I, Zombie, and the Art of Indie Horror Movies

Last year, when a good friend of ours told us he was making a zombie film and needed extras to play the part, both myself and my husband jumped at the opportunity to be daubed in corpse paint.

A little bit of background: Both my husband and I are fans of zombie movies. Our idea of the ultimate in Friday evening entertainment is finding the trashiest B-grade horror film, especially if it features zombies, then vegging out at home.

My husband also has this, erm... quirk. He knows it freaks me out when he pretends to be a shambling undead corpse, and he chases me about the house, delighting in my screams of anguish.

So... on Saturday evening, Thomas and I willingly allowed a bunch of makeup artists to apply greasepaint and fake gore, then shambled about the location for that night's shooting, from midnight to about 3.30am.

There's something so liberating about wearing makeup, even if one is made up to look like the undead. It's almost as if one is able to draw on the persona of the character you are pretending to be. When the time came and the director shouted "Action!" Nerine didn't exist anymore. It was as if a fog shrouded my critical thinking and I was that bloodthirsty, gorey creature out for a good night's killing.

A lot of the time we stood around doing nothing, but there were those priceless moments when we were in full swing and, I can tell you this much, it was intensely liberating.

Afterward, the lead actress approached me to tell me that we were the best zombies she'd had the "pleasure" of working with during the shoot. She'd been genuinely afraid. This was echoed later when the director called to thank us for our time. He'd seen that Thomas and I were really good... zombies. (Errr, should I take that as a compliment?)

Thomas told me later this was one of the few times he didn't need to act.

Oh, my... (What have I married?)

But what I'd like to get at is when writing some creature or being that is totally alien, it is vital that an author shove aside those human thoughts and emotions, and really get into the creature's head.

Feel the beast, and the madness that lurks and itches just beneath the skin, and let it out when creating prose. This experience of being able to step outside one's self into a totally alien environment, if translated, will succeed in showing readers (or an audience) another world, and it will come across as authentic.

Of course it's all make-believe but hell, it's sometimes fun being scared.

A little epilogue... Thomas and I had nowhere to get cleaned up after the shoot. We had a 30km drive back to the far south peninsula and I was so relieved there were no road blocks set up. I had this horror of explaining to a police officer what was really going on behind the red corn syrup and greasepaint.

For anyone curious to know a little more about the indie horror movie that's currently being filmed in Cape Town, South Africa, go check out:
http://www.facebook.com/tos.php?api_key=80dc496b72d3303cfe50b67f9d95b256&next=http%3A%2F%2Fec2-79-125-29-165.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com%2Fapps%2Fsuperlike_run%2F%3Fid%3D9%26fruid%3D1221306917%26_fb_fromhash%3D6f52d96414524e7b3d72ae00b5912769&v=1.0&canvas#/group.php?gid=383796100724&ref=ts

Mutts

Growing up, my dad always insisted on buying purebred dogs for pets. The few times I snuck a cat home, it disappeared. Once, I convinced my mom to adopt a pair of dogs from the local animal shelter (the SPCA brought 'pound puppies' to school and guilt-tripped us kids, but good), but the dogs chewed on something of my dad's then piddled on the floor - displaying their 'lack of purity' and out they went.

It left a mark.

Inside I was terribly conflicted. As a person, I'm this mish-mash Heinz 57 of cultures, but I was raised to expect a purity of design from my pets in breeding. Some of my dogs are AKC with papers, others are mutts, my cats are ... well, cats. The one is so dumb we named him Flat, as in his brain should have flat-lined.

In a way this conflict has carried over into my writing. I can almost never write "just a romance." Just like I can never write "just a horror." Face it, life isn't just one "pure" thing, why should a story limit itself?

Take, for example, one of my favorite horror duets, Frights&Delights. The two tales complement each other by being opposites. The first, Echoes of Yesterday, is a gentle ghost story set in the Appalachian mines with a little boy, his parents and his small terrier. The second, Rave On, is a dystopian zombie scream, slam-dancing in a lesbian freak-out fetish bar in Texas. In Echoes you feel the story ooze right up at you from the very beginning, but with Rave, the feeling is different, the sense of impending violence and horror comes from the actions of the characters and the setting, which is misleading. Passive/aggressive, victim versus aggressor... A lullaby and a seduction.

Echoes of Yesterday

Jackie sat on the shady side of the barn and peeked around the corner at his dad, he was back working under the old rusty car. Tiptoeing past the garage, he and his puppy Fearless Fred, or just Fred as his momma called him, made their way back to the hole.

His daddy didn’t understand! He and Fred had to patrol. They had to keep the chickens from wandering into that hole. He was being just like his Uncle Travis, the kick-butt state trooper, keeping things safe.

“Hello!” he yelled into the hole. Nothing replied back this time. “I’m back!” still nothing. “Be that way then! My daddy said you was nothing more than an echo anyways!”Jackie listened long and hard but he didn’t hear any voices, but he did hear the ting of a mattock hitting stone and the distant sound of laughter.

“C’mon Fred, we got to patrol. Maybe the echo will talk to us again later.”

Rave On

The night was young, the sun just dipping below the haze of air pollution tinting the sky a putrid whorl of cerulean, saffron and puce when I paid the bouncer at the gate. The place was painted black with a blood red floor and silver stools. Even the drink-slingers walked through the glaring Goth-Rock and vampiresque gloom looking bored and skewered.

The blue haired woman who took my order had her lips outlined with a twin row of pierced silver ornaments that resembled barbed fishhooks. But it didn’t stop her from snapping chewing gum as I ordered the evening special, an Impaler. When she returned, I opened my baggie and tossed back all the pills as well as the drink. It burned its way down like a combination of lava and glass shards. Roughly, I asked for another and the girl gave me a long considering glance from behind chrome-tinted contact lenses.

Pushing a spot on my shoulder, she prompted me to look at a willow thin girl with long pink-streaked hair, gracefully pirouetting like a broken stringed puppet in the center of the empty dance floor.

“Way you’re feeling tonight, sug, I think she’s your answer.”

* * * *

The first combines old fashioned storytelling, borrowing liberally from the tommyknockers and like stories I grew up with as a child, and adding a different sort of ending. The second was inspired by the annual Zombie Apocalypse Day. I figured anyone could be the victim of a zombie, how many could actually be the zombie - and really enjoy it?