A New Kind Of Horror Film

It’s dark. Paul Travers regains consciousness at the scene of a car accident—his car accident. He’s dazed and confused. His friend, who was behind the wheel, is gone.

Mr. Travers is temporarily distracted as a paramedic helps him out of the car. He thinks help has arrived, but he couldn’t be more wrong. As he walks around to the back of the box truck ambulance, the paramedic’s partner-in-crime is grunting as he feeds Mr. Traver’s friend into a huge meat grinder.

He screams and realizes he’s next.

At that moment, Mr. Travers woke up from his nightmare. And as the summer sunrise leaked into his Coram bedroom, he recalled during a telephone interview last week, he came up with an idea.

“I’ve always loved horror movies. I feel like I always have horror on the brain,” he laughed. “When I woke up at 5 a.m. freaking out, my first thoughts were, ‘Holy crap, that was scary.’ And my second thought was, ‘That would be the greatest movie: killer EMTs.’ I took down five pages of notes and just wrote it.”

Seven years later, the first-time screenwriter is watching his nightmare come to life. It is the opening scene of “Old 37,” a psychological slasher shot entirely on Long Island about two twisted brothers—portrayed by horror icons Kane Hodder (he played Jason Voorhees in four of the “Friday the 13th” films) and Bill Moseley (the star of “House of 1,000 Corpses,” “Repo! The Genetic Opera” and “The Devil’s Rejects”)—who intercept 9-1-1 calls in a retired ambulance. The two arrive before the real paramedics and exact revenge on careless teen drivers who the men believe are responsible for their mother’s hit-and-run death.

“The words ‘Don’t worry, I’m a paramedic’ will make you think twice before calling 9-1-1, similar to what ‘Jaws’ did with people going for a swim,” producer Dayna Ghiraldi said during a telephone interview last week. “It plays up on vulnerability. After you get into an accident and hear a siren and think help is coming, it’s not.”

After a two-week delay courtesy of Hurricane Sandy, the 60-plus cast and crew members descended upon the East End on November 17 for a month of 14- to 16-hour days shooting at various picturesque locations, including the Remsenburg Marina, Hubbard Park and Red Creek Road in Hampton Bays, and Outpost Automotive scrap yard in Speonk, not far from where Mr. Travers used to live before moving to Manhattan, he said.

They are also filming in Ridge, Patchogue Village and Sachem High School, Ms. Ghiraldi’s alma mater. The film is expected to wrap on Monday, December 17, she said, adding that she hopes to have a distributor by fall 2013.

As of last week, all of the talent—which also includes Brandi Cyrus (the sister of Miley Cyrus), Olivia Alexander and Maxwell Zagorski—had been on location in the Hamptons, according to Christian Winters, a Miller Place High School graduate who is making his directorial debut with “Old 37.”

“This is a lot more ambitious than I think most people do on their first time out. A lot more stunt work, a lot more special effects, a lot of epic visuals,” Mr. Winters said during a telephone interview last week. “It’s usually a couple people at a table pouring out their feelings. This is a lot more of a suspenseful, action, gory, horror movie, but there are certainly more nuances, which is something that horror fans welcome: filmmakers who actually say, ‘Listen, we think you’re intelligent adults and capable of watching something more sophisticated than your typical wham-bam, kill-them-all.’ We’re making something a little more complicated, a little more sophisticated and a little more stylish.”

The East End is no stranger to horror sets. Also the home of three thrillers by Caliber Media Co. partners Jack Heller and Dallas Sonnier, the locations here lend themselves perfectly to terror, especially during the off-season, Mr. Travers said.

“The scenery is just awesome. You can make it look like anything—the haunted, desolate roads in Hamptons Bays and the Pine Barrens are just scary on their own. On an indie budget, whatever you can shoot for free is really important,” Mr. Travers said, noting that he’s making the movie for less than $1 million. “We have a couple locations that are really just horror-centric. The junk yard is just the most perfect murdering location. The old marina in Remsenburg, the old sheds there are just ready to be used by the killers as their home base.”

Until next week, most of the cast and crew are calling a string of rental houses in Hampton Bays home, right around the corner from their set on Red Creek Road where Montauk-based actor Joe Loffreno was filming on Monday, November 26. It was a 10-hour day for the extra, who portrayed a paramedic—a welcome change from the Hamptons party-goer he frequently appears as in the USA network show “Royal Pains,” as well as a politico in the NBC comedy series “30 Rock,” he said.

On set, he worked alongside fellow actors—including Laurie Folkes, Cedric Cannon and Kenneth Simmons—surrounded by an accident scene: an injured girl in her overturned red Jeep, a scattered tree, marks on the road, smoke and the ambulance—Old 37.

“A girl had been in a car accident and it got disgusting,” Mr. Loffreno said during a telephone interview last week. “I don’t want to give the movie away, I don’t know how much I can disclose, but yeah, it was really sick. I was there and I almost threw up watching it. And I knew everything was all fake, it was all props and everything, but it was really, really gruesome.”

He laughed to himself and continued, “A lot of blood, a lot of guts, a lot of terror. My personal opinion of what it’s going to be like, it’s going to be a ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ but a little more deranged. It’s going to be a cult classic, for sure.”

So far, “Old 37” is living up to the screenwriter’s nightmare, Mr. Travers said, and he hopes to stir up a few more among an audience.

“I think that no one has ever made a movie with ambulance-driving murderers. We’ve been getting a lot of attention from horror press about that alone,” he said. “It has a story, and that’s what makes it so scary. It’s not just some kids going in the woods and getting killed one by one. It has a real story with characters that are developed and thought out and have lives of their own. It just intertwines with the horror element. When it’s normal and regular, the crew and Christian are making the most beautiful horror movie ever. But when it’s dark,” he paused for effect, “it’s dark.”

For more information, visit old37themovie.com.