LIFE * SCREENS

__________________________________________________________________

ALBANY, NEW YORK      TIMES UNION      FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26th, 2007

GHASTLY GROUP   Low-budget Filmmakers

Join forces to frighten

BY DANIELLE FURFARO

STAFF WRITER

Photos: LUANNE M. FERRIS/TIMES UNION

In director Jeff Kirkendall’s comedy “Of Theater and Bikinis,”

a success-obsessed actress finds out a prominent director is

coming to town and falls all over herself trying to get his attention.

Hijinks ensue.

Actresses might not be chasing Kirkendall down for a chance to

make a movie with him, but he doesn’t mind. The mostly self-taught

director, actor and editor has spent the past decade making low-budget

films about topics that interest him: horror - and bikinis.

THE SCARE SQUAD, from bottom: Rosa and Bruce Hallenbeck

of Kinderhook, Latham’s Jeff Kirkendall  and Watervliet’s Joe Bagnardi

In Hollywood, horror has always been big business. (So have bikinis, actually.) But in the past few years, the

market share has gotten even bigger as horror has boomed. This last weekend, the vampire flick “30 Days of Night”

ruled at the box office; this weekend “Saw IV,” the latest installment of the popular torture-movie series, will attempt

to carve up the competition.

But far from Hollywood, there are thousands of do-it-yourself directors toiling in the shadows, scheming logistics

for chase scenes, finding a proper vampire costume and learning how to make that blood look real.

Bruce Hallenbeck, Joe Bagnardi and Kirkendall might be called the Three Musketeers of local low-budget horror.

They each have their own production companies, but star in each other’s films, help with editing, costumes and set selection.

Most of all, they offer each other moral support for a pursuit that can often be painstaking and all consuming.

“I’d run into Bruce at local film events and we’d always say, ‘We have to work together,’” said Bagnardi. “And Jeff

showed up to audition for (Bagnardi’s film) ‘Shadow Tracker: Vampire Hunter.’ Since then, we always work together. When

Bruce is in my films, he’s more the actor. When I work with him, I’m more the cameraman. Jeff does more of the editing.”

All three of the directors will have public showings of their films in the coming weeks. Hallenbeck’s psychological ghost

story, “The Drowned,” will be shown Saturday as part of the Schoharie Scary Horror Film Fest. Kirkendall’s “Of Theater and

Bikinis” will be shown as a double feature Nov. 8 along with Bagnardi’s “The Edge of Reality,” a “Twilight Zone”-style episodic

film, at the Madison Theater in Albany.

Kirkendall also wrote and directed “Terror of the Master,” a vampire film. So far, all of his movies have gone straight to

DVD, aside from the odd screening.

With thousands of hard-core horror fans out there, the straight-to-DVD market for cult, low-budget horror films has always

been lucrative. But now that digital technology has allowed almost anyone to afford to make a movie, the Internet and distributors’

shelves are filled with low-budget horror.

Kirkendall said he is currently working on some distribution deals and with videoondemand.com, where viewers can pay per

segment or by the minute to watch movies.

Hallenbeck is the most well-known of the three filmmakers. The 55-year-old has built a career on selling screenplays to other

low-budget directors. He also writes columns in the movie magazine Little Shop of Horrors and is working on a book called “From a

Chuckle to a Scream: A History of Comedy Horror Films.” Whatever free time he has left after all of that - and his day job at the State

Library - is spent directing and editing his own films.

Tight Budgets

“So far, all the movies I’ve released have broken even or made a profit,” said Hallenbeck, who lives in Kinderhook. “It’s not a lot,

but enough to keep making movies.”

The biggest budget Hallenbeck ever had was the $60,000 that went into 1990’s “Vampyre.” Most of his films - including “London

After Midnight,” “Fangs” and “Blood of the Werewolf” - have been shot for much less. Some have been funded by outside investors, but

for most, Hallenbeck and his wife - actress and makeup artist Rosa Hallenbeck - have put up most of the money themselves.

Hallenbeck said he’s proud that he has stuck with filmmaking, seeing it through all the way from being a teenager with a Super8 camera.

“To be able to make these films seems to be my life, and I really enjoy it,” he said. “It’s about reliving your childhood and scaring yourself

silly. You get all of your fears out in your script and the rest of the time, you can be a normal person.”

TOP TERRORS

Local filmmakers pick their

five favorite scary movies:

Jeff Kirkendall: “Jaws,” “The Exorcist,” “Friday the 13th,” “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” The Shining”

Bruce Hallenbeck: “The Haunting” (1963), “The Innocents,” “Horror of Dracula,” “The Shining,” “The Exorcist”

Joe Bagnardi: “Night of the Living Dead,” The Exorcist,” “Sisters,” “Freaks,” “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”

Danielle Furfaro can be reached at 454-5097 or by e-mail at [email-masked]