Matt Spease
Starred and costarred in many films, his hero turn in Evil On Queen Street is what he is best remembered for. Also directed almost every film he had appeared in from 2001-2008.
Born on September 5th, 1973 in Sterling, IL. His early childhood was what could be expected for someone his size, he usually had a run in with the local bullies on a regular basis. After more then a few attacks, Matt decided to learn how to defend himself. He studied two forms of martial arts, Jeet Kune Do and Kenpo. These fighting skills not only helped him to overcome the local bullies, but he has incorporated them in to most of his films.
His entire filmmaking venture began in 1988 when a camcorder was first brought into the household. After shooting a few experimental short films (both horror with Killseeker and comedy with 3 Stooges inspired works), he decided to try his hand at a serious short horror film. With only a few of the roughest of editing tools, he began work on Evil On Queen Street in 1996 and this 40 minute short film would take him until 2001 to fully finish.
In between that time, Matt was busy writing scripts. One was a Spider-man script, another was Meteor: The Hidden 3, and the other was known a Eve Of Terror. Matt sent Spider-man to every major movie studio he could find the address of, but to his disappointment received no response from any of the companies. He thought about sending the Meteor script to New Line Cinema who had released the second Hidden film and sending Eve Of Terror to some of the other studios. But after the disappointment of Spider-man, he decided against it.
New online capabilities became available to Matt, and soon he was busy trying to show off his work on the internet. He placed his finished version of the short Evil On Queen Street on his web site, known then as Matt Spease Productions. He checked out the works of such online indy filmmaking companies like Timberwolf Digital. With this he decided to make the company official and starting working on films to sell on the web site. His first work for Matt Spease Productions was a Star Wars spoof with 3 Stooges elements known as The Stooges - Episode V: Die, Stooges, Die. The production was very rough and was shot with the same camcorder that Matt had growing up, needless to say the camcorder was in dire need of being retired. Then there was the lightsaber effects, which were a major pain that Matt grew tired of rather quickly. Pro Wrestler Violet Flame starred in the film as the Princess and Matt basically played all other roles in the film himself.
That film was only a mild success and Matt wanted to move forward to a film that was more his style. His father asked him to remake the short film Evil On Queen Street. Matt brought Violet in from California to play the role of Alexia Thompson, a character that was a combination of the other hero of the short named Damien and Nick's girlfriend who was a victim in the short. The film was released under the Matt Spease Productions company name in 2002.
Matt was happy with the outcome of the film and early reviews somewhat, but he wasn't happy with some of his editing, FX, and the title of his company. In 2003 the company became Dark Night Films. Eve Of Terror was then dusted off and was given the working title Copycat. This film was eventually released as The Chameleon Killer with Violet Flame again playing the lead. The film was released to a huge success online and is a major favorite among the fans of Dark Night Films.
2004-2005 was a point of experimentation for Dark Night Films as Matt directed two short fan films called Jason Vs. Leatherface (based on the comic of the same name) and Michael Vs. Jason. He planned another fan film titled Halloween: Wrath Of Jamie Lloyd, but the film was scrapped. This period was also a time of experimentation for the feature films with the arrival of the sister company Lighthouse Pictures, which was designed to film the action and sci-fi films. Lighthouse's first release was a new Stoogesless version of Die, Stooges, Die. This film was entitled Dark World: Duel Of The Assassins. Meanwhile Dark Night Films was doing an experimental film as well, the horror anthology called Evil Deeds. Matt even incorporated footage from the scrapped short film Halloween: Wrath Of Jamie Lloyd into the segment, The Mental Patient. Lighthouse's final experimental film was a prequel to Evil On Queen Street entitled StoryLine (although the film was initially released in two parts ala Kill Bill under the titles The Thief (2004) and Pray For The Hunters (2006)) was released in 2006.
In 2006, after all the experimenting was done, Matt decided to remake Evil On Queen Street and this time base it more after the initial short film. So the Damien Cruz character that was now popular from StoryLine was now reinstated into the new script and the Alexia character was reverted back to her original origin as just Nick's girlfriend. The film was shot with a almost totally new cast minus a few returning cast members (such as Matt as Nick, Isaak Partlow as Max Burton, and Roxanne Long & Joan Spease as Jannette & Christine) and a few archive footage scenes from the original film. It was finally released in 2008 to a much stronger response then the original Violet Flame version.
In 2007, after many failed starts and successful stops on the sequel to The Chameleon Killer (Silent Vengeance), Matt Spease started work on shooting a feature film remake of his oldest short film series, Killseeker (which was loosely inspired by the 1982 Chuck Norris film Silent Rage). And while this film was being shot, the Evil On Queen Street sequel, Domination, was finally remade with Phil Giourousis reprising his role of The Demon from the 2008 remake of the original. This film was finally released in early 2009.
Meanwhile Killseeker, now titled Indestructible, marks Matt's first feature film slasher role, as he plays the part of James Kirby. The film is scheduled to be released in mid 2009.
