For most women, the day after Thanksgiving is the biggest shopping day of the year. But for me, it’s November 1 – the day after Halloween, when I scour local stores in search of the marked-down macabre. Strobing skull lights. Glow-in-the-dark skeletons. Tombstones. Shrieking doormats. Jell-O molds shaped like brains and hearts. My most prized possession: the used coffin that graces my front porch the entire month of October. To paraphrase Charles Dickens, I am a woman who knows how to keep Halloween well.
So it came as no surprise to family and friends when I announced my intention to play a zombie extra in the independent horror/comedy flick Dead Moon Rising, directed by Louisvillian Mark Poole. The rules were simple. Sign a release and show up in zombie drag at O’Malley’s Corner on the 12th of August. No knives, weapons or drugs; no nudity; non-logo clothing only, preferably light-colored to accentuate the gore.
Caufield’s Novelty had everything necessary for my makeover from mild-mannered reporter to a member of the brain-slurping walking dead: tissue paper to mimic sloughing skin, black lipstick, gray eye shadow, white foundation, vampire blood and spray-on latex. It took more than an hour to apply, plus 20 minutes of teasing and spraying to transform my tresses from bed-head to dead-head.
Gazing at my ghastly reflection in the mirror, I felt it was time well spent. My oldest daughter, however, thought otherwise when I woke her to say goodbye. One glimpse and Tess sat straight up in bed and screamed. As I headed to the car, I heard her yell, "That wasn’t very nice, Mom!" But then, zombies aren’t supposed to be nice, are we?
Jefferson Street was swarming with people when I arrived. Some 1,000 biker and zombie extras turned out for the movie’s final scenes, where biker heroes clash with the gut-munching zombie horde. Poole told me later that a well-publicized call for extras inundated him with e-mail. "I heard from people from all walks of life — doctors, flight nurses, helicopter pilots, a line foreman, someone from the attorney general’s office in Frankfort," he said, amazed. "People compared being in the movie to being able to do Halloween anytime."
The tableau was surreal, with zombies lounging inside the murky Fox Den motorcycle bar, talking on cell phones in the sun, and patronizing the corner mini-mart while awaiting their cues. Some, such as 55-year-old Mark Scherrard, had spent much more time than I on their gruesome guises. "I started getting ready at five this morning and finished a little before nine," said the auto detailer. Among other zombies I met were a bride and groom; a fisherman with a dead flathead hanging from his pole; a chef in a blood-drenched apron; a prisoner handcuffed to a severed hand; and a skateboarder impaled on a gory board. There were zombies sporting suits and ties, pigtails and pleated skirts, and dreadlocks and shorts.
Emily Williams, 32, a researcher at Indiana University, drove down from Bloomington to be in the movie and achieve her life’s goal. Bobby Stamper, also 32, was thankful he didn’t have to go to Pittsburgh, where Romero shot the 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead and forever changed American horror films. For musician Matt Clayton, participating in Dead Moon Rising was a matter of civic pride, since the 1985 flick Return of the Living Dead was set in Louisville, though filmed entirely in California. And for 39-year-old biker extra and mortgage broker Matt Colman, it was practice. "I live every day in fear of the dead coming back to life and taking over the world," he quipped.
Swiftly loping feet combined with ape-like upper-body movements and growling — no smiling, speaking or shuffling — were the instructions Poole gave the zombies as we gathered en masse for our first scene. We got into character while lined up along Second Street, awaiting our cue. "We like babies; babies are tender," growled a zombie to a driver with an infant strapped into her backseat. By 4 p.m., the day’s production was done and I was loping my way to my car, but couldn’t resist the opportunity to growl one last time as a group of bikers zipped past.
Wannabe zombies who missed this opportunity may get another chance if Dead Moon Rising is a success, said Poole, who hoped to premiere the film at the Fox Den no later than this Halloween and is already knocking around a premise for a sequel. "I’d like to be able to shoot in more areas next time, like Cave Hill Cemetery," he said. "I love a graveyard."
