Who is Ted V. Mikels?

American filmmaker Ted V. Mikels holds a unique position as one of the most unconventional directors of exploitation cinema. Famous for his eccentric home life (he once lived with a harem in a castle with secret passageways) and promotional gimmicks (he was known for having nurses and ambulances on hand to assist "scared-to-death" moviegoers), Mikels is now considered a pioneering master of low-budget movie making.

Examples of Mikels' influence can be seen everywhere: from music (punk band The Misfits wrote a tribute song called "The Astro-Zombies"), to Mikels' film The Doll Squad being the template for the television series Charlie's Angels, to inspiring the look of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill.

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Kevin Sean Michaels

Producer / Director

Kevin Sean Michaels was born and raised in New York City. He started making films at age thirteen with a Super 8 home movie camera in the style of early silent films. Michaels was the Art Director for Troma Entertainment for three and a half years, working closely with filmmaker Lloyd Kaufman on Troma's film Poultrygeist! Night of the Chicken Dead, as well as numerous DVD extras. He and his wife, Theodora Michaels, founded the production company VAMP Productions in 2005.

Michaels is known for his documentaries. Vampira: The Movie, his first documentary, was released by Alpha New Cinema in 2008 and won the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award for Best Independent Film. In 2010 Alpha New Cinema also released his second documentary, The Wild World of Ted V.Mikels, about the grind-house filmmaker. In 2008, Michaels met David Lynch and began producing Beyond The Noise: My Transcendental Meditation Journey about Dana Farley, a teenager who is using Transcendental Meditation to help her deal with problems including learning disabilities. The documentary stars Lynch and will be playing festivals in 2011 through 2012.

Michaels is currently touring in support of a short animated film called Ingrid Pitt: Beyond The Forest, narrated by Pitt about her experience during the Holocaust.

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