After a successful Kickstarter campaign, Appleton’s Slasher Studios released their first feature-length horror film, Don’t Go to the Reunion, last summer. The homage to 80s slashers puts an inventive spin on familiar tropes as a group of old high school friends are stalked and killed off by a mysterious figure. Don’t Go to the Reunion earned several awards including Best Actress at the Crimson Screen Horror Festival and Killer Film Fest’s Audience Choice Award.
Slasher’s latest project, Dismembering Christmas, looks to take established teen slashers like the Friday the 13th series and put a holiday-themed twist on them. I spoke with Slasher Studios co-founder Kevin Sommerfield on his inspiration behind the idea and the studio’s return to Kickstarter:
What I like about Don’t Go to the Reunion is that it takes the high school reunion, an experience that can be pretty shitty for people, and amplifies the inherent misery with a slasher premise. What are you looking to tweak or subvert in Dismembering Christmas?
Kevin Sommerfield: I’ve always wanted to make a Friday the 13th sequel during winter. I grew up with the series, and it’s always been something that I ‘ve loved. I’ve always wanted a sequel with that Christmas feeling, with Jason at Camp Crystal Lake, with the snow and the blood.
Along with Friday the 13th, your Kickstarter page name-checks Black Christmas. Apart from that though, I can’t name a ton of respectable Christmas-themed slashers. Is The Gingerdead Man too much of a stretch?
KW: There’s Christmas Evil or Silent Night, Deadly Night, but lately I don’t think we’ve gotten that holiday slasher. In the 80s, you pretty much had a slasher for every single holiday and occasion, and that’s something we’ve always wanted to bring back. There’s got to be a holiday, and there’s got to be a killer centered around it.
Your $10,000 budget for Dismembering Christmas is the same as Don’t Go to the Reunion. What are you looking to do differently with the same amount of money?
KW: I’m really happy with Don’t Go to the Reunion, and I think it’s everything I wanted it to be. With [Dismembering Christmas], without giving too much away, all of our deaths are winter-themed. They’re centered around something that either happens during winter or around Christmas. We want to amp up those deaths and showcase them.
You’ve allotted $1,500 for food and only $500 for gore and effects. I know Slasher Studios privileges practical effects, but that seems like a small effects budget. Are you guys wizards?
KW: One thing that’s nice is we have our own in-house crew. Marla Van Lanen, who was in the last one, is helping us do the special effects. She works and helps run a haunted house. When you’re working in the indie horror genre, you’ve got to put yourself out there and get as many favors as possible with people that love and cherish the genre as much as you do. Here in Wisconsin, you don’t get a chance to make a lot of horror movies, so people are donating a lot of their time and experience to make this slasher happen.
Looking at the cast and crew, it seems like you’re working with brand new faces for the most part. Was that intentional?
KW: I loved our cast for Don’t Go to the Reunion, but Dismembering Christmas is a Friday the 13th homage so we really needed actors that could pass for 17, 18. That they were graduating high school and going to college. We wanted fresh-faced teens but at the same time, people that weren’t gorgeous supermodels. You needed to believe they could live in a small town in Wisconsin.
Steve Goltz directed Don’t Go to the Reunion, and he’s writing with you again, but you’ve got a new director this time in someone you’ve never worked with before.
KW: I loved working with Steven but he’s got a lot of scheduling conflicts and with a winter slasher, you have only one time of year to film it. I haven’t worked with [director] Austin Bosley before, but he is one of my good friends. He’s done about a dozen short films. He’s really ambitious and eager and wants to go out there with a great vision. The first time I talked to Austin on the phone, we talked for about three hours about our favorite slashers and right then I knew that this was the guy for the project.
Do you know where you’re shooting yet?
KW: We plan on shooting in the middle of January, and right now we’re looking at northern Wisconsin, something like Eagle River. That’s a place that has a “cabin-y” feel and isolation while at the same time gorgeous scenery.
Are you prepared to shoot a feature-length film in the freezing cold? That can’t be easy.
KW: It’s definitely not going to be easy, but that’s one of the nice things about this. It’s about a group of teens who rent out a cabin location, and [the cast and crew] are going to be staying at the location. So if it gets really cold and miserable, our central location is 20 feet away.
What made Slasher Studios turn to crowdfunding again?
KW: We can’t make this movie on our own, but going to film festivals and horror conventions, we run into all of these horror fans. “People aren’t making slashers anymore. What can I do to see movies that I grew up on again?” There’s so much support from people who want to see you succeed because you’re doing something they love, but there’s also this feeling of family in the horror community. Horror is generally the “outcast” genre, but I couldn’t be happier to be a part of it.
Your Kickstarter ends August 15th. Are you meeting your goal again?
KW: I’m going to do everything I possibly can to make this a success. It’s one of those where I’m crossing my fingers, but at the end of the day you can only do so much yourself. On August 8th, I’ll be at Flashback Weekend in Chicago, so I’ll have a table there with a booth promoting our movies to anyone who will listen.