Don’t blame me, says childrens theater director Dinah Lane as she watches one of her former students direct his first horror film.
At a house on Powisset Farm in Dover, Michael Neel is shooting a segment of “Drive-In Horrorshow,” an anthology in the tradition of “Tales from the Crypt.” In this scene, a doctor makes a house call to a man suffering from a flesh-eating disease – with dire results.
To hear Lane tell it, Neel was the sweetest, gentlest kid and among the most enthusiastic members of the Watertown Children’s Theatre, which she founded 25 years ago.
“I knew he had a penchant for Stephen King, but I wouldn’t have ever suspected this,” she says.
Indeed, the mild-mannered director, who now lives in Allston, doesn’t seem like the type to consort with zombies, cannibals, and serial killers. An oasis of calm amid the screams and peeling bodies, Neel, 31, is generous with praise, diplomatic with criticism, and meticulous with his organization.
