Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on February 8, 2008, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
“Every Generation Has a Horror Film That Defines Its Culture…This Is That Film,” the trailer on Dimension Extreme’s Automaton Transfusion DVD hyperbolically states. Yet as much as it typifies a few recent genre trends, the generation this movie seems most representative of actually flourished two decades ago, when grassroots auteurs like J.R. Bookwalter and Leif Jonker were passionately crafting microbudget ghoul epics like The Dead Next Door and Darkness on Super-8 film. Although it was shot on digital video, Automaton Transfusion has been postproduced to bear the grainy, gritty, jittery, high-contrast look of small-format celluloid. Though well-mastered, the disc’s 2.35:1 transfer is anything but slick, which was clearly the intention.
It’s thus appropriate, but a little disappointing, that Automaton Transfusion doesn’t demonstrate any progression beyond the aforementioned features on a narrative level either. The ingredients are all extremely familiar, starting with a prologue in a military/scientific morgue where an experimental corpse gets feisty and chows down on a worker. Cut to a group of Florida high-schoolers who are having the usual problems—bullies, getting cute girls to notice them—as they plan to attend, or not, what promises to be the party of the year (even though a bit of dialogue suggests it’s being held on a Monday night). A trio of guys decide to forego the bash and head into the city to catch a bar concert—and as they hit the highway at what should be rush hour, it proves to be strangely deserted. The early sequences of the three driving and walking down empty streets are the movie’s most impressive, not just for their stark atmosphere but for the fact that the nonpro filmmakers were able to accomplish them on a tiny budget.
Once the inevitable horde of ravenous, blood-streaked ghouls makes an appearance and charges after our heroes, the movie quickly settles into a run-fight-zombies-run-some-more scenario that keeps moving (it runs only about 70 minutes plus credits), but never really goes anywhere. The storyline hits on all the usual touchstones as if working from a well-worn playbook: a confrontation with a zombified relative, a gearing-up-for-battle montage, military men who show up to deliver exposition about the plague being a result of our tax dollars at work (isn’t it about time to get back to voodoo-created zombies by now?). Writer/director Steven C. Miller clearly loves these conventions and plays them straight, without any winking irony or in-jokes (the disc extras reveal that the latter were originally part of the script, but were wisely cut). And he dishes out gore that can compete with the grossest of ’em, including a truly icky moment involving a pregnant girl. All told, Automaton Transfusion can be seen as the ultimate fan-homage film, one that recaptures everything its creator loves about the subgenre without adding anything of his own to the mix.
And that, according to the supplements, is exactly what he was aiming for. Miller, on a commentary he shares with producers William Clevinger and Mark Thalman, states early on his ambitions to simply make a film intended for genre devotees like himself, one that eschews all that dialogue and character stuff that can bog a movie down and goes straight for “a bunch of blood, gore and violence.” It’s easy to be more impressed listening to this discussion than while watching the movie itself, as the trio reveal how they pulled off this ambitious, multilocation production in only nine shooting days on a budget of around $30,000. We find out here that a lot of improvisation of both dialogue and entire scenes was involved, along with help from friends, relatives and local officials. There’s a constant string of entertaining anecdotes, too, as Miller recalls blurting out “This movie sucks” during an early feature-editing job, his subsequent firing inspiring him to make Automaton Transfusion (you’ll have to IMDb him for a hint of what that movie was). He also explains the source of the odd title: His script originally dealt with robotic creatures created via nanotechnology.
You’d think that a movie done with such little money and time would involve a minimum of equipment and a maximum of rushing, but the 25-minute Trials and Tribulations documentary proves that, surprisingly, such was not the case. A wealth of behind-the-scenes video reveals a fairly relaxed pace under the circumstances, and the literal truckloads of gear these upstart filmmakers were able to employ. “It was all about having fun,” Thalman recalls here, and we get a good taste of that amongst the footage—from an on-set 19th-birthday party for one of the crew to three camera views of a key jaw-ripping effect that, we’re told, “brought everybody’s spirits up.” Not that the downside isn’t represented; the doc camera also captures a homeowner trying to throw the crew off property he had previously agreed to let them use, and Miller’s profane reaction to the situation.
In addition to the aforementioned trailer, the DVD also includes deleted scenes of no great consequence—other than the fact that Miller and Clevinger’s onscreen deaths are among the lost gore footage—two music videos and the writer/director’s short Suffer or Sacrifice. The beginnings of Miller’s edgy, albeit familiar, aesthetic are on view here, along with his resourcefulness; this movie was made as part of a 48 Hour Film Fest, named for the amount of time participants had to write, shoot and edit their projects. Miller demonstrates here his ability to make proficient use of a limited schedule—as he does on Automaton Transfusion, and no doubt will on subsequent projects, where he’ll hopefully take the time to develop his own cinematic voice as well.
