Barker says he called his producer and asked, “Where can I get a book on directing?” which is probably the last question a producer wants to hear. If Barker did find a book in time it probably wasn’t a very good one since by the time shooting started, he still couldn’t tell the difference between the various types of lenses. Or, as he put it, “If you’d shown me a plate of spaghetti and said that was a lens, I might have believed you.” Luckily, he says the crew was “very gentle” with him, and they sorta taught him the job as he went along. He also credits the cast with being very patient with his “ineptitudes” — he already had experience dealing with actors thanks to his theater years, but dealing with actors covered in latex costumes, hundreds of pins, and all-black contact lenses was new for him (and for the actor, who kept missing his marks because he couldn’t see $#&%).
It’s a miracle that the end result turned out to be a watchable movie, let alone a classic of the genre. As for the claim that Barker had to lie to the studio and tell them he “absolutely knew how to make a movie,” we’d be surprised if that was even necessary since the studio in question was owned by Roger Corman, the same guy who let editor Martin Scorsese, art director James Cameron, and PR guy Jonathan Demme direct movies and gave them their big breaks. He truly did not give a crap.
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