By Tracy F. Seelye, Express editor
editor@whitmanhansonexpress.com
HANSON — The historic Nathaniel Thomas Mill on Liberty Street has a “starring role” in an upcoming short horror film titled “Blood Martini.”
Filmed on location Saturday, Sept. 6, the film’s climatic scene uses the mill as the dramatic setting to examine the what-if scenario of a man’s present-day encounter with a mysterious woman from the past who was wrongly accused during the Salem witch trials.
Weymouth filmmaker Bill Jacques and Abington author Kristen Good based the script on her short story, “The Re-Acquaintence,” first published 20 years ago in horror magazine, Midnight Zoo.
With filming complete and editing expected to be finished by Oct. 11, Jacques is planning to enter the work several short film festivals, including the Providence Film Festival in Rhode Island, the Taos (N.M.) Short Film Festival, Screamfest and the Los Angeles Show Your Shorts film fest.
“We wanted to keep it under 20 minutes,” he said of the film. “If it gets longer, it’s harder to enter in short film festivals. We will also do a movie release party for the public and investors at a local venue.”
Jacques has acted, written, directed, cast, contributed to or done production work on more than 60 films in the past eight years.
“We wanted to delve into the possibility of what might happen if a beautiful, mysterious woman from the past — who was wrongly accused of being a witch in Salem — was able to come back to the present to seek revenge on the man who was responsible for her death hundreds of years ago,” Good said of the project’s genesis. “The story touches on reincarnaton, the occult and revenge.”
Actors Cate Carson of Boston and Harry Aspinwall of Cambridge were cast as the protagonists, which left the question of location. That’s when Jacques contacted Good.
“Bill has always been a fan of my photos,” Good recalls. “He says he likes my ‘eye for the creepy,’ [and] when it came down to shooting the final scene for the film, the only thing that was holding them up was where to shoot it.”
After a few weeks of scouting possible locations including Middleboro and Bridgewater, Good — who is known for her research on and photos of the Bridgewater Triangle — had an idea. She grew up in Hanson, so the Nathaniel Thomas Mill came to mind and, once there it inspired the filming of additional scenes at the location.
“I knew it would be exactly what Bill was looking for,” Good said. “We used the woods behind the mill as an afterthought on the day of filming. [They] had that spooky, mysterious look we were looking for that almost called out to us — so we went with it.”