For those in midcoast Maine who have ever wanted to see an action-comedy film shot in their backyard and produced in the style of a 1970s martial arts picture, times are good.
Matt Enos, the Searsmont-based creator of the surreal comedy web series “The Slim Duffy Show,” has now produced a feature film that’s making its big screen debut at the Colonial Theatre in Belfast Tuesday evening.
Called “Battle Legends: The Legend of the Battle Master,” it follows the character of Jim Duffy after he loses the title of best fighter in the town of Duffyville to local scoundrel J.T. Smash, forcing Duffy to try to regain it.
The film features the characters from “The Slim Duffy Show”: Slim Duffy, his brother Jim, and J.T. Smash, among others. In an interview, Enos said that it’s shot and produced in the comically action-packed style that he imagines the characters would have chosen.
“Get, you know, a couple bucks and like an old, VHS camcorder or whatever, and make this really cheesy action movie, of course,” he said, reciting what their thought process would have been. “Because in their minds, they would be action heroes, right?”
This isn’t Enos’ first film in the Slim Duffy universe, nor his first feature-length film, he said. This one came after he made a trilogy of short films based on the web series a few years ago and decided to expand one of them into “Battle Legends.”
Enos filmed “Battle Legends” in 2022, using locations throughout Waldo County, where he grew up with his creative partners and high school friends, Mike Urchin and Cade Nickels. They star alongside him in the production.
Though Enos’ love for film began with horror movies he watched in childhood, his tastes have led him to additional genres, including comedy. While he spends his days working at Liberty Graphics, the printed T-shirt company, he said film is his passion.
“I started making movies because I was just a huge fan of George Romero, John Carpenter. It was mostly horror films that got me into filmmaking initially when I was a kid,” Enos said. “The first few years I was making movies, and all my movies were just rip-offs of their movies. And then I eventually got into some other stuff.”
In a callback to his love for older movies, Enos spent a year editing “Battle Legends” to make it seem like it was shot on an actual film, rather than on the digital cameras they actually used. To further the effect, the team dubbed over the dialogue — deliberately doing a bad job of it.
Enos said when they started filming, he didn’t even have a complete script, and the group took its time to create a story that featured the characters they’ve developed in the five years of making “The Slim Duffy Show.”
Since the group already had film and editing equipment, their budget was only about $2,000, Enos said. But mostly, he’s just excited to see his work on the big screen.
“We knew that if we did do a movie, then what better place to show it than our hometown theater where we’ve grown up going?” Enos said.
For those who can’t get enough of the Duffy brothers and J.T. Smash, Enos expects to produce another movie in their universe, with filming set to start this summer. This time, it’ll be a horror exploitation film, he said.
While he doesn’t want to spoil anything about the next movie, he said he’s not quite sure a sequel to “Battle Masters” would work. He hasn’t ruled it out, though.
There will be a single showing of “Battle Legends: The Legend of the Battle Master” at the Colonial Theatre on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. The filmmakers will do a roundtable after the show to discuss their approach and production style. The film is also out on Blu-Ray.
