By Eric Stanze
I really love the Halloween season. Autumn brings with it the crisp temperatures, the changes in the trees, and the holiday full of ghouls, graveyards, and ghastly apparitions. It?s the best time of the year.

I remember when I was growing up in Pittsburgh, the Fall brought out the community enthusiasm for the locally-lensed classics Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead.

As it soaked in that I was actually living in the very area where these legendary films were shot, I gained an even deeper appreciation for the Fall season. The autumnal imagery in these two films certainly adds much to their overall atmosphere. The bare trees in Night set a perfect stage for the advancing undead. The cool Autumn outdoors makes an interesting juxtaposition with the harsh, sterile, artificiality of Dawn?s mall interior.

As I grew older, I began to understand better the ingredients that make up a film?s atmosphere. The chosen season and the elements of the outdoors have a tremendous impact on a movie?s overall vibe. Campy as it is, The Evil Dead definitely benefits from the outdoor Autumn imagery. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre uses the oppressive summer heat as fuel for the intensity and horror. The original Black Christmas expertly utilizes the season it is set in. You feel an invitation to get out of the bitter cold, to come inside where there is warmth and safety. That warmth and safety are then obliterated by the horror. Even the bright and uplifting season of Spring has been used as a counterpoint to darkness and violence in the film Don't Look In the Basement.

Autumn is really the standout season, though. It really sets that perfect horror movie mood.

Very aware of this, I decided that my next movie project should be set in the Fall. I wanted to make a movie that was not only set in this season, but was visually soaked in the atmosphere of Autumn. With this as an objective, I directed a horror movie called Deadwood Park.

The plot of Deadwood Park has nothing to do with the Halloween holiday, nor is the story directly linked to Autumn (it could really take place in any month of the year). Still, I knew Autumn matched the mood I wanted Deadwood Park to have. And the creepy, chilly, Fall setting worked like a charm. Deadwood Park has exactly the tone I wanted it to have.

I?ve been making movies since 1990, though these days I seldom admit to my earliest, most amateurish efforts. My first two movies to see home video distribution were actually student films; one from my high school days (shot in 1990, right after my high school graduation), and the one student project of my college years (shot in 1992).

My high school feature project was a poorly executed Nightmare on Elm Street rip-off. I was only 18 when we made it, so you can imagine the level of incompetence I achieved with this movie. It had a lot of cool, bizarre ideas, but the directing, the writing, the effects, and the sets were all terrible. My college movie was better executed. Slightly. It was an Alfred Hitchcock rip-off that somewhat functioned like an Italian giallo due to my fascination with Dario Argento.

Both of these student films are truly embarrassing for me today. Sitting down to watch my ineptitude of a decade-and-a-half ago is not my idea of a good time, so I don?t watch these movies at all anymore, and I recommend you steer clear of them as well!

Though they sold well on VHS, these titles thankfully did not make the jump to DVD (except that I think there is a Japanese DVD release of my high school feature). But, I can?t completely ignore these two student films. They did start a career that is still going today. When I made these two movies in my youth, I still thought of filmmaking as a hobby. When they (rather unexpectedly) got picked up for world-wide home video distribution in 1993, I turned a corner in my attitudes toward filmmaking. Instead of enjoying it as a hobby, I started building my career.

In the 17 years since shooting my big high school feature motion picture, I?ve learned a lot, experienced a lot, enjoyed great progress, and endured much hardship. Mostly, I?m thankful that I?ve been able to keep making movies. I didn?t have family or friends in the industry, I didn?t have a mentor to work under and learn from before my first feature, and I do not come from a family with money. With these ingredients, the easiest thing to make is a nice failure cocktail. So even I?m impressed by the fact that I?ve been making movies non-stop since 1990, and that I?ve earned my living at this since 1999.

My first ?professional? movie was Savage Harvest. Shot in 1993, it was a blood-soaked Evil Dead rip-off about people getting possessed by demons first conjured by Cherokee Native Americans. For the first time, I was making a movie that had a distribution deal in place before we ever started shooting. Though I was no longer treating filmmaking as a hobby, there was still plenty of directorial incompetence on display in Savage Harvest. I still did not have the confidence to be progressive and take creative risks. I had no voice as a director. I was really just emulating other filmmakers that I admired (in this case, Sam Raimi). At this time, I was also very susceptible to bad advice about how movies ?should? be made.

However, Savage Harvest did have a strong story (too bad I told that story so poorly) and the gory special effects turned out great. Thanks to the high splatter content, Savage Harvest gathered a cult following that exists to this day. So the movie wasn?t going to win anyone an Oscar. That?s okay. Savage Harvest still worked as a crazy b-movie, chock full of gore and energetic camerawork. Most importantly, it advanced my career.

After Savage Harvest, I officially formed my production company Wicked Pixel Cinema. The first movie to be made under this banner was Ice From The Sun, an ambitious experimental horror / fantasy film about an evil being in another universe who is a common enemy to both the angels in Heaven and the devils of Hell. The scope of the story was severely clipped by the budgetary restrictions of the production.

Instead of trying to go epic with the visual style, I chose to shoot the entire movie on Super 8 film and use the ?shortcomings? of this acquisition format to enhance the otherworldly and abstract style of the movie. The grainy, contrasty, smeary look of the Super 8 did exactly what I wanted it to do.

Far from perfect in its screenplay or direction, Ice From The Sun (shot in 1996) was a landmark in my progression as a filmmaker. For the first time, I made a movie that was unique instead of an imitation of somebody else?s movie. I was not yet a very good speaker, but I had at least found my own voice.

I know that making the same kind of film over and over again would be a form of ?practice? and that I would actually make higher quality movies this way. But starting with Ice From The Sun, I decided that I?d much rather challenge myself by constantly exploring new territory, even if this meant my movies would have more flaws in them.

Right after Ice From The Sun, we made the movie that I?m probably best know for. Scrapbook (shot in 1998) was an unflinching and brutal flick about a rapist-murderer and his final victim. This was another landmark movie for me. My skills as a director were finally fine-tuned enough to make a movie in which the triumphs outweighed the flaws. I think I finally became a real director when I made Scrapbook.

Many of Scrapbook?s reviews praised the performances (of actors Emily Haack and Tommy Biondo). Praise for the acting almost never happens at this budget level, so I?m very proud of that aspect of the movie. The movie has won some cool awards, most recently Best Feature at the 2007 Fright Night Film Festival. Though Scrapbook was first released in 1999, in 2001, Rue Morgue Magazine named Scrapbook the Best Independent Film Of The Year.

Despite the great reviews that Scrapbook was getting, Wicked Pixel Cinema?s financial situation was getting worse. Making movies at the poverty level tends to create a product that only a niche audience will purchase. The mainstream masses didn?t want the kind of movies I had made. So sales peaked and died off fast after each movie was released. My bills, however, kept comin? in strong.

To combat this, I took a break from my own company and spent a few grueling years as a producer-for-hire, churning out ultra-low-budget exploitation films and odd Euro-style horror movies for companies in New York, the UK, and France. This paid the bills for a while, but eventually the non-stop, torrential workload became unbearable.

I also started getting sick of the quantity-over-quality aspect of my job. Unfortunately, quantity-over-quality paid the bills a lot better than making decent movies, but I just couldn?t stomach it anymore. Additionally, while dealing with this crushing workload, I was an actor in Savage Harvest 2: October Blood, a movie that I was also executive producing for director Jason Christ.

At the end of this phase of my career, I produced and co-directed a movie called China White Serpentine. Though this was part of my producer-for-hire exploitation movie production slate, I worked very hard to give this last movie more cinematic substance. It has everything in it that I was required to deliver (sex, nudity, violence, etc.) but I actually think China White Serpentineturned out good. Though I don?t own the copyright, and I agreed to make the movie primarily to pay the bills, I am still proud of China White Serpentine.

I don?t regret my years toiling in those micro-budget exploitation movie trenches. It made me hungry to make better movies again. And those years actually did sharpen my skills as a director and producer because I had to work very efficiently with extremely limited resources (financial and otherwise) and still deliver a sellable product.

After about three years of this, I was ready to shift gears in a major way. I wanted to take on a big production, pour everything I?d learned into it, and make the best movie I could make.

In 2004, I re-focused my career and turned my attention back to my own company, Wicked Pixel Cinema. We entered production on Deadwood Park.

I wanted Autumn to be a major element of Deadwood Park's atmosphere. We scheduled the shoot to best take advantage of the changing leaves. Everything I wanted to shoot in the Fall was wrapped just in time. After wrapping our last day of exterior Autumn shots, the snow came, and winter was upon us by nightfall.

Keep in mind, Deadwood Park is a very low budget movie. We didn?t have Hollywood resources like soundstages. When Hollywood wants Autumn, they build it on a soundstage and they don?t have to worry about the season changing before they?re done shooting. We did not have that luxury. Designing a 55 day shooting schedule around Mother Nature ? especially when the seasonal imagery is so important to the movie ? is only one example of how independent filmmaking is uniquely challenging.

Deadwood Park, which is primarily a ghost story, mixes strange, unexpected story twists with very familiar horror movie vibes. I wanted to make a movie that pleased the 13 year old horror fan in me ? that kid who fell in love with Romero?s living dead while growing up in Pittsburgh.

I connect Autumn (and many other elements of Deadwood Park) to that period of my life when I was first discovering horror. I remember renting stacks of VHS movies from a local mom and pop video store and having all-night horror movie marathons. I remember the electricity in the air when Halloween rolled around and Pittsburgh television stations seemed to be proudly broadcasting Night of the Living Dead non-stop, over and over. I remember seeing The Changeling, Evil Dead, The Exorcist, Texas Chainsaw, and Romero?s films for the first time. (I forced my parents to take me to Monroeville Mall as my birthday present one year - my birthday is in November, so it was the perfect time of year.) I remember attending a special triple feature of Night, Dawn, and Day at Pittsburgh?s Fulton Theater, where the original Night of The Living Dead had its premiere a few years before I was born. I tried to color Deadwood Park with these memories. Deadwood Park is not a perfect movie. But I succeeded in making a horror film that the young kid horror fan in me loves very much.

So now Autumn is here. This year?s season of celebrating the ghoulish and watching horror movies is very special for me. I will be viewing all my favorite fright flicks, as I do every Fall, but this Halloween season, a fright flick of my own is being released. Deadwood Park will be available on DVD just in time for those Halloween movie marathons, and I?m very happy about that.

I?m proud to have contributed to a genre that has given me so much enjoyment through the years. I almost never watch my own movies after they?re released, but I?m pretty sure I?ll find an excuse to watch Deadwood Park this October.

Here is my Halloween invitation to you: Pick up a copy of Deadwood Park and check out a horror movie that was made for all the right reasons by a genuine horror fan. I feel all you other horror fans will find something to love in Deadwood Park. It would be my honor if you included it in your own Halloween horror movie marathon this year.