THE KING IS DEAD!

Long live the King!

LOST!

OK, hopefully that got your attention!

Bear with me!

20 years ago in 2006 I was building a publishing company with my wife, Christina, called Mam Tor, and to give us a little extra visibility at the legendary Bristol Comic Con - at the time the UK’s biggest and finest - we thought we’d make a promotional film.

The heart of the concept was derived from a misunderstanding. The most excellent Kev Crossley had been working on a story for our first anthology, ‘Event Horizon’, that featured zombie elves, but it was misread (I ‘think’ by one of our company co-founders, John Bamber) as Zombie Elvis. And thus was born the company mascot!

Viking Zombie Elvis by Kev Crossley, 2005.

This then naturally became the premise of the promotional film - the resurrection of the King of Rock and Roll!

I pulled a team together in Derby, bringing in the exceptional Owen Tooth (now directing ‘Coronation Street’, and involved in several incredible film projects) to be first AD, and our primary cameraman. Ali Powers was to play the zombie, as well as himself, and he brought some brilliant songs to the project too. Finally we brought in the quite wonderful and hilarious Paul Hammond as the intrepid and deeply annoying documentarian. Local legend, photographer and film-maker Doug Smith, brought his editing chops. And we fleshed the rest out with the Mam Tor creative crew, local friends, and Viking re-enactors. My parents provided the location and catering.

The short was played at at the Bristol con to a jam-packed room where it received an extremely enthusiastic reception, so for a brief while we harbored serious thoughts about trying to film a feature. But, alas, time and life took us all in very different directions. Eventually my DVD copies were dispersed, and finally all lost. The digital tapes were lost too. And it seemed we’d never again get a chance to view the little low-fi gem we had made.

RESURRECTED!

Then a couple of weeks ago Ali Powers sent me a link to YouTube, to where one of our cast members - Dready Dave - had uploaded his copy! I was absolutely delighted! Making the film had been a baptism of fire. Over that weekend I somehow managed to pull all these parts together to make something that I think stands up to this day, very much in the spirit of works like the Comic Strip’s ‘Bad News’, and ‘Spinal Tap’. We dubbed it a ‘Mock Schlock Rock Doc’. I wrote the basic script - some, like Paul’s ‘presenter’ part were fully scripted, but much was improvised. And as you’ll see, I played a rather irritated and demanding version of myself as ‘The Resurrector-in-chief’!

Please enjoy this 14 minute documentary about the resurrection of the King! Watch it with your tongue firmly planted in your cheek. Come for the silliness, say for Zombie Elvis’s completely one-off performance at the end. You won’t regret it! :-)

I have also found a link to the second film we did featuring much of the same cast, directed by the great Brian Luff, presented by the wonderful Georgina Sowerby, and guest-staring my dear friend, the delightful Ian (son of Robert) Shaw as the zombie wrangler! (I am playing such a miserable git in this second one!!!)

And last, there’s a link to the ‘movie’ trailer!

I have been trying to find the one-off podcast we did with Ian, but alas no joy. I did have some fantastic photos from the shoot too, back in the day, but they appear also to be lost to the ages. If any turn up I’ll be sure to share them!