johnnyterris

                                                     
                                                         A trailer for one of my films:

                           

Before creating Terfer Productions in 2004, filmmaker and actor Johnny Terris started out doing punk/guerilla style underground short films in the late 80’s and early 90’s in Canada. After putting filmmaking on hiatus for over 10 years, he has once again rejoined the film industry as both filmmaker and actor, delivering some of his most brutal work to date.

His first directorial debuts, The Stardust Memory and The Whores, were passed around through various colleges and parties and started to pick up a small following in the early 90’s. Stardust (which a plot of a mother and daughter team who go insane after drinking contaminated tap water) as well as the trailer park comedy The Whores, had been, for a limited time, recently released uncut on the first version of the DVD compilation "The Underground Collection" in 2007 with directors commentary. His next film, the transgressive Room 405 (also on "The Underground Collection" compilation), strayed away from the trashy black comedy of his previous films and depicted masochistic imagery and body scarification. The first version saw his very first use of heavy metal music; a style that would follow in his later work. The film has since been remastered with an industrial score. He shot the film Dominos next in the mid/late 90's, about a mentally unstable underground film director and his horde of backstabbing misfit actors. To this day Dominos has not been released on DVD.

After a lengthy break, in 2004 he starred in the Sidewalk Scramble Film Festival comedy, "Faux Paw", playing the indifferent boyfriend of a woman who decides to treat him like a dog to get more attention from him. The film was screened to a sold out crowd at The Sidewalk Scramble Film Festival in Alabama at The Carver Theater, located in downtown Birmingham. That same year he starred in a charity television spot for Safehouse Women's Shelter (which he did free of charge), playing an abusive husband and giving awarness to womens abuse issues.

After "Faux Paw" was completed and screened he headed off to Los Angeles with UK heavy metal legends Girlschool and filmed (and is briefly featured) in an unreleased video for their song "A New Beginning" from the album "Believe". A full length documentary on the band he was to produce and direct has been temporarily put on hold for a later date due to scheduling conflicts.

In 2005, he released his first official DVD entitled Sordid; an experimental journey through sex, death and rebirth which sold out the first 200 copies within a 24 hour period.

The uncut, more explicit version of Sordid was first released on his second DVD release; Scruff, a collection of short films done for the new millennium. The title film "Scruff", which is a rock and roll cheesy-fun flashback to the 1980’s, is combined with a horror short "Inside Inoxia"; a film loosely about the effects the chemical warfare and radiation poisoning.

The most recent DVD release is "The Underground Collection"; a compilation of six uncut short films that include Room 405, Sordid, Inside Inoxia, Scruff and two previously unreleased video shorts.

Heavily influenced by and often described as an underground Dario Argento by peers in regards to his stylized imagery and cinematography, his films have been compared to both Japanese and Italian/European horror cinema as well as likened and compared to the Cinema of Transgression movement of the mid-80’s which featured underground artists such as Richard Kern, Nick Zedd, Henry Rollins and Lydia Lunch.

As well as an actor in a lot of his own films, this summer he will be starring in the feature film Silent Alarm directed by award winning cinematographer/director Steve Ashlee and and in the JimmyO Burril sequel Chainsaw Sally 2: Bloodkin along side gore legend Herschell Gordon Lewis and the cast of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

He is currently writing two books; "Sinister Splendor & Broken Glass" and "Cinematically Raped" a comedic take on his thoughts on films and the film industry to be released through Terfer Productions in mid-2007.

OFFICIAL WEBPAGES:
http://www.johnnyterris.com
http://www.myspace.com/hitchhiketohell