MOUNT VERNON — Hidden deep in the countryside of Knox County, Ray Basham spent his weekend directing his first feature film, “Hillbilly Bob Zombie.”
Basham, an award-winning artist with a passion for the horror-influenced works, became interested in horror flicks after attending horror conventions to help sell his artwork.
“I started going to horror conventions because I’ve been an artist all my life,” Basham said. “Actually, I am an award-winning artist doing pen and ink illustrations. I go to conventions and start selling my artwork and start meeting with independent film producers. I’ve been in about 12 independent films now and I was an extra in ‘I Am Legend’ with Will Smith.”
As the film takes place in the hills at the home of a hillbilly family, the set requires nothing more than a two-room shack, a moonshine still and a container for hazardous materials. It is appropriately furnished for a one-room home, open at the rear to film the action.
The director, set builder, makeup man, cameraman and producer had it all set to start filming Friday night. Then the battery in the digital camcorder was dead.
It wasn’t an auspicious start.
Basham is the one-man movie production company; the filming is taking place in a field behind his home. The title of the move is “Hillbilly Bob Zombie.” It is about a hillbilly drinking party where the participants drink a toxic mixture of alcohol that turns them into zombies.
Prior to the start of filming on Friday night, Basham had already done a lot of preliminary work needed to get the production going. In addition to building the set, he wrote the script and hired a few actors.
One actress is Brenna Lee Roth, who said she played a technician for two years in “CSI Miami,” for which she won an Emmy. She is to play the hillbilly mother. Sal Lizard is a rotund and bearded actor, and stand-up comic, whose day job is working for an electrical company. That expertise was to come in handy when the filming started Friday night.
Three other actors — Scott Swick, Andy Konner and Stan Shane, all of Mount Vernon — pitched in to cut a door between the living room and bedroom. Later Basham was to have auditions for the part of a son in the family. Altogether, Basham said, there are 25 actors in his production.
The Mount Vernon musical group, Elixir, consisting of Mike and Chris Petee and Gerry Rensel, play the part of a drunken hillbilly band.
On Friday night, after a lot of pulling things together, the production became serious. Basham broke out his makeup kit, dabbing fake blood and other zombie makeup, to turn the members of Elixir into, well, zombies. In the curious world of film making, the production doesn’t always start at the beginning and follow the story to the end. In this case, the last scene of the movie is the zombie band playing outside the front of the hillbilly cabin.
When the group first tried to start filming, Basham went to his house for another battery, but came up empty. Lizard, the electrical actor, has a van wired for sound. He pulled the van down to the camera and plugged the wire extension into an outlet in the engine compartment and presto, juice to the camera. The zombie band then took up Basham’s call for action and did its thing.
Basham expects filming will take up to 30 days. Putting all the scenes together will take probably six weeks, he said. He has a $5,000 budget set for the production.
While this is Basham’s first attempt at film making, he was involved in a movie called “Abe’s Tomb,” which appeared on Chiller TV, a horror flick network. Basham said it was first place in the hearts of viewers, but got bad reviews.
“Hillbilly Bob Zombie” will probably never make it to mainstream cinema, but Basham expects it to make it to film festivals throughout the country.
“I’ve been talking to some distributors already, through a friend of mine, and hopefully we’ll be able to do the film festival route and in about a year and a half or two years, it will be on store shelves,” Basham said.
