Film

BLOOD WIDOW is a Halloween Treat with a Supernatural Twist

October 23, 2020 |

by Jennifer Powers

Fall is when our movie watching fancy turns to the scary and unsettling. Shadows grow long in the late afternoon, and the extended nights summon us to explore the dark side of our imaginations. The chills are extra-special when the action takes place close to home.

In Blood Widow, filmed in and around Tucson, young women are disappearing. Detectives Valentine and Stokes suspect a serial killer and soon pick up a trail from terrifying events across the city. Unbeknownst to the detectives, the last survivor of a mysterious clan is feverishly searching for the same person, with dark plans of her own. Should she reach the killer first, the detectives will be dealing with an evil unlike any they have experienced.

Blood Widow was directed by Brendan Guy Murphy, who co-wrote the script with Dominic Ross. This is the third film for production company MurphySpeaking Films, founded by Brendan in 2007, the same year his first film, Limbo, was released. Story Time Fables came out in 2010 and was featured in the Arizona International Film Festival and the Stepping Stone Film Festival in India, and it was a semifinalist in the Oaxaca Film Festival in Mexico.

Recipient of the 2008 Buffalo Exchange Arts Award, Brendan says he was inspired to make Blood Widowwhen he began to wonder what would happen if a malevolent supernatural evil encountered a morally evil madman. “The idea turned into a treatment, the treatment became a script, and as the right cast of characters came off the pages, it was time to make the film,” says Murphy.

Shot on location in Southern Arizona, Blood Widow taps into some of the psychic power embodied in Hotel Congress, El Rancho Diablo, and the Slaughterhouse—all of which have infamous stories in their histories, from gangster hideouts to murder. The three are also long rumored to be haunted. Danny’s Baboquivari Lounge, Petroglyphs, and Gentle Ben’s Brewing Company generously agreed to allow their businesses to be used by the filmmakers as well.

“Tucson and its surrounding areas are filled with wonderful filming locations,” says Murphy. “We were fortunate to have been granted access to numerous settings that created the unique texture and sense of place that anchors the film.”

As an actor, Murphy has been featured in many films, commercials, and music videos, including Lucky U Ranch, Wastelander, and the Alex Italics award-winning short film Sheltered Love. In Blood Widow, he surrounds himself with a diverse cast of players, primarily from Tucson, who bring an authentic Southwest feel to the movie. Melissa Alejandra, born in Sonora, Mexico, and raised in Tucson, is a dancer/singer/choreographer who has performed nationally and internationally. Dallas Thomas has acted in film, web series, commercials, and onstage, including multiple appearances with the stellar Rogue Theatre Company. Hector Ayala, a native Tucsonan, has appeared in several films and made numerous appearances with Borderlands Theatre.

Veteran actor James Craven, whose resume includes a long list of television and movie credits, has appeared on Broadway and in the European tour of Gospel at Colonus with Morgan Freeman. The Minneapolis-based actor is a long-time member of the Penumbra Theater Company there, where he has appeared in more than 35 shows.

There is a wealth of local talent behind the camera, too. Art director Cori DiSimone and makeup artist Sonia Campbell work their dark arts to magically eerie effect. Director of photography Antonio Villagomez and sound mixer and editor James Wan came to Arizona from Ecuador and Hong Kong respectively. They combine to create a thrillingly atmospheric cinematic chiller. Dan Singleton composed the film score.

Blood Widow was produced by Brendan Guy Murphy, Sergio Kardenas, Antonio Villagomez, and Scott Hellon and is distributed by Indican Pictures through Lionsgate Studios. It is available for streaming on Amazon Prime and for rent and purchase on Amazon Prime, Google Play, YouTube, Apple TV, Fandango Now, Vudu, and Microsoft.

This year, make Blood Widow your Halloween date for a good, frightening time in Tucson. Death will never be the same.

Blood Widow trailer:

Zócalo Magazine – March 2020

March 4, 2020 |

Zócalo Magazine – January 2020

January 3, 2020 |

Famed Filmmaker John Waters Brings His Christmas Cheer to Tucson

December 3, 2019 |

(Photo: John Waters, by Greg Gorman)

“Merry Christmas? How about an angry Christmas?” So says John Waters, filmmaker, raconteur, writer, traveler, and bibliophile, who’s on his way to Tucson to deliver what he describes as “70 minutes of me talking about politics, culture, and everything that has to do with Christmas. How do you go back home when it’s a civil war out there? Some families are very tense, knocking over the Christmas tree—just like what happened in Female Trouble, only about Trump and not cha-cha.”

Waters is no stranger to Tucson, though it’s been a few years since he was last here. He’ll be presenting his show A John Waters Christmas at the Rialto Theatre on December 9 at 8:00 pm, fast on the heels of his new book Mr. Know-It-All (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Always on the go, always in an airplane bound somewhere far away from his hometown of Baltimore, he writes there, “Sometimes I feel like a low-rent Oscar Wilde touring the coal-mining towns of America as he did in the 1880s.” One of those coal-mining towns is ours, just one of 16 to which Waters will bring his Christmas cheer over a period of three weeks. Tucson figures early in the tour because, Waters notes after years of hard experience on the road, you want to do your shows in cities where the weather is likely to be rotten last—and that means the final stop is Chicago. But, no matter how clement the weather here, Waters isn’t likely to notice. “I go from the airport to the hotel to the theater to the hotel to the airport,” he says. “I’m almost never found in real life.”

The book is vintage Waters, a blend of his hallmark sardonic humor with reflections on his work as a filmmaker and guerrilla fighter in the culture wars. On one page he’s taking on Pope Francis, writing that when he becomes the first man to get pregnant, then he’ll be worth listening to on what women should do with their bodies: “Not until he’s given birth to a female transgender Christ child of a different color will we indulge him with a little queer mercy of our own.” On another he’s dissing Madonna for stealing Blondie’s shtick, though not without good cause: Dare rest for a minute on your laurels in show biz, and someone will come along to make it theirs. And on the matter of religion, ever a Christmas-worthy topic, he throws his lot in with the nonbelievers, though in no organized way: Put them in a room, and atheists will drink too much, he says. “Plus atheists dress badly, too. It’s unfortunate, but they are a dreary lot.”

The best parts of the book are his recollections of making his films, of which he names the little-seen Cecil B. Demented as his favorite. “I guess all directors have a soft spot for one of their films that did the worst at the box office,” he notes. Even Serial Mom had its difficulties, he allows, while films like Cry-Baby and Hairspray have entered the mainstream, if improbably, while the films that earned him the sobriquet “The King of Puke” have been enshrined as cult classics, plate-licking, scratch-and-sniff horrors, and all. On the mainstream front, he’s even become a spokesperson for Nike, which, he says, is “ludicrous and ironic.”

But, notes Waters, there are only so many theaters out there and only so many bookings, so in order to keep an act alive, you have to keep putting out new material. “This is a whole new show,” he says, talking with Zócalo a few weeks before the curtain goes up. “I’ve written about three-quarters of it, and I haven’t learned a bit of it yet. But it’s all new stuff—I try not to put anything in the show from the book, since if you’ve bought the book you already know it. I try hard to give you your money’s worth.” Angry Christmas to all, and to all a good night! 

Zócalo Magazine – December 2019

December 3, 2019 |

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May 6, 2019 |

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