Anecdotes from the shoot: Mac and I had been getting together to jam and record music in his basement the whole winter of 2005/spring of 2006. We both play guitar though he is much more talented a musician than myself. When we weren't playing music, we were watching movies or talking about movies. And the movies we were watching were slasher movies from the seventies and eighties. Maniac and the tv show Intervention were two influences for sure. We started shooting in July of '06, just before Mel Gibson was arrested. No one involved in the production was paid anything. I spent the money I had on DV tapes, corn syrup, glycerin, food colouring, a plastic gas can, a bottle of bleach, and a knife. Mac chipped in a few dollars for the soup that we used for puke in the movie. I tried to stage most of the violence in kitchens or bathrooms, so we would have an easier time cleaning up afterwards. Twenty year old Steven Kostanski sculpted/painted/applied the gelatin head wound prosthetic he wears in the movie, and animated his face exploding over a few frames of footage. He was working on his own feature, an action-comedy called Love Journey at the time. After shooting the torture scene, Mac, Jolene and I went to a new sushi restaurant, and I ordered the all-you-can eat. It was the worst sushi I've ever had. I also bought a Steven Seagal DVD that day - one of his recent direct-to-video efforts. The movie was finished on October 16, '06. I edited it on my PC with Adobe Premiere 6.5. It premiered at The Winnipeg Short Film Massacre eleven days later taking home third place. -Adam Brooks
Behind-the-scenes pics:    
Quotes: "A Wickedly Straight-faced horror-comedy A series of great performances make this tale darker and funnier with each turn. The callousness of life is never fully flushed, which allows it to dwell in both dimensions of horror and comedy; to which it is affective in both. A great example of clever story writing and a testament to committed performances. Delivered in the same time as a TV show, one gets more story and worth than anything HBO has to offer. A Canadian proves once again that the Great White North has a great attatchment to the macabre and the hilarious. Look for the excellent torture scene that beats out Hostel any day for its genuine sense of terror." -el_phantasmo_1, www.imdb.com
"In particular, watch for Night of the Hell Hamsters, a UK/NZ co-production about demon possessed hamsters coming back from the dead, or Addiction is Murder, a Canadian film that is funny but also 'terribly gruesome.' The second is not only an incredible feat of genre bending, but also budget stretching, costing just $75 to produce." -Liz Guiffre, Drum Media #846,
p.61
"At the other end of the budget scale, Canadian filmmaker Adam Brooks' $75 flick, Addiction is Murder, offers an ultra-violent, but darkly humorous, allegory about addiction. Don't let its low budget fool you: The film's brutal special effects are definitely not for the squeamish." -Dario Fulci, 3D World, Issue
850, Mar 10, 2007, p.60
«Back"No it's not what you think or an advertisement for anti-tobacco companies, it's about something a little more…well, it's murder. And if you think that you have a bad addiction, think again." "Addiction
is Murder (Adam Brooks)
in which a self-help group is visited by a man with an unusual
problem... had both cheerful mayhem and a good ending."
-David Carroll and Kyla Ward,
www.tabula-rasa.info
"Good Lord, hair-raising
sights and sounds."
-George Toles, Writer of The Saddest
Music in the World |
