Film Name: Alien Legacy: Terror on Luxor Ridge
Director: Teddy Saxon & James Saxon
Writer: Teddy Saxon & James Saxon
Starring: Hannah Lucy Joyce, Emily Weller, Stephen Foster, Jon Hope, Meghan Adara, Anna Bird, Craig Bunce, Chelsea Campney, Marilyn Du Bonnet
Kate, a private detective investigating the disappearance of a girl, travels to a quaint English village in search of answers. What she unearths is true otherworldly terror and an alien legacy more horrifying than the blood thirsty locals.
In a new exclusive interview on Blazing Minds leading up to the Horror-on-Sea Film Festival, I got a chance to ask Co-Writer/Directors Teddy Saxon & James Saxon a few questions about their film ‘Alien Legacy: Terror on Luxor Ridge ‘.
Alien Legacy: Terror on Luxor Ridge has been selected to play at the Horror-on-Sea Film Festival on Sunday 21st January at 20:00pm.
Q. Your film Alien Legacy: Terror on Luxor Ridge has been selected to play at the Horror-on-Sea Film Festival. Can you tell us what we can expect from the film?
Teddy: When we sat down to write the script we said to ourselves we wanted to make a film that we would both enjoy watching and it therefore had to contain a lot of the things that we love about our favourite films and television shows.
Given that we love dark comedy, horror and sci-fi, the film is a mix of all three of these genres. We were very careful to ensure that despite the dark humour, the film isn’t a comedy and most importantly it had a storyline which was well thought out with characters we could relate to.
You can look forward to an action-packed film, with an extended fight scene in a Gnome Museum, plenty of shocks and scares, along with lots of blood, gore and boobs! We’ve also got a number of monsters and aliens, along with some quite bizarre characters including Mr Star, a UFO fanatic and the local butcher, who as you can imagine is up to something shady.
James: My brother came to me with the bones of an idea for a film and as we sat down together and
developed it, we soon realised that we’re both probably quite bonkers. You can expect to be transported to the beautiful English countryside, following the path of a private detective trying to shed light on the mysterious disappearance of a girl. You can look forward to a world of otherworldly
creatures, mystery, quirky villagers, gore, scares, twists and more special FX than you can shake a stick at.
Q. What were some of your influences when writing the script for Alien Legacy: Terror on Luxor Ridge?
Teddy: Growing up we both loved watching horror and sci-fi. From an early age Doctor
Who was always on in the house, along with Red Dwarf (1988 -) and then later on The Mighty Boosh (2003-2007) and The League of Gentlemen (LOG) (1999 -2017). Hopefully you’ll notice some of the
types of humour which come through from these shows. With the fight scene we wanted something akin to the over-the-top fights which the recent Charlie’s Angels films did so well, but of course on a micro budget we had to improvise without using wires and fancy special effects.
James: Being the younger brother, I was pretty much forced to watch whatever my brother wanted
to watch, which was usually Dr Who or a Hammer Horror film that Teddy had painstakingly set the VHS recorder to tape in the middle of the night. The film Event Horizon (1997) has always been a favourite of mine, with its blend of sci-fi and horror – I’m also a big fan of Guillermo del Toro’s work in films such as Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019) and Hellboy (2004), especially in reference to his monster special FX.
Q. What were some of your influences for the look and style of the film?
Teddy: Setting the story in a traditional English village was important to us to try and make the film stand out from other films, particularly horror films produced in America of which there are loads. We wanted to exploit some of the quaint British icons you might expect to see, so when scouting for locations we were looking for things such as red telephone boxes and old village buildings. Luckily here in deepest darkest West Sussex where we filmed, we have some lovely old villages and historic buildings.
You’ll see quite a lot of visual humour too, harking back to the LOG again. So, we had a number of signs and props made which visually not only looked great, but hopefully they raise a smile too.
James: I’ve always been fond of the look and feel of retro horror and sci-fi films, especially the over the top and sometimes laughable special FX. Everything from the film colour grading and sound design to the poster artwork – it’s always been visually pleasing and entertaining to me. The original Ghost Busters (1984) and John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) have always been influential to me.
Q. Did you make any changes from the original script during filming?
Teddy: We pretty much stuck to the script when filming but during the casting process, when we found the wonderful Emily Weller who plays Ellie, and realised she had such an amazing singing voice, I said we must get her to sing something in the film! We then worked in a short dream sequence where the character of Ellie does indeed give us a fantastic and mesmerising performance.
What we did do during filming was to add to the script, so we have a couple of extra scenes which we felt added a lot to the overall storyline, it also means we could write a sequel if this first film goes down well.
James: When we were writing the script, we almost had an attitude of ‘anything is possible’, and let’s not worry about how we’re actually going to do something in reality, we’ll just have to figure it out, we didn’t want the script to suffer from practicalities. There was certainly a fair bit of head scratching on set for certain scenes and special FX that we’d planned, and we often had to think on
our feet to come up with solutions to problems that arose.
Q. What were some of your favourite moments during filming?
Teddy: Meeting and working with our amazing cast, most of which we hadn’t worked with before and having such a laugh with some of the lines in the script. Our first main block
of filming was done during late spring with Hannah and Emily (who play Kate and Ellie), so being out on location on ‘The Ridge’ was enjoyable because the weather was great, and we got some great shots.
James: I think filming the scene with the character William (played by Stephen Foster) who appears near the start of the film, was extremely funny to film due to the many unusual turn of phrases in his dialogue, which had everyone in stitches with his line fluffs and excellent comic delivery.
Q. Did you experience any issues during filming?
Teddy: Planning, planning and more planning! I think that helped filming go as smoothly as it did, you should have seen the number of spreadsheets we kept which detailed what we were filming and when and with who. But we did have some issues with some of the more complex practical
special effects which meant that we needed a number of extra days of shooting, particularly with some of Trefor’s scenes (he plays the butcher). We filmed most of Trefor’s scenes in late December when it was freezing outside which caused its own issues as our small studio isn’t heated – however the positive outcome of this is that it really was that cold in the butcher’s storeroom where you can see Trefor’s breath steaming!
The issues came more in the editing process when we had a rough cut of the film which ran to almost 2 and a half hours! So, we had to be a brutal with some of the scenes we cut to get the running time down, but the result is a much tighter and faster paced film.
James: The hardest part for me was that we soon realised we had quite a lot of post- production special FX production to factor in, it took months around my day job and two kids. There’s a fair bit of special FX that involve ‘face tracking’ and the fact I had never done anything like this before meant we filmed some bits in a way that made my life very difficult later on. The good thing is I’ve
learnt a lot from this film and hopefully our future projects will be bigger and better!
Q. What makes Alien Legacy: Terror on Luxor Ridge stand out as something different in the horror genre?
Teddy: I think it’s the mix of horror, sci-fi and dark humour which makes this film quite unique. Also having some decent monsters on screen, rather than them hiding in the dark also stands out (albeit back to that micro budget and working within the boundaries of that). Having a film which doesn’t
take itself too seriously but at the same time respecting the audience and giving them an engaging story, with some interesting and developed characters, plus some fantastic pay offs at the end of the film makes this one to watch.
James: I would like to think that we have a really entertaining script and plot with a lot of depth to the writing and characters, combined with a high level of attention to detail. I believe this in conjunction with our many visual effects and ‘visible’ monsters makes as stand tall amongst our fellow indie horror filmmakers.
Q. What do you hope people take away after watching the film?
Teddy: I hope the film gets the laughs, scares and shocks in the places it’s supposed to. We put
a lot of effort into various smaller details in the film, from the props, signs, sets and references in the script, which I hope some of the audience will be able to link back to some of our influences above. Buying into the characters, feeling their emotion and wanting to see what happens next in their journey would also be great, plus we’d know if a sequel was wanted!
James: In its essence, I would like people to feel they’ve been entertained and that they go away telling their friends and family about how different the film is on the indie scene.
Q. Do you have any other projects which you are currently working on?
Teddy: We’re currently working on the script for our second feature film which we hope to
start filming in the Spring. This time it’s an anthology, partly because we figure it might be slightly easier to film 3 separate smaller stories and slot them together than what we had with Legacy which is one story running to over 2 hours!
James: As Teddy mentioned, we are currently working on the second project and we have some
exciting potential new methods of filming which incorporates 3D virtual environments, using the power of After Effects and Unreal Engine software. This hopefully means we can conjure up any filmset you can imagine for our films, and we’re not limited to real world environments.
Q. If someone was looking to write and direct their own film what advice would you give them?
Teddy: Organisation and planning is key. As mentioned above, having spreadsheets which detail every scene number, who’s in the scene and what props and costumes they need was essential. Then estimating how long it would take to get though the scenes then working out how long we needed to book the actors for. I’m pleased to say for the most part the planning paid off and we didn’t over run too much but it was tight at times.
I think the hardest aspect is getting everyone’s diaries to co-ordinate. For most of us we have a day job and even those actors who perform full time for a living have other commitments in the diary which are subject to change. Therefore, we deliberately kept the number of actors on set for each scene limited to a maximum of 3, maybe 4 at one time, though other times we just had the one actor who had to interact with nobody there and with some clever editing (hopefully) you won’t realise the other character they’re talking too wasn’t actually there. It also meant me, and James had to do quite a bit of body doubling.
Finally, make sure your script is a good one, spend enough time on it and keep refining it – I watched a lot of horror films over lock down, particularly low budget indies which I love, but in my opinion,
for the majority it was the script which let the film down and not the special effects or locations.
James: I would say let your imagination run wild when writing, don’t go into first writing stage thinking we can’t do this or that – you can always pare elements of your script back afterwards, the important part is getting your un-refined thoughts and ideas onto paper. There’s always a low-budget alternative to convey something, even if in your mind you’re planning a big Hollywood action scene or special FX.
Alien Legacy: Terror on Luxor Ridge has been selected to play at the Horror-on-Sea Film Festival on Sunday 21st January at 20:00pm.
You can find out more about the festival and purchase tickets here
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Published in various websites, Philip is a reviewer who is best known for his interviews and media coverage of independent projects including; films, books, theatre and live events. Always on the lookout for something different to cover!
