How a slasher movie spawned real-life horror

Dennis Murphy Correspondent • Profile

CENTRAL PA. - A first-time filmmaker was burning with ambition to make a blockbuster horror movie — the next "Blair Witch Project." Blaine Norris hoped his small film would really hit it big.

And that's when this Hollywood dream turned into the worst kind of nightmare: The cameraman's wife was stabbed to death.

But this was no random killing. Was someone willing to commit murder, just to make a movie?

In the spectral remains of an  old coal mining camp, it’s not that hard to imagine ghosts and creatures of the night lying in wait.

There was a time when Sean Gaston could look at this bleak stretch of the Appalachian trail in central Pennsylvania and see the bright lights of Hollywood just beyond. A few years back, he and a handful of others were starring in a low, low budget horror flick being shot there. 

Sean Gaston, first time actor: It's a ghost story— a horror film where we systematically get hunted down by a ghosts throughout the night and so, in many scenes, somebody gets killed. 

Back then, Gaston and his fellow no-name actors assumed this flirtation with the dark side would be a ticket to instant stardom or, more likely, a week of harmless fun away from the grind of their day jobs.

But no one knew then that the cheesy little slasher movie would spawn a real-life horror all of its own—a truly scary story, a plot filled with greed, deception and most important of all: a killer ending.

For Gaston, who runs the projectors at his local multiplex, it all began three years ago when he spotted a blurb in his hometown paper.

Gaston: It was a call for independent film actors.  It said that there was an independent film being shot in Lancaster county and actors and crew were needed.

Dennis Murphy, Dateline correspondent: You had an itch for whatever this thing might turn out to be, huh?

Gaston: I had a big itch.  I’ve always had an itch for film.

Within minutes, Gaston was on the phone with the movie’s writer and director. 

Gaston: Blaine Norris was the director of the film.  And told me the title of the film was called “Through Hike: A Ghost Story.”

Blaine Norris, director, was not exactly a marquee name in filmmaking— far from it as it turns out.  From 9 to 5 p.m., Norris worked as a computer tech for a Harrisburg insurance company. But for Sean Gaston, Norris’ passion for the genre more than made up for his total lack of directing experience. 

But to the other aspiring actors who answered the ad, Norris wasn’t so much a horror movie fan — more like as a horror movie geek.

That was Erin Lampart’s first impression of him. Still, she admits the director’s nerdiness put her at ease, especially at her audition.

Murphy: Did you have any expectations of what a director was supposed to be?

Erin Lampart, actress: I’d never did film before so from the audition through, I didn’t know what I was getting into. I didn’t know what to expect.  I had no expectations.

She got the part. Mostly, she says, because she had the necessary chops for any respectable horror queen — she has a reputation as a screamer.

That same audition session also scored a part for Sean Gaston, who, like most of the actors cast had more desire than resume. One of them did come with some credits.

Robyn Griggs remembers giving a lousy audition but was hired anyway, she thinks because she was a professional actress. Soap Opera diehards may remember her as Maggie Cory in the old “Another World” series.

Her professional experience told her there would be serious problems with this project, starting with the script.

Robyn Griggs, actress: I really think it needed a lot of work.

Lampart: It was bad.

Murphy: Cheesy?

Lampart: I always said it was like a “Scooby Doo” episode.

Robyn, the soap actress, says the story about five hikers chased through the woods by a ghost was simply too threadbare as Norris had written it. Yet, she says the wanna-be director seemed convinced his film could match the astounding success of a well-known horror indie:  “The Blair Witch Project,” also set in the woods, also shot on the cheap.

The director did have a few things in his favor, not the least of which was a backer willing to pump $18,000 dollars into the project. And there was a buddy from work, another computer guy named Brian Trimble who offered to shoot the film on his own personal camera equipment.

But that was a weird thing, none of the actors ever saw Trimble the cameraman, or his camera— not at the auditions or rehearsals.

Robyn, the pro of the ensemble, asked "What’s up with this?"

Griggs: I mean you can’t block a scene without the director of photography. It’s gonna be based on lighting and all that, you know.  Naturally you need the camera there.

Brian Trimble did actually shoot something— a few publicity head shots of the actors. They turned out to be such a mess that they gave the moneyman cold feet. Actor Sean Gaston says when the director refused to fire his cameraman and best friend Brian Trimble, the investor took his $18,000 off the table and walked away from the movie.

So now there was a movie with no major investor, and then just before cast and crew were supposed to hike up the Appalachian trail to start shooting, the other shoe dropped: It was about the hapless cameraman, Brian Trimble.

Gaston: Blaine told us that Brian suffered from multiple sclerosis and he wouldn’t be able to make the hike. He said that Blaine told us that his doctors told him it wouldn’t be a good idea to be out in the sun for five days...

No Brian Trimble meant no camera gear either. Sean, the actor, says the cameraman claimed his wife had put her foot down and ordered him to forget his fantasies about making movies and go back to fixing computers.

If the story’s true, the reluctant wife unwittingly set off a lethal chain of events.

But that would come later.

For the novice director it was decision time— here he had no investor, no camera gear or cameraman: Should he pull the plug on the movie and call it quits? Or figure out some other way to come up with the money that would get his little film all the way to a final cut and in the can?

Blaine Norris went for it.

Gaston: There should be red flags popping up everywhere. But at the time, in the situation, there wasn’t any. We are gonna make a movie. “Come hell or high water, we will make a film.”

An “A” for desire and ambition maybe, but those early pre-production setbacks would creep up on Blaine Norris and cause the rookie director to contemplate horror in a whole new way.

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