Trailer for the film "Return to Lake Havasu", which documents the story behind the making of the 1971 cult heist movie "Day of the Wolves".
LOG LINE: When small town America met Hollywood USA.
SYNOPSIS:
In 1971, a maverick filmmaker and his crew descended upon a small town in Arizona to make a movie. Using dozens of interviews and never before seen images, we document how the production of the cult film "Day of the Wolves", thought by many reviewers to be an inspiration for Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs", affected the lives of early residents of Lake Havasu City.
SUMMARY:
In 1971 the town of Lake Havasu was still little more than a semi-complete housing estate with a small strip mall and high school. People had come to settle in Lake Havasu from all over the United States, but especially from small towns in Illinois, looking for a new life and warmer climate. Reconstruction of the London Bridge in the center of town was almost complete, and was envisioned by the towns creator, Robert J. McCulloch, as a major tourist attraction.
In the hopes of bringing film productions (and publicity) to Lake Havasu, the McCulloch Corporation, which functionally owned and ran Lake Havasu, invited filmmakers to visit. One of the filmmakers on that flight to Lake Havasu was the maverick film producer Ferde Grofé, son of the famous composer of the same name.
Starting out as a production assistant to Sam Katzman at Columbia studios, Grofé progressed to producing his own movies, first with (Mary Pickfords husband) Buddy Rogers and Sam Arkoff, and later by himself in the Philippines. He had earned the deserved reputation as a low budget guerrilla filmmaker.
Within a month of visiting Havasu, Grofé had persuaded a small TV syndication company to agree to finance the production in Lake Havasu of a TV film from a screenplay he had written several years earlier, called "Day of the Wolves". The story was about a group of thieves attempting to ransack a town but thwarted by the towns ex sheriff.
Grofé traveled to Lake Havasu in February 1971 with a small crew and cast that included Richard Egan and Martha Hyer. Using the Lake Havasu amateur Theater Guild to fill smaller roles, locals helped at all levels of the production.
Almost 40 years on questions are still being asked by surviving townspeople and some in the production crew.
We have pieced together the extraordinary story of the events that led up to the production of this movie. We were assisted in the endeavor by former cast members and crew, including Hollywood luminaries such as producer Peter MacGregor Scott, renowned cinematographer Ric Waite and last but not least Ferde Grofé. The documentary uses the original music score by 60s rock music icon Sean Bonniwell (Music Machine), who comments about his interactions with Grofé.
With a remake in discussions, the documentary provides a timely look at how filming "Day of the Wolves" affected the lives of early Lake Havasu residents. We also see how time changes the perspective (and accuracy) of the memories or those involved. For a brief period of time, the hopes and aspirations of a small western town rested on the shoulders of a group of filmmakers from Hollywood, California.
The home page for the film is: http://www.returntolakehavasu.com
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Day of the Wolves preview 2by soondr807 views
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