Month: February 2006

Ten years ago, I used to work in a branch of Blockbuster video in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. God knows how many countless thousand hours I must have spent in that store; lugging videos around, cleaning, filing, banking and advising customers not to rent films like ‘Tough & Deadly’. Oh, and trying not to laugh when they rented ‘The Amazing Panda Adventure’ and I had to read the title back to them. It wasn’t the best job I ever had. Wasn’t the worst either.

Last week, I stood in that same branch of Blockbuster and saw my movie sitting on the shelf. I think it’s a safe bet that out of all those thousands of hours, I’d never previously had a single moment in that shop that had felt quite so good.

Yes, TrashHouse is out and about with the general public. I’ve been getting a few reviews by email, and some have been cropping up on websites. The target audience seem to like it. Seems to be shifting quite well on both rental and retail. All is well with the world.

If any of you folks out there check it out, feel free to let me know what you make of it. It feels oddly like I’ve had an offspring leave home.

After all that, TrashHouse is released to rent or buy on Special Edition Region 2 DVD today.

Don’t sit here reading this… Go buy it!!!

Let’s get the pie stuff out of the way first, because people keep asking. Yes, the pies turned up in the end, (6pm!!!), and yes, they were fantastic and worth the wait. I find it slightly disconcerting that more people have asked me about the fucking pies than anything in any other blog entry.

Onto the slightly more relevant stuff. KillerKiller is finally hitting the starting blocks, and we’re aiming for a shooting start date in mid-May. Still got some decisions to make, but as soon as anything gets signed I’ll blabber on about it here. Don’t mind admitting that we’re still puzzling over that main female role, since it would seem ideally suited to an established scream queen but they’re a bit of an endangered species in the UK. Heartbreaking, really… Where did all the scream queens go? Where’s this generation’s Ingrid Pitt? It’s a simple wishlist really… Startlingly beautiful, excellent actress, unafraid of partial nudity or vast quantities of fake blood. Only about three names readily pop to mind, and for one reason or another none of them have happened as yet. Our search continues.

The more astute of you will have noticed that I’ve given a rough shooting schedule for KillerKiller yet absolutely nothing as yet for HellBride. There’s a simple reason for this; we’re still having script problems, and I don’t know if it’s going to be ready to go in time to do the back-to-back thing. I suspect, in my heart of hearts, it’s going to end up getting delayed for a while. Be nice if it didn’t, but that’s life sometimes…

Just been running through the KillerKiller prop-list whilst waiting for pies. I’d like to go and get some lunch, but I’m scared to miss the pies. The pies are from http://www.pieminister.co.uk and look lovely, but the buggers haven’t turned up yet and I really want to leave my office.

The props list is mercifully shorter than the TrashHouse one was, but still includes such wonders as ‘Bladed Pom-Poms’…

Went on another location-scouting expedition on Monday. Still undecided about where we’re going to shoot the location stuff. The two main contenders have such different looks that it would greatly affect the feel of the movie, and I can’t quite decide which way to jump. One is incredibly gothic and extremely atmospheric, whereas the other feels more ‘correct’ but is less visually interesting. Although it is more varied. I’m torn.

There was a nice article about TrashHouse over on Fangoria;
http://www.fangoria.com/news_article.php?id=5505
I was particularly pleased with that one, since I can remember reading Fangoria at school and thinking it was the coolest thing ever. Nice to be in it!

Still no sign of the pies, in case you were wondering.