Trivia / The Recovered

• Actor-Shared Background: Bauman plays a hardware store employee at the hardware store where he worked at the time.
• Blooper:
  • Beverly usually has clear nail polish, but actress Krause was wearing pink nail polish during the reshoots, so Beverly's nails occasionally change colors. Her hair is also slightly auburn in the reshoots, though this is barely noticeable.
  • The unused camera dolly is visible leaning against a wall in one shot of Beverly sleeping on the couch. In a scene set in her original mother's kitchen, the movie camera's battery charger is clearly visible on a counter.
• Copiously Credited Creator: Bauman and Stoklasa did virtually everything on the film and show up a lot in the credits. It was actually difficult for Bauman to come up with enough specific credits for each of them to make the credits sequence long enough. This is why Bauman listed himself for "Lighting" and Stoklasa for "Music Director" even though these weren't specific duties either of them had been assigned. Bauman also invented credits for other people to pad out the sequence, such as listing his brother as "Fog Technician" for pushing the "on" button on the fog machine.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Krause lists this film first when asked which of her films is her favorite. Given that most of her other movies are low-budget exploitation flicks, this isn't a very high bar.
• Creator's Oddball: All of Red Letter Media's other films and web videos are comedic, while this film lacks a single joke.
• Descended Creator: Inverted in the case of Krause, who stepped in when the regular makeup artist was unavailable to do the makeup for the torture scene. Stoklasa notes how rare it is for the leading lady of a film to also do the makeup.
• Direct to Video: The film was never released to theaters and did not get a proper DVD release. It was available as a Pay-Per-View in some areas and as discs burned on demand. It is currently only available as a digital download.
• DVD Commentary: Directors Bauman and Stoklasa recorded a commentary track in 2013. They relate how the movie came together, explain their intentions for the film and tell anecdotes about filming.
• Enforced Method Acting: A bit of a de facto example. The film is a Mind Screw where nothing is necessarily real, and lead actress Krause never fully understood what was going on, which happened to mirror the state of her character. She admits as much in the behind-the-scenes featurette.
• Hey, It's That Place!: The film uses many locations that are also used in other Red Letter Media productions;
  • The hardware store and its basement are both prominently featured in Feeding Frenzy. Bauman was still an employee there at the time.
  • The kitchen in Beverly's original home is the kitchen of the Russian couple in Feeding Frenzy
  • The apartment of Beverly's high school friend is the same apartment used in The Grabowskis. It was Bauman's apartment at the time.
• Money, Dear Boy: Interestingly zig-zagged. The directors say that making the film was like recording a wedding video because it was not a passion project. They just wanted to make a low-budget horror film that they could easily shoot and sell for a profit. However, they ultimately couldn't help inserting things that interested them rather than what mainstream audiences would want to buy. As a result, their "just for the money" film turned out extremely unmarketable.
• No Budget: Bauman states that the film's budget was about $4,000. It's not clear whether this figure takes into account all of their expenses. They do point out a lot of cost-saving techniques, such as shooting in the houses of friends and family and using free wood from the hardware store to make camera equipment.
• Production Posse:
  • The directors had nothing but nice things to say about working with Krause and brought her back for small roles in Feeding Frenzy and an episode of The Grabowskis. Interestingly, Krause had recorded lines for Stoklasa's previous film Oranges: Revenge of the Eggplant without actually meeting him, and the lines didn't make it into the final film.
  • Makeup artist Dixie Jacobs is a personal friend of the directors who has a small role in Feeding Frenzy and plays the wife in The Grabowskis.
  • Rich Evans, as lamented by Bauman in the DVD Commentary, is notably absent from the film. He receives only a "Special Thanks" credit at the end.
  • Josh "the Wizard" Davis, a frequent guest on Red Letter Media panels, interviews Bauman and Stoklasa in the making-of featurette.
• Prop Recycling: You'd never really know it, but the rusted carving knife used in this film was recycled for the early Half in the Bag episode reviewing Scream 4. Stoklasa sticks the knife in the wall of the Plinkett set, and it's remained there ever since.
• The Shelf of Movie Languishment: The film was initially shot in 2006, but they had to regroup to do reshoots in 2007, and ultimately couldn't get it released until 2008.
• Throw It In!: When Beverly goes into the hardware store's basement, a mysterious silhouette streaks across the screen. This is actually co-director Stoklasa resetting the shot, but it was left in because it looks ominous.

---