Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on March 12, 2008, by Michael Gingold and Sean Decker and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
“My inspiration for the project was just about every slasher flick I had seen growing up as a kid,” first-time filmmaker Frank Sabatella says of his recently wrapped feature Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet. “Like many horror junkies in the ’80s, I grew up on a steady diet of corner-video-store VHS gems. Basically anything that had a killer in a mask thrilled me, and Blood Night was largely influenced by the style and tone of those films.”
Written by newcomer Elke Blasi and producer/director Sabatella, and starring genre vets Danielle Harris and Bill Moseley, the Chaos Squared/Sideshow Pictures/Harrington Talents production completed principal photography last December at a handful of creepy locations on the East Coast. As Sabatella tells it, it was these areas, in addition to his love for vintage slashers, that informed Blood Night’s narrative. “The script is based on an actual Long Island legend—that of a young girl who murdered her entire family with a hatchet and then killed herself,” says the 29-year-old Long Island native, explaining that the movie’s subtitular ghost, according to the filmmaker, has been reportedly “seen walking along the roads near the actual murder site. Our film is rooted in that legend, but expands on why she committed the murders and the reasons her ghost continuously returns.”
Certainly interesting fodder for a horror feature, though Sabatella wasn’t content with mining only one urban myth while crafting Blood Night, and decided to throw another into the mix. This one involves the purported haunting of the real and now-abandoned King’s Park Insane Asylum on Long Island; while the production wasn’t able to obtain permits to film there, they did utilize another reportedly haunted mental facility in Cedar Grove, NJ, as well as the Cypress Hill Cemetery in Brooklyn. “There are countless stories of inmate torture, electroshock therapy and frontal-lobe lobotomies surrounding that place,” Sabatella says of King’s Park. “There’s also a mass of unmarked graves of all of the inmates who died while committed there. As the story goes, the tortured souls of those people still haunt the grounds! All of these elements are factored into the plot of Blood Night, along with many other twists and surprises.”
Shot on hi-def video, Blood Night was co-produced by Frank Mosca, with cinematography by Jarin Blaschke and FX by Monster In My Closet’s Jeremy Selenfriend. Sabatella says that audiences can expect not only a good-looking flick, but one containing the elements that slasher fans crave. Citing influences ranging from Slumber Party Massacre to the original April Fool’s Day, he says that the key inspiration for Blood Night was the style of the early Friday the 13th films. “Their formula was so simple yet so effective,” he says, “and the tone of Blood Night is at once both very similar and very different. I really wanted to maintain the feel of those ’80s classics, but without retaining some of their inherent camp, so I went with a more modern style of cinematography and more stylish editing [by Stephen Franciosa Jr.] and coloring. Those details will make it stand apart from the older films, but it’ll still maintain that familiarity.”
One element that will help communicate that old-style slasher nostalgia is Sabatella’s enthusiasm for both nudity and gore. “One of the things I loved so much as a kid when watching horror movies was that there were certain guarantees,” he notes. “If you rented an R-rated flick, or snuck into a theater, you knew you were going to see naked chicks and great kills, and I wanted to bring that to Blood Night. There’s a bunch of sex in the film—not done in a pornographic manner, but just in a simple way that can be enjoyed by all. And the gore is great!”
And apparently plentiful, as Blood Night features “29 onscreen kills,” Sabatella reveals. “The deaths were very important to the flick’s overall tone, and I didn’t want to skimp out. Jeremy is a killer effects artist, and always had 20 to 30 gallons of blood on hand for whatever gag we were doing, with most being major effects shots. Audiences will get their money’s worth.”
Selenfriend, whose credits include Aunt Rose and Crazy Eights, had collaborated with both Sabatella and Blasi on previous horror projects, “and we all just kind of click in terms of knowing what everyone wants to see on screen, how gory, how vivid, etc.,” he says. “This was the first time, though, that they had the financial freedom to really let the blood fly. With third-party financing, Frank didn’t have to hold back anything from his twisted imagination, and I was free to take his lead and come up with some unique death sequences, and work at a level of detail I don’t always get to do. The higher budget allowed for everything to be done top-of-the line: all silicone, all hair-punching, multiple heads for single gags, everything you hope for on a horror feature. The effects were probably the most challenging I’ve ever created; thankfully, I was able to bring in a team of five to help me out. I had two girls doing nothing but hair-punching the 14 heads for months. Even so, we had to start preproduction months before anyone else was on board the film.
“Blood Night definitely has some very unique and over-the-top kills,” Selenfriend continues. “Everything is grounded in reality, but that exaggerated reality you get in the Friday the 13th flicks. One death in particular, involving scissors through the neck and out the mouth, is my favorite. I don’t want to give it completely away, but I did have to build an enormous mouth interior and 3-foot-long scissor blades for a point-of-view shot. All of this was aimed at a sexy topless woman, with me and Frank dumping bucket after bucket of blood on her while she screamed her head off. Good times!”
Scenarios like this were thrilling enough for Sabatella, but he also admits to an initial fanboy astonishment at working with fright faves Harris and Moseley. “It was an unreal experience,” he says, “and a little intimidating at first to work so closely with actors whom I’ve been a fan of for years. But their professionalism was amazing, and they had a way of making me feel very comfortable.” Bringing much experience to the film (Harris’ résumé includes Halloween 4 and 5 and Rob Zombie’s remake, while Moseley has essayed such iconic characters as Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2’s Chop-Top and The Devil’s Rejects’ Otis Firefly), both actors helped Sabatella immeasurably in crafting Blood Night.
“I had many conversations with Bill about his character of Graveyard Gus during the shoot,” the director says, “and he would come up with suggestions and ask if I thought they would work, and we’d talk things out and decide what would be best for the picture. I always felt like he truly listened to my direction and respected my ideas, which made me feel more confident in what I was doing. Same with Danielle—we’d talk about the scenes beforehand. A lot of them were very intense, and she had a great understanding of what was needed to make a particular shot work. She brought all her years of horror and filmmaking experience to the table, which was great.”
Selenfriend was equally impressed with the duo. “Bill Moseley and Danielle Harris were amazing,” he says. “Danielle and I are about the same age, and Halloween 4 was the first horror movie I ever saw in a theater, so I naturally had a crush on her at age 11. Getting to collaborate with her so many years later was an awesome event! She was very kind, and totally into the process. And working with Bill was one of the few times I’ve ever been intimidated by a star. Here it was one night, 6 a.m., he was freezing, he was exhausted, he’d been officially wrapped from production, and I had to do this life cast for a postproduction effects sequence. But he was A-OK with everything, far more jovial than anyone should be given those conditions, and just a true pro to work with. He shared tales of both big and small films he’s been involved with, talked about his band, his travels, everything. I’ve never met a cooler, more down-to-earth star!”
Sabatella’s happiness with his cast doesn’t end with the known names. “They were all truly great to work with,” he says. “Samantha Facchi, who plays Mary Hatchet, put up with intensely physical demands and did it with a smile. I’m grateful for every actor I worked with on the film, because each of their personalities brought something unique to the story.”
Currently overseeing postproduction, Sabatella reveals, “I’ve already been contacted by a few distributors who want to take a peek at the final cut,” and he’s hopeful for a theatrical release this summer. “It’s extremely intense, but does give the audience a chance to breathe a little bit from time to time,” he says. “But it always returns to something dark and violent. Blood Night will definitely live up to its name.”
