Riding the wave of “public domain horror” most obviously represented by Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey, filmmaker Taylor Morden took a little time out from making pop culture documentaries last year to shoot Bampire, a new horror-comedy in which teenagers are haunted by a demented creature in the woods — a creature that might be seeking revenge for its mother being killed by a hunter. That’s right, Bampire is a portmanteau of “Bambi” and “vampire,” and the movie — currently seeking funding on IndieGoGo — was literally filmed while Morden and company were running their previous crowdfunding campaign — for his upcoming documentary Getting LOST.
Unlike Blood and Honey (or most of the recent attempts at making Micky Mouse into a mascot horror monster), Bampire has its tongue firmly in cheek. It’s a movie that knows what it is — as you can tell by casting folks like The Room‘s Greg Sestero and Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman.
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“My friend Zoe [Wassman] wrote this script that we sort of adapted into a Bambi thing. It was a deer/monster/woods thing, and I’m like, ‘Aha, public domain will get us press,’ and it did,” Morden told ComicBook.com. “But, we didn’t really change the script. It’s still just a good movie about teenagers going in the woods and getting mauled by a deer….Spoiler alert. But there were a few roles, a handful of parts, where I’m like, ‘We could reach out to some people who are in some iconic indie films,’ or some, in Diane [Franklin]’s case, iconic mainstream films. But, horror stuff, too, and just on-brand.”
Franklin, who appeared in Better Off Dead and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, joins a cast that includes a number of Oregon locals, as well as familiar faces like Verona Blue and, as teased above, Greg Sestero.
“I’m a big fan of The Room and The Disaster Artist and just his whole vibe, because he’s very self-aware,” Morden explained. “He knows what The Room is. He’s on tour with it right now, just soaking it in, and it’s not his fault The Room is what The Room is. He was just there. And he wrote a whole book about it, and they made a movie about it, and those things are great,” Morden explained. “But, we were really going for that level of self-aware, not campiness, but, self-aware, tongue-in-cheek, ‘What is this?’ It’s not a commentary on public domain horror, but we’re like, ‘We get it. We know. This isn’t Schindler’s List that we’re making. This is not Citizen Kane. This is a horror comedy based on Bambi. Maybe instead of even trying to get an actor from a Citizen Kane-type film, let’s get the guy from The Room that I feel like sends the message that we know our lane. We’re in on it.”
Bampire is in post production now. The plan is to get the movie out to fans by the end of the year.
