Raised and educated in Texas, David Schmoeller began his career as a
young playwright and was awarded the Texas Good Neighbor Scholarship
for studies in Mexico, attending the Universidad De Las Americas from
1967-1968. In Mexico he studied theater with
Alejandro Jodorowsky
(El Topo (1970)) and was mentored in film
by legendary director Luis Buñuel. After a
stint as an interpreter for ABC Sports during the 1968 Olympics in
Mexico City, Schmoeller returned to Texas and completed a Masters
program in Radio-TV-Film at the University of Texas at Austin. His
thesis film,
The Spider Will Kill You (1976),
funded by a grant from the Directors Guild of America, received an
Academy Award Student Film Nomination in 1974, losing in the finals to
Robert Zemeckis student short
A Field of Honor (1973).
Subsequently, under the auspices of the American Film Institute with
funding from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences,
Schmoeller spent six months as an intern with writer-director
Peter Hyams on
Unternehmen Capricorn (1978).
Schmoeller's first feature,
Tourist Trap - Die Touristenfalle (1979) (which he wrote
and directed), is the favorite film of master storyteller of modern
horror Stephen King. His writing
and directing credits include work on the highly-praised television
series Mit 15 hat man noch Träume (1977) as well
as the feature films
Tele-Terror (1982) for Embassy
Pictures; Killerhaus (1986),
Ghost Town (1988) and
Catacombs - Im Netz des Dunkeln (1988) for Empire
Entertainment and the cult classic
Puppet Master (1989) for
Paramount Pictures. "Puppetmaster" subsequently became one of the most
successful franchise horror films ever made, producing seven more
sequels, the latest in 2003
(Puppet Master: The Legacy (2003)).
Schmoeller's film Alienator 2 (1991),
a science-fiction black comedy, was selected for the Midnight Madness
screening at the Toronto Film Festival. After "The Arrival," Schmoeller
wrote and directed
Im Bann des Voodoos (1992), a ghost story
filmed in New Orleans. Produced by Full Moon Entertainment,
"Netherworld" was also released by Paramount. Schmoeller then directed
two children's features:
The Secret Kingdom (1998) and
"Mysterious Museum" in New Orleans and the Romanian cities of Bucharest
and Sinia. In addition to his feature work, Schmoeller has directed
many hours of network television, including three seasons of the
CBS-USA Network series
Palm Beach-Duo (1991) as well
as Renegade - Gnadenlose Jagd (1992) and the pilot and
multiple episodes of
Cop Files (1995), a series
for the Fox Network.
He was honored on January 26, 2007, in Paris by the Cinematheque
Francaise with a tribute to David Schmoeller screening, showing two of
his early features ("Tourist Trap" and "Crawlspace") as well as his
celebrated short documentary on directing enfant terrible
Klaus Kinski:
Please Kill Mr. Kinski (1999).
In March 2007 Schmoeller was a Visiting International Artist at
Objectifs Centre for Photography & Filmmaking in Singapore, where he
shot the Singapore segment of a film he is making,
Wedding Day (2008) (set in Las Vegas,
Paris and Singapore), about a bride in each city on her wedding day as
something unexpected happens.
Schmoeller has been an internationally recognized feature film and
television writer-director (nine feature films, many hours of network
television and numerous award-winning shorts) for over three decades.
Schmoeller has two feature film projects in development: "Little
Monsters," a crime drama and "Neon Desert," a romantic-comedy. His
short Spanking Lessons (2007)
won the Cinevegas Jury Award for Best Nevada Filmmaker.
Schmoeller is an Associate Professor of film production at the
University of Nevada, Las Vegas and runs the Film Department's UNLV
Short Film Archive. He can be reached at schmoeller@cox.net.
