By Shannon McGrew
In FOR SALE BY EXORCIST, Susan Price (Emily Classen), a savvy realtor and certified exorcist, has spent years flipping haunted houses across the country. From bleeding walls to glowing eyes, every listing is to die for! But as Susan hunts for her own forever home, the ghosts she's evicted return for revenge. Will Susan settle with these vengeful spirits...or could she lose her life along with her down payment?
For the release of FOR SALE BY EXORCIST, Creepy Kingdom's Shannon McGrew spoke with Director Melissa LaMartina. During their chat, they discussed everything from haunted real estate inspirations to the challenges of shooting a mockumentary - and why finding the perfect spooky home is no easy task.
Thank you so much for speaking with me today, Melissa. First, I would love to know how FOR SALE BY EXORCIST came about!
Melissa LaMartina: My husband, Chris LaMartina, co-wrote the movie with our friend, Rob Walker. We started talking about how when you see real estate signs it's always the agent's picture and never pictures of the house they're selling. Chris and I got married about a decade ago, and when we went on our honeymoon in New Orleans, we saw signs on all the houses for sale that told you if the house was haunted. We then went down a path of what does somebody's career look like who specializes in those haunted houses.
Chris wrote the initial draft back in 2017, which had been kicking around for a while. He started to talk to Dread/Epic because he had been on their radar due to WNUF and some of our other projects like Call Girl of Cthulhu. Everybody was looking for the right project to work together on because Dread/Epic doesn't typically do horror comedies, but they were really into his work. They were like, if we're going to do a horror comedy, this is the team we want to do it with.
Once we got our budget and we started seeing the parameters of the sandbox we were in, we would read the script to each other and try to figure out what we could cut. A whole other side story in the script got completely cut. We had a team of paranormal investigators who were brothers, and Susan hooked up with one of them, who came back in the end for the big finale. We pared it down a lot, which was helpful because even when all was said and done, we had like 16 locations. It was a huge undertaking, but we took some time to mold what we had script-wise to the reality of production.
Speaking of Susan, Emily Classen did a phenomenal job bringing that character to life. Can you talk about bringing her on for this project?
Melissa LaMartina: Before I met Chris, my background was mostly in theater. I had done a lot of work on stage with the Baltimore Rock Opera Society. I was an actor, then a director, then a producer, and I was in a few shows with Emily and fell in love with her. She's amazing. Then, she was in our sequel to WNUF - I played a talk show host, like a Ricky Lake-style talk show host, and she was a guest on that show who had fallen in love with a ghost via a spirit board. Essentially, she's cheating on her husband with a ghost, so very Jenny Jones/Ricky Lake topic but spooky. She was amazing and she knocked it out of the park. She also naturally has that Southern accent and really dives into a character, like she's all in and committed to it.
Aside from Emily, I knew many of our other actors from my theater life. With the nature of the production and shooting this in 12 days, and wanting to commit to the bit of it feeling like a mockumentary, feeling like these people are real, I wanted to be able to do those long takes where we could follow a scene. I knew theater actors were going to give me that. They come prepared because you've got to know the whole show from start to finish when you're on stage. The audience is right there. I wanted to recreate that and bring that to the film project.
There are always many unique challenges that come with making a mockumentary or found footage film. What challenges did you face, especially since this movie incorporates numerous locations?
Melissa LaMartina: The locations were a huge challenge. One of the great things about working in Baltimore is that we have such a rich creative community, so we had many people who were more than willing to let us take over their house for a day. The goth couple's house was one of our best friend's houses and they allowed us to take over their living room. The house that the characters that Chris and I play, the succubus house, that's the house of an old bandmate of Chris's. There were a lot of creative community favors called in.
Some of the other big challenges were the retirement community. It was really challenging finding a place where we could be like, hey, can we draw all over the floor even though it might not come off? [Laughs]. The biggest challenge was finding the house by the cemetery. I was so committed to having a house that was actually overlooking a cemetery. Chris was like, we can do movie magic, you can shoot the house this way, and then we'll go to another cemetery and shoot it the other way. I was like, no, I wanted to see the cemetery. I made a Google map of all the cemeteries near houses in an hour and a half radius. I made flyers saying we were making a movie, could we use your house? I probably flyered like 60 houses or something.
This one woman called back and she was like, this sounds interesting! Chris and I went over to meet her and the next thing you know we're just sitting and drinking wine with her. Flash forward three or four weeks later and we have our whole crew and our cast and we all roll up to her house and she's like, our phone numbers are on the blackboard in the laundry room, we'll see you guys later! She just left the house full of strangers [Laughs]. Not only did [the scene] pay off movie-wise, but it was also a wonderful experience to meet this human being who was open to having us come over to shoot a movie at her house.
While location scouting a couple of weeks before production, I looked at this farm where we would shoot a few scenes. The next thing I know, I'm petting a goat born the night before I was there. I'm like, making movies is so cool [Laughs].
Lastly, finding a home can be just as anxiety-inducing as a horror movie. How did you approach blending the supernatural with the more mundane parts of home buying?
Melissa LaMartina: In regards to the supernatural and sort of the mundane aspects of real estate, Susan is committed to finding the right place for her clients and eventually finding the right place for herself because she hasn't focused on that. What's interesting to me and is really compelling about this story is it becomes about finding a place for everyone in the community - living or otherwise - is the quote I put together for the movie. For me, that's really important, especially now in the times that we are living in, having that devotion to finding that place where everyone can be together and have what they need and be thriving, whether they're dead or alive, in this case.
Susan is so convinced she's doing the right thing that she has tunnel vision. She's serving her human clients, cleansing the spirits, and not thinking about how to make space for these people, what is she doing to these other entities? Her willingness to challenge her perspective is really interesting to me too. Part of what makes this so special is that Emily is such a phenomenal actor, and we could dig into those aspects without getting too thematically heavy and obvious. She and I worked so closely together to find that internal life where you sense what's going on with Susan, but she doesn't have to come out and say it a lot. There are times, of course, where she does but we're not belaboring the point.
Fun story, I was doing an interview a little while ago for our public radio station and it ended up calling back this memory of when we bought our house and looked at 11 houses in one day, which I do not recommend [Laughs]. I ended up blending two houses in my mind. When we came to do the final walkthrough of this house, I'm walking upstairs, where there is another staircase to the third floor, where I thought there was a finished attic, which would be a wonderful studio for doing all my art, sewing, and stuff. I was convinced it was this house so I had an internal meltdown when it wasn't, while externally I'm here with our real estate agent trying to act fine like this is exactly the house we picked [Laughs]. So yes, anxiety inducing for sure!
FOR SALE BY EXORCIST will be available for rent or purchase on video-on-demand beginning March 11, 2025.