“Melvin” is not just another cheesy zombie movie, it’s Eugene’s cheesy zombie movie.
Three years after a prank-gone-wrong, Melvin is back from the dead to take his revenge on the bullies who picked on him in college. To make it happen, he hypnotizes a fellow nerd, Norton Pincus, who engages in a sleepwalking rampage of “throat-ripping, vomit-spewing, head decapitating and much, much more.”
The plot is simple enough. “One nerd goes out and gets another nerd to help kill people,” said director Henry Weintraub.
With a budget of $3,500, a cast of 50 and a year of hard work, Weintraub is set to release 1,000 copies of his first feature-length film. “I’ve seen movies made for $500 million that look worse than this,” he said.
Weintraub is inspired by classics horror flicks such as Living Dead, Killer Clowns in Outer Space, Toxic Avengers and Maximum Overdrive. Shot entirely in Oregon and mostly in Eugene, the project began in April 2008 with casting and numerous script rewrites. It was shot in August and everything was finished by last month.
Given a more reasonable budget, Weintraub said the film could have been done in three weeks, but everyone in the group has either a full-time job or is a student, so filming happened on Saturdays. “On a good week, we could pull off four to five minutes. It’s a very fun process, it’s just time consuming,” said Weintraub.
After finishing high school in Indiana, Weintraub and his best friend flipped a coin between Boston, Mass. and Eugene. In 2001, Weintraub found himself working at a local video store. Life seemed rather uneventful, but in 2003, his best friend died.
“I guess it sparked in my head that life is short, and I should be doing something with my time. I saw myself in him,” Weintraub said.
After that, Weintraub decided he needed to live a more active life, and he weighed the possibility of going to college with the money he had saved up. Instead, he gathered the courage to do what he really wanted, and used the money to buy film equipment.
Seven years later, Weintraub has completed 12 short films, including the sci-fi comedy MindSlime, which recently sold to Troma Entertainment. “(Melvin) is like the fruit of my labor. That was like my film school and this is like my graduation,” said Weintraub. He is now looking for investors for a new feature-length film called “Midnight Movies,” and works for Timeless Media Group, a video-editing company that produces war documentaries and classics.
“I feel like, especially in the last 10 years, movies have lost sight of entertainment. I’m sick of PG-13 movies and ghost movies and stuff; it gets old,” Weintraub said. “People want something safe; they want actors they know. They’re remaking remakes of sequels! What the hell is going on? There is no originality, the content is the last concern.”
For Weintraub, movies are first about entertainment; not every film needs to push a message. Some of the dialogue in Melvin seems as though it was “written on the bathroom wall,” he said, but none of this is accidental.
Of course, a horror film is nothing without special effects. It can take long hours of editing to create a few seconds of gore-filled fun. “I think people should suspend their disbelief and get lost in it as opposed to try to pick it apart. I hope it’s fun with a little bit of artistic value and a little bit of drama. It’s entertainment that comes from the heart.”
“Melvin” stars local actor and University senior Patrick O’Driscoll, a theatre arts major who plays Norton Pincus, a socially awkward character whose life seems always to be flowing against the tide. “We were trying to strike a balance between something over the top and cheesy and, dare I say, realistic,” said O’Driscoll.
Also an avid fan of B-movies and horror, O’Driscoll has always wanted to be an actor. “I’m just really grateful to have found a group of people making a truly independent film where there is so much creative freedom to be able to do what you like,” he said.
“Real horror fans would definitely like (Melvin),” Weintraub said.
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