Movies & TV / Columns
Gregory Lamberson On Crowdfunding His New Werewolf Movie The Frenzy Moon
Image Credit: Patrick Reilly
The 411 Interview: Gregory Lamberson
Gregory Lamberson is a director, writer, and producer who has been making movies since the late 1980’s, starting with the classic horror flick Slime City. Since then, Lamberson has directed such movies as Naked Fear, Slime City Massacre, Dry Bones (he co-directed this with Michael O’Hear), the absolutely fantastic horror comedy Killer Rack, Johnny Gruesome (the best movie of 2018), the unsettling horror flick Widow’s Point starring modern horror icon Craig Sheffer, and the upcoming action movie Guns of Eden (check out that movie’s Facebook page here). Lamberson is also an author, responsible for the books Black Creek, Carnage Road, Johnny Gruesome, The Frenzy Wolves, and The Jake Helman Files series (Lamberson also co-directs, with Chris Scioli, the Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival). Lamberson’s next movie is set to be the werewolf horror flick The Frenzy Moon, and he has launched an Indiegogo campaign for the movie (check out the campaign page here). In this interview, Lamberson talks with this writer about why he wants to make The Frenzy Moon his next movie, what sort of werewolves to expect in the movie, and more.
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Bryan Kristopowitz: How did you decide that The Frenzy Moon would be your next movie as a director?
Gregory Lamberson: I wanted it to be my previous film. I wrote the screenplay about six years ago. I thought it would be my next movie after Johnny Gruesome, but then Richard Chizmar suggested we do Widow’s Point together. Then I wanted to do it a couple of years ago, but my daughter got sick…and then Covid happened. The Frenzy Moon is a “cabin-in-the-woods” movie with seven characters, and shooting seven actors, plus crew, plus a special effects team, all in one cabin, was not going to happen. So I shifted gears to Guns of Eden, my action movie, because that was set mostly outdoors. But now it’s time to get furry.
BK: How does The Frenzy Moon connect to your Frenzy series of werewolf novels?
GL: Very loosely! The Frenzy novels are set in NYC, and each book would cost $100 million to make. As I said, The Frenzy Moon is a “cabin-in-the-woods” movie, very self-contained, more like John Carpenter’s The Thing with werewolves. None of the characters from the books carry over, but the pulse pounding werewolf action does.
BK: When and where do you plan on making The Frenzy Moon?
GL: I live in Buffalo, so this is where I make movies. I hope to shoot in the fall. I shoot most of my movies in the summer, but this one requires darker atmosphere, and I’d like to take advantage of fall colors.
BK: What sort of werewolf/werewolves can we expect to see in The Frenzy Moon?
GL: They will be bipeds, and they will be practical. A filmmaker friend recommended I use CGI for the creatures because that’s what SyFy wants, and I entertained that idea for about half a day. I’m making a monster movie, and for me the fun is creating the monsters, and seeing them come to life. There are certain advantages to CGI, but I want practical werewolves, and I believe the audience does too.
BK: What do you hope to get out of your ongoing Indiegogo campaign?
GL: I’m not looking to finance this whole film through crowdfunding the way I did Guns of Eden. The film I want to make is too big for that, so I’m going to need investors. But if I’m to shoot in the fall, my special effects team needs to begin making these beasts this summer. My goal is to raise 24K via the campaign, give them a budget to begin work, hire the artist who did the book covers for The Frenzy War and The Frenzy Wolves to do a kick ass poster, cover some legal work, and pay for reward perks. We’ll see how it goes. The Guns of Eden campaign was a big success, but the world is ever changing.
BK: How long did it take to make your proof of concept/pitch video?
GL: The proof-of-concept video was just a matter of editing existing footage. I mapped it all out, and Chris Cosgrave, who shot Guns of Eden, edited it very quickly. And then one morning we went to the Screening Room, a boutique cinema here in Buffalo, and shot my pitch in about two hours. I spent more time writing it, and rewriting it, and planning it than shooting it – just like a movie. A lot of thought went into it, and we had some very cinematic shots in mind, which turned out nice.
BK: Just what is coming out of that werewolf mouth in the video? Spit? Slime? It looks incredibly gross.
GL: It’s supposed to be spit, but I’m sure they used methylcellulose, which is the slime agent everyone uses. I had nothing to do with shooting it. It’s actually stock footage. I spent less than $400 licensing all of those shots.
BK: Once you finished making your pitch video, did you go out and hunt down some werewolves with that revolver and batch of silver bullets?
GL: They’re everywhere, man.
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A very special thanks to Gregory Lamberson for agreeing to participate in this interview.
Check out The Frenzy Moon Indiegogo campaign page here!
Check out The Frenzy Moon Twitter page here!
Check out The Frenzy Wolves Facebook page here!
Check out Gregory Lamberson’s Facebook page here!
Greggory Lamberson headshot courtesy of Gregory Lamberson. The Frenzy War cover image by Patrick Reilly. All other images by Stephen Gilliam.
