Article clipped from Janesville Gazette

Tina Ona Paukstelis stars as pregnant Katrina in ‘Trie Unearthing.’Movie/Itmixes horror with humorContinued from 1Cthere’d be a hand coming out of furniture and attacking people. he said.? And every Friday night, you’d find 10-year-old Barry and Mends at the Genoa City Theatre.’’Whatever was playing, good or bad, we’d go and see it,” Pol-termann said. “One of the first movies I ever saw was ‘Tales from the Crypt.’ I thought it was the coolest thing in the world.” Horror movies tap into something primal and exciting, Pol-termann said.“There’s a freedom to it, like riding a roller coaster,” he said.The Bloomfield Township Fire Department helped bum down an old farmhouse for the film’s finale. Firefighters did a great job, Poltermann said, but apparently didn’t know what they were getting into.The movie's finale includes a Filipino maid named Cupid walking out of the burning building with an ax in her hand. A bloodied pregnant woman is screaming for her life, and one of the vampires is demanding that Cupid “Kill her! Kill her!” “We didn’t tell anyone what we were shooting,” Poltermann said. “So the firemen were kind of like. What the hell is going on here?’ ”Another scene from the movie features actor Victor Delorenzo (who also drums for the Violent Femmes, a rock band) dressed in a Bloomfield police uniform and driving a Bloomfield squad car.“Everyone locally helped us out a lot,” Poltermann said. “We probably couldn’t have done something like this very easily in a city.”Poltermann said that while filming at the abandoned farmhouse north of Genoa City, police received reports of UFOs that turned out to be the film crew’s flashing movie Lights.County officials also visited the set to investigate whether the movie was pornographic(it’s not).But perhaps the oddest, funniest scenario during filming occurred at the Buffett mansion in Whiteflsh Bay. Poltermann and his film crew were kicked out of the mansion one day by Secret Service agents who were preparing the house for a preelection speech by then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton.“Here one day we’re chasing a pregnant woman around with axes,” Poltermann said, “and a couple hours later the future president is speaking to the nation in the same lobby.”“The Unearthing” ends with several surprises. But, as you might expect, just about every character is killed.Or were they?“We’ve already written thesequel,” Poltermann said. “It would be more absurd and more hilarious than the first one. But I don’t know if it will happen.... My parents want me to do a good film.”Barry’s parents, Bruce and Kay Poltermann, live and work on a farm outside Genoa City. His mother also runs PFI Fashions along County B. Both parents watched their son’s film at a premiere in Milwaukee.“At one point, there’s a really gruesome scene in the film, and my mother turned to my father and said, ‘What an imagination,’ ” Poltermann recalled with a laugh.Poltermann probably enjoyed making his movie as much as watching it. It’s an experience he’ll never forget and hopes to repeat.“It was a real high,” he said. “The whole time I was going, My god. I’m actually making a movie.’ And at the end, when it’s like, ‘Cut, last shot, that’s a wrap,’ you’re a million miles in the air.
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Janesville Gazette

Janesville, Wisconsin, US

Sun, Jul 17, 1994

Page 18

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WI, USA 15 Oct 2024

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