wo twin brothers in Australia loved low-budget horror movies. They remember sneaking into early Peter Jackson horror SF schlock like Bad Taste and Braindead (Dead Alive) in Brisbane and watching the audiences go wild.
And so Peter and Michael Spierig gathered some friends, some chocolate syrup and sausages and made their own home horror movies. Their Undead Trilogy got them some note at the Queensland College of Art, where Peter was majoring in film and Michael was majoring in graphic design. When they graduated and could get only a few jobs doing commercials, they decided that their talents weren't best suited for selling soap detergent. They returned to their roots—zombies.
Now, their feature film Undead is their calling card to Hollywood. They did all the special effects themselves, learning to produce them using a computer as they went along, and they shot the film on a shoestring budget, with some of the shots done literally in their back yard. They started shooting in the middle of the 9/11 tragedy and braved freezing rainstorms at night. They used Steven Boyle for makeup after his work on the last two Matrix films and Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones. The film was released in New York and Los Angeles on July 1, and they will soon be casting another movie for Lions Gate, about vampires, called Daybreakers.
They came through Los Angeles on a press tour with lead actress Felicity Mason, who plays Rene, the beauty queen trying to leave the small fishing town of Berkeley who suddenly gets overtaken by zombies and aliens. The brothers and Mason talked to Science Fiction Weekly at the Avalon Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif.
Peter and Michael Spierig, which one of you is the evil twin?
Peter: I guess I am the one.
Michael: We're both evil; we've both got the bad gene. We get asked that a lot at film festivals.
I heard that the Internet has been a big help for you and a boost for the film.
Michael: The Internet has been a key tool to the initial advertising of this film, and it's been a huge benefit to us because we had absolutely no money. We put up images and a trailer and people went crazy over it.
You will inevitably be compared to Land of the Dead, 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead. Are you worried about that?
Peter: What we tried to do with Undead is give what people have seen before in the classic horror films, and you can't do a very specific horror monster movie about vampires, werewolves or zombies and not be compared to the other films in that genre that have been successful.
Some of the things that happen to the zombies are quite original, but what are some of the conventional rules of zombies that you knew you had to keep?
Peter: I think the rule to shoot them in the head and shoot them in the brain is one, and also the slow-moving thing is funny to us, especially in a comedy. You can't get away from them, and they're barely moving. The wide eyes and all those types of things were important.
What were some of your influences?
Peter: One of best movie experiences was seeing Braindead [Dead Alive] in Brisbane, and the audience had never seen anything like that, and it was so good. The audience went nuts. Peter Jackson made those films with such little money, and we were doing things the same way.
Michael: We did a trilogy of short horror films that we made when we were 17 or 18 with a group of friends. We basically took the very basic blood-and-guts zombie movie we enjoyed very much in the 1980s and made it again.
You had 305 special effects that you designed on the computer. Is it that easy to do now?
Michael: The technology is such now that it is available to everyone. You can buy domestic software to make Hollywood effects, but you have to take the time to do it. It takes a long time to learn the 3-D effects. We'd go to a tutorial, read up on how it's done and then go do it. You have to commit the time to understand what it can do. Some shots it would take 11 hours to render a frame and then it would crash. It was an incredibly long and painful process.
Peter: We had a Pentium II 600 and one other computer. Now we've switched to Macs.
So, can you guys talk about the vampire film you're doing next, Daybreakers?
Peter: It's not another vampire story like Underworld or Blade. It's serious drama. Yeah, it's true. And we're looking for some big-name U.S. actors to star in it.
Michael: Not surprisingly, it's about two brothers who take two different paths. One wants to be a vampire and live forever and thinks being a vampire is one of the greatest things, and the other brother thinks that, as a vampire, you lose your humanity, and he wants to become a human being again. The story takes place about 10 or 15 years in the future, when vampires have taken over and moved back into their homes and go about their daily lives. They are very suburban vampires.
Peter: There are fewer human beings, and the blood supply is thinning out. The only way to survive is to become human again and then become the hunted.
Are you changing any of the vampire conventions?
Michael: Yes, we are, but we can't tell you yet. There's no hiding of the vampires; they're basically open, and they have become the very common in the everyday world. The humans are basically hiding, and they are thinking, "What are we going to do when our blood supply is gone there are not many humans left?" That is the dilemma.
How do the two of you direct together?
Michael: I come from an art direction background, so I worked with the actors more and Peter worked more with the camera, so it's a 50-50 split.
Felicity Mason, you have done various roles in Australia, but this is your first big starring role. Are you worried about being pegged as a campy B horror science-fiction movie actress?
Mason: I am a campy B horror movie sci-fi actress. I had heard of these directors, and they did TV commercials, and everyone knew how talented they were, so I was really flattered to work on this film, whether a horror movie, sci-fi or whatever. I mean, look, a lot of actresses got their start in the genre. Jamie Lee Curtis and her mother [Janet Leigh], and look at Sigourney Weaver. I'm not worried about it.
I'm happy that [my character of Rene] is not the pathetic, weak, vulnerable, screaming girl. I liked that about the character, and I looked at Sigourney Weaver in the Alien movies, but of course I didn't try to copy her, or Jamie.
I don't care that some actors look down on it. Years from now I can sit down and show my grandchildren and tell them, "Sit down and see what your grandmother did," and they'll love it. They'll rip it out at parties and show their friends. How many grandmothers will be able to do that?
Were there parts of the movies that you were shocked about when you saw it with the final special effects?
Mason: They were talking about there being people up in the sky, and I was wondering how they were going to do it, so I was blown away when I finally saw it. It wasn't hard for actors to be afraid of the zombies. Steven Boyle, who did the makeup, designed some really scary zombies; they were very real. They did zombie training for, like, three days. That's how organized the brothers are; they even did zombie training.
Were there parts that you look at and you cringe?
Mason: In the very opening scene in the bank, I think I'm terrible. I'm extremely proud of this movie, and of the brothers, and it was a fine first effort.
What movies like this did you like as a kid?
Mason: I'm a past fan of Pet Sematary. I loved that, and I liked The Omen and The Exorcist. I look back on them now and they freak me out. I wasn't so much into zombie movies, but I am now. I loved Shaun of the Dead.
It's strange that all these directors telepathically got together and thought to make a zombie movie. I'd much rather see zombies getting shot than normal people getting shot. I love zombie movies now. It's fantasy, it's escapism, it's a good genre. And, in this case, the woman saves the town.
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Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg of War of the Worlds
