The following is from the Record Journal article which ran June 29th, 2006.
A‘Blood Bath’ for filmmakers
By Ralph Hohman
Record-Journal staff
PLAINVILLE — Coming in off the street, it looks as though you’ve happened upon a frat house or maybe a graduation party, what with all the cars and a tent set up in the driveway. Until, that is, you hear the screams coming from inside — Oh My God! Oh My God!
“This is a pretty funny scene,” explains Rob Cosgrove, aka the psycho, murderous “Chef” of the campy, low-budget slasher flick, “Bikini Blood Bath.” Risen from the grave for a sequel, he’s back for more meat, only in this scene he’s off camera, holding the boom mike.
“There is a dead guy in the closet,” Cosgrove continues, “and there’s a party going on and there’s this couple in there playing Seven Minutes in Heaven. The guy actually starts making out (unknowingly) with the dead body.” When our young lovers discover their unintended menage, the screaming starts, part of “Bikini Blood Bath 2: Bikini Bloodbath Carwash,” being filmed at a house on this presumably normally quiet street.
“We just tried to make the name ridiculously long,” says Cosgrove, who lives in Meriden. The film, which was shot over a couple of weeks in Plainville and Southington, follows “Bikini Blood Bath,” which comes out in July.
They are “B” movies, and revel in their cheesy, gorefilled low budgetness.
“The script is essentially comedy,” says Thomas Edward Seymour (the shoot is in his brother’s house), who with Jon Gorman wrote, produced and directed the “Blood Bath” movies. “We tried to write straight horror in the first one, and we kept putting jokes in.” B-movie queen Debbie Rochon joined the shoot last weekend after taping her new Sirius Satellite show, “Fangoria Radio,” with Dee Snider. Cosgrove says Rochon’s lecherousgym- teacher character meets her demise in the first “Blood Bath,” but is somehow been written back into “Bikini Bloodbath Carwash.” She’s joined this time by Rachael Robbins, another star of the low-budget genre, who broke her wrist goofing around on the set.
“I was so bummed,” Robbins says, “because this is one of the most wonderful shoots I’ve been on. The script is absolutely hysterical.” She says her right arm, supported by an elastic wrap until the swelling goes down and a cast can be applied, has been hidden during the shoot, “under shirts, behind hunky guys, behind not-so-hunky guys.” There’s not really time or money to shut down. This isn’t a union shop. Gorman and Seymour say “Bikini Blood Bath 2” will cost about $12,000, plus the cost of a new, digital camera they bought for the project. With cable networks expanding into high-def channels and looking for programming, they say their technology upgrade might help get “Carwash” on television.
“Our intention is to build a horror company — pump them out as fast as we can,” Gorman says.
Seymour, a New Britain native, wrote and acted in “The Land of College Prophets,” which was produced by the Hale Manor Picture Company, of which he’s a partner. “Prophets” took home a bunch of festival prizes last year, including Best Picture at the New Haven Underground Film Festival, which was held in Meriden (it moved to Hartford this year).
In the first “Bikini Blood Bath,” Cosgrove says, a group of young women are celebrating their high school graduation when they cross paths with the Chef who, using a meat cleaver and other utensils, goes on a killing spree. In the sequel, the survivors of that first massacre try to make contact with their murdered friends, but unwittingly resurrect the Chef with a Ouija board.
In real life, Cosgrove, Gorman and Bruce Seymour (owner of the Plainville home used as a set) are business partners, owners of Another Bookstore in New Britain, an alternative source of textbooks for Central Connecticut State University students.
With his shaved head, Cosgrove looks the part of the Chef, whose backstory includes a twisted mother (of course). Onscreen, he says, “This is me — basically it’s typecasting.” How good anactor is he?
“I’m terrible,” he says. “I’ve just got to look mean and they throw blood at me.” And the blood budget is bigger this time, with more special effects than in the first “Blood Bath.” “We have some real crazy stuff like ripping out intestines this time,” Cosgrove says.
Which brings up ratings. “Bikini Blood Bath 2” won’t have one. But if it did, “it would definitely be an R,” Cosgrove says, for violence and skin.
“We don’t do sex scenes,” he says, “but we do have breasts exposed.”
rhohman@record-journal.com
