From writer/producer/director Christopher R. Mihm:
To understand "The Monster of Phantom Lake" and its reason for being, you must first attempt to understand my late father, George Mihm. My father would tell these great stories of spending cold, small-town Minnesota winters in the relative warmth of his local movie house, taking in double features of trashy, B-grade science fiction and horror flicks. For a quarter he'd see double bills with such classics as "Village of the Damned" ("The eyes..." he'd tell me.) and "Them!". ("Giant ants!" he would exclaim.) When I was a kid, my dad would rent these movies repeatedly. We would frequently watch them together although, at the time, I could never quite figure out just what it was my dad saw in these (often) low-grade, barely frightening (by my standards) films.
At age 51, in the year 2000, my father died of stomach cancer. Since then, I've revisited many of these old movies and realized, they're just not the same without him there. I miss the stories... like the one about the time he went to the movies against his mother's wishes, saw something so scary he couldn't sleep for a week AND got in trouble for it!
Fellow producer and actor Josh Craig and I have been friends for many years. We've been discussing making our own movie as long as we've known each other. Seeing those old movies again and enjoying their often poorly written dialogue, barely passable camera work and marginal special effects, I started to wonder: "What would happen if Josh and I stopped talking about it and actually made a movie? And not just ANY movie but THIS kind of movie, one that a ten year old version of my dad would approve of?"
That thought soon took over and my obsession began. I parked myself in front of my laptop and "The Monster of Phantom Lake" was born. Soon we were holding auditions and then amazingly, we were shooting! Filmed in glorious black and white, "The Monster of Phantom Lake" was completed in September 2005. The film was accepted and screened at the Faux Film Festival in Portland, Oregon and the 3rd Annual Flint Film Festival in Flint, Michigan. It was recently accepted to the Twin Cities Underground Film Festival and has played to near sold-out audiences at recent local screenings.
SYNOPSIS
A shell-shocked ex-soldier transformed by Atomic Waste into a revolting monster wreaks havoc at a high-school graduation party in writer/producer/director Christopher R. Mihm's monochromatic tribute to the B-movie flicks of the 1950s. The summer sun is shining and a group of recently graduated teens has taken to the outdoors to celebrate their newfound freedom. Something horrific is afoot in Phantom Lake, though, and as the rampaging beast makes his presence known to the horrified teens, a dedicated scientist and his beautiful graduate student soon realize that they may have just stumbled upon one of the most important scientific discoveries of their lifetime.
COMING ATTRACTIONS:
Keep an eye out for the next Professor Jackson adventure, It Came From Another World! currently in post-production and scheduled to be released May 2007!
