When two Daves stroll right into a podcast, you don’t count on to come across a meditation on artwork, failure, persistence, and horror-comedy. But that’s precisely what occurred on this electrical and delightfully unfiltered dialog with Dave Campfield, a filmmaker, actor, and host of the Troma Now Podcast, greatest identified for his work within the cult Caesar and Otto comedy-horror movie collection.
Dave Campfield is a fiercely impartial filmmaker whose journey from a now-defunct movie faculty in New Mexico to directing his personal cult horror satires has been a protracted and winding street paved with hustle, humor, and horror.
We begin within the sand-colored surrealism of Santa Fe, the place adobe buildings and the ghost of City Slickers set the stage for Dave’s early filmmaking goals. In the land of tumbleweeds and tumble-down health club studios turned sound levels, Dave lower his enamel not simply on movie however on the artwork of adaptation. The faculty now not exists, however the recollections—like chalk strains underneath studio lights—stay vivid in his story. “It was like going to school on Tatooine,” he says, laughing, however behind that joke is a bittersweet nod to the ephemeral.
From there, Dave walks us by way of the phantasm of success—early conferences with Universal and New Line Cinema the place hopes had been dangled like carrots in entrance of keen younger dreamers. The trade, he rapidly realized, speaks its personal coded language: familiarity, marketability, and typically, plain deception. One mentor instructed him to “say you’re young, from the streets, and have a dark comedy,” no matter reality. Dave gave it a shot however got here away with the haunting realization that “they were intrigued enough to keep me on leash, but not enough to make it happen.”
That expertise seeded his first actual movie, “Dark Chamber,” a mystery-horror mission which intentionally bucked slasher formulation. It took 5 years to make—5 years of blood, sweat, and overdrafts. And but, when the studios responded with, “We wanted something more familiar,” Dave knew he was swimming upstream. Still, he bought the movie to a small distributor, endured its repackaging as one thing it wasn’t, and received it onto Netflix. A win—simply not the one he envisioned.
But right here’s the guts of all of it: Dave didn’t cease. He pivoted, not with bitterness, however with evolution. “I decided I wasn’t going to be one of those people waiting for opportunity. You had to make it happen on your own.” And so, he leaned into comedy horror—a style he describes as “Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein, but for the splatter generation.” Thus, Caesar and Otto had been born: two absurdly lovable doofuses bumbling their manner by way of massacres, monsters, and paranormal mayhem.
One of Dave’s secret weapons is loyalty to what’s actual. Whether recounting how Lloyd Kaufman forgot him (then remembered) or enhancing commercials for the Philadelphia Pet Expo, he retains a type of grounded magic about his craft. He shares a deeply private new mission, “Awaken the Reaper,” born from a decade of introspection and wrestle, calling it “the most personal thing I’ve ever written.” He says, “It’s about being stuck—feeling like every day you’re not moving forward—and finally getting out of your own way.”
All alongside, Dave’s been quietly constructing a popularity for casting future stars earlier than they break—Trey Byers (Empire), Peter Scanavino (Law & Order)—and internet hosting a podcast that thrives not simply due to model synergy with Troma, however as a result of he genuinely is aware of the right way to speak to individuals. “They’ve never rejected an episode,” he remarks. “I tease Troma a lot, and they’re always game. It’s a beautiful collaboration.”
The dialog wraps not with grandiosity, however a recognition that even the smallest cult followings can maintain a creator going. “My fanbase is small, but intense,” Dave says with delight. “I can rattle them off on two hands.” Maybe that’s sufficient. Maybe that’s every part.
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