Film Name: Frenzy Moon
Director: Gregory Lamberson
Writer: Gregory Lamberson
Starring: Alyssa Grace Adams, Aaron Krygier, Kayla Malika, Gabrielle Nunzio, Harold Octavius Jacob
Six college grad students and a mysterious stranger battle a pack of ferocious werewolves in a secluded cabin.
In a new exclusive interview on Blazing Minds, I got a chance to ask Writer-Director Gregory Lamberson a few questions about the film ‘Frenzy Moon‘, which will have its UK Premiere at Horror-on-Sea on Saturday 24th January at 12:30hrs.
Q. Your film Frenzy Moon has been selected to play at the Horror-on-Sea Film Festival. Can you tell us what we can expect?
A. A 70’s style action-horror film with 80’s style special effects.
Q. What were your inspirations when writing the script?
A. I’m a novelist as well as a filmmaker. I wrote three ambitious, almost epic werewolf novels (The Frenzy Way, The Frenzy War, The Frenzy Wolves) that would have been too costly to mount on the kind of money I can raise. But I wanted to make a werewolf movie, so I devised a cabin-in-the-woods scenario that was manageable. Besides my own novels, my inspirations were The Howling (1981) and John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982).
Q. Did you have any of the cast in mind for the characters when writing the script?
A. My friend Craig Sheffer starred in my haunted lighthouse film Widow’s Point (2029), so I wrote the male
lead for him. Union rules changed, making it impossible for me to cast him, and I had to do the film on an even lower budget than originally conceived, so I cast the entire film with Buffalo, New York Theatre actors, which worked out very well. Aaron Krygier got that role, and he eats the screen in a very memorable performance.
Q. What were some of your influences for the look and style of the film?
A. I actually came to realize that Tobe Hooper is my greatest influence, and I’ve been grasping at his version of Salem’s Lot (1979)for a long time. Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) is also a huge influence.
Q. Did you make any changes from the original script during filming?
A. The story and beats remained the same throughout. I allow my actors to tweak my dialogue, and the limitations of what we could achieve with practical special effects necessitated some changes to the action in the climax.
Q. What were some of your favourite moments during filming?
A. I’m not a visibly joyous person during filmmaking, because I’m the main producer as well as the screenwriter and director, and the clock is always ticking. But I enjoyed working with the same actors day in and day out, instead of piecemeal, and my cinematographer, Chris Cosgrave, did an excellent shot.
When I made my first few films (including Slime City (1988), released on VHS in the UK as The Slime), I had no dolly, so they were very static. I had a lot of dolly shots on this film, which made me very happy.
Q. Did you experience any issues during filming?
A. The schedule I made was absurdly, insanely short for an ambitious practical effects movie, but that’s what I could afford. And we had to do a lot of pickups and reshoots with the effects, so shooting went on long before principal photography. On the next-to-last day of filming, Covid came to our cast.
Q. What makes Frenzy Moon stand out as something different in the horror genre?
A. In terms of the overall genre, nothing – except maybe the quality of the acting. But in terms of contemporary horror, it’s a throwback to 70’s an 80’s werewolf films, and I think it acquit itself quite nicely.
Q. What do you hope people take away after watching the film?
A. I want them to have FUN, and I think they will.
Q. Do you have any other projects which you are currently working on?
A. Always. I have two films in active development, and two in earlier development. A survival horror thriller, a vampire film with a lot of action, a vigilante/revenge film, and something a little more contemporary and mysterious.
Q. If someone was looking to write and direct their own film what advice would you give them?
A. Care – really care – about the story you plan to tell, sign agreements with collaborators if you wish to remain friends, and pace yourself for the long haul.
Frenzy Moon will be playing at Horror-on-Sea on Friday 16th January at 17:30hrs.
You can find out more about writer-director Gregory Lamberson on the website here
You can find out more about Horror-on-Sea and purchase tickets the Frenzy Moon here
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!
