Feature Category: Article

Edgar Wright has a lot to answer for; by pitting Simon Pegg and Nick Frost against the living dead, he opened the floodgates to a marauding horde of shuffling flesh-eating films. Many were not worth the ground they climbed out of, but some deserve more than a swift blow to the head. Despite the too-close-for-comfort title, Shed of the Dead is firmly in the latter category. There’s much more to Drew Cunningham’s 2019 comedy-horror than a cheap cash-in.

Headlined by Spencer Brown (Nathan Barley) and Lauren Socha (Misfits), playing mismatched husband and wife Trevor and Bobbi, it featured a supporting cast of well-known faces. Horror royalty Michael Berryman (The Hills Have Eyes), Bill Mosely (The Devil’s Rejects), Kane Hodder (Hatchet), and Emily Booth (Cradle of Fear) all appear and deliver some fantastic moments. There is also some brilliant narration provided by the unmistakable dulcet tones of Brian Blessed.

Ewan MacIntosh – deadpan-faced Keith in the UK version of The Office – plays Graham, Trevor’s best mate and fellow gamer. Trevor spends all his time in his shed on an allotment, although he has no interest in growing veg. Instead, he is brewing bootleg vodka and painting his board game figures. These two have a fun line in banter, and there are several cutaway Warhammer-style fantasy sequences in which Trevor and Graham become their sword-wielding alter egos. You’d think this would hold them in good stead when it comes to the inevitable zombie apocalypse. However, in the real world, Trevor is a downtrodden, henpecked, weak (hinted at by being often seen puffing on an inhaler – a bugbear of ours as they never actually use the medication right!) sort. So when the shit goes down, he’s less equipped to cope than most. Trevor and Graham do attempt to do the right thing, however, as they head back to ‘save’ the women.

British horror icon Emily Booth plays a fun role as Bobbi’s co-worker at a salon, Harriet. We spoke to her about the film, and the first thing we had to ask was about the scene in which she rode Michael Berryman like a horse. Literally. “I was a little bit apprehensive,” she tells us “but he was an absolute gentleman and game for anything.” As well as having to have Emily his back, Berryman wore leather shorts and a cropped string vest, along with horse ears and a tail (which was attached to a butt plug, but the director didn’t insist on him wearing that, thankfully). “I couldn’t believe how game he was for anything,” Emily reveals, “He must be 70 plus, and he had a really bad back. So he was on his hands and knees, and there’s me on his back, balancing! I’m wearing these riding boots; I’m trying to shuffle along and try not to put my weight on his back. I felt guilty as he’s a legend. I was really surprised how game he was for it.” It wasn’t all stressful, though: “It was a lot of fun, and we got to improvise it. The director Drew just said ‘go on – do your thing’ so we made a lot of stuff up, like the bit about the safe word.“

Emily’s character, as you can probably guess, offers more than just haircuts and makeovers. Graham is particularly infatuated with her, going to some quite disgusting measures to ‘be close’ to her. It turns out fine in the end, albeit not the way he envisaged. Working with Ewan was something Emily was looking forward to, having been in touch with The Office actor even before the part came up; “I really liked our twisted zombification-cum-cannibalism-cum-death-scene,” she told us. “I enjoyed the scenes where I’m slowly transforming into a zombie. I had a lot of fun with that because I wanted to slow it down and almost make it an emphatic sort of scene.” Elaborating, Emily said: “I kind of feel was sorry for her, she’s just left, and her friend doesn’t really give a shit about her. Everyone’s laughing and being casual about her turning into a zombie. I guess she sees Graham as her only salvation, but then it turned into this cannibalism. There is that little switch, where we sort of kiss, and it turns into this violent kiss where I pull his tongue out.” This is where Emily was in her element: “I just really enjoy working with the gore, spitting out bits of tongue or human entrails – I just find it fun and amusing.” Laughing as she tells us, it’s obvious the horror fan in Emily is coming out. “Because it was quite a slow turn, I was sitting on the edge of the bath for ages and Drew was just laughing at me. I think because I’m all cross-eyed and dying, and they’re all having a chat and ignoring me.“

While Emily’s face wound is a reasonably simple makeup job, she does relish filming those types of scenes: “Behind the scenes, there’s a makeup person with a huge mug of gloopy blood, which is basically treacle and food colouring, things like that, they have to be thick, and it can’t be too runny. And they whack an absolute load in your mouth, and you have to pretend you haven’t got any in your mouth until the moment where you have to throw it up and goo it out. Emily continues, giggling: “So that’s always quite fun, but it plays havoc on your teeth, I think because it is just pure sugar. I always like that moment when it all – bleugh – dribbles out of your mouth really slowly. That’s always fun!“

Harriet’s death scene was a clincher for Emily accepting the role, however. “I only agreed to play the part if they changed the entire way I died,” she tells us. “I didn’t like the tone of her death in the original script, so they rewrote it for me, so I respected that about Drew.“

As we mentioned, there are occasional make-believe elements in which the characters are reimagined as their gaming personas. With Graham having the hots for Harriet, it made sense that she’d be part of his LARP fantasy. “That’s another reason I liked the film,” Emily continues, “because I thought there couldn’t be many films where you’re your character and then you get to go into fantasyland and play a manifestation of whatever your RPG character would be.” It wasn’t just portraying a different element to the character Emily enjoyed, “I really loved the costume, but my baby was about eleven months old at that time, and I’d just finished breastfeeding, and they were trying to get this bra to fit me because my boobs kept changing size and it was really heavy because of the bones sewed onto the bra, but I loved doing Moana, I would have liked more from her.“

As star-studded as Shed of the Dead is, it never loses its very British soul and humour. Forget expectations of Pegg and Frost and meet another very relatable pair with unusual quirks. And plenty of flesh-eating zombies, of course.

SHED OF THE DEAD screens on Horror Channel. Sky 317, Virgin 149, Freeview 70, Freesat 138. The short film SELKIE, which was co-written and stars Emily Booth is available to view on YouTube.

Actor Tony Jaa is known for killer action sequences in the Ong-Bak trilogy, and for causing havoc in the seventh Fast & Furious instalment, and his latest big-screen adventure comes in the form of Monster Hunter. Directed by Paul W. S. Anderson (Resident Evil, Event Horizon), this video game adaptation sees Tony as the mysterious Hunter, alongside Artemis (Milla Jovovich) as they both try to navigate the monster-infested world that they are trapped in! STARBURST catches up with Tony to find out what this action-filled blockbuster was like to work on, and much more…

STARBURST: How did you initially get involved with Monster Hunter, and what attracted you to the role of Hunter?

Tony Jaa: My manager and my agent told me about the film, I thought the idea of adapting the game to a live-action movie was a good one. When I heard Paul was directing, I was very excited.

How would you describe Hunter, to someone who was unfamiliar with the movie?

You must remember Hunter is from a different world. He is a man who has lost his family and his mission in life is to destroy the monsters that were responsible for this.

What did you like the most about working in this video game world? 

I liked the idea of going into a fantasy world. It’s fun and anything is possible.

What do you remember the most about your first day on set, filming Monster Hunter?

I had never been to South Africa before and it was a different and exciting environment for me. The sets were very impressive, I remember thinking “This is going to be fun”, and it was.

Monster Hunter was filmed all over the world, can you elaborate on what that was like, and how the filming process compared to anything else that you had worked on before?

I have filmed in a number of different countries. What was rather unique on this film was the part we filmed in Namibia. It looked like a movie set from another planet, but it was not a set, it was real.

What was it like to work within your costume design? Carrying those huge weapons!

The weapons were really cool, but they were also really heavy. I guess you could say every time I ran with the weapons I got a good workout!

What was Milla Jovovich like to work with, and what do you think she brought to the dynamic between Hunter and Artemis?

Milla was amazing. She is great to work with, wonderful personality and sense of humour. We got along very well. We worked together practising our action scenes, and she really does those very well.

In the film, there is a language barrier between Hunter and Artemis, how interesting was that for you to work on and what do you think it brings to Monster Hunter?

I think it gave a good break for some humour and showed how alien the situation was to both characters. It also forced them to find a way to form a bond.

What was Paul W.S. Anderson like to work with?

Paul is great to work with, his attention to detail is wow! He explains what he wants very clearly, and he has a strong creative vision.

What was your most memorable scene to work on, and why?

I think my fight scene with Milla was my most memorable scene. We really spent time working together on this and got to know each other well. I think that ultimately shows on screen.

Finally, why should STARBURST readers check out Monster Hunter?

Because if they don’t I will hunt them!

MONSTER HUNTER is available to download and keep from September 6th, and to rent on digital, on 4K Ultra HD™, Blu-ray™ and DVD on September 20th.

With Sound of Violence having just had its UK premiere at Arrow Video FrightFest and hitting Blu-ray and DVD this week, we caught up with writer/director Alex Noyer to talk about the film that bombards all the senses…

STARBURST: Sound of Violence started life as a short, Conductor. Was it always the plan to expand it?

Alex Noyer: Firstly, the short was purely meant to be a short. I just finished and delivered this huge music documentary called 808, and I was exhausted with my documentary career. I needed a new challenge, and my wife told me to get into horror movies because that’s my lifelong passion. And long story short, I was developing a few movies, and I had a lightbulb moment. I was reminiscing about the documentary, which is about the Roland TR 808 drum machine. And I thought, ‘I need to kill somebody with a drum machine’. So then the idea of Conductor came up and very quickly came together. My producing partner Hannu Aukia and I shot it in March 2018, and then we started touring it. The response from festivals was crazy, and I was developing something else at the time. The questions I was getting about Alexis [the character in the short] really got me thinking, so I wrote her backstory. It was potentially going to be another short, but the writing was coming out of me. Because there is a good idea, it just kind of planted a seed and organically continued.

So it developed quite quickly?

I went to Canada in May 2019 and received a lot of interest, so I returned and rewrote the script, so I broke down the script completely and rewrote it in four days. Of course, there’s still some tweaking on how we shot, but that version that I wrote got us the rest of the way to greenlight the movie. The film’s first draft was written in January 2019, and we shot the movie in October 2019. I hope every movie development I have goes like that; the next one will probably take five years to get off the ground!

Did you research the medical condition synaesthesia?

Yes, I think it’s important that people are held accountable for how they write topics like that and try to bring authenticity to it. If it only takes us to research, then we have no excuse to try to get it wrong, and so I researched, and we consulted. As far as hearing loss and how to address the fact that she’s not deaf, she lost her hearing. So how do we address that? Well, never use the word deaf. Okay, no problem. The way we use sign language, the fact that she’s quite clumsy about it, and she speaks at the same time because she lost her hearing, so she was speaking. I never felt the consultation was any way of a hindrance or slowed us down. In fact, it made the writing more effective because it came out like ‘this is how it must be’. Then with synaesthesia, it’s fascinating; it’s called a condition, but I call it an ability because the idea of it being able to see and experience sound is next-level stuff. I realised that synaesthesia is something that is very individualised. There’s no one way to picture it.

You do a good job of putting it on screen, though…

Again, through research, I realised that we could really craft synaesthesia for Alexis, and, perhaps from my Nordic origins, I thought of the Northern Lights; to kind of float. I knew I couldn’t just have blue blues and greens; I needed to have something a little bit more psychedelic, so we expanded it, and some of them needed to be a bit fiery; we needed to be able to create the sense of the harshness of certain sounds. I hope you can hear how much fun it was to craft this. The research was never a hindrance, just all inspiration; like the murders, I tried everything I could. I was like a mad scientist trying to piece things together.

That brings us to the murders. There’s one scene – which we won’t spoiler – in the studio that features a great surprise.

Yeah, that’s a great effect. It’s a great shock as well, but you get a bit of a giggle out of it, and you’re supposed to. That scene is a pivotal moment in the movie because it’s a pivotal moment for Alexis where she’s like, “that’s it”. Especially because of the classroom event, it’s like all bets are off. And, because of the person as well in the booth! This is the moment where we take the handbrake off. It’s funny that you mentioned it because I love that scene as it’s the film’s turning point. And also, as far as the audience, this is the moment where some are like, “What are you doing? How dare you!” And I’m like, “I know!” After that, there’s an emotional crescendo, but we needed that moment of relief, and you have the comedic effect, which is very much on point. Some people have said what movie is that you are making? You keep shifting your tone, and I say, “Are you realising what psychological rollercoaster this is for Alexis? The dread, the lightness and the catharsis she’s going through. It’s going in every direction”. With the amazing performance of Jasmin [Savoy Brown], it all comes across. Look at her eyes; she acts with her eyes and brings so much to it, and all those moments are there, not just from my choice of writing. She brings them, and the climax of that studio scene sees her reaction and tells me it doesn’t feel like she got it. I don’t even want to think about how the movie would be without Jasmin. She is a force to be reckoned with, and I can’t wait to see Scream. I hope she has a prominent role in the movie because she’s great. If we did this movie today, I probably would not get her in any of my films, so I’m very lucky.

What was the casting process like?

We had an amazing casting director called Amey René, and she’s the one who suggested Jasmin. I was like, “Oh my god, this is such a good idea”. I loved The Leftovers, and she stood out to me, so I immediately wanted her. Then we met, and that was it, I had met Alexis! When it came to the role of her friend Marie, we looked at various options, but I always had an eye on Lili [Simmons], but she wasn’t going to be available, so I had to look again. Lili then became available. Okay, this is amazing. And James Jagger is one of those actors that I had in mind to work with for a while, and so when I was crafting the role of Duke, I remember he’s one of the people I had in mind. He read the script and came in and took on the role. When we met him, he admitted that he was mad at me as far as the ending, and I was like, “This is great because you should be!” We really hit it off, and this was helped by the fact that we support the same football teams – we’re both Arsenal fans.

What was it like directing your first feature?

It was daunting. Then once we got going, I was really great. The good thing is I surrounded myself with amazing people. My cinematographer, Daphne [Qin Wu], is fantastic. My producing partner, Hannu, has worked with me on the short, so he knows my process. He knows what I’m going to drive him nuts with! What he always said is that the one thing I know is I know what I want. And I’m very clear about what I want. And therefore, my focus is always on performance. I never touched a camera. I’m all about performance because I surrounded myself with such a great team. My blood wizard Robert Bravo, who did the practical effects, and Gillian Chance, the production designer, know me because most of them worked with me on the short. So there was a really strong bond. We often say that the director is the least qualified on set, and that’s because we’re surrounded by amazing specialists, who we should trust the abilities of, and we have to explain clearly what we want. Then let leave it to them to come back with solutions. This was a 20-day shoot – fast, fast, fast – but I’m so proud of how we delivered it, and it’s so exciting.

What about the gallery scene – that’s a really shocking moment…

Did you flick your fingers during it? [Laughs] I can tell you when we shot it, Hannu got a bit queasy! I was behind the wall watching my monitor, and there was this echo in the gallery, so I was shouting my instructions, and I have a pretty deep voice, so that was echoing over the room! The scene was quite intense for everybody to watch, so occasionally, there was a little bit of chatter, and they would hear me, “silence!” It was a crazy thing to shoot and a tricky one as well to craft. It seems extremely simple, but he’s actually, you know, we had to do with local audience boy we had to really figure out the mechanism. I’m the son of an artist, and I grew up in the art world, so the idea of shooting a horror scene in the gallery was amazing. I would say it’s the most giallo scene of the movie; the contrast, the colours, the way we were shooting it upward and everything. It doesn’t start as such, and that you know we’re quite level where we’re in that crowd, but then as soon as we’re on the main attraction, you see how we lowered up. Plus, we have Tara [Elizabeth Cho], the harpist; this was her first role in a feature film. She was first brought on because of her musical skills, but she really owned it, and I need to praise her because she did a fantastic job and was relentless. She was like, “No, no, no, I’m good”. She was tireless and kept going and again. I can’t say anything because I don’t want to spoil it, but it’s a pretty intense scene to shoot and the craft of Robert Bravo to make it work. Again going back to surrounding myself with specialists, Robert Bravo had my back; he knows that I’m a stickler for how practical effects have to look; I’m a stickler for how blood looks. He knows me very well. He knows that I am never rude or anything, but there’s one thing I will not go with is blood that doesn’t look the way I want it to; we’re talking flow, luminescence, colour, everything, and he gets me. That’s why I call in my blood wizard! The first award our short won was for the special effects, and he deserves it completely, absolutely.

Were there scenes that you wanted to film that you couldn’t?

I wrote a few other murders. One was initially in the ending, and it was just too big. It was completely out of sync with the balance of the film. Budget-wise, I think it would have been way too expensive. So maybe it’s something that I’ll bring back if somebody is crazy enough to let me do a sequel. In my research about instruments and about what crazy things I could do with them, a few things could have happened. I’m very happy with the selection, though, and the ones that we cut would have just affected the balance of the film, so I wanted to keep everything very human-scaled

What’s next for you?

There are two things I’m working on. I’m writing a horror movie that is a Nordic-based story. That’s going to be something that I’m writing and directing, and I’m in talks with a couple of studios, so let’s see. I’ve also been approached to direct a PG-13 horror movie, which my daughters are very happy about. Yeah, because they can’t see Sound of Violence. I never stop, and I’ve had a couple of other conversations about interesting things, and who knows, maybe one day there’ll be a sequel to Sound of Violence.

Sound of Violence is on Blu-ray and DVD now from Dazzler Media. You can read our review here.

400 Bullets is the latest film from writer/director Tom Paton and stars Andrew Lee Potts (Primeval) as Noah a soldier and Jean-Paul Ly (Nightshooters) as the Gurkha Rana, respectively, who are stationed in Afghanistan, fighting to keep some missile guidance chips from falling into the wrong hands. We caught up with the former to find out more about the film and get an exclusive reveal of something to come…

STARBURST: This is quite a departure for you – what prep did you have to do?

Andrew Lee Potts: Oh God! I didn’t really do any, it happened so quickly. I shaved my head, went up and talked to Tom at the studio, and that’s about it. He told me what we were planning to do and before I knew it, I was shooting it. We had a stunt coordinator, Spencer Collings, who’s a military advisor, but taught me exactly the right way to hold the gun and make it realistic. He wouldn’t let us do it Hollywood style, everything’s close and tight to the body. It’s all really efficient and you know he’s really into it.

So was it physically demanding?

Oh yeah! The physical side of it was. I was used to a lot of physicality, in the work that I’ve done previously, but this was brutal. We did mostly night shoots and I used to text Tom in a morning with pictures of all my new bruises! My body was covered in bruises. I’m not even joking, bruises like you can’t even imagine. So I used to do like a daily update of how you were harming your actor [Laughs].

My first day was the fight scene where I get stabbed in the shoulder and he bust my nose. Literally straight off the bat, in the in the first take and my nose is gushing! So it was all fun and games.

What was it like working with Jean-Paul Ly?

JP is just amazing, he’s such a lovely dude as well. He helped me a lot with the fight stuff and the way to shoot it. I don’t think you’ll find anybody who’ll say he’s not a nice dude. He was so caring and amazingly focused on his job. And when he just switched it on and he did his stuff, you have all the men in the room mesmerised by it. He had to tone it down a little bit, because he’s capable of so much more. But we had to keep it as real as we could, with a Gurkha skill set in stone.

What was the shoot like?

It was freezing, it was December, and we were shooting outside, all at night. So it was a slog but the crew was amazing. It was one of the most favourite jobs that I’ve ever been on because everybody was just gunning for it, they were loving it.

How was Tom as a director?

I loved working with Tom. I knew of Tom’s work and he knew of mine. And when we met each other we saw there’s a lot of similarities within us; we recognise that we appreciate each other’s skillset and each other’s talent. It was a really good partnership in that sense.

There is a great message about honour in the film…

Yeah, it was massively important. That’s what I love about the character Bartlet [played by James Warren], he’s a bad guy for sure, but there’s a scene where he’s speaking to Rana [Ly’s character] about his disbelief in the system and how it chews you up and spits you out. There’s a lot of truth and relevance in that and you kind of start to go ‘I see your point’ and that’s why I think the film works so well.

The other thing that’s really important is the story of the Gurkhas, because it’s hardly being done on film. They’re amazing soldiers, they’re so committed to helped us so much.

Your character Noah starts off really cold, a proper hard-nut soldier, but as Noah gets to know Rana we notice a few of your trademark banter and comedy quips coming into it.

[Laughs] I wasn’t allowed to do very much. It was a balancing act because there was a few bits where I wanted to go a bit further, I think my first ad lib was in the bit where Rana touches me to get a bullet out, and I say ‘your hands are cold’. Tom let me go so far and then he reined me back in.

What’s next for you?

I’ve written my first movie, which is called Divided and Tom has come on board to produce it. It’s a sci-fi heist, Black Mirror-type story. We were just so close to start pre-production on it, and then COVID happened. It’s fine, though, things are still in place. We weren’t going to shoot it until the summer anyway. We have Tom and the finances in place, so we should be okay.

I can also reveal that you haven’t seen the last of Noah and Rana. The character’s gained the trust of each other and respect. Going forward with a sequel, it’s exciting to see how far they push that.

400 Bullets is available in the US on digital and DVD/Blu-ray from March 2nd – a UK release is TBC. Check out our review here. You can find out more about Andrew’s work at www.keychainproductions.co.uk and director Tom Paton at www.tompatonfilm.com.