Award-winning co-creators of short horror film Vagrant, director Ben Trandem and writer John Ungaro, are teaming up again for Basher, a “balls to the wall” short horror film featuring a homicidal baseball mascot taking a swing at a group of townies in their local dive bar.
The hit project takes bat this week with the launch of a Kickstarter campaign, which is live now, offering fans the opportunity to not only back the slasher film with a myriad of reward options, but also take a swing at raising the brutality levels in the film by unlocking stretch goals. Fans who like the unhinged gruesomeness of Terrifier, but also a good old-fashioned Desperado-level bar fight, will love this curveball horror film.
In Basher:
“A former player turned burnout, nicknamed ‘Beefeater’, never made it to the majors. The only way he can stay connected to the great American sport of baseball is by being the local team’s mascot—Swishy The Squid. Unwilling to witness a new young talent break his cherished Cape Cod League record in person, Beefeater retreats to a dive bar where he gets loaded on booze and drugs to cope. However, this narcotics cocoon is shattered when Beefeater, along with some townies, becomes trapped in the bar with a masked maniac in the team’s old mascot outfit—Basher. This homicidal killer will go through anyone, like a wrecking ball, to get his pound of flesh. And Beefeater just may be more connected to this killer than he knows.”
Watch the first bloody teaser below:
The tone and feel of Basher can be described by the look of the villain himself: an encapsulation of decaying Americana. The vibes are both nostalgic and sinister in the zone that the film occupies. While a number of the slasher greats, like Scream and Halloween, have been an influence on the production, Basher is also inspired by action films. An idea that went into the writing of the script was to make a horror movie version of the iconic opening shootout in Desperado. So, the short film will be a confluence of foreboding 80s slasher atmosphere and explosions of rip-roaring action, similar to early Sam Raimi films.
Trandem and Ungaro have also been working with Special FX Lead Lawrence Mercado, a Makeup/Special Effects Makeup artist who is known for his work on The Terminal List, A Quiet Place 2, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and American Horror Story:1984, the latter for which he received an Emmy Award nomination. The team is bringing together their expertise across horror, videography, and special effects to knock Basher out of the park.
“Kickstarter is the perfect breeding ground to bring our monster Basher to life,” said Trandem. “Backers aren’t just viewers. They’re supporters who become an integral part of our team from the start. That community aspect inherent with Kickstarter fully allows for that level of co-ownership of this rad new slasher icon.”
“There’s baseball dramas, baseball comedies, baseball romance, baseball thrillers, but there’s no baseball horror,” said Ungaro. “So we can do something unique and different with the horror genre, and there was no hesitation for us that Kickstarter is the perfect home for our bloody slugger.”
The Basher Kickstarter campaign runs from now until September 21, 2025.
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