"When Lt Brian Murphy finds himself in extreme conditions he must team up with local Daniel Dembele in order for both men to try and find their way back to what is left of their lives whilst battling a terrifying threat from which there seems to be no escape."

BLOODY DISGUSTING: Tell me how everything got rolling on THE DEAD?

HF: As brothers, we started making short films on super 8mm film from a very early age. When I was 12 and Jon was 14, we'd watched George Romero's 'Dawn of the Dead', Lucio Fulci's 'Zombie Flesh Eaters ('Zombie 2'), Jorge Grau's 'The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue' ('Don't open the window') and Sam Raimi's 'The Evil Dead' in quick succession and they'd had incredible impact on us.

Even at 12, we were so impressed with these film's ability to inflict the emotion of fear on us, even though deep down you know it's only a film and technically shouldn't be able to physically harm you in any way. It was suddenly obvious, we had to make a Zombie film! As far as we were concerned, this was the only reason for picking up a camera!

CUT TO:

Twenty years later we had never made 'that zombie film'. The time hadn't been right, if we were going to do it had to be really really good and at that time we didn't have the resources. We also didn't want to add to the stacks of seemingly endless rip off crap that was then being churned out following the classics. Our movie would have to stand shoulder to shoulder with the classic Zombie movie we loved... By now I was running a successful production company but Jon had never stopped talking about making this zombie film.

I had directed, and Jon had been the Director of Photography on commercial after commercial, for every kind of product you could think of from Guinness to condoms to mobile phones... Over 100 commercials later we had honed our film-making skills to a whole new level then the time was right to make our zombie film. It was now or never, so we said F**k it, lets shut the production company doors and resurrect our Zombies!

Not only that, but we would shoot it in Africa. We had shot a lot of commercials in Africa and were therefore 'experienced in the field'. It seemed like most other zombie movies were set in LA, New York, London. Very familiar locations... and always with the characters of the film stuck in some building somewhere, whereas we wanted to give audiences something different and make the ultimate zombie move that we'd always wanted to see. We would shoot it like a 'Road Movie', an epic journey across rural Africa including the Sahara desert and make a beautiful, artistic but realistic horror film that was like nothing that had ever been made before.... We would stick to traditional zombie folklore and honor the greats such as Romero and Fulci – no ridiculous running, jumping, flying or walking-up-walls zombies. That someone else can do for the kiddies, ours would be hard, brutal but with a horrific sense of reality, a true zombie film for intelligent adults.

BD: Are you both hardcore horror fans?

HF: We both grew up watching every horror film we could lay our hands on. Jon managed to collect virtually the entire pre VRA video nasty list.

BD: What film would you most compare this to?

HF: The reality is it's a strange mix of many of the classic zombie movies; Romero's dead trilogy ('Night,' 'Dawn' & 'Day') and Lucio Fulci's 'Zombie Flesh Eater's'. We even have a soft spot for Bruno Mattei's 'Zombie Creeping Flesh'! This mixed with a neo realist style of film making has given us something totally unique . We did a test screening recently and some said it's 'Dawn of the Dead' meets hotel Rwanda'!

BD: How bloody and violent is it? Can you reveal any cool gags?

HF: It was never going to be just a shoot-em-up but believe me when I say this film will satisfy…. Even during the cast and crew screening, Jon & I sat at the back and watched the entire audience jump out of their seat several times, including members of the actual production crew who were visibly shaken afterwards. Also there was resounding yelp from the audience after a particularly nasty head crushing scene! There may be more violent films than this but due to the realistic nature of the violence, the blood letting has a chilling quality to it that really hits hard. It's a case of quality over quantity. This is not some glossy sanitized Hollywood product commissioned by fat cigars who have no love for the genre and are just interested in turning a profit. This has been made by professional filmmakers with a true love of the genre, Jon is actually a self confessed zombie geek – a walking encyclopedia for the genre!

We've also been amused to read that many people have compared our film to Resident Evil 5 but we actually started writing the initial ideas for the script in the mid 1980's!

BD: This was shot in Africa, but is it an African production or would you say it's an American film?

HF: It's actually a British film, set in Africa with an international cast and crew.

It was very important to us that this film should have a unique and authentic look. Other film makers who show Africa, seemed to take the easy route and go to South Africa where it is very 'civilized' and they can stay in nice hotels with lovely facilities etc but we wanted to show our audiences locations that had literally never been seen by anyone from the western world... and that's exactly what we did. In fact some of the villages we filmed in, foreigners, let alone cameras had literally never been before... Not only that, but nearly all the guns and military equipment we used were genuine African army, fresh from a civil war in nearby Sierra Leone.

I can't explain how tough it was to shoot this movie. It took 5 weeks just to get our equipment into the country even after the whole cast and crew arrived and we were constantly stopped by armed police for money and held up by so many things you could never plan for.

For a start I was mugged at knife point on the first day in the city of Ouagadougou and all my money, credit cards, driving license, EVERYTHING taken from me. Then I was nearly put in jail for driving without the license that had been stolen from me! It became clear that to the locals we looked like a moving cash machine with our cast/crew/equipment/generator etc.

Sometimes we literally would not make it to the location for the shoot as we would be stopped at gunpoint, for seemingly no reason... On top of this, when we did finally get to start shooting our fantastic lead Actor Rob Freeman from Canada collapsed with full blown Malaria and very nearly died.

He was a really tough guy, a fitness fanatic even, but this little Malaria bug put him in hospital for a total of 2 weeks... He was meant to be in every scene so you can imagine we were a little restricted at this point!

All of us became ill, which is perhaps not surprising when I think of some of the locations we had to film in, including real village huts some of which contained the remains of dead relatives that had been stored in pots. I remember shooting a low angle shot in a dark hut and having giant cockroaches crawling over my hands and up my trousers.... Jon and I would sometimes discuss shots and camera angles in-between bouts of projectile vomiting!

We also used some real Voodoo in the film as we wanted everything to be as authentic as possible and it took us many days and a lot of complex negotiation to secure a real witch doctors outfit and captured real voodoo spells that feature in the film and although I was never allowed to know what is being said, I was told it was strong and powerful and very real...

We also met some real cannibals who told us how they eat people but only if they are already dead and not decomposed. One of them stopped by the set and watched our white eyed zombies pretending to eat human flesh and they loved what we were doing! I asked my translator to find out if this cannibal had ever tried 'white meat', he said no but he would love to if he got the chance.. Then made a local joke whilst eyeing us up and down... It was getting dark at this point and we were in the middle of nowhere. It was an ominous and uneasy feeling...

There was so much horror in making 'The Dead' that i am writing a book about it, documenting every single painful incident that happened. This will hopefully be released with the film.

BD: What kind of zombies will we find it in this?

HF: Slow moving Zombies are the only way! Jon and I agreed on that before we would even put pen to paper on the script. This is not just because this is how our inspirations did it, but also because I believe you loose something fundamental with these so called 'running Zombies'. Think about it, when an attacker is running, the scene has no choice to become an action scene and when you are shooting action, you loose suspense which we feel is much more powerful.

Also, our journey took place in an area where you cannot hide and you also cannot keep going and going as you are short of food and water and at some point you have to sleep or rest. No matter how slow something is, it will eventually catch up with you and eat you and that is a scary thing!

BD: Do you have an origin for the dead rising?

HF: For us, it was never about 'why' the dead was rising, we wanted to concentrate on how people would deal with the situation.

BD: What's next? More horror? Spill the beans!

HF: Basically, we're on standby to see if this gamble pays off, if 'The Dead' is successful and that's completely down to the fans, then we are planning to come back with a bigger budget and make what we feel could be the ultimate zombie film!!!