| Slaughter Disc A Tale from the Carnal Morgue |
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|---|---|
| Directed by | David Quitmeyer |
| Produced by | David Quitmeyer |
| Written by | David Quitmeyer |
| Starring | Caroline Pierce Robert Williams Jewels Mackenzie Travis Lee Albin Kinsey |
| Music by | Peter J. Gorritz |
| Distributed by | Steel Web Studios |
| Release date(s) | March 19, 2005 (USA wide) |
| Running time | 90 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $10,000 |
Slaughter Disc is a hybrid, feature-length, independent film that blurs the lines between mainstream horror and adult films. The movies stars Caroline Pierce, Robert Williams, Jewels Mackenzie, Travis Lee and Albin Kinsey. It was written and directed by David Quitmeyer and released in 2005 by Steel Web Studios. An edited version of the film was released towards the end of 2006 by Scarlet Entertainment.
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The film focuses on Mike, a 20-something guy who is addicted to porn. As his addiction causes him to lose both his girlfriend and his job, he encounters a mysterious DVD featuring Andromeda Strange. Mike is drawn deeper and deeper into her dark and gory performances, until he finally sees her in a scene having sex with and then brutally murdering his friend. By the film's end, we learn Mike himself had died long ago while watching the movie, and his soul joins the others enslaved by Andromeda Strange.
Slaughter Disc was filmed under a budget of $10,000 in MiniDV format. The film was purposefully captured with "guerilla" filmmaking techniques, including hand-held cameras, low lighting, and un-focused frames. The feel of a "B-Movie" was used to make the subject matter of porn addiction easier for audiences to accept. Two weeks of actual filming was spread across three months in an effort to work around the individual real-life schedules of the cast & crew.[1]
David Quitmeyer not only wrote the story and screenplay, but he is also the film's director, producer, casting agent, set designer, film editor, main camera man, publicist, location scout, wardrobe consultant, special effects artists, and even made two cameo appearances in the film [2]. In doing this, David was free to spend more money on the actual production of the movie rather than on crew salaries. It also allowed him to capture the look and feel of the movie as he had envisioned it from the beginning.
Peter Gorritz of the Goth band The Last Dance was hired to compose a dark and moody score for the film. Peter composed the music based on a rough cut of the movie over a two-month period. David and Peter communicated by email 99% of the time and swapped video and music files through email. Peter was encouraged to reach deep down and use all of his musical experience and influences while composing the score for the movie.
While low budget in nature, Slaughter Disc utilizes a number of sophisticated modern special effects including the use of blue-screens, CGI and makeup prosthetics. Four different types of blood were used, including one created with water-based personal lubricant. The lubricant based blood was used to prevent the female performers from developing yeast infections during some of the story's more intimate scenes.
Makeup artist Catherine Crump was recruited to develop the effects and styles for the film's female anti-hero, Andromeda Strange. For the story's climactic ending, Catherine developed a secret blend of lotions and sprays to create the glow-in-the-dark effects that the script called for. Makeup assistant Ashley Rees donated her time to the project and helped Catherine with the application and blending of latex makeup appliances.[3]
Subliminal imagery such as photos of actual decayed corpses and video of cemeteries are overlaid throughout the film's more horrific moments. Rather than spray blood everywhere, realistic gore was used based on the filmmaker's own experiences working in the emergency room of a regional trauma center.
Mixing the genres of Horror and Erotica is certainly nothing new. Whether you look at the seductive lore of the succubus in early religious texts or the voluptuous curves of horror hostess Elvira, Mistress of the Dark on late night TV, one thing is apparent: sex and horror are perfect bedfellows.
As a child, Quitmeyer was a huge fan of television horror anthologies such as Tales from the Darkside, The Twilight Zone, Monsters, and his absolute favorite, Tales from the Crypt. Other early influences in his life were the literary works of Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, Stephen King and Clive Barker. "Stephen King was my idol growing up," admits Quitmeyer. "He is a simple family guy, yet he has a fantastic imagination that has entertained millions of people over the years." [4]
Slaughter Disc is based on Quitmeyer's original short story "The Tape", which was written over 15 years ago - long before movies such as The Ring and White Noise existed. In the original story a college student receives a transparent VCR tape in the mail. Each time it is viewed, a new horrific sex act is played out on screen. Eventually friends and family of the viewer are gruesomely murdered and a mysterious woman known as the Bride of Death performs deviant sexual acts with the mutilated corpses.
"The Tape" was re-written to further explore the supernatural realms of modern technology. Cell phones, DVDs and the World Wide Web were not around when the story was originally written. David also stripped out most of the gore and sex in order to make the story more acceptable to audiences as well as to allow the movie to be filmed on a shoestring budget. "I basically cut out all of the effects that I knew I couldn't do myself", states Quitmeyer. "If worse came to worse I knew I could hold the camera in one hand and the blood tubing in the other."
Quitmeyer wanted to not only push the envelope of sex and gore in shoestring budget filmmaking but to also follow in the tradition of great horror films by educating audiences about addiction at the same time.
"There is a moral to almost every horror story out there", explains Quitmeyer. "Whether it's don't play with God's plans, don't make fun of people or don't swim alone, there is also something to be learned. I've never seen a movie focus on the growing problem of sex addiction, so I thought it would be an interesting subject to explore from a supernatural perspective. The sad truth is that too much of anything will kill you."