Filmmaker Mickey Keating, an indie-horror workhorse who churns out films quicker than SyFy and their Sharknado obsession, has even more updates out of South By Southwest on his new film, the simply-titled Psychopaths.
To this point, we know who the cast is comprised of, and it’s a venerable wealth of genre riches. As announced so far, actors include Mark Kassen, James Landry Hébert, Ivana Shein, Ashley Bell, Angela Trimbur, Jeremy Gardner, Helen Rogers, Graham Skipper, Matt Mercer, Sam Zimmerman, and Larry Fessenden. This is common knowledge, but what comes next is a little taste of the film’s body and soul.
While chatting with Keating about his SXSW Midnighter, Carnage Park, he let me know what to expect from Psychopaths:
…I wanted to make Psychopaths ultra-glamorous, and really colorful. All about composition and camera-movement as much as it’s about the characters. We looked to movies like Dressed To Kill, Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls, Enter The Void – those kinds of really beautiful, hyper-stylized, colorful movies. The script is super violent and super blunt, so I wanted to make sure my cast understood it’s not going to be just another exploitation flick, or B-Movie.
There are parts of Psychopaths that I wanted to look like Paul Schrader’s Hardcore. I lifted lighting techniques from that, and Graham Skipper plays the owner of a club who looks like he should be beaten up by George C. Scott.
Then, when I asked who his favorite “Psychopath” was, he let me have a small taste of the characters some actors were portraying:
Well you’ve got James Landry Hébert, who will be playing a Shadow Of A Doubt type of strangler.
Ashley Bell is going to surprise a lot of people. She plays a girl who escapes from a mental asylum, and she thinks she’s some glamorous 1950s movie star. Angela [Trimbur] is great, she plays a character who captures men and tortures them in her suburban basement. Jeremy Gardener’s a maniac cop. Hellen Rodgers has a great role – she’s a house mother who ends up really fucking Sam Zimmerman’s day up. [Sam Zimmerman] plays a contract killer, so it’s all these crazy different combinations of 70s and 80s sleaze.
Psychopaths has finished shooting, and is now in its post-production life. No word on when the film will be finished and ready for a festival premiere (crosses fingers for Fantastic Fest), but Keating seems to be saying all the right things. I’m head-over-heels happy about his usage of Ashely Bell, and can’t wait to see what she does with her mentally unstable role.
Either way, stay tuned for our full interview with Mickey Keating from South By Southwest, along with more updates on Mickey Keating’s Psychopaths, and be sure to catch Carnage Park (here’s our Sundance 2016 review), which was just picked up for distribution by IFC Midnight.