Parrot Mask Psycho Temp
SYNOPSIS: Unassuming ornithophile Blanc Franju just wanted to spend an afternoon "appreciating" Tippi Hedren. But his cell phone had other ideas, unlocking the kind of multigenerational blood feud that can only be solved with common office supplies, kitchenware and hammers.
BACKGROUND: Gross Ken was such an arresting cinematic presence in Odontophilia that we just *had* to go back to the well. (IRL he's quite dashing and dignified; imagine Nick Mangold if he didn't attend Trump rallies.)
Parrot Mask Psycho Temp was originally conceived for 2021's Sick 'n' Wrong 72-Hour Debacle Film Challenge. You virtually roll two dice for "mood" and "theme" (we landed on "aggro" and "a smartphone virus invades the human body"), then your team has just three days to write, shoot, edit, color, score, etc., the resulting masterpiece. Which is surprisingly a lot of fun aside from the "tweaking DaVinci 'til 6 in the morning while your friends in the apartment below are shrooming and mashing up The Wizard of Oz and Dark Side of the Moon like college freshmen" part.
I was kind of embarrassingly butthurt that we didn't win anything (the trophies were, like, bedazzled/melted Furbys), but in retrospect, what I was going for — throwing low-key shade at the killers-in-animal-masks trend in mainstream horror; Google the character surnames if you care — was nowhere near disturbing enough for the target audience.
Oh well, BROO-HOO. A lot of buds came together on the spot to make the time crunch less brutal, from Lisa Scucci's motion graphics to Justin Smith's ridiculous score. We just recut/recolored this thing with Pig Destroyer's Blake Harrison kindly offering up Hatebeak Waldo the Parrot to make the intro and closing credits really squawk. It's no American Werewolf in London, but pretty decent for our first stab at (ahem) horror-comedy. —Andrew
