WWW- [Fangoria.com]- Fango caught up with writer/director John (BLOOD GNOME) Lechago, who provided us first word (and the juicy exclusive stills below) on his latest horror feature, the “violence and nudity-filled” BIO•SLIME.
The filmmaker, whose MAGUS hits DVD April 8 from MTI, shot this new production over two weeks last August, and tells us it’s intended to “satisfy the fans at Fango conventions who enjoyed the sticky mayhem” in BLOOD GNOME, and that he’s currently “editing BIO•SLIME, and will be shooting pickup and effects shots this spring.”
Executive-produced by Lechago (who also wore the hats of cinematographer, editor, set designer and FX head) under his Lechago Entertainment banner, BIO•SLIME “is first and foremost a monster movie,” he says, “about a creature that traps seven very different people in a room and constantly menaces them.”
No need here to worry about overblown psychological pretense, though, as Lechago reasserts that BIO•SLIME is rife with “violence, blood, gore and nudity. The entire premise of the film is designed to include these things, which to me are essential nutrients of a B-horror film.”
The self-professed horror fan says that he’s not employing these tried-and-true tricks to cover up a lack of a script, however. “Does BIO•SLIME go any deeper than slinging slime and blood at scantily clad victims? At the risk of alienating myself from ardent gorehounds, I say yes.
Our characters are very different in nature [from standard horror types]; they quickly realize the creature’s nature, in that it surrounds them, can kill them and is intelligent and cunning, but they also discover their own human nature and that it can be deceptive, cowardly and scheming. Fear, paranoia and stress dissolve their superficial personalities and reveal their genuine psyches, and it’s not pretty.”
Assisting in creating the “not pretty” is 1313FX man Tom (Fango Video’s JOSHUA) Devlin, whom Lechago says delivers the goods with BIO•SLIME. “There’s strong violence and gore, monster kills and plenty of slime and blood!” Lechago initially intended to go the CGI route to realize the creature itself, but, after some thought, decided on physical FX. “Audiences like them better,” he says, “and even though you lack a degree of control with practical FX compared to CGI, there is a visceral quality you can’t get with a computer.”
Produced by Vincent Bilancio (who also stars as one of the unlucky seven at the center of the fim) and Tai Chan Ngo, BIO•SLIME also features Ronnie Lewis, Kelli Kaye, Micol (ALIEN ABDUCTION) Bartolucci, Magic J. Ellingson, porn star Gia Paloma (most assuredly providing “production value”), Victoria (WEREWOLF IN A WOMEN’S PRISON) De Mare, Al Burke and Mark Stefanoski.
MAGUS lead Ron Fitzgerald provides the voice of the creature, which channels a bit of 1987’s THE HIDDEN in its modus operandi.
“Quite a few of the characters become infected by the slime monster over the course of the story,” Lechago says, “but its main human representation is done by Victoria [pictured below in slime mode], whose character starts out as one of the victims and then is used by the creature near the end of the film to confront the survivors.”
The filmmaker is looking forward to completing the final FX shots this spring, and says that regardless of the “microbudget” he’s working with, “the production will look like a bigger-budget film. Since I have very limited funds, I wanted to create a situation where I could maximize the quality. First thing I did was invest in a good HD camera, and while doing so was more expensive than renting one, the advantage is that I can shoot at my convenience. Owning the camera also allowed me to become very familiar with it and enabled me to better control the image.” Lechago has a “rudimentary website” on-line for BIO•SLIME here, and you can check the flick out on MySpace here.