This Roddy Piper Vs. Cthulhu Project Needs Your Money

By Nick Venable | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

they liveThat thing you think is cooler than a short film about “Rowdy” Roddy Piper taking on Cthulhu? You’re way fucking off, my friend. The exclamation-heavy Portal to Hell!!! aims to pit the iconic pro wrestler against the legendary deity, and the filmmakers have taken to crowdfunding in order to raise the money to help create their horror-comedy. It’s only a short film, sadly, but I’m this concept hardly needs to be stretched to feature-length to destroy all of the worlds.

In Portal to Hell!!!, Piper will play the superintendent for an apartment building, a guy who likes simple things with simple solutions. His world takes a weird spin when two tenants inadvertently open up a portal to hell in the building’s basement. He heads down to take care of the problem and will presumably kick some supernatural ass. Cue the joke about bubblegum.

Actually, a reference to Piper’s They Live wouldn’t be out of place here, as the project was initially inspired by director Vivieno Caldinelli and writer Matt Watts’ love for John Carpenter’s film. They wondered why Piper hadn’t really done any other genre-mashing films quite like that one, so they decided to write a spiritual follow-up themselves. And after reading it, Piper agreed to take on the role and smack some tentacled bitches around. Is it surprising that almost everyone involved in this film is from Canada?

Caldinelli is known for the sketch series Picnicface and the political satire This Hour has 22 Minutes. Writer Matt Watts is perhaps best recognized as an actor from the Canadian series The Newsroom and Michael: Tuesdays & Thursdays, which he co-created. Heading up the special effects is Steve Kostanski, whom GFR fans might recognize for putting together the low-budget “masterpiece” Manborg, and as a co-founder of the filmmaking collective Astron-6. For executive producers, the short boasts Twitch.com’s Todd Brown (The Raid) and Andrew Rosen (Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy). Synthy instrumental group Voyag3r will put together the score for this one.

The film is currently well on its way to reaching its low $21,000 Indiegogo goal. (The fact that it’s so low goes a long way in making me excited about what this thing will look like.) Check out the promo video below.

We’ve already seen Roddy Piper take on the undead in Pro Wrestlers vs. Zombies, so now it’s time to see him battle H.P. Lovecraft’s most popular being. Most children born on a daily basis don’t have nearly the potential this short film has. Let’s get it made, people.