Phil Tibbett has always considered himself an artist, and the movie “Mad God” that he wrote, directed and produced is his dream project come true.
The film combines stop motion, live action, and techniques inspired by lifelong visual effects. After working 30 years on the project, Shudder, AMC’s premier streaming service for horror, has acquired the film and will make it available this summer.
Tippett, a two-time Academy Award winner, came up with the idea for the experimental movie during a break in “RoboCop 2.” After working with a series of drawings inspired by all the movie monsters he loved as a kid and designing a few sets, he and his team shot the first few scenes at Tippett Studio. He was soon offered work in Jurassic Park, so Tippett suspended the project while collaborating with Steven Spielberg on iconic effects that set a new standard for action movies.
“I didn’t know it at the time but my mind was bobbing and I was working through the ideas [from when] I was very young,” Tibbett says. “It can take many years of crafting, coming up with ideas and comic panels for something to come together sometimes. You can call it research, but for the artist this is like a dream. ”
Tippett set his story in a fantasy world with the kinds of creatures that have always eaten him – monsters, mad scientists and even weird war pigs. When the movie begins, a miserable diving bell descends into the city’s ruins. He finally settles on a castle guarded by zombie-like guards. Then a character known as Assassin advances to enter the Tippett world of bleak landscapes, populated by many strange creatures. The story takes Assassin on a journey that leads to his unexpected development.
“Mad God” has received strong reviews for its unorthodox storytelling style and gruesome image. The horror/animated film currently has a new rating of 90% on Rotten Tomatoes.
“As our company got bigger and was able to train more visual effects supervisors, it gave me more time to work on Mad God,” Tibbett says. “But there’s still a lot to experience. Sometimes, I need to process things in my mind or by experimenting with my techniques because this isn’t a traditional story told the way the studio wants it to be told. It’s the story I wanted to tell and I told it the way I wanted it to be told.”
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