Haselwurm (Italy-2011; short [15 min.]; dir. Eugenio Villani)

Haselwurm is a a short fantasy/horror film inspired by folktales originating in the region of Trentino, Italy, and by H.P. Lovecraft’s weird tales. It tells the story of a man and a woman who, while investigating an ancient mystery in a remote mountain locale, kill a strange creature with a stray rifle shot. The consequences of this reckless act are terrible and the price they have to pay is high …

The aim of the production, according to the press release, was “to make something that pays homage to monster movies” and diverges from the sort of thing being produce in Italy in recent years, instead harking back to the good old days. In early 2010, director Eugenio Villani asked for a script from David Chance Fragale, who would also conceptualise the make-up and monster effects.

Shooting on location in the Trentino mountains seemed like an inspired notion, as the region is full of atmosphere and spectacular scenery — though it also meant that the production was plagued by “sudden weather changes” and overly tight deadlines. Post-production, including a raft of visual effects, were completed in early 2011.

“The purpose of the [project] is to raise awareness of the recovery of Italian genre cinema, gone many years ago, without giving up a touch of experimentation, trying to give emphasis to the legends of the area in which we live, legends that increasingly are being forgotten, and to pay homage to those foriegn authors of supernatural stories who have always had a big following in Italy, such as H.P. Lovecraft, W.H. Hodgson and Arthur Machen. The result is something that resembles the end of a longer movie, with the resolution of the fate of the protagonists but not the whole story of what happens before.” (Press release)

Fragale (pictured above) commented that the story of what led to the events of Haselwurm may be told in the future. Indeed he considers the film a first step towards creating a strong team that can continue to work in short films or even longer stories with fantastical themes. “We are working on new projects,” he admitted. The question is, will one of those projects be a feature-length version of Haselwurm.

Longer Synopsis:

A man and a woman kill a mythical creature. The reasons are unknown and remain unknown, but they probably lie in the fabled magical properties that the creature is said to give to whom manages to eat it. The man shows immediately the effects of the bite of the beast and the woman is forced to drag him in a makeshift shelter. Night falls. After struggling to calm the pain of the companion, the woman finds herself talking to herself, recalling the powers of the Haselwurm, until sleep comes. When she wakes up, the woman realizes that she cannot abandon the creature’s body and runs to the place of the horrible crime. Meanwhile, the man begins to suffer the most incredible metamorphosis. The story ends with the woman discovering that Haselwurm has disappeared and that the man has turned into a new creature, perhaps a reincarnation of the killed animal. Now, she must take care to pay for the hurt done to nature and to the mystery that has always lived among these mountains…

Above: Director Eugenio Villani

Head over to the Cinema of the Backbrain to see the short film. It is available in two formats: via Vimeo and in two parts via YouTube.

The Gallery below includes conceptual artwork and more images from the film.

Source: David Chance Fragale via Avery Guerra; Press release.

Further information: Haselwurm website; IMDb.

Gallery:

To quote Wikipedia: “Midges comprise many kinds of very small two-winged flies found world-wide. The term does not encapsulate a well-defined taxonomic group, but includes animals in several families of Nematoceran Diptera.”

The short film, The Midge, directed with style by Rory Lowe, gives little back-story or explanation for its events, but uses sensuous, high-resolution photography and a subtly disturbing soundscape to forge a connection between sexual uncertainty and a horror scenario involving a new breed of insect. Flesh, sex, infestation and insemination are intertwined through superb close-up photography of insects and CGI imagery, as well as subtle performances from its two human principles.

Without being overly insistent, Lowe and his team fill the woodland in which a young woman and her sexually inexperienced boyfriend take part in a game of seduction with menace and a growing sense of dread — the external threat giving metaphorical force to the young man’s sexual fear. It is subtle, happening without the methodology becoming obvious, at least in most instances. Take a look at the film and I think you’ll see what I mean. The imagery is carefully chosen, so that the young man’s internal uncertainties are everywhere reflected and enhanced — until consummation brings sex and fear together in a bloody moment of conception.

Sound is used beautifully, too, giving the soundscape of the woods and the growing presence of the insects a music of their own. It is a quiet symphony, in which human dialogue seems almost discordant, and making the end even more inevitable.

Trailer:

The Midge trailer from Once Were Farmers on Vimeo.

Director Rory Lowe gave Undead Backbrain an insight into the making of the film:

It was quite an experience making the film, a huge learning process. It’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but I’m proud of it and I’ve learnt a hell of a lot along the way!

In true horror film style we had some fairly major incidents along the way, too. On the first take of the first day the Steadicam guy had an accident and smashed the RED cam, not a good start but we managed to sort it out enough to tentatively continue. The actress — Amy — became ill on the second day of the shoot – something to do with swimming in that lake possibly… It was her 30th birthday and she was stuck in a little cottage in the middle of nowhere with no-one about and no phone reception. She got well enough to shoot again but for some of the Macro scenes we had to prop her up whilst we filmed around her in extreme Macro! We also nearly killed the boy — Sean — he hyperventilated shooting the scene at the end where you see his face upside down looking more and more freaked out. It was a great shot and we struggled to contain ourselves from bursting out with laughter as he performed it several times. We didn’t have the time or money to set any of that up in a studio so it was all filmed in a tent in the hot sun at the edge of a field. It got very, very hot in there and shooting the last part when Amy has her head on Sean’s chest, he is heavy breathing and the breathing suddenly stops. We’d done about 4 takes when Sean suddenly did it completely wrong. He went all floppy and lay down. He gave me a blank look as I called first positions again and got ready for another take. After a couple of blinks he asked if he could have a moment and it became apparent that he’d blacked out from hyperventilation. Imagine it from his perspective, as he told us afterwards: he woke up in a hot sweaty tent in the middle of nowhere, not knowing what was going on or how he’d got there — he didn’t know any of us before hand — he had a hot young scantily clad lady on top of him ready to ride him like a wild animal and a bunch of big hairy sweaty men around him filming it all! For a moment he wondered where his life had gone wrong and he’d got into porn!

We had a great time making and I’m hugely grateful to everyone who helped out. It was made for next to nothing, just enough for us to hire the camera and feed everyone! Just. I learned a massive amount in the process and I’m really looking forward to pushing it further in the future.

Lowe added that he hoped he might be able to turn The Midge into a feature film one day.

Note: Currently you can view The Midge on the website of I’ve Seen Films — International Film Festival 2011 Internet Short Film Contest. Go there now to watch the film and vote on it!

Gallery:

Sources: Rory Lowe via Avery Guerra. Written by Robert Hood.

This weekend’s Fright Flick harks from Denmark and features a particular cryptozoological favourite — a hybridisation of Man and Fish. In the past, mummified merfolk have been a standard attraction at traveling “freakshows”, though of course the weird displays oft prove to be taxidermological frauds, such as this rather spectacular one:

The main contemporary image we have of mermaids derives from the famous story by Hans Christian Anderson and has appeared in cinema in romantic comedies such as Ron Howard’s 1984 Splash!, and most famously in Disney’s 1989 animated film The Little Mermaid.

But the connection between mermaids and the Sirens of Greek mythology reminds us there is a dark side to the aquatic mythology of the “women of the sea”, which films such as Hideshi Hino’s 1988 tale of delusion and decay, Mermaid in a Manhole [aka Ginî piggu: Manhôru no naka no ningyo] and the under-appreciated She Creature (US-2001; dir. Sebastian Gutierrez) exploit to good (i.e. nasty) effect.

This weekend’s short film presents a cautionary tale that lies somewhere between the beauty and terror of mermaid folklore — veering more to one side than the other.

Check it out here.

The Yeti has long been associated in cryptozoological thought with the North American forest man-beast known as Bigfoot or Sasquatch, which in itself has spawned many horror films. But this weekend’s Fright Flick postulates a closer cousin still, an cryptid inhabitant of the snowy Yukon known as Yakatutch.

Claws (US-2010; short [11.23 min]; dir. Sean Francis Ellis)

The short film concerns a group of young friends who set out into the Canadian wilderness to find the father of one of their number, who has disappeared while hunting down the legendary Yakatutch. They find more than they bargained for.

It was based on a longer script developed by Sydney-born director Sean Ellis, which was a finalist in the Beverly Hills Film Festival Screenplay Competition in 2010. The short was filmed in Big Bear, California, in February 2010 and stars Spencer Falls, Adrian Chang, Sarah Belger, Paton Ashbrook, Alessandro Giannetti and Tom Skalka as Carter. For more crew details, see its Vimeo page.

Meanwhile, enjoy the short film here (or follow this link to view it in on the Vimeo site).

From Short to Feature-Length:

Ellis’ aim is to make the feature-length version as his first feature film, and to that end the Beverly Hills Film Festival event and the short film were a major step in bringing his vision to life. He commented to Undead Backbrain:

At this stage, the film is about one year away from production. The shoot will take place in the winter, in a mountainous area of the US or in Canada. The creature from the film is being designed currently, but no artwork is available yet. It will likely be a suit with some CG enhancements.

He sees the film as drawing inspiration from creature-feature classics such as The Thing, Predator and Jaws, “while adding a Native American element to the Yeti myth”.

Here is the full synopsis. It suggests that the film will be much more than a simplistic creature hunt:

For 350 years, the Tutchone people of Western Canada have told stories about the Beast known as Yakatutch, which lives in the remote wilderness of the Yukon. Once a fierce warrior, Yakatutch was cursed for an unspeakable crime against his tribe, and banished to the farthest mountains. But the tribal leaders who cursed Yakatutch could not foresee what has come… a large population, living on the edge of its habitat.

When an unknown animal starts killing people near the small Yukon town of Whitehorse, Anthropologist Marcus Fletcher discovers DNA evidence of something part-human and part-animal. He believes it is the legendary creature, but his son Scott (22), a local snowboarding champ, is unconvinced. Marcus meets with a Tutchone Elder, who explains that Yakatutch can only be killed by one of his descendants. The Elder sends Matusa, a powerful-looking but quiet young tribesman, who has been raised for one purpose: to kill The Beast.

Marcus introduces Matusa to local Police Captain, Pierre Babineaux, who is intrigued by their story. He invites them to his home for dinner, but Scott is uncomfortable, because he is dating Babineaux’s daughter, Ayasha, a beautiful young RCMP officer. That evening, Babineaux’s wife Anita, who is also Tutchone, makes a startling revelation about Matusa – he is her son. He was taken away as a child, because she was unmarried.

When police discover more victims with distinctive claw-shaped wounds and The Beast’s DNA, Marcus makes an even more startling discovery: The Beast is evolving – becoming more human. Marcus believes The Beast is the key to potentially ground-breaking DNA research. He secretly goes to the mountains alone, hoping to capture The Beast, alive.

Believing that Marcus is in grave danger, Scott convinces Babineaux that the legendary Beast is real. Anita warns him to stay away from The Beast’s domain, but Babineaux decides to go, with Matusa as their guide. Aware of the danger, Ayasha joins her father and her half-brother, Matusa, to help Scott find his father, and hunt down The Beast.

Sources: Sean Ellis via Avery Guerra; Official website, Facebook page (where there is an abundance of production shots); also here; Sean Ellis’ website. Written by Robert Hood

Addendum:

Alternate poster for the short film:

Director Ellis has also supplied us with some storyboard pages prepared for the crashing helicopter scene from the short film. You can download it in PDF format from here: Storyboard.

So far they are simple and beautiful, with a light, luminescent sense of humour. Check them out.

Episode 1: Army

Giant Episode 1 Army from Benedi yann on Vimeo.

Episode 2: Sun

Giant Episode 2 Sun from Celine&Yann on Vimeo.

Source: Twitchfilm

A Vengefull Ghost (short  [5:54 min.])

Synopsis:

On his way back from the pub Gary is so desperate to go to toilet, he decides to go in the local graveyard. Something follows him back to his flat and strange things start to happen.

A VENGEFULL GHOST from Paul Dowers on Vimeo.

Attack of the Training Dummy (short [1:41 min.])

Synopsis: A training dummy is tired of getting beaten up everyday,he decides to take revenge on his owner.

Attack of the Training Dummy 2: Bob Strikes Back (short [3:04 min.])

Synopsis: A training dummy wants revenge for the death of his brother.

Attack of the Training Dummy 3: The Dummy Army (short [3:29 min.])

Synopsis: Bob’s relatives want revenge for his death, so they gather a dummy army.

Attack of the Training Dummy 4: The Final Conflict (short[4:22])

Synopsis: A mysterious man in black attacks the Dummies headquarters.

This one comes courtesy of Daniel Lenneér, who previously brought you the Jules Verne pastiche, Vågbrytare [aka “The Wavebreakers”] (Sweden-2009; short [14:30 min.]) — see this Backbrain article for details.

The new film’s called Terror from the Abyss [aka Fasan Från Avgrunden] and is 11:56 min. in length, filmed in black-and-white in the style of a silent film of the ’20s. This particular retro approach to Lovecraftian filmaking was popularised by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society’s The Call of Cthulhu (US-2005; dir. Andrew Leman) — and it works here, too.

Terror from the Abyss is more light-hearted and somewhat tongue-in-cheek, filled with cute animated Elder Beings and Shoggoths, but the ending in particular is a doozy. Richard Svensson (“The Lone Animator”) is responsible for the “blasphemous” claymation and Stefan Harrysson for transfforming the footage into a 1920s silent film style using “glorious” post-production techniques. It stars Lenneér and his oft-collaborator Christopher Johansson.

Says Lenneér: “To bring life to Lovecraft’s strange visions, the film uses mixed techniques like green screen compositing, cut-outs, and clay animation. The production took place in Sweden during 2009-2010.”

Images:

• Leneer’s website
• Millroad Production’s website
• Research: Avery Guerra  |  Written by Robert Hood

According to Bankston, the story behind the film goes like this:

Long thought to have been destroyed in the great vault fire of ’59, a print [of ICFBTM] was discovered during the police raid of a reclusive collector’s home and can now be seen for the first time in 40 years! Teens are terrorized by a giant rampaging spider mutated in a 1950s atomic test gone awry, featuring a mad general, a freight train and a mind-numb… I mean bending… climax that will make your brain turn into some sort of quivering, gelatinous substance. This restored director’s cut features footage found under a bed in room 927 in the Roosevelt Hotel.

So we present, for the first time since 1959, It Came From Beyond the Mountain. Enjoy!

It Came from Beyond the Mountain from Douglas Bankston on Vimeo.

Bankston adds: “On a completely unrelated note, my short film The Courier just (and I mean just) won Best Film at the 48 Hour Film Project in Little Rock. Unfortunately, it didn’t draw horror or sci-fi as the genre but rather thriller/suspense.

Source: Douglas Bankston via Avery Guerra

Jesse Blanchard is a self-taught filmmaker who only recently discovered what he describes as “the joys of horror films”.

Note: on that subject, John Carpenter says (on the commentary track for his Masters of Horror film Cigarette Burns): “Anyone who’s ever worked in movies knows the most fun you can have making films is in a horror film. Dramas are boring and comedies are hard, but horror films — the minute anyone brings out knives and blood and rubber, everyone’s going to have a good time.”

Blanchard mostly works on his own, taking on the role of writer, cinematographer, editor and FX man, as well as director.  He’s made 43 short films in the past eight years. “My goal,” he says, “is to hit 50 before I start production on my first horror feature—Chompers 3D.”

But more on that later.

He has had some success with his short films. His documentary, “The Ranch”, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and was invited to the Grenada Film Festival. His zombie mini-epic “Run For Your Life” was entered into George Romero’s Diary of The Dead short film contest (which attracted some 250 entries) and ended up in the director’s favourite five. These were put on the DVD of Diary of the Dead as a bonus feature. “I was especially surprised,” Jesse commented, “because he hates running zombies … and that’s all ours do — run.”

Today Undead Backbrain presents a fun short film that’s full of considerable zing, lots of style and bugs from outer space. It’s called “Space Bugs”. Blanchard describes it as “a practice run as I build up for my feature film — Chompers.”

It comes complete with funky theme music and extremely colourful title/credits sequences.

Synopsis:

Mutant Bugs attack Portland, Oregon. A young girl rushes home to warn her husband. Will she get there in time?

SPACE BUGS

History of Space Bugs

The original idea for Space Bugs was a ticking time bomb that shoots down from space and latches onto someone’s arm. The Hero then spends the next three minutes running through total chaos trying to get the thing off of him. However, I couldn’t connect with a 3D person to do the effects I wanted. So, I tweaked the idea into Space Bugs so that I could produce the bugs without any 3D work.

Originally, I was going to use LED lights for the bugs. I ordered a whole bunch from China and got heaps of hearing-aid batteries to power them. I was really excited about this approach and planned on throwing them past the camera and pulling them around on wires. But, another failure. The LEDs were not bright enough. I could either see them or light the set and see my actors. So, back to the drawing board.

Eventually, I ended up using a whole bunch of tricks including homemade ooze covered light bulbs, flares, flashlights, and one shot with LEDs.

The Bugs’ point-of-view shots were a ‘homage’ (rip-off) of Sam Raimi’s monster cam from the Evil Dead series. I tried to one up him by mounting the camera on a board two storeys in the air. This end shot flying into the house took a long time to get right. And I’m certain the neighbors were a little confused seeing me running over and over again at a house with my camera on top of a 16ft board.

I made Space Bugs completely on my own including all of the writing, shooting, editing, and effects. I’m practicing for my next feature Chompers 3D which will be much more ambitious, much more fun, and whole lot scarier.

The Production (from Notes to Storyboard) — click on the image to see the details more clearly:

Below is some of Blanchard’s concept art. Click to view enlarged image.

Undead Backbrain will be reporting on Chompers 3D as it develops.

• Source: Jesse Blanchard via Avery Guerra. Text and organisation by Robert Hood.
• Interview with Jesse Blanchard on The Horror Shack
• Jesse Blanchard’s homepage
• IMDb entry

Bonus Extras:

Not to be outdone by George Romero, here is Blanchard’s zombie film, “Run For Your Life”:

Run for your life from Jesse Blanchard on Vimeo.

Director? Artist? Auteur? I’m just a guy who loves movies.

As we’ve seen many times of late, the best way to make a micro-budget sci-fi horror film these days is to make a homage to low-budget monster flicks from the 1950s and 60s. At least that way, the poverty-row ambiance can be seen as deliberate.

Daniel Lee has been busy spending as little money as possible making two films that draw heavily on low-budget scifi horror films of the past, while keen to ensure that potential viewers will have as much fun watching the results as he had making them.

The films are Ocho: Arachnid From Hell and It Came from Beyond Beyond.

Daniel Lee told Undead Backbrain’s Avery Guerra about these projects.

Daniel: The two films share most of the same actors and a lot of the same main characters and same setting.  In Ocho: Arachnid From Hell, a scientist working on a matter enlargement ray (he wants to solve world hunger) accidentally enlarges a spider.  In It Came from Beyond Beyond, he is working on matter teleportation (if he can get the food to the hungry, he can solve world hunger a different way), and it accidentally opens a portal through which a monster from another dimension enters.

Ocho: Arachnid from Hell (US-2008; dir. Daniel Lee)

Why did you make Ocho: Arachnid From Hell?

I never really intended much of anybody to see the movie, and it was just a labor of love and way for me to pay homage to all the great horrible movies I loved.

How did you create the giant spider?

Ocho the giant spider was made by sawing a body shape out of plywood, covering the top with some black, stretchy fabric, which was thumb-tacked to the underside of the plywood. I stuffed it with the fiber stuffing used in plush teddy bears and such. Then I made legs out of one inch PVC pipe and joints. I used metal brackets to hold electrical conduits to the wall to attach the legs to the plywood.

And how did it work out?

Well, it didn’t really have to look good. It just had to be as cheap as possible due to my financial constraints. In fact, the worse it looked, the funnier and therefore better!

The name?

The name of the spider, and the film, is a nod to Manos: The Hands of Fate [US-1966; dir. Harold P. Warren ... considered by many the worse film ever made -- Rob], which by the way was shot in my sometimes-summer-hometown of El Paso, TX.

How did the production go?

We shot the movie over several weekends and tried to get it done in time to submit to the Tupelo Film Festival in the hopes of a hometown screening. We did meet the deadline, but they rejected the film! The upside was that during the filming, my earlier short, The Picture, was part of a different film festival and actually won the Best Student Film award. That fest was a very positive experience and definitely convinced me to keep making films after Ocho. In fact, the entire three-month period was definitely the best time of my life. There wasn’t one day we were making Ocho that I didn’t at least once literally fall on the ground laughing.

Where did it premiere? Is it available?

We threw our own premiere at the local Malco theater and drew like 120 people without spending a dime on advertising. I sold DVD copies of the film literally out of the trunk of my car.

People constantly ask me for more copies, because apparently what happens is they loan it to their friends who never return it. It gets passed around so much that I have even run into somebody from Maine who walked up and quoted the movie to me. I never expected it to get a cult following, but strangely, people love my silly backyard B-movie.

And after Ocho?

The inevitable demand for a sequel prompted me to make It Came From Beyond Beyond.

It Came From Beyond Beyond (US-2009; [55 min.] dir. Daniel Lee)