The After Party Massacre centers around a mysterious female fan - Scarlett - who attends a live performance by the metal bands Incantation and Soulless. At this show - Scarlett soon found herself thrown into the dark depths of torture and depravity showing what happens when you push - an already damaged mind - too far.

During this show - Scarlett encounters a forcibly rough fan that had followed her into an empty corner of the venue. During this altercation she has flashbacks of a dark past and it transforms her into a bloodthirsty killer on a mission to kill her attacker plus anyone and everyone else in her way (friend - fan and foe alike) until only a pile of bodies is left within this bloody massacre.

We caught up with director, Kristoff Bates, to talk about After Party Massacre.

Horror News Network:  "After Party Massacre" centers around the after party of a metal concert. Metal music and horror imagery have been linked since the beginning of the metal genre.  They're like peanut butter and chocolate.  Tell us about the inspiration to intertwine the plot of the film around a metal concert?

Kristoff Bates: Well this was the easiest part of the movie for us hahah! Kyle and I both really like movies that utilize the atmosphere of metal music within the movie setting the moods of the scenes.

Movies like Night of the Demons 2 (who use Morbid Angel), Nightstalker (with a bunch of death metal bands), Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3 (Laaz Rocket, Death Angel, etc) and even the classic Trick Or Treat movie really were a perfect match for Metal and Gore to go together. Even the Saw movies used a bit of metal/industrial (Pitbull Daycare, Front Line Assembly, Mushroomhead, Ventana, etc) as part of their soundscape to help push the movie just a bit farther.

With Kyle being a part of the death metal scene for years with Incantation and Acheron, it was within our first ideas to navigate a slasher around the band directly or the idea of it happening at a show - so the rest was easy to work with, or so we thought hahah!

But once we started writing the movie, we got in touch with a bunch of our friends in the bands involved (16volt, Asphyx, Cardiac Arrest, Cyanotic, Denial Fiend, Estuary, Gravehill, Soulless, Ventana, etc) and started working with them in getting our soundtrack and movie sound scape started.

Ibex Moon Records also worked on a CD soundtrack with 12 exclusive tracks from bands on their roster (including new tracks from Incantation, Denial Fiend, Cardiac Arrest, etc) that went well with the After Party Massacre story line and release as well!

Horror News Network:  Unlike many "slashers," your killer Scarlett has a back story.  Give our readers a bit of insight on her story and the trigger to go on her brutal spree?

Kristoff Bates: Scarlett is a quiet and innocent girl, with a hellish past of mental, verbal, physical and sexual abuse that she's just kept inside for too long. She's definitely the explosive type of personality that once you push that button, you'd better watch out!

It appears that her religious upbringing was the worst part of this reason for her wrath. There was a priest that she had encounters with who verbally, physically and sexually abused her at a younger age - which she had just kept in until she was pushed too far and just exploded in to a bloody rampage.

Not that any location is good for such a rampage, but with the amount of people there and the quick/easy availability of the tools, sex toys and anything else she could massacre people with - this definitely made for a more interesting story line for her killing spree as well.

However as this is also not a premeditated killing spree, you might wonder how does she escape or survive? Well I guess you'll just have to watch to find out!

Horror News Network: In your opinion, what sets Scarlett apart from most other horror villains?

Kristoff Bates: She, being a female killer, is already a bit of a twist as most of the horror villians are either very masculine male figures or some that just are unable to die and keep coming back regardless of how many times you try to dispose of them.

But this act was also not something premeditated. She was at the show with friends and was just hanging out until she was forced into a situation that just unlocked what was hidden within her head and she just justified all of her pent up aggression and rage on any and everyone within her way.

Usually movies like this have some premeditation of how or what is supposed to happen - until it all goes to hell and then it's improvised. With Scarlett, it's all improvised as she uses anything in arms reach to dispose of her victims. Be it duct taping someone to a chair and sawing off limbs, finding a vibrator and sledgehammering it into someones head, slitting throats with a box cutter, beating someone to death with a double ended dildo - she is just creative and menacing with her ways of killing.

Horror News Network: There's enough blood and gore to satisfy any horror fan. Some of the means by which Scarlett attacks her victims is pretty insane (I don't want to give away too much, people need to see some of them for themselves). How did you guys come up with some of that?

Kristoff Bates: Hahaha well it looks like I just did! But really it was something that we both had thought about and as the locations changed (we ended up losing our first location after the "glory hole" scene - the first day heh) we had to quickly adjust to the new location and some of these were thought up a bit quickly within the new location.

The sex toy double kill scene, I roughly had in mind for several years after working with Rob Rotten on the Texas Vibrator Massacre (Metro Video) and from there Kyle and I had thought up a few other means of demise with adding in some power and hand tools that quickly formed within our thought process from there.

Horror News Network: You definitely keep it real in the film with a no holds barred approach to the kill scenes and the sex.  Do you think that's an advantage of making a film independently?

Kristoff Bates: We approached After Party Massacre differently than major movie companies do (more so now with all of the remakes) - we wanted to make something that was very intense - violent and sexual - and cater this movie to those that like a bit more intense gore and sex in their faces without worrying about "how do we make this more store accessible?" to get more sales.

But as you mention, we definitely went into this with a no holds (or holes) barred approach and went with what we wanted to do with it (within legal reason obviously) to make it a violent splatter fest with a bit of sex mixed in.

Which is definitely an advantage of independent film making, in that (within legal reason) you can shoot whatever comes in to your head and put it out there.

However the largest downfalls are $$, time, scheduling and reliability of every one involved. Which is why it took us almost two years, from writing to replication, to get this out there.

Between affording the location/props, getting everyone's schedules together, finding time at the location (as we were shooting at an active music venue with 1-3 open days a month to shoot) and along with my/Kyle's time on the road it made production very difficult to work with.

It was definitely 10x more time and money than we originally expected to put in to it, so for those reading this that want to get in to film making, definitely set as much time and $$ aside as you can as it will take over your life and wallets once you dive in hahah!

With our next release (currently untitled), we already have a bit more organized approach to write a deeper story line, make scheduling work a bit easier - while delivering even more (and more creative) sex and gore to make it a more powerful release.

Once we have a bit more on that (approx Feb/Mar) we'll let you know a bit more as well. :)

Horror News Network: A few scenes in the film are actually pretty funny.I think at one point I see a man dressed in a banana costume walking through a sea of naked chicks.  Can you talk about mixing  humor throughout the film?

Kristoff Bates: Actually, that guy was not part of the original script hahha! We were shooting the party scene upstairs and there was a show at the venue going on downstairs - so I went down there to grab a few extras and my friend was already there in the banana suit. Not sure why he was in a banana suit already, but I wasn't one to ask hahaha!

So I brought him upstairs and just let the party take its course as he walked through the crowd and ended up drunk before he left to go back to the other show. That part was actually just spontaneity working in our favor hahaha!

Which is a lot of what happened within After Party Massacre, esp with the extras that came out to the shows/parties - we just kept rolling footage until we could piece it together to make it work! :)

As far as some of the other parts, we wanted to keep the movie serious enough for the story line aspect - but as this is as live show, and that (more so) Kyle and I have spent many years on the road with bands/tours/etc that we wanted to keep a bit of humor in it as well to help accent the story a bit.

Movies like Hatchet (I more than II) Doghouse, Shaun of the Dead, anything Troma, etc are amazing at showcasing one-liners/humor and gore in the same release. So we wanted to go along those lines to keep it funny, but not let humor be the main drive for the movie. We definitely have more ideas in store for the next release and I'm sure (with the locations we have picked so far) that spontaneity will also help with this one as well haha!

Horror News Network:  As a follow up to the last question, you can tell by watching everyone had fun making the movie.  What was it like on the set?  How long did it take to film?

Kristoff Bates: Too long hahah!

It was definitely a fun time to do all of this and every one involved had lots of fun with it.

As we sometimes had a month space between shoots at times, we had a huge rotating cast of extras. But it seemed that every one had fun within the filming experience and we also made a ton of new friends for our next project as well as we definitely had a motley crew as a part of this one!

Plus, as I did all the editing as well, I also really enjoyed working on this. I learned so much with the software we were working with (and also the post-production/dvd production) and definitely will be looking forward to more editing time with this new one to showcase a few new tricks I've learned as well.

If we can cut the time down (again it took us almost 2 years from writing to replication) Kyle and I won't burn out on it as much as we did towards the end as we were both involved in this so much with the music releases, marketing and also promoting it on the road with our different projects.

But I definitely had fun with this movie, and sure with any release (more so the first few that you learn so much on) that you could shoot/edit/showcase things differently for a different scene/outcome once you look back on it - but overall we're pretty happy with the outcome and that we are already looking to create more from here!

Horror News Network:  What else would you like to add about "After Party Massacre"?  Where can people get a copy?

Kristoff Bates: Well if you've read this far of the description and interview - then we're pretty sure the After Party Massacre is for you hahah!

Filled with blood, sex and metal - the After Party Massacre is not for the faint of heart. Made by horror fans for horror fans we definitely had fun with this release and we hope that you enjoy it as well!

We have the DVD, CD soundtrack and limited edition bloodplatter 7 inch (with tracks from Incantation/Denial Fiend) available at http://horrormerch.com/afterparty-massacre/

Best Buy and Amazon have both the DVD and CD (direct links can be found at http://afterpartymassacre.com/store.shtml) and also many of the stores that deal mostly in underground/independent movies or death metal music do as well.

But thanks again for the interview and we look forward to giving you a bit more of a scoop once we start shooting our next horror endeavor in the spring! :)

Horror News Network:  Thanks for your time, Kristoff! Have a comment? Post it here.

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Published on: 2011-12-05 (251 reads)