By Birgitta Wolfe, Managing Editor
This nerdy guy takes his predawn jog down a lonely country road.
The moon is up. The night air is cool.
Out of the roadside forest he hears a low guttural growl seconds before “a big dog” leaps out and bites him and disappears.
Our hero keeps running, all under the watchful eye of an unseen hunter who takes it all in.
As days pass, our awkward hero grows more positive in his outlook, more confident in the pursuit of his ladylove.
But by now, the hunter from the forest is stalking him.
The new confidence turns to aggression, and the aggression turns animalistic, bestial.
It’s pretty clear our hero has turned into a werewolf, and the hunter is out to take him down before the changeling infects anyone else.
That’s his story, and producer Joseph J. Greenberg, of Bordentown Films, is sticking to it.
The Burlington City resident has been filming “Lunan,” a feature-length movie, in Bordentown City, Mansfield, Bordentown Township and Roebling since October and finished up at the end of May.
”Our actor transforms into the wolf through four different makeup stages, ending with a fiberglass and silicon wolf headpiece that was custom fit to our main actor’s body by way of a plaster head cast,” Mr. Greenberg said.
The 34-year-old adjunct professor at Rowan University hopes to have the film ready by Halloween and plans a screening this fall in the Roma Bank Media Room at the Roebling Museum where some of the filming took place.
A filmmaker for 12 years, the 1995 Bordentown Regional High School graduate wants to sent the movie around to film festivals in August, saying that is the quickest way to get distribution, possibly as a home video.
Filming took place at Bordentown City’s Under the Moon restaurant on Farnsworth Avenue late last fall where the hero has his first date with Gwen, his love interest played by New York actor Stefanie Londino, Mr. Greenberg said.
Then it was on to the Liberty Two Diner on Route 130 in Mansfield where the changeling, played by Vincent DiCostanzo, of Haddonfield, arranges to meet the hunter to find out why he is trying to kill him.
More filming was done for two days and nights at the River Front Motel on Route 130 in Bordentown Township.
Filming at the 7-acre Roebling Museum site took place in early June and made use of its industrial artifacts and turn-of-the-century buildings, including an old shoe shop.
A museum volunteer said it was funny to see “bloody body parts” coming in and out of the museum all night during the shooting.
The museum is the backdrop for the scene where the villain gets taken out.
It’s the hunter who turns out to be the villain, and the hero-werewolf kills him to protect other “people” like himself from being targeted.
The werewolf then “walks off into the night, and we’re led to believe he’s really a good werewolf,” Mr. Greenberg said.
Keep in mind producer Greenberg’s all-time favorite movies include “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”
Mr. Greenberg, who grew up on Bossert Drive in Bordentown Township and also has worked for NFL Films, has made several short horror flicks on video and 15 and 35 mm film, but “Lunan” is his first 90-minute feature film.
He once tried doing a “Leave-It-to-Beaver” type family drama, using a student crew, but said, “I was out of my comfort zone.”
Ensconced in that zone, he has produced “Carter’s Abyss,” shot at Thompson and Second streets in Bordentown City, about an heir kept alive in a dry well with table scraps; “Darker Suggestion,” shot at Hope Hose Humane firehouse and an Olive Street townhouse in the city, about the horrible price a girl pays for her telekinetic powers; and “Downriver,” shot on the Delaware River in Bordentown, about a day-in-the-life of three survivors of a zombie apocalypse as they discuss the walking dead, the dangerous living and the meaning of life.
”This film was the one that got me the most recognition,” he said of “Downriver.” “It was in the New York City Horror Film Festival and the Philadelphia Terror Film Festival where it won an award for best cinematography.”
And it all led to “Lunan, “which is being edited at the moment. Editors have to produce a full moon in the museum footage, for one thing, because despite the perfect setting for a werewolf romp, no moon emerged at the actual Roebling shooting.
Next, said the producer, comes the sound design for the music and the guttural growls. The final mix is set for August.
The goal is to have the werewolf walking in public again by Halloween.
