Zombies will get the red carpet treatment Saturday night at the Waco Hippodrome Theatre, where the locally made horror film Risen makes its Waco debut.

Risen writer and producer David Talbot, a Woodway software engineer and technical writer, remembers a red carpet experience four years ago during the low-budget movie’s filming. It wasn’t intentional, just the aftermath of a bloody zombie attack.

“We shot about 15 to 20 minutes of film time in the movie (in his house), but with that many people — the production crew and the zombies — it just destroyed the carpet,” he recalled. “We still have (fake) bloodstains on the ceiling and in a couple of rooms, though we have since replaced the carpet.”

Risen — Waco premiere

Performance: 7 p.m. Saturday at Waco Hippodrome Theatre, 724 Austin Ave.

Tickets: $7, available at the Hippodrome box office. Call 752-9797.

Actor Joe Thackery with a white haired zombie behind him.

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Zombies swarm some unfortunate victims during a take on the set of Risen.

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Filmmakers Damon Crump (left) and John Franklin shared production duties on Risen with writer David Talbot (not pictured).

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Four years after its filming in Bellmead and Waco locales, the horror movie featuring scores of blood-spattered, snarling Central Texas zombies arrives back home. Saturday night’s Waco premiere will feature limousines arriving at the theater, a red carpet entry by several of the film’s professional actors and an afterparty at Austin’s on the Avenue across the street from the Hippodrome.

It’s been a long four years to get to this point, said Talbot, a 30-year-old zombiephile whose dream of making a zombie movie proved the catalyst that created Risen. “I thought it might take us, at the max, two years — and that was my high side,” he said.

What took so long? Consider it a consequence of low-budget, independent film making.

“When you can’t pay people what they’re worth, you gotta wait for favors,” explained Waco filmmaker and video producer Damon Crump, who heads Waco production company Jackalope Entertainment and directed Risen. Crump also shared production duties with Talbot and fellow Baylor University grad John Franklin, a College Station filmmaker.

The horror movie follows a married couple, Jenny and Sam Mills (GiGi Erneta and Joe Thackery), and Sam’s brother Nick (Jason Harper), who try to rescue the Millses’ young daughter in the aftermath of something that’s turned their community into flesh-eating zombie hordes. Helping fend off the attackers is Texas Ranger Jack Hays (Steven Lee), who organizes a defense of a community rescue center.

The undead in Risen move and attack surprisingly fast in the early moments of their infection. The film also offers a mass zombie attack as scores, maybe hundreds, attack the community center (the Bellmead Civic Center). Talbot praised the cooperation filmmakers got from Bellmead, which also lent a bucket truck, fire truck and police car for scenes. “The help Bellmead gave us was huge,” Talbot said.

Three months of filming were just a warm-up to months of post-production work that included reshoots, editing, sound, special effects, fundraising, film festival appearances and negotiation of distribution and licensing rights.

On the way from local filming to local theatrical screening, Risen accumulated a number of honors in 2008: Best Picture and Best Make-Up Effects at the Chicago Horror Film Festival; a Silver Remi in the sci-fi/horror/fantasy category at the WorldFest 2008 in Houston; and screening at the Texas Frightmare Weekend, the Red Wasp Film Festival in College Station and the B-Movie Celebration in Franklin, Ind.

For Talbot, the high point came at the Chicago Horror Film Festival, where he saw his pet project on a big screen and with a real audience. “It was far more epic than I thought we’d ever get,” he said.

Crump was pleased at how Risen looked on the screen despite its shoestring budget. “David Talbot’s goal was to tell a story with real characters and I think we achieved that . . . and I wanted it to be seen as a movie, not an amateur weekend project,” he said.

How low was the budget? The two Waco producers won’t say. Talbot felt disclosure of a dollar amount could affect the film’s perception by potential distributors, though Crump noted, “it might make a decent salary for a person living here.”

The horror film will play in about 20 theaters in the Midwest and a few on the East and West Coasts later this summer — as will another Waco-made movie, Chris Hansen’s The Proper Care and Feeding of an American Messiah — before a DVD release and life abroad in theaters in Germany and Southeast Asia. “Hopefully, it will be around for another few years,” Crump said.

The two producers don’t plan to revisit zombies in the future. Crump admitted he’d ultimately like to make a “James-Bond-type” movie and a western. Talbot has written some more screenplays, but movie producing — that’s a real horror story.

“(Risen) will be my one and only movie project,” he said. “I can’t imagine carrying one through the process again . . . (but) I’m extremely glad I did it. Making a zombie movie was something I always wanted to do and I feel good about it.”

Even if zombies don’t clean up after themselves.

choover@wacotrib.com

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