Fangs on Film in The Dead of Winter

ALBANY- Bruce Hallenbeck lives with his wife, his cats and about 3,000 movies.
The films, he said, are to keep him company in case he gets snowed in.

The big old house where he makes his home is in a sleepy Hudson Valley town, not far from where he grew up.

It is a place where the legends of Washington Irving are inescapable. Where the dense forests provoke haunting images of Ichabod Crane being chased by the Headless Horseman; where Martin Van Buren - the eighth president of the United States - drew his final breath in the summer of 1862. It is a place where the mind can ramble in imagination, where the ominous sounds of a lonely cello run deep, circulating with the crash of cymbals, creepy violins and a foreboding landscape that threatens to unleash a volley of blood-curdling screams from within.

'I grew up around that kind of folklore,' said Hallenbeck, who recalled one particularly life-defining moment in 1958.

Like many other neighborhood kids his age, Hallenbeck headed down to the local cinema to attend a screening of the film 'The Horror of Dracula.' While his peers ran from the theater
in a panic, young Bruce laughed at the fleeing mass and instead found inspiration in what
was happening on the screen.

'For me it was an epiphany,' Hallenbeck said.

More than 45 years have passed, and Hallenbeck has spent a good part of his adult life in the light of that epiphany. He is a film critic and an actor, a script writer and a movie-maker, with nine full-length feature films to his credit.

'I'd say I'm all of those, but I always consider myself a writer first. It's all about creating,' he said. His most recent film,'London After Midnight," had its world premiere at the New York State Museum during the four-day Dead of Winter film festival. The festival also featured
a pair of Hallenbeck's earlier films.

'Vampyre' is the movie maker's macabre and brooding ode to the 1931 surrealist Danish film 'Vampyr.' Originally shot on 16mm film, the late 1980s film was Hallenbeck's earliest feature. A second film, 'Fangs,' is hosted by 1950s horror movie starlet Veronica Carlson.

' 'Fangs' I call my shockumentary. It's an hour long look at the history of vampires,' Hallenbeck said. Hallenbeck describeshis latest, 'London After Midnight,' as a combination of 'The X-Files' and 'The Avengers' meets the works of H.P. Lovecraft.

It is a tale of two people fighting the dark forces of evil in today's world. The movie has been a long time in the making.

'It took seven years,' Hallenbeck said. 'There were so many travails, 20 speaking parts and a lot of post-production. It is a very ambitious project.'

Among the locations where the film was shot is a fabled old gangster and movie star hangout called The Crooked Lakehouse in the Hudson Valley. Scenes were also shot at the now-defunct post-punk goth-looking club QE2 in downtown Albany.

The club's black walls and diabolical decor provided the setting for his action/adventure/horror movie.
'The only thing we had to do was just had to bring in the lights,' the filmmaker said.

Hallenbeck has worn many different hats in his own productions and in those of others, often simultaneously.
'It can get a little hairy at times, but life is short. I don't want to waste it,' he said. For fellow filmmaker Joe Bagnardi, Hallenbeck has killed, drank blood and eaten somebody's brains. What are friends for?

Bagnardi had his own day of multiple screenings at the museum's film festival.
After making hundreds of Super 8mm movies as a young man growing up in Watervliet, Bagnardi made his first feature film in 1995, 'Shadow Tracker Vampire Hunter,' parts of
which were filmed in Saratoga Spa State Park.
Two additional films, 'Edge of Reality' and 'Blood of the Werewolf,' were also screened.

Scenes filmed in the Capital Region have made their way around the world. Horror film is a popular genre in the foreign market, Bagnardi explains, and some of his independent work
has traveled to places like England and Germany, even Taiwan.

The entire film medium is one that gives Bagnardi pleasure.

'The whole movie-going experience is a great escape. You can just go into a different world.
I want to entertain people. I want to strike a chord with them, touch on an emotion,' he said.

When Broadway Joe's closed in Saratoga Springs, the once viable outlet for moviemakers like Bagnardi and Hallenbeck was gone, and the search began for alternative venues.
Coincidentally, the New York State Museum was looking to showcase movies by area filmmakers and the Dead of Winter film festival was born.

by Thomas Dimopoulos
The Saratogian, Jan. 2005.