First Details, Trailer & More for Pinup Dolls on Ice
What with Christmas well and truly over you’d think that would be the end of the gifts. Well my friends, today we have a bounty of gifts for you in the shape of an upcoming Canadian slasher film, Pinup Dolls on Ice, and let me just say, this one looks freakin’ killer!
So, recently the filmmakers Melissa Mira and Geoff Klein reached out to me with their latest feature Pinup Dolls on Ice, and with that we have been provided with the awesome trailer, poster and a slew of stills. Not only that, but I got the chance to ask them some questions regarding the film and their future. So, make your way below and check out some insane bloody carnage, on ice!
Synopsis: The Pinup Dolls are a hot retro act who put the tease back in striptease. But when an old friend (Suzi Lorraine) hires them to put on a show at a secluded campground, the girls find themselves being stalked by a homicidal maniac with a sick obsession with ice. As they’re hunted one-by-one, they soon realize they’ll have to rely on more than just their looks to survive this nightmare named Moe.
For those of you who are making your way to this years Shockfest Festival in LA, will have the chance to witness the film which has been selected for the Shocker Award! More details can be found below.
I believe that PINUP DOLLS ON ICE is a sequel to BIKINI GIRLS ON ICE? What made you guys do a sequel?
Geoff: You’re absolutely right. We made the sequel because Bikini Girls on Ice started out as a joke amongst friends. I was sitting in a hockey locker room with a bunch of high school friends, when one of them starts on about his secret fantasy. It involved getting a prostitute into a hotel room and putting her in a bathtub full of ice, letting her freeze to death and then fucking her back to life! I was like “Holy shit!
That’s an awesome idea for a film!” And then before you knew it, I had taken that idea and morphed it a little, and Bikini Girls on Ice was born! So I made the film on a shoe-string budget, hoping that ANYONE would see it, and lucky enough for me, a few years later it was on Netflix being criticized along side Rob Zombie’s Halloween. So I just felt like I needed to make Pinup Dolls on Ice because we had a lot to prove, now knowing that the film would actually get seen by people.
When making Bikini Girls on Ice, I didn’t know if we could even make a film; but with Pinup Dolls on Ice, this was my chance to show everyone that I could make a good slasher film! But I knew moving forward that I would need some help getting to that point, so when I met Melissa, I knew I had found that missing piece of the puzzle.
Melissa: After seeing Bikini Girls on Ice at one of its screenings, I felt that it was a good film, but it had a lot of missed opportunities. Basically, I agreed with what the critics were saying even if it was never meant to go as far as it did and especially to get reviewed as a big budget film.
I remember having to convince Geoff about a few scenes I wanted, mostly about the rawness and brutally carried on throughout the film. I had to explain to him that we couldn’t and that I didn’t want to make Bikini Girls on Ice 2, but a sequel that would bring the series to another level.
We took every single critic to heart, brainstormed and gave Michael Penning, Writer of Pinup Dolls on Ice, a call and told him to meet us at a local bar because we needed him to make sense of our mishmash of ideas! He’s a dear friend of ours and a devoted fan of genre cinema with a soft-spot for the classic 80′s slasher films, if anyone could deliver the kind of visceral gut-punches we had in mind, it would be Michael Penning.
I’ve only just seen the trailer and it looks killer! How was it to work with the awesome Suzi Lorraine?
Geoff: Suzi Lorraine is the kindest soul on the planet. Working with her is a dream, I honestly can’t say enough good things about her. She actually played in the opening scene of Bikini Girls on Ice but I enjoyed working with her so much that we casted her in Pinup Dolls on Ice as a completely different character. She has even come to a few festival screenings and has really supported the film and continues to do so; she rocks!
Melissa: I had never worked with Suzi Lorraine before Pinup Dolls on Ice, but Geoff spoke very highly of her so I supported his decision to work with her. I can definitely say that she is the poster child for professionalism and integrity. She was a blast to work with and she showed us so much love and support throughout her time on set!
I have to admit that I was a bit starstruck when I saw her arriving on set! I’ll never forget the night we had to shoot one of her scenes with Moe, the homocidal maniac; the script called for a pretty sadistic scene between Suzi Lorraine and William Jarand (Moe), and after we got the shots we needed, we found the two actors sitting in the cafeteria sipping tea together as if nothing terrible had just recently transpired on camera! Professionals, period.
The gore looks awesome, who is responsible for the practical effects?
Geoff: Melissa actually did the practical effects in the film. She had never worked on a film before, so doing the makeup was a huge challenge! (Along with co-producing, co-directing, and acting) She honestly knocked it out of the park! She’s just one of those people who gets it, and it’s awesome to work with people like that. I’m one lucky SOB!
Melissa: We were not getting the results we wanted during principal photography and there was no way that we were going to deliver a horror film with shitty effects. It was clear that we were going to have to reshoot most of the death scenes and hire a new makeup team. This is when I stepped in.
Thank God for my cousin, Gabriela Tamara Munoz Meza, who came on board during the reshoots and helped me with the makeup and special effects. I couldn’t have done it without her! With her being fresh out of beauty school and my lack of experience in special effects, along with my already busy agenda on set, we managed to reshoot five death scenes and make them look as bloody and cringe worthy as they were originally supposed to be.
The film has been selected for the Shocker Award at this years Shockfest Festival as well as having its premiere, what can you tell us about that?
Geoff: Well, the nomination for the Shocker Award is awesome! We’ve never been to LA, so to not only have an LA premiere but to also have a nomination for such a prestigious award is really quite something. This is what you dream of whenever you’re on set shooting; the chance to actually bring home some hardware!
Melissa: Honestly, I’m just happy that we actually finished the film! This is just the cherry on top! The Shockfest Film Festival crew are doing an awesome job in promoting the festival and we cannot wait to get there and take part in all the festivities! On top of it, the first fifty people that show up to the screening will get a free Pinup Dolls on Ice t-shirt, so we are excited to meet our supporters and shoot the shit with them!
What was the inspiration behind PINUP DOLLS ON ICE?
Geoff: With the Hatchet series bringing slasher films back into the spotlight, it just reminded everyone how nostalgic and fun slasher films can be. Well we wanted to spin that on it’s head a little and still keep some of the campy nature of the genre, but inject some real life drama and brutality. We still followed the “slasher formula” but tried to make it different than other main stream slasher films. We focused a lot of attention on the lighting and camera work and all of the small details in a scene; something that often gets overlooked in these films because the gratuitous T&A and over the top violence take centre stage.
Melissa: Well, all we knew is that we wanted to get a group of girls isolated in a remote location and for bad shit to happen – that’s all we had for inspiration! Michael Penning was able to present us a story around the ideas we had. He was able to give us great pacing and a properly structured film. Pinup Dolls on Ice is not Geoff and I’s take on real life issues or a profound message wrapped within layers of symbolism and allegory – we are definitely not philosophical filmmakers.
Friday the 13th, Halloween, Prom Night, Opera, A Nightmare on Elm Street: The films of the glory days of VHS were simple but effective. Good-looking people fighting to survive the brutal attacks of a deranged killer. In an age when horror fans are starved for new material – desperate to escape the tedium of remakes, torture porn, and found-footage – we decided it was time to go back to our roots, to keep things simple… and make horror films fun again!
Are there any distribution plans in place? If so, when do you expect the film to be released and how?
Geoff: Many offers on the table, but we haven’t decided on anyone just yet. We kinda just want to enjoy the festival run and then see where we’re at. We’re going to be patient and make the right decision for Pinup Dolls on Ice and for our future films. Doing the festival circuit lets us meet the horror fans around the world and get an insight on what makes them tick! We love connecting with these people at the Q&A’s and the creative questions often blow our mind, but we love it!
What does the future hold for you guys? Any other horror movies in the pipeline?
Melissa: There’s another “On Ice” film coming! We have to get it out of our systems before we move on to other projects! Every few days I come up to Geoff and tell him about this idea I have for a scene, most of time he tells me “that’s crazy! we’ll definitely use if for the next instalment!” and something he tells me “that doesn’t fit the “On Ice” series, save it for another film!”. So we definitely have a few projects coming in the future. Although we love the slasher genre, we do want to explore some of the other sub-genres of horror that interest us.
Thanks for your time and is there anything else you would like to add?
Geoff/Melissa: We are proud to present Pinup Dolls on Ice, our latest slice of old-school slasher mayhem. As a Canadian horror duo, we adhere to the unorthodox spirit of independent filmmaking; delivering high production value on a limited budget. We pride ourselves on the ability to remain true to our uncompromising vision of Canadian horror cinema and we want to thank the entire Cast & Crew for their talents and for being crazy enough to join the bloodbath!
We are just starting our festival run, but we’ve already been nominated for Best Horror/Thriller at the Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival and we WON an award for BEST SOUND DESIGN at the New York City Horror Film Festival. We had our World Premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival in front of a sold out crowd! We rocked the Telluride Horrorshow in the beautiful Colorado Rockies! We had our US premiere at the Spooky Movie Film Festival in Washington DC and Edmonton blew us out of the water at Dedfest for an unforgettable screening!
I think this one looks awesome, but what do you guys make of this one so far? If you would like to follow Melissa and Geoff, make your way over to their official Facebook page. Let us know if you’ll be keeping your eye out for this one?
