Interviews
[Interview] Olivia Tennet and Milo Cawthorne Talk ‘Blood Punch’
I saw Madellaine Paxson and Eddie Guzelian’s Blood Punch at last year’s Mile High Horror Film Festival and have been itching to watch it again ever since. In my review, I called it a “supernatural film noir on meth, with heaps of dark humor and a madcap edge that cuts deep.” After watching it again on Midnight Releasing’s DVD, I stand by my initial 4-skull review. This movie is a stupid amount of fun and has a body count in the dozens – even if it is the same body getting killed again and again and again.
The film is about Milo, a brilliant chemist with a knack for cooking meth. At a drug rehabilitation center, he falls for a chain-smoking harlot named Skyler, who quickly whisks Milo away to a remote hunting lodge in the woods. There, Milo is employed by Skyler’s psycho-boyfriend Russell to cook one mammoth batch of meth for a sizable paycheck. The lodge itself was built on the site of a bloody Native American war, which left a bit of a supernatural mark on the joint. When people die on its grounds, well, sometimes they come back. It’s a vicious cycle that Milo and Skyler must try to break to survive (and sell their meth).
One of the things that makes Blood Punch work so well is the cast: Milo Cawthorne (Deathgasm), Oliva Tennet, and Ari Boyland all worked together before this film on the Power Rangers R.P.M. series in New Zealand. This history shows on screen as their chemistry practically drips between the frames. I had the opportunity to toss a few questions at Cawthorne and Tennet (who are married in real life) about the film, what the behind the scenes mayhem was like, and other bloody stuff about this very bloody film.
Like I mentioned they all worked together on a Power Rangers series in New Zealand before Blood Punch. Making that shift from kid’s show to bloody horror-comedy was a bit cathartic for them. “Power Rangers is quite a long shoot as far as TV series go,” Tennet explains. “So although we had an awesome time shooting it, by the time we were in our last month of shooting we were all a bit over it and ready to do something else. Blood Punch is definitely the furthest you can get from a kids’ series where we were fighting rubber monsters and running around in Lycra! But it was also really great to go into a project with a cast, a director and a writer that I knew so well and had such a solid working relationship with already.”
“It was massive fun,” says Cawthorne. “RPM became very tough after the 5th month of filming, it was a real struggle to get through some of those scenes and that dialogue. Also for Eddie and Maddy I think this was a nice breathe of fresh air, they’d been in children’s TV land for years and years, so this was them really letting their hair down.”
What starts off as a bizarre love triangle meth cookout in the woods quickly turns into an even more bizarre supernatural time loop of death. Cawthorne’s initial reaction to the script was “‘Oh shit, this guy (Eddy) is a nutcase who is trying to lure us to the US’ hahaha, I don’t think I’ve ever told him that! But then I read it again, saw how cool the Skyler character is, then as I got more of the script I started to ‘get’ the tone of the film, and after reading the whole first script I was hooked. I was keen to make it.”
Tennet explains that “To get a role written specifically with you in mind, pretty much never happens as an actor so it was really flattering, not to mention really exciting. Shortly after reading it my thought was ‘Oh god, I really have to learn how to smoke.’” Skyler does indeed smoke a lot in the film. Each time, she cooly lights a match with her thumb. It’s a tough trick to pull off in real life. “I’m not sure I should give this away, but the lighting the match trick was actually done by super-gluing a small piece of the lighting strip from a matchbox onto my thumb and then striking the match on that. There are lots of outtakes of me stuffing up the trick because if the matches got just slightly damp they would snap.”
For the role, Tennet did her film noir femme fatale research. “Blood Simple, Double Indemnity, Something Wild, Body Heat are a few of the ones we watched. Lauren Bacall, Kathleen Turner, Anne Bancroft and are all actresses who nailed the femme fatale role so I definitely drew inspiration from them. Also Noomi Rapace from Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, because we thought that Skyler had probably had quite a tortured past. In saying that, I then let all of that go when we start shooting and just go with my instincts, otherwise I can start to doubt my choices.”
There’s a lot of weapons utilized in Blood Punch. Everything from crossbows to hatchets and even a grenade for good measure. That being said, there’s a lot of great kills in the film – ranging from gruesome to humorous. I’m partial to one where Skyler uses a cleaver. Cawthorne agrees, “that might be my favourite as well. I also like the double ‘scythe’ after Skyler and I have an argument about whose turn it is. I love all the kills once it becomes a bit boring for me and Skyler, that’s when I enjoy the film the most.”
Some of the kill effects didn’t go as planned, as Cawthorne describes, “There was one point where Eddie was firing paintballs at Ari to mimic the pistol shots I lay into him. Ari had padding on most of his upper body. I say’ most’ because there was a small portion of skin that hadn’t been covered right under Ari’s armpit. And it was about the fourth or fifth hit, you can see Ari go from ‘acting’ pain, to really ‘feeling’ pain. It never fails to crack me up. The look on his face as that paintball hits. So no, I guess there’s not a lot of sympathy there.”
Aside from the kills, one scene in particular was difficult for the actors. It involves making out with a whole lotta blood pouring down on them. “I would have to say that was my hardest scene in the whole film,” says Tennet. “You can actually see Milo holding onto me really tight because I was desperately trying to get out of the way of the blood! Actually…now that I think of it…Milo was probably just using me as a shield. What a dick.”
Cawthorne says, “One of the worst thins about that was the blood acted like glue and just picked up anything that was on that ground, so you go to get cleaned up and you’ve got cigarette butts sticking to your arse, and little bits of wood entangled in the hair on your thighs.”
As it turns out, shooting up in CA’s San Jacinto mountains drew some unwanted attention… “We had a guy who had nothing to do with the crew, kind of start following us around, he carried a gun in his belt and would often pull it out and show it to you. Towards the end of the filming he demanded to be paid for his ‘services’, our producer declined and so the guy pulls out the gun, and suddenly our producer was convinced that maybe we actually should pay this guy. He got his money and we haven’t heard from him since.”
The crew also made a bit of a mess in the cabin where they shot. The owner was furious, so when they realized reshoots needed to be done, “We can’t say that we’re the same film crew that ruined the house earlier, so Ari pretends to be someone else, puts on an American accent and rents the cabin. After doing some shots outside we get a call from the owner, saying that one of the neighbors saw people near the cabin with a camera, he’s worried because he had a bad experience with a film crew earlier in the year. So Ari has to assure him that we’re not the same crew, we’re just a bunch of friends who are taking snapshots of the forest. The owner buys it, and we manage to get all the shots we need. But that was a nervous period of time for us, we didn’t know whether the owner was going to pay us a ‘surprise’ visit or not. One day the cleaner knocked on the door and we all jumped with fright.”
Thanks a million to Milo Cawthorn and Olivia Tennet for answering my questions. Blood Punch is available now on DVD, iTunes, and VOD from Midnight Releasing. The DVD includes deleted scenes, behind the scenes footage, and other fun tidbits. I sincerely recommend this film to our readers. It’s an absolute blast.
Of all the places to find a coven of witches, the attic above a Christian youth camp is probably the last place you’d think to look. But that’s just what we find in Camp, a surrealist nightmare of feminist empowerment from Canadian filmmaker Avalon Fast.
Emily (Zola Grimmer) is still reckoning with her involvement in a horrific tragedy when she accidentally contributes to the death of her best friend, Charlie (Giselle Morison). Unable to move on, the traumatized teen takes a job at a rural summer camp, hoping to forget her own sorrows by looking after at-risk kids. She quickly connects with a counselor named Clara (Alice Wordsworth) and finds comfort in her close-knit group of female friends. But a mysterious whisper from deep in the woods warns that they may be leading her down a darker path.
Fast burst onto the scene in 2022 with Honeycomb, a psychological horror film that follows a burgeoning matriarchy. Known for their focus on “Girl Horror” stories, the talented young filmmaker tackles similar themes in Camp as Emily leaves the modern world behind to embrace a dark vision of self-discovery through magic.
Ahead of the film’s U.S. release on June 26, Bloody Disgusting sat down with Fast to chat about the nebulous nature of good vs. evil and the intoxicating power of female-driven horror.
Bloody Disgusting: What inspired this unique story? Did you go to religious summer camps when you were young?
Avalon Fast: I did. I went to lots of different summer camps, but all of them were primarily Bible camps. The memory I have of camp is kind of strange. I was very homesick as a kid, and I didn’t necessarily enjoy all my time there. I definitely remember meeting some interesting girls at camp and having that presence of religion hovering around the whole experience.
BD: I really love the film’s gorgeous natural setting. Camp is the kind of surrealist nightmare that you don’t just watch. You feel it too. How did you approach creating this world?
AF: Well, a huge part of it was working with my cinematographer Eily Sprungman, who’s a very close friend. We spent years prepping, shot listing, storyboarding, and mood boarding. She’d had a similar experience to mine. We grew up around the same place, and so we understood each other’s visions from the get-go. But there are so many other pieces that came together. The costuming, the art, and the animated sequences were done by Sofiya Iurkevych. One of our producers, Taylor Nodrick, was obsessed with shooting on Super 8 film. I’ve always wanted to as well, so all the memory sequences were shot on Super 8. It was just a lot of people with an understanding and a vision for what this project was. I’m really happy with the way it turned out.
To the extent that you’re comfortable sharing, what’s your relationship to witchcraft, and what does Camp have to say about modern witches?
Well, that’s the question of Camp. It’s not that I don’t resonate with any of these things, but I specifically wanted Camp to be a little bit ambiguous around what witchcraft looks like. Is this witchcraft? Are these girls witches? Emily explicitly asks if that’s what’s happening here, and the answer isn’t yes. The film isn’t going to answer that question for you. My relationship to magic and witchcraft? It’s tough. I feel like there’s so much magic, connection, and spirituality that comes from these friendships, the closeness of these women, and what’s happening around them. A lot of what Camp is trying to say or show is just that magic can come out of friendship.
I loved watching these female friendships develop. And you’re right. No one ever says the word “coven,” but you can feel that connection, and you can see a change in Emily as those relationships grow. I’m also really fascinated with the way Camp plays with the idea of good and evil. At one point, Clara says, “Maybe God drew us to the devil,” which stopped me in my tracks. How do you view witchcraft or the magic these girls are experiencing in regard to good and evil?
That was such a huge part of the script’s construction. The story is really trying to keep a balance between those two things. I like asking people if they think these girls are good or bad, because I feel like a lot of people come out of the film thinking one or the other. They’ll say things like “thank God Emily found her people” or “God, I really wish she’d gone home.” I just don’t think there’s ever an answer. I wanted to explore the idea of going down the wrong path, especially coming out of grief. What makes you a bad person, and does healing mean you’re looking to become a better person? I don’t have an answer, but I do feel like that’s a huge part of what Camp is asking. What is good? What is bad? Why did God bring me to the devil?
Yes, because this is all happening at “God camp” in Emily’s words. So how can both of those things exist at the same time? Along those lines, I’m also fascinated by the voice Emily hears in the woods. Without spoiling too much, what is this voice asking, and what is required in return?
Emily comes to camp with a shout into the void, asking can anyone hear me? Does anyone want to? And it’s answered so clearly by these girls, specifically responding only with love, care, support, and trust. It’s like her prayers were answered. It doesn’t mean that everything is going to be alright, but Emily is looking for peace. She’s looking for a moment where she feels pure good. And I think, even at its surface level, she does get that experience.
Personally, I don’t really think people are good or bad. I think we all exist somewhere in the middle. Camp centers traditionally villainized characters, but that’s where Emily seems to find her peace, however you choose to define it.
I also wanted to show the experience of having decided that you are a bad person, you’ve made mistakes, and you feel cursed. Then when you meet other people who have done things that you would consider worse, you can actually feel good in their presence. You feel like less of a bad person. I think that’s a huge part of the story as well. Emily’s finding her version of other fucked up people, and she feels less fucked up around them. I’ve found that in my own life. It’s a cool thing. I don’t think it’s bad.
I don’t think it’s bad either. It’s finding your home, your people. We meet Emily in the aftermath of unthinkable trauma. Is this a story about mental health and healing?
Witnessing it myself. witnessing other people experience tragedy and then move through grief, you hear a lot of talk about healing or coming out the other side. There’s so much conversation around what that looks like, with self-care and showing up for yourself. I always felt really averse to it. It annoyed me. I think the beginning of the film speaks to that. The therapeutic version of what getting help looks like is obviously very different from what Camp is showing. And again, I don’t have an answer for what you’re supposed to do. But I think that’s another question I was asking: how do you heal? Do you heal at all? Is that the end goal, or are we just trying to get better? It’s something I experienced in my own grief. And the answer, for me, at least now, is just that I’m not looking to get better. So I felt like I hadn’t. I found it hard to find people to have those conversations with. And I think that’s what I ultimately wanted to make a film about.
I love that unanswered question. In my own experience, I’ve had to reframe what healing actually looks like. There’s not really an endpoint. It’s just finding a way to keep going. There’s also an element of sacrifice in this story, particularly regarding another counselor named Jo (Sophie Bawks-Smith). What role does she play in Emily’s journey?
For me, Jo is this human embodiment of Charlie, Emily’s friend. As Jo, she had a life at this camp before meeting Emily, and then was kind of taken over by Charlie’s spirit. I think a lot of people view Emily’s final choice as horrendous and tragic. In a way it is, but for me, if Jo becomes her angel, it’s almost like a self-sacrifice. Jo knows that by sacrificing herself, she’ll be giving Emily power to move forward. In the original script, the girls were supposed to bring out another counselor, JB (Aidan Laudersmith), and burn his body. But I just thought, there’s no way sacrificing this guy could give the girls enough power. There’s just no way, right? Logically, that just didn’t line up for me.
I’m glad you mentioned JB, because he has his own tragic arc. How do men factor into the world of Camp?
The way men factor into my world is so bizarre. I have such little respect for them in my films, which is something I’ve been called on. I think I have to challenge myself in the future to make a movie about a boy because, these boys … It’s not that the men in my films aren’t redeemable, but there’s no depth to these characters. They’re just treated with such disrespect. I don’t know why I do that, actually. That’s something for me to look into. It was the same with Honeycomb. They’re just such peripheral characters. I’ve had people ask about Kayne (Henri Gillespi), the scary guy at the fire, what happens to him? I just think, I don’t know. I don’t care. That’s not the point of the story.
Well, I can say after a lifetime of watching women on the periphery of the story, the course correction feels nice. In a similar vein, I’m in love with your homepage, avalonfast.com. There’s an image of girls on a film set and then a still from Honeycomb in which a blood-covered girl is screaming at the sky. And in the middle, it just says Girl Horror. It’s a really powerful statement that gives me chills. How do you define Girl Horror, and what draws you to these types of stories?
I was obsessed with the term when I started making my movies. It was something I’d come up with to kind of brand myself and describe what I was doing. Then I went through a period where I felt like it was a bit gender exclusive and didn’t interest me as much. But now I’ve come full circle on the term. I think it’s a bit of a commentary on youth and the horror of growing up female. But I think everybody can relate to that experience. I don’t want it to feel like this exclusive thing, that I make movies exclusively for girls, because I don’t think I do. I’m interested in exploring what Girl Horror means. Originally, it was just a title, something I came up with, and now it’s become something that resonates with people. You said it gave you chills. That’s cool for me to hear because there’s obviously some depth there.
Are you working on anything new?
Yes. I am actually making a movie about a boy. That’s the next thing.
That’s exciting! The more I think about feminism, the more I end up coming back to men and boys, because they have a place in the world of Girl Horror too.
Absolutely. It’s all just part of being human.
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