Post-Production is complete!
The movie is currently in submission with a number of festivals nationwide.
Stay tuned to learn how to see it.
The concept for DEATHTRIP! first happened on the set of my short GIRL FROM ICELAND (2014) in Pensacola, FL. Special effects makeup artist Lemme Crews and I were name-dropping as much horror criteria as we could when we suddenly realized there were hardly a handful of ‘melt movies.’
I had already written a fan-treatment sequel to BLUE SUNSHINE (1977) involving a cocaine addict that convinces himself of a conspiracy involving MDMA overdoses from the 1990s. So, I kept the ecstasy and political conspiracy elements, but changed the protagonist to a straight-edge female journalist and worked in body-melting.
I finished writing the first draft while living in Chicago, but my relocation to New Orleans in 2015 warranted a ‘fish-out-of-water’ rewrite for the protagonist. Within the year I self-financed a proof of concept which I shot with my Florida collaborators over two long nights. The next planned step was to attract investors and finance a feature version: I figured that’s how Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell, and Rob Tapert turned their short WITHIN THE WOODS into THE EVIL DEAD (1981), so why not?
That didn’t quite work out so easily. We played a few festivals in Louisiana, Florida, and Tennessee and still managed to yield no financial backing. So, I decided to do it myself with no money. We shot on weekends and recruited cast members along the way. The immediate inspirations were maniacs from the 1970s like Richard Elfman (FORBIDDEN ZONE) and David Lynch (ERASERHEAD) who did the very same thing to launch their filmmaking careers. Along the way I began to find contemporary inspiration with no-budget features like Heidi Moore’s DOLLY DEADLY and Benjamin Combes’ COMMANDO NINJA as the movie began to grow from available resources.
We shot sixty days over five years with thirty-eight locations and sixty-six cast members. We are finally fished and ready to show the world.
So, what is a melt movie? Well, I think it’s pretty obvious: a movie where people melt.
I suppose it all started with THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN (1977) - which was an early Rick Baker gig by the way - and then really didn’t become a genre per se until the mid-eighties with Larry Cohen’s killer yogurt satire THE STUFF (1985), the NYC wino opus STREET TRASH (1987), Chuck Russell’s remake of THE BLOB (1988), and a nasty little indie called SLIME CITY (1988). There’s also an Australian honorable mention, aptly-titled BODY MELT (1993) which incorporates STREET TRASH’s sneaky contagion element with the health craze silliness of THE STUFF.
If the 1950s sci-fi alien genre was a response to the cold war, then we can view the 1970s body horror genre (and it’s baby brother the melt movie) as a response to the fluidity of cultural norms of the time. The changing sixties lead to the turbulent seventies and a newfound conservatism took shape in the eighties. What better representation for the degradation and reconfiguration of the body politic than an ill shaped, depleting physical form? But of course, I don’t subscribe to any of those notions. I simply wanted to make a genre picture because it would be fun and entertaining.
Josh Stephenson is an American cinephile based out of New Orleans, LA. He is a graduate of the University of Florida and Columbia College Chicago.