Skip to main content

Five Horrific Questions for Rocky Karlage of ‘The Ghost Walk Saga’

Title card for Rocky Karlage's horror film, 'The Farm'

‘Tis the season for monsters and mayhem, and the Midwest is no stranger to horror movies or horror filmmakers. George Romero, Wes Craven and Sam Raimi all call the Midwest home.
To celebrate all those things that go bump in the night, we’ve reached out to more than a dozen filmmakers who are either from the Midwest or shot their scary movie here. We asked each filmmaker the same five horrific questions. Just the thing to get you in the mood.
First up is Rocky Karlage, writer and producer of The Ghost Walk Saga. Born and raised in Amelia, Ohio, Karlage had no intention of becoming a filmmaker.
“I created a story sequence named The Ghost Walk Saga, which I planned to be a photo book with local model and my future partner at Ghost Walk Studios, Victoria Vardon,” explains Karlage. “I hoped the story would catch the imagination of a filmmaker.”   
After meeting Steve Olander and striking up a friendship with the director, Karlage attended a film seminar and soon found himself producing the first film in the series, Ghost Walk: The Farm, which is loosely based on Karlage’s my own paranormal experiences. Karlage is in the midst of production on the second film in the series, Ghost Walk: The Dawson War.
Horrific Question No. 1: What’s makes a horror movie scary?   
Karlage: Finding the unexpected or something disturbing infringing upon real life - or both. 
Horrific Question No. 2: What’s the scariest movie you ever saw?    
Karlage: The Shining 
Horrific Question No. 3: Who is your horror inspiration?    
Karlage: Dean Koontz 
Horrific Question No. 4: Why do we like to be scared?     
Karlage: We can experience something exciting and dangerous at the same time, but have the assurance in a movie that it is not real. 
Horrific Question No. 5: What movie would you like to turn into a horror movie? And how would you do it? 
Karlage: Tough question, because I'm already tired of seeing some of the classics turned into zombie stories. I think it would be fun to turn The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly into a horror film.   I would write it as a showdown of different types of monsters. Then recruit fun and excellent actors.

Comments

Popular Posts

Everything we know about Hulu’s ‘The Land’ TV pilot

Actor Christopher Meloni hanging with the Cleveland Browns (photo Christopher Meloni) >> Does Hulu’s new streaming series, The Land , focus on the Cleveland Browns? Maybe? Here’s everything we know about Hulu’s The Land  streaming series. What is The Land  TV series about? Nothing official has been announced, but some digging suggests that The Land , aka 17 Sundays , is This Is Us creator Dan Fogelman‘s upcoming Hulu series set in the world of pro football, starring Christopher Meloni and William H. Macy. Meloni was spotted in Cleveland over the summer in Berea, attending a Browns' training camp session, according to News 5 Cleveland . Meloni’s Instagram account confirms it, with snaps of Meloni alongside Miles Garrett and other Browns players. Meloni also visited the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. On August 27, Deadline reported that “'The Land' … got the largest allocation (of California tax credits) … with nearly $43 milli...

A chat with Erik Kripke, creator of 'Supernatural' and 'The Boys'

Erik Kripke on the set of 'The Boys' Those that know Eric Kripke from when he was a boy growing up in the Toledo, Ohio, suburb of Sylvania often tell him they didn’t know that he was “secretly disturbed.” And even the filmmaker admits that his happy, idyllic life seems out of place for the guy that created the horror sensation, Supernatural . “I guess the only thing weird may have been how normal everything was,” Kripke says. Kripke’s Supernatural, which ran for 15 seasons on The CW, tells the tale of two monster-hunting brothers – Sam and Dean Winchester, played by Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles respectively. Think of it as a sort of Route 66 with chainsaws, muscle cars and a boatload of demons. It's a bit of a 180 for a guy who started his career as a comedy writer. Dangerously obsessed Kripke says that since he was 8 or 9 years old, his focus was on becoming a filmmaker. “I never really wanted to do anything else. You could say I was ‘dange...

Why Does Cleveland So Love 'A Christmas Story'? We've Got Some Answers

Higbee's in downtown Cleveland during the filming of 'A Christmas Story' A Christmas Story . What is it about this movie? What is it about this film that so captures the imagination of Clevelanders ? And I don’t mean in the way it captures the imagination of overtired parents and children coming down off a candy cane buzz sitting in front of TBS on Christmas Eve . I mean how Bob Clark ’s now classic film, based on Jean Shepherd ’s classic story, is now part of the very fabric of Cleveland . It is true that some of the film’s most iconic scenes - the outside of Ralphie’s house and the backyard where he shoots his eye out, the Christmas parade and Ralphie’s tragic visit to Santa Claus ( “Ho …. ho ….. ho.” ) - were filmed here. But the bulk of the movie was shot in Toronto . And the story is set in fictional Hohman , Indiana . Still. Doesn’t matter. A Christmas Story is Cleveland through and through. How did this happen? And why is it so? ‘You’ll sho...