Your new movie Night Hunt
- in a few words, what is it about?
Night
Hunt is an old fashioned vampire movie in contemporary times.
We have a couple of journalists who are the only ones who know the
truth while all the authorities in the city refuse to accept the
truth. And the truth is that there's a vampire in town killing
people.
With Night Hunt
being a vampire movie, is that a genre at all dear to you, and some
of your genre favourites? Vampires are
subgenre within the horror genre that yes, I do like a lot. I
wouldn't necessarily say that it's my favorite subgenre but it's for
sure one of the most fun to write and produce. Also within the
subgenre of vampirism there are many different ways to approach it,
it's very broad which is also something that I enjoy a lot as a
writer. In my case in particular I prefer vampires that behave like
monsters, almost like animals, as opposed to seductive pretty people
that knock at your window and ask you to come in. In that regards
this new vampire movie is pretty much a mix between a werewolf and a
vampire in the sense that it's almost like dealing with a savage
animal. You also asked me about some of my favorites and I would say
that I prefer Christopher Lee playing Dracula precisely because he
plays him almost like a monster that almost never talks and is very
difficult to stop. I also like The Night Stalker from 1971 where
Carl Kolchak played by Darren Mcgavin faces again a silent vampire
that is completely unstoppable and bestial. (Other) sources of inspiration
when writing Night Hunt? As I mentioned in my previous
answer, The Night Stalker
is my favorite source of inspiration for
any vampire movie and definitely for this one that I just finished. Night
Hunt plays as an homage to that particular movie from 1971.
The
Night Stalker-series was shot here in Chicago, and I even
located the office of our main characters at the same building and
even same window they used for the classic series of the seventies.
With
vampire movies being more or less a dime a dozen, what do you think makes
yours stand out of the crowd? I'm not sure that my movie
will necessarily stand out as a very original take on vampirism
since there are so many movies that have been produced during so
many years. However in the context of the type of horror movies and
vampire horror movies that are produced nowadays, I do believe that Night
Hunt brings us back to a time when there was a very good mix
of humor and horror where you can fall in love with funny characters
without allowing horror to be damaged by an excess of humor placed
on the villain. Do talk about Night
Hunt's approach to horror! Night
Hunt’s approach to horror is pretty much my approach to horror in
general. As a viewer I prefer to watch a movie where I can relate to
the characters because they are normal people in extraordinary
circumstances. These extraordinary circumstances is where horror
comes in. I don't like the heroes, in this case “sheroes”, of my
movie to be superheroes. It's a little bit of Stephen King's
approach to horror where he introduces his monsters in familiar
settings and affecting people that could very well be ourselves. A few words about
your overall directorial approach to your story at hand?
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In directing
Night
Hunt we have to make a separation between
how we approached directing the actors and how we approached
directing the camera and everything technical. When it comes to
acting we were looking for relatable characters, so we did work a lot
with the two main actresses Monica Ochoa and Adilene Martinez in
order to find these two characters and make people hopefully fall in
love with them. When it comes to the technical aspects of this
movie, this is a very technical movie with a lot of action scenes
that required a combination of stunts, special effects, and getting
the right camera angles so that all these practical effects and
practical stunts would work on camera. We almost did not use any
digital effects or any green screen. We barely used digital
technology to erase some elements on the screen such as Wires, etc.
In general I prefer to use digital technology only to enhance
practical effects and not to substitute them. You
also appear in front of the camera in Night
Hunt - so what can you tell us about your character, what did you
draw upon to bring him to life, and have you written him with yourself in
mind from the get-go ... and how much fun was it to play a vampire?
I did write the vampire
character for me because I actually played this same character in
two previous movies that I made in the 80s in South America. 30
years later Crowley, which is the name of the vampire, comes back from
the dead and I had to be the actor playing it even when I'm much
older now. I knew what I wanted back in the 80s and I still know
what I want right now, which is, as I said before, vampires that act
like beasts, like monsters. They don't talk, they pretty much growl
and they're like killing machines. He is on earth to feed and he's
looking for blood every night just to keep himself alive. What
can you tell us about the rest of Night
Hunt's key cast, and why exactly these people? The two main characters of this movie are
Pilar Franco
played by actress Monica Ochoa and Shelley Maxwell played by actress
Adilene Martinez. Pilar Franco is actually a crossover from a
previous movie that I made before titled Macuma. I brought that
character back into this movie and I added some new characteristics
to it including having a girlfriend played by Adilene Martinez who
not only is her partner in crime but also her lover. These are the
heroes of the movie and they are intelligent powerful and funny. I
had to find the right actresses to play these characters. I wrote this movie with Monica Ochoa in mind because I had worked with
her before and I knew she could pull it off. I did call auditions
for the character of Shelley Maxwell, which is a new character and I
wasn't sure who could fill those shoes. I was very lucky to find
Adilene Martinez who did a wonderful job. Both of them together are
very powerful on screen and I think people are going to love them.
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The third main character other than the vampire in this movie is his
victim. Her name is Sandra Stevens played by actress Tiffany Curtis,
who also did a great job combining strength and vulnerability at the
same time which is not easy. She is a strong woman under
extraordinary circumstances that turned her into a very fearful
victim. That was a difficult combination that Tiffany pulled off
beautifully.
Do
talk about the shoot as such, and the on-set atmosphere! We shot the movie in 14 days. They were long journeys
with many changes of sets, costume, make up, etc. As in most of our
movies, the atmosphere was one of camaraderie and friendship. We did
have very cold weather for some exteriors which made our lives a
little miserable, but such is the price to pay to shoot these low
budget indies in Chicago.
The
$64-question of course, where can Night
Hunt be seen? The movie is currently available on Amazon
Prime. I know it’s been picked up by Tubi TV too, but as of today
it’s not live yet. Anything you can tell us about
audience and critical reception of Night
Hunt? Since this movie is so new and has
barely hit the platforms, I still don’t have a lot of feeback to
report. However, I did share the trailer on some Facebook groups
that have searched the movie on Prime, and their feedback has been
very positive. In particular, there is a Kolchack: The Night Stalker
group of folks who love the classic series from the seventies where
I shared news about our movie. Some members have watched Night
Hunt and their response was very good, which is great considering
that they love the original material which made them a potential
skeptic and tough audience. Any future projects you'd like to share?
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As I pay for the loan I took to produce Night
Hunt I have all
2023 to write scripts. I have just finished the first one titled Transhuman about an organism created in a lab to harvest
organs for transplant that gets out on a rampage to recover all his
parts... I’m now writing a Spanish language horror script about a
woman that turns into a hybrid jaguar/woman that will tear her
lovers a part. The title is Garras en la Oscuridad, Spanish
for Claws in the Dark, and I have another script titled Do
No Evil which is a revenge film about a girl who is raped and
left for dead. She’s deaf and mute and the movie is told from her
point of view, so it’ll be a silent horror movie. I cannot tell
you which one of these three will be my next production yet. Stay
tuned... Your/your
movie's website, social media, whatever else? Our
website is alphastudiosfilms.com and I’m on social media: Twitter:
@RIslasfilms Facebook: ricardo.islas.961 Instagram: @rislasfilms Thanks for the interview!
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