Principle photography on the up-coming Robert Kurtzman motion picture The Rage came to a conclusion this week. Shot entirely in the North Central Ohio area, The Rage tells a story of a mad scientist who’s ‘rage’ toxin is unleashed upon society via blood thirsty vultures.

‘The Rage’ stars genre veterans Andrew Divoff (Wishmaster) and Reggie Bannister (Phantasm), cult actress Erin Brown, as well as a talented young supporting cast consisting of Sean Serino, Rachel Scheer, Anthony Clark II, and introducing Keith Herrick and Ryan Hooks, a Mansfield, OH local in his debut performance.

Locally financed, and free of Hollywood interference, shooting for ‘The Rage’ went according to plan, and without incident.  Kurtzman’s company, ‘Precinct 13 Entertainment’ is producing the picture, utilizing its 13’000 sq ft sound stage, CG department, and in-house crew.

“We just wrapped our 4 week shoot this weekend and it went great! We have an awesome cast and crew who busted there asses to help make this film a stand out production. We spent several weeks out in the wilderness shooting at waterfall, and deep woods locations for a majority of our action sequences. Then moved on to our stages for the interior shoot.  All the major interior sets were built at P13’s stage as well as several practical locations in and around Crestline Ohio, Kurtzman’s Home town were P13 is located.”

Despite its truly ‘independent’ status and low-key arrival, ‘The Rage’ is creating quite a buzz within both horror genre circles and the public alike. Recently, it has appeared in SPIKE TV’s ‘Most Anticipated Film of 2007’ category for this years ‘Scream Awards’. In addition, it has received MANY positive accolades within the horror press, in both print and online publications.

“The film is a retro-style horror film written by Producer John Bisson who also production designed the film. Anne Kurtzman, Matt Jerrams and Gary Jones also serve as producers on the film. John and I wrote the story together which is a wild ride packed with special creature effects and lots of fun bloodletting. Andrew Divoff gives another classic genre performance as mad Dr. V and he has a blast with the character bringing out the humor and insanity of the situations.” Kurtzman says.

We also did this huge rave sequence with 150 extras at an outdoor concert were our lead characters are having a night out with friends. We had the rock group Mushroomhead performing one of the singles from there new album which will be featured in the film as well as local Ohio band Senior Citizen. While shooting the film we also shot the video for the Mushroomhead single complete with Miss Pussykatt, a performance artist who does a firebreathing act and grinds metal grinders on plates attached to her body… she looked amazing. The video is directed by David Greathouse who is one of our FX artists and has directed several other videos for the band as well as designing the bands make-ups for their stage show. It was a real treat working with the band that night. We finished our main shoot at midnight and then slid into rock video mode and put 5 cameras on the band while they performed and we just went nuts with the cameras.

Tom Callaway who shot two of the Horror Chronicle films including my film “Buried Alive” and the upcoming “Feast” came out for our intense week of outdoor shooting and Tom and I tag teamed the coverage, both operating a camera. For most of the film I’ve been shooting A camera myself setting up the shots as Al Tuskes has been pulling double duty designing the lighting and also stars in the film as “Gor” our Tor Johnson style mutant. ”

We are now in our post production phase which will take us through first of the year as we complete the edit, visual effects, and post sound. The score is being done by Midnight Syndicate.

The Rage is all over the web.  You can visit the films official site by clicking here.  For those of you into the whole MySpace scene you can click here to check out the films page and don't forget to head on over and vote for The Rage as the most anticipated horror film in the Spike TV horror awards.

Can’t wait for this one, it looks to be a real bloodbath.  Bob and Co. will be heading to the East Coast Fango Con to preview the project and if you are in the area you best damn well be there.  Keep it here for all the latest on this project.