The self-taught experimental filmmaker and artist creates throwback black-and-white slapstick horror movies reflecting an upbringing one could call Southern Gothic. As a tyke, Childree spent his summers with his grandparents in Mobile, Alabama, where his budding imagination romped wild. His granny, Doris Wall, had been a Vaudeville performer as a young girl. Grandpap J.F. Walls regaled the impressionable Childree with lurid tales of his adventures as a sea salt. Childree recollects that Doris once lost her glass eye through the wooden slats of a pier and he helped fish for it. His mother, Barbara Doetsch, who had once been a Catholic nun but gave up the church to raise a family, was a creative influence as well. She spooled Super8 horror reels for the young Childree at their Plantation home, infecting him with the celluloid bug. The 37-year-old auteur went on to helm The Flew, rated one of the top 50 midnight movies of the past decade. His quirky shorts earned him in recent years the South Florida Consortium and Native Seeds grants. It Gets Worse, Childree's latest opus, unfolds the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde-like account of a seafarer whose scrotum blows up to monstrous proportions when his deadly alter ego possesses him. The filmmaker says he was inspired by a story his grandpa once told him about a visit to Brazil, where he encountered a man suffering from elephantiasis, which caused his balls to grow so large he had to cart them around in a wheelbarrow when out on the town. The amazing thing about Childree's irreverent, hallucinatory productions is that he writes, directs, produces, and stars in them.