Larry Fessenden knew something was wrong with “Stake Land,” a bleak horror movie he was producing about the survivors of a vampire outbreak . Mr. Fessenden worried that an early outline for the movie lacked emotion . So he invited the movie’s young director, Jim Mickle, out for a drink.

“Give this a heart,” Mr. Mickle said Mr. Fessenden told him. “We didn’t hire you to make ‘Terminator 5.’ Go make the only movie you can make.”

The result, an evocative post-apocalyptic tale that emphasizes feelings of isolation rather than bloodshed, won an audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival last year.

Mr. Mickle, 31, gives much of the credit for how the film turned out to Mr. Fessenden. “Larry could see that I was trying to force it into something that it wasn’t,” he said .

Mr. Fessenden, 48, a staple of the New York underground scene as a writer, director, producer and actor, is a scraggly- haired man easily recognizable by a missing front tooth. He has produced around a dozen micro-budgeted movies in half as many years. He advocates a form of eerie storytelling that he says Hollywood abandoned long ago in favor of blunt scare tactics. “The horror should creep in,” he said. “That’s how it happens in real life.”

Mr. Fessenden has shared his filmmaking secrets with like-minded directors for decades. “He’s really great at being able to not impose what he would do, but he can figure out your aesthetic and talk to you about it,” said Kelly Reichardt, who directed “Meek’s Cutoff.” Since 2004 Mr. Fessenden, with a production company, has formalized that mentor status and gained a reputation as a modern-day Roger Corman, the Bmovie king.

“Larry validated us by thinking we were talented,” said the director Ti West, who made “The Roost.” “The movies have done well, but mainly I really enjoy having Larry as a part of my life.”

Mr. Fessenden speaks about his mission to foster emerging horror filmmakers with the same ferocity he brings to environmentalism. “I absolutely insist the marketplace make room for these types of movies,” he said, lauding films like the original “Night of the Living Dead” and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” for their critiques of excessive human behavior. “If not, we’ve lost our souls.”

But Mr. Fessenden feels a little frustrated. “I’m pleased to be doing this with the young fellers, but I also need to get back on track as a director,” he said.

On the other hand, he clings to his belief in what he calls the no-budget model.

“My life ambition is to give a million dollars to someone like Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese and have them return to their roots,” he said.


By ERIC KOHN