"Specimen" (1992)

"Specimen" is a short student film directed by Clarke M. Smith, and starring Adam Kaye, M. Todd Meador and Ande Felix. It was produced by TimeAxis Entertainment. It was completed in May of 1992 via equipment from Tucson Community Cable Corporation. It was Smith’s final film created as a student at the University of Arizona. He had taken a self-paced independent video class, which was simply to create a video production and hand in at the end of the semester; no class or lecture. When the film was completed, Smith was satisfied with it, but decided to turn in “Arizona Smith and the Lost Ore House”, which had not been used for any class.

## Realizing the Script

When Bradley Grimm wrote the first few drafts of Arizona Smith in 1989, he also quickly penned out his version of a treatment Smith had written called “Specimen”. However, much like Arizona Smith, he wrote it campy and tongue in cheek, with one section written as “the next 20 minutes is a chase scene”.  Smith did use a few elements of Grimm’s script, but opted to write his own, much more serious-toned story.

When first written, Smith had in mind Tom Findlow and Kyle Fellows.  Tom had graduated from the U of A in 1991 and moved to Wyoming. He was in 5 of Smith’s short films up to this time, most notably as the lead in “Arizona Smith and the Lost Ore House”.  Kyle was in several films as well. But by the time it was being finalized and planned, Smith brought back Adam Kaye from their last 16mm film “Foresight” (1991), and  M. Todd Meador, the villain from Arizona Smith. Also in the cast was Ande Felix in his final film role. He had appeared in several Smith films. 8 years after completion of “Specimen”, Ande died of melanoma cancer at the age of 49.

Rounding out the supporting cast was Steven Scott Corty as the Specimen, and Don Moline as the mad scientist’s “Igor” type character.  Lastly, a sheltie collie named “Shitty”. Sadly in addition to Ande Felix, each of these supporting actors have all passed away since the film was made.

## Shooting Details

M. Todd Meador was able to secure the church used for a few scenes in Arizona Smith.  This time, much more if it was needed. Smith was able to cleverly shoot the apartment scenes at his own apartment (shared with Kyle Fellows) and create the illusion that the church was across the street. In reality, the two were 6 miles apart. For one shot, he took the blinds off the apartment window, drove it down to the church, and shot through them for an apartment POV.

The Specimen had been cast but not set in stone as shooting began in January 1992.  When Adam Kaye brought his friend Steve Corty to a church shoot to help out, Smith was immediately enamored by him and asked Kaye if he thought he could be the Specimen. And just like that, the new Specimen was cast.

It was Ande Felix’s idea to cast his co-worker’s husband Don Moline as his assistant, and he was a quirky, odd little man, and perfect. Ande refers to him as “Moline” in the film, his real name.

For a pivotal scene, Smith brought in a door to replace a door in the hallway of the church.  He pre-cut a hole in it for the moment when the Specimen bursts through and chases the boys. This made quite a mess with door splinters, requiring a lot of work to clean up.  Another big mess was the boxes scene.  Little by little, Smith carted several boxes to the church for the scene when the boys run into them.  Adam Kaye nearly got injured when he slammed into the boxes, and everyone forgot that there was a thick pillar in the midst. He narrowly missed it.

Ande Felix’s performance was much different than envisioned by Smith.  To be sure, it was an improvement by Felix to make the mad doctor extremely serious, rough, and violent with the boys.  Smith wrote him to be a lot more harmless as it were, more in the vein of Doc Brown from “Back to the Future”. Felix did it much more frightening, jerking the boys around and being quite mean. This was a good choice, combined with his pseudo German/Nazi accent.

### Music

The musical score for the original Specimen was music from composer Brad Fiedel and his score from “Terminator 2 Judgement Day”. As this film was heavily inspired by the Terminator films (only 2 existed then), it seemed fitting to use the score. However, in later years, the score became quite iconic and recognizable.  That was one of the reasons Smith decided to change it for the digital re-edit.  Also, for the opening and closing credits in the original version, Smith used Jerry Goldsmith’s music from the “Twilight Zone: The Movie”, segment four titled ‘Nightmare at 20,000 Feet’.  In the early stages of the film, Smith had planned on using Jerry Goldsmith exclusively, with selections from Alien and other Goldsmith scores like The Omen and Poltergeist. He later felt a modern, electric score would be more appropriate, especially after seeing Terminator 2.

But for the re-edit, Smith used 4 composers to fill out the score: John Frizzell, Christopher Young, Elliot Goldenthall, and Marco Belrami. Among the film scores used were Alien 3 (ironically, Smith's most hated film of all time), Alien Resurrection, Ghost Ship, and A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge. This made it less of an almost Terminator parody, and more of a unique entity with a more serious tone.

## Film Analysis

This film, perhaps more than any other of Smith’s, was ultimately rendered laughable due to a complete lack of set and production design.  He had envisioned having a dark lab, wth beakers, boiling flasks, the whole nine yards for a creepy mad scientist’s lab.  Instead, it was brightly lit kiddie classrooms.  The rest of the church functioned well, but it was clearly a mistake to locate the lab where they did - in the upstairs classroom. In hindsight, Smith wished he had been as equally clever with the apartment appearing to be across the street, and used one of the more nondescript downstairs rooms of the church as the lab.  But he feared a weird continuity with the boys always walking or running upstairs, cutting into entering a downstairs room.

However, the corridors and other parts of the church worked well for creepy, as well as action running scenes, and the filmmakers did their best to make it look larger and more complex than it was.  In essence, there was one main hallway.  They tried to make it appear that there were more, when the boys run out of the church and ‘continue down another hallway'.  In reality, they simply ran back down the same one they just came from.

The short was completely inspired by “Terminator 2: Judgment Day”. Another big influence on the film was "Reanimator".

## Aftermath

This being Smith’s final student film, and graduating with a bachelor’s degree at the time, Smith’s parents Ande and Sherry Felix threw a big, double premier/graduation party at their house for “Specimen”.  The entire cast attended the event, and screened the film to an audience of about 25 people. There was some poor quality video that was shot at the party (see below).

A sequel was considered, during a brief time Smith returned to Arizona after some time spent in LA looking for work. Piggybacking on the story from Terminator 2 a bit, Smith thought of the sequel featuring the specimen character from the first film, to be a protector of the 2 kids. Maybe there was a reversal serum in the doctor’s lab, and the kids injected the body, after realizing that the assistant (Moline) was now reanimated and trying to kill them.  It never made it past the thinking stage. Additionally, Adam Kaye wanted Smith to come up to his home city of Stockton, CA to make the sequel.  Adam came up with some radical ideas of having it take place in modern times (then 2021) where the syringes still have the serum, and a person in a lab injects into a dead body, starting the nightmare all over again.  Adam would play a detective, which is what his character became. Smith told Adam that if anything, he’d rather turn Specimen into a feature length film, possibly using some of those ideas.

Steve Corty (the Specimen) passed away from AIDS in the mid 90s, which made a sequel impossible, as Smith would not use a replacement actor. Don Moline (“Moline”) also passed away in the years since the film was made. Of the entire cast, only the 2 boys (Adam Kaye and M. Todd Meador) are live today.

A few months after the film was finished (May 1992), Smith moved to LA to try and break into the television and motion picture industry. No further films were made until moving to Connecticut, with 1995’s “Bloodline”.

## Video Links

Trailer

"Specimen" (1992) (Full Movie)

1999 Visual Audio Commentary

"Specimen: The Final Project" (1992/2011)

1992 Graduation and Specimen Premier Party

Ande’s Swan Song (a tribute to the late Ande Felix)