This Fall, fresh off the success of their “8 Films to Die For”, After Dark returns with a series of 8 original titles under the After Dark Originals banner. Bloody Disgusting spoke exclusively with Automaton Transfusion director Steven C. Miller, who is currently finishing up work on a monster movie entitled Scream of the Banshee for After Dark. Lauren Holly stars as a college professor who opens up mysterious, ornate box only to unwittingly release a horrific scream from a bloodthirsty banshee. Soon the scream haunts everyone that discovered it, picking them off one by one. The iconic Lance Henrickson co-stars.
“SCREAM OF THE BANSHEE is basically a throwback to old school monster movies,” Miller tells BD. “I was really excited about being able to do the movie with prosthetics instead of a lot of CGI. That was the main focus for this movie, for me anyway. I’m a huge fan of practical effects.”

Banshee is a bad-ass chick with a horrible howl that brings ultimate doom to all that hear her shriek. “There’s one monster, Banshee,” says Miller. “She actually takes a couple of different forms. One is an old hag, one is full-on banshee mode and one is sort of like a seductress. And she can kind of morph in-between. Like I said, we didn’t use a lot of CGI, so practically getting her to morph with old school [techniques] was the biggest challenge on a smaller budget and not a lot of days to shoot the movie.”

BANSHEE is planned for a limited theatrical release followed by an airing on SyFy Channel. The TV plans forced Miller to tone down the gore a bit. “They don’t want it to be a different version [on SyFy], so it’s pretty tough to get the gore you want. The editing process to get it down to a SyFy is a whole different editing process that takes a longer time. So they’re hoping to get a version that needs little tweaking to go from theatrical to SyFy.”

It’s currently unclear whether the theatrical version will amp up the gore a bit or if a home vid release might possibly throw in some extra red. “It’s definitely on the verge of PG-13, but hopefully that will change. We’re still finishing it right now. We’ve got a lot of pieces that are sitting there and we’re just hoping that maybe they say, ‘Yeah, go ahead and throw it in there and we’ll cut it out later.’ If they let it in, it’s gory and intensive. It’s still fun. I think the monster movie fans more than the gore hounds are going to enjoy the movie.“