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PROFILE: John Pata

m 091fc9481e76c87be58a8e2c1d5dc612John Pata: Whiskey, the Howling and Living Among the Dead By Brian Kirst

There are a lot of things that drinking can induce – blackouts, hangovers, homicide.

Luckily for us, John Pata’s robust binges brought about the zombie indie short “Better Off Undead”. This initial limb wrenching project was inspired by Pata and friends sitting around drinking whiskey, watching zombie movies and thinking – “I wanna do that!”

As a result, the fun project about 3 friends experiencing a sudden zombified invasion in the streets of Wisconsin takes its energy from the John Cusack sad sack classic its title apes and sifts it through a rotisserie of blood and mayhem.

The film, which took about 10 months from inception to completion, featured many of Pata’s acquaintances (with no film acting experience among them) in various roles and has earned convention happy Pata’s amazement of “the supportiveness of the horror community. They kept asking what else I was going to do.”

This enthusiasm has inspired Pata to attempt a full length feature, Among the Dead, which has begun filming this fall. “The film is about the same outbreak, but it focuses on the characters and how they interact. Five friends are stuck in a house during the invasion. It’s very much my homage to Night of the Living Dead,” Pata states. In fact, he is so enthused by this project that he recently quit his job to devote all his time to it.

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Though, considering all that he is undertaking, he probably would have had to. ‘It’s all me,” he enthuses. “I’m doing the set design, the preproduction and special effects!” Of course, its nothing a little Jim Beam can’t help him with – or your friendly support at www.myspace.com/better_off_undead. Hell, even if you don’t want to discuss Among the Dead, you can always investigate the merits of Pata’s guilty favorite – the Howling sequel, Howling: New Moon Rising. He might even let you see his recently purchased movie poster – if you ask really nicely.

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Mitchell Wells

Founder and Editor in Chief of Horror Society. Self proclaimed Horror Movie Freak, Tech Geek, love indie films and all around nice kinda guy!!

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