horror film | Amusing the Zillion

Posts Tagged ‘horror film’

Fiji Mermaid Horror Film Set in Coney Island Seeks Backers

Posted in film, tagged Coney Island, Fiji Mermaid, fundraising, horror film, Russell Richards on December 12, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Filmmaker Russell Richards was inspired to make a horror short about mermaids after seeing a Fiji mermaid –a monkey’s head sewn onto the body of fish–in a history museum. “I dug into the history and folklore of mermaids and discovered they were not the good guys portrayed by Disney movies,” says Richards. “They tended to be sinister seductresses that lured sailors to their doom.” In April, the Charlottesville, Virginia resident plans to shoot in Coney Island, where he says most of the action takes place.

Pledge $1000 or more to the project, which is currently on Kickstarter, and you’ll receive a one of a kind Fiji mermaid made by Richards, an artist with some training in special effects. Pledges of $25-$500 will get you a movie poster, DVD of the film when it is completed, T-shirt, original etching or your name in the credits.

One of the mermaids that appears in "Fiji Mermaid." Photo © Russell Richards

With 59 backers and 57 hours left on Kickstarter, the project has already exceeded its $5,000 goal, but Richards says the film will end up costing three or four times that amount. “A big part of any money raised will go towards film, development and telecine, a high-resolution film scan,” according to the filmmaker. “I live and work in Virginia, so it would also help bring my cast and crew to Coney Island to film for a few days.”

Richards is aiming for a summer 2011 completion date. In the meantime, check out the video compilation of some of the effects and design work he has done so far, including a peek at the new “sideshow banner” and animation.

One of the mermaids that appears in "Fiji Mermaid" Photo © Russell Richards

Video: The Museum of Wax by Charles Ludlam

Posted in film, video, tagged Charles Ludlam, Coney Island Film Festival, Dick Zigun, Everett Quinton, horror film, Rob Leddy, silent film, Wax museum, World in Wax Musee on September 27, 2010| 1 Comment »

On opening night of the Coney Island Film Festival, the first film up was Charles Ludlam’s silent horror short “The Museum of Wax,” shot in the late 1970s in Coney’s World in Wax Musee. It is a little gem, but seeing Lillie Santangelo’s long-vanished museum was eerie and sad, especially now that the Henderson Building, where it was located for more than 60 years until closing in 1984, is being demolished to make way for Thor Equities’ strip mall.

Equally eerie and sad was seeing the late and much-missed Charles Ludlam‘s brilliance on the silent screen. Ludlam’s over-the-top performances in campy melodramas like “The Mystery of Irma Vep” at his Ridiculous Theatrical Company in Sheridan Square were a must-see for us in the 1980s.

Unfinished at the time of Ludlam’s death from AIDs in 1987, this rarely seen 16 MM film was remastered by Queer/Art/Film as part of the Outfest Legacy Project for LGBT Film Preservation and the UCLA Film & Television Archive. OutfestLA has also made the 20-minute film available in three parts on their YouTube channel.

At Friday’s screening, Coney Island USA founder and artistic director Dick Zigun referred to the film as “a work of film genius” and noted that it was last screened in Coney Island on Halloween in 1981. The occasion was a day-long theatrical extravaganza called “Tricks or Treats,” which Zigun curated at the Wax Musee. The film was shot in a few days after Zigun introduced Ludlam to Lillie Santangelo, the elderly proprietress of the wax museum. “It was a 100 percent found location,” says Zigun, who had discovered fifty wax heads, which appear in the film, in the museum’s storage area.

“Not much was planned. It was just go for it,” recalled actor Everett Quinton, who was Ludlam’s partner and muse. Quinton, who appears as the second convict in the film, compared it to “the unfinished Michelangelo sculptures that lead up to the David. It is unfinished.” According to Outfest’s website, until the recent digital re-mastering and the addition of a new score by original composer Peter Golub, “Museum of Wax” had not been seen in over 20 years.

In an act of programming genius by Coney Island Film Festival director Rob Leddy, “The Wax Museum” shared the opening night bill with “Shape of the Shapeless,” a new documentary exploring the gender bending life and performance art of Jon Cory aka Rose Wood, and the effervescent “Dirty Martini and the New Burlesque,” which won best documentary feature.