The Barge People (2018)
Director: Charlie Steeds
Writer: Christopher Lombard
Starring: Kate Davies-Speak, Mark McKirdy, Makenna Guyler, Natalie Martins, Matt Swales
Set on the canals amid the glorious British countryside, two sisters and their boyfriends head off for a relaxing weekend away on a barge, unaware of the flesh-eating fish mutants lurking in the water, ready and waiting to feed.
In a new interview in the series leading up to Horror-on-Sea Film Festival, I got a chance to ask The Barge People director Charlie Steeds a few questions about what we can expect from the film.
Q. Your latest film The Barge People has been selected to play at Horror-on-Sea. Can you tell us what we can expect from the film?
Expect deformed fishy mutant mayhem on the canal, in a retro B-movie throwback to the days where the best horror was found in tattered VHS boxes on the dusty top shelves of video rental shops.
Q. What attracted you to script for The Barge People which was written by Christopher Lombard?
Right from the title ‘The Barge People’, it had my attention, and I’d not seen a horror film set on the canal, on a barge… When I read it, its the type of horror movie I’d have watched in my early teens. Me and Chris both love The Hills Have Eyes (1977), and his script brought that type of backwoods horror to England, to the canal.
Q. What were some of your influences for the look and style of the film?
The Hills Have Eyes, both the remake and the original, were both big influences, from writing all the way to shooting. Another is the 1978 Australian film Long Weekend (1978), in which the killer of the film is nature itself! I love the way director Colin Eggleston shot the locations, the animals, insects, the weather… Every element is battling with the characters, and I wanted to bring that feel to The Barge People. I hoped to make viewers feel like they were out in the countryside, stranded with our characters.
Q. Where there any elements of the original script which were adapted during filming?
Writing is my personal favourite part of the film making process, and this is the only script I’ve directed so far that wasn’t my own. I learned a huge amount from the experience. I think overall, taking on Christopher Lombard’s script, we were able to chop and change it to fit my director’s vision, and we arrived at something better than either of us could have achieved without the other’s input.
The biggest change though is that I imagined the Barge People should be fish-mutants, or at least mutated by their habitat (there’s a rat-mutant who dwells in the underground caverns too)… in the script they read more like characters from the Wrong Turn (2003) movies, I wanted something more creature-like. My main regret, in fact, is that we didn’t go full-fishman on all the mutants, but perhaps that’s for another film…
Q. Did you experience any issues during filming?
Not enough time, not enough money, and every issue that comes with that… This was a particularly tough shoot because the weather in October in Cornwall was brutal! Many scenes had to be changed to get out of the bad weather, we were caught in a storm of some sort, it had been all over the news. But thankfully its all there on-screen, you can see our struggle with the cold, wet and windy night shoots, and in this type of survival horror that goes a long way to enhance the film’s atmosphere. It was hard work, but in retrospect it was a stroke of luck.
Q. What were some of your favourite moments during filming?
When I read the script and got to the ‘Barge Massacre’ sequence in the middle, that’s what I was most excited for. We had to build the interior of the boat as a set, just to pull off this scene, with the amount of bloody carnage I wanted. Its a 7 minute action sequence, we shot it over 2 days, and as a horror filmmaker you couldn’t ask for something more fun to shoot than that. Blasting actors with blood and green slime from a pressure sprayer… I get a bit over-exited and carried away! Throwing people through breakaway walls too. Also, spending time with this cast. The film is 10 times better than it should be thanks to their relentless energy in every scene.
Q. You are working again with actress Kate Davies-Speak who has made an impact in the British horror industry and previously appeared in your film Escape from Cannibal Farm (2017). What is Kate like to work with and what do you think makes her such a good final girl?
This lead role in The Barge People was written specifically for Kate, and it was through her that the script came to me. Having worked together on 5 feature films, Kate and I are close friends, so its very easy working together! There was a nights hoot on The Barge People where we had to get a load of the most intense emotional scenes from the movie (the rain has stopped us shooting them sooner) but now the rain and wind was even worse and we only had a few hours to get everything. Kate raced through the scenes one after the other, tears, snot, screaming, shouting, she can dive in an give it all her energy, full commitment, which is what you need when it comes to a good final girl performance.
Q. What makes The Barge People stand out as something different in the horror genre?
I like making horror movies that are uniquely British, its not done too often, especially not the backwoods-slasher kind, so I hope this stands out as a fun and unexpected horror movie set on the canal. We also have a severe lack of fish monsters in the horror genre. Aside from that, I’ve tried to create a throwback to the older horror movies I’ve grown up loving, so while its something different, I hope the retro look, the synth score, the practical gore/creature effects, all lend it a very familiar feel.
Q. What do you hope people take away after watching the film?
If you can watch this film with your mates, with a few beers and lots of popcorn, and have a good laugh whilst enjoying the blood and gore, then that’s the best I can hope for. I just want horror fans to have a good time!
Q. Do you have any other projects which you are currently working on?
I’ve just finished post-production on my 1960s-set ghost story film An English Haunting. I’m also in post on a Grindhouse-style 1970s-set blaxploitation splatter movie called Death Ranch that I shot in Tennessee earlier this year, and also a sexy vampire thriller currently called After Dark. All 3 will be out in 2020. My next film shoots in January, and like The Barge People, its a creature feature.
Q. If someone was looking to write and direct their own film what advice would you give them?
If you’re looking to make money, see what the sales agents are after and give them what they want, then do your best to make it your own, if you can… If your doing it because you want to make a film you’d love to watch, make sure its something bold and original and 100% you, not an imitation of some horror film you love. Make sure you’re going in with a plot that if you’d read it on the back of a VHS box as a kid, you’d absolutely have bought the film in a heartbeat.
There’s too many imitations and halfhearted half-thought out so-so horror movies floating around currently (I can say so, I’ve probably been guilty of making them), its just so easy to make films these days. So be brave and make something nobody will forget. Give your sales agent a hard job by putting back the extreme violence and gore (if the story calls for it), give the horror fans their thrills and they’ll be happy! And, if you get a chance to stick a fish monster in there, do it!!
The Barge People will be playing at Horror-on-Sea on Sunday 19th January at 20:00 hrs
You can find out more about Horror-on-Sea and purchase tickets for the festival 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!
