“C’mon! Come and get me!”
That’s the first thing Fango hears after stepping onto the Hamilton, Ontario set of LEFT FOR DEAD, the debut production of fledgling company Mindscape Films, starring Danielle Harris from HALLOWEEN 4 and 5. Writer/director Chris Harrison is blocking actors for a climactic confrontation with the film’s vengeful killer (identified only as “The Mask”), showing his true colors as he communicates the emotional level he’s looking for in lead actor Steve Byers: “It’s like Tommy Jarvis at the end of JASON LIVES.”
“It’s an ’80s slasher flick,” says the 29-year-old Harrison, who describes horror as his genre of choice. “Five frat boys are stalked by a machete-wielding maniac who is out for revenge after they left him for dead a year earlier. We’re not reinventing the wheel, but we are shining it up a bit. A serious slasher film hasn’t been done in a while.”
When it came to casting, “Adam Dirani, our executive producer, decided we should get some names involved,” Harrison says. “We got interest from Danielle Harris. I’ve loved her since she was a kid, and she’s such a great actress. We wanted somebody who was known within the genre, and she came on to play our leading lady.”
“The shoot has been really easy and really fun,” says Harris, whose last genre appearance was in 1998’s URBAN LEGEND. “I’m so excited to be back doing horror movies.” Of the genre projects she’s been offered lately, LEFT FOR DEAD “was the most classic. It’s very old-school, the way horror movies used to be made. CGI is great, but I kinda like the real thing. They’re doing everything the way it was done 20 years ago, and that’s great.”
Harrison’s commitment to “keeping it real” hasn’t precluded a little creative computer tinkering when it comes to at least one bloody death scene. Digital compositing—not full CGI—will combine two shots into one (“SHAUN OF THE DEAD-style,” explains Harrison), resulting in six inches of machete slicing completely through someone’s ribcage. “I did want to show all of the effects, literally,” he notes. “We don’t hide anything. We wanted to be more violent, because the technology is here to make that happen.”
“We’re trying to keep it as practical as possible, but there’s a little bit of digital work in there too,” says makeup FX artist Carlos Henriques. “It’s a lot of appliances. We have a neck slit, which we just did. We’ve got a machete going into someone’s throat, and when it comes out there’ll be shooting blood, ROBOCOP-style—this 6-foot spray, like Dario Argento, painting the walls.”
“We’ve also got an exploding head,” producer Ryan Louagie says with enthusiasm. “At one point, the killer jumps on the hood of a car where this couple is making out, takes a shotgun and blows the guy’s head off.”
“MANIAC-style!” Henriques adds with a grin. “Chris, Ryan and I have known each other for many years. A lot of late nights watching the classics. So we’re referencing everything we can. The film is a complete ’80s homage.”
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