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We’re big proponents of gritty, indie filmmakers getting their hands dirty, DIY’ing the hell out of a shoot and just making their damn movie. So when we heard about the Blood Mountain Massacre filmmakers, we were excited to chat with them about their guerilla horror film.
Of course, guerilla filmmaking in the horror world leads to loads of DIY practical FX, and few things get the proverbial blood pumping more than that phrase. Described by Blood Mountain Massacre director Bob Place and co-writer Darby Dust as “a love letter to slashers.” The movie is set ambiguously in the past, and Place and Dust drew on their shared background and experiences as touring musicians for this story that centers on an all-girl band on the road. When recounting their own days spent touring, they note, “We were always filming videos.”
That little detail lends itself heavily to the signature kill in the film, which involves a camcorder. According to Place and Dust, the rest is “fairly standard slittin throats and stuff.”
“We wanted to contribute something to the genre that we had never seen before. We had a character in the film videotaping everything on the tour to make a band video. We thought it would be interesting to get the audience familiar with some of the film from the perspective of what she is taping and then to turn her camera on her and smash her face with it.”
The effect is done in camera using a series of mannequin heads, swapping them out between brutal “smashes” from the killer. “The kill is seen from the perspective of the camera. To achieve the effect, we had four prosthetic heads with caved-in faces in varying degrees. We cut a hole in the mattress where the actress’ head would lay backward. We put a pillow over her head and rested the prosthetic heads on her chest. We hid the gap between her head and chest with a bandana she wears in the film.”
The crew also made their own blood and… cocaine. Copious amounts of powdered baby milk were snorted to simulate cocaine, which the cast does not recommend, explaining that they “tasted milk for days.” Place even threw up a little on set after snorting a heaping bump of the powdered milk. All in a day’s work!
Shooting in a condemned house scheduled for demolition with no power or utilities added to the challenge. The crew had to bring in generators to power their equipment, but you can’t beat a free location, especially when you have free range to do whatever you want to it. Special FX Supervisor Matthew Maher admits that it was difficult, but ultimately: “What I saw was a lot of people rising to the occasion. You might have needed a lamp in the room, but you could yell into the dark, and sure enough, a lamp would come.”
Place views the low budget (“No budget,” Dust corrects) as an asset: “Too much money would have hurt the film. We needed it to be authentic.”
The duo’s musical background is something they hope will set this indie slasher apart. With Place, Dust, (and much of the cast) spending years touring in local bands, they’re able to offer a little bit of inside baseball when it comes to dealing with promoters, bartenders, and the various cast of characters bands meet during their travels. The inside knowledge of what it’s really like on the road adds another layer of authenticity to the project, a story about musicians made by musicians.
The music itself is another hugely important element here. Centering your movie on two bands is going to require a hefty soundtrack. The filmmakers tapped into their musical backgrounds to write and record all the songs in the movie.
Bob Place and Darby Dust wrote the score and the song for the guys’ band, Dick Hammer. Dust and K.D. O’Hair (who plays the lead singer in the girl band) wrote the song for the film’s all-girl band, The Abortions. Darby also wrote the goth band’s synth songs, and Taylor Norland played the theremin on those gothy tracks.
For the soundtrack, Place and Dust also utilized music from bands they’ve played in along with tracks from other Atlanta musicians who also appear in the film. The filmmakers tagged in members from local bands Chew, Swank Sinatra, Sonic Speculum, Whiskey Shit Vomit, Indigo Method, and CHPNDL. “Randy Garcia wrote ‘Bird Song,’ which is featured at the beginning of the film, Matt Pechiney wrote two songs specifically for the film introducing Dick Hammer and for the after-party montage.”
Because the movie centers on The Abortions and Dick Hammer, Place and Dust were tasked with writing and recording music for not just one but two separate fictional bands. When it came to differentiating the “sound” of each band, they explained the similarities and the major differences:
“Both bands are punk rock bands, so musically, they are similar. The two things that really differentiate them is that one is a guy lead singer and one is a girl lead singer, but the bigger thing is the lyrics of the songs establish a narrative of what each band represents. The Abortions are a girl power type band. Dick Hammer is a sex, drugs, and rock n roll type band.”
Two signature songs are featured in the movie, one for The Abortions and another for Dick Hammer. “Both songs were written with the characters’ motivations in mind. We practiced the songs. Bob and Darby played bass and guitar for each song, and Kevin Stokes played drums. Then, we recorded both songs in one session with Randy Garcia, who recorded, mixed, and mastered the tracks. Each singer in the film is actually singing their part.”
When you put all that work into writing and recording the music, it only makes sense to go the extra step and shoot some music videos. Which they did for at least two of the tracks.
The casting process for this music-centric movie was a combination of balancing out actors who could sing and musicians who could act. “We had a bunch of comedians that wanted to act. None of the female band members were actually musicians except for the lead singer, and everyone in the guy band was actually a musician except the drummer.”
It’s no secret that a DIY production presents its own unique set of challenges. Place and Dust recall the most difficult element of the shoot:
“The most challenging shoot was the finale. The film ends with our characters in a horrifying situation in a remote cabin. We built props and set dressed for two days. There was no cell service; it was a rundown shack with no air conditioning and a slight rodent problem. It was also the location of a recent suicide. We basically locked ourselves in the cabin for two days of non-stop shooting. Shooting that scene was isolating and spooky; by the late hours of the second day, everyone was delirious. We overcame those difficulties with sheer determination.”
Blood Mountain Massacre is now streaming on Amazon, Roku, Vudu, and Vimeo. Watch the unrated trailer below.
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