A meteor lands in Jamestown California in 1849 during the gold rush. It is found by miners who release it's spoors which turn the population into blood thirsty mutants.

We caught up with writer/director, Rene Perez, to talk about The Dead and the Damned.

Horror News Network: How did you come up with the concept of The Dead and the Damned?

Rene Perez: The most conceptual part of the Dead and the Damned is the mixing of the genre's. I knew that every other low budget film crew out there was filming a zombie movie so I had to find a way to make us stand apart from everyone else. But that wasn't the only reason. Setting a zombie movie in the wild west was very energizing for me. Artistically. I said to myself, a western/ zombie movie cannot be funny, it cannot be campy. It's got to be scary and it's got to hit hard. And that's what we set out to do.

Horror News Network: Can you talk a bit about the main three cast members and what made them perfect for their roles?

Rene Perez: The actors were great collaborators. I had known the cowboy (David Lockhart) for a few years. He's has the look of a leading man and he's able to deliver lines in a way that draws you in. His character in the story is a simple man who's caught in a complicated situation which become even more complicated with the sudden life and death struggle against the zombie's. So I needed an actor who could handle all of those things, and he did. Powerfully.

Camille Montgomery is our leading lady and she has the ability to make everything she does seem natural. That's the greatest thing I can hope to get from an actor. It's unusual to find an actress who's beautiful and talented. We were lucky to discover her.

Our Apache Indian was played by Rick Mora who is a real life Apache Indian. Another stroke of luck for us. He gave us a very visceral performance. Rick has a great physicality and it came through in everything he did, from his calmest moments to the vicious slaughtering of zombie's. I can't say enough good things about them.

A bit of trivia about their names in the movie: The Cowboy, "Mortimer" is named after Lee Van Cleefs character in one of the best westerns ever made called "For a few Dollars more". The beautiful girl, "Rhiannon" is named after a famous Fleetwood Mac song and the Indian, "Brother Wolf" is named after a song by The Cult.

Horror News Network: What can our readers expect in terms of blood and guts?

Rene Perez: Gallons of blood, lots of guts, legs, arms, a heart, a head and the list goes on. The humans took a lot of punishment from the zombie's in this movie. But the gore is just one layer of the horror in our movie. Anyone can put a gory prop in front of a camera. We went out of our way to make sure that the gore was accompanied by suspense and terror. And it's not just the zombie's creating the carnage, our people fight back. We have an apache warrior and a gun slinging cowboy. These guys do some heavy damage to the zombie's. Our hero's are covered in green zombie blood by the end of the movie.

Horror News Network: Can you talk a bit about the special effects in the movie?

Rene Perez: We used CGI effects and practical special effects. I prefer to use non-computer effects where ever I can and I think we have a great mix of those two arts in this movie.

Horror News Network: What did you find to be the most challenging thing about creating this movie?

Rene Perez: Working with a super small budget creates a lot of limitations. It affects everything from crew size, to rehearsal time to make up to locations to effects to absolutely everything. Everything except creativity. We had 30 thousand dollars to make this movie happen. They say that art thrives from limitations and we thrived on this movie. We got creative in ways that we hadn't even imagined. Out of necessity. For example, the old Star Wars movie's had a lot of limitations, so they had to get creative. The new Star Wars movie's had no limitations other than creativity. I'm would never compare us to Star Wars. What I'm comparing is the tactic that they used in the originals. It's the same approach we took on the dead and the Damned. Movie's are art. Art doesn't need pre-visualization, or schematics, or people sitting around tables planning things out on computers. It needs creativity. Creativity can be achieved at any budget.

Horror News Network: Where can our readers find out more about The Dead and the Damned?

Rene Perez: They can go to idicentertainment.com, and more importantly they can rent the movie at blockbuster, or buy it at Best Buy or Wal*Mart or even on 'video on demand' if they don't want to leave the house. The soundtrack is available on iTunes. We also have a Facebook page with some behind the scene's video's.

Horror News Network: In closing, what would you like to say about The Dead and the Damned?

Rene Perez: I think the most important thing about the Dead and the Damned is that it was made for the audience. A lot of low budget movie's try their best and then hope that the audience will be forgiving of any short comings. We didn't approach the Dead and the Damned in that way. We approached it knowing that people wanted to be scared and entertained and that they would give us no mercy or pity because of our low budget. We what would be demanded of a zombie / western regardless of the size of the budget. People want to be entertained, so it was our duty to rock the house in the wild west.

Horror News Network: Thank you for your time, Rene. Comment on this interview here.

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Published on: 2011-07-14 (745 reads)