June 4: THE DISTURBED meet “Monstors” Down Under

THE DISTURBED, the Aussie zombie movie we last reported on here, has spun off a genre-centric music video for Adelaide-based horrorcore metal rapper KidCrusher, titled “Meet the Monstors,” that lensed a few Saturday nights ago (see more pics below). The location was the former Aradale Mental Hospital in Ararat, Victoria. A sprawling set of grand Victorian buildings, Aradale had been left to decay for some 20 years until recently being spied by DISTURBED filmmaker Daniel Armstrong. It’s allegedly one of the most haunted places in Australia, and several of the crew agree. Standing on a cold dark night in a morgue littered with body parts supplied by makeup FX maestro Justin Dix, it was hard to deny the atmosphere.

Armstrong’s fascination for the location led him to make it THE DISTURBED’s setting. After he completed several drafts of the script, the filmmaker and his Strongman Pictures constructed a trailer (visible at the project’s official website) that caught the attention of horror fan KidCrusher, who in turn based “Meet The Monstors” on the film’s character Snake. The artist is not averse to including music and dialogue samples from his favorite fright films, nor is he shy about his Insane Clown Posse-meets-Dario Argento influences. His latest disc TORMENTED MUTATION will have many listeners racking their brains regarding the sources of many of his samples. The “Monstors” clip stars the rapper as Snake, and also prominently features filmmaker Efisia Fele as his ghoulish nemesis.

While the Kid endured his own makeup session to apply the appropriate bruising and bleeding (and ran around shirtless for most of the night), it was nothing compared to Fele, who initially spent five hours in the chair as Dix and crew turned her into a full-blown ghoul. With half a bodysuit on and staples firmly embedded in her head, she became an alluring yet revolting nightmare vision, moving like a twisted freak from a J-horror epic. Fele, a South African out of Italy who has spent several years living in Melbourne, has been making noise with her own Outback horror project LOST NOT FOUND (which we broke the news about here), and recently joined the cast of the soon-to-be-lensed U.S. indie feature DEATH WALKS THE STREETS (see its MySpace page here).

In between shots conducted at a very fast pace, Armstrong related his theory that forms the basis for THE DISTURBED: “Procedures like the lobotomy effectively turn a mental patient into a zombie. A mental patient has problems with emotional control, so you lobotomize them and it takes away those problems. This makes it perfect for setting a zombie film in that environment.” For updates on the production status of THE DISTURBED and interrelated projects, go to the site linked above and its MySpace page. For more on KidCrusher’s fear-friendly work and news about the “Meet The Monstors” video, check out his own MySpace page. —Michael Helms

http://www.fangoria.com/
http://www.fangoria.com/news_article.php?id=4374
http://www.kidcrusher.com/
http://www.strongmanpictures.com/