Byline: WALT BELCHER
By WALT BELCHER
TAMPA -- Getting attacked by bats was a snap compared with being
dead, says a young actor from the Tampa Bay area who makes his
TV debut tonight in the CBS movie "Vampire Bats," starring Lucy
Lawless.
Arnie Pantoja, 20, who plays a college student and victim of a
mutant bat attack, said he spent hours in makeup and had an
intense scene in which he pretended to fight off bats in a
Louisiana swamp.
"But the hardest thing was to stay perfectly still while playing
a corpse in the morgue," he said. "If you move a muscle or take
a breath, it ruins the whole scene."
Pantoja is one of four actors from the Tampa area who have
significant roles in the movie, which was filmed in New Orleans
and Nova Scotia.
Pantoja; Andrew Matthews, 21; Brandon Rodriguez, 20; and Bobby
Campo (billed as Bobby Camposecco in the film), 22, are close
friends and fellow students in an acting class at Independent
Castings, a casting agency and acting school in Tampa.
In the film, Lawless ("Xena: Warrior Princess") plays their
biology professor. She reprises her role as Maddy Rierdon, a
sexy scientist who battled mutant grasshoppers in CBS' "Locusts"
last spring.
In the sequel, set a few years after the locust attacks, Maddy
has moved to Louisiana with her husband (Dylan Neal) and their
two daughters.
Brett Butler plays Lawless' sister-in-law, and Timothy Bottoms
is mayor of the town invaded by bats. Craig Ferguson, of CBS'
"The Late Late Show," has a small role as a fisherman.
The four lads from the Tampa Bay area say the movie was a great
adventure.
Not only did they get to hang out in New Orleans with "Xena"
while earning their Screen Actors Guild union cards, but they
also faced the wrath of Hurricane Katrina, evacuating at the
last minute.
"It was kind of crazy with the hurricane coming," Pantoja said.
"We all piled into a little BMW and headed for Texas." Other
cast members ended up in Baton Rouge.
"The whole experience was amazing, and we got paid," said
Rodriguez, a graduate of East Lake High School in Tarpon Springs
who left Florida State University after one year to pursue an
acting career.
These four friends got the roles through their agents with help
from Independent Castings owner Kathy Laughlin, an acting coach
and casting director. Laughlin said each of them is talented
enough to succeed. All plan to relocate to Los Angeles soon.
"They all drove up to New Orleans together for the audition on a
wing and prayer, and they were so broke that they all stayed in
one hotel room and were horribly uncomfortable," said Lawless,
who predicts that they have a future in films and television.
"The director [Eric Bross] loved them and cast them because they
had such an obvious camaraderie, which was a great fit for this
film," she said in a recent telephone interview.
Rodriguez and Pantoja were classmates at East Lake. Campo is a
graduate of Seminole High School. Matthews grew up in Orlando
and only recently moved to Tampa to take Laughlin's courses.
"This bat movie is the biggest thing that we've done so far,"
Campo said.
Campo said the four worked together on "99," a low-budget
independent film shot in Tampa. "It was about a guy whose goal
was to have sex with 100 women," Pantoja said.
Friendship Translates To Screen
Rodriguez said they jumped at the chance to work with Lawless on
a film that will be watched by millions.
"She was really cool, and we learned a lot," Pantoja said.
In the film, Pantoja's character gets killed early. Campo's
character meets his fate much later. "I end up face down in a
pool," he said.
The characters played by Matthews and Rodriguez survive.
"Those four brought a youthful enthusiasm that inspired all of
us," Lawless said. "They were grateful for the opportunity, and
even though we were working in sweltering heat and mopping our
brows, they came in all bright-eyed and gave us all a lift."
She said the film is a throwback to escapist 1950s horror
flicks.
It has computer-generated killer bats; screaming, bloody
victims; and coeds in skimpy outfits.
"It's just fun," she said. "The film is perfect for Halloween."
Lawless, 37, said her family (husband Rob Tapert and three
children) had been with her at a rented New Orleans home, but
they left early in the production.
She said she bonded with the younger actors and even went out
and shot pool with them. "They were kind to take an old lady
out," she said.
Pantoja said they had a lot of fun on the set.
"Eric, our director, likes to play pranks, and when we were
going to do the morgue scene, he got me good," Pantoja said.
The scene was filmed in a real morgue. It was supposed to be
empty, but when the director pulled out the drawer where Pantoja
was to play a corpse, there was a body wrapped in a sheet.
"Eric was acting like he was mad, and suddenly the body jumped
up. It was Brandon!" Pantoja said.
Lawless said these cut-ups went too far at one point and she had
to scold them when they were goofing off during one of her
scenes.
She cut them down by saying she might as well be acting with
"two tennis balls and a stick."
"I felt it was important for me to get their attention and rap
their knuckles, because I really liked them and didn't want them
to get away with shoddy behavior," she said.
Escape From New Orleans
All the fun in New Orleans came to an end when, with one week of
filming left, Hurricane Katrina was coming up the Gulf.
"I was going to ride it out," Lawless said. "It seemed very
adventurous ... besides, a lot of people depend on you for their
living. You can't just leave."
But the producer decided to call it quits on the Sunday before
Katrina hit. Unable to get a flight out, most of the cast and
crew piled onto a bus headed for Baton Rouge.
"We left in controlled panic, with thousands of people on the
road," Lawless said. "I saw thousands of people just walking the
streets with no options. They couldn't leave, and all I could
say was, 'Please, God, let them be all right.' "
Lawless ended up at a bed and breakfast in Baton Rouge. "That
family took in 40 people, and they didn't know who we were," she
said. "The people of the South are amazing and so generous."
The entire cast and crew eventually resumed work in Nova Scotia,
where the production company was just finishing another CBS
film, "The Hunt for the BTK Killer."
Lawless said she was "bummed out" for a month after Katrina.
"A lot of places that I dearly loved in New Orleans were
destroyed," she said.
She said that, for a while, she felt that making a fluffy bit of
entertainment wasn't important.
"But then I came to a place of peace with myself and decided
that giving some people entertainment is enough," she said.
(CHART) TV PREVIEW
Vampire Bats
WHAT: A horror movie starring Lucy Lawless with four actors from
a Tampa acting class
WHEN: 9 tonight
WHERE: CBS
GRADE: C