Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight
Short description
Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight follows Frank Brayker, a former soldier who has spent decades on the run while guarding one of seven ancient keys. The key holds blood that is the only real weapon against demonic forces, and the Collector, a demon in human form, wants it to open the way for darkness to overrun the world. Brayker's flight ends at a boarding house in New Mexico, where he and the residents find themselves under siege by the Collector and a horde of his creatures.
Ernest R. Dickerson directed the film, his third feature after Juice in 1992 and Surviving the Game in 1994. Billy Zane plays the Collector, with William Sadler as Brayker, Jada Pinkett Smith as Jeryline, CCH Pounder as Irene, Brenda Bakke as Cordelia and Dick Miller as Uncle Willy. The screenplay is by Mark Bishop, Ethan Reiff and Cyrus Voris. Made for 12 million USD, it took about 21 million USD worldwide.
On IMDb the film holds 6.7 out of 10 from 28,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.9 out of 10 from 583 votes. A critics' rating of 5 out of 10 from 40 reviews sits below both audience scores, indicating that viewers have generally responded to it more warmly than reviewers did. It is a horror comedy and thriller running 93 minutes.
What's left behind the scenes
- The film's release date was specifically set for Friday, January 13, 1995, as all films in the franchise were intended to be linked to dates traditionally associated with horror – Friday the 13th and Halloween.
- Birds nested among the beams on the set, which repeatedly caused sound problems. Eventually, before the start of each take, a blank shot was fired into the air on set to scare the birds and get them to fall silent, even if only for a short time.
- The script for the story about the Knight-Demon circulated in Hollywood for several years. The script was not an adaptation of works from E.C. Comics, but producers decided it would make a good spin-off of the series “Tales from the Crypt” (1989-1996).
- The filming location was set up in an abandoned hangar at Van Nuys Airport in California. The action of almost the entire film unfolds over one night, so the film crew was able to shoot during the day.
- The green slime was taken from glow sticks (referring to a party accessory; inside glow sticks there is an invisible thin vial that separates two liquids; when you need the stick to glow, you bend it, which breaks the partition between the liquids and mixes them, resulting in a glow).
- In the case of the character nicknamed the Gravekeeper, voiced by John Kassir, the actor wore a puppet head over a green mask.
- The hand is torn off the character of C.C.H. Pounder, in this scene the actress filmed in a costume that visually gave her fullness.
Similar movies
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
