This weekend saw the annual Pigeon Shrine FrightFest Halloween event take place at Cineworld Leicester Square. Running from Friday evening and all of Saturday, the mini-festival hosted nine UK-debut feature films. Ryan Smith and Tyler Foreman’s Eldritch, USA kicked off Saturday’s festivities with a rousing comedy zombie musical. The film started the day off gently with its tale of two brothers torn apart by jealousy and death, who reconnect over resurrection and rituals. Eldritch, USA played well to the FrightFest crowd, and after the screening, THN were able to snatch a few moments with co-director Ryan Smith:
How is it working as a directing duo?
It’s nice to have somebody beside you to lean on a little bit. Particularly since this is my first feature, it was nice to have somebody I could lean into. Especially with how diverse Eldritch is, as far as the different genres that came together, you kind of had to have somebody who was looking at one part while somebody else was looking at the other part, just to make sure you didn’t miss anything. So Tyler had a close relationship with our cinematographer David Watson, and so he and Tyler work really well together. They would sort the lights and stuff, whereas I would focus more on the people and making sure the choreographer was doing their job.
This isn’t an easy first feature, you’re juggling a lot of tones and themes…
I think I just wanted to do something that would stand out. I already knew going into it that it was going to be difficult. A lot of people actually tried to convince me not to. But it was the story I wanted to tell, and it was the story that I had written out. And so we just decided to go forward with it.
How do you make a zombie musical?
So one of the things I really wanted to do was to lean into the music; that had to be part of the story. I’ve seen so many musicals where something will happen, and then the person will sing about what just happened. Whereas I wanted to do something where the music actually moved the story forward. So I made sure that as I was writing I was like, “okay, here’s where the songs are going to start. This is what they’re going to sing about” and then from that point on the story continues from there.
I worked with Nathan Hurley quite a bit. He is the lead singer for a band called Fox Royale – they actually just did a European tour. I would do that story bit and then he and I would get together and discuss the theme. I’d say “hey, this is what the song needs to be about,” and once we came to an agreement, he would go off and draft the melody and the lyrics and come back and say, “how does this sound” and I’d give him some tweaks and we’d finalise it. Then when it was all done, I would have a scratch recording of just him playing the guitar and I had the actors come and sing with it at my house. Then we gave it all to our producer Davis Drake who went through and finalised all the music.
Zombies have been done to death in terms of design; how did you go about creating yours?
We intentionally wanted to lean into just that, aside from his eyes; nobody noticed that his skin was obviously turning more and more pale, and that he had veins coming off his neck. We just wanted to let it be the traditional George A. Romero zombies, just have fun with that. In the original script, actually what I wanted to do was more Village of the Damned. I wanted all of the people who are undead to have white hair, and from a budgetary standpoint we just could not get fifty wigs. So we decided to go with just the pasty makeup.
We’re talking immediately after the FrightFest Halloween screening; how has the reaction been?
It’s been positive. A lot of people came up afterwards; they liked the music, they liked the comedy that was in it. Just sitting in the room, they were laughing at the right spot. So as far as I can tell, it was well received.
For those that missed it, they can catch it as part of the SoHome Horror Festival. Why should people take a chance on Eldritch USA?
It’s different. It is a very different approach to horror. I would almost say – and horror people probably don’t want to hear this – but I would say it’s probably a musical and a comedy first, and it just has horror elements to it. But it’s a fun story. It’s something where, if you were to go to a Broadway musical that had zombies and blood and guts, that’s what you’re in store for. And it’s just a fun film.
Beetlejuice was the same, it’s a comedy film first, but has been adopted by the horror community.
Yeah, and it’s also for people who like Lovecraft. I tried to cram as many lovecraftian inferences in it as I could. So there’s artefacts, there’s locations, I think even my car is used a lot in there, and my licence plate says Lovecraft on it. So Lovecraft is throughout the film.
And Stephen King. There’s a whole song dedicated to him. Who is the Stephen King fan?
Me! That’s the one song that I did write. I said I want to have a song where the best friend just references tons of Stephen King books and films in an effort to convince his friend not to do this thing, and his friend just knows those are fake. It’s not real, but maybe it is…
Eldritch, USA screened at Pigeon Shrine FrightFest Halloween. You can read our review here. Eldritch, USA will next screen as part of Soho Horror’s virtual festival, SoHome Horror. Tickets can be purchased here.
