The Undead News Thread (20090619.01)

Corpus Delecti (The Passion of the Zombie Christ)

"Ira Hunter of The 13 Flames Empire and Nick Parsons of Monster Media sent along the eye-catching trailer for their in-the-works feature project CORPUS DELECTI (THE PASSION OF THE ZOMBIE CHRIST), which promises to put a spin on the story of Jesus that Mel Gibson never dreamed of. Parsons, who’s serving as a producer on the movie, provides some background: 'Ira is the creator of the cult underground comic books CHAMPIONS OF HELL and ZOMBIE JESUS,; he tells Fango. 'About 12 years ago, he entered a local filmmaking contest in Victoria, Canada called Scrapshots. The criteria were that the movies had to be done entirely in one shot, with no post-production whatsoever. Ira entered one called CORPUS DELECTI (THE PASSION OF ZOMBIE JESUS), and surprised everyone by taking first place!'"

"'Twelve years went by,' Parsons continues, 'and Ira decided to ‘remake’ the CORPUS DELECTI short into a feature utilizing Victoria’s first greenscreen production facility, Island Industrial FX. After five months of planning and replanning, and realizing just how difficult and expensive it is to organize 30 volunteers, the decision was made to shoot a trailer over one weekend in the hopes of landing production money for the full film. Ira changed the title of this version to CORPUS DELECTI (THE PASSION OF THE ZOMBIE CHRIST), and is hopeful that a big-name star like Bruce Campbell or George A. Romero—who expressed interest in ZOMBIE JESUS to Ira nearly 10 years ago at Comic-Con!—will come on board in some capacity.'"

My friends and I have been talking about this idea for years now. I always talked about how the Last Supper, where Christ told his friends: "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me," and "This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me." It always seemed a bit cannibalistic to me. Maybe even zombie-like. I also remember one of my friends (Tyler) asking if Easter was the day that Jesus "rose from the dead and walked the Earth again, right?" It's too bad we never made this movie ourselves years ago. Oh well. If this guy can pull it off right, I'm down for it. I'm sure I'm well on my way to Hell now (like I wasn't before). Here's the original short that won him first place at the Scrapshots Film Competition.

Source: Fangoria