Who doesn’t love zombies right? But what’s way better than your average zombie you ask? Well for me, a Nazi zombie is. These flesh eating fiends not only are back from the dead, but they are imbued with the sinister drive of the most evil soldiers to ever walk the earth…Nazi’s! The creative force behind three of the best examples of this ever growing horror sub-genre, Kieran Parker, who wrote and produced Outpost, produced Outpost: Black Sun and directed the upcoming Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz sat down to chat with me recently.
Parker grew up on some of the greatest war films of the 60’s and 70’s including Kelly’s Heroes, Where Eagles Dare and more, but he also grew up with a love of horror films. What he did was combine his love of action packed war pieces with horror films of the 70’s and 80’s like Evil Dead, Dead Alive, and Texas Chainsaw, and came up with the spark for what would become the Nazi zombie Outpost film franchise. If you haven’t seen either of the first two Outpost films, I highly recommend checking them out before watching the third film, Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz, on VOD now and DVD on March 18th from XLrator Media.
Join me as I chat with Kieran about the third and in my eyes, best film of the series, Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz. He talks about where the idea came from for the series, why the Nazi zombie sub-genre is so popular and more!
The film is directed by Kieran Parker (Outpost, Outpost: Black Sun) and stars Bryan Larkin, James “The Colossus” Thompson, Iván Kamarás, Michael McKell, Velibor Topic, Laurence Possa, Ben Lambert.
Plot Synopsis
In the third installment of the hit Nazi Zombie action-horror franchise, OUTPOST: RISE OF THE SPETSNAZ, we discover the horrifying origins of these supernatural soldiers as they battle the most ruthless and notorious of all military special forces: the Russian Spetsnaz.
Michael Juvinall: I’d like to say it’s a pleasure to speak with you. Thank you for taking the time
out to talk with me and the readers of Horror Society.
Kieran Parker: My absolute pleasure.
MJ: I watched Outpost 3: Rise of the Spetsnaz last night and I have to say that I really enjoyed the film.
KP: Did you? Great, that’s great to hear.
MJ: Its action packed, it’s full of Nazi zombie carnage and it’s just a kick-ass film.
KP: Great! I’m glad to hear that you liked it, tell your friends.
MJ: To get things started here. Mr. Parker, you’ve been involved with all three Outpost films, as a writer or producer, and now on the third film, as director. What is it about this series that has kept you coming back?
KP: I’m a filmmaker first and foremost. I always wanted to make movies; I always wanted to be involved in the movie game. To be able to keep working in the genre that I love is the greatest job on the planet. I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do. My dad was a big movie fan; I grew up on movies like Cross of Iron, Where Eagles Dare, and Kelly’s Heroes, all those kind of movies. Then you have horror as well, Evil Dead, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, all that stuff from the 70’s and 80’s. To be able to combine the two is just a dream for me. I think the idea that I originally came up with is obviously the bastard child of all those movies kind of thrown together. The first movie was a real success for us and people seemed to get it. The second film came and did its thing as well; it’s just great to be able to continue working in something that we really love. I think the really nice thing for us is we don’t feel that we are retreading old ground with the new movies. I appreciate there’s certain things we have to deliver for the audience. We haven’t made the same movie three times. We think people out there dig it as well. As long as people like it, we’ll keep making it, we’re just really happy at this end.
MJ: The first two movies were awesome, I’ve loved those and I think number 3 is just as good if not better than the first two films.
KP: Thank you very much indeed. That’s a real compliment. I think my thing was, Steve Barker who did the first two movies, is a really great friend that I’ve known since our first day at art school together back in 1990. We worked together very closely, I’ve produced for him, and he’s got a vampire movie that we’re starting to work on now. Part of the reason as to why the third movie is a prequel and set in World War
II is because what I didn’t want to do was step into Steve’s world. I think the fact that his movies are contemporary, it almost was a given that I would try to make it in the past because they become very different on a professional courtesy level, but also on a kind of selfish creative level, I wanted to come up with different things and the idea that the zombies in the first and second film are a certain type. In the past, it meant we could reinvent the zombies a bit, with none of the spectral entity kind of things in the third film. We always like the idea that out there since 1940, there’s this mad Russian scientist in some big bunker underground somewhere just coming up with ways to make zombies disappear and reappear. There are loads and loads of ideas. There are three of us that sit around spit-balling these ideas and there are a million ideas that we haven’t used for the franchise. We love doing it and we would carry on as long as people are happy to watch the movies.
MJ: You touched on the films being a mishmash of war films from the early 60’s and 70’s along with more modern horror movies, but where specifically did you come up with the idea for the Outpost films? Where did that come from?
KP: It came from a short film I had written up. I guess you would pitch it as Platoon meets the Sixth Sense. There was a war crime that took place in Vietnam and you followed these American troops who had done this horrendous massacre in a village in Vietnam and you follow them through the desert, you don’t realize the background changes and they end up in a forest. The soldiers slowly start to get picked off one by one by this unseen enemy. At the very end of the film after all of the unit have been killed off, there’s two people left, the main bad guy that you absolutely hated who did all this murdering and killing of innocent people, then you’ve got this other one which is more like the Michael J. Fox character from Casualties of War. He’s kind of liked all the way through it, he’s the one that’s really suffering, and he’s the one that has a conscience about what’s happening. As this Nazi soldier stands over the main bad guy and sucks his soul out and you then realize that actually, he turns to Michael J. Fox is being resuscitated on the battlefield in the middle of a desert and you realize they’ve actually gone to Hell and the Germans are policing who goes in Hell and who doesn’t. At the end of it, the Nazi officer’s deicide that he’s taken all these other American officers who committed this war crime and he sent this one back who wasn’t involved and sent him back to earth to spread the word that Nazi’s police Hell and we thought it was a cool idea for a movie.
MJ: That’s interesting. One last question Mr. Parker, Nazi zombies are becoming a very popular sub-genre right now, why do you think that is?
KP: I think its two-fold really. I think everyone loves a good horror movie, put it this way, the great thing about horror is that chances are you’ll watch any of them and if you don’t like horror, you won’t go near them. My wife, even if a title sounds scary, she won’t watch it. If you’re into them you’ll watch as many as you can and consume horror which is great. I think that covers the zombie angle. The great thing about the Nazi zombie angle is you get to add character to your zombies. That’s the one flaw with zombie movies, barring a few exceptions like with some of Romero’s movies, you can’t really give the zombies character without making them farcical. If you add the Nazi angle to it, what you do for the audience, you give them preconceptions about the character that are now the zombies. What I like about the Nazi zombie angle is you have the preconceptions of the audience; everyone knows that Nazi’s are all sons of bitches and should rot in hell and all that kind of stuff.
The idea being, you take that preconception and you put it into a zombie form and basically you end up with 
somebody that’s either really bad or someone you really want to kill. So, as far as a character within a movie, if the first time you see your bad guy he’s standing there in a SS outfit, you go fuck me he’s a bad guy, so that the audience’s preconceptions really work for you. Actually you’ve already got your audience coming up with ideas before they’ve seen the movie, which is an absolute master stroke for any filmmaker. If you get your audience thinking about the film before they’ve seen it, you’ve done an awful lot of work already. People that don’t know horror don’t really think that horror films are intelligent and some of the most intelligent film’s I’ve seen are horror movies. I’m not saying the Nazi zombie sub-genre is a stroke of genius but what I am saying as far as creative concern, there’s awful lot of mileage to go with in preconceiving your bad guys. I think that’s why audiences and the market just love it; people seem to be consuming it left, right, and center. There’s a new Dead Snow movie coming out, we’ve done three Outpost movies, people love it which is great.
MJ: It was a pleasure speaking with you Mr. Parker and I look forward to seeing more Outpost films.
KP: It was an absolute pleasure, thank you so much. Thank you for enjoying it, thank you for your time, take care.
Watch the official trailer for Outpost: Rise of the Spetsnaz on VOD now and DVD on March 18th from XLrator Media.
