‘Knight Chills’ Blu-Ray, Sequels, Sept 5th Releases, ‘Silent Night In Algona’ at Red Letter Awards and ‘Harsens Island Revenge’ Gearing Up to Film!
(Wardrobe test as ‘Axel’ in the upcoming Harsens Island Revenge)
Good morn to you all! I’m here sipping my hazelnut coffee and taking a few moments to try and report on the many past week events. Starting next week I’m going to go to Sat updates during the Harsens Island Revenge shoot. Next Saturday I’ll be moving in up North, and so with that being our day off it will be easier to blog on Saturdays. I might even go to the vlog updates to give you all a more exciting experience while we are filming. Once up there on the 9th, we have a week of on-location pre-production before three weeks of filming. Once home I’ll return to my Sunday blogs. We are doing Saturdays off because more things are open should our cast and crew need to do things on their day off. Above is a pic from my wardrobe tests. I have variations of three outfits, the above being one of them. More on that later. On the home front it has been getting things ready for me to be gone for a month. I’ve finished harvesting the hops and rhubarb. I’ll have to put another mow down on the lawn but soon that should slow down. My soccer season ended with us coming out on top of the lower division. Last year we won the upper division but we had injuries and several of our players coaching. The nice part is I had a good season and no injuries. Let’s jump into some movie talk.
HARSENS ISLAND REVENGE – We are all excited to tell this story. The departments are all kicking strong. I transferred many of the props to our art director. Great meetings with wardrobe and hospitality departments. We are down to our final cast and crew hires and some are being interviewed by department heads. We had a fun read through on zoom with some of the cast participating. I will comment on one funny comment we had to a news story. It was a snide comment on us not shooting on Harsens Island. That is false. We will do some filming on the island but we need 1920’s. Also filming or staging a small army on a island with zero big stores, hospital and dependent on a ferry is not good producing. How many films on the Alamo have been made but they did not film at the Alamo? When we get to shooting SPIRIT LAKE MASSACRE do you think that the lake appears as it did in 1850’s? A more primitive lake will surely need to be used for many shots/scenes. We will do some shooting on Harsens Island to get some of the exterior beauty shots but we needed a place more friendly to filming with an army. So this individual obviously has no experience in filming and was just chiming off. People do that quite often these days but I saw it as a chance to educate.
We have many sponsors that have been coming on board and this past week we added Red Cedar Spirits and SE Growth Corp. They join a host of great businesses aligning themselves with our film. Some of that sponsorship will be used to help transport some of the great cars to the area for use in the film. It is exciting to be able to showcase so many cool vehicles from the time period. These amazing cars, boats and even a plane will be able to add this movie to their long history. Two other sponsors Nash Nurseries and Ace Pyro will play a part after the main shoot working with the FX unit for a spectacular moment in the film. We still have a few more coming on board that we’ll announce very soon.
SOME PR:
SILENT NIGHT IN ALGONA – Our fixes should all be done this week and we’ll be able to announce the hard release dates for DVD and streaming. I’m getting asked daily about this and I will answer as soon as I can. We are all super excited to bring this story to the world. Our own Donna Kitzinger, our Algona coordinator will be traveling to TN to attend and represent us at the Red Letter Awards where the film is up for many awards. But honestly, we already feel like we won after all the beautiful responses from our theatrical run.
THE PATCHWORK GIRL OF OZ – This was the first animated feature collaboration for CDI and the film has been remastered to HD and will start streaming on Encourage TV on Sept 5th! This is a great watch for the approaching holidays for the entire family.
Show your support and we just might have to kick off a new film from one of the other amazing books. Speaking of Encourage TV – one of our most popular films MAN’S BEST FRIEND just celebrated crossing the 2 million viewer threshold on the streaming platform. You can watch it free with ads and help us get to 3 million!
WATCH HERE free with ads – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afDYPOiL5pY
KNIGHT CHILLS was CDI’s first feature film. Jeff & Juanita Kennedy and I had been shopping scripts around Hollywood with a few close calls. Finally, we decided to produce our own. This micro-budget feature shot released 25 years ago has become a classic. The good folks at Saturn Core approached us about doing a 25th anniversary Blu-Ray. This required a new digital transfer and audio remastering. We also had some wonderful Tom Miller fan artwork and dug into the archives to bring you some true gems. We were able to get a few new retrospective interviews and even a great film historian talking about the special place this film holds in horror history. Vinegar Syndrome just released a pre-order link for the special edition 1000 unit run whereas they moved about 600 units in the first 6 hours. This is the special slip cover version and will be a true collectors edition.
(Special parody slip art of the new Knight Chills Blu-Ray)
Claim one of these unique collectors edition now! Click on the link below-
(IN THE WOODS– Yes that is Jim Greulich in the background)
We are in hopes to give CDI’s 2nd feature film FROM VENUS the same Blu Ray treatment. Did you know Sir Kallio from Knight Chills makes a cameo? In other remastering news, I had a great talk with Lynn Drzick the director of IN THE WOODS, my first feature film. An ambitious creature feature that now has a director’s cut. The entire film retransferred and re-edited with added scenes. I imagine a blu-ray with the original version and the director’s version. Lynn is going to start talking to various distributors and following a limited theatrical of the new cut, a BluRay and streaming release. What is even more interesting is the sequel that is in the planning stage. I’ve agreed to once again play reluctant monster hunter Alex Kerwood. Also I’ve agreed to co-star in another supernatural thriller that Mr. Drzick will be directing. It is fun to return to the genre that gave me my start. I also recently had to pass on starring in another horror feature due to an overlap in schedule with Harsens Island Revenge, but I was deeply appreciative of the offer.
(Above is Tom Miller’s cool fan art part of the new Knight Chills Blu-Ray release)
WRAP UP: I smell eggs and bacon and so that is my cue to wrap this up. It is gonna be a few more hot days in Michigan before fall truly settles in. MSU my alumni college started slow but pulled out a win. I hope our Lions are off to a good season. I think I’m going to grill ribs today and get a few things done around the homestead. As always, I so appreciate you all. I hope you have a safe and enjoyable Labor Day. I’ll speak to you again next Saturday after settling in to my home away from home for a month.
Be good to one another.
DJ