Rock Savage (film producer)



Rock Savage is the pen name of Jose Luis Behar, an independent producer and director of underground films who has lived in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. since the 1970s. A child daycare worker during the daytime, Monday through Friday, he assumes a very different role in the evening and on weekends, when he sets aside lesson plans to pick up a camera and script.

Savage Film Group
Rock Savage's adventures in underground filmmaking began at Prince George's Community College in 1980, where some other students and friends helped him start the Savage Film Group. None of them had professional acting or film production experience.

The first production of the Savage Film Group was A TASTE OF FLESH, a campy horror film about flesh-eating zombies, released in 1981. Campy horror, with some elements of the action film genre, has been the Savage Film Group's specialty since then.

All of the Savage Film Group's fiction productions, including their audio recordings, have a distinctive style resembling the low-budget horror B movies of the 1950s. Their style can be identified by the following features:


 * Low budget, produced mostly in Prince George's County, Maryland
 * With a few exceptions, performed by unpaid, non-professional actors and actresses
 * Scripts written by Rock Savage, although sometimes with help from other members of the group
 * Campy horror and action scenes, often involving blood-spattered gore
 * Independent, with production and distribution costs underwritten by Rock Savage

In Rock Savage's films, the good guys always win. The bad guys (and things) always lose, usually to the quick, informal justice delivered by Rock Savage's gritty, vigilante heroes.

The Savage Radio Theater anthology was an exception to Rock Savage's usual practice of working with his own scripts. This collection of stories was written by other members of the group and previously published in the group's newsletter, Savage Underground. However, the stories copied Rock Savage's film style and borrowed a vigilante hero from his previous films, private detective and occult investigator Harry Gross.

In his 2005 documentary film, The Occult World of Rock Savage, Rock Savage interviewed Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone during their visit to a private campground, formerly an antebellum plantation, in Maryland during 2004. His film recorded a séance led by Janet Farrar inside an old house, reputedly haunted, located on the campground property. While the film takes a generally sympathetic view of ghost hunting and occultism, it also contains an interview with skeptic Benjamin Radford recorded by other members of the Savage Film Group.

Production methodology
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Rock Savage recorded his fiction movies on Super 8 film. A sound track was recorded later in his home studio, then dubbed onto a videotape copy of the film.

Illegal Possession was recorded with a combination of Super 8 film and Hi-8 videotape. Although he eventually switched from film to videotape, this occasion was forced on him when his camera's battery failed during an on-location shoot. He borrowed a Hi-8 camera to finish the shoot.

Rock Savage recorded his non-fiction productions, with sound, on Hi-8 videotape.

Since 2001, Rock Savage has recorded all of his fiction films with either Hi-8 or digial camcorders. Film was originally his preferred medium, but he found getting film developed increasingly difficult and expensive. After abandoning film, he also discontinued his practice of dubbing in sound after the shoot.

Dead to the Last Drop included original music produced by Marvin Kennedy, who played the role of Count Dracula in this anthology of three shorts about vampires.

Notable participants in films
Violence is My Business was hosted by former Channel 20 (Washington DC) TV icon and horror host, Count Gore de Vol. The Count provided an introduction to each of the three films in this anthology. He also broadcasted each of the films on his own Creature Feature The Weekly Web Program.

Conrad Brooks played the role of Commissioner Spilane in The Beast of Retro City. This film was part of the Baltimore MicroCineFest's "That's Psychotronic!" program at the G-Spot theater on November 5, 1999 and received a Psycho Award from the Washington Psychotronic Film Society during the same year. It was also part of the 10th annual Melbourne Super 8 Film Festival, showing at Melbourne, Australia's Yarraville Theater on November 27, 1999.

The "Mod Mutilator", purportedly a former WWE wrestler by the same name, is a frequent character in the films produced by Rock Savage. However, the actual name of the actor playing the role of this masked vigilante is a secret not disclosed in the credits of these films.

Acting roles


Rock Savage played a minor role in Chainsaw Sally (December 2003). In this film, he was a customer in the hardware store where Sally bought her chainsaw and other hardware "weapons" from Herschell Gordon Lewis, who played the hardware store owner.

In the horror film produced by Conrad Brooks, Jan-Gel, the Beast from the East (1999), Rock Savage played the pizza delivery man who discovers an unconscious woman who had just encountered Jan-Gel.

In several of his own films, Rock Savage played the gritty, vigilante hero, Hary Gross. In every Harry Gross film, he appeared in a Nehru jacket with an Eddie "King" Roeser haircut, using slang from the late 1960s and early 1970s. His jacket and haircut became his signature style, also worn by the hardware store customer he played in Chainsaw Sally.

He also played Maxx Bloodd, the vampire hero in Maxx Bloodd, Vampire Spy. In Ms. Lola's Movie Magic, he played the role of Mr. Director.

Rock Savage at conventions
His knowledge of horror films and comics has made Rock Savage a frequent guest speaker at science fiction and horror conventions, such as the Baltimore Science Fiction Convention and Horrorfind in Cleveland, Ohio.

Non-fiction film

 * The Occult World of Rock Savage (2005)
 * Hall of Strange (2004)
 * Witchcraft Confidential (2003)
 * Mondo Pagan (1999)
 * Beneath the Psycho-Sexual World of Rock Savage (1998)
 * Ms. Lola's Movie Magic, with Lola Wells Woods (1998)
 * Ms. Lola Visits a Chicken Farm, with Lola Wells Woods (1997)
 * The Psycho-Sexual World of Rock Savage (1997)
 * Neat Stuff (1981)

Fiction film

 * Weird Adventure Tales (2009) anthology:
 * Blood Reign of the Snake God
 * Operation G.E.N.I.
 * Assignment: Lost World
 * Two-Fisted Tales of Terror (2008) anthology:
 * Fangs of the Black Widow
 * Attack of the Albino Assassins
 * Shadow over Retro City
 * Dead to the Last Drop (2007) anthology:
 * Omega Wrestler
 * The Vampire Pierre
 * Bloodsucking Sheiks
 * Operation: Witchforce (2003)
 * Over Your Dead Body (2002) anthology:
 * Mask of the Mutilator
 * Curse of the Zodiac Killer
 * Governor of the Living Dead
 * Violence is my Business (2000) anthology:
 * Illegal Possession
 * Mod Mutilator vs Goatman
 * Daughter of the Yellow Death
 * Hard Boiled Heroes (1999) anthology:
 * ''My Gun is Groovy
 * The Invisible Empire
 * The Beast of Retro City
 * Vengeance for a Dead Alien
 * Mod Mutilator’s Greatest Hits (1997)
 * Groovy Squad vs Dr. Brain (1997)
 * Maxx Bloodd: Vampire Spy (1994)
 * Groovy Squad & Zombie Beach Conspiracy (1986)
 * Mummy A Gore Gore (1986)
 * A TASTE OF FLESH (1981)

Audio
Savage Radio Theater anthologies:
 * Vol. I: The Occult Files of Rock Savage
 * Blood Red Horror of the Mummy
 * Nazi Blood Cult
 * Vol. II: Hard Boiled Faery Tales
 * Missing Unicorn Affair
 * One of our Mermaids is Missing
 * Luchador vs the Giant