“It doesn’t feel like a modern horror film,” TOOLBOX MURDERS screenwriter Adam Gierasch reports to Fango of an early TRAPPED ASHES screening he attended last week. “It feels like something that was done in the late 1960s, when a studio hired a group of great directors to do a horror movie, they took a bunch of LSD and came up with something really weird and trippy that sort of resembles a ‘horror’ movie, but is not like anything you’ve ever seen!”
While the film is not yet complete, Gierasch’s enthusiasm for writer/producer Dennis Bartok’s multidirector horror anthology is clearly evident. Bartok tells Fango, “We’re about two-thirds of the way through [postproduction] now, working with all the directors and getting closer to locking the picture. We’re still in the process of finishing the visual FX shots—in particular the CGI fetus and the tapeworm for John Gaeta’s episode, which won’t be done for several more weeks. After we lock picture, we start on sound design and scoring.”
Editing TRAPPED ASHES, which is comprised of five separate segments, each by a different director (Sean Cunningham’s “Jibaku,” Ken Russell’s “The Girl With Golden Breasts,” Gaeta’s “My Twin the Worm”, Monte Hellman’s “Girlfriend” and Joe Dante’s wraparound material) is Marcus Manton, whose previous credits include the original PUMPKINHEAD as well as WISHMASTER 3 and 4. “Marcus has a very solid background in genre films,” Bartok says, “and he gets along very well with all five directors, which is no small accomplishment!”
As for the film’s aural component, Bartok reveals, “We’re lucky to have signed one of the top soundtrack composers in Japan, Kenji Kawai, to score our film. He’s written the music for some of the biggest [Japanese] horror films of the past few years.” Given Kawai’s résumé, which includes Hideo Nakata’s RINGU, RINGU 2 and DARK WATER, as well as numerous anime favorites including GHOST IN THE SHELL and its sequel, Bartok’s proclamation is an understatement.
“He’s an amazingly creative artist and musician,” Bartok continues. “There’s a dark and ethereal feeling to many of his soundtracks that will lend itself beautifully to TRAPPED ASHES. He’ll be talking with each of the individual filmmakers to craft a score that works both for their unique episodes and also for the film as a whole. I’m sure he’ll come up with something very unexpected and unnerving; we’re all very eager to hear what he’ll do.”
While TRAPPED ASHES at present has no official website (Bartok assures Fango he’s “working on it!”), attendees of Fango’s Weekend of Horrors convention, to be held June 2-4 in Burbank, CA, will be able to catch a sneak peek of the film, as Bartok and company will be in attendance to screen clips and discuss the anthology.
Keep your eyes here for more info.
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