Oh, bother PRODUCTION. WINNIE THE POOH: BLOOD AND HONEY
He’s rumbly in his tumbly. Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey dredges through the controversies of B-movie pulp, but is this madcap indie horror a budding cult classic, or mere honey trap? We learn all from the film’s DOP/director team
WORDS. Jake Liban Pezzack IMAGES. Jagged Edge Productions and ITN Studios
W hen AA Milne settled down to pen his sophomore collection of children’s stories, the ex-army officer could never have foreseen the impact that a tubby anthropomorphic teddy bear would have on the world. Crafted as an affectionate tribute to his fledgling son, Winnie-the- Pooh would peddle over 150,000 copies in first-year sales alone, establishing Ashdown Forest as an earnest and amiable place to dwell. ‘A hug is always the right size’, the pudgy protagonist would lovingly declare, waddling through quaint countryside trails in search of his next nectar pot, a fearful Piglet nestled closely at his side. Talking donkeys and rabbits were tender guides in these quests of friendship, love and togetherness – gentle reflections of a companionship that was wholly childlike and delicately clean. At the turn of this year, Winnie entered the public domain, and as a result, Milne’s doting tales surrendered certain IP exclusivities. Discounting filmic depictions and later characters like Tigger, rights to the original 1926 novel became free and accessible to all.
Opening Christopher Robin’s gang to the prospect of adaptation was an inevitability, but no one could have predicted the firestorm that followed. However unlikely it may have seemed, whisperings of an emerging horror began to surface in the early summer months. Surely not… Helmed by debutant writer/director Rhys Frake-Waterfield, Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey was officially unveiled in July, a characteristically gruesome poster heralding its explosive arrival. The idea was absurd: blighted by abandonment, beloved bear and cherished piglet stalk scantily clad youngsters across ominous scopes of rural woodland, maimed and disfigured, exacting their grisly revenge in increasingly brutal ways. CRAFTING A KILLER “When you start conceptualising this sort of film, the main consideration is the monster. We wanted to create something distinctive,” Frake-Waterfield reasons. “I love horror, but in this genre, things get repetitive. We’re constantly bombarded with werewolf flicks and zombie movies. I find there’s an
overabundance of particular themes, and after a while, they can become tedious. “We aspired to set this apart from that crowd, so I dreamt up a proposal. I began to think about nursery rhymes, and that whole tradition of innocence in
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