HUGHESVILLE — Independent film maker, Zeb Eckles, of rural Pettis County spent New Year’s Eve wrapping up the last shoot of the week for his film “Demon’s Vale,” a horror/western that explores the tenacity of a nun, a cowboy and the evil they encounter in backwoods Missouri in the 1860s.
Eckles, who received a degree at Central Methodist University and attended film school at Full Sail University in Florida, said the film was recently entered into the Screencraft Horror screenplay contest. Out of approximately 1,600 scripts “Demon’s Vale” made it into the top 50.
“It’s a pretty big one and one of the bigger genre one’s where they do an action (film) and horror (film) and romantic comedy,” Eckles said. “I entered it on a lark. It was already written and had him (cinematographer Raubyn Pointer) signed up to work on it, and we were already rolling through everything. So I just did it, to see if we could get a little publicity for it. We made it into the semi-finals which was the top 50, we didn’t make the top five.”
This is Eckles debut as a director/producer.
“This is my first film, I’ve worked on sets, and produced a couple shorts, and then I worked on films in New York and in Austin (Texas),” he noted.
He added that his family’s 150-acre property in rural Pettis County was the “back lot” for the film, with costume and make-up trailers, two different sets and plenty of bare winter trees.
“It’s my parent’s property, my aunt and uncle’s property, my property and a couple neighbor’s property,” Eckles said.
Eckles and his brother Jacob Eckles hand built the weigh station and the homestead used in the film. Everything was handmade right down to the hand cut wood plank siding and roof shingles.
The six main actors hail from Kansas City but the production has become a family affair with extras taking in friends and family members.
“There’s a handful of people who just show up and get shot, or something bad happens to them,” Eckles said. “Those are all local people … they don’t have any lines.”
Director of Photography Raubyn Pointer, of Kansas City, noted that the film has a lot of detail.
“This was a lot of moving pieces and parts,” Pointer added. “I’ve read through numerous scripts and I’ve done several short films, but reading this script really got me.”
“This is not like your normal, super low-budgeted independent film, which is either very sort of truncated or doesn’t have a lot going on,” Eckles noted.
Pointer, who works as a team with his wife Lara Mueting, added that Eckles “passion” also influenced him to shoot the film.
“Not only did he write it and he produced it, but he built these amazing sets,” Pointer said. “The first couple times I came up, and I could see the locations and what was getting ready to happen, I was like ‘okay this guy has passion.’ Where other people just kind of think they want to make a movie, this guy was like head-set on it.”
Eckles is working with budget of close to $50,000, he began shooting Dec. 27 and planned to wrap up this segment on New Year’s Eve. The crew worked sometimes 14 hour days and on Saturday many of them didn’t go to bed until 4:30 a.m. They were on the set again at noon getting ready for an exorcism scene.
Eckles said that additional shooting will take place through January.
Lead actress Charlotte Crumm, of Kansas City, who plays the nun, noted that her character wasn’t always a nun.
“Her husband passed, by being possessed by a demon,” Crumm said. “That lead her to the calling.”
Her character is now an exorcist. This is Crumm’s first film although she’s been acting for years on stage and has done media work for charities.
Lead male actor Scott Lucas, the cowboy named Owen, has played in several Indie and Short films in the last two years.
“I started acting about three years ago,” he said. “… I’ve always loved film and I do a lot of commercial acting in Kansas City. I saw the auditions for this online and jumped on board. He’s done a great job of writing a really in depth script that has thriller and suspense elements.
“Zeb has created a whole story and a universe, really,” he added. “He’s got characters developed, he’s got a really nice story line, and it’s an entertaining, well-rounded story, more so then a horror, monster flick. It’s fantastic, really.”
Actor Chris Owen, who plays Father Eric, said the film leans toward a Quentin Tarantino movie, minus the extreme violence.
“I love the mesh-mash of the western, but also the very clever kind of Quentin Tarantino style dialogue, as well as the demon possession horror aspect,” he said. “My character is traveling with the nun at the beginning of the story. In the initial scuffle with the supernatural, I get possessed. Later … I realize I’m part of this whole grand scheme that’s in motion. It’s going really well and it’s very different than anything I’ve done before.”
Cody Ceniti, plays Martin, a rancher and the nun’s brother who becomes possessed, said he would give the film a PG 13 rating. He emphasized it wasn’t a slasher film and didn’t delve into demonic extremes.
“It’s very subtle and suspenseful,” he noted on Saturday. “I think the most violence is when I die tonight, I just get driven through with spikes, it’s not demonic. Even in the exorcism, I’m not screaming out insults.”
Ceniti noted that he’s never worked on a “more put together project.”
“I love it,” he added. “The set’s great, amazing … this is awesome.”
Assistant Director Cameron Cox also noted that the actors and crew have been treated extremely well by the Eckles family.
“Zeb’s family and friends have been the most kind people,” he said. “We’re out of the city … we didn’t know what to expect. We were greeted with nothing but the warmest, kindest people you ever met. You don’t get anything like it in Kansas City … down here you feel like family.”
After Eckles is finished shooting the film, it will take approximately a year to go through the editing process. His plan is to show it at film festivals in 2018.
For more information on “Demon’s Vale” visit the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/demonsvale/?fref=ts.
