guardiola . . . Matthew DeCostanza
Cameras operated by . . . whoever was off-camera at the time

Note by Meg Powers

In summer 2015, Steven Glavey and I hauled up many dusty rolls of carpet from the basement, painted the backs of them black, and nailed them over the living room windows, transforming one room into a small studio where the expansive palace grounds would manifest through our most valiant impressions of Kenneth Anger and German Expressionist film. I believe this was my directing debut, and I was tasked with drawing upon all of my resourceful no-budget theatre tricks from the past to manifest what radio had more easily suggested: an opulent baroque palace with lush gardens, phantasmagorical conjuring tricks, lavish period costume, and a canopy of stars collapsing in abstract, cosmic horror upon the heads of the court. I will never forget the smell of days-old grocery store cake ground into the dusty 1970s shag of the living room floor—leavings from the grotesque Emperor's gobblings—or the slimy sensation of (successfully!) maneuvering a paper shadow puppet rendered completely limp by the dyed dish detergent we used to produce psychedelic effects with a borrowed overhead projector.

I am still proud of this film, and am retroactively pretty impressed by the marathon filmmaking we crashed and tore through, and all of the costumes and effects we achieved using materials immediately at hand. Certain scenes are genuinely chilling, in spite of their foundations being built on papier-mache and careful camera framing. And I will always feel an attachment to the incredible character Steven wrote and entrusted me with performing over the course of the radio play, puppet show, and film. You don't get many opportunities to direct films with a group of cherished friends and telepathically-linked collaborators, and doing so while dressed as a towering, masked magician channeling my best Christopher Lee was the cherry on top of the disgusting ruins of that grocery store cake.