As of March 4th 2009 the first three ‘Penny dreadful’ animations from Carrion film – the rarely UK seen ‘The Vampire‘ (2004), the award nominated ‘Scayrecrow‘ (2008) & new festival favourite ‘The Screaming skull‘ (2008) – will be available to download for the very first time.
Each film will be available from the shop as an mp4 video; an ideal portable format and compatible for iPod, iTunes and laptop viewing. For a limited time each animation will cost only £2.99 to purchase and keep, that’s less than the cost of a screening ticket.
Director Ashley Thorpe had this to say: “I’m very excited actually, this is the first time that these films have truly been let loose and this style of commerce, the inexpensive download, is the closest thing to a modern ‘Penny dreadful’ type of distribution. The Penny dreadfuls would be bought for pennies and then handed round, increasingly dog-eared reader to reader, but the stories – the good ones at least – would spread like wildfire. Now the devoted or just plain curious can dowload and share these in much the same way. It’s fantastic and it’s just scraping the surface. We’ve got some very special things on the horizon…”
Details of ‘Scayrecrow‘ and ‘The Screaming skull‘ can be found posted throughout our archives, ‘The Vampire‘ however may be new to many. Ashley Thorpe explained: “It was my first attempt of tackling this kind of material in this way. I was trying to find a way of combining still images with a dynamic soundtrack, like a musical storybook. It was first and foremost going to be a comic that had an animation as an extra. It has animated elements, but it was a test really and people were very supportive…I was especially lucky – and I don’t think it hurt getting this one into festivals – that my photographer knew Derren Brown and he persuaded him to cameo as a vampire! Blink and you miss him…but he’s there.”
After the initial run of downloads further releases can be expected later in the year, including further vintage material from the vaults and subsequent ‘Penny dreadful’ releases such as ‘The Hairy hands.’