When a production company starts shooting a horror film in a 100 year old...and actually haunted...Sid Grauman built movie palace turned strip club in San Francisco, the "inhabitants" revolt and take over the movie for their own purposes with bizarre and shocking results.

Monday, August 5, 2013

Paranormal Activity Re-edits The G-string Horror


The angry ghosts of the Market Street Cinema, fed up
with all the cameras, lights and too many probing questions, have re-edited The G-string Horror to their own liking.

Director’s Notes on how the *Demon Cut* of The G-string Horror came to be.

These first notes appear on The G-string Horror website and describe some of the seemingly paranormal anomalies that occurred during the shooting and editing of the film. The final cut (for public release) of the film contains material that was “spontaneously” altered during editing, changed back, altered again…and again…and finally just left they way “they” wanted it. The official DVD, Blu-Ray, digital, etc. version of the film that is being released to the public contains some of this unexplained input. Then…after mastering, replicating, etc…and after the Ghost Adventures crew did their investigation and stirred things up a bit, the timeline of the film in Final Cut Pro went through a violent and bizarre transformation “on its own”.  This altered state of the film will be described in more detail in the second set of notes.

1. In 1985 I was shooting in an exercise chamber at the Northern Shaolin Temple in China that had never been photographed before. The monks allowed me and two other cameramen to shoot for a few minutes only. We kept shooting, I suppose, longer than the unseen “inhabitants” of the chamber thought acceptable.
Although all indications were that we were recording, there was nothing recorded on any of our tape beyond the first couple of minutes that the monks had originally designated. A similar thing happened while I was shooting a sub basement tour with a dancer/witch at the Market Street Cinema. We encountered several of her unseen friends who did not like what I was doing. From that point on, nothing was recorded even though, by all indications, the camera was functioning properly.
That was just the beginning. Much of the strange tale told in the film actually happened in a slightly different form. Shots were moved around in the edit…not my doing. At times the movie DID change each time it was viewed…not just for me…others also. And none of us were “smoking” or drinking. The actors were not themselves at times. On several occasions when an actress was playing a fictional version of one of the ghosts, it seemed that the real ghost took over and enjoyed being “exercised” by a human host.

2. In December, 2012, the Ghost Adventures (Travel Channel) crew did an investigation of the Market Street Cinema. The episode was first shown at the beginning of March, 2013. During the investigation Zak Bagans had a serious run in with the dancer/witch (mentioned above) and one of her dead friends who chose to show his demonic side.
 
Soon after the show aired I noticed that the hard drive that contained the files for the film was showing less…and then still less…available space, and I had added nothing. I opened the drive and found that a copy of the film had been made and that the timeline for the copy contained a flipped (backwards) version of the film superimposed over the normal forward version. I had not done this. No one else had access to the movie. Malfunction? Hardly.

 



There have been experiments with hidden (demonic?) messages being added to songs by artists, or interpreted as such by fans, by reversing audio, and even an experimental presentation of  Kubrick’s The Shining projected backwards and forwards simultaneously that has developed a cult following, but those manipulations were performed by human hands. (see links below) I had already experienced what seemed to be some sort of paranormal intervention in the shooting and editing of the film, but nothing this extensive.

“Bizarre juxtapositions and startling synchronicities…you begin to get drawn into the surreal, hypnotic interplay of images on screen. And you begin to see that the movie is commenting on itself, playing with its own themes and echoing itself again and again.”
Badassdigest re The Shining Forwards & Backwards

But this was just the opening move in what has become a surreal and darkly comical game. Several days after the film had been turned backwards, other changes…new footage I could not account for, shots of ghosts who had been “left out”, voice changes, disturbing messages, etc…began to appear spontaneously. I have come to realize that I now have very little say in whatever the final “final cut” of the movie will be. Through the continuing work of my prankster “collaborators”, the film continues to evolve on its own.

I have been able to make copies of a recent version of The G-string Horror, which I call the *Demon Cut*. A Director’s Cut is out of the question at this point.

Charles Webb
  




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