So excited to share that Hell: A Rescue Mission has received an Honorable Mention from the Horrorific Women Film Festival. It’s baby’s first laurel!
This adaptation of my story by the same name, which you can read in the collection Into the Dark, is actually less of a horror story than the original short story. The short story is even darker than the film. I made that as a deliberate decision. I wanted to get at the friendship between Jenna and Trudi, the deep connection that they had. The relationship in the prose story is much more twisted, although still full of love.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m getting softer in my old age. Still, we had some great horror scenes in the film, and I think it was scary.
Hell: A Rescue Mission Cast
I got so lucky with my cast and crew. Anissa Obregon as Jenna, Molly Burke as Trudi, and Anthony Gibson as Nurse Frasier had great chemistry. Anthony was pretty eerie as the nurse who knew things about the dying floor. One of my favorite scenes is of him and Molly smoking on the loading dock behind the hospital.
And speaking of that scene…
Location Scouting for Hell: A Rescue Mission
We needed four locations. A hospital room, a house, a hospital exterior, and hell. Since this was a project for a class at Austin Community College, we got really lucky. The Health Simulation Center let us film in one of their simulation rooms. It had everything. They took the dummy out so we could film in there, and we added a few things like curtains to prevent reflection from the glass entryway.
The house — a living room and bedroom — was easy. We just filmed in my house. We had a pretty tight crew and managed to get the shots we needed with minimal background noise.
The hospital exterior — well, we filmed outside a local hospital. And they let us. Sometimes, when you act like you belong somewhere, you get away with things that if you had asked to do, they would have told you know. Also, I look like a sweet old lady. It comes in handy.
Finally, hell. We ended up filming on campus in the “spooky hallway” — a stretch of hallway that goes behind the classrooms. The Highland Campus used to be a mall, so this back hallway was pretty unnerving. With the excellent lighting by the gaffer and the G&E team, we turned it from a badly lit industrial space to a claustrophobic hellscape.
We really had a lot of fun dressing the set for hell. The work that cinematographer Angela Reavis, lighting designer Ethan Dubois, and gaffer Drew Schwemer did to make hell come to life (or death) was creative and exciting. Making movies is the ultimate team sport.
The Score and Sound Design
I met Bennett Mains on a couple of other student films and when I told him about Hell: A Rescue Mission, he was excited about the opportunity. The sound recordist Matthew Linder had done an excellent job on set. Now it was up to Bennett to design the soundscape. He added so much depth and texture, and the score — oh you guys, the score is so amazing. I am so looking forward to sharing the film with you — whether at a film festival or on YouTube.
Next Steps for Hell: A Rescue Mission
I’ve submitted the film to a few more festivals, and I’ll let everyone know when and where it will screen. Until then, if you want to check out the short story in my collection Into the Dark, that’s available wherever you usually buy your books. Let me know in the comments if you want more details about my movies along with my usual updates about books, writing, and the other ephemera this site is known for.
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