You’ve seen zombies and martial artists roam the mean streets of Akron onscreen. So why not cannibals?
Urban Cannibal Massacre, a horror film directed by Maurice Thomas (aka J Starr), will be shown in the Nightlight Cinema at 11:30 p.m. Friday. Thomas says the film — originally called Meat the Jones — is not your typical cannibal picture.
The central characters are African-Americans, who are somewhat rare as the centerpiece of horror films, Thomas said.
While there have been companies such as Alchemy Entertainment specializing in urban horror (particularly direct-to-video), urban-horror big-screen landmarks such as Blacula and Blackenstein date to the early ’70s, and even the Spike Lee-backed Tales From the Hood is more than 20 years old.
Thomas and his collaborators, including screenwriters Dustin Austen and Jennifer Jeter, looked for a different kind of plot, too. They decided not to go for the monsters-chasing-folks-in-the-woods approach of some horror. The African-American family in Urban Cannibal Massacre is upscale and prominent in the community; early in the film there’s a mention of their charitable work.
“They’re a model family,” said Thomas.
Meaning, of course, a model family involved in killing the homeless and turning them into food.
Make no mistake: this is a bloody, profane, disturbing film. Just one with glimpses of 2013 Akron.
And it’s one of several showcases for made-here exploitation films. At 9 p.m. Friday, Monsterfestmania in Akron will show The Dead Next Door, by local horror maestro J.R. Bookwalter. The showing will be followed by a Q&A with Bookwalter.
On Aug. 18, martial-arts action movie The Instructor will be presented at 9 p.m. in the garden of the Akron Art Museum, in a digital transfer from VHS with new music by local musicians and a highlight reel scored by Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo, whose artwork is on exhibit at the museum.
As for Urban Cannibal Massacre, it began when Thomas and friends were spinning ideas for a movie. Thomas, 41, had long wanted to get deeper into movies; he had directed local music videos and made one film, Hellsoapopera, which impressed Bookwalter enough that Thomas became a production assistant on several films Bookwalter also had a hand in.
“It’s clear that he learned from those experiences,” Bookwalter said. “He was paying close attention to what we were doing and those films inspired him to get his own thing off the ground.”
At one point, what became Urban Cannibal Massacre was envisioned as a horror parody of Tyler Perry’s Madea films, only to evolve into something more serious. Made on a super-modest budget of about $25,000, it was shot on weekends between February and April 2013, with post-production — done in Thomas’s home — completed in 2014.
Since then, it has been shown at some film festivals, sold via video on demand and acquired a distributor, Tomcat Films, which lately has been getting into theaters, including the Nightlight.
Thomas, who has a day job for a medical management-consulting firm, has also completed another movie, Rhyme Slaya, which he calls the first “hip-hop slasher movie” — a throwback to films from the ’80s and ’90s.
And if you think Urban Cannibal Massacre sounds scary, look out. Thomas said Rhyme Slaya is “more in your face.”
Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal, Ohio.com, Facebook and Twitter. You can contact him at 330-996-3582 or rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.