10 Things You Didn’t Know About Nemesis

The MVD Rewind Collection continues to be a gold mine for fans of movies from the Direct to Video era. One MVD Rewind title that I slept on was their release of the Olivier Gruner starring/Albert Pyun directed Nemesis.

One reason I dragged my feet on this release is simple, I wasn’t a huge fan of the film when I first rented it back in the day. But I am a huge fan of behind the scenes stories and information and the MVD Rewind Collections’s Special Collector’s Edition of Nemesis is bursting at the seams with special features… Interviews with Olivier Gruner, Director Albert Pyun and Producer Eric Karson, three making of featurettes, photo galleries, TV spots, three different cuts of the movie and my favorite… a commentary track with Albert Pyun.

But this wasn’t just any commentary track, this was Albert Pyun talking about the Director’s Cut of the movie, aka Nemesis 2.0.

The commentary did not disappoint and after an enjoyable trip down memory lane, I am happy to present…

10 Things You Didn’t Know About Nemesis

1. Albert Pyun, who wrote the Nemesis script under the pseudonym Rebecca Charles, envisioned the Alex character as a 13 year old girl and even had someone in mind for the role. But when Pyun took the project to Imperial Entertainment, they agreed to make the film only if the character was changed to a male in his 30’s, more specifically Olivier Gruner, who they were looking to cast in more movies after the success of Angel Town. 

2. The foot chase scene at the beginning of the film was intended to be shot at a fish market in Los Angeles. However the price to shoot there was in the neighborhood of $20,000. Pyun, not wanting to add that cost to his budget, hatched a scheme to shoot the scene using some guerilla filmmaking tactics, but security at the fish market put a quick stop to Pyun’s “run and gun” plans. 

3. One of the locations that Albert Pyun wanted to shoot in and he actually got, was the Yuma Territorial Prison State Park in Yuma, Arizona. But there was a catch, they had a four hour time limit. 

4. Albert Pyun intentionally chose a color palette filled with warm earth tones as opposed to the cool colors one would expect in a futuristic movie filled with cyborgs.

5. There were some behind the scenes conflicts between Director Albert Pyun and one of the producers who was on set. The most notable disagreement was on Pyun’s insistence that he do all 500+ of his insert shots at the beginning of the film. This was not standard operating procedure in the filmmaking world, but Pyun had missed insert shots in previous movies and wanted to avoid that with Nemesis. 

6. One of the more famous scenes in Nemesis features actress Deborah Shelton completely nude. When Shelton’s co-star, Thomas Jane in one of his earliest roles, found out that Deborah would be nude in their scene together, Jane decided that his character should be nude too.

7. The guys who play Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa’s heavies in the film were some of the union truck drivers who were a part of the production in Hawaii. Pyun liked their look and put them in the movie.

8. Another random casting was the old woman who shoots Sven-Ole Thorsen’s uncredited cyborg character and has some choice words for cyborgs as she walks away. Her name was Mabel Falls and she was not an actress, but  a resident of Hilo (aka The Big Island) that was hired on the spot.

9. There were a few injuries on set including a cameraman that was knocked out during the mudslide scene. More notably Olivier Gruner’s stunt double, Bob Brown, dislocated his shoulder during a scene where he had to jump out a window. Brown could not continue on as Gruner’s stunt double so they were forced to hire another stunt double to take Brown’s place, but Pyun made the decision to keep Brown around. Brown would earn the additional credit of  Associate Stunt Coordinator and Pyun would get more heat with his producer rival.

10. Once Albert Pyun and the editors assembled the rough cut of Nemesis, Pyun’s battle with his producer rival came to an end. The unnamed producer told Pyun that the rough cut was Pyun’s director’s cut and that his services were no longer needed. And that’s why we have a Nemesis and Nemesis v2.0.