Monday, June 20, 2016
Bimbo Zombie Killers! Moonshine of the Damned
It's finally done. It was a long time in the making, I ran out of steam by the end of filming and several other things didn't happen in a certain amount of time and it just died for a bit - but I finally managed to wrap it all up and here it is.
Sunday, June 19, 2016
My own review of my own movie, Moonshine of the Damned. And a little bit of back story.
This probably will either seem an utterly egotistical thing to do (which it isn't), totally stupid (might be) or even completely pointless (it could be). I don't want this to turn into a rant about why I hate movie reviews, so I'll just leave it at this - I just want to point out the flaws before some brilliant mind takes it upon themselves to do so.
The full title of this, my last movie I'll ever make, is Bimbo Zombie Killers! Moonshine of the Damned. The last in a trilogy, sort of, the first two being rather short and lacking (intentionally) a clear explanation (at least for some of the less imaginative folks who've seem them) ending with Moonshine of the Damned where everything is made clear...ish.
So, is it any good? I think it's decent - hardly brilliant or anything, but it is supposed to be a bad movie. An homage to the shitty, but fun, horror movies of the 80s and even 70s. Most all of what you see is intentional, to emulate the look and feel of a low budget poorly made movie. I didn't want the actors acting poorly, that's just annoying, so I did other things to camp it up and get that feeling of a movie so bad it's good.
Again, Moonshine of the Damned is an intentionally bad(-ish) movie. Everything you see in it was done on purpose, the lack of tripod, bad lighting, the sometimes unclear script (which was severely shortened), the awkward action - as intentionally bad as I could get without ruining it totally. It's terrible I have to say this, but over the years after the first two BZK! movies, I realized there are some people who didn't really get it. They were under the impression they were seeing a bad attempt at good filmmaking, when in reality they just confirmed it was a good attempt at bad filmmaking - so bad, they believed it could only be because of lack of ability. That's a little arrogant sounding to say, but it's the truth and the simplest way to put it.
The only thing I'm not happy with, is that it wasn't the full feature length version I'd planned, but I had to make a call on whether to do a 45 minute movie as well as I could, or throw together an unfinished feature length mess. A massive subplot involving a traveling circus of soul eating demons was removed - it was very campy and silly, with a very Buffy-esque villian whose name I can't even remember. The final battle involved things like a redneck trying to put his face back on after getting it ripped off in a bear trap, a zombie-demon-bimbo all out Battle Royal...It would have been awesome, but incredibly expensive and impossible considering the schedule we had to work around.
There are some of the more drawn out exposition elements that suffered because of the truncated script - so there's one scene that literally explains everything all at once - missing some minor details - but overall it's basically up in the air what's going on really until this one 2-3 minute scene that explains it all.
The acting is spot on for what I wanted, not professional and not that fake bad acting, genuine untrained acting without being horrific. I've still seen way worse and honestly from a group of people, some of whom this was their first attempt, it's actually not that bad.
The FX are about 98% of what I wanted, there are a couple moments simple because of lack of help I had to do a small crowd of zombies by myself, which isn't a huge deal, but then I had to go out and film for several hours so one of the two duties had to suffer for the sake of avoiding burning myself out - so the "extra" zombies were slightly lacking sometimes.
The "hero" zombies were great, I'm happy with how all of them turned out. We're not talking The Walking Dead style zombies here, just zombies, nothing overly mind blowing or anything - because it doesn't suit the movie, it just needed some decent functional, consistent zombie makeup.
The picture quality isn't always as nice as I'd like, but it suits the style in an accidentally intentional sort of way. Shooting in the forest is tricky, with so many little splashes of dark and light everywhere. So not perfect, but suitable for the quality of movie.
Sound - again, intentionally lazy to a degree. Considering the dialog was all recorded in individual sessions over the course of 2 years, there's bound to be issues. Overall okay, not rotten, but hardly fantastic. Suits the style in my opinion.
The general mood and air of the movie is perfect, exactly what I was hoping for. A little sloppy, a little unclear in moments, but that's just the way I wanted it to emulate the quality of slapped together movies.
It's not a movie for everyone, by any means, you have to have a love for bad movies. If you don't love low budget, so bad it's good horror, you'll probably hate it and think it's utterly stupid. And then again, even if you do like low budget, so bad it's good horror, there's still a chance you'll hate it and think it's utterly stupid.
And lastly, this isn't part of the review, I just wanted to take a quick few lines to thank everyone involved. Even making a stupid movie is a lot of hard work, scheduling was a nightmare by times, but everyone was dedicated enough to make the time and I appreciated everything everyone did to get this thing done.
The full title of this, my last movie I'll ever make, is Bimbo Zombie Killers! Moonshine of the Damned. The last in a trilogy, sort of, the first two being rather short and lacking (intentionally) a clear explanation (at least for some of the less imaginative folks who've seem them) ending with Moonshine of the Damned where everything is made clear...ish.
So, is it any good? I think it's decent - hardly brilliant or anything, but it is supposed to be a bad movie. An homage to the shitty, but fun, horror movies of the 80s and even 70s. Most all of what you see is intentional, to emulate the look and feel of a low budget poorly made movie. I didn't want the actors acting poorly, that's just annoying, so I did other things to camp it up and get that feeling of a movie so bad it's good.
Again, Moonshine of the Damned is an intentionally bad(-ish) movie. Everything you see in it was done on purpose, the lack of tripod, bad lighting, the sometimes unclear script (which was severely shortened), the awkward action - as intentionally bad as I could get without ruining it totally. It's terrible I have to say this, but over the years after the first two BZK! movies, I realized there are some people who didn't really get it. They were under the impression they were seeing a bad attempt at good filmmaking, when in reality they just confirmed it was a good attempt at bad filmmaking - so bad, they believed it could only be because of lack of ability. That's a little arrogant sounding to say, but it's the truth and the simplest way to put it.
The only thing I'm not happy with, is that it wasn't the full feature length version I'd planned, but I had to make a call on whether to do a 45 minute movie as well as I could, or throw together an unfinished feature length mess. A massive subplot involving a traveling circus of soul eating demons was removed - it was very campy and silly, with a very Buffy-esque villian whose name I can't even remember. The final battle involved things like a redneck trying to put his face back on after getting it ripped off in a bear trap, a zombie-demon-bimbo all out Battle Royal...It would have been awesome, but incredibly expensive and impossible considering the schedule we had to work around.
There are some of the more drawn out exposition elements that suffered because of the truncated script - so there's one scene that literally explains everything all at once - missing some minor details - but overall it's basically up in the air what's going on really until this one 2-3 minute scene that explains it all.
The acting is spot on for what I wanted, not professional and not that fake bad acting, genuine untrained acting without being horrific. I've still seen way worse and honestly from a group of people, some of whom this was their first attempt, it's actually not that bad.
The FX are about 98% of what I wanted, there are a couple moments simple because of lack of help I had to do a small crowd of zombies by myself, which isn't a huge deal, but then I had to go out and film for several hours so one of the two duties had to suffer for the sake of avoiding burning myself out - so the "extra" zombies were slightly lacking sometimes.
The "hero" zombies were great, I'm happy with how all of them turned out. We're not talking The Walking Dead style zombies here, just zombies, nothing overly mind blowing or anything - because it doesn't suit the movie, it just needed some decent functional, consistent zombie makeup.
The picture quality isn't always as nice as I'd like, but it suits the style in an accidentally intentional sort of way. Shooting in the forest is tricky, with so many little splashes of dark and light everywhere. So not perfect, but suitable for the quality of movie.
Sound - again, intentionally lazy to a degree. Considering the dialog was all recorded in individual sessions over the course of 2 years, there's bound to be issues. Overall okay, not rotten, but hardly fantastic. Suits the style in my opinion.
The general mood and air of the movie is perfect, exactly what I was hoping for. A little sloppy, a little unclear in moments, but that's just the way I wanted it to emulate the quality of slapped together movies.
It's not a movie for everyone, by any means, you have to have a love for bad movies. If you don't love low budget, so bad it's good horror, you'll probably hate it and think it's utterly stupid. And then again, even if you do like low budget, so bad it's good horror, there's still a chance you'll hate it and think it's utterly stupid.
Thursday, June 02, 2016
Hungu Demon (12 Months of Demons - May)
Not a whole lot to say about this shoot. It was pretty straightforward. The face piece is new, sculpted just for this shoot since I wanted to try some large tusks - which were somewhat successful. When this piece goes online for Limited Run sale, it'll have different tusks, these are hand carved from styrofoam.
There was also a pair of ears that were to replace the ones on the cowl, I just didn't have enough time, nor did I want to waste the foam latex trying the moulds too many times. I'll be using them later on for another shoot though. I might even offer up these ears, as well as a previous larger pair I made, up for sale.
There was also a pair of ears that were to replace the ones on the cowl, I just didn't have enough time, nor did I want to waste the foam latex trying the moulds too many times. I'll be using them later on for another shoot though. I might even offer up these ears, as well as a previous larger pair I made, up for sale.
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