Iggy Pop and Dario Argento are using the crowdfunding site Indiegogo seeking donations for a new horror film in which the punk icon will star as the classic bogey man The Sandman.
Pop and Argento are hoping to secure $250,000 (£155,000) for the project, the Italian horror maestro’s first film as director since 2012’s Dracula 3D.
Titled ETA Hoffmann’s The Sandman, the film is based on the 1816 short story Der Sandmann by the German romantic writer Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann, rather than the Neil Gaiman graphic novel, which is currently being adapted for the big screen with Joseph Gordon Levitt tipped to direct. The titular villain is a version of the bogey man who gouges out the eyes of his victims when they refuse to go to sleep. Producers are promising Argento’s “most horrific film ever”, a tall order for the director of 1976s’s gory Suspiria.
The film will centre on a handsome student called Nathan, who suffered a terrifying childhood experience on Christmas Eve at the hands of the Sandman, a masked serial killer who removes the eyes of victims with a jagged melon spoon and keeps them as trophies. The villain belongs to the young man’s past, but shows himself to be still alive and ready to mount another furious murder spree after turning up to kill a beautiful young woman who lives in the apartment opposite.
Iggy Pop says in the project’s promotional video: “With your help, Mr Argento can make this movie his way, the way that you and I appreciate and respect, and what the world needs so much right now: a good, artistic, gothic, terrifying scare.”
The movie will reference some of Argento’s best-known films, including a scene in 1975’s Deep Red (Profondo Rosso), in which a child witnesses a murder against the backdrop of a Christmas tree. The 74-year-old director’s long-term musical collaborator Claudio Simonetti, of the band Goblin (who worked on Suspiria), will compose the score.
Perks for donors range from a month’s membership of the cult film streaming site Fandor, for $5, to a role opposite Iggy Pop in a key scene for $25,000. At the time of writing, the film had raised $11,800 towards its $250,000 goal, with 30 days still to run.
Argento hopes to shoot in 2015 on location in Ontario, Canada.
