Deathgasm, the winner of the Make My Horror Movie competition, follows a bored kid called Brodie, who moves to a small Kiwi town. He starts a band, who uncover an unrecorded song by their favourite death metallers. They record it, only to find the satanic anthem turns everyone who hears it into blood-thirsty zombies.
It's an ambitious project that's been a learning process for Howden, who gave up his job as a clean-up artist at Weta to dedicate himself to the film.
The prize money, just $200,000, forced him to learn how to make a movie for cheap and super quickly - from writing and re-writing Deathgasm's 86-minute script, to auditioning actors, keeping to strict deadlines and mastering "gore rigs" to make decapitations look as real as possible.
He's also had to learn how to make all that fake blood splatter in front of the camera in exactly the right way.
"Sometimes the blood goes where you want it to - in front of the lens," he says. "Sometimes it shoots off 20ft in the air and lands on expensive equipment. Then you spend two or three hours cleaning equipment that you've hired and can't afford to replace.
He laughs - then compares horror films to another type of niche movie-making: "It's gravity, you're shooting fluids in the air. Much like a porno probably, you can't always judge where it's going to go."
It may have been done for cheap, but it doesn't look it. Like Jackson's early films, Howden's had to learn how to cut costs, rewrite expensive scenes and call in favours - but still make it work. That's no easy task when you're trying to make an impact in the overcrowded horror market.
Howden believes the restrictions make his film different. "I'm a fan of practical effects in horror - there are too many digital effects in a lot of films these days," he says. "It was challenging. We were doing a lot of one-take wonders because of time restrictions. If it worked, awesome, if it didn't, we had to go back to the drawing board or make it happen some other way.
"The first script draft was so over-the-top it would have cost $10 million to make. A lot of it was just looking at what we had [then employing] No. 8 wire. We'd beg, borrow and steal ... Even day to day we'd be looking at the script and saying, 'We can't actually do this. What can we do instead? How can we tell the story?'"
Howden also called in favours from Deathgasm's cast members, which features a mixture of well-known Kiwi actors and unknowns, including Kimberley Crossman, James Blake, Milo Cawthorne and Jodi Rimmer.
Getting them onboard for a first-timer's feature film meant a leap of faith - especially given Deathgasm's extreme subject matter.
"We had some great actors in some very compromising positions," says Howden. "We had people like Jodi Rimmer as an underdemon pretty much just getting dildos rammed through her head."
That attitude has earned Deathgasm plenty of praise from overseas, where it's already played in America, Brazil, Switzerland, Australia and Korea. It debuts here as part of the International Film Festival, beginning this week.
"It combines heavy metal, gore-horror and comedy into an inevitably rude, bloody mess," wrote Variety's Dennis Harvey, while Rob Hunter from Film School Rejects wrote: "Deathgasm hits some rough spots, but they're brief and mostly overshadowed by arterial sprays of crimson joy."
Howden hopes those reviews turn his "balls-to-the-wall 'splatstick' action comedy" into enough box office ticket sales so he can film a sequel. He's already written it, a Deathgasm soundtrack is coming out soon, and he says he's "in love with the Deathgasm world".
It might be a good time to stock up on fake blood then.
What: Local splatstick film Deathgasm
Where: Screening as part of the NZ International Film Festival
Screening times: The Civic, July 24, 9.15pm; SkyCity Theatre, August 1, 10pm
- TimeOut
