Jay Burleson
Alabama filmmaker of low-budget horror homages.
Jay Burleson is an American filmmaker from Hartselle, Alabama. He shot his first feature film, Feast of the Vampires, in 2009, intending it as a homage to 1980s films such as Fright Night and The Monster Squad. The film premiered that fall at the Southern Shorts Film Festival in Athens, Atlanta, where it won the Audience Choice Award for Best Film. Burleson self-released the film on DVD in February 2010, and it later became available on Amazon and Amazon on Demand. He followed up with The Nobodies, a feature combining pseudo-documentary sequences with horror footage, shot on VHS and premiered in 2017 at the Sidewalk Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Prize for Best Alabama Film.
Quick Facts
- Birthplace
- Hartselle, Alabama, United States
Facts from the source article.
Features
Jay Burleson made his directorial debut with the 2009 feature Feast of the Vampires, a love letter to 1980s horror classics like Fright Night and The Monster Squad. That fall, it debuted at the Southern Shorts Film Festival in Athens, Atlanta, where audiences voted it the Best Film. Burleson put out the DVD himself in February 2010, and it later landed on Amazon and Amazon on Demand. The plot drops a regular young man into a Southern plantation under a vampire curse.
To save the farmer's beautiful daughter he has fallen for, he has to outsmart an African American vampire and his Native American housekeeper. The movie was also released on VHS, complete with a host reminiscent of Robert Osborne. It leans heavily into camp and fits squarely in the B-movie category. Critics took notice: Rhonny Rheaper of The Dollar Bin Horror Blog called it "A ton of fun to watch..entertaining as hell!" while Brett G of Oh-The-Horror.com praised Burleson for making a stylish film on a shoestring budget, noting, "I enjoy this kind of stuff because I like to see enthusiasm shine through; it does here in spades."
In April 2011, Count Gore De Vol aired it on his internet version of Creature Feature. By 2011, Burleson had started work on The Nobodies, a feature that blends fake documentary footage about the making of a low-budget horror film with scenes from that fictional movie. Shot entirely on VHS, it stars Lane Hughes, Bill Pacer, Hannah Hughes, Neva Howell, and Danny Vinson. The Nobodies premiered at the Sidewalk Film Festival in 2017, where it took home the Special Jury Prize for Best Alabama Film.
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