NewRetroWave could not be prouder to bring you “The Phantom Machine”, an action-packed feast for the senses. Set in a post-apocalyptic future, the video follows a lone traveller who crosses paths with a deadly force known as the Phantom Machine.

Directed by Jendo Shabo of Helios films and starring Shane Morris in the lead role, The Phantom Machine is nothing short of a tour-de-force in indie filmmaking and an awe-inspiring example of a passion led by pure passion and dedication.

Along with the film release, Waveshaper has also released an EP/Maxi-single  with a movie edit of the track along with the movie’s intro and outro.

For fans of Seth Ickerman’s Blood Machines and Masebrothers’ Cyborg : Deadly Machine, here’s one short you’re definitely not going to want to miss!!

The Phantom Machine EP is out now on Bandcamp and Spotify.

This marks Meteor’s second album and third release this year, having released his last album System Failure last May and having collaborated on the Cyborg : Deadly Machine Soundtrack alongside Fixions.

Cyborg : Deadly Machine (Movie Soundtrack) by Meteor / Fixions / Kid Zan / Magic DanceBe sure to check out Meteor on Bandcamp and Facebook for the latest music and updates.

A veritable spoonful of explosive, post-apocalyptic sci-fi action to make the exhausting election coverage go down, the film is a godsend that is sure to bring you back to those golden years when end times looked a lot more fun. In an age of great divide and turmoil, Cyborg: Deadly Machine is a humanistic reminder of human resilience spelt in the form of a love letter dedicated to classic Eighties and Nineties action flicks.

The French filmmakers deliver above and beyond all expectations, thanks in no small part to the phenomenal score by Synthwave acts Fixions and Meteor (out now on Bandcamp)

Cyborg : Deadly Machine (Movie Soundtrack) by Meteor / Fixions / Kid Zan / Magic Dance

Consolidating cheesy one-liners, stunning stunt work and old-school practical effects eye-candy, the Masebrothers successfully recreate the feel of the classics we all know and love to create a piece of indie retro cinema for the ages.

The French version will also be premiering on Youtube tonight via this second link.

Be sure to Subscribe to the Masebrothers Youtube channel and like their Facebook page to catch the latest news on their upcoming projects and releases.

So what’ve you got to recommend to our readers today?

I’ve chosen two film recommendations. I brought the 1986 horror film Night of the Creeps. It’s probably one of the most criminally underrated Eighties movies ever made it’s a mix of science-fiction, cheesy horror and laugh-out-loud comedy and the director delivers everything in spades. It’s one of the first horror films that I can remember watching and I can’t recommend it enough to the readers! I remember getting it at a video-store.  The VHS cover stood out to me. I used to spend a lot of my childhood around video-stores, which is where I got my love for films. I used to rent a lot of films. The first job I wanted to do was to be a film director. I always remember that as one of my first memories.

The second film that I think everyone should watch is a 1986 film called Chopping Mall, which has an incredible Synth soundtrack by Chuck Cirino. It’s batshit crazy. It’s got out of control robots, awful dialogue and exploding heads, all within a shopping mall in the Eighties. It’s best watched with beers and a few friends. I must’ve seen the film between the time I was ten and thirteen.

Can you identify what draws you to old-school horror, as a director and as a fan?

I think it’s the atmosphere. Modern horror doesn’t have the atmosphere of Eighties horror. It’s got some kind of schlocky vibe with an undercurrent of pulsing synths. Nothing today measures up to the horror movies of the Eighties and early Nineties. That’s what I think, anyway. I very much like DIY style horror, where you can feel like the movie was a passion project. John Carpenter’s Halloween was a really low-budget, for example. The same goes for Chopping Mall and Night of the Creeps. They are not the churned-out unoriginal money-making machines you see in cinemas today.

I know the film-rating system is pretty harsh in the UK. Were these horror films easy to get a hold of when you were still a child?

There were a lot of films that were banned in the Eighties in the UK, like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Exorcist. These films were re-released around the 2000s’. The schlockier, lower-budget films that weren’t really that “harmful”, were released on videocassette. It was only the ones that had the blood and gore and various things that people thought could “harm the public” that were banned. There was a politician called Mary Whitehouse, who basically banned a bunch of films due to what she thought would cause violence. A lot of these films were just 18+ films. Our films rating system goes from U (for all audiences) and PG (Parental Guidance) to 12+, 15+ and 18+.  I remember watching Clownhouse and Halloween when I was very young. My mum and dad didn’t really care about showing me things like that. If you’re born a certain way, you’re going to turn into a psychopath, but I don’t think TV violence turns into a killer.

Did you have a lot of friends that were into horror? Or were you the odd one out of the bunch in school?

I was the kid that people used to come around to the house to. I had hundreds of VHS tapes. My parents bought me them. They used to watch Terminator and Halloween around my house [Laughs] without their parents knowing. People used to come to my place after school to check out all of the newest horror and action releases that they couldn’t see anywhere else.

How did you pick out the movies you’d watch?

The thing is that you couldn’t really tell if something was really good back then. You just had to go off the poster artwork, whereas nowadays you get to read reviews online. You had to go through a video store and browse around. It was the same with CDs in the Nineties. When an album was released, you didn’t know what the rest of the album was like. It basically boiled down to luck. I still have a lot of terrible VHS tapes in my house [Laughs]. You paid quite a lot of money back then for a new release, too.

Has your relationship with horror movies changed since the digital age or have you kept somewhat of an old-school approach to consuming horror?

I still watch a lot of horror movies, but I don’t really listen to anybody’s reviews or opinions on it, because I think that horror is very much in the eyes of the viewer. You’re either going to really like it or you’re not. That’s why I go to a lot of horror festivals, as well. I don’t read about the films that are showing, I like going in with an open mind. It’s just nice to find something new and refreshing that someone else has picked out in a horror festival, as opposed to sifting to loads of stuff that you’re not sure is going to be good. I still read reviews of horror films, I just don’t really trust them. A movie that I’d been really looking forward to might come out and get loads of bad reviews, but I might still enjoy it. There are a few films that I’ve watched when I was growing up that have terrible reviews that I love.

Do any examples come to mind?

I’ve got two, actually. Sam Raimi released a western in the Nineties called The Quick and the Dead and it’s absolutely incredible. It’s one of the most underappreciated films ever made. I think that everyone should definitely check that. I think that it’s Sam Raimi’s best work. It’s fantastic. There’s also Money Train with Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson. It’s got a fantastic script and loads of memorable one-liners. Me and my dad used to watch it all the time on the weekends when I was growing up.

So what’ve you been up to and what’ve you been working on lately?

I’m developing my first feature film while I’m in lockdown. It will be a brutal thriller with a lot of action involved. I’m looking forward to sharing that with everyone soon. I’m also currently working on the marketing for a film called Lieutenant Jangles, which is an Australian Synthwave movie. I’m also helping on a film with the Masebrothers called Cyborg: Deadly Machine. The film is going to be dubbed over into English and I’m basically polishing up the translation. I’m also working on Commando Ninja II soon with Ben Combes, which should be exciting. The lockdown has given me the time to work on all of these projects, and we’re also hoping to set some Synthwave festivals again in 2021 for which I can get some acts. The other organisers Will and Simon of Retro Future Fest are hoping to put something on next year in the summer.

Be sure to check out James’ work via his IMDB page or his Instagram to catch up on his latest filmmaking projects.

IMDB

Instagram

Synthwave TV

Having loved their previous, action-packed short Rage of Fire II, we were thrilled to hear that the guys are back at it and ready to take their craft to the next level. Retro-heads, meet Cyborg – Deadly Machine, the Masebrothers’ latest love letter to Eighties Action Sci-fi flicks, a love letter to James Cameron’s Terminator… with a tomato-flavoured twist! The guns are loaded and the pasta-water is on the stove, however, the Masebrothers are in need of your help to get their dream project to life, which is why they have set up a Kickstarter page to call upon your interest and support for this project. As we further enquired about the project, we took the opportunity to ask Masebrothers co-founder Mathieu Caillière about the channel as well as the project.

First off, can you say a few words about your background as a collective?

We’re a bunch of buddies that make short-films. Two years ago, we decided to start a Youtube channel and make videos dedicated to Eighties and Nineties pop-culture. We basically wanted to do work on something related to the whole Retrowave culture, whether it be music, films or retro-revival TV series.
Masebrothers is basically three creators: Jérémy Vazzoli who has a graphic design background, myself (Mathieu Caillière) –a graphic designer who does a bit of 4D Cinema, VFX and film post-production, – and Sébastien Petitjean, with whom I createdthe channel and who is also a graphic artist. Sebastien does the writing and I’m more on the directing, editing and special effects sides of things.

At which point did you realize you wanted to work within the whole Eighties and Nineties pop-cuture aesthetic?

We’re actually Eighties kids. I’m thirty-five and we’re all around the same age, so it’s what we knew when we were kids. We’re paying homage and recreating the candor of our childhood, how we heard music and how we saw movies back in the day. It’s basically a tribute born out of our love for that era.

The credits in your videos and short-films indicate that you all have a large set of skills. Were there any that you were recquired to learn on-the-fly?

We do work on many aspects, but we keep learning with each shoot we do. Our limited means of production forces us to think of new, smart ways of moving forward and overcome constraints. Of course, it would be great to have more resources and more people to guide us along, but we also learn a lot this way. I did study editing though, so I already knew that. I started making movies when I was in middle-school, so my first steps in filmmaking were with me playing with my dad’s film camera when I was a kid.

Your videos feature a whole lot of old props and accessories. Were these part of your collection or did you have to hunt down some of these objects for your purpose of the videos?

Actually, we’ve had to buy a lot of things – like old TVs’, old dial-up telephones and radios, because we unfortunately didn’t keep everything from back then. We also got a lot of things from our families. We’re very fond of vintage action-figures we used to play with when we were kids, so some of those were part of our personal collection that we kept in our dusty cardboard boxes. We made a trailer called Toys War, where we only used action figures. There were basically X-Men and GI Joe figurines fighting together. We used some of our own and bought a few more for the film. It was part of our little passion as collectors.

Are there any props you’re still looking for? Some things that are hard to come by?

We’ve had trouble finding a good Sony Walkman Cassette Player. They’re hard to come by and they’re really expensive to buy online nowadays. There were also these watches with TV screens on them. It would be awesome to find one of those. Those are also outrageously priced, they’re collector’s items. If we manage to get one of them, we’ll obviously make a film based around them [laugh].

Moving on to the main subject: Cyborg – Deadly Machine. What is it about and what are your ambitions for the project?

Cyborg –Deadly Machine is the story of a bunch of a Resistance-faction that’s fighting against machines. The atmosphere is very similar to James Cameron’s, only here we have some pretty eccentric characters on board. The Resistance is led by this female warrior called Stacy who, on her way, meets our main-man Alex, a guy who is fixated on making tomato sauce in a world where tomatoes have pretty stopped growing. Together, they will find a way to fight against the machines, all the while being tracked by an ultra-sophisticated, deadly Cyborg.

Cyborg – Deadly Machine is a tribute to Eighties and Nineties Sci-Fi and Action films. It’s a continuation of what we do on the channel with our sketches, fake-commercials, fake trailers and short films. Last year we release a short called Rage of Fire II dedicated to action films and retro-gaming, and this time around we wanted to pay tribute to the Sci-Fi genre, namely the Terminator franchise that we grew up on and its technical aspects. A lot of these films were done with mostly practical effects. We’d like to work with more traditional means, such as animatronics and model-sets to create our universe. The idea is to use the old means to shoot the film with our own means. That’s what we want it to look like, anyway. There will still be some digital effects for things like gunshots and explosions for budgetary reasons, but we’ll be using animatronics for the Cyborgs in the film, for instance. The film will be roughly twenty to thirty minutes long. That’s what we’re aiming for with the Kickstarter project, anyway.

How did the tomato sauce storyline come to be? It sounds like you had a lot of fun during the writing process.

[laugh] The film is pretty serious from a visual perspective, but here at Masebrothers Productions we’ve got a thing for humor and the absurd. We’re not making fun of Eighties films but rather we’re having fun with their common tropes. We wanted to go for something a bit more light-hearted, thus came the whole idea with the tomato sauce. It’s about a quest for flavor, in a barren, post-apocalyptic world that has lost all flavors, where it’s all about survival and robots ruling over everything. Alex’s way of being consists in seeking things that remind him of humanity, symbolized to him by tomato sauce. He’s also followed around by a little robot, who will be adding to the film’s comic relief.

Your Youtube channel combines sketches in both English and French. What made you decide to start shooting these short films in English?

We launched the channel with a film called Kickin’ Jack, which we filmed exclusively in English. We were really marked by the big, buff voices we used to hear in American blockbuster movie-trailers, more so than those we’d hear in French. We wanted to use them in our films. We’re heavily influenced by American pop-culture and Asian films like those made by John Woo, and we wanted to do a throwback to the way we perceived them at the time. Some of our sketches are in French because all of our short-film are done in English because we weren’t sure we were going to gather an audience for them in France. Given that we followed certain channels like NewRetroWave, we figured there’s a larger audience that would be interested in what we do, namely thanks to films like Kung Fury that really helped in getting the ball rolling. We thought it would be more fun to branch out beyond French audiences, even if we do sometimes shoot sketches in French because it’s also part of our culture.

Is your DIY approach more of a personal choice or rather the result of a perceived lack of interest from production studios?

I don’t think we’d be of much interest to producers. We didn’t go see any, and I can’t really think of anyone we could conceivably work with. It’s not like we’re Christophe Gans [rire]. We’re pretty low-level, so it’s a little complicated. We’ve always done things this way. We’ve often stitched things together ourselves. We’ve gone through a few official procedures for the project but it’s tricky. We figured the best way to get this project off the ground would be to turn towards the Retro community and to our loyal fans.

How did you meet your music collaborators, Meteor and Fixions, with whom you will be once again working on Cyborg – Deadly Machine?

I believe I first came across Meteor through NewRetroWave [laugh]. I got in touch with him around the time I was starting to work on Kickin’ Jack, as I had fallen in love with his first album Parallel Lines. I was a huge fan of his work and so I offered to make a music video for one of his songs called ‘Escape the Fate’, and the video actually ended up on the NewRetroWave channel, actually. Our collaboration started from there. He was also a fan of our work and when it came time to make Kickin’ Jack he gave us his consent to use the music from his album and he really appreciated it. Up until now we just used his songs for our videos. We also used his second album Inner Demon in Rage of Fire II. It only seemed natural to work with him again, as I’m a huge fan of his and I really want to get an original score for the project.

For Fixions, it was actually him who contacted us first. We didn’t know who he was but we later found out that he was the guy who made the soundtrack to Mother Russia Bleeds. We eventually hit it off and became really good friends. Furthermore, he also lives around my area so he also participates in the making of our videos.
I think the pair will really add something to the project through their complementary styles. Meteor is rather Synthwave/Outrun-driven, whereas Fixions is sounds more Darksynth, which will go well with the whole post-apocalyptic decorum and the machines in the film.

Closing off : can you name one of your favorite albums, movies and books?

The Killer by John Woo, Inner Demon by Meteor and The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

Any closing words?

Cyborg –Deadly Machine is a project we’re really passionate about. We believe we’ll be able to make something really fun and special. We really want to work with these Synthwave artists and we hope that you will find some cool stuff on our Kickstarter page and that you’ll dig it. Keep listening to Synthwave and ‘Stay Cool, Stay Retro!’.

Be sure to check the ‘Cyborg – Deadly Machine’ Kickstarter page here if you wish to know more and support the project.