A comedian, a wrestler, an EastEnder, a Bond villain and a Misfit go into a bar – well, a whole set of steel bars. It sounds likes the first line of a very unlikely joke, but then Fanged Up is a very unlikely comedy. Sci-Fi Bulletin’s Nick Joy serves porridge as Christian James follows up his toilet cubicle zomedy Stalled with a vampire comedy set in a prison, joined by a cast of TV, social media and wrestling stars.

“Those blood stains on the tiles, they’re just fake,” reassures the production assistant leading me through the set of Fanged Up in former prison HMP Kingston on a very cold winter’s day in naval city Portsmouth. “And what about those dirty finger nail scratches?” I enquire. “Oh I imagine they’re original,” he shrugs. And right there is one of the biggest assets of this low-budget horror movie being shot entirely on location over three weeks – the verisimilitude of filming in a real prison.

Unlike some former prisons, this building hasn’t been Disneyfied for visitors, it feels like it was just abandoned yesterday rather than three years ago when this ‘fine example of a Victorian radial design penitentiary’ was deemed uneconomic to continue running. Cut to November 2016 and it offers a full 360-degree set with cells, mess hall, governor’s office, exercise yard, barbed wire-crested walls and the aforementioned showers. In short, far bigger films would struggle to have such an expansive and expensive shooting ground, and every barred window and rusty lock is being used to maximum effect. Porridge it ain’t.

Fanged Up follows Jimmy Ragsdale as he is introduced to prison life in fictional lock-up HMP Stokesville, played by comedian Daniel O’Reilly (who also co-wrote the script). Daniel’s knitted out in regulation grey prison sweatshirt and joggers and white slippers. The top is drenched in blood. He has a props table behind him with a severed arm, human offal and other grisly guts on it. “The lead character is not the hero at all; the hero is Katie, his ex-girlfriend (played by Danielle Harold). You see Jimmy go on an adventure that to me feels more like Big Trouble in Little China. It’s gory, but it’s funny gory; I spend the majority of my time covered in blood. The comedy comes from the humour in the situation that you find these characters in. When the vampires die, they properly blow-up!” He points to his two-tone top. “You kill them and then a moment later they explode. It has to be the last shot you do of the day!”

Former EastEnders actress Danielle Harold is on hand to help Jimmy. It’s her first role since quitting the soap after five years as teenage mum Lola Pearce. Dressed in lab coat and Miss Moneypenny glasses this is a million miles from the crop top and creole hoop earrings of Lola. She’s been rehearsing her upcoming scene with Steven Berkoff, the movie and theatre legend playing the governor of this vampire nest. It’s a tight scene in a small office with barely room to swing a bat, so I just observe from a monitor in the hallway. The governor’s office wall is plastered with old photos, there’s blood on the keys of a piano, church candles add to the gothic feel, and a very crimson Bloody Mary looks suspiciously like… gulp, plasma!

Danielle introduces us to her character. “Katie Makepeace is new here – the prison doctor – and has been told by her friend about the dangerous things going on behind the scenes. Through the film she starts to twig what’s going on with the guards and vampires and guides the guys through the prison to help them get out. Oh, and there’s blood – buckets of the stuff, everywhere you look. By the end, I am literally covered. I loved it for the first few days but then when you can’t get it off your skin and your hair’s a bit pink after you’ve washed it…” She laughs. “It’s just a nice change, it’s fun to get down and dirty with your job.”

In one episode of EastEnders her character famously gave birth on a live episode. Did that make her fearless and mean that anything after that is like a walk in Walford Square? “I had never been so nervous in my life,” Danielle recalls. “That episode got something like 8 million viewers and it was hard because we had to match the live performance to some pre-records; that was a lot of pressure for me and I guess I’ll never be that nervous again.” And how does working with Steven Berkoff measure on the scareometer? “Oh, he was very funny and great to work against. He’s so intense and the part he plays is brilliant and creepy – it was a real pleasure to work with him.”

How important was it for Danielle to play a strong, independent, female character, distancing herself from young mum Lola? “Katie is the complete opposite end of the spectrum for me, so it’s been great to try out something so different. I did keep getting offered auditions for the same character [after leaving EastEnders] so to get something like this was really great. She’s very much in control; it’s her plan about where to go as she drives the inmates through the prison. Usually, in these sort of films, she’d be the one who’s crying and waiting to be rescued, whereas it’s actually Katie who saves Jimmy.” Growing up, did you watch Buffy and dream of being a slayer? ”I did actually fancy the idea of a playing a vampire, not necessarily the slayer, but this is all good.”

If you are going to have a tough guy by your side, he might as well be 6 foot 6 former WWE wrestler, Stu Bennett. He has just wandered into the green room after shooting a scene with Jimmy in the mess hall where one unfortunate prisoner has had their face battered by a food tray on numerous takes. I pity the poor assistant who has lined up exact copies of the tray, ready to hand over portions of equally-sized congealed mash and peas to aid the continuity. Off-camera another member of the crew is blasting faux steam onto the set to give the room a just-cooked greasy ambience. But onto more important matters, what’s this US-residing Brit doing playing a Russian?

“I got a call from my agent about three or four weeks ago asking if I could do a Russian accent, and my response was laughter. I’m not Russian, I’m not from Eastern Europe and I’ve never done that accent before in my life! But he suggested I give it a shot and so I sent in a tape to Terry Stone, the producer of this movie. He liked it and next thing I knew I was flying over from the States to play a Russian prisoner. Funnily enough I’ve since had a couple of requests for auditions for Russian-type roles.” Who would have guessed that there’s not enough hard men with Russian-type accepts in the acting pool?

“I’ve been in three movies, all action thrillers where there’s lots of punching and shooting, so this appealed to me because – a) I’m a prisoner, b) I’ve got an accent and c) it’s a horror comedy. As a fan of the Shaun of the Dead type movies it’s something I wanted to get involved in. Any time I can do something new, I’ll jump at it.”

Stu is better known as wrestler Wade Barrett. “It’s always interesting to see how wrestling fans follow wrestlers once they step away from wrestling,” Stu posits. “You only have to look at the sort of things that The Rock has done, or Dave Bautista or John Cena. I think it’s a natural fit. Wrestling isn’t a pure sport; there’s elements of entertainment, we have storylines and we’re performing as characters, simulating certain fight scenes.  Fingers crossed the wrestling fans in the UK will particularly like the British humour. Having lived in the States and seen what a success Shaun of the Dead was out there I’m hoping we can try and get a bit of that success too.”

I ask Stu what Victor makes of Jimmy’s character when they are forced to become cellmates. “It takes a little time for Victor to warm to him. He sees him as very much the wide boy cheeky chappy, whereas Victor is very cold and serious and has had a rough past. Victor is initially very wary of him and finds it awkward but eventually becomes something of a father figure who protects him within this prison of lunatics. There’s a lot of vampires getting killed in this movie. We’ve been awash in blood and this prison is freezing cold so doing this every day isn’t the best thing for your health… but I’m manning up and so far I haven’t got ill.”

Before we leave HMP Stokesville we catch up with Misfits favourite Lauren Socha (she won a BAFTA as Kellie) who is semi-reclined in a make-up chair with prosthetic appliances starting to set on her forehead and cheeks. She was recently released from a scene downstairs in the mess hall where she was terrifying prisoners as the knowingly-entitled head warden Miss Renfield. She’s partway through being ‘vamped up’ and there’s another hour of work before she’ll be ready for the contacts and serrated teeth. This isn’t the first time she’s been in prosthetics (“I had to be bald in one episode of Misfits”) and it’s something that definitely runs in the family – her brother Michael frequently had to ‘wolf up’ in Being Human. And she’s carrying on her belt literally the biggest bunch of keys you’ve ever seen – there’s no risk of her creeping up on you undetected.”

“I always play the prostitutes or crackheads, which is fine, but this part took me a long time to get into,” Lauren shares. “There was a lot of practice required to find her; as an actress you have to be versatile. Miss Renfield is not a nice person [there’s a clue in the name] – she’s Governor Payne’s sidekick. I have to portray someone who’s very well-spoken and well-to-do. Not posh, but some of the words I’d never heard of before! She’s sinister, dark and turns out to be a villain. It’s a challenge for me and that’s why I like it.”

I ask if she’s playing the role in her native Derbyshire accent. “Sort of, but not so hard, which is good because I ‘ate me accent. This sort of role requires proper acting, and if you’re just playing yourself… it becomes boring.” Is this what happened when she left Misfits? Was she getting offered ‘Kellie’ roles by any other name?  ”Absolutely. And what’s the point of it? It’s just boring and you get typecast in everything you do.”

For a role like Miss Renfield it would be easy to go ‘too big’. How did Lauren self-regulate her performance so that it didn’t stray into pantomime territory? “Me and [director] CJ had a good chat at the beginning about how to play her. I don’t want to go pantomime – I want to be sinister. You don’t have to shout to be scary, it’s funny enough with her just standing next to Steven Berkoff, for God’s sake. Me, Lauren, with Steven Berkoff, that’s comedy in itself! He’s got these amazing speeches and you get so mesmerised listening to him that you have to snap out of it so you don’t miss your cue. He’s wicked, man. It’s intimidating, but he’s a legend, and you have to make sure that your lines are on cue. It’s a privilege to work alongside him.”

Night has fallen and suddenly the whole place feels a lot colder. Temperatures have been dipping far below zero all week and quilted jackets and woolly hats are par for the course. I chuckle as one prisoner suddenly remembers to take his hat off as the clapperboard snaps – he hadn’t been wearing it in the previous take. The future of the HMP Kingston premises is still to be decided, and while for many it will represent a grim reminder of a best-forgotten past, it will at least be forever immortalised for its parting shot as being the home of 90-odd minutes of gory fun with an emphasis more on shivers than shivs.

 

Fanged Up is released by Altitude Film Distribution on 30 July. Read our review here

Set photography by unit stills photographer Andrew Ogilvy Photography