Zombie Frat House will screen on Saturday, Jan. 18, at The Times Cinema, 5906 W. Vliet St. The event will include a talk-back and a making-of documentary.
Every generation has its own ideas about zombies. “I’m interested in how they’ve changed in the last few years,” says Milwaukee’s Ross Bigley, who just wrapped his own entry into the genre, a 90-minute feature called Zombie Frat House. “What you saw in the films of Val Lewton”—who produced the melancholy allegory of enslavement, I Walked With a Zombie (1943)—“is nothing like what you see now.”
We’re sitting at Café Bella on a frigid winter day, warming to the subject of the shambling, unintelligent undead (as opposed to the more cultivated vampires). “George Romero [Night of the Living Dead] was the bridge between Lewton and now,” I venture. Bigley agrees. “Romero got into satirizing consumerism. Lots of the movies nowadays are more of a fun thrill ride. Or it’s more like a video game; you go around slicing and dicing. Like reality TV, it’s more about survival; this does go into people’s fears about the culture today and the way the world is.”
In Zombie Frat House, college students, blood dripping from their mouths, stumble around the easily recognizable environs of UW-Milwaukee. Screams are heard, axes are wielded, bones are cleaved.
Bigley says he hasn’t seen Jim Jarmusch’s recent zombie satire, The Dead Don’t Die. In any event, shooting for Bigley’s movie commenced six years ago. Bigley explains his inspiration. “I wanted to combine genres—comedy and zombies, Animal House meets ‘The Walking Dead.’ Ours starts as a frat house comedy for the first 30 minutes; then it becomes a horror comedy. We try to balance laughter with tension.”
Bigley is no stranger to DIY filmmaking, but Zombie Frat House is his most ambitious production to date. “I had a second unit, a makeup department with 100 zombies to be made up. I was going spot to spot wrapping pick-up shots and heading to the main set. It was about management as much as vision.”
Beneath the splatter runs a vein of social commentary. The movie’s party-hearty fraternity, with the worst reputation on campus, has been suspended, and the guys are having “the blowout party to end all blowout parties,” Bigley says. “They invite their sorority sisters, and then chemicals are unleashed on campus. Let’s just say someone was careless.”
Bigley had no trouble recruiting a cast recognizable to Milwaukee theatergoers. Among them are Tom Reed (Shakespeare in the Park), Robert W.C. Kennedy (The Constructivists), Bo Johnson (Windfall Theatre) and Brian Miracle (Optimist Theatre). Some actors played multiple roles.
Zombie Frat House has an original score by the electronic duo Cyberchump, featuring Milwaukee musician-filmmaker Mark G.E. “It was the first time I’ve worked with Mark,” Bigley says. “He was helpful in sound mixing. I couldn’t have finished the movie without his knowledge.”
Following its world premiere in Milwaukee, Bigley says, “we’ll try to enter it in film festivals and see about getting it sold.”
Zombie Frat House will screen on Saturday, Jan. 18, at The Times Cinema, 5906 W. Vliet St. The event will include a talk-back and a making-of documentary.
