From ‘The Walking Dead’ to Myrtle Beach, this local zombie is moving to a screen near you
There isn’t much to celebrate during a zombie apocalypse, but when five friends stumble across a six pack of beer, their celebration leads to some trouble. That’s the premise of a short film produced in Myrtle Beach by a local film company.
“Thirst of the Dead,” produced by Coastal Independent Films, won the 2020 Homegrown Horror Award at the Crimson Screen Horror Film Fest in Charleston. A few days later, Gregory French, the film’s writer and lead zombie, got a call from Shorts TV, an international television channel.
They wanted to buy the rights to the film and air it in over 60 countries.
“I thought we were being pranked. Honestly, I thought, ‘OK, these guys sent us this but I don’t know if it’s for real,’” French said.
When Shorts TV sent the contract over, Michael Evans, an attorney who also directed the film, combed through it to make sure it was legit.
It was.
For the Myrtle Beach film company, the announcement was the biggest news they’d ever received.
“I’m from a small town in West Virginia of 500 people. And I always dreamed about being in the film industry,” said Blake Mounts, president of Coastal Independent Films. “People said, ‘You’re crazy, you’re going in the coal mines like everybody else,’ but here I am.”
French originally came up with the idea for the script and pitched it as a commercial while working as an extra on “The Walking Dead.” The idea laid dormant for years until last September when the group formed.
By October they were ready to go.
Pre-production, usually a month-long process of meticulous planning, took the group less than a month. And filming which can take weeks, took place in one day. The reason for the rushed process? All of the members of Coastal Independent work full-time jobs. French and Paul Inman, the film’s editor and co-director, are teachers.
“I’m completely lost about how we actually pulled that off for our first one,” French said.
French said his experience on the set of “The Walking Dead” allowed him to play a convincing zombie. Through four seasons he’s played multiple roles including the “Barbed Wire Zombie”, the “Gas Mask/Riot Gear” zombie and others.
They also had some help from Sean Krumbholz, one of the make-up artists from “The Walking Dead” team who already had a silicone molding of French’s head.
The 13-minute film weaves in and out of suspenseful scenes and comedic breaks as characters traverse through woods and a zombie camp. It was filmed on almost 30 acres of rural land on the outskirts of Myrtle Beach owned by another member of the group.
“It had almost everything you could imagine. So there’s a big forest area, there’s a big field area, there’s a nice stream that runs along next to it. And his house was under construction so it looked the part of something that was abandoned so it fits the bill for a lot of things we wanted to do,” Inman said.
Inman thinks the location helped set their film apart.
“Myrtle Beach is a lot of things but being known for film isn’t one of them,” he said. “The hope is that we can make some people aware that this stuff does happen here, too.”
The film first aired in 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic had some comparing life in quarantine to a zombie apocalypse. When the main characters find a case of beer they take a moment to toast and “feel normal again” said Inman.
That “normal” feeling is still far away from returning as the Myrtle Beach area is setting records for coronavirus related deaths and masks required in most public places.
Coastal Independent films are still filming, but following SAG health guidelines and limiting the number of people on set, wearing masks and, of course, washing their hands.
“There’s lots of hand sanitizer going around the set now,” French said during a Zoom interview with other members of the company.
“Thirst of the Dead” is set to air on Short TV in October, just in time for Halloween. You can find it in a variety of places, including DirecTV(Channel 573), AT&T U-Verse (Channel 1789), AT&T TV NOW, Google Fiber (Channel 603), Frontier Communications (Channel 789) and Hotwire (Channel 560).
This story was originally published July 30, 2020 at 6:00 AM with the headline "From ‘The Walking Dead’ to Myrtle Beach, this local zombie is moving to a screen near you."
