A few years ago I was writing a horror-comedy script during the inception of the Tea Party movement; you, know, those angry, white, "Christian" folks who wanted to "Take America Back." The more I read about this "renegade" Tea Party and their subsequent stranglehold over the GOP, the more I cringed. It just seems to me they loved their God and their guns a little too much, to the point that it's frightening - almost like a horror movie.
I couldn't help but reference films like Mississippi Burning; where the townsfolk are entrenched in their secret society (spawned out of the Confederacy's defeat and the subsequent reconstruction era) who terrorize anyone who isn't "like us". The film depicts a corrupt Sheriff's Department committing atrocities across the Mississippi countryside wearing bed sheets. FBI agents are called in to investigate the murders of three Civil Rights volunteers. This backwards mentality invests its posturing in some kind of white entitlement - that the mongrel, godless peoples of color should bend to their whim - and back in the sixties, that included Catholics too.
The more I read about the Tea Party, the more I was inspired to make their mentality the focal point of supernatural villainy in a film entitled,
Ghost Trek: Confederate Ghouls. Go here for details:
https://www.indiegogo.com/...
A little about me. I am an author (Kill the Music - 2009 - I was voted "Best Writer of 2010" by Charlotte Magazine) writer, director (Ghost Trek: The Kinsey Report - Winner of "Best Comedy" at Fright Night Film Fest in 2011, and an Addy Award for "Best Film Presentation Package" in 2011), and Producer (Clive Barker's Nightbreed: Director's Cut - Nominated for a 2015 Saturn Award). I hold a Government and International Studies Degree from the University of South Carolina, also a Doctorate in Jurisprudence from John Marshall Law School.
My father was born here from a family of Greek immigrants - Democrats for the last 100 years since immigrating to Charleston, SC and then Charlotte, NC. My mother's side are Democrats as well; she is a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and Daughters of the Confederacy. My Uncle John G. Plumides, ran for Congress in the mid-1960's in North Carolina (albeit unsuccessfully - the year Nick Galifianakis lost to Jesse Helms) - and as John was Greek, the "not one of us" propaganda was used against him and Galifianakis effectively. Later, John would be one of Jimmy Carter's campaign managers, and was President of the AHEPA (American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association) in 1967 then again in 1987. John was invited to the White House to meet every President since Lyndon Johnson until his death in 2005. The Ford Library recently released photos of my Uncle and a Greek delegation meeting with President Ford and Kissinger to discuss the Turkish invasion of Cyprus.
I have met countless politicians in my life - everyone from Terry Sanford to Paul Sarbanes, as well as some disgraced, like North Carolina Senator John Edwards (but he had some great hair) and recently convicted Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon (who asked me, "Who you want me to lean on?"). Incidentally, I was the man who uncovered the Chick-fil-a/ Pat McCrory connection regarding the scuttling of the "North Carolina Film Incentives" by the GOP. My blog has had over 100,000 reads on the subject: https://michaelplumides.wordpress.com/... - point being, I have a seasoned and well-nurtured understanding of politics.
Now that I qualified myself, I am currently running an Indiegogo campaign for Ghost Trek: Confederate Ghouls. It's a supernatural-horror-comedy concept I've been developing. When I began to write the feature film, the Tea Party was just beginning to steal the news headlines with their backwards, fire-and-brimstone, creationist, overzealously pro-gun, anti-civil rights, pro-white, Anti-Obama rhetoric.
Because of the Tea Party's thinly veiled reactionary stances on so many modern issues, they became the inspiration for the "Confederate Ghouls" - a group of tortured souls that are resurrected during a ghost hunt who return from the grave 150 years later to find there's a "Black President" and have nefarious plans in store, as they plot to march on Washington once they have exacted their revenge on the researchers. The "Confederate Ghouls" must be destroyed by the imperiled ghost hunters, the Paranormal Underworld Detective Society (PUDS) with side-splitting but gory results. If you love paranormal reality shows (or hate them), 80's horror, ghoulish evil zombies back from the grave, metal, mixed-martial-arts, political satire, gore, dope and bro-humor... AND the occasional naked hotty running for her life, the film
Ghost Trek: Confederate Ghouls is tailor-made for you!
Ghost Trek: Confederate Ghouls is a dark, creepy, exciting, AND utterly hilarious return to classic eighties-style horror. The P.U.D.S. Team is summoned to a remote town in the "Low Country" by an old woman, Virginia Askew, to investigate her haunted mansion adjacent to the memorial. We even picked out a big scary house. Mom still lives there! Okay, cat's out of the bag. I grew up in an old creepy mansion where a guy killed himself. We've got wrestlers like Colt Cabana and Disco Inferno, Jonny Fairplay from
Survivor, Chris McCorkindale - who played Shuna Sassi in
Nightbreed, and the Little Zombie Girl from
The Walking Dead, Addy Miller, who plays a ghostly pageant princess based on JonBenet Ramsey.
Here's the premise: Shawna (the Showrunner) is notified the show will be cancelled if she doesn’t produce some sensational paranormal evidence. But the P.U.D.S may have bitten off more than they can chew. The old woman is not who she appears to be. They also discover the great, great grandfather of Dr. Zeke was responsible for the Confederate's summary execution. While the team uses “guerrilla ghost hunting tactics” to provoke the ghosts to appear, the "Black Flag Regiment" rises from the grave, lead by Confederate Colonel Andrew Jackson Trull - holding his glowing, cursed Bible in one hand and his saber in the other. Colonel Trull and his "Good Book" must be destroyed if P.U.D.S. hopes to survive the night.
We'll have lots of "g-g-g-g-ghosts", political satire, decapitations, guns, explosions, mixed-martial arts, nudity, bonging out, sexual misconduct, and all sorts of extreme violence and hilarious mayhem in store for you. I am super excited about this film!
Although political messages have been conveyed through science-fiction films such as
Planet of the Apes,
Avatar, or maybe
Soylent Green, no one has ever infused sociopolitical commentary in a horror-comedy, to my recollection. Now that anti-gay and anti-religion laws are being proposed and passed all over "Middle-America" and even in my home state, I think it would great for like-minded Democrats to support my crowd funding efforts in the same fashion as the racists donated $500,000 to that Pizza Parlor who refuses service to gays. Help me lampoon the Tea Party disguised as the Confederate undead. It will be classic!
Now, especially that the same mentality killed the film incentives in North Carolina which sent much of the vocal liberal opposition packing (so they can frack us to death), help us poke them in the eye back. This is a hilarious concept - but we need your support. After all, it's "Paranormal Research with an emphasis on bad taste!"
Here's the link again: https://www.indiegogo.com/... - so find a perk that's good for you. You can donate $1, 5, 10, 20, 40, 60, 70, 80, 100 - or $10,000 if you really wanted.
Michael Plumides with Dan Aykroyd from Ghostbusters, Britt Griffith of Ghost Hunters, Steve-O of Jack Ass, Chip Coffey of Paranormal State, and Aaron Goodwin of Ghost Adventures.