Orlando resident Ryan Lightbourn has jumped into the low-budget horror and gore pool with both feet as well as his ass with his insane 14 minute short Roid Rage, which features a killer mutant hemorrhoid. Lightbourn has been fooling around with film and video since 2007 when he and his buddies were just goofing around making short films and fake movie trailers.
The next year he decided to enroll in Full Sail University, a renowned art, music, and film school, but quickly dropped out. “I realized I was learning much more with my own untraditional methods. After leaving, I jumped into the music video world for two years straight. I felt like I was becoming completely tied down with those, so I made Roid Rage to gain myself some notoriety in the short/feature film world,” explains Lightbourn.
As a child he was introduced to horror films at a young age by his brother and became desensitized to the gore and violence. So when he decided to step out and take a chance on making a movie, he decided to make a very cheap gore flick with a goofy edge. Ryan told us, “I’ve always found gore in movies hilarious, as long as it’s practical… I think C.G. gore is super lame.”
Lightbourn did all of the practical splatter gags and well as the small bit of computer generated gimmickry in the short. “I didn’t have a crew, so no one on set was experienced with FX. Everything you see in Roid Rage was experimental,” Lightbourn said. So experimental that he tells us that there was a mishap with some latex and an actor having to rip out some hair and skin to remove it. “I looked into the garbage and saw tumbleweeds of bloody hair and skin. He was sitting on the toilet ripping away at his scalp to get the latex out of his hair. I’m extremely fortunate that he’s a nice guy and didn’t sue the shit out of me.”
The shoot for Roid Rage lasted a total of 4 days and the minuscule budget turned out to be around $2500. “I funded it myself with money I’d saved up from music videos.” Ryan continues, “Most of the actors were college buddies and we ending up stealing 90% of the locations.” Those locations were here in the hometown of the Cinesploitation headquarters of Orlando, Florida and its surrounding areas, including the seedy drug and hooker infested Orange Blossom Trail.
After I got the chance to screen Ryan Lightbourn’s 14 minutes of visceral chaos I was left wanting more. More offensive humor, more explosive action and yes more gruesome, ass-munching gore. So will Roid Rage be made into a feature length film?
“I fucking hope so. The trailer has racked up almost half a million hits and the festival run has only just begun,” he says. ” I have some absolutely insane ideas for the feature. After the Roid Rage feature I’d definitely take a more serious approach with my career. I don’t want to be known as ‘the guy who made a killer asshole movie’.”
The future looks bright for Lightbourn if Roid Rage‘s well done effects, outrageous premise and surprising overall production quality have anything to do with it.
