Home-grown filmmaker's blood-soaked dream comes true

The teaser trailer for Bikini Girls on Ice, which can be seen on the film's website, offers a hint of creepiness without necessarily being overly graphic, unlike many slasher film contemporaries.

The camera slowly zooms on the back of a young woman in a bikini in front of an icebox, as viewers hear the disturbed, heavy breathing of someone who clearly has a couple of bad intentions. Suddenly it cuts to a quick shot of a shadowy man lifting his knife and screaming, before the screen fades to black with the words "coming soon."

"We wanted to have the marketing of the title Bikini Girls on Ice," said Ile Bizard-native filmmaker Geoff Klein, 30, who dreamed up the script for his first feature film with long-time friend and collaborator Jeff Ross.

Klein said the title needed to reflect the slasher movie horror genre, but he was hoping to give viewers a slightly more intelligent film than the average Scream rip-off.

Clearly passionate about both filmmaking and the horror genre, Klein said his fascination stems from the fact horror movies are really only limited by the film creator's imagination.

"You can do pretty much anything, and people are gonna accept it," he said with a laugh.

Wary of the dangers of delivering a film to audiences expecting one thing and who end up seeing another, Klein said he tailored the film's teaser trailer to be particularly illustrative of what he was trying. That is why, for example, we see a hint of the murderer's knife, but not necessarily blood splattered all over the place, or why we only get a rear shot of the woman in her bikini.

"You're still gonna get what you go in for," he said to the audience of young men who typically get attracted by titles like the one he had given his movie, but maybe something a little more too.

Of course, that 'something more' is not quite ready to be revealed yet, not even by the film's lead actress, Cindel Chartrand, who joined production after hearing about the script from Klein, a previous colleague and acquaintance.

"I would say it is," she said when asked if the film really was a bit deeper than most horror fare, but would not go beyond revealing the set-up for the story.

As Jenna Taylor, a freshman soccer player, a "kind of wholesome, kind of timid" type of person, Chartrand finds herself having to drive to a soccer tournament while the rest of her team takes a bus.

However, when the bus breaks down in the middle of a sleepy suburb, Taylor gets a phone call and is asked to join them. The girls try to raise money for their team with a bikini car wash, and that's about when "things start to happen," Chartrand said ominously.

Besides wanting to gain the experience of being in a feature horror movie, Chartrand said what really attracted her to the shoot was also Klein's presence. "He was fantastic," she said. "He wanted everyone (on the set) to feel like a family."

Perhaps it helped then, that the caterer for the set was none other than Klein's mother.

"He is very passionate," she said.

That passion is clearly Klein's driving force. The film, for example, is completely self-financed at an estimated budget of $70,000. "We self-financed it with loans from the bank," Klein said.

Many of the crew are personal connections, including producer John Dietrich, who Klein has worked with in the past as well. The most important piece of equipment, a state-of-the-art HD camera, was rented thanks to a friend in the cinema business in the United States. It is the same kind of camera George Lucas used to film the newer Star Wars films, Klein said.

The film was shot in August, mostly in the Eastern Townships, as Klein and co. waited for patches of sunlight in the usually rainy weather to be able to do their work.

Klein said he has no illusions about making a million dollars off of the movie. The most he hopes for is to recover his costs, and make a name for himself by having it screened next summer at various well-known horror film festivals, including Montreal's own genre film fest Fantasia.

Bikini Girls on Ice is in post-production now. The film's website can be seen at www.bikinigirlsonice.com.