HAUNTED CITY : VENATOR (a film by Chris .R. Notarile)

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After forty years of acting as Death's Emissary, Lucy Castor is a shell of her former self. Gone is her enthusiasm and lust for vengeance. All that remains now is her apathy, and growing discontent with being deceased.

A WORD FROM CHRIS

This is the final chapter in Lucy's character arc before completely embracing the dark side. For the uninitiated, Lucy is one of the primary antagonists for Jane in my Haunted City radio play, as well as in my unmade feature script. I started this miniseries to help flesh out and familiarize her character with my audience. Lucy, like all of my Emissaries, is incredibly complex and quite deserving of having her story told.

Lucy's trilogy began in 1977 where she exacted revenge on the serial killer that took her life. From the get go, I wanted to show that vengeance was never enough, and that Lucy's eventual turn towards the dark side was truly inevitable. With her second installment, 1985, I wanted to showcase how Lucy had been developing her dark magic skills, while caring less and less about the victims she was avenging, and instead only focusing on getting results, regardless of the means, including enslaving a demon.

This final chapter takes place in 2019, which is the same year Jane was murdered. I didn't add the year to this story's title because I wanted it to stand out. For VENATOR, I wanted to show how after 42 years of being dead, Lucy is just empty inside. She has nothing to "live" for, and no connection to the world around her. Instead, she just abuses her demon slave and laments about a life she never got to finish living. This, of course, makes Lucy incredibly vulnerable to certain forms of manipulation.

In the world of Haunted City, there is indeed a spell for everything, you just have to know where to look, and the demon may or may not know just that. However, whether or not he truly knows is irrelevant. Just the promise of coming back to life is enough to tempt Lucy and make her turn her back on everything she swore to uphold as an Emissary.

Filming took place over the course of two evenings. The first evening was the exchange between Lucy and the demon. Lindsey Bean brought her signature apathy and bubbling rage to Lucy, while Kevin Michael Shiley returned with his scene stealing sleaze as the demon. I tend to prefer starting off filming all the dialog heavy scenes first, then getting to the action after. It's just an easier process.

Night two was the confrontation between Lucy and the Venator, played by Austin Trace. The Venator is basically a supernatural Terminator in a black cloak. While I'm aware that the glowing green blade may remind some viewers of a light saber, I really did my best to change it up through sound effects and lack of hilt. Hopefully, it's enough to suspend disbelief.

For any aspiring filmmakers out there, filming on location 8 times outta 10 sucks. There's always a constant barrage of unwanted noise ruining your audio. From someone with a loud engine whizzing buy, to helicopters flying over, to just crickets chirping, it's always something. I now know why Alfred Hitchcock shot as much as he could for his movies on backlots. Having 100% control over your sets is a true luxury that I will not stop until I have.

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