Montrealers Jerome Sable and Eli Batalion made their name on the stage with their acclaimed musical comedy J.O.B.: The Hip-Hop Musical, which premiered at Toronto’s Fringe Festival back in 2001. Now they’re back in the T-dot to screen their first short film, the 12-minute horror musical comedy The Legend of Beaver Dam. It plays in front of the much-anticipated stoner comedy Fubar II this Thursday, September 9, at 11:59 p.m. at the Ryerson Theatre as part of the Toronto International Film Festival’s Midnight Madness program.

Set in 1978, it tells the tale of a group of kid campers and their counsellor gathered around a forest campfire to hear the terrifying tale of Stumpy Sam, a local legend who will come to kill you with his machete if you say his name three times. Veteran Canadian comic Séan Cullen plays the asshole “Pathmaster” who relentlessly torments little Danny Zigwitz (L.J. Benet) in front of his fellow Pathfinders. You just know that Stumpy Sam appears to wreak bloody havoc amongst the campers, all to a wild rock soundtrack.

What is your background as a horror fan?

Two words: Hitch cock. Um… yeah. A lot of my early exposure to horror was by watching pretty much every flick from good ol’ Hitch, even the super early ones like The Lodger. Also, it wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t also mention my exposure to early Peter Jackson, Sam Raimi, Clive Barker, Wes Craven, Brian De Palma, Stephen King— y’know, the classics, the essentials, or, to put it another way, pretty much every film mentioned in Carol Clover’s Men, Women, and Chainsaws

Tell us about where the idea for this film came from.

Batalion & I had been messing around with the idea for a horror musical for a while. We always bat around a lot of “what if’s,” and in this case we were saying to each other, “What if the ghost story that the camp counsellor was telling actually came true?” And then, of course, as we have a tendency do to, we added, “And it’s a musical.” We were specifically interested in merging horror with heavy metal, and we began developing a villainous monster who terrorizes little campers with a rock tenor scream.

Tell us about the creation and background of your villain, Stumpy Sam.

Because the camp counsellor is kind of riffing, it’s sort of like he’s inadvertently fusing (or confusing) all the classic horror villains of all time – Freddy, Jason, Beetlejuice, Candyman. We were like, “What do you get when you have a drown victim who wants revenge on little kids, who’s missing an arm, and who appears when you chant his name three times?” This gave us the fun opportunity to pay homage to all of them, while creating a new bogeyman at the same time.

For the makeup effects, we worked with the brilliant and über-talented Hugo Villasenor. Then the amazing Rick Miller flew into town and gave life to the voice and physicality of Stumpy. Rick can do just about anything with his pipes, so we said, “What happens when you mix Robert Plant with Robert Englund?” We used that as a starting point and then went from there, developing it, tweaking, honing. Ultimately, what Rick brings to the character we find completely unique, and with Hugo’s work, you end up with a celebration of all the oldies, but with the birth of a newbie as well.

Your other stage musicals have been hip hop-oriented, but Beaver Dam involves folk, rock and metal. Was it a challenge to write in those genres?

Definitely a challenge, but something that was natural for us at the same time. As music lovers, we have always had a passion for Zeppelin, AC/DC, Rush, G’n'R, Queen – you know, basically our whole high school experience (!), and as musician-composers we’ve been in several bands of the more “rock” persuasion, as well as our hip-hop stuff. We not only had a blast writing and producing the music for Beaver Dam, but we had the good fortune of the sick blues prodigy Kyle Riabko come into the studio as a session player and shred all over the soundtrack. The dude came in and tore it up completely off the dome, and those are his solos you hear over the final credits.

What are the challenges in translating your musical style from stage to screen?

Setting the tone is the main challenge, I think. When Batalion & I did theatre, there was always something absurd about seeing two short Jewish white guys on stage – no matter how serious we pretended to be, people still found it silly, and that was largely a good thing.

Now, with the cinematic experience, we run the risk of people getting totally sucked in at the beginning and not quite knowing how to react when our off-the-wall stuff drops. But we still don’t want to go all the way into silly world, because we still want to tell a story and hopefully it can pack some emotional punch. Or at least some emotional “slap,” even if it’s a weak floozy slap with a floppy wrist. Y’know, the kind of slap that makes you go, “Ow, that kind of…didn’t really hurt.” And then, after a long pause, “Why’d you do that?”

Is there a full-length Sable & Batalion horror movie in the future?

I don’t know, is there? I hope so, and I hope that the future sends it back in time to us so we can see it and copy it and make it now, in the present. Or at the very least the future send the script to us by email. But yes, we are working on Pine Rock, a full-length musical feature about a serial killer at a performing arts camp. Picture High School Musical where everyone gets killed. It’s our love-hate-letter to musical theatre and all of its gleeful people.

What was your worst camp experience?

Oh, it had nothing to do with a supernatural bloodthirsty killer – I once tried to ask a girl out and never quite got the words to come out of my mouth. I was just so embarrassed that I never even brought it up. But I kept trying. I had taken her outside in the middle of a “social” and I was walking and talking with her and I kept saying, “Um, I want to ask you something.” And she would say, “Yes?” And I would then make up a completely unrelated question, like, “What… um… what colour are your eyes? Cuz I can’t really see… what colour… they are.” It was ridiculous. Wow. Why’d you just bring that up? I was pretty sure I had wiped that out of my memory like 15 years ago. Yeah. That was horrible.

The Legend of Beaver Dam screens before Fubar II at these times & locations:

September 9^th, 11:59pm @ Midnight Madness, Ryerson Theatre, 43 Gerrard Street East

2^nd Screening Sept. 11^th, 12pm (NOON) @ Cineplex Odeon Varsity Cinemas (8) – Manulife Centre, 55 Bloor St. W., 2^nd Fl.

Tickets at tiff.net and by phone at 416-968-FILM (3456)

Go to www.stumpysam.com for more information.