From bone-chilling screams to over-the-top gore, nothing gets your blood pumping like a horror film…until now. Numera Films is spicing things up by combining the horror and Western genres.
Numera Films is a Calgary-based video production company that offers various digital and film services. According to the company’s website, they are “storytellers first and filmmakers second.”
Numera is best known for Abracadavers (2019), a web series that follows Chris, a boy emotionally attached to the hair salon chair that killed his mother. It gets weirder.
The salon chair gives those close to it superhuman powers. If that sounds like your chaotic cup of tea, Numera will re-release the web series along with Season 2 of Abracadavers sometime this month.
The horror Western isn’t a new genre, but it is an untapped gold mine. Who can resist Yee-Haw meets Yee-Horror, creepin’ cowboys, or giddy up and get spooked?
One of the oldest examples of a film in this genre is Curse of the Undead (1959).
There’s also Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1966), featuring everyone’s favourite outlaw, Billy the Kid, trying to save his fiancée from Dracula.
Recent examples include Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012) and Bone Tomahawk (2015). If you’re itching for another horror Western, Numera’s latest film project might scratch that itch.
The project’s working title is Project: Six-Shooter. The film follows three Old West traders who accidentally find themselves involved in occult and supernatural dealings. Don’t you hate it when that happens?
Project: Six-Shooter features some names you’ll recognizes:
- Reamonn Joshee (Wynonna Earp, Billy the Kid, Guilty Party)
- Emily Howard (Joe Pickett, My Life with the Walter Boys)
- Alice Wordsworth (Crow)
Because the team behind the project is under strict non-disclosure agreements, not much else is known about the film. But we do know that Sundre is featured heavily in Project: Six-Shooter.
Specifically, the Sundre and District Museum’s historic pioneer village was used to recreate the Old West. Numera wrapped up filming in Sundre last month.
According to Project: Six-Shooter‘s producer and director Griffin Cork, the Numera team spent most of its time filming at the museum compared to other locations.
Cork credits the museum staff for being so helpful. He claims as many as 20 staff members were moving around exhibits so the crew could get the shots they needed.
“The other thing is we had a blacksmith on set because the forge here at the museum is a workable coal forge. We got some great footage of that,” Cork told the Red Deer Advocate.
Numera also visited the impressive Chester Mjolsness World of Wildlife exhibit, featuring 170 taxidermy mounts. When the film crew wasn’t filming, they were chowing down at local eateries.
“It’s fantastic. I feel like a lot of small Alberta towns have that, where you go to the town, and you find this one hidden gem, and you kind of go, ‘How did I not know about this?’” expressed Cork.
This wasn’t Cork’s first rodeo in Sundre. The accomplished filmmaker spent time in the area in 2020 filming Pipe Nation, a fictional film about the struggles of oil and gas workers in a small community.
In the film, Cork played Cody, whose legs get crushed by machinery in a worksite accident.
“We’re proud that Project: Six-Shooter will allow Sundre to reach an international audience, as it is being produced for markets around the world,” said Sundre Mayor Richard Warnock.
So far, Numera has filmed in Bassano, Drumheller, Longview, East Coulee, and Canmore. The crew will finish filming sometime this month. But not before shooting in Lethbridge, Calgary, and the Cremona and Water Valley area.
A release date has yet to be announced for Project: Six-Shooter, but the film will be released worldwide, most likely in theatres and through video on demand.
