Erie community members can help to see the town get overrun with fictional zombies at an upcoming Zombie Crawl event that will be held to help fund an action-comedy movie that will be shot in town.

Michael Freeman, writer, director and producer of “Eerie Town,” said the film is a love letter to the town of Erie, as well as his love for action-comedy movies. The movie is about a man who returns to his home after living in the big city and finds himself having to survive hoards of zombies after a vampire hunt goes wrong.

Freeman said the idea for creating the film came to him when he was at an Erie town event. He said he looked around and thought, “Man, this would be a good zombie town.”

He could immediately picture people running through the streets being chased by zombies through Old Town.

“When zombies rise from the Erie graveyard, people have to run for their lives and shenanigans ensue,” Freeman said.

He said that with the movie taking place in Erie, it only makes sense to involve the community with production, acting and filming.

The Zombie Crawl will take place on Sept. 25 along Historic Downtown Erie. Freeman said he’s hosting the crawl hoping it will be a way for local businesses to help raise funds to produce and make the movie — whether businesses donate a portion of the evening’s profits to the movie or create a specialty product to help promote the movie. Patrons can also meet the cast and crew of the film at the event.

“It’s a way to involve the community and get people downtown,” Freeman said.

After he created a Facebook post, asking residents if they wanted to be zombies in the movie, Freeman said he received a huge wave of interest from the community to act as zombies.

Freeman said that supporting indie movies is a way for people to look at new ideas and support local artists because even something as silly as a zombie comedy requires a lot of hard work from a lot of different people.

“It takes the support of a community to get things off the ground, it takes a small army,” Freeman said.

During the filming, Freeman said that local businesses have invited Freeman onto their property so he can film, and they’ve let him use their equipment for free. He said there is no better feeling than being able to “play pretend” with the community.

Erie businesses can contact Tiffany Freeman at tiffnfreeman@gmail.com to learn how to participate in the Zombie Crawl.

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Originally Published: September 16, 2024 at 7:43 p.m.