Development Interviewed in
The Film Journal about developing
A Chronicle of Corpses, McElhinney commented: "I like the horror genre because it is disreputable and anything is permissible. As long as you fulfill certain genre expectations -- or actively don't go in the direction of those expectations -- you have a 'horror film.'
A Chronicle of Corpses appears to both 'embrace and reject conventions' because the movie is ultimately interpretive, impressionistic -- an open text. It is not up for the film (or the film's director) to decide how or what the picture is finally, but for the viewer to work with, and become part of, the text and interface with it in his or her own way."
Fangoria remarked
A Chronicle of Corpses is "History written in blood" and that "
Corpses is a fusion of highbrow and lowbrow aesthetics."
Writing McElhinney has stated that the
A Chronicle of Corpses screenplay, "was pretty set by the time we went into rehearsal (which I'm not sure was a good thing in the end) but Kevin Mitchell Martin who plays Mr. Elliot was actually so in tune with my style for that film and understood his character so deftly that he improv-ed his monologue ("I feel so hungry to remember . . .") right before the woods
tracking shot where his character disappears." The director recalled meeting Dusay: "Marj and I met by chance at the New York-Avignon Film Festival in 1998... I was/am a huge Guiding Light fan and loved her Alexandra Spaulding on the show... Marj had just done Love Walked In and said the
independent film was a nice change of pace from soap work. I mentioned specific scenes from various projects, the way she had played them, and how they impressed me. I believe she was flattered. Finally, I asked if Marj would look at a script in about six-month's time for what was going to be my next movie. Marj said to call her when I was ready and I did."
David Semonin In the memorial,
David Semonin Memory Book (2010), McElhinney shared this about his collaborator who appears as Edward in
Magdalen (1998) and Uncle Grady in
A Chronicle of Corpses (2000). "I met Dave in 1987 when I was nine. I already loved the theater, and had asked my parents to take me to a bookstore that only sold play scripts. We landed at the old Drama Book Store on the second floor of 7th Avenue and 48th Street and their Dave was. I remember asking him for a play – I wanted something avant-garde and provocative -- something along the lines of
Frank Wedekind. Not quite giving me what I wanted, David handed me a copy of his favorite play,
Thornton Wilder’s
The Skin of Our Teeth. We became fast friends and soon no trip to New York ... was complete without a stop-in to see Dave." McElhinney continues, remarking: "As an actor Dave was amazing. I wish we had the chance to work together more. Dave's method was an incredible hodge-podge between total confidence and equally total confusion. Dave feared the spotlight as much as he loved it, and it – and the process -- made him humble. And great. And the pauses! No one this side of John Wayne in a
Howard Hawks movie could take a pause like Dave."
Locations According the movie's credits,
A Chronicle of Corpses was filmed on location in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in July, August and October 1999. Two historic houses were used for the primary location during
principal photography: The Upsala House and The Stenton Mansion. The barn can be seen from Stenton Avenue, just above the intersection of Stenton and East Bells Mill Road. The church scenes were filmed in the Turner Chapel of The First United Methodist Church of Germantown. Additional photography was completed at Asterisk Studies. Exteriors were shot at The Upsala House, in Carpenter's Woods in the Wissahickon Valley Park part of Fairmount Park, and on Burlington Island. == Reception ==