The Turning is a feature film born out of frustration and desire. For the past 5 years I have been making lots of various features, all mainly in the horror genre, but each one exploring various sub genres. I have managed to get a few of these features in the hands of various distributors and had various releases, mainly in the USA, as some of my titles will not go down too well with the good old BBFC! ‘The Turning’ is not their cup of tea either, to sum the film up in a nutshell – we follow ‘Dillon Slater’ a man with a troubled life on the run, but bumps into an old girlfriend in which they spark up an affair which leads to the murder of his lovers abusive husband. When they go to dump the body and go on the run they are caught in a world of zombies created by Nazi’s to pure the world, a film with many political undertones, like most of my flicks.

Anyway it has become hardier to make these films, due to the fact that I fill a lot of my job roles myself, and constantly having to find the finance for them as well! But I was eager to make a new feature, my last big feature was ‘Tortured AKA Sex Slave’ shot at the end of 2007 and completed mid 2008, was originally put in as a double bill with Kemal Yildirim’s Gillo ‘Penance’ and was premiered at the Phoenix cinema summer 2008. This film has been a rollercoaster to find its audience. The double bill was called ‘Exploitation’ and was presented like ‘Grindhouse’, it was presented with 4 faux genre trailers, one of which was a Nazi sexploitation tribute titled ‘Women Prisoners Of SS Camp From Hell’. We had trouble finding a distributor, and the films ended up being split, and due to the shocking rape scene various cuts were made to try and get the censorship issue sorted. After one distributor viewed the cut version they tried to get a release under the title ‘Deranged’ but got dropped due to the films disgusting dialogue and sex and nudity. So I made further cuts of 10 minutes now bringing the film to a mere 50 minutes and because of the short running time had to stick it with my thriller ‘Tormented’, so hopefully this new double bill will be released soon.

After that epic saga I have done a few bits and pieces, but ‘The Turning’ was my next big venture. Kemal Yildirim who had produced and was my DOP on ‘Tortured’ was eager to get another film on the go for me and was scratching at my brain for something. He wanted to produce and was giving me an opportunity to go for it and go all out to make a new epic. He also wanted to explore his acting roots again, so I was going to cast him as the lead, and give him a lot of challenges as an actor to deal with.

So I came up with a simple synopsis set in a shack where a zombie has bitten a woman and slowly changing into the undead while her lover is helpless trying to nurse her. I pitched this to Kemal and he loved it and we set off on pre-production. I got excited to return to the zombie genre. I won best film with my 10-minute short film ‘Zombies in the Wood’ at the ‘2 Days Later Short Film Competition 2004’. I had not actually made a full-length zombie feature, I had a few zombies lurking about in ‘Tortured’, but that was a random exploitation sub-plot I had built into the film. This was going to be my first full-length zombie feature.

So pre-production was under way, I started uploading pre-production videos on you tube to gain attention and publicity for the project, we location scouted, I wrote a scene break down, and suddenly the film was becoming bigger, more complicated and growing out of control!

I was developing the story and character, and doing my crazy style of bringing sub plots referencing the old classic video nasties that I love and bringing in various wacky characters, Kemal was loving it and encouraging me to go crazy and didn’t want my vision to be restrained due to budget and the restraints of independent filmmaking.

I started to think about the style and how I was going to shoot the film and decided to try a style I have always wanted to do but not explored much which was to make the film a kind of shocumentary, to use this style like ‘Faces of Death’ mixed with a style of filmmaking I had used before – Dogme 95. I shot a feature called ‘Troubled’ in  which I created the outline of the story and the characters, and then stood back and guided the film and let the actors improvise and saw where the story took us, which was to darker places than I expected. It was a good experiment and one I wanted to return to, so I thought I would do a similar approach to ‘The Turning’. I used my scene breakdowns and new ideas and cast the mains, got them together for a brief and rehearsal and let them create their own dialogue. I briefed them on each scene, throw them in it, told them the points they must touch on, how it will fit with the overall picture and let them do a few takes while I filmed as much as I could in true documentary style. It was exciting, but also has caused more chaos in the edit suite. I have filmed so much and alternate sequences sticking it all together has took some patience and time, has had its stressful moments like all films do in post production.

As we were in production me and Kemal kept bouncing ideas off each other making the film more manic and complicated but stronger. All the sub plots were coming together to make the film stronger and boost the storyline to its limit. I had an ending in mind that the film was building up to and to add more shock content into the movie, so Kemal set out to find an actress for the final epic scene which was to be the final 2 days of principal photography, and he came back with  ‘Eileen Daly’ which was great news for us as I am a huge fan of independent films and love films like ‘Razor Blade Smile’, but I am a big fan of the independent German cinema especially the works of ‘Andreas Schnaas’ particularly the ‘Violent Shit’ films and ‘Timo Rose’ and his film ‘Barricade’, so it was very exciting and fun to work with a legend for what I hope will be a great showdown and pay off to the audience in the film.

‘The Turning’ has been a fun experience, a bit hell raising on the journey as at times I was not totally sure on the exact content I would be getting, I have had to deal with technical problems, day 1 of filming I lost a channel of audio so I have had to try and solve this problem in post, and half way through the shoot our radio mic got damaged and stopped working, so I had to beg borrow and steal to get a replacement to continue the shoot, luckily I only lost half a days filming and soon got the shoot back on track.

Kemal is usually my Director of Photography, but as he is the main lead playing ‘Dillon Slater’ I have ended up directing and shooting this project, as well as editing and doing sound. I have had my wife Sharon Impey help me behind the scenes and do some stills photography, and Jenny Buckland and her assistant Becky Stone have had their work cut out, as everyday me and Kemal would decide to add more blood, more gore, and kept wanting to kill zombies in the most brutal way as possible! I cast a regular of mine Rami Hilmi as Quaid Hess, a bounty hunter caught in this mad world of zombies & Nazi’s, but he also choreographed the epic fight scene between his character and Kemal’s, which lasts nearly 10 minutes of non stop kicking, punching, smashing through the set, and a shoot out, another scene that grew and grew. In fact this project has been a child hood dream come true, combining action scenes with full on gross out gore mixed with some tense drama with a group of Nazi’s to polish the production off, the kind of film I dreamed of making when I was younger watching any copy I could get my hands on of a video nastie.

This film has been a great group effort, including cameos from my dad and my son. The film has been a journey, but will be worth it in the end, and everyone’s hard work will have paid off.

Maxim Media International have distributed this film.

Has had several edits, running time ranges from 50 minutes – 78 minutes

Tortured AKA Sex Slave Original Uncut Version 2008

65 minutes

Tortured follows the frequently violent and obscene exploits of two escaped convicts, Kurk and Quaid who take a sexy female hostage in an attempt to avoid getting busted by the cops. Filled to the brim with f-words and crash zooms, Tortured (also known as Sex Slave) is an outrageous journey into the domain of exploitation cinema.

While Jason was making his controversial short film Revenge of the Dead he came up with an idea for a scene about two criminals who had killed a women and were trying to dispose of the body while they get into an argument and disturbed nearly getting caught, they were almost rookie killers. As Jason started to develop this idea he began work as director of photography on Kemal Yildirim’s 30-minute Giallo film ‘Penance’. This was a big shoot and while on it Jason thought it would be a good idea for him to make a different horror sub genre and combine the films to make a double bill which Kemal thought was a great idea and so pre-production started for ‘Tortured AKA Sex Slave’. Jason gave Tortured an AKA name on purpose to homage all the classic European video nasties and their 101 titles. Jason also wanted to cross a few of the sub genres from the video nastie era and added a zombie twist into the graphic rape and revenge storyline he had mapped out.

To add to the project Jason and Kemal decided to make 4 faux trailers to add between both films to give it the old drive in cinema feel like Rodriguez & Tarantino’s ‘Grindhouse’ and call the whole project ‘Exploitation’. Two guest directors made with help from Jason & Kemal their trailers while Jason & Kemal directed a trailer each, Jason’s being ‘Women Prisoners Of SS Camp From Hell’ which is a homage to the Nazi sexploitation films of the 70’s.

Maxim Media International has distributed the original uncut version of Tortured used in this double bill complete with the Nazi trailer on their Brain Damage Films label. 

School Ground Massacre

Hitchin’ Hell

Satanic Bitch

Women Prisoners Of SS Camp From Hell

& the complete uncut version of Tortured AKA Sex Slave & Penance.

Penance 2007

30 minutes

Detective Richard Klein, a recovering alcoholic with a troubled past and an affiliation for bondage has been chosen to catch a serial killer not by superiors but by the killer. With the city in his grip the killer is leaving clues that only Klein can solve. Scarlet is his only salvation; a steamy love affair that could be the answer to Klein’s problems. Klein needs to solve this case for the city and for his own Penance.

This version of the film was premiered at the Phoenix Cinema in London in the summer of 2008 with five people walking out due to being disgusted with the film, however it has been very hard to find distribution for this version and so it is a rare unreleased film. A 10 minute version of Penance was edited and is included in the feature film ‘Tales of the Dead’.

After the interest showed in ‘Tales of Terror 1’ Jason quickly put more of his short films together to make a second instalment, this time adding a more grindhouse style to it with short interludes added to give it a more fun viewing experience. The films included on this instalment are:

Tape of Horror

The Baker

Zombie Hunters (a film Jason produced & starred in)

Zombies in the Amazon (a hoax trailer)

Beyond Reality (a hoax trailer)

Eternal Beast

Lone Warrior

Soccor of the Dead

Hardman (a hoax trailer)

Rake

Sick Bastard (the short film)

Never 2 Alone (a film Jason shot & edited)

Beyond Darkness Dave’s Story

WWMM released this film on DVD and Chemical Burn Entertainment has released a double bill containing both Tales of Terror 1 & 2.