"Somewhere in Texas, Terrence Malick is laboring to complete his seventh movie in 41 years; meanwhile, David DeCoteau has directed 102 movies since 1986, including 37 since 2010." note
— Judy Berman, Flavorwire, 2014
David DeCoteau (born January 5, 1962) is an American-Canadian director and producer.
Having worked in movies since age 18, he started off as a production assistant to Roger Corman, before eventually striking out on his own. He is the founder of Rapid Heart Pictures, which makes homoerotic horror porn movies as well as Talking Animal movies. In a career spanning four decades, he has produced and/or directed well over 100 films. If you've watched cable during that time, you've bumped into at least one of them, since his early directorial efforts were late night staples of Cinemax and USA Network, and more recently he's begun specializing in movies for Lifetime and Hallmark Channel.
Selected Filmography:
- Creepozoids (1987)
- Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama (1988, the closest he ever came to a mainstream hit movie)
- Witchouse (1999)
- Hansel & Gretel: Warriors of Witchcraft (2013)
- A Talking Cat!?! (2013)
- An Easter Bunny Puppy (2013)
- Bigfoot vs. D.B. Cooper (2014)
- The Wrong: A Thematic Series Thriller franchise for Lifetime, beginning in 2016, for which he's directed all of the (dozens of) movies.
- The Wrong Cheerleader (2019)
Tropes common to his films:
- Beauty Is Bad: The villain will often be the hottest character in his movies.
- Bottle Episode: Since this is No Budget filmmaking, he's made a habit of setting movies primarily or entirely in a single location (often a mansion), since this obviously aids in producing the films quickly and cheaply. A mansion setting is basically the one slender thread connecting many of the 1313 movies.
- Fanservice: As mentioned elsewhere on this page, he tends to cast Mr. Fanservice in the male lead role and give him opportunities to show skin. His Lifetime movies also usually feature Ms. Fanservice as the female lead and give her revealing outfits.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: When DeCoteau's The Wrong series started out, the films hadn't yet developed its trademark of having the character played by Vivica A. Fox deliver a Title Drop at the end of the movie. Some of the earlier films (The Wrong Teacher and The Wrong Mommy) even broke away from the trademark by having characters played by other actors deliver the line.
- Gory Deadly Overkill Title of Fatal Death: Commonly used for his Horror efforts, such as Ancient Evil: Scream of the Mummy and Sorority Slaughterhouse.
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Ho Yay: Even in his movies that aren't softcore porn, there tend to be a lot of homoerotic undertones. - In Love with the Mark: At least two of The Wrong movies (The Wrong Roommate, The Wrong Blind Date) feature a Con Man hired by the heroine's ex to romance her and break her heart, which the ex thinks will drive her back to him, only for the con man to fall in love with her and violently turn against the ex.
- Lifetime Movie of the Week: His recent specialty has been this, anchored by The Wrong franchise, a (seemingly neverending) series of thrillers / dramas co-produced by and starring Vivica A. Fox (usually in a supporting role). He's done some other unconnected, but stylistically similar, thrillers for them as well.
- No Budget: As a disciple of Roger Corman, many of his films are made on low budgets, and it shows.
- Pen Name: He directs most of his talking animal films under the name "Mary Crawford". He's also used "David McCabe", "Ellen Cabot", "Victoria Sloan" and "Julian Breen" at various points in his career.
- Production Posse:
- He tends to use most of the same actors in his films, including Eric Roberts, Kristene DeBell, Johnny Whitaker, and Justin Cone.
- In The Wrong movies, besides the mandatory Vivica A. Fox role, you can usually count on some combination of Jessica Morris, Jamie Bernadette, Dominique Swain, Tracy Nelson, Jason-Shane Scott and Rib Hillis in the cast.
- He's directed no less than four movies starring the trio of Linnea Quigley, Brinke Stevens and Michelle Bauer (aka Michelle McLellan): Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama and Nightmare Sisters in The '80s, and the more recent reunion movies 1313: Cougar Cult and 3 Scream Queens.
- Recycled Set: A lot of his movies reuse his large mansion (with a red car cut in half as a sofa, plus the long spiral staircase next to the double doors in the foyer) as a shooting location.
- Sequel Gap: Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama 2 came out in 2022, 34 years after the original, but it was directed by its star Brinke Stevens (presumably DeCoteau couldn't squeeze the four hours or so needed to make the movie into his busy schedule).
- Shirtless Scene: In his Lifetime movies, the hunky male lead will almost always get one, often a shower scene.
- Stock Footage: Practically every scene of a DeCoteau movie opens with a long establishing shot that flirts with Leave the Camera Running status, which will usually just be a panorama shot of the film's location, that has zero reason to be there except for Padding purposes. Does the movie have a rural setting? Get ready to see lots of shots of trees and fields. Is it set in Los Angeles? You'll be reminded every few minutes with a drone shot of the L.A. skyline. Same goes for aerial shots of houses in a suburban setting. And he'll reuse these shots from movie to movie.
- Talking Animal: Some of his more well-known movies involve talking animals.
- Title by Number: He masterminded the 1313 series of Horror movies. The initial movie was filmed as A Dream Within a Dream (an Edgar Allan Poe allusion), but DeCoteau decided 1313: Nightmare Mansion was a punchier title. After its release, he realized he'd hit on a formula that was perfect for Netflix and other on-demand services: since numbered titles show up first alphabetically, <number> + <High Concept subtitle> is an easy way to grab the attention of potential viewers, so he went ahead and did a whole bunch more 1313 movies, which don't really have any connections outside of copious male Fanservice.
