by Maria DeBlassie
Daily Lobo
Starting June 10, Albuquerque will be ripe with "The Stink of Flesh."
Scott Phillips, director and screenwriter of the horror flick, said the picture is a low-budget zombie movie filmed over 12 days in August of 2003. The film is about a swinger couple who have a hard time finding people to swing with because everybody is dead, he said.
"It's like a Tennessee Williams play, only with zombies and not as well written," he said. "It's a weird little tale of jealousy and lust."
The DVD was released on Tuesday, Phillips said, and there will be a DVD release party on Friday at the Hastings on San Pedro Drive and Lomas Boulevard. There is a possibility that zombies will be loose in the parking lot, he said.
Phillips said he sold his first screenplay to Hollywood 10 years ago. His biggest movie was an action movie called "Drive," starring Brittany Murphy. He said after working for Hollywood, he decided he wanted to make "Stink of Flesh" on his own.
"It was tough but satisfying," he said.
When asked what got him into filmmaking, Phillips said he's always been drawn to it.
"When I was about ten years old, I saw 'Night of the Living Dead' and that was all it took," he said.
Favorite movies of his include "Taxi Driver," "The Graduate" and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."
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He said he was looking forward to seeing Rob Zombie's "The Devil's Reject" and George Romero's "Land of the Dead." Phillips said he also loves the old '50s monster movies and the classic Frankenstein and Dracula movies.
Although he tends to lean toward horror, Phillips said he likes all movie genres and plans to write a comedy in the future.
He said for this movie he wanted to make a film that was entertaining and different from the standard fluff Hollywood pumps out.
When asked why audiences so readily believe the thin, improbable plots common to these movies, he said horror fans are like anybody else in that they will choose to believe it or not. Even if it does involve a drunk somebody walking off to the cemetery at midnight while knowing a psycho killer is lurking nearby, Phillips said it's not hard to suspend disbelief.
"It doesn't require anymore suspension of disbelief to watch 'House of 1,000 Corpses' than it does to watch 'The Longest Yard,'" he said.
Phillips said although there is a lot of gore in his movie, it is not an unpleasant experience, but rather silly and frighteningly fun. He said people like horror for the same reasons they like roller coasters.
"People like the feeling of being scared, then being able to turn on the lights and be safe," he said. "It's like telling campfire stories."
