Chris Mayers as Lucas (bottom) and Hamid-Reza Benjamin Thompson as McScruffy (top) in William Bagley’s ‘Hold the Fort’
Courtesy of William Bagley
“A made-for-TV Stephen King movie mixed with the chaos of Scott Pilgrim…”
That’s how Atlanta-based indie filmmaker William Bagley describes his sophomore effort, Hold The Fort, in which the members of a homeowners association fend off a menagerie of dark creatures — from broomstick-flying witches to exploding bats — spewed out of a nearby portal to Hell.
“I love incompetent people fighting monsters,” Bagley says over Zoom. “I like horror when the good guys win. I like tension and I like things to be intense, but I hate it when it ends bleak. I like a happy ending. That tends to lean with my style, which is comedic. Every time I try to write straight horror, it just ends up being funny. But hey, there’s nothing wrong with that. I like putting the characters in difficult situations and then making it extremely hard for them to get out of them.”
Caught up in this otherworldly Alamo are Lucas (Chris Mayers) and Jenny (Haley Leary), a young couple who have just moved into the neighborhood. Julian “Malk” Smith, meanwhile, takes on the role of the HOA’s chipper and mustachioed president, Jerry. A delightfully campy romp that recalls the early “splatstick” work of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson (think The Evil Dead and Braindead), the project — which Bagley wrote alongside producer Scott Hawkins — was the result of a seemingly throwaway gag in the director’s feature debut: The Murder Podcast.
“The main character is watching what’s supposed to be a really cheesy movie on his TV,” Bagley explains. “A silly little joke about a guy shooting witches and saying, ‘I guess magic can’t stop bullets…’ But after [Murder Podcast] came out, Scott kept saying, ‘I want to see that movie! We should make that crappy green screen movie!’ And I was like, ‘Okay, well, if you pitch me an idea, I can write something, and we’ll make it.’ He came back to me with this idea about an HOA fighting off monsters, and I thought it was hilarious. So I sat down and busted out this script.”
After reading it, Hawkins declared, “‘Dude, you wrote this too good. Now we have to make it a real movie,’” Bagley remembers. “And so, that’s exactly what happened! It’s based off of that little scene in The Murder Podcast and became this crazy, big, legit movie that’s tons of fun.”
He continues: “I think for me, it was a good step up from The Murder Podcast. It feels like a much bigger movie. There are some slightly deeper themes and we also got to try out a bunch of cooler stuff with action that I’ve been wanting to do. I really learned a ton on this movie and if anything, it’s just ignited me wanting to do a third movie even more, so I can put all those things that I learned into practice.”
Hold The Fort, which raised nearly $40,000 on Kickstarter, landed a distribution deal this past May via Blue Finch Films.
“William Bagley is a distinctive new voice in genre and we were hooked within the first five minutes of watching Hold The Fort,” Mike Chapman, managing director of Blue Finch Films, said in a statement (via Screen Daily). “He seamlessly combines frenetic action sequences, strong creature design, and genuine laugh out loud moments, to create something which will thrill audiences worldwide.”
While an official release date has yet to be announced, Bagley does have ideas for a sequel if audiences want more. “I know where we’re going next,” he teases. “This was a fun world to live in and I totally have more things that I want to explore. And with a little bit more money, there’s so much more that we could pull off in terms of some of the stunt stuff. So heck yeah — if people want a sequel, we got it!”
With two features under his belt and deep roots in Georgia, Bagley is committed to keeping the state’s filmmaking community alive and well, even as major studios continue to vacate Atlanta in favor of better tax credits and rebates overseas.
“It’s bumming me out that all this stuff is kind of leaving, but that’s also how the movie biz goes. They’re always going to go where it’s cheapest to film,” concludes the filmmaker, who makes his living as a camera operator and cinematographer in the corporate world. “I would love to do another film here, especially if we could take advantage of the tax credit. That’d be awesome. But for me, it’s because all my friends are here. All my cast and crew, all the people who I’ve worked with her are here.”