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| Matt Spease was born on September 5th, 1973 in Sterling, IL to Charlie and Joan Spease. His early childhood was what could be expected for someone his size, he usually had a run in with the local bullies on a regular basis. After more then a few attacks, Matt decided to learn how to defend himself. He studied two forms of martial arts, Jeet Kune Do and Kenpo. These fighting skills not only helped him to overcome the local bullies, but he has incorporated them in to most of his films. His entire filmmaking venture began in 1988 when a camcorder was first brought into the household. After shooting a few experimental short films (both horror with Killseeker and comedy with a few 3 Stooges inspired works), he decided to try his hand at a serious short horror film. With only a few of the roughest of editing tools, he began work on Evil On Queen Street in 1996 and this 40 minute short film would take him until 2001 to fully finish. In between that time, Matt was busy writing scripts. One was a Spider-man script, another was Meteor: The Hidden 3, and the other was known a Eve Of Terror. Matt sent Spider-man to every major movie studio he could find the address of, but to his disappointment recieved no response from any of the companies. He thought about sending the Meteor to New Line Cinema who had released the second Hidden film and sending Eve Of Terror to some of the other studios. But after the disappointment of Spider-man, he decided against it. New online capabilities became available to Matt, and soon he was busy trying to show off his work on the internet. He placed his finished version of the short Evil On Queen Street on his web site, known then as Matt Spease Productions. He checked out the works of such online indy filmmaking companies like Timberwolf Digital. With this he dicided to make the company official and starting working on films to sell on the web site. His first work for Matt Spease Productions was a Star Wars spoof with 3 Stooges elements known as The Stooges - Episode V: Die, Stooges, Die. The production was very rough and was shot with the same camcorder that Matt had growing up, needless to say the camcorder was in dire need of being retired. Then there was the lightsaber effects, which were a major pain that Matt grew tired of rather quickly. Pro Wrestler Violet Flame starred in the film as the Princess and Matt basically played all other roles in the film himself. That film was only a mild success and Matt wanted to move forward to a film that was more his style. His father asked him to remake the short film Evil On Queen Street. Matt brought Violet in from California to play the role of Alexia Thompson, a character that was a combination of the other hero of the short named Damien and Nick's girlfriend who was a victim in the short. The film was released under the Matt Spease Productions company name in 2002. Matt was happy with the outcome of the film and early reviews somewhat, but he wasn't happy with some of his editing, FX, and the title of his company. In 2003 the company became Dark Night Films, and a much sleeker revamped cut of the film was made to coincide with the new company. Eve Of Terror was then dusted off and was givin the working title Copycat. This film was eventually released as Chameleon Killer with Violet Flame again playing the lead. The film was released to a huge success online and is a major favorite among the fans of Dark Night Films. |