No stranger to peculiar horror-comedy concepts (that, admittedly, don’t always work), Kevin Smith has found a new niche subject for his horror-comedy anthology “Killroy Was Here”, debuting the first trailer during his Comic-Con@Home panel on Saturday. The panel was an extension of an annual one-man talk from Smith that’s part stand-up, part promotion, as the filmmaker also revealed bits from his upcoming Netflix animated TV series “Masters of the Universe: Revelation”.
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As for “Killroy” itself, as the title suggests, the film takes inspiration from the much-speculated-upon World War II graffiti, “Kilroy was here” (see what they did there with the extra ‘L’), but Smith’s idea for it started elsewhere: “originally we wrote it as a ‘Krampus’ movie, and then someone actually made a ‘Krampus’ movie, so we changed it from a ‘Krampus’ movie to ‘Killroy’ instead, so go figure.”
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The film is a project Smith wrote with Andy McElfresh that the director describes as being “kind of like ‘Creepshow’” but then goes on to clarify “it’s probably more modern, kind of like ‘V/H/S'”. In the film, Kilroy is a sort of slasher monster terrorizing people living in the swamps of Florida. “Killroy Was Here” was shot in collaboration with a group of students from Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, where Smith had gone to speak a few years back.
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Smith comments that he began working on the film with the students before he had his heart attack two and a half years ago, putting it on the shelf after he recovered while he worked on last year’s “Jay and Silent Bob Reboot”.
The castmembers of “Killroy” include (as ever) “Jay and Silent Bob” actor Jason Mewes, former wrestler Chris Jericho, “Queen of the South” star Ryan O’Nan, “General Hospital: Night Shift‘s” Azita Ghanizada, as well as Smith’s daughter Harley Quinn Smith, and Justin Kucsulain in the role of Killroy. A trailer for the film can be seen at the 48:22 mark in the video below.
