Wild Eye Releasing has selected Aug. 30 as the DVD debut
date for writer/director Paul Winters’ Walking Dead in the West, a mixed
genre thriller that will not only please horror affectionados, but those who
enjoy Westerns as well.
The first impression for any indie film is almost certainly
related to production values. If you’ve
seen you share of indie films — which always means films with limited budgets —
did the filmmaker(s) get the technical aspects right? Acting, plot, direction all succeed or fail
on their own, but if the film looks like crap (i.e. an ill-conceived student
film project) the greatest plot, with Oscar-winning actors and director, no
matter their talent, are doomed to failure.
If the technical part is fubar, then you can’t get through
15 minutes before your eyes start to bleed and your all of your senses are
screaming, “turn it off, for god’s sakes, turn it off.”
So when you settle in to watch a Western and a zombie flick
as an all-in-one experience, it better be technically sound otherwise it is a
no-go from the get-go. Paul Winters (Nate
and the Colonel, The Homecoming of Jimmy Whitecloud) and his cinematographer
Adam R. Cook (his first feature film) absolutely nail it. Walking Dead in the West is
gorgeous, so grab the pop corn and enjoy.
It is the famed Arizona Territory of the O.K. Corral, the
Earps, Apaches … it’s the Wild West; the untamed frontier. There is just one little thing amiss, the
dead are on the prowl — a traditional Western would have cowboys and soldiers
fighting off marauding Indians, but they too have to put their differences aside
and join in the fight (think: survival) against a common enemy.
U.S. Marshal Frank Wilcox (Paul Winters) has to assemble the
survivors of the town of Crumpit into a fighting force to defeat the zombie
hoard. It’s all about trust — and, yes,
survival — as a Buffalo Soldier, Sergeant Bale (Calion Maston) teams with an
Apache Chief (Lee Whitestar), a crazed preacher (Greg Bronson) has to take up a
gun, a saloon owner — the lovely Rose Ann (played by Sandy Penny) — and the
Marshall’s own prisoner (Jarod Anderson) have to put the things that have set
the apart aside. It won’t be easy as
trust can be hard to come by!
So mark Aug. 30 on your must-see calendar — Western, zombie,
horror — as those are three great reasons to check out Walking Dead in the West.
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