The Woods Themselves

It's dark, it's crazy, it's gritty, it's wildly creative, and while some will say it's impact has faded over time, I still find it shockingly violent. Sam Raimi's 'The Evil Dead' is one of my favorite films, and when I saw the Deadite Of The Day Contest post on bloody-disgusting.com I immediately set to work. I hauled an old prop out of the attic and gave it a complete makeover. A new head, a new arm, a new paint job and a whole lot of angry molesting tree roots. On the weekend, I took it into the forest and filmed it. I got eaten alive by mosquitos and nearly smashed the camera into several trees, but it was great fun. And since The Evil Dead was one of the movies that inspired me to try out filmmaking, I felt I owed it to it.

I quickly edited the footage together with audio samples from The Evil Dead, uploaded it to Vimeo, and sent it off to bloody-disgusting.com for consideration on Monday night. My parents woke me up early on Wednesday morning with exciting news. The article pretty much speaks for itself, so click below for the link:

Needless to say, it was incredible to see myself of Bloody Disgusting. I've been checking their site daily for two years, so it was nothing short of surreal to see my name and prop on their headlines. And I keep thinking about all the people that may or may not end up seeing it (do horror directors check Bloody Disgusting?).

Anyway, here's the video, titled 'The Woods Themselves' - my love letter to Sam Raimi's original 'The Evil Dead'.

Building

After two months of doing nothing whatsoever followed by two months of filmmaking, I'm happy to say that I've come full circle and am now working steadily on props again. My room stinks of PVA glue, I've got black paint under all my fingernails, I've collecting tree branches and hoarding them in my room, my carpet is covered in tiny bits of sticky masking tape... just the way it should be.

I'm working on a couple of new props for 'The Backs 2013' as well as a top-secret project that is soon to be revealed. Till then... teaser photos!

Skeletons

I've always been a huge movie fan, and I've always been fascinated by the film-making process. I never rent a DVD without watching the special features. I love reading interviews with my favourite directors, and I'll often rewatch movies with the commentary on as I work on props or other such things. I never really thought about making my own movies until I saw The House Of The Devil. I've warbled and raved extensively about this film before, but for whatever reason, it really struck a chord with me. I made a few (very) short films since then, mostly just shot by myself on one night. And I found that I liked doing it quite a lot.

Over the past while, I've been working on making a 'proper' short film. I wrote a script, drew out a storyboard, built props and makeshift camera dollies, and convinced my dad to play the lead (and only) role. We worked till late many nights - it's worth noting that it's summer over here, which doesn't help when you have to film everything after dark (a quick shout-out to my mother and sister, who'd let us kick them out of the living room nearly every night for filming). After many, many hours of filming, re-filming and re-re-re-filming, we finally finished. I've spent the last week or so writing and composing music for it. When I say writing, I mean poking at the piano keys until something nice came out, and when I say composing I mean putting my sister's laptop on top of the piano and recording from the tiny in-built microphone straight into iMovie. Overall, it's been a fantastic and fun experience, albeit with an enormous amount of help from my dad, who happily and enthusiastically complied with my stupid perfectionism, proved to be quite knowledgeable about film-making and let me advertise him as a remorseful child murderer on the internet.

I'm thrilled to announce the beginning of my (very) amateur 'production company' Geisterbahn Pictures, and to debut my first film - Skeletons. It's set on the night before Halloween, and revolves around a reclusive haunter who gets a late-night visit from what appears to be a trick-or-treater.

Get yourself comfortable, put on some headphones and enjoy...

2013

In August of 2010, aged 12, I was walking home from school when I passed an empty shop window. I had recently finished building a witch and a set of five groundbreakers, and was mourning the fact that Halloween was drawing near and I still had no way to set up a haunt. The front garden on our house was (and continues to be) small, awkward and packed with colourful flowers - not exactly yard haunt material. I had props, ideas and a whole lot of enthusiasm, but no location. Waiting at an intersection, I looked up at the empty shop window. There was no store attached to it - it was simply an empty space with two walls at the back and two huge glass panels at the front. And a sign taped to the glass "Window for Lease - display purposes only." followed by a phone number. I realized then that this was the perfect space for a haunt. Props could be set up inside, lights could be attached to the ceiling, candy could be handed out to trick-or-treaters outside... Over the next month, I obsessed over the window. I left messages on the owner's answerphone, measured the dimensions of the window, planned the whole thing out in my mind... When the owners finally called me up to let me know that the space was not available, it was only a few short days until Halloween.

I was desperate to find somewhere to set up a haunt. And furious at the shop-owners for taking so long to reply. Then my dad had an idea. My parents used to live next to a lovely lady called Jeanie. She runs a neat little florist/gift shop which is open from Thursday to Saturday every week. She also owns a small building next to it that she uses as a workshop and storeroom. A small building with three huge glass panels on it. We called her immediately and she (very) kindly offered to lend me the window for Halloween free of charge. Dad and I spent the next few days frantically setting up the display. We shifted boxes and tables. We hung black cloth from wires to make a background. We drove to and from our house and the window, the car loaded with groundbreakers and branches and bags of pine needles. On Halloween night, we turned on the string of coloured lightbulbs, turned up the dark ambient music and waited for the trick-or-treaters. I handed out candy, took mountains of photographs and video, and generally had a blast. On the afternoon on November 1st, as we were packing up the display, I was already planning for next year.

2011 was very different for me, mostly because I had an entire year to plan the display. I changed my mind a lot about the theme for the haunt, until in June I finally settled on the black-plague-mass-grave idea. While 2011's haunt admittedly followed the same formula as 2010's (faux forest + magical being + groundbreakers), I could focus on planning and creating a cohesive, themed display and I finally felt like I was building props for a purpose.

2012, however, was a huge step away from what I had done before. The abandoned-ghost-train idea came to me in December and stuck partially because I wanted to avoid changing it at the last minute again, and because it really struck a chord with me. I had always had an intense fascination with ghost trains ever since reading the book 'Come For A Ride On The Ghost Train' when I was 4 years old. It also meant that I could combine 'real' props (the witch and the dead twins) with intentionally tacky ghost-train-props. The build for 2012 was a pretty huge challenge, and I had an enormous amount of help from my dad. The cart was tricky - we built the main structure out of cheap MDF, and I constructed the giant skull from cardboard and paper-mache - it had to be cut in half just to get it out of my bedroom door. Making feet and legs for the twins was a bit of a nightmare, and something I had never done before. The ghost-train track had to be built from scratch. The walls that make up the background were made out of MDF as well. We set them up in my bedroom, where I painted, repainted and weathered them, ready to take apart and re-assemble in the shop window. While 2012's haunt was much more challenging, practically, than the previous year's, I spent an equal amount of time and effort focusing on the details of everything. I spent an insane amount of time obsessing over the spinebones on the twins, the shade of green on the cart, the faux water-damage on the walls, the rust on the tracks... I made little posters to tape up on the window to explain the backstory to trick-or-treaters and passersby. I carefully arranged ivy, tree branches and debris around the display.

Halloween night itself was far busier than the previous year's. A highly-toxic combination of photo-taking, small-talk, excitement and exhaustion was nearly the death of me. At one point I quietly snuck away and sat down for a while for fear of fainting. When the people died away, I took a few pathetic minutes of video footage... and then we tore down the display. Jeanie needed her workshop back in the morning, so we spent the early hours of November 1st packing up the props, taking down the walls, moving boxes back into place... When the sun rose that Thursday morning, the florist next door was open, Jeanie was trimming and arranging flowers in the workshop and there was no sign of any ghost trains, witches or rotting corpse twins. And as the universe would have it, Halloween shifts forward a day every year, meaning that October 31st, 2013 will fall on a Thursday, the florist's workshop on the corner will be in full swing, and there will be no Halloween display. Or the year after that. Or the year after that.

I'm still not sure what the future holds for my haunt. I'm not looking to do another window display. If I end up doing anything this Halloween, it'll probably be something more low-key. I haven't been working on any props, and I don't really have any intention to right now. What I can tell you is that I will be building a few new props for 'The Backs' this year. After three years of solid Halloween obsession, I feel like it's time to take a break. Blog posts will probably be spotty for a while. But who knows, maybe I'll have a change of heart and dive headfirst into fanatical prop-building in a couple of months. After all, I do love Halloween. And I do love sitting in my room and watching horror movies as I assemble ribcages out of newspaper. This is not the end of The House Of Marrow. And this 'break' of mine is not going to last forever. I guess old habits die hard.

I hope you all have a fantastic year.

Marrow House 2012 - Geisterbahn

The ghost train stood in the center of the abandoned amusement park, flooded in moonlight. The wooden beams holding up the front facade had begun to collapse. The once vibrant skeletons and ghouls that adorned the walls and roofs were now cracked and faded. Ivy crawled over the walls. Trees had grown up through the holes in the rotting floorboards, branches twisting through the tunnels and rooms. The years of rain and sea spray had rendered the building a sad ghost of its former self. There was no denying that the place was spooky. Most of the town kids had heard stories about the old ghost train being haunted, but very few knew the truth about what happened there many years ago, one fateful Halloween night. Rummaging through a pillowcase bloated with candy, Elliot's older brother, Owen, produced an orange flashlight. Holding the glowing torch beneath his face, features shadowed and skewed, he spoke in a deep and mysterious voice.

"On a dark Halloween night, many years ago, two kids - nine year old twins - were finishing up a long evening of trick-or-treating. Reluctant to call it a night, they decided to walk home through the amusement park. It was nearly closed, and they were the only kids there. That was when they spotted the ghost train. Neither of them had any money, so when the owner wasn't looking, they snuck into one of the carts, and disappeared into the darkness of the ghost train. And they never came out..."

Owen paused for a moment, and then, words dripping with melodrama, continued with the story. "They were halfway through the ride when the lights turned off and the cart crashed to a halt. As the twins sat in darkness, the owner, unaware that the twins were in the ride, locked up the ghost train and drove home. The mechanically locked seatbelts that lay tight across the twins' waists wouldn't budge an inch. As hard as they tried, they couldn't wriggle out of the cart. That night, the ghost train owner died in his sleep, and the ghost train was left to rot. And so were the twins..."

Elliot glanced over at the crumbling building, which now looked more like a tomb than a theme park ride. "But the story doesn't end there. One November night,  a witch laid eyes upon the empty ghost train and decided to take up residence there. I mean, what better a home for a witch than an abandoned ghost train? So she must have been delighted to find the two children waiting for her. No-one knows if they were dead by the time she got there. Some say they had died of starvation. Others say they were poisoned by the witch. And some say the witch slit their throats right open...” He grinned, running a finger from his left ear to his right.

"Well, eventually the entire theme park went under, and the rides were all shut down. Some of them have been demolished, but the ghost train remains. And so do the witch and the two dead twins... But on every Halloween night, every year, the witch brings them back to life. The twins, and the ghost train. The lightbulbs glow with a supernatural energy. The rusting mechanisms jerk back to life. The ghost train props awaken, animatronics creaking into motion... And the twins, imprisoned in the rotting carcasses that used to be their bodies, are forced to ride the ghost train... Round and round, until sunrise..."

Owen clicked off the flashlight, and the two of them sat there in the murky darkness, hanging off the words,  daring each other to move or speak. A cold breeze blew over the park, and a strange sound drew their attention to the ghost train. The structure began to glow with an eerie luminescence. Green light poured from the cracks and holes in the walls, projecting ghostly light onto the sea fog that now swirled around the building. The sounds of the ghost-train echoed through the twisting corridors and out into the chill Halloween night air. The scratching of rusty cogs grinding against each other. The screech of wheels scraping across metal tracks. And rising above the mechanical wails of the ghost train,  the bone-chilling cackle of the witch.

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

 

   

   

Dedicated to Colin and Jacqui Hawkins for the inspiration 

And to my dad for the endless help and support

Hallowe'en

Happy Halloween!

Best of luck to all haunters out there, especially those on the East Coast. May the weather have mercy on you. Have a fun, safe and spooky Halloween, everyone!

Seven Days...

Enter The Geisterbahn...