Inspiring Scares (Day 14): Ian Messenger (CatchMeKillMe Productions)

Think the slasher heyday is over? Horror filmmaker Ian Messenger from CatchMeKillMe Productions argues that this might not be the case in a brand new Inspiring Scares.

“The slasher boom stopped dead in its tracks in 1993 after the release of Friday The 13th: Jason Goes To Hell. Don’t get me wrong, we had a few slasher’s here and there (Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer) but they honestly just didn’t stirke me the same as the slasher’s of old. The sub-genre attempted to revive itself with the dreadful Jason X and then again with Freddy vs. Jason – both attempts seemingly failed to get the public interested in the darkest corner of cinema’s basement, the slasher film.

After Freddy vs. Jason’s release in 2003 there was real movement from our beloved slasher’s until 2006, enter Adam Green and his film Hatchet. When I first saw the preview for Hatchet, a swamp in New Orleans, a creepy little song played in the background and some letters faded onto the screen “Old School American Horror”, then a quick glimpse of a screaming Victor Crowley and the preview ended. My knee-jerk reaction? I laughed. I knew it was going to be a slasher film and I thought they should just let the dream die.

I’m so glad they didn’t let the dream die. Hatchet renewed my faith in slasher films, I wanted more when the film ended. All of a sudden I had an insatiable thirst for blood, guts, and gore again. It’s everything the movie’s in the 80’s and early 90’s were, but this film KNEW it was campy.

They poked fun at the excessive amounts of blood, one shot shows a tree off in the distance and all of a sudden a gallon of blood splashes against it. Adam Green knew these films shouldn’t be overly serious but he also knew how to make his monster scary.

Victor Crowley took fans by the throat and ripped them along for a ride we hadn’t been on in years. The film was so successful at doing it’s job properly it has spawned two sequel, one of which is currently in post-production.

If you want some good old fashioned American horror look no further then the Hatchet series. Boobs, blood, and guts – It’s all here. Upon my 4th or 5th viewing of the movie, I thought to myself that maybe I could do this. I’d never really considered film making as an option before this. When the movie finished I turned on the “Making Of” feature and I was stunned to see Adam Green, a guy like me, talking about movies the same way I did. He explained the route he took to horror film glory and I decided right then I would do the same thing.

I shut off the DVD and opened up my laptop and started consuming all things horror. I was overloading my brain hoping that a monster would come lurking out of the dark recesses of my brain. He didn’t. No monster, no slasher. I went for days spinning the ideas in my head but honestly they all sucked. Then finally I brought the idea up to a friend, we sat down and began discussing what scared us and it started to happen. We began piecing together a horrible creation – his mask, his weapon, his tale, and then he was born.

The Hog was created (4 or 5 variations of the same script) and we went out and filmed. Not a film class between us but we did it and I owe it all to Adam Green and Hatchet.

A side note to this story, I would later go on to propose to my now wife at the premiere of Adam Green’s premiere of Chillerama which resulted in us (my wife and I) meeting the man himself.”

Check out the awesome Catch Me Kill Me Films at the Youtube link below:
www.YouTube.com/CatchMeKillMeFilms

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