Night Brings the Fury

Lauren Cross as The Fury in the horror short "Night Brings the Fury"

So, one time I played a transsexual “Pirate Demon” serial killer, and it was an epiphany:  I am an actress, and, however I pay my bills, I need to act.

It started with a chance meeting with a friend/ real estate agent who rented our Brooklyn apartment to us.  Like so many of us creatives, by day Chris* worked as a broker, but was a talented artist with a penchant for horror movies.

It was Chris’s dream to direct a script that he’d written.  One day, he learned that he’d secured funding for the first 10 minutes of his feature-length film Night Brings the Fury, and his good news coincided with our encounter.

He asked me if I would like to audition for one of the lead roles – that of the Fury, a male-to-female transsexual who was the victim of a hate crime eight years earlier and seeks to avenge herself in the present day.  I literally leapt at the opportunity, and channelled Felicia from The Witches of Eastwick in my audition.  It worked!

A few weeks’ later, I made my way to Long Island City in Queens to meet with a Special FX artist to build the prosthetics for my face that would turn me into The Fury:

Becoming "The Fury"

Half-woman, half-plaster-of-Paris-swamp-monstress

Becoming "The Fury"

The closest I'll ever get to playing "Tommy" in the rock opera of the same name by The Who...

As my character anoints herself with mud from the local swamp before each of her slayings, prosthetics were required for the purposes of continuity. But this mud is no ordinary mud – it’s supernatural! So we had to do a few make-up tests to see which kind of mud would be best: as it turns out, the hypoallergenic special FX stuff worked better in my hair, and terracotta clay worked best on top of my skin and the prosthetics:

Red make-up to contrast with the fluorescent green contact lenses!

Playing around with another prop...

Prosthetics in place, now for the mud!

Drying the mud

The Fury brought to life!

A couple of months later, the entire cast and crew travelled down to Allaire State Park and Asbury Park, both in New Jersey, to film over a long weekend.  It was an intense shoot, not just because of the subject matter, but because of the long days/ nights.  But we all had a great time working on this camp horror flick!

Oh, just in case you’re wondering, three hours in the make-up chair = 45 minutes in the shower afterwards…

If you can stomach extreme violence and camp gore, you can watch it for yourself here. But be warned, this is probably R-rated (18 in Europe).

I’ll say it again: VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED - strong violence, graphic sex, extreme gore.

*As Chris’s name appears in the credits of the above movie, I am breaking my usual rule and calling him by his real name.