It turns out that north-east Scotland is an ideal location for a horror movie. By day our luscious forests are beautiful havens to escape to, but by night they take on a foreboding character.
As darkness descends, they morph into a confusing maze full of sharp branches and ankle-snagging roots – an ominous web that’s all too easy to get lost in. Ideal for an axe-wielding assailant. One minute you’re camping happily in the woods with your friends; the next you’re running for your life as screams shriek out behind you. Your mind races, grasping wildly at panicked thoughts. Who is this towering murderer with the tattered mask? Why is he attacking us? Am I the only one left? You stop to catch your breath, but all too soon you hear the inexorable crunching of footsteps approaching …
Thankfully, this scenario isn’t the reality for happy north-east campers, but fans of the horror genre will be delighted to hear that it is in fact the broad premise of a forthcoming feature length movie, The Redwood Massacre, filmed in locations around Newmachar, Stonehaven and Oldmeldrum.
The product of more than a year’s work for two pioneering north-east movie-makers, David Ryan and Lorraine Keith, Redwood aptly showcases the “horrifying” potential of the region and, as early reviews seem to indicate, captures it to great effect.
THE 1980s SLASHER FORMULA
“I grew up watching ’80s classic slasher films, they’re embedded in my brain,” David told me as we spoke over morning coffee in an Aberdeen cafe – an oddly cheery setting to be discussing blood and gore.
The 33-year-old director explained how the idea for a Scottish slasher movie came about. He and Lorraine – his wife and producer – are the main forces behind Clear Focus productions, through which they have a packed CV of corporate work. They also directed and produced the 2012 horror comedy feature, Attack of the Herbals, which was also filmed locally.
While ‘Attack’ secured some impressive distribution deals, David and Lorraine knew that its failings primarily lay with its pacing. Long passages of character development and exposition ultimately served to weigh it down. And so, to their minds, what better way to address the problem on their follow-up project than to set their sights on the slasher movie – perhaps the paciest of genres ever, and one which certainly captured David’s imagination in his youth.
“It was about going back to the classic ’80s slasher films, that was where the best films came from. A lot of films today try to copy them, but many ruin it because they lose what was good about them by trying to change them and make them original,” David explained.
When it comes to this beloved genre, which brims with cult classic movies (Halloween, Friday the 13th and Prom Night to name a few), reinventing the wheel doesn’t always work. In David and Lorraine’s educated opinion, if you stick to the classics, you’ve got yourself a winner.
“I didn’t want to change any of the stereotypes of the slasher film,” David added.
“I like watching them because you know what’s going to happen: people go into the woods, they shout a lot, get killed. It’s all about the set up and the excitement, and that’s why I watch them.”
“It’s a formula that really works,” Lorraine agreed.
HE’S A KILLING MACHINE
True to their original vision, The Redwood Massacre follows closely in the footsteps of its 1980s progenitors. A troupe of five friends embark on a trip to the legendary site of Redwood where a family massacre occurred 10 years prior.
The mysterious nature of the woodland retreat begins to unfold, and excitement and high spirits soon give way to terror and bloodshed as a masked killer picks off the campers one by one.
“He’s a big guy. An unstoppable moving force – a killing machine,” said David with a grin, describing the movie’s antagonist.
“We looked to all the classic villains throughout Hollywood,” said Lorraine, 32.
She said the only stumbling block was finding a name for him. In the end, it worked better to preserve the mystery. “So you don’t know whether he’s dead, demonic, or just a guy that’s gone crazy,” she said.
As for the cast, David and Lorraine couldn’t be happier with the gang of slasher-fodder they gathered for the movie. Auditioned and invited from a catchment of professional and seasoned Scottish amateur actors, the cast jumped at the chance to work with the Clear Focus team in bringing Redwood to the screen.
Cast and crew work commitments meant principal photography took six months of weekends – from July to December last year – but ne’er did a complaint issue from the cast’s lips, even the most experienced professionals, Mark Wood and Lee Hutcheon.
The night shoots were cold and long and the locations often damp and smelly, from bird-poop ridden barns in Newmachar and Stonehaven, to the soggy forests of Dunnottar woods in Stonehaven and Den Wood near Oldmeldrum.
And none were put through the ringer more than the film’s heroine, Aberdonian Lisa Cameron, who in the role of Pamela spent much of the six-month shoot covered in fake blood.
“When you see what she’s put through physically in the film, you really know how hard it is must have been for her,” Lorraine said.
But while the film might be scary, and the conditions often challenging, the atmosphere on set was always light.
“They were all just happy to be involved in the production,” said Lorraine of the cast.
“And also because they knew we were going to sell the film. We knew we would find an audience for this.”
BLOOD IS VERY, VERY EXPENSIVE
This doesn’t mean the production team rested on the enduring popularity of the 1980s slasher alone. The production values needed to be high too, and so £100,000 of self-funding has been ploughed into the movie.
“When you get to the level of selling a film, there’s an expectation of the quality that you have to make it,” David said.
With the majority of the camera and kit in possession of Clear Focus, and most filming locations available for free, you might be slightly perplexed at where the not-inconsiderable budget was allocated.
“When you look at what you need to pay for, the costs just go up and up. It’s the food, petrol, actors and sandwiches – things like that,” he said.
“Oh, the sandwiches,” Lorraine chimed in, shaking her head wearily at the memory of making countless meals.
“By the end they were just bread and butter,” she joked.
Another major budgetary consideration, as you would imagine for a slasher movie, was the cost of fake blood. The pair estimate a staggering 200 pints of it were spilled during the shoot.
“Blood is very, very expensive, especially the good stuff. Not the kind that will attract a swarm of wasps – a lot of the cheaper stuff is very sugary and sweet. So to buy the quality type is expensive,” Lorraine said, chuckling at another memory of spending hours mixing sachets of blood powder with water to get the realistic consistency.
“The actors knew when they saw the buckets how much blood they were going to get covered with,” she laughed.
Three anatomically correct fake torsos were also bought for the production, and are employed to gruesome effect in the many death scenes. Safe to say, those of a squirmy constitution need not attend the Aberdeen premier screening next Friday (September 19).
“We used old-school camera trickery techniques for the deaths. But still all the people who have watched it say it’s very violent,” David admitted.
KEEPING UP THE PACE
And as Hollywood shows, horror sells. In fact, as we spoke, David and Lorraine were in the thick of negotiations with distributors and sales agents across the world. Feedback for the film has been positive, and is boosted by its acceptance into a number of horror movie festivals, such as the Sitges festival running in Spain in early October, and the Chicago Horror Festival later this month.
With regular ticket-holding audiences queuing up, how do they feel about the film finally reaching this stage?
“It’s funny because we’ve become detached from the film after seeing it so many times during the editing process,” said David.
“It’s hard for me to just watch it as a film because I now just see the cuts, the sound and music. So it’s going to be fun to show it to people that will watch it as a movie.”
While horror sells, and especially action-packed slasher horror, one trope of the genre audiences won’t see tribute paid to is the over-sexualisation of its characters.
“When you look at other horror films, there’s always sex but we really don’t need it,” said David.
Lorraine agreed: “I don’t want to be in a cinema watching things like that, knowing I made it.”
Anyway, slowing the action down for a love scene was never the plan. In fact, slowing the pace wasn’t on the cards full stop.
“The movie is really tight for 80 minutes,” David said.
“The pacing is so quick, and I think it works, because many of the sales agents are saying it is really good, and we recognise that’s what was wrong with Attack of the Herbals. I mean, someone dies every 10 minutes. It’s really a film for the gore fans.”
The Redwood Massacre will premier at the Belmont Filmhouse on Friday, September 19 at 7pm. Tickets are available from www.belmontfilmhouse.com or by calling 01224 343500.