A former Fango contributor drops his guerilla-style love letter to exploitation cinema, his wife, and his car.
(Editor's note: When former (and, as of this article, current) Fango contributor Sean Decker told me about the DIY car chase short he made with his wife Sarah Nicklin and other LA pals during the 2023 actors’ strike, I knew I wanted to help boost. Yes, it’s not horror, but Sean is part of the Fango fam and, as he explains so eloquently below, the project was made with the blood, sweat, and passion of movie fandom that connects us all. I think you’ll dig it. – PN)
If you had told me in 1985—when I was shoving a dog-eared copy of FANGORIA #9 under my mattress so that my parents wouldn’t find it—that I’d one day be a staff writer in the aughts for the very same magazine, I would have laughed in disbelief. If you had gone further and claimed that in 2025 FANGORIA’s Editor-in-Chief, Phil Nobile Jr., would invite me to chronicle my first directorial effort—a short (and non-horror!) film titled Rendezvous—in the form of sort of a production diary for the masthead, I’d have called it a fantasy.
And yet, that’s exactly where I find myself. Life has a way of connecting the seemingly unconnectable—turning the secret obsessions of our youth into the professional milestones of our adulthood. Horror fans, in particular, know this trajectory well: what starts as contraband VHS tapes, late-night cable airings or smuggled magazines can evolve into a lifelong passion that shapes careers, friendships, and creative pursuits.
So where to begin? Perhaps by acknowledging that horror has never been just about blood and monsters. For me, it has always been about community—the unspoken recognition between people who share a taste for the macabre, and a deep appreciation for the strange places where imagination meets fear. To have the opportunity to return to FANGORIA not as a wide-eyed reader but as a filmmaker reflecting on the process feels like closing a circle I never imagined would exist.
Onto Rendezvous. While my early cinematic appetite was dominated by horror, it also carried a parallel hunger—for the raw, gasoline-soaked grit of 1970s car cinema. Films like
Vanishing Point
,
Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry
, and
Mad Max
didn’t just rev engines on the screen; they spoke to something primal about freedom, speed, and rebellion.
Maybe that connection was inevitable. My parents, after all, first met in the 1960s while illegally street racing souped-up cars on San Francisco’s Great Highway. My father lost that initial race, and my mother wasn’t exactly impressed—but 62 years later, it seems they found common ground. Car culture wasn’t just in the background of my youth; it was baked into it.
For me, the road has always symbolized possibility. The growl of a super-charged engine promised both escape and defiance—attainable dreams in a world that often felt intent on boxing you in. Horror offered me monsters, but cars offered momentum. And in their own ways, both genres—horror and automotive—were about survival, adrenaline, and the refusal to obey the rules.
That’s the DNA running through Rendezvous. It isn’t simply a film about cars or nostalgia; it’s a collision of those forces. It’s an acknowledgment that sometimes what drives us isn’t just story or spectacle—it’s legacy, rebellion, and the memories of engines that roared long before we ever picked up a camera.
So, what was the nucleus? It came on a sweltering August day in 2023 when the SAG-AFTRA strike was in full swing, and I was one of dozens standing outside Netflix on Sunset Boulevard with a picket sign in hand. (Credit where it’s due: thank you, Jason Blum, for sending an ice cream truck to keep morale from melting entirely.) The mood was equal parts solidarity and stagnation. No one was filming. Sets were dark. Momentum in the industry had screeched to a halt.
For me, the lull quickly became maddening. For my wife, actress Sarah Nicklin (V/H/S/Halloween)—whose devotion to her craft makes me look lazy by comparison—it was equally suffocating. Striking meant sacrifice, yes, but it also meant days filled with restless energy and too much time to think.
Driving home that afternoon, sweat-soaked and sunburned, I blurted out: “Let’s just go shoot something, and let’s make it fast.” It wasn’t a plan so much as a release valve, a way to push back against the lack of inertia that had swallowed the industry whole. If the studios weren’t making movies, we would. If the machine was broken, we’d build our own.
That impulse was the seed of what became Rendezvous. And looking back, I realize that moment wasn’t just about making a film—it was about reclaiming agency in a business that too often asks artists to wait their turn.
The concept was simple enough: an out-of-work actress forced by circumstance to turn to grand theft auto in order to survive the strike, and a film that rebuked a predominantly male subgenre. I already had the actress—my wife—and I had the car: a turbo-charged 2016 Ford Focus ST that I’d been wrenching on since the Covid lockdown. (Pro tip: never buy an out-of-state car on eBay; you’ll end up with more work than you bargained for.)
A Focus ST you ask? Well, if you know, then you know.
What I didn’t have was a crew. So, I started dialing. First call: Will Barratt, longtime Adam Green collaborator and Emmy-winning director of photography. Then Richard Trejo, with whom along with Will I’d teamed on the docu-series Collection Complete. And then John Fitzpatrick, filmmaker, editor of The Boys and Supernatural, and a dear friend since our 2015 short horror outing Yummy Meat: A Halloween Carol.
For whatever reason—maybe shared frustration, maybe sheer stubbornness—they all said yes. So did friends Joe Stockton (sound designer), Ryan Valdez (who provided additional cinematography and completion), acclaimed composer Joseph Bishara, voice actor Bill Millsap, visual effects artist Tammy Sutton-Walker, and more, who all replied in the affirmative to an overly ambitious idea. “Yes” to a project with zero funding. “Yes” to trading picket lines and the loss of momentum for the uncertainty of creation. “Yes” to shooting on streets that weren’t locked down, and at speed.
That’s the thing about filmmaking: it’s rarely about resources. More often, it’s about audacity—the belief that if you just start, if you just gather the right people, the rest will sort itself out.
Part of sorting it out meant location scouting—thank you, Google Street View, for saving me countless hours in traffic. The other part? Staging a full-blown car chase in downtown Los Angeles without a single permit. The solution was equal parts nerve and neighborly goodwill: borrow the guy next door’s black Charger, mount a light bar in it, and hope no one mistakes you for an actual cop—or hauls you off for impersonating one (this was undoubtedly the most stressful night of photography, as I was the one steering the Charger).
Sarah, by the way, did all of her own driving. In those ridiculous heels. Badass and beautiful.
RENDEZVOUS (photo credit: Decklin Films)
In the end, the greatest reward of Rendezvous wasn’t just the problem-solving, or the footage we captured, or the chase we managed to pull off without permits, it was the camaraderie of the cast and crew, and the lessons I carried with me. The question of “Can I actually pull this off, and will it be any good?” lingered at every stage. And like a faint echo of De Palma—whose fingerprints are all over the film’s visual sensibilities—Piper Laurie’s taunt in Carrie of, “They’re all gonna’ laugh at you!” haunted me in the background.
Will they? That’s for you to decide. But for me, the act of creating alongside such talented friends, fueled purely by artistic freedom, will always remain one of the most meaningful experiences of my career.
Just as I remain grateful to FANGORIA #9—that forbidden magazine I once hid under my mattress—for introducing me to a world that, decades later, would lead me right back here.
