How the "Night of the Slasher" (Almost) Never Came

Sex, drugs, and final girls: Scott Javore and Lily Berlina in "Night of the Slasher," part of the SXSW Midnight Shorts

Ask most filmmakers about making a short, and they'll tell you it's quicker and easier than a feature. But writer/director Shant Hamassian went through every production nightmare possible before getting "Night of the Slasher" to the screen.

His subversive take on horror's "final girl" trope centers on the relationship between a survivor (Lily Berlina), her slasher (producer Adam Lesar, pulling double duty), and the innocent dupe she drags into her mess (Scott Javore, whose character is tellingly just called "the bait"). "She's a final girl victim who has to drink, do drugs, and have sex, do the horror movie sins, as a way of coping with her trauma."

Hamassian describes the film as a self-contained "proof of concept" for a feature, and he was attracted by the idea of a short being (supposedly) so much simpler. He said, "I was inspired after being discouraged by the industry for many years and dealing with abusive working environments."

Little did he know. Funding fell through, his original leading lady dropped out, he had to become cinematographer after his original cameraman dropped out, then the Red camera they were shooting on came missing a part. Finally, there was the killer's mask: In a nod to Michael Myers' famous William Shatner mask in Halloween, Hamassian found a pair of Leonard Nimoy masks online to paint white. However, in a miscommunication with the prop department, they ended up wrong because the artists did too good a job modifying them. "When I saw the masks, my heart sank. I went, what is this? He said, 'I thought you wanted it to look like the masks from Halloween?' I'm like, no, it's inspired by Halloween. It looks like Michael Myers, not Leonard Nimoy." That was a big problem, because not only was it the night before shooting, "There are no masks in L.A. anywhere."

Cue frantic calls all over L.A., and Lesar has to drive two hours to Banning, Calif., to find replacements. Hamassian said, "He calls and says, 'How many masks do you want?' 'Three. Buy fucking three.' They were more expensive than the ones we had online, but I didn't care. We had such a low budget, but without the mask, we did not have a shoot."

Lesar had good reason to want the mask: After all, he'd be the one wearing it. He explained that he took the role of the killer because he was worried that another actor might not get the precise tone they were going for. As for the part of "the bait," Hamassian had worked with Javore before, but he still made him go through the audition process. "Just because Scott's my friend, doesn't mean I give him every role."

Javore was a little surprised that he needed to do the reading. Javore said, "Shant had just directed a web series pilot that I had written and starred in a month before. Yet apparently that shoot did not come with clear and convincing evidence."

Even though Javore nailed the part, Lesar said, "We still had to pull a prank on him when we got into the car afterward. We went, 'Yeah, man, you're not right for the project.'"

Night of the Slasher

Midnight Shorts
Thursday, March 17, 10pm, Alamo Ritz