PRESS RELEASE – Betrayals & Bullets: The Dame (2015)

Howdy, Manly Movie readers. Resident reviewer Cal here with a special announcement.

I am in the process of making a new motion picture. Pre-production for the movie kicked off in June. Production started in early August, with the majority of the movie being shot over a ten-day period from August 21-30. Filming has wrapped. Post-production is heating up. I have two composers busily working away to submit the rest of the music before the movie premieres on October 24th in my hometown. The current edit of the movie runs a rather sizeable 51 minutes, including opening & closing credits, and a post-credits vignette.

The movie is a prequel to a short film I produced back in 2012 that Night Rider reviewed the Blu-ray of a little while ago, and can still be viewed on YouTube for free. It’s a passion project that I have aspired to for many years, with the first draft of the movie being mapped out as early as May 2013 before sitting on a shelf gathering dust for two years. And now I’m editing the thing. It’s surreal. Just for the record, this is a bit of an omnibus movie, with two movies in one. Here’s the trailer:

You can also see a short behind-the-scenes glimpse here, as well as other related videos on my YouTube channel. Please also visit and “Like” the official Facebook page for more pictures, videos and tidbits. As for the story, here’s a plot synopsis:
In “The Dame,” after the brutal murder of his girlfriend Leonora (Emma Monk), a gang enforcer named Dwight Rafferty (Callum Knox) sets out to find out who was responsible, leaving a trail of brutality and bodies in his wake. All the while, Dwight copes to come to terms with losing the one person in his life who held any meaning.
In “The Package,” a shipment of drugs and money is stolen from powerful crime lord Walter McCarthy (Shane Skerly). Dwight and new gang member Shep (Keiron McDonald) are assigned to recover the goods and eliminate the men responsible.

The obvious influence here is Sin City, but I also took influence from classic noir like The Big Sleep, on top of more recent noirs like Brick and Killing Them Softly. I am very conscious of adding unforced dramatic depth in my movies to make them more than vapid action demo reel, so the whole thing is not wall-to-wall action. It was a tremendous production that I sunk a lot of money into, with my cinematographer actually being flown to location for filming. Oh, and it it also now listed on IMDb.

It’s my first movie in two-and-a-half years. It has reignited my passion for the art form, and already I have plans in the works for future films set in this universe.