Trailer For The 1951-Set Live-Action/Animated Noir Horror Short Film ANGEL CITY HORROR

Here’s the trailer for a cool-looking live-action/animated noir horror short film titled Angel City Horror, which is set in Los Angeles 1951.

In the story, “With the help from his partner Glenn O’Brien, veteran detective George Hard stumbles on to evidence that leads him to investigate the disappearance of a mental patient at the city’s most notorious insane asylum. After interrogating the head nurse for answers Hard and O'Brian discover the reason behind the missing patient.”

The movie was written and directed by Matthew McWilliams, and we have an interview with him that you can read below.

This trailer is shared in collaboration with the FilmQuest Film Festival, where we are looking to expose some of the awesome indie genre films and shorts that filmmakers are creating. We also included an interview with the directors below.

Without spoilers, tell us what your film is about, its characters, and its themes. Is it a proof of concept, or a standalone story? 

Angel City Horror is a live-action animation noir horror film set in 1951 Los Angeles. It serves as a proof of concept for a much larger world, encompassing an expansive backstory revolving around the main character, Detective George Hard.

This film combines the conventional themes of noir and horror into one visually hybrid genre film. The story itself is fairly straightforward. Two hard-boiled detectives investigate a routine missing persons case at the infamous St. Mary’s Asylum when they discover a sinister presence lurking inside.

Detective George Hard, a WWII veteran from the Greatest generation, suffers from addiction, PTSD blackouts, and profound loss. He has seen evil up close and looked it in the eye. What he witnessed in the war he carries with him, at least the parts he can remember.

Returning home, he leaves the war behind with hope for the future, aiming to partake in the American dream. However, he quickly learns that was never in the cards for him. The war seems to follow him everywhere he turns, and his attempt at a normal life fails as he faces hardship and heartache in a city plagued with corruption and infested with monsters.

Now working for the LAPD, he is on the cusp of a new war starting between ambitious political factions, the corrupt LAPD, the mob, and the Fourth Reich. His haunted past will come full circle, and he will be forced to confront his demons to save the City of Los Angeles as well as himself.

What was the inspiration for your film? How did you come up with the idea?

This film was created unconventionally. At the time, I was pitching story ideas to Crypt TV, who were specifically looking for story elements that catered to their content branding. At the center of this brand is the monster, so that's where I started.

Thinking in terms of a series and a potentially long-term narrative, I developed a simple concept with a monster that could exist anywhere and in any time period. I thought this approach would avoid being hampered by budgetary limitations.

So, I conceptualized a monster and then began searching for affordable filming locations where I could shoot a series of horror films based on that monster. With my background in the Art Department, I am naturally attracted to degraded locations, vintage sets, and props.

So, I chose a small, dilapidated set that was visually interesting and could provide production value. The monster and the location were my starting point. As I began writing, the time period, characters, tone, style, and genre naturally fell into place.

From that point on, I was writing a noir horror film. Once that was established, I knew what I wanted from my characters, their dialogue, and with endless historical context, the backstory just kept delving farther down the rabbit hole.

Tell us about yourself. What is your background? How long have you been a filmmaker?

I grew up in Minnesota and graduated from the University of Arizona with a Bachelor of Media Arts. Afterwards, I bounced around Wyoming and Montana before moving to Los Angeles in 2009, where I started working in production.

After a few years, I transitioned to the Art Department, where I was introduced to set construction and set design, and I have been working there ever since. As a filmmaker, my directorial debut began with my first feature film, "Chupacabra Territory." (A big thanks to Christopher Maltauro for making that happen.) Since then, I have directed several short films, including Mushtown, my award-winning short Bath Bomb, and "Candy," which is part of the Happy Horror Days anthology feature.

What inspires you to work within genre cinema and tell these kind of stories?

I have always been drawn to horror and genre films. They each rely on specific narrative and stylistic conventions. Noir, for instance, boasts iconic cinematic elements such as corruption and murder mysteries, themes we've all encountered in some form or another.

The same can be said for horror. Both genres capitalize on tension and mystery, aspects deeply rooted in our cultural history. Genre hybrid films like Dark City and Sin City served as significant inspirations because they utilized the noir genre to explore various narrative and visual styles.

Horror films, deeply ingrained in our historical and primal DNA, offer the creative license to conceive anything your imagination can conjure, bring it to life, and profoundly impact us on a subconscious level. The horror genre presents limitless storytelling possibilities across all genres, making that creative freedom a significant draw for me.

What was your favorite part of the filmmaking process for this project?

There were numerous elements to this film, each presenting its own set of challenges, so it's difficult to narrow down one aspect. However, I was fortunate to assemble a talented team for this project, spanning every department from the actors to camera, art department, SFX, editors, composers, animators, wardrobe, and hair and makeup.

Each individual contributed to the film in extraordinary ways. Collaborating with such a skilled cast and crew was a humbling experience, and their collective efforts played a pivotal role in shaping the film's visually unique outcome. Working alongside everyone throughout the process was immensely rewarding.

What are you most proud of with this film?

I am most proud of incorporating animated visuals into the film to expand the story. It was my first attempt at such an ambitious concept, and it was quite a painstaking undertaking. I also wasn’t sure how it would be perceived, if it would flow together with the live action, or if the film would end up in a mess of two visual styles.

However, I feel that the time and decisions we made, combined with the talents and patience of my late Editor, Wes Sneeringer, came together to create a truly unique film that stands on its own. I was also proud of how we utilized our location.

With help from Production Designer Tim Bedwell, we constructed set walls, much of which lived in my tiny backyard for weeks, door plugs, and a twenty-four-foot ventilation duct made out of wood, tinfoil, and spray paint. This allowed us to transform one small set into an asylum from the 1950s.

What is a favorite story or moment from the making of the film you'd like to share? 

I always prefer practical FX, but they do come with uncertainties that can be problematic. There's a scene that called for a six-foot tentacle to wrap around one of the actors. It was engineered with internal vertebrae and cables to function and move, but because of its weight and length, it just wasn’t able to articulate the way we needed it to.

We were working on a tight schedule, so we didn’t have the time to mess with it. Practical SFX always take longer than I schedule for. Thankfully, we had an identical backup tentacle made of foam that was a lot more flexible and maneuverable. After some problem-solving, we decided to reverse the action of the scene and shoot it in reverse, which thankfully achieved the effect I wanted and is my favorite shot in the film.If it did, how did your film change or differ from its original concept during pre-production, production, and/or post-production? How has this changed how you'll approach future projects as a result?

Going into it, I knew the film location we were shooting at was incredibly small. It was basically the size of a bedroom placed outside the studio under a dilapidated metal shack. I was concerned that the space might be problematic, but it was our best option. I also wanted things to feel close and claustrophobic, so we went for it. I catered my shots to it accordingly.

However, after the first raw edit, it was apparent that using close-up shots and a small location created a spatial issue. I knew I would need to somehow finagle establishing shots to make this film seem bigger, the location seem bigger, and the world as well. Initially, my plan was to steal shots of downtown LA, but the more I looked into it, that option wasn’t viable because it wasn’t going to add what the film needed, so I looked for another option.

The two issues I had were that the backstory I created needed to be touched on, and that the film needed an introduction to the time period, tone, and main character. I began discussions with friend and fellow filmmaker, Jason Ragosta, a talented animator and filmmaker, to add animated comic sequences throughout the film to address these issues.

My thought was to use animation to create the visuals that were unattainable with my budgetary limitations. I wrote some narration and began my research, gathering reference images and planning out how and where these sequences fit. The Creepshow series, which was one of my inspirations, had done something similar with comic animation to introduce each episode. I thought it was a fantastic visual tool.

I wanted to take that idea one step further and bring these images to life. Within each comic cell in the panel, we created layers of articulated movement in the background, mid-ground, and foreground. This helped create a cinematic element to the images and animated visual movement with multi-directional depth.

In the end, this helped me pack in a lot of story into a short runtime, and I think this addition brought more to the film than I could have imagined. Going forward, I am continuing to incorporate animated visuals into future projects to assist in the storytelling process.

Who were some of your collaborators and actors on the film? How did you start working with each other?

I have to give a big thanks to my Producer, Josh Murphy, with MadWest Content, who was there from the beginning. We were friends back in film school and reconnected in recent years in Los Angeles. Without his help, this film wouldn’t have happened.

As a creative Executive, his expertise was invaluable and he was there to push me when I needed it. Similarly, most of my film cast and crew consists of friends and colleagues I have worked with over the years in the industry.

Sarah Nicklin, who plays the Nurse, is a longtime friend who starred in my first feature, “Chupacabra Territory,” as well as my shorts, “Bath Bomb” and “Candy.” She’s a phenomenal actress and was perfect for the part. I always love having her on set because I know there are no limits to what she can do. I had worked with actor Matthew Cook, who plays Detective George Hard, behind the scenes on several jobs.

He was originally cast to star in my film “Candy,” but after a storm came through dumping four inches of snow in the mountains, rendering him incapable of reaching the set, we unfortunately had to replace him. When I told him I wanted him to star in “Angel City Horror,” he jumped on board. Patrick Joseph Rieger, who plays Detective Glenn O’Brien, is an old high school friend from Minnesota who I ran into at a pub when his Irish band, Whiskey Sunday, was playing across the street from where I lived.

He starred alongside Sarah “Candy,” which was shot at his house in Crestline. The scream queen of horror, Sadie Katz, was a welcome new addition. She plays the psychiatric patient. She was recommended by filmmaker and actress Jessica Sonneborn and absolutely nailed every scene.

A few other people I would like to mention are Wardrobe Designer Shon LeBlanc (who won best costume) and Desiree Falcon, head of hair and makeup. We had previously worked together on Disney’s TV show, Encore! I knew that in order to make this film, I would need the best in both of these departments. The level of detail and knowledge they brought was paramount to making Angel City Horror a believable period noir.

Tim Bedwell, whom I have worked alongside for years on The Bachelor TV series and who got me into Art Department, built and designed the sets to turn our tiny room into the asylum, awarding the film Best Production Design. Wes Sneeringer, who edited my film Candy, won several Best Editing awards for his painstaking work. He also connected me with animator Jason Ragosta.

Together, they were an invaluable team whose efforts made a huge impact on this film, also winning an award for Best Animated Film. Composer Carlow Vivas has scored all of my films. He really went above and beyond with Angel City Horror trying to find the right tone and pacing, fine-tuning the score, and working with me through dozens of revisions.

Nick Reisinger and Alexys Paonessa were the Special Effects team. I had known Nick for years as he provided all the special effects on my previous films. It was my first time working with Alexys. She designed and built the monster. Because of their work, Angel City Horror won the award for Best SFX.

What is the best advice you've ever received as a filmmaker and what would you like to say to new filmmakers?

Don’t have your Director of Photography edit the film. Just go for it guns blazing. You learn by doing. You learn by failing. The more films you make, the better they will be. Listen to everybody and nobody.

What is your next project and when can we expect to see it? 

I am currently working on a collaboration project with filmmaker Tara Erickson on the third installment of her award-winning zombie comedy series titled, A Real Killjoy: Pizzaz for Life. This post-apocalyptic zombie short film explores loss, regret, and addiction through the vein of our hopeless, sarcastic, and sexually questioning hero, Sam Jones. Drawing from my experience with Angel City Horror, I am combining live-action with animation sequences, this time with images inspired by Genndy Tartakovsky-style anime. We are in the fundraising process and are hoping to start production by the end of the year.

Where can we find more of your work and where can interested parties contact you? Do you have a website or YouTube/Vimeo channel? Social media handles?

You can check it out here.

Bonus Question #1: What is your all-time favorite film?

The Thing

Bonus Question #2: What is the film that most inspired you to become a filmmaker and/or had the most influence on your work?

Terminator 2