The guys on the Nerdist podcast conducted a fantastic horror-heavy interview with Elijah Wood in their September 2nd episode, number 726. Wood was there to promote his latest film, Cooties, but he also talked about his involvement in a film I’d assumed was long dead: Bad Vibes.
The last I head about Bad Vibes was in 2011, when news first broke about writer/director David Gebroe‘s weird horror movie about hippie werewolves hosting a love-in to kill or infect “the terminally unhip”. Now, Elijah Wood has confirmed that he’s involved, that photography begins this October in Austin, and that Ariel Pink is still writing all the songs.
Here’s a partial transcript of his comments on the film, starting around 1:13 of the podcast:
It’s a movie about – it’s set in 1969 – it’s about a feel-good sort of sunshine and hippie flowers sort of rock band that are very popular at the time. The lead singer of this band, a band called Sunshine Majesty, he sleeps with a groupie. The groupie gives him an STD. That STD is basically like a lycan disease. There’s a slight physical transformation, but the main thing is ideological, so he becomes a nihilist…. he starts writing this new sound, and it’s like this really gnarly discordant dark music. And the whole thing is about, like, killing “squares”.
This seems like such a weird and incongruous combination of elements, but to hear Wood talk about it (and his role producing and staring in “killing raving zombie children” horror-comedy Cooties), I can believe this will work, especially with Ariel Pink’s psychedelic music.