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Elizabeth Terrel applies the finishing touches to
Tim Davis (left) watches as Brendan Deninger films Danny Boes, a first-time zombie who said, 'I seem to have a natural ability to scare people.'
Tim Davis helps Christine Rinehart adjust her costume. Rinehart performed double duty in Davis' independent horror flick, acting as both zombie and makeup artist. |
VERY ZOMBIE has a story.
Take Cleavage Zombie. When not prancing around with the undead in Stafford County, she's Kristen Kicker Lehl, an Alexandria housewife, eager for a baby. She hopes her pangs of queasiness weren't caused by the eerie zombies surrounding her.
Army Guy Zombie is a freelance photographer, just back from photographing Hurricane Katrina. Jim Bartlett spends most of his time chasing wars and major storms, but thought it might be fun to spend Sunday as a zombie. "It beats sitting around watching a sporting event," he said in between breaks of filming an independent zombie-based horror flick on the Widewater property of Tim Davis.
Tattoo Zombie is a professional stunt man, usually based out of California or Florida. He came to Virginia to help out his mom, who is in the middle of chemotherapy. Jake "Kid" Richmond once played a demon on "Charmed," so he figured a zombie wouldn't be too big of a stretch for him.
Suit Zombie spends alternate weekends teaching massage therapy. He's also a systems analyst and newly certified massage therapist in Alexandria. His roommate, Neck Wound Zombie, is a big fan of the genre. "I've watched every zombie movie there ever was," said Ken Clayton, smoking a cigarette and relaxing with a gaping knife wound across his neck. Clayton is an actor who seeks odd roles and has some experience as a zombie. He played one in "Dead Reckoning: The South Will Rise Again," an independent horror flick due out in 2006. He learned some tricks on that set that he passed on to roommate Scott Olson, including "not all zombies walk with one leg dragging."
Even the people behind the scenes of Davis' film, "Nudist Colony Zombie Massacre," have stories.
Christine Rinehart of Lorton usually works in a salon, where she dolls people up for proms, homecomings and weddings. Making regular people into members of the undead proved a welcome challenge. "This is fun," she said. "The whole point is you're not supposed to look good."
Brendan Deininger, the cameraman, works at the Home Depot when not filming independent horror films--opportunities he finds through the Internet. He says a lot of filmmakers throughout Virginia spend their free time producing low-budget movies.
And then there's the man behind the production. Tim Davis' story begins in his childhood, with a "Planet of the Apes" obsession that grew to include the science fiction and horror genres in general. During his teen years, Davis tried to recreate the special effects he saw in his favorite flicks. As an adult, he and a partner ran a special-effects makeup studio in Washington, working on movies, television and print advertising. In 1990, health problems sent Davis to Stafford to live with his parents. He spent most of 1990 and 1991 in Medical College of Virginia's hospital, undergoing heart surgeries.
As Davis recovered, he began to help with small independent movies and soon found himself immersed in the independent film scene, where people show up to work on movies for free. Davis decided to make his own zombie flick and put up a notice at craigslist.com--an online community announcement forum--seeking zombies.
More than a dozen showed up at Davis' home Sunday. Two-by-two, they entered the makeup room, where Rinehart and Elizabeth Terrel, a graduate of the University of Mary Washington, took pale foundation and a variety of creams, fake scars and powders to turn each person into a member of the walking dead.
The zombies joked about staying in costume and going out for dinner or even keeping the makeup on for another day, until Halloween. But after a full day in layers of makeup, most thought they'd opt for some cold cream, the perfect remedy to a zombie face.
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