The Spierig’s lived like hermits while filming – which ended up costing around $1millionAU (about $650,000US) – to come up with an effort that looks like it cost a hell of a lot more. This is due to the fact that almost all the surprisingly good special effects were done by the Spierig’s themselves; on laptops, no less. The Spierig’s spoke of the painstaking amount of work that the CGI required at the Q&A session after the Toronto Film Festival screening.

“We had a 600MHz Pentium III and the rendering took something like 11 hours per frame. Then it would crash sometimes and we’d have to start the shot over. Needless to say, I’ve switched to Mac.” Further stories about how they managed to fight through adversity – ranging from archaic cameras to their ever-deteriorating van (ala Raimi’s Oldsmobile) – gave the movie even more charm.

The Spierig’s shared filmmaking duties, each employing their own expertise, Peter having gone to school for film and Michael, graphic design. They had previously shot several shorts involving zombies on Super 8 (again, much like the early shenanigans of Raimi and co.) and many of those ideas show up in Undead. This movie is elevated beyond normal zombie fare not only by its great iconic characters – namely Marion (Mungo McKay), the triple shotgun-toting fisherman-turned-savior-of-humanity and Rene (strikingly blue-eyed Felicity Mason), the resourceful ‘fish & bait queen’ - but also uncharacteristic storyline depth. God bless Lion’s Gate for picking up this fun genre gem.

As enjoyable an occasion as this festival screening was, it was also a sad one. This was the last show at the Toronto landmark theater The Uptown. The crowd observed a moment of silence for the historic movie house and then whooped it up all through Undead. Midnight Madness at the Toronto Film Festival will never ever be the same again.

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Copyright© Written By: Tom Servo
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