A filmmaker’s lifelong dream becomes a ‘nightmare’ when he puts his life savings on the line to make a low budget horror film about an aborted fetus that seeks revenge on its family.

Horror Movie: A Low Budget Nightmare follows the journey of Australian filmmaker Craig Anderson in the making of Red Christmas (4.3 stars out of 10 in IMDB). It is not a high-browed venture. It is not a legend for the ages. The filmmaker’s circumcision is discussed.

Anderson starts the journey with a dream to make a movie and get out of working in TV. The project he settles on is Red Christmas, a tale of a surviving aborted fetus that returns to wreak revenge on its family. Super stuff. Anderson is fortunate enough to be able to cast scream queen Dee Wallace, known for such films as E.T., Cujo and The Howling. The other major star is Gerard O’Dwyer, a performer with Down Syndrome who plays the would-be brother of the fetus that was, in fact, aborted because it was suspected of having Down.

Little does she know they’re using real human placenta in this scene

Over the course of the making of the film, Anderson and crew meet many challenges of the sort that often face creators on shoe-string budgets. Conflicts with SAG over flying Dee Wallace into Australia for the shoot, locations that they have to scout illicitly to avoid paying thousands of dollars to retain, and an existential crisis with O’Dwyer, whose relationship with his own family and his syndrome is somewhat fraught.

One of the more unusual elements of the film is the use of real, preserved human placenta, a detail they opted to keep a secret from the star. Anderson worried a lot that Dee Wallace would be horrified about the working conditions, the relative amateurishness of the filmmaking, even of his father’s prattle as he picked her up from the airport. But by the end of her final scene, she chokes up and says it has been like working with a family.

It is clear that Anderson loves his team, which includes talent he’s worked with before as well as his family and friends. His father even cameos briefly as an ill-fated cop. He works himself very hard, makes sacrifices, swallows pride and borrows money, and slowly, slowly, the movie turns into something everyone is proud of. Even the part where the mysterious stranger rips a guy’s dick off.

Red Christmas is not a classic. It’s not terrible, it’s pretty good for what it is, and often quite funny.  “I’m definitely confident that I’ve made a film,” says Anderson, “…that is a horror film.”