West Sussex film-maker hoping for zombie movie success in the US

Felpham film-maker Kevin Short is eyeing up triple success with his films in the States this summer.
Kevin ShortKevin Short
Kevin Short

Kevin’s film Tom And His Zombie Wife (A Love To Kill For) is a finalist in the massive Megafest from July 26-August 1 at the Galaxy Theater Boulevard, Las Vegas where it could well be picked up by American distributors.

“Amazingly, the Festival coincides with the July 27 US DVD release of two of our previous award-winning films Punk Strut – the Movie and A Reel Life so it does look as though we might be dancing on the Las Vegas Strip!” Kevin said.

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In the film, Tom will do anything to keep his zombie wife and their love alive… even kill for her.

“But he longs for the old days.

“He longs to have their life back, a family who sang and danced together…

“We finished on the post-production during the lockdowns of the past year,” Kevin says.

“We filmed a couple of years ago.

“It was fantastic.

“We worked with some very good people who were free to be able to work with us, and we filmed it around Climping Mill, the old schoolhouse which used to be a mill.

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“It’s a feature film. It is 80 minutes and it hasn’t been released yet.

“It has gone to all the festivals around the world, though, and it has won lots of awards for best horror, one for best writer, one for best actress.

“I am going over to Las Vegas at the end of July – fingers crossed that all the travel restrictions are lifted.

“I am going over to Megafest and we are pitching the film to American distributors.

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“It has been chosen as a finalist at Megafest which is a coming together of 19 festivals of all different genres.

“It is a kind of free-for-all for the distributors of all kinds.

“The film is about a man who locks up his wife because she becomes a zombie.

“She tries to bite him.

“He has to lock her up in a room.

“He puts bars on the door and locks her in the adjacent room. And he has to go and kill for her in order to feed her.

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“He feeds her through this cage that he has built, but then his conscience takes over and he doesn’t want to do it anymore.

“He is left with the choice of either having to kill her or let her die naturally, but then something wondrous happens…

“It is a zombie love story!

“And the great thing is that if we do manage to go over to Las Vegas at the end of July, there are two other films of mine that are being released in America at that time on DVD and on Amazon.

“Punk Strut – the Movie is one of them.

“I had a punk band in the 1970s which was signed to EMI and we had a near hit which has become a bit of a cult record on eBay and around the world.

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“I had a reunion of the original band 30 years later and we filmed it all in Bognor. We had a lot of Bognor people in it, and there is some good English talent in it.

“It is a mockumentary. We based it around the real band, but a lot of it is fictional.”

Also coming out will be A Reel Life “which is basically a semi-autobiographical film about myself, about a screenwriter that gets so involved in the script that the script takes over and his life becomes a film.”

All in all, it adds up to potential success on three fronts – an unexpected upshot of the troubled times we have all been living through this past year and a half, Kevin says.

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“It has all come about in a way because of this awful crisis that we have had and that we are still having.”

It helped give Kevin a particular focus.

“It meant that I was able to concentrate on promoting the films and contacting people.

“It has all given me a breather in a way, though obviously it is an awful way to have a breather.”

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