ShareThisHundreds of movies currently are making the rounds of domestic and international film festivals, but it's safe to say only one of them showcases Faye Dunaway in the role of a one-armed police detective from Memphis battling an Elvis-loving rockabilly zombie in Wales.
Written and directed by British horror enthusiast David Howard, 34, a veteran BBC documentarian, and produced by fellow documentary-maker Rik Hall, 32, "Flick" is the story of a vengeful undead Teddy Boy named Johnny Taylor (Hugh O'Conor), who is nicknamed "Flick" for his "flick knife" switchblade style. He is restored to life by the sound of the vintage rockabilly tune "Jilted Again" after the Hillman Minx automobile he drove off a dock in 1960 is pulled from the watery depths in the present day.
Coincidentally, Johnny's killing spree begins while a Memphis detective named McKenzie (Faye Dunaway) is in town as part of a police exchange with Welsh sister city Hobbs End (named in homage to the locale featured in the 1967 Hammer science-fiction classic "Quatermass and the Pit").
"Don't let the arm fool you -- the rest of me is all woman," McKenzie proclaims when her new partner, a gruff veteran policeman, notes her puppetlike wooden replacement hand.
"I'm from Memphis -- home of the King of Rock 'n' Roll," she continues. "I spread bigger men than you on my muffins for breakfast."
"Music was the direct inspiration for the film," said Howard, in a recent interview.
While driving home late one night, Howard heard "Teen Angel" on his car radio, the 1960 pop hit about a teen-ager dying in a car crash. "Its haunting melody and chilling lyrics had me thinking: What if someone was driving through the night, listening to this music, on the way to commit a murder? From this initial idea, the rest of the film evolved."
Howard said the role of the Memphis detective was written specifically for Dunaway, an Oscar-winner for "Network" and an Oscar nominee for "Chinatown" and "Bonnie and Clyde."
Said Howard: "Most people laughed when we sent (Dunaway) the script, and we assumed it would end up straight in the trash can on reaching her American agent, because she still commands considerable fees, which as a low-budget film we certainly were not able to bring to the table."
But to the filmmakers' delight, Dunaway accepted.
"We knew Faye was a Southern girl (from Florida)," Howard said, "and it just felt a natural fit to draw on her own origins, the whole Southern-belle-with-a-twist thing. Maybe as a teen-ager she danced to music from the halcyon days of Sun Records at her own school prom ... It's a nice thought.
Howard -- who visited Memphis and Graceland eight years ago while on assignment for the BBC -- said rock music and horror movies are pop-culture blood brothers because "the confusion, fear, anger, loathing and changes ... between childhood and adolescence can seem quite horrific, and nothing expresses mood and emotion more effectively than music. It's not difficult to see why rock and roll was seen as dangerous and heretical to the parents of 1950s teen-agers."
As for Elvis, who is referenced throughout "Flick": "In the (United Kingdom), the music of Elvis continues to endure... His is a cult that continues to grow and his fans, of all ages, remain legion."
(John Beifuss is a reporter for The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn. Contact him at beifuss(at)commercialappeal.com. His movie blog is www.TheBloodshotEye.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
