Vampire Zombies from Space. I have the co -writer,
co -producer, and he also has a little cameo
in his own film, Alex Forman. Wow, amazing. I
loved, loved this show. I was so happy to see
it. Oh, well that's fantastic to hear. We had
such a fun time making it, so we are just really
happy to share it with the world at this point.
Okay, so you and your writing partner have been
working together for how long? Well, I met Jacob
Scrippa in high school and we were both kind
of the film guys at like our difference respective
grade schools. So once we met in high school,
we kind of decided to start kind of collaborating
there and then just through university and up
until we're in our 30s now. So yeah, it's been
quite a while. Me and Jacob had the original
scripts that we brought to Mike Stasco who helped
us with some additional writing and then he was
the director. And together we made Vampire Zombies
from space. I can't say it enough. I really enjoyed
it. I went in there because I know you and I'm
like okay we got to be supportive. But it was
a blast. I like the old feel of like Dawn of
the Dead and it was great. A little campiness
to it. It was perfect. made you go in that direction?
Well, Jacob and I, we love just writing different
things, so we have so many scripts of so many
different topics. But we just like to find areas
where you can really dig in and just really drill
out some great comedy. And the 1950s horror movie,
the really... kind of junky special effects and
like can't be acting. It seemed like the perfect
playground for us. So that really drew us to
the genre. And then from there we decided to
do like, okay, do we do like vampires and werewolves
and all that kind of stuff. So that's why it's
Vampire Zombies from Space. It's kind of like
the ultimate 1950s horror movie, like to the
extreme. And I think that's why we kind of gravitated
toward that genre. Is this the first horror -type
project that you've worked on? It's not the first,
like, horror project that I've done myself. Jacob
and I have done a lot of short films, and some
people describe them as nightmares. So we don't
really think about it in terms of genre when
we're writing different things, but, yeah, a
lot of the times we just end up... gravitating
towards the horror genre because I think horror
and comedy are very similar in a lot of ways.
Like you're eliciting a strong reaction from
the audience in both. With horror, if you get
a scream, you know you did a good job. With comedy,
if you get a big laugh, you know you did a good
job. And maybe that's why we're always kind of
accidentally doing horror when we're always trying
to focus on the comedy. And this movie, you get
both. I mean, there was a few, ah, and then laughing
at the same time. Like, it was a blast. There's
some gnarly special effects. Oh, yeah. Like,
to the point where I wouldn't watch it. If I
didn't make the movie, like, there's some stuff
that would make me squeamish. Perfectly done
in every way. Now, it is making the rounds of
the film festivals. It's amazing, yeah. You've
been all over the world. The movie's been all
over the world. Honestly, I wish I could just
like tell you the entire list of everywhere that
we've played. There's too many. Yeah, and we're
so thankful for that. Like, we're playing, we
played so many festivals in the fall of last
year, starting in October 2024, and even like
next week we've got, or I don't know when this
podcast comes out. Oh, this is coming out for
that. Yes, okay, so March 28th we'll play at
the Canadian Film Festival in Toronto, really
looking forward to that one. But we're playing
in Europe, across Canada, We're playing in the
States later on next month. And I don't know
when the train's gonna stop. We just kind of
keep getting accepted to festivals and we'll
just keep going as long as they let us in. And
you guys have won some festivals. We have. Yeah,
yeah. We've got a couple of awards for like best
audience choice and like best screenplay, best
director. If you check out our social media,
you'll see all of that on our Instagram page.
But yeah, we're super proud of what we put together.
You guys had some familiar faces in there as
well. We did. Yeah, yeah. Right from the start,
we knew that we wanted to have some kind of star
power in this. We were so lucky to feature a
bunch of fantastic local actors and actresses
from Windsor and Toronto. There's so much amazing
talent in the city. But we were also able to
reach out and get some, I don't know if you'd
call them horror icons, but definitely some more
well -known names in the horror community, especially
the 1950s horror community. Judith O'Day was
in the film. She was the star of Night of the
Living Dead. The original Scream Queen is what
they call her. Actually, when she was on set,
she said that she preferred to be called the
Gel Queen. instead of Screen Queen. I thought
that was kind of fun. But we had her, David Liebherhart,
he's from Tim and Eric. So if you're a Tim and
Eric fan, you'll for sure be familiar with him.
And just a couple other roles from actors that
you might have seen. We have one actor, he was
in The Saw, Saw IV, I believe. And Lloyd Kaufman
from Troma Entertainment. I'm not huge into Troma
myself. I haven't seen a lot of those old movies,
but I know there's a lot of horror diehards who,
they love the Troma. and if you ever check Lloyd's
IMDB, his movie database page, he's got like
600 credits. He's such a lover of smaller films.
And you were in it? I was in it, yeah. I had
a little role. When it came to me and Jacob and
Mike too, Mike has a very small part in the movie,
we kinda just got down to the scheduling at the
end and we were like, okay, since we're here
every day, we can kind of play around with the
schedule for these specific roles. And that's
how we ended up playing the greaser teenager
characters, me and Jacob. You've done a lot of
short films and a TV show, a few episodes. How
hard was it to write a full length? Well, it's
definitely a lot harder. Just the pure length
of it, and especially the way you have to just
make the story... Kind of keep progressing and
just building the stakes more and more when you're
doing like a four minute five minute sketch You
pretty much have like one core idea of like this
is what I want to have the joke This is the main
thing and then you just figure out a way to like
tell that one joke in the best way But with the
movie you're almost like coming up with like
40 different little sketch scenes that you're
stitching together and you have to have the narrative
on top of it and you have to have the characters
that you're supposed to root for and want to
follow and care if they die or live and yeah,
just putting all that together. It's something
that me and Jacob never really had a whole lot
of experience with until the point where we started
working with Mike. And working with Mike has
been so great because this is like his, I want
to say it's his sixth film that he's done. He's
been making movies in Windsor for a long time,
him and Ted Bezer. But he really helped us shape
the more narrative side of the movie. So when
it comes to making sure that we have callbacks
like to a certain plot element in the first act
that comes back in the third act. and trying
to really keep the scripts very economical as
far as characters and roles. I know when the
script first started, me and Jacob had 10 different
cop characters that each had one line throughout
the entire movie. But now we only have, I want
to say, two cops who have any lines. So things
like that really helped us shape the script into
a real movie, I guess you could say. Okay, since
Vampire Zombies from Space has only been in film
festivals and it hasn't been released as a motion
picture yet. What is the plot? So we hope that
the title kind of sells itself a little bit,
Vampire Zombies from Space. Hopefully you know
what you're getting into with that title. You
know you're coming into just a silly comedy about
the 1950s horror movies and it's going to be
just kind of wacky, like not take itself too
seriously. So the plot is very, very simple.
It's just vampire zombies from space, of course,
come invade this little small town, Marlow, and
there's a little band of characters, a couple
cops, there's a young woman and a greaser, they
get together and they try to stop the evil invasion
from Dracula. And this was all done in black
and white, which was... Awesome. And it was recorded
in Windsor? Yeah, I would say like 99 percent
in Windsor. There was a couple like pick up things
that we did. But yeah, it was all local. We had
local actors, local craft services, local crew,
which was fantastic. And I just want to touch
quickly on the black and white. That was such
a help to the production of the film, because
you get you get you get to get away with so much.
with the black and white. Like for example, my
favorite trivia fact is a lot of the blood in
the movie, it's actually chocolate syrup. I never
even would have thought of stuff like that. But
it's great because like fake Hollywood blood,
like it's pretty expensive and it looks great
when you're in color, like you almost need that
stuff. But in black and white, the colors really
change. And that was a big deal for our costumes,
too. We had to make sure that those would all
look good in black and white. But for the blood,
you would just use chocolate syrup, and it looks
exactly like blood. And I'll tell you, it's a
lot cheaper. And if you're an actor who, like,
you get, I don't know, punched in the face and
you have to spit some blood out of your mouth,
chocolate syrup tastes much better. Oh, I can
imagine. Than the other stuff. Yeah, it would
be really interesting to figure out the costumes.
Do you have to really match everything or it
can be totally all over the place? Yeah, the
thing with the colors is you'd have to... I'm
not the expert on it. So you'd have to look online
to see exactly how each color translates to black
and white But basically a lot of colors just
kind of wash out when it's in black and white
So what you do for the costumes is you actually
focus on texture more than color Because that
helps the black and white like you can pick that
up on the camera a little bit easier We had a
costume designer Emily. She was really great
at picking out the best outfits and choosing
the good colors for each of our actors and I
think it's a beautiful film really looks great
at the end of the day. That's exactly what me
and Jacob were hoping for as far as the black
and white aesthetic and the look of the whole
thing. Super happy with how that ended up. It
really was a perfect old -time campy horror show.
We want it to be authentic. It was. Is it going
to be released? No, I don't think we're ever
gonna show anyone. No, we're gonna come out with
it. Is it ever going to be released past the
film festival? Absolutely. I wish I had more
to say. There's so much unknown right now. But
what I will say is you could probably expect
it either sometime this year or next year. It's
probably a decent bet. Because it needs to be
seen by everybody because it's so much fun. Are
we going to get to see it back in Windsor again?
Yeah, I'm sure we'll do some kind of like local
premiere and maybe even like a little small run
at like one of the local theaters too. So yeah,
we definitely want to we want Windsor to be able
to see this movie the first out of anybody. That's
great. Are you guys doing anything else? Like
do you have any other works going right now?
Well, that's the life of like the filmmaker.
You always have a bunch of like scripts kind
of cooking and you never really know exactly
what's going to be like the next big thing that
you get to work on. But yeah, absolutely. Me
and Jacob have a couple buns in the oven. Just.
seeing where we can make some different things.
We have a short that we're planning on shooting
next month for a film festival in the summer.
And yeah, we just kind of keep making things.
Now, is that for the 48 -hour flick fest? No,
no, we did that last year. Oh, yeah, you can't
plan that. No, you can't plan that one. And that's
a really, really fun festival. Yeah, we answered
last year at the Windsor Film Festival. didn't
do much as far as awards, but we were happy with
- That's hard! It's pretty hard. We were happy
with our little concept, and I think looking
back at the film, we're gonna look back and really
enjoy watching it. It was called Bed Bomb. Bed
bomb? Yeah, yeah. Well, like, they gave us the
criteria. You had to have a mattress salesman
in your movie. And we're like, how do we have
a mattress salesman in the 48 -hour movie? So
we figured, you know what? What if we do a twist
and we'll do something about a mattress itself?
And we call bed bomb, we call it speed on a mattress.
So it's like a guy, he, like, he rips his mattress
tag out and then his bed becomes a bomb. that
he can't leave the bed. And I won't spoil the
ending. Obviously there are people in Windsor,
Essex County that have never heard of the 48
Hour Flick Fest or even The World. What is that?
It's great. It's a 48 hour film competition.
So they do those, I want to say a lot of different
film festivals you'll find them at. But essentially
all it is is you get 48 hours to write, shoot,
direct, edit, everything to create a film. how
it works is like Friday night at six o 'clock,
you'll be given certain elements that you have
to put in your film. And then you have 48 hours
starting from then to do everything. So 48 hours
from the start, you have to submit a finished
film, just like uploaded and send like the link
over. And making a movie in 48 hours, it sounds
like it could be doable, but it is very difficult.
There's no sleeping. No, no, you're lucky if
you can sleep the first night. We have a pretty
good routine now, me and Jacob. We've entered
the competition, I wanna say, 11 or so times.
And usually Saturday night, you can expect to
sleep a little bit if you can come up with a
solid idea. There are definitely some years where
we're banging our heads against the wall at 3
a .m. and we're just kinda like, all right, I
guess this is the idea. And then yeah, the Saturday
night, you do not sleep whatsoever. No, I couldn't
imagine doing it. I know my husband, John, had...
I've done it a few times and I've seen them.
He did a really good one, yeah. He did like a
cupcake one, I remember. Cupcake continuum. Yeah,
yeah. It was really cute. I wish... I wish I
would have been around to see them make it, but
I'm kind of also glad I didn't because it would
have been way too stressful for me. Hey, there's
always this year, Tracy. We're too old for that.
We're leaving that for you guys. So you're going
to be joining it again? We'll see. It kind of
depends. Jacob does some work out of the country.
So if he's in the area during the festival, we
usually do it. I'll say maybe on that. Fingers
crossed. Yeah, yeah. This is awesome. I'm so
glad that you were able to stop by Alex. I really
do appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. This was
super cool. Why Qgenia in bloom? Well, again,
you guys have to keep your eyes out for vampire
zombies from space because it really is a little
gem and it is a pride in the Windsor -Essex County
area. Everybody was so happy to see it and. It
was just great. And congratulations on you guys
for doing so well at the festival. Yes, thank
you. That Windsor premiere was more than anyone
of us could have asked for. It was so incredible.
So thrilled to do that. It was great. And again,
my name is Tracy Martins. I want to thank you
for joining me for another episode of YQG & Bloom.
You all have a great day.