Director/Photography – Mark Atkins, Screenplay – Mark Atkins & Jeffrey Giles, Story – Jeffrey Giles & Michael Lurie, Producers – Mark Atkins, Jeffrey Giles, Michael Lurie & Erica Steele, Makeup Effects – Mike Peel, Production Design – Carl Waters. Production Company – Automatic Entertainment.
Feth Greenwood (Leuthar), Vivien Vilela (Badriyah), Lee Bennett (Anzo), Alan Calton (Gabriel), Jason Beeston (Raphael), George McCluskey (Calon), Dylan Jones (Bjorn)
England in the year 1349. As the Black Death scours the land, a small group of soldiers follow the priest Leuthar across the countryside on a quest. All around them, the dead are returning to life and can only be stopped by cutting off their heads. The soldiers are pursued by bandits seeking revenge, while the only hope to lead them out of the valley is a girl that some of the group insist is a witch.
Mark Atkins is usually a cinematographer at The Asylum and has also directed a number of films for them. (See below for Mark Atkins’ other films as director). In the case of Knight of the Dead, Atkins was working for the US-based Automatic Entertainment, another regular producer of low-budget films. With their backing, which appears to be slightly more in the way of budget than The Asylum usually allows, Atkins has travelled to England to shoot in Wales, casting local actors in the roles.
The major influences on the film would have been the mini-spate of mediaeval horror films that came out around 2010-1 with Black Death (2010) and Season of the Witch (2011). Knight of the Dead is essentially a continuation of these but where it gradually becomes apparent throughout that the Black Death is actually a zombie outbreak. This certainly makes for a new and unusual variant on the Zombie Film, even if the film never does too much more with the zombies than that. One of the novel additions to the mix is the priest’s use of the Holy Grail as a potential antidote to the zombie plague – although when employed this never appears to actually have any curative effect.
Almost the entire film has been shot outdoors. Atkins conducts the photography himself and shoots a good deal of Middle Ages grit. Much of the colour palette has been reduced to a grey-green-black look, which creates something quite visually impressive. (And all conducted without using modern digital colour desaturation techniques). Mark Atkins does surprisingly well with the film. The characters are bared and most of the largely unknown British cast give solid performances. Once the zombie action arrives, Atkins delivers it with a vigorous kinetic drive. All in all, I would go so far to call Knight of the Dead Mark Atkins’ best film to date,
As director Mark Atkins has also made Night Orchid (1997), Evil Eyes (2004), Halloween Night (2006), Allan Quatermain and the Temple of Skulls (2008), Dragonquest (2009), The Haunting of Winchester House (2009), Princess of Mars (2009), Battle of Los Angeles (2011), Alien Origin (2012), Sand Sharks (2012), Jack the Giant Killer (2013), Android Cop (2014), Dragons of Camelot (2014), P-51 Dragon Fighter (2014), A Perfect Vacation (2015), Road Wars (2015), Planet of the Sharks (2016), Empire of the Sharks (2017), Jurassic School (2017), 6-Headed Shark Attack (2018) and Monster Island (2019).
Trailer here