Despite only making her film debut in 2012 Genoveva Rossi has made a massive impact on the horror genre and with 94 IMDB credits has earned her the title of Scream Queen. In addition to her acting, Genoveva has continued to show her versatility as a director, scriptwriter, journalist, model, psychic and tarot card reader.
With her short film Attack of the Killer Chickens (2015) now playing at film festivals and her feature Attack of the Killer Chickens: The Movie now in production, I got a chance to talk to Genoveva about the inspirations for Attack of the Killer Chickens, working in the horror genre and the modern interpretation of a scream queen.
You are currently working on your first feature Attack of the Killer Chickens: the Movie
We had the short Attack of the Killer Chickens which played at the film festivals, it won best short and best comedy at the FANtastic Horror Film Festival and it won two acting awards as well. It won a lot of awards for a short film, so we decided to turn it into a feature. It has always been my dream to turn my crazy chicken short film into a feature film, so we are currently in the process of shooting it as a feature.
Where did the original idea come from?
The movie plays a homage to all of my favourite B-movies like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1978) and Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1958), it is very reminiscent and really pays homage to that. I was also inspired by Kingdom of the Spiders (1977) with William Shatner. It’s not a serious movie it is very much a comedy horror, it is off the wall crazy and chickens attacking the world. On the news, I heard that there are more chickens now in the world than there are humans and I thought oh my god what if they all turn on us? So, I decided to make a movie like that because it is just hilarious. It is very much like Kingdom of the Spiders except they had tarantulas taking over. It is funny to have a movie when you have something which is seemingly not that much of a threat ends up taking over the whole world, enslaving and destroying human beings.
What were some of the experiences you have has so far whilst filming Attack of the Killer Chickens?
We are quite far along now and have had some fun times, I am one of the main actors, the writer, director and producer. I also have my producer Dave Stein who produced The Litch (2018) and a whole load of other movies and one of the actors in the film. I also have Edward X. Young who is known for being in a lot of movies including Mr Hush (2010). We have a bunch of people are going to be popping up in the film with small roles and cameos that will be familiar with in the B-movie horror genre. It has been a pretty cool experience with the whole hilarity of it, it’s one of those films that are a lot of fun to make, edit, write and its going to be a lot of fun to watch! It’s just a crazy wacky movie, made by crazy wacky people.
How do you find the process both writing, directing and acting in the film?
It’s a lot, you have to be super organised, especially as this is my first feature after directing a short film. I am sure there is a learning curve in learning from my mistakes, other people mistakes and figuring out what needs to get done. For the most part I think things have been going pretty smoothly, but I think the most important thing to do as a director is to assemble a great team of people, both cast and crew. I am really honoured to have such a great cast and crew for the film and everyone is doing a fantastic job.
Is it the same crew you had for the short film?
It is some of the same people but not everyone was able to come back, unfortunately, due to scheduling and things like that. Edward X. Young, Rocco George, K.J. Hopkins and myself will be returning from the short. I think everyone came back apart from Pamela Martin and Nick Petito, it’s a shame they didn’t come back but it just didn’t work out. I did want to give a shout out to Pamela Martin because she did win best-supporting actress for Attack of the Killer Chickens at FANtastic Horror Film Festival last October. One of the people we are most excited about having back is Rocco George because he is our puppeteer, puppet maker and acting in the film. He is a huge person contributing to the film. The film actually came second place at The Hollywood Dreamz Film Festival for best art direction which is partly due to Rocco’s amazing chicken puppets that he created for the film. Rocco and I are big fans of Jim Henderson so a lot of the movie to an extent plays a homage to our love of Jim Henderson especially as children with The Dark Crystal (1982), Labyrinth (1986), The Muppet Show (1976-1981), Sesame Street (1969-Present), so there is a little bit of an influence there as well.
There are a lot of different things that influenced me, I think the directors that influenced me the most would be John Waters and Ed Wood. It’s about making a fun, over the top zany film and those two directors can really relate to that. I don’t want to call it a horror-comedy it’s a comedy-horror film, because I think its more of a comedy than a horror. I don’t think too many people are going to have nightmares, but the film screened at 40 film festival and two women were very upset by the subject matter because they had been attacked by chickens when they were children. I didn’t realise people got attacked by chickens as much as they did, but a friend of mines mother had to go out during one of the first scenes, she said, “I was attacked by chickens when I was younger, I can’t watch this” and ran out. I never thought that would happen.
Not for this no.
But when people started getting attacked she had flashbacks I guess. At another film festival, a woman came up to me and said “You did that film Attack of the Killer Chickens. I was attacked by chickens when I was a child, I was young feeding them and they ambushed me”. You just don’t realise how aggressive they are, but we do kill and eat them so well they turn around its fair game! (Laughs). You can look at that a couple of different ways they are defending themselves, we do cut off their heads and make chicken nuggets with them!
And is the short still playing at the festivals?
Attack of the Killer Chickens is still going out to film festivals, it has been in about 40 has won about six awards but I am still submitting it whilst I make the feature film. I did the short as a proof of concept so the short is called Attack of the Killer Chickens and the feature will be Attack of the Killer Chickens The Movie. It was very popular, and people were asking when you are going to make it into a movie, it has really created its own audience.
When are you hoping to have the feature finished?
We are pretty far along now and have been working on it quite diligently and if all works out we will have it done by the end of the summer. If we don’t we will go into an extra innings, but the main thing is the quality of the film and getting all the actors involved that we really want. We should be done shooting by then, but then it’s the whole other process of editing it, colour correction and doing the score and everything else. You really want to take your time because that is one of the most important steps in making the film.
Going back over your career where you first started you appeared in Jack ‘O’ Slasher and I Spill Your Guts which obviously started your career in the horror genre. Were you always looking to go into horror or is that just a genre which you naturally progressed into?
I had been doing acting since Nursery school when I played a ladybug in a play, that wasn’t a horror play, and I did some acting in grammar school, high school. But I think my heart was always in horror, because I fell in love with the genre when I saw The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) with Vincent Price and Barbara Steele. That was when I realised how artistic a horror film could be and how well acted. I got really into Vincent Price, Barbara Steele and Christopher Lee and Peter Cushion, that whole era with Roger Corman and Hammer Films. I also loved the Universal films too with Bella Lugosi, Boris Karloff. All that was amazing to me so artistic, even those Universal monster movies I watched The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) and Dracula (1931) recently and the shots and the art direction are so beautiful it still holds up today. I was watching horror movies and reading Fangoria magazine as a weird little kid, so I think I always dreamed of being a little horror actress. I was reading about Linnea Quigley, Brinke Stevens, Michael Berryman and all these cool people and wondering how I could get into that? One day I was contacted on Facebook to see if I wanted to be in a movie called Jack ‘O’ Slasher (2012). Directed by Jennifer Valdes, it was her first feature film and was a horror-comedy and I played a sexy Satanist. I met James Balsamo, Bob Socci, a whole load of other horror people and I have kept very busy since then. That was 2012 and now I am on 94 film credits, mostly horror, sometimes I do improve, comedy, drama but I love horror the best.
People don’t realise that horror has a lot of bases and a lot of sub genres. Sometimes people think horror is someone running around with an axe and all the woman are naked. That’s part of horror but there is also the thriller, horror comedy, the arthouse horror, dramatic horror, Sci-Fi horror, fantasy horror I think it is the dark face of fantasy. I love all sub genres of horror and I guess there is something interestingly psychological about horror playing upon our fears and embracing our fears through film. Our greatest fear is probably death which is a huge theme amongst in horror films I think a lot of people check into horror because we want to feel comfortable with what makes us the most uncomfortable which is Death and end of life. A lot of the Vincent Price films have a lot of issues of the human soul, good and evil, god and the devil. It brings up a lot of deep philosophical and psychological issues in horror films that don’t bring up in a lot of other genres. Vincent Price said, “The challenge of acting in horror movies is acting realistically in the most unrealistic of circumstances” He is always spot on, a little rubber bug is after him in The Tingler (1959) and he is playing it serious. It could be Hamlet, he is there playing it in the moment, he is that character. That is sometimes the challenge in horror film something zany is happening, sometimes gory scary things in film don’t film that way when you are in them because you see how they are done. You have to make it seem real to the audience, so you have to make them seem real for you, to seem real for them. Some people think that actors in horror are not as good as actors in other genres, I would say if you are a good actor in horror you are better. Because the challenge you have in drama and I have done drama, you don’t have the stunts, the physical effects, the timing all whilst remembering where you need to be in the scene and the dialogue. When your drama you’re sitting there, having a conversation so you have is your dialogue and staying in your character. It’s a lot easier than when someone is next to you, blood is going to be spraying out at a certain point or you have a knife and you have to cut a person at a certain point in the scene and you have to hit them exactly right for the blood to spurt at the right time and the blood pump to go off and the dialogue. You really need to have your ducks in a row and often you only have one take. I did Herschell Gordon Lewis Bloodmania (2017) and we has this amazing scene which award winning make-up artist David Trainor, who works in the tv series Fargo (2014 -) set up the scene and I had one take because of the amount of blood and gore being used it couldn’t be duplicated. So, you have this pressure and you had better not suck. There is a lot of money we have spent on props, pumps, outfits so you have to get this right. So, sometimes the fear is real! (laughs)
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!
