Diabolical Tales: Part I

Diabolical Tales: Part I - Genesis of the Men From Within The Earth is a 2005 short sci-fi/comedy film and the first entry in the Diabolical Tales series.

The first public screening of Diabolical Tales: Part I  was at the ShockerFest Film Festival in Riverside, California in October 2006, where it won the Best Editing Award. The film later played at several other film festivals, winning a number of awards in the process.

Diabolical Tales: Part II was completed in August 2007, followed by Diabolical Tales: Part III in October 2007.

Diabolical Tales: Part I - The Radio Drama, an audio drama adaptation of the movie that featured many returning members of the original cast and crew, followed in May 2022.

Synopsis
Set in November 1952, Diabolical Tales: Part I follows a rookie FBI Agent Cooper who survives a near-deadly brush with a mysterious man dressed in black. He is later selected to team up with a cryptic U.S. government agent known as Operative-132 on a top-secret investigation called Project AGARTHA.

Tibet 1939
The film opens with a prologue set in Tibet on August 6, 1939. Three men - who we quickly learn are Nazis - are scouting the area. Two of the three men are doctors - Dr. Ernst Schafer and Dr. Helmut - who have been searching for an entrance to the legendary underground kingdom of Agartha. As Schafer laments his lack of success in finding this mysterious entrance to the Underworld, Dr. Helmut responds to an urgent message from Base Camp: the Fuhrer has decided to move "the plans" up to September 1 (which history reveals as Germany's invasion of Poland and the beginning of World War II) and they have been recalled to Germany as a result. Dr. Schafer is disheartened, as he reveals his hopes for a Nazi alliance with the superior Aryan supermen of the legendary "Agartha". Dr. Schafer suspects that they have been watched by "the little Chinamen". As Schafer and Helmut laugh that they will "vanquish them all with the Great Plan" and head back to their base camp for some schnapps, we learn Dr. Schafer was correct. They were being watched, but not by Chinese: a mysterious man in a black cloak and dark-tinted glasses, who then wandered off alone.

The H-Bomb
A second prologue set thirteen years later reveals the world's first H-bomb tests were secretly carried out by American military on November 1, 1952 at a remote Pacific atoll called Ewenetak Island that completely annihilated it, leaving a 175-foot deep, 1-mile wide crater where the island once had been.

Agent Cooper's First Encounter
On November 10, 1952, Agent Cooper and his partner Agent Thompson are on stakeout while trailing Frank Sinatra when a mysterious man in a cloak - Zong - ran by their car. After giving chase and cornering this sinister man, he produces a strange weapon that fires an energy beam at Agent Thompson, vaporizing him. Agent Cooper is then stunned unconscious by the weapon and Zong escapes into the night.

Assistant Director Smith
The next day, Agent Cooper wakes up in his office at FBI Headquarters to see his boss, FBI Assistant Director Smith, watching him. After groggily recounting his memory of the encounter with the strange man and Agent Thompson's subsequent death, Assistant Director Smith discourages him from following up on the case, insisting that they have other "top men" working on it. When Agent Cooper persists, Smith orders him a weeklong vacation.

Kate and Operative-132
Agent Cooper returns home to his wife Kate Cooper, who has secretly begun drinking vodka during the day to replace her increasingly occupied husband. It is clear that they have a tense relationship. When Kate questions him for information about where he's been, he just barely starts to tell her the truth when abbreviating himself with "Can't tell you any more. National security." Kate storms off, angrily yelling "You never tell me anything!" when the doorbell buzzes. Agent Cooper opens the front door to meet by a man who identifies himself as Operative-132 of the National Security Agency. O-132 then questions him about the strange man he encountered and the details surrounding Agent Thompson's death. When Agent Cooper asks for more information on who the strange cloaked man was, O-132 reveals that what he was about to tell him is "Above Top Secret": there was recently a break-in at the Atomic Energy Commission Building which was less than a mile from the site of Agent Cooper's encounter with the strange man. He also revealed that on November 1, the U.S. secretly test-detonated a Hydrogen Bomb - the world's first - in the Pacific. O-132 suspects that the strange man was a Communist attempting to steal American hydrogen bomb secrets and that Agent Cooper was the only person ever to encounter this particular "man in black" and live to tell about it. Agent Cooper enthusiastically agrees to assist Operative-132's mysterious Project AGARTHA in order to bring the sinister Soviet agent to justice.

Zong and Master Zun
The mysterious man in black, Zong, returns to his near-surface evil lair, hidden within a rocky chasm. There, he uses a hologram-based communications device to speak with his Supreme Leader, Master Zun. Zong reveals his secret Plan 0, which involves theft of American plans and materials to create a hydrogen bomb, which he would detonate near Washington, D.C. It was expected that the Americans would believe it to be an attack by the Soviet Union and respond with a full atomic exchange, destroying both nations in the process. Master Zun enthusiastically approves Zong's efforts and signs off.

Curiously, Zong then attempts to use some of his evil mind powers to move or levitate a pen on his desk. Unfortunately, this doesn't work yet he still declares to no-one in particular: "If any surface-dweller dares to get in my way, I will vanquish them with the power of my mind!"

The Investigation Begins / The Second Encounter
The next day, Agent Cooper and Operative-132 visit the Atomic Energy Commission Building and interview Miss Tessmacher, an AEC employee. She confirms that the hydrogen bomb plans were stolen several nights ago. O-132 pressed her on what would be required to build an H-bomb, and she replied "plutonium, uranium, and a triggering device. But those you can get at the AEC Plant - that's where we made the hydrogen bomb - it's across town". Deducing that the Communist saboteur was plotting to build an H-bomb himself, O-132 resolves to stake out the area around the AEC Plant.

Later that night while on the stakeout outside the AEC Plant, Agent Cooper learns that O-132 had previously been involved with many Above Top Secret UFO-related projects, specifically mentioning Project SIGN and Project GRUDGE. Their conversation is interrupted by a crash nearby. As they suspected, Zong had infiltrated the AEC plant and was carrying a briefcase as he escapes away. Agent Cooper and O-132 give chase, pulling their sidearms on him. Zong attempts an evil mind power attack on them which does not produce any results. Discouraged, he runs off while the two G-Men give chase. However, Zong escapes into the night once again.

The Next Move
Operative-132 and Agent Cooper regroup at FBI Headquarters, where O-132 places a call to General Burton with updates on the mission. An angry Assistant Director Smith enters, upset that Agent Cooper is back working on the case against his own orders. Operative-132 then puts Assistant Director Smith in his place by revealing that "he" is the top men working on the project and that he's brought Agent Cooper in for assistance, and that he has jurisdiction over the case from this point out. Silent but angry, Smith exits the room as O-132 announces that General Burton has arranged for them to pick up a Geiger counter to lead in their search.

The Final Confrontation
Now armed with a Geiger counter, O-132 and Agent Cooper head into a rocky chasm to begin taking readings, hoping to find a radioactive signal that will lead to Zong's H-bomb.

While exploring the chasm, Agent Cooper learns that General Burton was O-132's boss before he joined the NSA, and that he's been handy for him with giving information when he needs it.

After exploring for a while, Operative-132 spotted Zong, causing him to flee. The G-Men again gave chase. Agent Cooper tackled Zong, forcing him to drop his briefcase H-Bomb which O-132 quickly retrieved. Zong managed to fight off Agent Cooper and the three got into a standoff, where Zong revealed the details of his evil plan, and referred to the two as "surface-dwellers". Naturally, this horrified the G-Men, and caused O-132 to demand to know what the U.S.A. has ever done to the Underworld.

An astounded Zong then explained that the secret U.S. H-bomb detonation in the Pacific caused a mass flooding in the Underworld, submerging countless miles of tunnels and killing over 250,000 Agarthans.

Then H-bomb started buzzing as if it was about to go off. Zong used this distraction to kick Agent Cooper and fire off an electro-incinerator shot at Operative-132, which missed. Agent Cooper once again tackled Zong, head-butting him back against the rocks and catching his fallen electro-incinerator in the process. As Zong attempted to attack Agent Cooper again, the rookie G-Man used the Agarthan weapon on Zong, vaporizing him in a flash of light. Operative-132 then used the same electro-incinerator on the briefcase H-bomb, vaporizing it only seconds before it was going to detonate. This ended the threat of the Men from within the Earth's Plan 0.

The Secrets Revealed
Agent Cooper then pressed Operative-132 on the truth. All of Zong's revelations about the Underworld and confusion over what a Communist was had tipped him past the tipping point. Reluctantly, O-132 revealed the truth: Project AGARTHA was concerned with the Men from within the Earth, an ancient race of beings who lived deep inside the Earth and whose names had a tendency to start with the letter "Z". The Nazis believed in the existence of the Agarthans and sent a search party to Tibet to locate them without success. Based on Zong's statements, O-132 believed the Men from within the Earth have declared war on humanity in response to the Americans' secret H-bomb detonation.

Now mostly on the same page with Operative-132, Agent Cooper pledged to support him with Project AGARTHA against Underworld threats in the future.

Cast

 * Brian Bedell as Agent Cooper
 * Mike Larose as Operative-132
 * S. Matthew Aod as Zong
 * Rachel Knutton as Kate Cooper
 * Don Gerron as Master Zun
 * Ted Cunningham as FBI Assistant Director Smith
 * Brian Van Kay as Dr. Ernst Schafer
 * Ken Wester as Dr. Helmut
 * Joe Mahoney as Agent Thompson
 * Erika L. McCauley as Miss Tessmacher

Behind The Scenes
The first three of the six Diabolical Tales movies were shot simultaneously in Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts in 2001-02.

The crew was:
 * Brandon Kane - Writer, Director, Producer, Editor, Photographer
 * Don Gerron - Producer, Visual Effects Artist, Animator
 * Troy Sterling Nies - Original Score
 * James T. Rieder - Sound Design & Mixing
 * Erika L. McCauley - Makeup
 * Brian Bedell - Stunts Coordinator

Development
The script for Diabolical Tales: Part I was written in late 2000. It was originally intended to be the first part to a prequel trilogy to another series called The Man From Within The Earth trilogy, which Kane and Gerron had created in 1995-96 in Bloomington, Illinois. Only after production wrapped on "the prequels" in February 2002 was it determined to reboot the series starting with Diabolical Tales: Part I, Part II and Part III. There would be no connecting with the 1990s trilogy, and instead those three sequels - Part IV, Part V, and Part VI -  were completely rewritten to adhere to the continuity established Parts I-III. These sequels remain un-produced.

Pre-Production
The original three Man From Within the Earth movies had been shot with no budget with only 5-7 shooting sessions each. The Diabolical Tales trilogy would have actors cast instead of friends filling the roles, and while there was no budget to pay the cast and crew, there was a small amount put aside to feed them during production. Including the purchase of a small amount of costumes and props, the total budget for the entire Diabolical Tales trilogy was $1200: for an estimated 30-day shooting schedule spread out from October 22, 2001 until January 2002. Each movie cost roughly $400 each to produce.

Starting in August 2001, casting notices went up on various New England-based websites and location scouting began. The first auditions were held on September 8, 2001 at AS220 in Providence, Rhode Island. During this session Mike Larose, S. Matthew Aod, Rachel Knutton, Ted Cunningham, Tom Weaver, Steve Lopresti, Kris Williams and Juliette Rose auditioned and were ultimately cast. Later casting meetings were held throughout September and into early October, from which Sparky Schneider, Lara Schneider, and Brian Bedell auditioned. Two other actors auditioned and won key roles: Agent Cooper and Zerrath, the villain of Diabolical Tales: Part III. Mr. Bedell was initially cast as a henchman for Part II as well as a number of other supporting roles. Several roles, including the Nazi doctors for the Part I prologue, had yet to be cast as production began.

Production
The first scenes shot for Diabolical Tales: Part I were on October 22, 2001 with Mike Larose as Operative-132, S. Matthew Aod as Zong, and the other actor as Agent Cooper at Purgatory Chasm, Massachusetts where it quickly became apparent that the casting was wrong. At the end of the day, Mr. Bedell was called and offered the part of Agent Cooper for the entire trilogy, which he accepted. As a result of the re-casting with Bedell of Agent Cooper, this first day's footage was scrapped.

On October 28, 2001 Bedell shot his first scenes as Agent Cooper, which happened to be the previously-scheduled final battle scenes of Part II with Sparky Schneider as Zerg, Kris Williams as Zella, and Lara Schneider as Zeena. Melissa Pare was cast as Zera at Mr. Bedell's suggestion. As a result, Diabolical Tales: Part II actually started production days before Part I did.

On November 3, 2001, Kate and Agent Cooper's small argument in their apartment kitchen was the first scene from Part I to be shot. In mid-November, the final confrontation scenes of Part I were re-shot at Purgatory Chasm with S. Matthew Aod as Zong, Mike Larose as Operative-132 and Brian Bedell as Agent Cooper.

Production continued, on nights and the weekends, throughout November and December 2001. The final scenes shot for Part I included the opening "Tibet" sequence, shot in Lincoln Woods State Park, Rhode Island, as well as the evil lair scenes with Zong, which were shot in Walpole, Massachusetts, all completed on January 26, 2002.

Post-Production
Initially, there was another editor and who had volunteered to work on the entire trilogy, as well as a composer/sound designer. While the footage was passed over to the editor, Kane and some members of the Diabolical Tales cast and crew reunited for the feature-length project Scorpion Bowl, which filmed throughout Rhode Island and Massachusetts from October 2002 through March of 2003. After over a year delay and several false starts, Kane took over editing, handing off the completed cuts to Don Gerron to do visual effects work.

Mr. Gerron created the distinctive animated opening credits sequences, the animated Cosmic Control Productions logos, and visual effects like electro-incinerator blasts and vaporizations, which involved a great deal of work as skeleton bones are frequently seen as the victim is consumed. In the end, he completed over 30 visual effects shots.

Editing, visual effects and animation were fully-complete in early 2005, and on May 30 Killdeer, North Dakota-based composer Troy Sterling Nies agreed to contribute the musical score for the entire Diabolical Tales trilogy. He began work in June 2005 on the "Diabolical Tales Main Titles" that accompany the opening credits sequence.

Meanwhile, James T. Rieder of Ohio-based Suite Audio Sound Design started work on the sound effects, design, and mixing for Part I, which included setting a standard for the various sounds of the electro-incinerators, vaporizations, stuns, the sounds of the evil lair and holograms, along with many other somewhat challenging sound creations.

On December 15, 2005, Diabolical Tales: Part I was completed, and post-production work commenced on Diabolical Tales: Part II.

Videos & DVD Release
This is the original full-length cut of Diabolical Tales: Part I.

Diabolical Tales: Part I was also released via a two-disc DVD set made especially for cast and crew as well as film festival screeners. These two-disc sets are now out of print, but contained the following special features:

Disc One: The Movie / Special Features Disc Two: Bonus Features
 * 1.85:1 Widescreen presentation
 * 5.1 Dolby Surround and 2.0 Stereo sound options
 * Audio Commentary by Diabolical Tales creators Don Gerron and Brandon Kane
 * Audio Commentary by Diabolical Tales composer Troy Sterling Nies.
 * Diabolical Tales Trailers Gallery
 * 12 Diabolical Tales: Part I Web-Movies
 * Schlock Treatment! A Secret History of the Men From Within The Earth 49-minute documentary
 * The Tales Begin: The Making of Diabolical Tales Part I 30-minute documentary
 * The Tales Continue: Diabolical Tales Part II featurette
 * Cosmic Control Productions Trailers Gallery
 * Cast & Crew Filmographies

Music
The original score was written, performed and recorded by Troy Sterling Nies.

Released in October 2006, the Diabolical Tales: Part I Original Motion Picture Score is available for purchase via Mr. Nies' Bandcamp page. Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

The track listing is:
 * 1) Prologue: Tibet, 1939
 * 2) The Nazis / The H-Bomb
 * 3) Diabolical Tales Main Titles
 * 4) Agent Cooper's First Encounter
 * 5) FBI Assistant Director Smith
 * 6) Kate and Operative-132
 * 7) Descent Into The Lair
 * 8) Zong and Master Zun
 * 9) The Investigation Begins
 * 10) The Stake-Out / The Second Encounter
 * 11) The Next Move
 * 12) Enter The Chasm
 * 13) Plan 0
 * 14) Evil Mind Powers
 * 15) The Final Confrontation
 * 16) The Secrets Revealed
 * 17) End Credits

Film Festival Screenings
From December 2005 through mid-2007, Diabolical Tales: Part I was submitted out to over forty regional and genre film festivals, mostly receiving rejections. However, ShockerFest in Riverside California agreed to add the movie to their programming schedule, and so Diabolical Tales: Part I had it's first public screening on October 6, 2006. At the festival's conclusion, Diabolical Tales: Part I won the Best Editing Award.

Diabolical Tales: Part I later played the 1st Annual It Came From Lake Michigan! Film Festival held in Racine, Wisconsin in October 2006, where it won the August Derleth Award - the Best Sci-Fi Film - of the Festival. In July 2007, the film played the Brainwash Drive-In Movie Film Festival in Oakland, California.

Distribution
In March 2009, the first three Diabolical Tales movies were acquired for worldwide distribution through Toronto, Canada-based Ouat! Media for a four-year term, which expired in 2013.

During the period of their distribution, there was a forty-minute version of Diabolical Tales: Part I which was made that sped up the ending credits from the original cut in order to make the film television-friendly.

As of May 2013, the rights to Diabolical Tales: Part I reverted back to Cosmic Control Productions.

Awards

 * Winner, Best Sci-Fi Film - It Came From Lake Michigan! Film Festival, Racine Wisconsin October 2006
 * Winner, Best Editing Award - ShockerFest 2006, Riverside, California October 2006

Media
Diabolical Tales: Part I -  Trailer A

Diabolical Tales: Part I - Trailer B

Appearances

 * Agent Cooper (first appearance)
 * Operative-132 (first appearance)
 * Zong
 * Kate Cooper (first appearance)
 * Master Zun (first appearance)
 * FBI Assistant Director Smith (first appearance)
 * Dr. Ernst Schafer
 * Dr. Helmut
 * Agent Thompson
 * Miss Tessmacher
 * General Burton (mentioned only)
 * Zorak (Trailer B only)
 * Tibet
 * Eniwetok Island, Pacific Ocean
 * FBI Headquarters
 * Agent Cooper's Apartment
 * Evil Lair
 * Atomic Energy Commission Building
 * Atomic Energy Commission Plant
 * The Gorge
 * Washington DC
 * Agartha (mentioned only)
 * FBI
 * NSA
 * Project AGARTHA
 * Project SIGN (mentioned only)
 * Project GRUDGE (mentioned only)
 * UFOs (mentioned only)
 * Zeta Reticuli (mentioned only)
 * Electro-incinerator
 * Holograms
 * Zong's H-Bomb
 * Plan 0

Radio Drama Adaptation

 * See Diabolical Tales: Part I - The Radio Drama