It's a road trip even worse than Griswald vacations when a Grand Canyon-bound bus breaks down, and the passengers find themselves facing history's greatest serial killers.







In “The Butchers,” hitting DVD and VOD on November 11, a dark ritual turns a ghost town with a serial killer museum into a new hunting ground for the likes of Ed Gein, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Jack the Ripper, The Zodiac Killer and Albert Fish.







Director Steven Paul Judd has held many positions in front and behind the camera throughout his career, but after working as a writer on Disney's “Zeke and Luther,” he decided to focus on directing, and this darkly comic take on “Night at the Museum” caught his attention when he heard the producers discussing it at a Christmas party. “I thought the premise was really interesting and something I hadn't heard before.”







While the movie's travelers largely begin as broad stereotypes with whose names are almost secondary to The Loud Black Woman, The Born-Again Christians, The Goths, The Haunted Veteran, as the film progresses, more details are revealed, humanizing the cast.







“I think we tried to hit archetypes to represent all different ones,” Judd said. “They are all going into Dante's Inferno, basically, going through their own hell for things that had happened. We didn't have enough time to delve into everyone's back story the way we would have liked. Even some of the serial killers had a bit more back story, like Jack the Ripper had a little back story that I wish we could have told why we made the choices we made for that character.”







Like many slasher films, the action is set almost entirely at night, but with a great deal of exteriors, the shoot proved challenging, especially filming the climactic battle.







“We had to get it done in a little over two weeks, and we were shooting at night just trying to fight the sun and get in as many pages as we could each day.”







“That fight was even supposed to be even more elaborate than what you saw. We actually had a crane to crane over them, but because we shot everything at night, and the sun was about to come up, we didn't get to shoot that the way I wanted to shoot it, but I think it turned out pretty well considering.







“Because that was the final fight, we were trying to slowly build up, and that was going to be this huge epic battle, that pretty much became, 'Alright, just start fighting,' and we had a DP follow them with a hand-held camera.”







Shooting on such a tight schedule is always challenging, but Judd was fortunate to be part of a group, from the producers and crew to the actors, that had a similar vision and dedication to the project.







“I think the good thing is that everyone who came to the project knew what they were getting into, that it was a low budget film. No one was there to try and get rich. They were just there because they thought it was a cool project that they wanted to get into. Everyone came to set knowing their lines, and everyone working hard. Everyone wore many different hats; we had producers helping with craft services.







Judd is currently shooting another horror film in Missouri with the same producers, and plans are to have another shoot coming up in February. He also has the short film, “Ronnie BoDean” starring Wes Studi.

















