Movies
Danielle Harris Reveals ‘Stake Land’ Webisodes!
While visiting the set of Dark Sky Films’ Stake Land in the cold, upstate Catskill Mountains, leading lady Danielle Harris spilled the beans about a series of webisodes that were shot for each of the main characters in the film. You can read all about them beyond the break. Being helmed by Jim Mickle (Mulberry Street), the flick takes place following a global spread of vampirism.
Kelly McGillis plays a nun who joins a small team of survivors – including Danielle Harris – as they make a treacherous journey north to safety through the war-torn U.S.
With there being so little dialogue in Stake Land (watch for our full report soon), and virtually no back stories, some of the lead actors and actresses in the movie have directed their own shorts, which will be available for viewing before the film’s release.
“I just directed a webisode for Stake Land,” Danielle Harris told Bloody-Disgusting. “The webisodes are a nice little look inside our lives before we met. They’re short, maybe four to seven minutes each. It’s a great chance to sort of see all the directors’ styles, and how we differ from one another, which I don’t think is done very often, giving the fans the chance to sort of become emotionally invested in these characters before they watch them. A little snippet into their lives.”
Further conversation revealed that Danielle Harris would be singing in her back story.
“I come out in a beautiful, risqué, very short, cleavage gown… I’m just kidding. No, there’s no Sequin gowns in this movie! It’s just a nice way to sort of introduce who Belle is. We’re sort of having a little honkey tonk. We’re singing – Jim Mickle (director) and Adam Folk (producer) were out there with me – one playing the banjo, one playing the guitar. I got a chance to sing, and I have a horrible cold – I don’t have the greatest voice to begin with. I guess I can kind of carry a tune. But, um… I gave it my all. I’m the girl you usually have to bribe when I’m drunk – cause I don’t get up and do kareoke, no matter how much money you put on the table. I did it once, because Quentin Tarantino directed me up on stage and I just couldn’t resist, but other than that, I just don’t get up on stage. So – this was new for me. It will be interesting to see. I think it will be on the soundtrack, which I’m really nervous about.”
When asked if it was ever considered to go into a studio:
“Jim is really about leaving it real and keeping it real and not having it look like we’ve done it in the studio, pitch corrected. I don’t really care, to be honest,” said Danielle, shrugging it all off. “Whatever. I’m not a singer, I’m an actress. But it was fun to do. Again, I have this cold, and I couldn’t really hear myself, so it’s probably a little bit off key. Or a lot off key. But I got the crowd going, which is all that really mattered. And then I left, drove six hours, slept, got up and drove to the mountains and watched the sun rise for my short. I shot for twelve hours today. And now I’m going to bed…”
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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