Gore love
A Shoreline Dream’s Ryan Policky trades atmosphere for plain ol’ fear
Motel London
A Shoreline Dream’s new CD, Recollections Of Memory—whose release will be celebrated with a show at the Bluebird Theater on Thursday, Feb. 26—is one of the dreamiest, most atmospheric pieces of music the Colorado scene has ever produced. But the band’s frontman Ryan Policky has been hiding something meaner and sharper up his sleeve: Motel London, a blood-soaked and insanely hilarious new horror short he’s premiering tonight at the Meadowlark in flagrant, disgusting disregard of Valentine’s Day.
“It’s going to be some shoot-from-the-hip fucking gore,” Policky says of the film. “I prescreened it for a couple people, and they just got this look on their face—like it was either really gory or just really bad. I’m not sure which.” The YouTube teaser for Motel London is basically 46 seconds of a dude made up like a burn victim screaming bloody murder into the camera, not to mention a brief flash of text that reads “Bloodshed Deathbath,” the name of the movie-production collective he helms with local DJ Tom Hoch.
Policky might seem like he’s joking around, but he’s a serious lover of horror. He caught the fever for scaring the shit out people years ago as an actor—playing a goddamn clown—in Halloween haunted houses around Denver, and that morbid theatricality dovetailed with his lifelong love of celluloid slashers in Bloodshed Deathbath’s debut film, 2005’s Holzwarth Vs. The Bear. It was followed by the shorts Barnum Splatter and Chicago Or Death—and while Motel Death is billed as the newest installment of the “quadrology,” Policky feels that the new offering is a standalone piece of fright-filled micro-cinema. He also hopes the setting of tonight’s premiere is suitably able to cause permanent mental scarring.
“We wanted to screen the movie at the Meadowlark because the place is all underground,” Policky says, referring to the basement venue’s cavelike vibe. “We’re running turntables through some effects pedals and playing these spooky records, kind of the same thing that’s in our soundtrack. That way people will get scared before the movie even starts.”
As for his decision to screen Motel London on that most blatant of contrived, consumer-driven holidays, Policky has this to say for himself: “I don’t have a girlfriend or anything, so I just want there to be blood on Valentine’s Day.” Aw… kind of makes your heart go boom, doesn’t it?
