(Note: Bruce G. Hallenbeck is a writer/director/producer/actor based on the East Coast. He has written such screenplays as DR. JEKYLL AND MISTRESS HYDE, THE WITCHES OF SAPPHO SALON and MISTY MUNDAE MUMMY RAIDER for Seduction Cinema. He has acted in such films as SHADOW TRACKER for ei Independent Cinema. And he has written and directed VAMPYRE and FANGS for ei, as well as BLOOD OF THE WEREWOLF (with Kevin Lindenmuth and Joe Bagnardi). Hallenbeck's pet project for the past several years has been a very ambitious movie called LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT, which he describes as "The X-Files Meets the Avengers Meets H.P. Lovecraft," which is to be released by Brimstone this year. He recently sent Monsters at Play a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film.)

The first question people ask me when I tell them I've made a film called LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT is, "How does it differ from the original?" My answer is: in every way. My movie is not a remake of the lost 1927 Lon Chaney/Tod Browning faux vampire film. I just stole the title. Actually, it's a play on words, because London in my film is not the city, but a character. Let me backtrack a bit...

Way, way back in 1965, when the world and I were very young--in fact, I was twelve--I created a character called David London. I wrote a short story about him; he was a secret agent then. You have to remember that this was the time of the big spy craze in movies, when James Bond and The Man from UNCLE were all the rage.

May years later, circa 1979, I resurrected Mr. London as a very different type of character in a screenplay I called LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT. The reason for the title? David London was now an investigator of all things spooky and paranormal, so it stood to reason that he would be creeping around "after midnight." In the script, he was paired up with a female sidekick, ala THE AVENGERS.

Over the years, I rewrote the script several times and eventually came to call his sidekick Holly Gemini. I thought it was an interesting sort of pagan name; holly, after all, is a very magical plant that is most commonly associated with Yuletide, but is also used in some witchcraft rituals. And Gemini is the astrological sign of the twins, meaning Holly would have at least two important facets to her personality: the light and the dark. Finally, in 1997, the screenplay was finalized for filming on a low--very low--budget, and we started filming in August of that year.

By "we," I mean Director of Photography Joe Bagnardi, who had previously done some work with me on BLACK EASTER (a film that will, sadly, probably never be released--but that's another story); and a group of actors and craftspeople who stuck with the project for the next two years of on-again, off-again filming.

LAM, as I affectionately refer to LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT, was a very ambitious project from the start. It's really a high-concept action/adventure/horror film with a lot of locations, characters and special effects. As a result, it's taken me longer to complete than any other film I've attempted.

Seven years is a long time by anybody's standards. Through late 1997, we filmed mainly on weekends, and we were still doing pickup shots in late 1999. During that time, I was also working on an assignment for ei Indpendent Cinema, among others, so it was impossible for me to concentrate solely on LAM. But I was determined to finish it. What I thought was going to be my fourth feature ended up being my ninth. What a long, strange trip it's been.

In the movie, David London and Holly Gemini are paranormal investigators who rescue people from Satanic and Lovecraftian cults. When an old friend of theirs tells him that his son may have been abducted by one of these cults, they spring into action, as the saying goes. Along the way, they encounter a lot of interesting things, including a rich and charismatic villain (every action/adventure/horror film needs one), a group of zombies who work as strippers in a goth nightclub, and even the Lovecraft "goddess" Shub-Niggurath.

My influences for LAM include just about everything I grew up with: Hammer Films, H.P. Lovecraft and 60s action-adventure TV shows such as THE AVENGERS and THE MAN FROM UNCLE. There's a lot of tongue-in-cheek action in LAM, and, believe me, it's difficult to do action when you can't afford to hire stuntpeople. But we had some game actors in LAM, and I think there are some pretty good sequences, including a long fight/chase sequence when Holly is being pursued through a graveyard by an unstoppable henchman called Armstrong. He's the kind of secondary bad guy you always see in the Bond movies, the one who gets punched in the face and just smiles.

As for the actors in the film: I like to use actors who have stage experience. My favorite actor of all time is probably Peter Cushing, who had that very mannered, "theatrical" style. David Louis, who plays the lead role of David London (and didn't even have to change his initials!) has a great deal of stage experience. He's excellent in the role, as London is this sort of darker version of Ilya Kuryakin; he's very intellectual, doesn't like guns, but thinks nothing of decapitating the bad guys with swords.

Page 1 | Page 2