Zombie Grit: Kieran Parker on the Outpost Trilogy

Outpost, released in 2007, was a major turning point in Kieran Parker's career. Acting as co-producer alongside Arabella Page Croft (who Parker later married), and co-creator, conceptualising and developing the film with director Steve Barker and writer Rae Brunton, Parker re-mortgaged his home to secure the initial funding for the project. He and Barker had been friends ever since attending art school together in the 1990s, and the deal they put together for Outpost had been coming for a long time. “We had confidence that when we knew what our first film would be, we would go for it,” Parker explains. Outpost, the tale of an elite special forces unit discovering the ruins of a World War II Nazi experiment to make undead soldiers, was the idea that won out. Parker didn't hesitate: “We just knew it was right,” he says.

Their faith was repaid, with UK DVD sales for the first movie exceeding 300,000. After a more critically-successful sequel, Outpost 2: Black Sun, which saw the Outpost team up the stakes with more action, more Nazi zombies and a more involved, character-driven plot, Barker felt he had said all he needed to say about the Nazi undead. For the new sequel, Outpost 3: Rise of the Spetsnaz, Kieran Parker stepped up to direct.

“The transition to being the director was actually about as easy as it could have been,” he explains. “Having had two feature films essentially as practice, in the same franchise, made stepping up to direct a third as easy as was physically possible.” Working with much of the same crew, and on the same sets as were used in part two, Parker more than stepped up to the challenge, creating a prequel to the first two films that tells some of the origin story of the Nazi bunker. Preparation time for the third film was shortened by Parker's intimate knowledge of the series so far: “I knew exactly what we needed to deliver, and exactly what we could skip past,” he says.

Rise of the Spetsnaz begins as a heist movie, rich with period detail. A small team of battle-damaged Russian soldiers are Nazi-hunting behind enemy lines, hoping to steal secret military plans. And, of course, they stumble across much more than they bargained for. From the off, it's a much faster-paced story than the first two films. Parker says that he didn't want “to go into the same realms” as his old art school crony. “Steve's two films are set essentially in the present day, and when we came round to making the third film, I decided I didn't want to interfere with Steve's world. I wanted to have my own world,” he says. “That was to be considerate of Steve's work, but also to be selfish about my own. My instant reaction was to make it a prequel, and set it during World War II.”

He has “the greatest respect in the world” for Barker's vision, but for Rise of the Spetsnaz, his first feature as director, he wanted to create something different. “I wanted it to be a rapid ride, a full-on action movie experience,” he says. “What Steve achieved in the first one was almost like an Alien kind of movie – I wanted this one to be a full-on, balls-out action film.”

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“Aiding a performance is important for a director. A fully-loaded MP40 is just much more fun...” - Kieran Parker

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The arena in which the film succeeds the most convincingly is its action sequences, and in the scrupulous, loving detail used in the many, many fist fights, shootings, stabbings, throat-slittings and grenade explosions depicted as our hero, gruff Russian soldier Dolokhov (played with stone-faced, growling charisma by Brian Larkin), attempts to escape from the zombie-infested bunker. “I am a huge fan of in-camera effects,” enthuses Parker. “In the digital age, there are certain things you can do in post-production which I don't think work, certainly in an action movie. When they use digital gunfire, I can spot it a mile off. It's the same with blood spatter. For me, when it is done digitally, it's not physical, it's not visceral.”

Parker also found that working with convincing in-camera effects and real guns was a brilliant way to motivate his cast. “I've never acted, but I've fired a lot of guns,” he says. “There's a hell of a difference between holding a gun up and going 'BA BA BA BA BA!' and making the noise, and an armourer coming on set and loading the weapon, everyone sitting there with their headphones on, the first Assistant Director's got the floor and he's screaming and shouting, 'Weapons live!' The blood starts pumping. When the guns go off, they make one hell of a fucking racket! You get something more out of the actors as a result of that. It's the same with squibs, the same with throat slitting – all that stuff. It's much more visceral. I liken it to the difference between vinyl and CDs. Yes, you can do it very, very well digitally. But you don't get the vibe, you don't get the intensity.”

It's a smart move – many genre fans lament the passing of proper in-camera effects, and their replacement with cunningly tricked-out CGI. Outpost 3 is defiantly old-fashioned, but for a valid artistic reason. “The fact that we did it practically and physically, for me, actually comes across in the film,” argues Parker. “I'm a meat eater, I wanted to make a meat eating film. Something that has real physical presence. I think performance is important, but I also think aiding a performance is important for a director. A fully-loaded MP40 is just much more fun, and that comes across on screen.”

Also revelling in old-school monster-movie techniques are the film's cast of zombies, none of whom are augmented with digitally-rotted flesh or blue-screened missing body parts. Instead, Parker follows the dictates of an almost bygone, and much-missed age, filling carefully created rubber suits with martial arts experts to pit against his hulking Russian protagonists. “James Thompson, who plays our 'colossus' zombie, is a mixed martial arts fighter,” Parker explains. “He's an absolute monster of a man – about six foot five and about 24 stone. He could probably break through a brick wall if he wanted to just on size alone – the fact he can fight is even more terrifying.”

Lead actor Brian Larkin also had to bulk up for the role. “I was very specific about the fact the weight he put on wasn't this kind of lean, sculpted, six-pack, beach kind of body, like you see in a lot of movies,” says Parker. “What I wanted was just raw, angry bulk, so that when he got into a fight, yes he had a lot of skill, but he was also just a really powerful blunt weapon. He looked like he could just beat the shit out of people.” Parker and Larkin also studied special forces combat techniques – “they run at you, kill you, and then move on,” he explains with glee – and the Russian martial art known as Systema, or The System. “Because it was the 1940s, there wasn't necessarily as much of a style then; they were just hard, hard men,” says Parker. “That was what appealed to me about the Spetsnaz – this idea of hard men who had grown up in the woods, on the steppes. People who were survivors.”

The relationship between Parker and his leading man is clearly one of the film's key dynamics. He tells me they are “good friends” and that in the run-up to the shoot, they hung out while Larkin “was just riding bikes, eating chicken and lifting weights.” Larkin also helped Parker nail the film's tone, which he defines as a blend of the epic scale of Hollywood war classics like Where Eagles Dare with the unflinching brutality of the 1985 Russian film Come and See. He and Larkin watched films like these in the film's pre-production period.

Another film Parker cites as an influence is Sam Peckinpah's Cross of Iron: “Peckinpah really captured the style of how soldiers were behind enemy lines,” he explains. Similarly, the heroes of Rise of the Spetsnaz are “dressed in the trappings of war, wearing German coats, carrying German weaponry they had captured, because they were better than Russian weapons.” This period detail, a compressed, realistic method of visual storytelling is used to great effect, elevating the film beyond its sensationalist, fantastical plot, lending it and its characters a gritty realism.

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"The first one was almost like an Alien kind of movie – I wanted this one to be a full-on, balls-out action film” – Kieran Parker

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Rise of the Spetsnaz premièred at this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival, an experience which Parker says he very much enjoyed, but also found “nerve-wracking.” Luckily, he says, “the majority of the reviews so far have been really positive, and the nice thing about that is that people are actually 'getting it' as the type of film that it is. People could quite easily say of some parts of the film, 'Well, that would never happen in real life, what utter bollocks.'” He credits genre fans as being some of the most movie-literate, yet forgiving audiences in the world.

The film premièred alongside another Nazi zombie movie, Frankenstein's Army, a more visually driven, steampunk take on the undead thousand-year Reich. “We were probably the only two genre films there, and the fact they put them next to each other so we could kind of fight our own little corner was wicked fun,” says Parker. It's an increasingly crowded genre, with entries going back to the 1940s (King of the Zombies) and crossing many borders, with notable successes such as 2009's Norwegian, comedy-themed Dead Snow. Rather than competing, Parker and Frankenstein's Army's Dutch director Richard Raaphorst showed an easy camaraderie in joint interviews. The decision to screen the movies together “we thought was a particularly brave thing to do,” says Parker. “It was great for me, because I'm based in Glasgow, so it was almost like a home game. It was a real privilege. It's really nice for your movie to be the one that's different, in among these movies of all shapes and sizes.”

Going back to the moment he re-mortgaged his house to fund the first Outpost, Parker recalls that his wife-to-be, producer Arabella Page Croft, was uncertain about taking on a zombie movie. “Arabella isn't a genre fan,” he explains, “but as a producer, she believed in us, and she believed in the idea of the film.” Putting up his own cash was like “the first drop over the waterfall,” he says. “We had written the script to be done for no money whatsoever. Then other people came on board because we were doing it, no matter what, so we ended up getting a decent budget for a no-budget film.” The eventual budget – around £1.2 million – was recouped, and then some. “It took a leap of faith from us, and a real commitment, to make people see the idea, and like it. The bottom line is, when Arabella put us in a room with financiers, we could pitch the hell out of it. That's the job of any filmmaker, certainly a first-time filmmaker; to persuade somebody to part with their hard-earned cash.”

It's a trick that Parker seems able to keep on repeating. His production company, Black Camel, have made five features in five years, with the latest, Sunshine On Leith, based on the music of The Proclaimers, and directed by Dexter Fletcher, being a much more commercial proposition. “That was funded by Creative Scotland after they saw how well we had done with the first Outpost film,” Parker explains. “To have that support, and to be able to act off of our own ideas, is really important and of huge benefit.”

So what's next for Parker as a director? “I'm attached to a project called Breathe, which is a chase movie set in the Scottish Highlands,” he says. Go on then – give us the pitch. “A Glaswegian cop has to go to Fort William to pick up a criminal who's been arrested, but he doesn't realise how important the prisoner is until a bunch of mercenaries attack. So he goes on the run.” The movie then becomes “this huge, Bruckheimer-esque, Michael Bay kind of film, with helicopters and heavy weaponry, car chases and explosions.” It has, of course, got a much bigger budget. If Parker can pull it off, he could well become the go-to director for hi-octane, action-driven films set in Scotland. It's an appealing prospect, made all the more exciting by his determination to avoid CGI wherever possible.

“I just want to stay physical,” he says firmly. “It's not like it's even that much cheaper to do things digitally. If I had my own way, I'd even shoot on film. There are certain things I think we're losing in the digital age. Don't get me wrong, I love the big effects movies. But I think you can lose some of the edge, some of the grit.” It's absolutely what you want a rising-star action movie director to say, and with its well-researched, detailed production design, carefully choreographed fights, balletic blood spatter, realistic rubber monster suits and eye-popping assortment of period weaponry, Outpost 3: Rise of the Spetsnaz delivers grit by the spade-full.