"When Stragglers first came to me, I wanted to write a horror movie centered less on gore and special effects and more on suspense, story and characters," says writer/director Dave R. Watkins. "I toyed with the script off and on for a period of about three years."

After working on a few shorts and the public access television show Witch Hunters Extraordinaire, which he also writes and directs, Dave and producers Eric Bomba-Ire and Michael D Friedman decided to shoot a feature. All three of them had scripts of their own but they ended up producing Stragglers for a number of reasons.

"Production costs mainly. The script called for a small amount of locations and a small cast," observes Dave. "We already knew actors who could fit most of the parts. Marketability was another main factor, we figured it would be easier to sell an independent horror movie than one from another genre."

Their plan was to shoot the principal photography in about a week. They made arrangements to film the week of Thanksgiving of 2002. The main location was found, a cabin, at a resort in Dahlonega, GA.

"It was an ambitious plan, but it seemed like we could make it work," Dave recounts.

After casting for the main parts, they started rehearsing regularly, two months prior to the shoot.

"Halfway through the rehearsals, a decision was made to shoot the flashback scenes, which made up about half of the script, hand held and continuous to create a real time effect." Dave remembers.

"Some of them were about twelve pages long, with a lot of movement, and non-stop dialogue," adds Eric Bomba-Ire, who was also the director of photography. "I knew we were raising the bar higher, but most of the actors came from a theater background and that wasn't an issue. The main problem we saw was blocking the scenes with the camera movements."

After discussions between producers, rehearsals were focused mainly on the continuous scenes... conducting them similar to that of a stage production with the presence of Eric moving alongside with the actors.

"That gave us an idea of how to work the scenes," Eric explains. "It was hard in the beginning but as we progressed, I ended up knowing the actors lines and it made blocking easier. I was right there between the actors at all times, to the point that towards the end of rehearsals I was already feeling like part of the cast."

"I'd never gone through that much rehearsal for a film shoot in my life," notes producer/actor Michael D Friedman. "I wasn't sure I was going to be able to keep all the dialogue in my head, but we eventually got the scenes nailed and the cast started clicking."

Trouble began when a few weeks before shooting when an actress playing one of the supporting characters, Heather, dropped out of the cast.

"It seemed like it wouldn't be a major issue to recast an actor who only would have to shoot for two days," Dave recalls, "but even after two auditions and countless phone calls, the part remained open."

Further complications surfaced when the cabin location was lost about a week before shooting.

"There was a possibility that we might be able to get the location the following week, so we made arrangements to do that," he explains.

In the meantime, the producers decided to go ahead and shoot the scenes that didn't take place at the cabin.

"The first shoot, the lab scenes, went relatively well but we were not able to get into the location until about 9 p.m. and wrapped about 3 a.m.," Dave says. "Most of the people involved, including myself, had to be at work the following morning."

A cave was needed for the second scene. When co-producer Ron McLellen went to scout it out, a couple of forest rangers told him they could not shoot there.

"So we ended up making our own cave in a creek bed in the back of Ron's yard in Lula, GA," notes Dave. "It looked surprisingly realistic."

Later that night, a minor incident occurred while shooting the cave scene.

"We had run stingers from Ron's house and we were about four hundred feet into the woods," Dave continues. "We had the scene lit, but everything around us was dark. We were shooting a scene where two actors walked off camera and screamed to indicate that they were being slaughtered. During the last take we suddenly heard a voice yell out, 'You might be able to scream better if I sick my dogs on you!' We stopped, looked around, and didn't think much about it until we began to hear noises in the woods around us. We turned the light and shined them into the woods, but could not see anything. Fearing a possible Deliverance reenactment, we packed up the equipment and got out of there."

After that, things only got worse. The third shoot they ran into the greatest tribulation of all.

The scene: EXT. RIVER - DAY. The scene also included a girl in a bikini and a gun. Unbeknownst to them, the location chosen was part of the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, a national park. In the scene, Michael D Friedman, playing the character of Booth, was the unfortunate actor holding the gun.

"The location was off the path of some hiking trails that were advertised as part of my apartment complex. We assumed we were still on private property," recalls Michael.

"The location seemed secure," notes Dave. "We were deep in the woods and no one else was around so it was shocking when after the second take, we were suddenly surrounded by police officers and park rangers with guns pointed. They yelled for Mike to put down the gun and he quickly complied; yelling that it was a prop gun as he placed it on the ground. The cops immediately secured the area, checked the gun and discovered that it was in fact, a prop gun. The cops laughed lightly about it and left.

"It seemed like the incident was over when suddenly a park ranger stepped out of the woods holding a ridiculously huge gun and told us all to stay where we were. He then began recounting a story over and over about how he came really close to shooting Mike. Pointing out the specific times in which he almost opened fire.

"Since the incident happened so suddenly, Eric did not have time to secure the camera. We looked over and saw that it had fallen over and was close to falling into the river. I told the forest ranger about it and as I walked toward the camera, he lifted his gun and said, 'Tough.' I looked at him and noticed for the first time that he was not quite all there. He seemed a little too trigger-happy and too eager to display his gun. So I sat back down and waited anxiously for the outcome."

Eric adds, "At that point, I kept looking at the camera which co-producer Muta'Ali Muhammmad had just recently purchased and I thought what a pile mess have we gotten ourselves into."

"The Park Rangers took the next few hours, searching us and interrogating us concerning themselves mostly with the African American members of the crew," Dave continues. "The on-edge park ranger continued telling the story about how he almost fired at Mike, until eventually it became surrealistic. Finally they allowed us to pack up our equipment and leave. They cited Mike with disorderly conduct and took the blank gun, which belonged to actor Chris Burns. Luckily Chris was able to get his gun back later.

"When we got back to Mike's apartment, Mike told us that as he was getting the ticket, the park ranger with the huge gun leaned over and said, 'you can tell us now, it's all over, you were making a porno right?' This statement infuriated me. I believe that they could have revealed themselves and told us to stop what we were doing at any time, but they waited until the actress in the scene, who was wearing a bikini, began to put her clothes back on before doing so. By trying to bust us for shooting a porno, they inadvertently put Mike's life in danger."

This was in many ways the turning point in the production. The production seemed cursed.

"I believe that both Mike and I were ready to abandon the project after the incident," Dave remembers. "I have for many years been working on independent movies and productions and I, as everyone else who works with me, have made many sacrifices, but then the question came to me after Mike was almost shot by a forest ranger, is it worth it?"

"It didn't hit me until after I was safely back home, the sheer gravity of the moment," notes Michael. "I really didn't feel like it was worth it to continue."

"For some reason Eric seemed unaffected by the events and determined to finish the rest of the movie," recalls Dave. "So we took his lead and moved on."

"After that ordeal, everything that was being said was doing nothing but breaking our morale," Eric adds. "Yes, we have been having problems since we got into this project; yes, Mike almost got shot, but the most important thing is that the situation didn't escalate to that tragic probability. But what would have become of this project if we had packed up the equipment and let those unfortunate events shut us down and end what we've been working on for months?"

Things got slightly worse before they got better, however. The cabin location was lost again and it became clear that they had to find another location quick or Stragglers would never get shot. The crew began calling cabin resorts in Georgia and surrounding states, most were already booked up.

"Then Eric had the ingenious idea that we should use Ron McClellan's house as the cabin," remembers Dave. "I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of that myself, Ron's house was dressed remarkably like a cabin, and it even had animal heads on the walls. When we approached Ron, who was also part of the cast, he was open to the idea. There was of course the issue of his dog-sicking neighbor, but Ron cleared up the misunderstanding when he talked to his neighbors and they reported to him that it was their daughter's drunken boyfriend. They said that there would be no further trouble from him and there wasn't."

Few shoots were done during the first few weeks of December, but since they had to reschedule a lot of them, many of the actor's schedules had changed dramatically. Then came the weather and soon the Christmas holidays. Most of the shoots were pushed back to January.

"When we were shooting the main scenes during the latter part of January, I felt as though a huge weight had been lifted off my chest. It was then I realized that we were going to finish the movie," Dave remembers.

Ron was able to find an actress, Katy Sulhoff, whom Dave had had worked with before in Ron's movie, "The Middle of Nowhere," to play the part of Heather -- the role they had trouble casting in November and December. "She fits the character perfectly and I was glad to have her as part of the cast," Dave says.

Even though production started on shaky ground, Stragglers took off little by little. Now, with a finished film which took longer than it was scheduled and which breaks the rules of conventional horror flicks, is Dave concerned about Stragglers being accessible to the general audiences and striking a cord between the usual Horror film fans?

"We did not shoot the movie in the small amount of time in which we had hopped," he says, "but I am thrilled with the way the movie turned out, it is a good-looking, well-acted product and I feel audiences will react positively to it. Despite all of the stuff we went through, except Mike almost getting shot, the journey was worth it and I would do it all again."