CHATSWORTH, Calif.—While the title might at first call to mind a certain people-devouring plant-thing from Little Shop of Horrors, Ricky Greenwood’s new splatter-core howl-a-thon Feed Me owes much more to another piece of cheeky fright cinema: the 2007 freakshow parable Teeth.
“It goes back to when we did the movie Blue Moon Rising,” Greenwood explained during a break on the set of the five-day shoot for Feed Me in an unassuming Porn Valley house-turned-studio. “[AVN Award-winning makeup artist] Alexxx Moon was on set with me, it was the first time we worked together, and we were joking around about, ‘[What if] a pussy was talking and having teeth and stuff?’ We were just talking about it ... I tried searching people and studios to see if they’d be interested, obviously they didn’t want to do it, nobody was biting on it.”
Pun intended? Not quite sure, but we digress.
“So I finally find an angle that was not just a stupid concept of a pussy talking and having teeth, but more meat around it,” he continued. “The writer, Maddy [Barton], she was like, ‘Oh, maybe we can go with something more like about the male gaze, and that’s the picture that she has in her mind, her sexual desire that she sees as innocent, it can be the monster—we put some meat around the bone and it became a more interesting story. This character is discovering herself sexually, and we don’t know if she really have a monster inside of her or not, maybe this is what she’s picturing or it’s what society is telling her, that her sexuality is bad or not good.”
Lulu Chu, Tommy Pistol
The character in question, Sally, is portrayed by Lulu Chu, who told us over her lunch prior to the girl/girl scene she’d be shooting shortly with September Reign, “I was really excited when I heard about the premise. It seemed really different, and I’ve always been into horror stuff. My character is trying to discover her sexuality, and her boyfriend’s disappointing her, her mom is very religious, so there’s not a lot of talk about sex, and the monster just kind of starts it all ... it’s like, you’re not being satisfied, you need something more.
“It’s an allegory for women’s repressed sexuality,” she went on, “which really spoke home to me, because I grew up very Catholic. My parents never even had a sex talk with me. I had to learn on the internet and in public school. So I really related to the role. And then to prepare, I watched a lot of Exorcist clips.”
Yep, the horror influences keep on coming ... in fact, Chu describes Feed Me as “Teeth meets Jennifer’s Body meets It Follows.” And Greenwood adds, “You also have Bad Brains ... like the monster that comes out looks like the Bad Brains monster.”
Tommy Pistol, Lulu Chu, September Reign
So just how much viscera should viewers expect to see, given that this is, in fact, an adult movie and there are some pretty strict guidelines in place when it comes to such things?
“Obviously you have to play with the rules [that] apply to the legal part of it, and being a big company, you have to follow stuff,” Greenwood conceded. “But after that, they let us do one part that is gory and bloody. They allowed me to do one section, because it’s a dream, so that means it doesn’t apply because it’s not in reality. So that part, we go over the top a little bit.”
Naturally, all of this calls for special effects, and Greenwood said they went the practical effects route to achieve their vision: “We create a fake body of her so we can have the skin moving, so the monster at night move under her belly. We also have the fake pussy [that] have teeth, and when it’s talking, it’s with a grip who’s moving [it]. We have the monster pop out of her chest like Alien”—that’s right, yet another big horror nod—“and blood everywhere. So everything was practical.
“I like practical more than CGI,” he professed. “For me, it’s old school and that’s what I like, even if you can tell it’s a puppet. It’s just fun.”
As to whether the movie is intended as a straight horror pic or more of a horror-comedy, Greenwood ruminated, “It’s really hard to say ... we have some moment that maybe people will laugh. The monster is pretty serious, that’s not too goofy. But like we also try to not be too serious, we have some light moment in it, so it’s not really deep drama and deep horror, it’s just a nice mix in between.”
One thing that’s for sure, meanwhile, is that mixing horror and porn isn’t always the easiest sell. “I’m very interested to see how people will receive [it],” Greenwood added. “You need to be sexually aroused, and finding a way to be sexually aroused with a pussy with teeth is, like, a weird mix.
“But I think that also, horror fan and porn fan are hand-in-hand together, so normally when you like horror, you like porn. So those people will be like, ‘Oh cool, that’s an horror movie that I love, plus I see pretty people fucking, oh my god, that’s the perfect mix for me.’
“But yeah, I’m very excited for this one. It will be a unique movie that I’m curious to see the reaction out of it.”
Feed Me is available on Adult Time now.
September Reign, Lulu Chu
Amber Lynn, Lulu Chu
Tommy Pistol, Lulu Chu, Julia Ann
Ricky Greenwood (middle) and crew
