Well this write up is going to contain a few spoilers. So you’ve been warned. Deadgirl is one totally messed up film. It’s about 2 socially awkward guys who end up finding a zombie girl tied down in an old hospital. Being teenagers and the girl being attractive still one of them of course is twisted enough to start getting the idea to having sex with the undead girl. A whole lot of crap goes down and in the end of the film it escapes and goes on a killing spree. It’s perfectly setup for a sequel and one that never quite materialized. Perhaps it was the content material of the film, perhaps it was the lack of a budget or studio that would take it. I mean anything that has to do with rape and necrophilia is just an overly touchy subject no matter how you look at it. (Really.. who would want to rape a zombie.. that’s just asking to be turned into one of the undead.)
While it’s a completely twisted film it did have a very solid plot and acting, once you could push back the thought of a group of kids using a zombie as a sex slave. It’s a messed up film and one that was left open to have a sequel as the zombie does get released in the end. Which is clearly what looks to be what they wanted to do as an official draft of a script had been written. Trent Haaga who was behind the film basically announced that it wasn’t going to happen do to a series of “terrible particulars that killed the project.”
His exact blog post on the subject so you don’t have to waste his bandwidth is:
There was some hoopla about a year ago about the fact that DEADGIRL 2 was being talked about. I’m not going to get into all of the terrible particulars that killed the project, but needless to say the outcome wasn’t pretty and I don’t think that a sequel will ever get made. It certainly won’t get made with my participation. And it’s probably the best that it remain this way.
But I did write a script for it. I always saw the original DEADGIRL as a condemnation of misogyny as opposed to being misogynous – the boys were the monsters, not the “monster” of the title. But a lot of people didn’t see it that way. My idea for the sequel was to try and tell a story from the point of view of a female outcast and what would happen if she found the DEADGIRL this time … instead of using the DEADGIRL for the impetus of her sexual fantasies, what if she used the DEADGIRL for her revenge fantasies instead? I also wanted to put the story back into the “really small rural town” where the first one was supposed to take place (we shot the first movie in Los Angeles and while it looks a lot like “anytown,” it didn’t capture that economic desperation that I was hoping for … desperation that would have added to the boys bizarre and angry choices). What I ended up writing could maybe be described as “Precious meets The Pit with a zombie attack dog.”
Maybe this movie would have sucked. Maybe people would have loved it. Who knows? It wouldn’t have hurt to at least try, but alas it wasn’t to be.
… So as a special treat to my fans and blog readers and the fans of the first DEADGIRL, I’ve decided to let everyone who’s interested take a look at the un-produced screenplay. My wife, among others, is like, “Why would you do something like that? What if the project comes back to life? Why don’t you just change the title and see if you can make it anyway?” I dunno … for me, the work has already been done and to have it just sit on a shelf collecting dust seems unfair to the story. I’ve basically moved on to other things. I would only make this story if it was DEADGIRL 2. It’s the only way that it would make sense for me (although, to be fair, the story could easily be sold as something else – the DEADGIRL herself is the only returning character). And that’s just not going to happen.
Enough pontificating. Here’s the script. I hope that people dig on it. Remember that it’s a first draft, so I’m sure it’s got all kinds of bumps and warts, but it is what it is. Enjoy and leave me some comments, whydontcha?
You can read the script on Keep and Share. It’s apparently using all of it’s downloads each day so get to downloading it early or you may have to wait a day to have a chance to read it.
