The Case of Evil

"The Case of Evil" is a movie firmly rooted in the past. It's studiously anti-modern, eschewing decades of technical innovations in favor of the simpler conventions of early cinema. The camera sticks stubbornly in place, only moving when absolutely necessary. The dialogue is intentionally sentimental and "speechy", reflective of the theatrical style that ruled in the age between the fall of Jazz and the rise of Rock and Roll. Adhering strictly to the movie code of the era, even the language is profanity-free, and the gunplay bloodless. Despite that the movie was shot and edited in 2014, we made every effort to behave as though we were a "B" film unit shooting a low-budget horror movie in 1941.

When we accepted the challenge from Horrible Imaginings Film Festival to submit a short, it would have been simpler to choose a less complicated horror genre. Slasher movies are cheap and relatively easy to film. Zombie movies rule at the box office and on television, so it would have been a more logical crowd pleaser. What we choose to do instead was follow our passion and shoot a gothic-flavored period piece that would hark back to the classic black and white movies we grew up loving. We wanted a movie that felt like you could put in on your DVD shelf right between "Dracula" and "The Wolf Man" and it wouldn't feel out of place. You could run it as a short reel before one of those classic monster movies, and you wouldn't even bat an eye because it had the same kind of feel, the same story rhythm. Everything had to be right, down to the pop and hiss of the audio track.

The challenge, of course, was to find two actors who could emulate that acting style and feel natural. We didn't want camp. From day one we'd known we'd be casting Merrick because he's already got such an old-school movie star quality about him. He's butter on screen. He can go in an instant from the nice guy next door to a Cagney stone-cold killer, and you love him either way. With Rebecca it was more of a gamble. She was a first time-actress, but from the moment she stepped on set, she radiated this grand-dame-of-the-stage presence that simply commanded attention. She starts off like Maria Ouspenskaya, but there's a moment that she's got this whip-crack line delivery that you swear is Bette Davis back from the dead, and we all got chills. Once those two got rolling, it was easy to forget were were in the 21st century.

In the end, "The Case of Evil" is a love letter to a genre of film that shaped generations. We hid under the coffee table in the dark as the Triffids invaded earth, while the Creature watched his love forlornly from his black lagoon. We all grew up being told that they don't make 'em that way any more...but that doesn't mean we SHOULDN'T.