Prolific horror filmmaker Andy Edwards (Midnight Peepshow) is back with brand new slasher Punch, which is set to debut at Frightfest 2023.
We caught up with Andy to quiz him all about his latest feature.
What can you tell us about the genesis of Punch?
Punch came from the union of two separate ideas. One was to try and create a very “British” slasher movie, as we don’t really have any iconic slasher villains like Freddie, Jason, Michael Myers, or even newcomers like Art the Clown. But I couldn’t think of who or what form it would take. And then my other idea was just a setting really – I’ve always been fascinated by seaside towns out of season, and the melancholy windswept vibe you get from them. (Well I do anyway, being from the landlocked Midlands originally)
As soon as I put those two ideas together – a slasher set in a seaside town – Mr Punch just jumped out at me as the obvious choice for the villain. So obvious in fact I had to check it hadn’t been done before. There’s a few films featuring killer puppets, but I couldn’t find any with Mr Punch as a masked killer.
How much of a change of pace is this from Midnight Peepshow?
Midnight Peepshow was “easy” compared to putting this together. On Peepshow I shared directing duties with three other directors, and was only responsible for twenty minutes or so of the film. On Punch I co-produced this via my own production company, Paranoid Android Films – and I also wrote it, directed it, edited it. I would have sung the theme tune too, but I’m tone deaf and have a voice even more grating than Mr Punch himself. (So instead we have a very talented singer called Stephanie Jane Oliver doing a cover of John Conolly’s folk classic “Mr Punch and Judy Man” as our title song)
It’s probably worth pointing out that I haven’t taken on all these roles due to some ego-fuelled desire to have my name run through the credits like a stick of rock. Whilst I very much enjoy writing and directing, all the other roles were due to the necessity of working on a small budget!
Tell us about crafting the character of Frankie?
Frankie is of course our “Final Girl”, and I wanted to make her as real and three-dimensional as possible, so the audience get to know her before the carnage starts. We see Frankie’s home life, her friends and relationships in this small rundown seaside town, before her life gets turned upside down. We may be playing with a very American-style genre in the slasher, but we wanted to combine that with a British kitchen-sink aesthetic to create a hybrid of the two.
The casting was key to this, and we found Alina through the audition process. This was her first feature, but she blew us all away, and she’s a real star in the making. And then we brought in the very talented and experienced Kierston Wareing to play Frankie’s mother, and that relationship is the catalyst to the events of the film.
In turn, tell us about creating the slasher Mr Punch?
There were two parts to creating Mr Punch, first was the mask, and then the mannerisms and the voice. The mask was something I knew we had to get right – a creepy looking mask is half the job with a slasher. Mess that up and you’re in trouble. I drew some sketches and sent them to an Irish company called Rubber Johnnies who specialise in latex creations, and we worked together to create the mask as seen in the film. Hopefully audiences are going to find it genuinely pretty scary – even on set it creeped a few people out.
For the mannerisms, that was down to our performers coming up with Mr Punch’s movement and voice. Without giving too many spoilers away, we had several people in the mask on set. The majority of the time though, he’s played by stunt performer Mark Sears. It was always just my intention to just have him do the physical movements, and we’d ADR the voice in later with someone else. But there’s something about that mask that possessed him- and in the end we used Mark for the voice too, as he truly inhabited the madcap, maniacal Mr Punch.
What sort of slashers did you take inspiration from?
I didn’t want this to be self-aware and meta like Scream etc – these aren’t sassy American college students who know they’re in a horror movie. Instead they’re working class British people confronted with something both violent and ridiculous. So inspiration-wise, we’re harking back to the classics, to Halloween and Black Christmas etc. Teenagers being terrorised by a man in a mask over the course of one evening – as simple as that.
And as mentioned earlier, I wanted to infuse that American-style structure with some British social-realism – “Ken Loach’s Halloween” was a phrase I’m sure I said a few times on set. Whilst staying true to the simple rules of the slasher genre, you can still set it in a world where real life issues and politics exist.
What was a typical day on-set like?
I’m not sure there was a typical day – because we shot this very, very quickly, and in multiple locations. One day was in a chip shop, the next day on a pier, the next day in an amusement arcade etc. We did two night shoots in an old boat yard, but that was the only time we revisited a location for more than one day. This obviously has its challenges – every day you’re figuring out a new space. How you’re going to stage the action, how you’re going to light it, etc. And then with my producer’s hat on, there’s all the practical issues – where’s the power, where’s the toilets etc. Luckily on that side of things I had my co-producer Rebecca J Matthews to help out. At only a very young age, she’s a veteran of many an indie film shoot, so her help was invaluable.
It was the same with cast too – we had our core leads but then we had lots of people dropping in for a day or two, so there was always new energy on set each day. Hopefully this will pay off for the audience though – this isn’t one of those indie horrors where four people are stuck in a basement the whole film (like my segment of Midnight Peepshow was!). This one shows you all the fun of the seaside.
With that in mind, I do have to give a shout out to the cast & crew. It was an ambitious shoot on a very small budget with multiple locations, a big cast, and some terrible weather at times (it snowed on our night beach shoot). Very much indie punk-rock filmmaking in every sense.
This is another premiere at Frightfest, how excited are you to be back and will you be attending?
Very excited to be back! I was a regular visitor to Frightfest as a fan before I’d even made a film, so its always an honour to be selected. I’ll be there for the premiere and a q&a afterwards with our cast and crew, and I’ll be there for the rest of the weekend too. Two of my fellow Midnight Peepshow directors are back as well (Jake West with Mancunian Man and Airell Anthony Hayles with Werewolf Santa) so I’ll be checking those out along with other British films like Lore, Isaac and How To Kill Monsters and others. I think it’s important for those of us in the indie horror world to support each other, and it’s great that Frightfest are showing a good amount of British indies this year. I might also be giving Frightfesters a sneak peek at my next project, but more on that another day…
Bloody Flicks 