Spent a pleasant Saturday morning in the country with soft sunlight filtering through green leaves and a cold clear stream babbling in the background. The reason I was doing so was to shoot material for a teaser trailer for our upcoming THE CABIN production. THE CABIN if you have not gotten the storyline yet is about a woman losing what is left of her already fragmented mind in an isolated cabin on a remote mountain top in the southern tier portion of Western New York. The woman is Angelina Leigh. We (and by we I mean myself and Aaron K (not the actor)) shot both PG-13 and R versions of the promo. There's Angelina in a white night gown, Angelina in a slightly bloodied white gown, and Angelina wearing nothing save riverettes of blood. I shot on both my digital still camera using its video function and my faithful Flip cam. Aaron K (not the actor) shot using a Samsung mini-corder. Very low tech. Very consumery which is how I believe we will shoot the film come August. Aaron and I also shot a number of stills, mostly of Angelina going through a range of tormented emotions. Some striking shots taken that I hope to post to THE CABIN website this week. In keeping with the lo-tech aesthetic of THE CABIN I will be putting the promo matieral together using Windows Movie Maker and possibly AVS Video Editor 4. I'm not sure if this is a reaction to shooting CLERIC on the R3D and wanting to get away from hitech for a bit and immerse myself in something a tad more organic (or as organic as any digital format can be) but failing a better explaination I'll go with that. Expect to see the first of several promos later on this week.

I have never been a fan of Superman. Never much for the comic. I sort of remember watching the TV show but being bored. Far as I'm concerned the movies pretty much sucked with the last one sucking worst of all. I managed to sit through about half of that atrocity before switching to the Cartoon Network. But, in my secret filmmaker wish box I would love to make a Superman movie. The one where Superman dies. For real. As I've not read the comic nor paid much attention to what has gone on in Supe's neighborhood for decades, some of this may have already been done but I know nada about it so its mine.

Superman was "born" in 1932. Now in my story he grew to adulthood but then has not aged much since. Maybe a year for every 20 human years. This film is also in real time. So Lois Lane is in an old age home all decrepit and shit. Jimmy Olson is dead. Actually pretty much everybody Superman ever knew is dead or older than dirt. So he pretty much keeps to himself. He's gotten pretty tired of the human race and all our bullshit. He lets the local authorities take care of the bank robbers and murderers and drug dealers. He focuses on things like stopping giant asteroids from plowing into the Earth or fighting off invasions from pan-dimensional alien warlords. You know, the big stuff we can't handle. So he spends most of his time in his Fortress of Solitude reading and listening to music. I think he might be drinking a bit too much as well. Probably flies in some whores now and again when he gets the urge. Forgets to shave. Or bathe. Now one of those giant asteroids triggers an alert. He goes to stop the thing and does so but the asteroid has some residual kryptonite of some color that gets into his system. At the same time a horde of super beings escape from the Phantom Zone or somewhere doesn't matter where and he has to fight them. Each is stronger than the next, but Superman, because of the kryptonite, is getting weaker. Finally he faces his final foe but is so weak he barely manages to survive the battle. But a whole new horde breaks through. Realizing he is dying and when he is gone nothing stands between these new horde and the Earth, Superman has to destroy the horde and all the other evil (including the human variety) out there before dying himself. He dies with the hope that what is left of the human race will keep to the straight and narrow. 

 

Cleric wrapped the end of April which a quick look at the desk calender tells me was less than 2 months ago but I've spent the past few weeks agonizing over what to do next. For a bit there it appeared that Anomaly was going to happen but that got put back on the back burner when we couldn't secure the required location. I could fill a page with venom but legal has repeatedly asked me to put a cork in it (in a polite way of course) which absolutely goes against my grain. I mean, if someone is an asshole you should let them know right? Just in case they don't know. Just in case they might wish to do something about it right? So its really an act of human kindness to let someone know they are an asshole 'cause how else are they going to get to changing that and turning their sorry lives around?

Anyway....

Aaron K (not the actor), Angelina Leigh and myself are heading out into the wilds of Akron this weekend to shoot some teaser material for our upcoming Repulsion rip-off er homage THE CABIN. Said teaser materials to be posted to the currently work in progress The Cabin website. The Cabin the Movie itself is being shot in August and will once more team myself with Kathy Saul of the Sauls of Arkansas doing the makeup fx thing and William (the worst person I know) Schweikert doing the DoP thing. The four of us plus my old friend, band-mate and drinking buddy Ronwies locked up in an isolated cabin for 2-3 days...something strange and scary is bound to come out of that mix. 

There is also talk of Red Scream Vampyres 2.5 the semi-sequel to the recently released Red Scream Vampyres. Steven W. Easley is currently tweaking my first draft of a script looking to add more gore, sex, sexy gore and gory sex to the mix plus the ghosts of dead children and some particularly evil dolls. Following in the footsteps of jean Rollin we is. 

 

 

Red Scream Vampyres (2009)

Studio: Red Scream

Theatrical Release Date: May 4, 2009

Directed By: David R. Williams

Cast: Satu Rautaharju, Valeria Dombrovschi

Review By: Marc Patterson

 

Any film that compares itself of Jose Ramon Larraz’s Vampyres, Jess Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos, and Kumel’s Daughters of Darkness promises one thing guaranteed: to be fucked up beyond all recognition.  Red Scream Vampyres delivers on that promise in spades. 

 

The film opens with a graphically nasty sequence of two fully-grown females being birthed into a mess of blood and god knows what.  Together they break free from this blood encrusted womb of sorts, and are birthed into vampirism.  It’s a grotesque moment of performance art that sets the stage well for this unique vampire film. 

 

Theodora and Elenora are vampire twins who make their existence by preying off the blood of random hitchers.  They reside in an abandoned industrial warehouse that was used in its prior life as a slaughterhouse.  Unlike most vampires they are impervious to sunlight, and rather than resort to the sexy blood sucking stylings of their eurotrash counterparts, these two rip their victims to pieces with their bare teeth, devouring them whole.  When a particular hitcher is picked up Theodora does the unthinkable.  She falls for him.  The Devil only knows why.  This causes her sister Elenora to spiral out of control into an uncontrollable rage. Lots of jealously fueled sex and bloodletting ensues.   

 

Technically speaking this film isn’t that great.  The image is muddied and there’s a lot of audio hiss during the parts where dialogue is present, but the story is interesting enough, in a twisted kind of way, to keep you watching, and that’s the key.  If you can dig this kind of independent and artistic cinema then you’ll stick with it.  All others?  Well, you’ll be lost fairly quickly.  Simply said, this film is going to appeal to a rather niche audience.  I don’t like using that sentence, or any derivative of it, in any review since there isn’t a single film that is going to appeal to everyone’s taste, but here it’s especially appropriate.  Art house cinema is highly subjective to the viewer and there’s typically little middle ground for a simple brush off. 

 

The simple breakdown is that Red Scream Vampyres takes some chances at doing something different, and presenting the vampire mythos in a unique way.  In this the film is really refreshing to watch.  It’s graphically violent, which helps score it some points, and a highly sexual trip into the world of art house vampirism and comes injected with plenty of gore, graphic sex, (incest even), all topped with a grinding industrial and heavy metal soundtrack.  Because it is heavily influenced by the Euro-Sleaze of Jess Franco and Henry Kumel you can expect a fairly convoluted story with more emphasis on style over acting or substance.  Grab your favorite psychotropic drug of choice and get ready for some bloodletting Red Scream style.  

 

- from Brutal As Hell

"....it goes back to that first film. Like so many others I was raised on Famous Monsters of Filmdom. That and Monster Times. But I was also lucky enough to catch the last few issues of Castle of Frankenstein. Where FM and MT were jokey and lightweight, CoF was freaking like the horror film version of Cineaste or Cashiers du Cinema. That was serious shit man. People who believed that horror was an artform. Or could be. So right off you had that dichotomy. That Universal monsters and Monogram poverty row and Roger Corman b-movie influence and that serious film thing. So that's why in Prison of the Psychotic Damned you have that homage to The Haunting but also that scene where the ghoul doctors tear out the photog's intestines and you get that H.G. Lewis -esque ridiculously long intestine. One reviewer called us on that but it was like, you stupid fuck, of course its fake. Haven't you seen Blood Feast? Moron motherfucker. FrightWorld is, what's that Wes Craven film? Fun House? Or was that Toby Hooper? Google it. But Red Scream Vampyres, now that's where it really comes together. You got your Eurotrash grindhouse exploitation. You got your art house erotica. That scene with the vampyre tossing the white balloon around. That's absolutely art house. Just a strange little moment that has everything and nothing to do with the rest of the film. We take that even further in Red Scream Nosferatu except in a different way. RSN is even more art house. The third in the series will I think go back more toward the Eurotrash....oh man, we should take Red Scream Vampyres 3 and mash that up with the evil dolls. Now that would freaking rock...."

I am in the process of adding more photographs to our new Photo Gallery. Some of the images (well, more than some) are still squishy but that will be something I will be addressing in the following weeks...months(?). Whadda ya expect for freeware huh? Still we are here for the long haul, so keep checking the gallery for new stuff.