An interview with the creators of Basher

Director Ben Trandem and screenwriter John Ungaro are making a slasher. The villain? The homicidal mascot of the local baseball team.

Right now, Trandem and Ungaro are raising the funds for their film Basher on Kickstarter. In the following conversation, we chat the intersections of baseball and horror, their relationship to the game, and best baseball movies.

Why baseball horror?

John Ungaro: Baseball is such a malleable subgenre of film. There's baseball dramas, baseball comedies, baseball romance, baseball thrillers, but there's not really any baseball horror. So that is one empty space in every baseball fan's film collection. That gives us a place to put our stamp on it and do something new. Thematically, baseball represents so much on film, and we can be the first to explore those meanings from a horror angle.

Ben Trandem: When John brought me the project initially, I was amazed that horror and baseball hadn't been put together before. Specifically in the sense that a baseball team was the focus of a slasher killer's ire. There have been thrillers set around baseball, and some more outlandish horror adjacent films from Japan like Deadball (2011). The closest films I could find, as a horror cinephile, was The Catcher (1998) and Billy Club (2013). But both of those use baseball as a catalyst event for the killer to get revenge decades later.

What traditions of horror (or baseball films) are you pulling from for Basher?

John Ungaro: For the film we're looking to make, our biggest inspiration was doing the opening shootout of Robert Rodriguez's 1995 action classic Desperado, but as a Friday the 13th type of movie. So, we're going for a white-knuckle-thrill-ride approach like in a Sam Raimi film. We're here to entertain.

Ben Trandem: There is no way to avoid the connection to the masked killers of the 80s visually. So, with that in mind, my goal was to treat how Basher functions in his methodology differently from Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. Basher doesn't move like a stalking killer of an Italian giallo (though he does wear the black gloves), but like a human bulldozer. Stylistically I've always been a fan of the energy in the early films of Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson, so I want to imbue that into Basher. Which works very well from a baseball perspective as the story has a pace of a live game. It's got the build up of characters getting in position, setting up the play. And then Basher shows up like a hard line drive to midfield and the whole place goes crazy.

What's your personal history/relationship with baseball?

Ben Trandem: I'm a kid from Minnesota, specifically the Twin Cities, so I grew up a Twins fan. I believe I still might have a Homer Hanky, the handkerchief with red text on it from one of their World Series runs, tucked away somewhere. I played t-ball through a few years of little league, but eventually gravitated more toward soccer and hockey as my favorite sports to play. Part of Basher's costume design—his painters styled baseball hat—is based on a Twins hat I had as a child. I wanted to base a lot of the character's origins and stylings around baseball that I grew up with in the late ’80s. That way he'd have a visual backstory that resonated with the ’80s—the heyday of slasher films—but the character could stay modern.

John Ungaro: I'm from Massachusetts, so I was born a Red Sox fan, and I will remain that way till the end of time. While I don't follow closely, I always love catching a live game when I can, and I'll watch when the Sox are in the running. Working on Basher got me to really appreciate the game. With the script, my writing partner got to write from the angle of the diehard baseball fan, and I got to write from the angle of a casual viewer, and I think it makes for a great balance.

What are your favorite baseball films?

Ben Trandem: Maybe a little shocking from a horror guy, but I kind of like the more kid-based, kid-friendly baseball films. The Major League series were fun films, but I really enjoyed Rookie of the Year (1993), Angels in the Outfield (1994), and The Sandlot (1993). Of course, as a Minnesotan, I also loved Little Big League (1994). A kid gets to own the Twins? That's such a fun dream scenario. I didn't see the Bad News Bears films until around college, but I loved the rough edges they had, too. One that really stuck with me, that I got to see at the local drive-in growing up, was Mr. Baseball (1992). The accuracy in how they portrayed the unique, possibly unknown to westerners, manner of Japanese baseball and society still holds up.

John Ungaro: My number one film of the year right now is Eephus by Carson Lund. It's about this group of middle-aged men playing one more game in their rec league before their field is demolished. So, you spend the whole afternoon and evening with them, learning who they are, and what baseball means to them. It's a miracle movie that I think says a lot about today in a simple and deeply human way. Also, it's a very New England movie, and I appreciated that a lot.

The Kickstarter for Basher is running til September 21st. Check out the campaign here.

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