Party of Darkness – A Horror/Comedy Anthology

Sponsored Feature: Temporary Insanity Productions, LLC.

Party of Darkness is an upcoming horror/comedy anthology featuring eight short films starring Felissa Rose, Glenn Plummer, Sean Whalen, Robert Mukes and more.

Watch the teaser trailer here!

Heather from Hell / Directed by Randy Van Dyke 

A group of horror movie fanatics and an uninvited goth girl, Heather, get stuck in a cabin in the woods with no internet and no movies to watch. They resort to telling spooky and sometimes silly stories around the campfire. But the gang find themselves in a REAL terrifying tale when they realize Heather has manipulated them into opening a portal to hell, prompting an epic finale with demons, a knob goblin and a cauldron full of baby batter.

Bootytown Bloodbath / Directed by Randy Van Dyke 

A superfan thinks he has won the opportunity to star in a scene with his favorite streaming adult content creator. But instead of the naughty adventure of his dreams, he finds he’s been lured into an underground livestream snuff film.

Pizza Bites / Directed by Justin Armao

A serial killer’s consciousness in the body of a nurse wearing the uniform of a murdered pizza delivery boy goes on a rampage ending up in a sorority house full of fresh victims. Meanwhile, a werewolf, hiding a big secret from his wife gets distracted when the sorority girls from next door come over looking for another to join their pillow fight.

Unable to Comply / Directed by Randy Van Dyke

A sci-fi horror tale of man vs. AI. Using classified alien technology, a civilian cargo ship’s Engineer travels back in time to prevent his crew from being killed by an invisible, Predator-like entity. When the tech malfunctions, the engineer becomes the bloodthirsty entity he was trying to stop.

Ding Dong Dead / Directed by Andy Cauble

An ’80s period piece that follows a trio of teenage metalheads who decide to prank their friend with deadly consequences on their way home from a concert.

Pervasion / Directed by Matt Leal

A gritty ’90s psychological thriller about tenants in an apartment complex who suspect their new neighbor of being a child molester. They eventually sneak their way into his apartment only to learn an even darker secret.

Coyote / Directed by Alan Maxson and Jason Maxson

A grindhouse bloodfest with a practical puppet hunting down stoned hikers.

Ixchel / Directed by Alexys Paonessa and Matthew Festle

Heather from Heather from Hell’s adolescent origin story where she learns she has to make the ultimate sacrifice to tap into her true destiny as a succubus.

A Q&A with Director Randy Van Dyke

Hi Randy, thanks for joining us at RIR to discuss your upcoming anthology Party of Darkness! The film falls in the horror/comedy genre and focuses on a wraparound story to tie the segments together. What makes Party of Darkness stand out from other horror anthologies we’ve seen? 

The biggest difference between Party of Darkness and other anthologies is our approach to tying everything together.  Oftentimes anthologies will just group unrelated stories, or sometimes there will be a common thread or character that unifies the segments.  In our case we wanted our characters in the wraparound to be the ones telling the stories that we get to see as segments. It’s fun because every segment is meant to look like a completely different type of movie based on the tastes of the person telling the story.  It’s really interactive because by the end of it the gang finds themselves in the middle of the scariest story of all!  I’ll go more into detail when we talk about the individual segments.

Party of Darkness features 8 shorts from 8 different directors (and some directing duos). How did you decide who to involve? 

I have been blessed to work with a lot of really talented filmmakers over the years, and collectively we have worked really hard on cultivating an amazing, diverse and truly fun team.  We are all directors of our own projects, but we also have specialized crew roles on set.  Between us, we have camera, lighting, sound, makeup, art department and post production covered!  Collectively, we have worked on nearly a dozen features together, but this time we wanted to try something different.  After the cast and crew premiere of Justin Armao’s Xanadu Hellfire (a feature all of us worked on together) we started talking about the idea of collaborating on an anthology where we all get to put our voices into a single movie. And that is how Party of Darkness was born.

The film includes a cast of heavy hitters like Felissa Rose, Glenn Plummer, Sean Whalen and Robert Mukes, to name a few. What was the casting process like and how has it been working with these great actors? 

All the thanks in the world goes to the team from 3 Keys Media (Matt Leal, Alexys Paonessa and Matt Festle) for the heavy-hitter casting connections. Recently, they had worked with Sean Whalen and Felissa Rose on Sean’s upcoming directorial debut, Crust, so we were able to bring in some cast from there. Sean Whalen and Robert Mukes are a delightfully creepy duo in Matt Leal’s Pervasion segment.  We had the opportunity to do some really impressive physical scenes with Robert where he intimidates and decimates his castmates.  Watching Sean transform into his character was mind-blowing. It never ceases to amaze me when I see someone get so dedicated to a character. I’ve admired Felissa Rose and Glenn Plummer for quite awhile so it was a dream scenario to have them both in my segment, Unable to Comply. I wrote it with them in mind, hoping they would say “yes!”.  Glenn loved the script, and was really excited about being in a sci-fi movie set in space!  Felissa is quite possibly the nicest human being I’ve ever met. She brings tons of energy and enthusiasm to her role as the captain of a starship.  She was thrilled to do physical chase scenes and be a badass leader, taking the fight to the enemy.  It’s different from the type of role she’s generally known for, so she really has fun with it.  Felissa and Glenn are overflowing with charisma, so their onscreen chemistry is real.  Taking Glenn’s character from the peaks of action through the depths of horror and despair was inspiring.  As a director, that was probably the most fun day I’ve ever had on set.  I would be remiss if I didn’t mention what a great job Justin Armao did with casting the rest of the anthology.  He was casting director for 6 out of 8 segments, and I couldn’t be happier with the whole cast.

Felissa brings tons of energy and enthusiasm to her role as the captain of a starship.  She was thrilled to do physical chase scenes and be a badass leader, taking the fight to the enemy.

Tell us about some of the segments included in Party of Darkness. You spoke a bit about Unable to Comply, a sci-fi horror set in space.

We’ve got period pieces, we’ve got creature mini-features, we’ve got some silly stuff, sexy stuff, and some that are just a bloody good time.  Emphasis on the bloody part.  We crafted the wraparound segment first (Heather in Hell), knowing that we wanted to take a different approach with this anthology.  Most anthologies have a recurring theme, plot thread or character tying the segments together, but we wanted a strong primary storyline. Bootytown Bloodbath starts the anthology when a superfan thinks he has won the opportunity to star in a scene with his favorite streaming adult content creator.  But instead of the naughty adventure of his dreams, he finds he’s been lured into an underground livestream snuff film. This segment ends abruptly in the middle of a wildly gruesome kill as an error message pops up onscreen.  We pull out to see it’s a plot device that sets up Heather from Hell; our wraparound segment.  A storm has knocked out the internet. With no way to stream movies and no physical media, a group of horror fanatics and an uninvited goth girl (the titular Heather) are forced to tell tales of terror around the campfire.  These stories are all structured as the partygoers describing their ideal horror movie.  So each story was shot with different equipment and varying crews to differentiate the look and feel of each segment. Pizza Bites starts like a teen sex comedy from the 80s, then takes a dark twist when a werewolf gets involved. Ding Dong Dead is a period piece set in the 80s with a group of teenage metalheads pranking their friend with deadly consequences.  We shot this one with lenses from the 1960s to really give it a retro feel. Pervasion is a gritty 90s psychological thriller.  Tenants in an apartment complex suspect their new neighbor of being a sex offender, so they sneak their way into his apartment only to learn an even darker secret. Coyote is a grindhouse bloodfest with a practical puppet hunting down stoned hikers. Unable to Comply is a sci-fi horror tale of man vs. AI. Using classified alien technology, a civilian cargo ship’s Engineer travels back in time to prevent his crew from being killed by an invisible, Predator-like entity.  When the tech malfunctions, the Engineer becomes the murderous entity he was trying to stop. Ixchel (pronounced Ee-shul) is Heather’s adolescent origin story where she learns she has to make the ultimate sacrifice to tap into her true destiny as a succubus. And this takes us back to the wraparounds where Heather has manipulated the guys into helping her open a portal to hell, prompting an epic finale with demons, a knob goblin and a cauldron full of baby batter.

Why did you want to go the horror/comedy route with Party of Darkness? 

My first two features were comedy, so that’s my comfort zone.  My last feature was a psychological thriller called Like Dogs.  I discovered I really liked exploring the darker side of storytelling, and when it comes down to it, comedy and horror are similar in how you elicit a response from the audience. We also have Justin Armao and Andy Cauble, the team behind the Bloodsucka Jones movies directing segments in Party of Darkness.  They’ve really tapped into what makes horror/comedy work.  Those BSJ movies have a dedicated cult following.  Alan Maxson, along with his brother Jason, who co-wrote and co-directed the Coyote segment, have a strong background in creature features.  Alan is a world renowned creature actor, and really has a deep love for those types of movies.  Matt Leal, Alexys Paonessa and Matt Festle, also have a really strong background in horror/thriller movies.  To make this a true collaboration and create an environment where literally any story we put into it “works” within the structure of the wraparound, we had to start it off with some less-than-serious segments so we let the audience know it’s okay to laugh and have fun with this.  We didn’t want it to feel like it was taking itself too seriously.  The reaction of the partygoers in between segments is always going to help set the tone, or give you the chance to breathe and laugh a little before we jump into the next one.

What were some of your biggest challenges when it came to special effects? 

Practical effects are expensive, and they often fail! I don’t think the average horror movie fan realizes that. You’d think it’s the cheaper option, but it’s not, which is why you see so many films and TV series’ relying heavily on CGI these days.  Our approach to the bloody scenes and the kills were to keep it as traditional as possible.  Puppets, blood-pumps, blood-cannons, prosthetics and some good old forced-perspective camera tricks.  But at the end of the day, we will still be relying on some CGI to enhance the practical effects we shot on-set.  Unable to Comply, the sci-fi segment, on the other hand is the most CG-dependent story in the anthology because it’s set in space. Although we have a big, wonderful practical spaceship set, we do have exterior shots, and windows looking into space. Plus our monster has stealth tech like The Predator, so VFX is a must.  A real treat for me was designing the prosthetics and kill rigs for the Bootytown Bloodbath segment.  Growing up reading Fangoria magazine, I always dreamt of designing creatures and gory stuff.  It’s probably the most twisted kill in the whole movie and we only had the materials to do it once, so it had to work the first time, and thankfully it did.  We shot it with 3 cameras, and it turned out exactly how I hoped it would.  

A real treat for me was designing the prosthetics and kill rigs for the Bootytown Bloodbath segment. Growing up reading Fangoria magazine, I always dreamt of designing creatures and gory stuff. It’s probably the most twisted kill in the whole movie.

You have an Indiegogo campaign currently running for Party of Darkness to get an extra 10% of funding that’s needed. Tell us about the perks horror fans can receive for supporting this indie film.

It turns out anthologies are expensive to make!  More than traditional narrative films, because in this case we have 8 sets of actors, crews, locations, wardrobe and production design.  The cost of permits and location fees alone is absolutely staggering.  We were able to wrap production successfully, but our Indiegogo campaign now is to help us get to the finish line of post production.  In the grand scheme of things, the movie is 90% complete.  But things like licensing music, composing score, VFX, and 5.1 sound mixing isn’t cheap.  We are hoping this campaign will cover the majority of the costs of post production, plus put a dent in the debt I had to go into financing this film out-of-pocket!  We have lots of fun perks! Of course there is physical media: signed DVDs and Blu-rays. T-shirts, signed screen-used clap slates, signed posters, and little stuff like buttons and stickers. There are digital downloads of the movie and the epic theme song.  We have screen-used props and wardrobe items, and a piece of the spaceship set signed by Glenn Plummer and Felissa Rose. There are opportunities to feature your voice in the movie, or remotely record a roll that appears on a TV screen.  People can even have their song or a short section of their movie featured within Party of Darkness.  But the biggest perks are called “Sponsor a Segment”.  Here a backer can become an Executive Producer of the segment of their choice and they’ll get screen-used hero props or wardrobe pieces, tickets to the premiere and tons of other signed items from the list above.  We even have Producer credits available at lower price-points that don’t include all the physical swag for the folks that believe in this movie and want to join the Party of Darkness.

Learn more about the Party of Darkness Indiegogo campaign and follow them on Instagram, Facebook and Youtube.

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