Blog of the Living Dead have been quietly following the exploits of this little Rom-Zom-Com by Ontario's Thunder Bay native Casey Walker back in February. You can read this first post HERE.
Well, fundraising aside, the movie is heading out for distribution.
And here is the scoop...
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Casey Walker's first movie - an offbeat little number called A Little Bit Zombie - is something he calls a rom-com-zom, a romantic comedy with some zombie in it. It's a little gross, a lot funny and only slightly Canadian.
"We consciously did not set out to make a Canadian film," said Walker. "There's a reason we can't compete on the international stage.
And we didn't want to do that. We know we're a pulpy, pop-culture kind of film, and to not embrace that would have been ridiculous."
Shot for $2 million in Sudbury, Ont., A Little Bit Zombie wears its pulpy pop proudly. It's the story of a nice, polite young man - that's the Canadian part - who is bitten by a zombie mosquito and becomes, well, a little bit zombie. He must balance his hunger for the brains of living creatures with his desire to please his fiancée, a bridezilla type who is planning a perfect wedding and doesn't want her groom to become one of the walking dead and ruin everything.
Just to complete the picture, they've gone away for the weekend with another couple to that quintessential horror locale, a cabin in the woods. A couple of zombiehunters, including Stephen McHattie, the best known of the cast members, are on their trail.
A Little Bit Zombie isn't your typical homegrown fare, and it didn't get to the screen in the typical way.
Walker, 36, is a TV director (he made the children's show The Adrenalin Project) who was at a friend's birthday party a few years ago, when someone said there was a man he had to meet, someone who had an idea for a movie.
"That always happens. Most of the time it's, 'Oh, groan, here it comes,' " Walker said by phone from Toronto. "But this was really funny: 'Here's what happens when a guy gets bit by a zombie mosquito: He becomes a little bit zombie.' "
The man with the idea was Christopher Bond, co-writer of Evil Dead: The Musical, the rock show based on the low-budget horror film. He and the other co-writer, Trevor Martin, had come up with the zombie-mosquito idea, and they joined forces with Walker.
It took three years and a day for filming to start. Part of the delay was in raising funds, which Walker accomplished partly through what he says was the world's first crowd-sourcing site, Mymilliondollarmovie.com.
In the days before Facebook was available to the public, he started a website offering to sell frames of his upcoming film for $10 each. The story got picked up by an English newspaper, and soon he was getting offers from around the world. By the end, he sold $200,000 worth of frames to people in 27 countries. (Once the film pays for its costs, they will get their $10 back. Any profits will be given to an environmental charity of their choice.)
Walker loved making the film, partly because, after working in TV, he got to be in charge for a change. "I didn't answer to anybody. I was the end of the line, which is rare, because usually, I'm fighting for my ideas and trying to convince people this is better. In TV, a lot of times, you just abandon it."
He also loves sitting in the theatre and watching it. A Little Bit Zombie won several awards at festivals - including best dark comedy at the Houston International Film Festival - and Walker says the laughs are constant. Most of the humour is of the slapstick variety, but he said he put in some extra laughs that are mostly visible on second or third viewing.
Fanboys can also watch for homages to other horror films. "I love the genre to death, pardon the pun," Walker said. "It was a chance for me to play and bring a few original things to the genre, but also pay homage to things that really influenced me, and some stuff that scared the s- out of me as a kid."
Another unusual thing about A Little Bit Zombie is the way it's getting into theatres. Walker, who is distributing the movie himself, called 100 or so independent movie theatres in Canada and lined up 21 of them, including some from the Landmark Cinemas chain in Western Canada. Walker and some cast members will attend some screenings on opening weekend.
"We're going to small towns," he said. "We're going to places where there's no multiplex to bring it to people. . . . I grew up in Thunder Bay. A movie like this never would have come to the theatre."
He'll be flying around the country that weekend, trying to prove, among other things, that there's a place for a funny, raucous Canadian film.
"We produce so many amazing comedians in this country, and so many amazing comedy writers, and we're losing it all. Nobody's making those films here. . . . We feel we have to make these sappy, sad-ass, cold, grey, that's-our-culture movies. And every now and then, something else pops up and shakes the dust off it."
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