‘Spaghetti Northwestern’

PALMER — Fans awaiting the sophomore cinematic effort of Chad Carpenter, whose 2015 film “Moose, The Movie” earned a cult following — even in the Lower 48 — will get to see a preview of “Sudsy Slim Rides Again,” followed by a re-screening of “Moose” on Saturday at 6 p.m. at the Glenn Massay Theater in Palmer.

Prior to the 7 p.m. screening of “Moose, The Movie,” the first in more than a year, according to Carpenter, there will be a behind-the-scenes sneak peek at the new feature that’s headed for final editing before a 2018 release. Between the preview and the “Moose” showing, there will be a silent auction of props used in making both movies.

“I’ve got stuff that’s been sitting in my studio way too long,” Carpenter said. “I also have a friend who’s an Elvis tribute artist, so he’ll be performing. He’s changed a few of the songs, so that instead of ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ it’s ‘Moose Suede Shoes’. He’s a really good Elvis impersonator; not one of those tacky ones, and you can get your photo with Sudsy. We’ve kept him under wraps.”

“Sudsy” in the plot of the new film, which took about 70 days to shoot in the Palmer, Wasilla, Sutton and mostly Hatcher Pass areas, is the legendary old mining figure, dead for 100 years, who winds up kidnapped by a couple of villains, who find themselves trapped in the fictional town of “Scratcher Pass.”

“They stumble into a small town that’s only accessible by plane and when they get there they figure out the only thing keeping the town alive was its meager tourist industry based on the display in a gift shop of Sudsy Slim, the most famous residence of Scratcher Pass,” Carpenter said. “A lot of people say (the plot) is kind of like ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ in some ways, but it has more of a western feel.”

Carpenter describes ‘Moose, The Movie’ as a ‘Creature Feature’ and ‘Sudsy Slim Rides Again’ more as a ‘Spaghetti Northwestern.’

“I wanted to do something that mixed a little Alaska history with Hatcher Pass,” Carpenter said. “It’s not by any means based on real Alaska history, but we were able to use Independence Mine and the buildings above Independence Mine.”

Carpenter said he got tremendous support from Parks officials and was able to use property owned by Dan Renshaw to shoot in areas not open to the public.

“We also had access to a really nice mine shaft, which worked beautifully in the film,” Carpenter said. “It had all the moving parts — the lanterns, old barrels, everything is there.”

Sudsy Slim stars Raymond Chapman in the heroic role of the local lawman with Katie Schmidt in the role of the leading lady. Zack Lanphier and Joe Lecompte star as the nefarious villains with a ridiculous plan for escape and wealth, and a number of supporting characters, including Anchorage’s best brotherly comedic tandem of Wayne and Shane Mitchell, known collectively as “Schwayne” to avoid confusion, Carpenter said.

“Every movie we do we want to be bigger, better, faster stronger,” Carpenter said. “In Moose we had a very tiny crew, but we have a much bigger crew in this one, which was hugely fantastic. In fact, most of the budget went just to crew. The camera was 10 times better than the camera we had for Moose, including all the sound and lights.”

While Carpenter aims to continue growing his films bigger and better than the last, he never wants to deviate too far from the original script.

“You don’t want to lose that guerrilla filming thing. By all means this is a very independent film; it’s nothing near Hollywood, nor would we want to do that — that would ruin it,” Carpenter said. “Hollywood can crank out multimillion dollars of garbage. I knew I could make a bad movie for a lot less.”

All tongue-in-cheek humility aside, Carpenter is striving to make movies by Alaskans, for Alaskans.

“Even though Moose did really good outside of Alaska, that was not the goal at all,” he said. “We’re mainly shooting for an Alaskan audience and if it does well elsewhere, fantastic. But we have a good market here, incredibly supportive people, and what we found with the DVD was that people will watch it again and again and would start buying multiple DVDs. It became a gift people would give to people Outside to say, this is what Alaska is about in a weird, quirky way.”

Tickets for Saturday night’s screening are $10 at the box office of the Massay Theater on the campus of Mat-Su College.