Exclusive: Michael Bailey Smith Talks Blood Shot!
Johnny Butane
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Michael Bailey Smith is a horror actor on the rise. Sure, he’s been working for years in various roles both with and without makeup, but more and more lately he’s making himself a known face to horror fans, which is something we’re all about. There’s no fan more loyal or more forgiving than a horror fan, and I believe he realizes and embraces that.
The coolest thing is he’s not above sticking to his roots, no matter how many high-profile roles he may take on. Which leads me to Blood Shot, a new film announced a few days back via B-D in which MBS will star as an operative for the CIA who also happens to be a vampire. He’s relentlessly pursued by a cop whose family and friends deem him crazy for believing in vampires, until eventually the two have to team up to face an even bigger threat.
”A month after 9/11, the director of the film, Dietrich Johnston, was still in film school.” Smith tells us of the film’s short-form origins, ”He’s a friend of mine, and said “I have the most fantastic idea for my senior thesis for film school” and he told me what it was and I just said “Dude, that’s too wrong right now… too soon”.”
What it was, was the story of said CIA operative, played by Smith, who is sent to track down a group of Al Qaeda terrorists who are planning to cause some major damages to LA. Despite it being “too soon”, the pair still made the short happen (the poster for which you can see on your right).
Though there were numerous drawbacks on the road to getting the short seen at school, likely due to the time in which it was made, none of them stopped Dietrich from getting the film out there as any good filmmaker would do, ”He said they wouldn’t show it and he started submitting it to film festivals and got a big of cult following;. I won best actor in three of them and it won best short in four or five.”
A private party had seen and loved the short, so he approached Dietrich with the offer of ponying up some money to make a feature film out of it, which I’m sure is every director’s dream when they get a short film out to the viewing public. Shooting is expected to start on the feature on January 14th.
Delving more into the plot of Blood Shot, Smith insists there won’t be any secretive government police force consisting of vampires or anything; he’s the only one of his kind.. ”Dietrich’s also mixed in a lot of vampire folklore for the backstory, as well as a lot from mid-Eastern faith.” Sounds like an interesting enough twist on the vampire mythos to make this one worth watching. And if that’s not enough, then there are always Smith’s closing comments;
”Blood Shot’s got kick ass action, lots of blood and lots of violence like heads being ripped off, and it’s all against terrorists, so it’s the best kind!” Keep it here for more on Blood Shot as well as Smith’s other recent role as the killer in Chain Letter!
Check out the trailer for the “Blood Shot” short film below!
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