Macabre Gets Masterful: The brilliant minds behind Kane Hodder doc Part I

With To Hell and Back: The Kane Hodder Story currently demolishing conventions, we sat down with its creators…it’s getting Masterfully Macabre.

To Hell and Back: The Kane Hodder Story — Courtesy of Masterfully Macabre Entertainment

Think you know horror icon Kane Hodder? Get ready to pick up a machete and think again…

Over the weekend, we sat down with the Masterfully Macabre Entertainment. With the emerging company premiering its new documentary, To Hell and Back: The Kane Hodder Story, on US soil at Scarefest X, we knew getting a word with its creators was a must.

So without more word wizardry, we’re jumping into a sleeping bag and bringing the bloody stuff. Grab a machete, hockey mask and some blue overalls as we present the first part of our conversion with Masterfully Macabre’s Derek Dennis Herbert and Andrew Barcello.

The Interview:

To Hell and Back: The Kane Hodder Story — Courtesy of Masterfully Macabre Entertainment

1428 Elm: So how did the macabre become so masterful, so to speak. How did this company come together?

Derek Dennis Herbert: I decided I wanted to create a production company and I knew Andrew (Barcello) wanted to get into producing. I had been involved in some, you know, minorly directing projects. So I wanted to start a company to focus on these horror, or horror adjacent, kind of movies. And Kane’s happened to be the first one that came to fruition. 

I read the book and heard a bunch of stories about him, like talking and telling stories. So I knew he was a good storyteller. So I wanted to make this film, but I didn’t really know the process in which to get the rights and and approach celebrities and all that. So that’s when I brought the book to Andrew.

Andrew Barcello: Yeah I took the book, read it and was fascinated by it. So I said let me help you get this thing produced. Since then, we’ve obviously done the documentary on Kane, but we have a new documentary in the works and we just wrapped our first narrative film, it’s a home invasion movie we’re now editing. We hope to have the film out in a couple of months.

1428: So talk about the genesis of To Hell and Back. Obviously you guys read the book, were intrigued, and began the process. Were there any other ideas or was it let’s do this one and only focus on this one?

AB: So I think the original ideas was to start in documentaries. A big reason for that was they usually don’t take a lot of capital to get off the ground. You can kind of start recording and go from there, it’s a longer process. So Derek said, as a horror fan, “I love these horror documentaries but no one is doing biographical ones on these horror icons, And I want to be able to do that.”

So we kicked around the idea of certain ones, but when Kane’s story came to light, it was such a stark contrast to learn about a guy who’s literally killed more people on camera than anyone in history, and yet he has this super soft side that people aren’t aware of. And more people also don’t know about the bullying and the PTSD that came from that and the burn incident. So it was kind a no brainier that his story was the first one we did.