As a young child, Steve Balderson watched television with his mom, and one night, he saw a wedding interrupted by a militia that killed a lot of the wedding guests. Later, Balderson realized it was the Moldavian wedding massacre that was a cliffhanger-finale for the prime-time, soap opera Dynasty. Balderson recorded it on VHS and played it over and over again. He liked the melodrama and the violence, the cat-fights involving Joan Collins and so forth.
His co-writer and co-director for his latest project Hell Town is Elizabeth Spear whom he met at the Victoria Texas Independent Film Festival in early 2013. Spear was a fan of the NBC soap opera Passions, which had crazy intersex and incestuous story lines. Balderson and Spear bonded over their mutual appreciation for the ridiculousness in these shows. She flew to his home in Kansas later that year, so they could start writing the script for Hell Town, which would ultimately be a love letter and spoof of Dynasty and Passions.
The two knew it would be a serial killer story line, a whodunit as it were, but soap operas are all about dueling families. In Dynasty, there were the Carrington family and the Colby family. Here, Balderson came up with the Gable family and the Manly family. One was relatively wealthy and the other was from the wrong side of the tracks. Within each family, there are several archetypes that Balderson uses. As evidenced in the movie’s trailer, the archetypes are the Prom Queen, the Outsider, the Femme Fatale, the Femme [boy], the Outlaw, the Vixen, the Fraud, the Traitor, the Jock and the Viper.
The movie is structured as if you’re binge-watching a TV show like Dynasty. Except, the episodes aren’t consecutive. They’re disjointed. Even though the movie was accepted at festivals and won awards, Balderson said festival programmers were confused over the episodic nature of the movie. However, it wasn’t until Balderson met Canadian scream queen Debbie Rochon that he was inspired to change the structure slightly adding Rochon as a direct-to-camera host or buffer between the episodes. Rochon came late in the process. Initial filming began in May 2014, but her scenes weren’t shot until January 2016. As I noted in my review, Rochon’s role ultimately becomes like Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.
Balderson had been directing films since his debut Pep Squad (1998). For over 20 years, he’s worked with many actors, none more frequently than Pleasant Gehman who has appeared in a half-dozen of Balderson’s films. A few, if not most of the other actors were ones Balderson had worked with before. One of whom was Ben Windholz, an actor whom Balderson described as Anthony Perkins meets Christian Bale. The two young actors playing the potential, same-sex couple were Blake Cordell and Owen Lawless. Balderson had never met them. Both gave great, comedic performances, but they were relatively new actors.
Balderson choose them by having the young actors audition through video. He narrowed down the actors to five and simply had them record themselves doing improvisation as their characters on video and send it to him. He says it’s more comfortable for the actors.
Balderson moved to Los Angeles permanently in February where he’s now based, but he shot this movie for two weeks in Kansas. He says filming in his home state as opposed to L.A. is better. He didn’t need to pay for permits and borrowing locations from friends kept the budget low.
Because he and Spears had planned and fully collaborated before filming began, the shoot itself went rather smoothly. The only challenge was the special effects. Aside from being a soap opera spoof, it’s also a horror spoof or horror-comedy. As such, the murders are the centerpieces, and Balderson loves blood and gore, so implementing the effects in that regard were the only real challenges.
He edited the movie on Adobe Premiere Pro. He would send rough cuts to Spears who would give notes or make adjustments. The final version was only 10 minutes less than the initial, rough cut. Most if not practically all that was scripted made it to the final version.
Hell Town will be available on VOD, including iTunes, Amazon and Google Play, on August 23.
For more information, go to http://www.dikenga.com/#!helltown/cvd2
