Beyond the Grave

More than 500 people packed Tower City Cinemas last October to get a preview of Edward Douglas' film, The Dead Matter. The event was a thank-you to everyone involved with making the vampire and zombie flick. The movie's stars flew in, and guests mingled at an exclusive party afterward.

Douglas hoped to have a DVD distributor for his film lined up soon after the party. Having built a successful business writing and recording creepy Halloween music as half of Midnight Syndicate, he expected an established fan base would help. What Douglas got was a lesson in how much the industry had changed.

"When we were pulling together all the financing and putting together all the pieces of the puzzle in early 2007, distributors were doing well," he recalls. "The rental chains were still strong."

Instead of finding distributors ready to pay large cash advances, Douglas says he found an industry struggling to deal with the economy, video piracy and the decline of video rental stores. Douglas ultimately decided to do what he's been doing with his music for years and distribute the film himself.

He struck a deal with the Hot Topic chain, which already sells Midnight Syndicate CDs, to serve as a national retailer for the film. On July 30, a three-disc edition of The Dead Matter that includes the film, its soundtrack and Midnight Syndicate's greatest hits went on sale for $19.99 at the teen-oriented retailer's more than 600 stores throughout the United States.

"I was talking to one distributor and he told me, 'I've been in the business 20 years, and I've never seen an independent film get into a chain like you just did,' " Douglas says. "He told us we were breaking new ground. So that makes me feel good."

Edward Douglas still believes in vampires repulsed by crosses and zombies that shuffle slowly toward their victims. He doesn't buy into pop culture's recent updates to monster mythology that find bloodsuckers attending high school and the undead explained as rage-driven victims of biological disasters. The question is whether a generation raised on Saw will warm to a movie Douglas describes as "more of a dark fantasy than a horror film." The Dead Matter revolves around an ancient amulet that gives its wearer the ability to control the dead whether the deceased is a zombie, a vampire or your dearly departed brother. Two warring vampires want the talisman, a hero hopes to destroy it, and an innocent young woman is drawn in by its power. The film's exposition is spotty, especially when it comes to explaining the background between the rival vampires portrayed by Andrew Divoff (Wishmaster, Lost) and Tom Savini (Friday the 13th, Dawn of the Dead), but it delivers creepy moments, great monster makeup and an outstanding score from Douglas' Midnight Syndicate. Yes, the movie is cheesy at times, but it's meant to be. The Dead Matter is a slickly made B-horror movie that takes no shame in the fact.