Scooter McCrae, the director known for cult classics like “Shatter Dead” (1994) and “Sixteen Tongues” (1999), has successfully completed filming his third feature film, titled “Black Eyed Susan.” The film has now entered the post-production phase.

“Black Eyed Susan” boasts a stylishly minimalistic, low-fi aesthetic within the realm of erotic science fiction. The movie was shot on Super 16mm film in various locations, including Brooklyn and Upstate New York. The cast includes Damian Maffei (known for “The Strangers: Prey at Night” and “Wrong Turn”), Marc Romeo, and former WWE Superstar Scott Fowler. Making her feature film debut is model Yvonne Emilie Thälker, who plays the titular character.

The film’s storyline follows Derek (played by Maffei), a man in desperate need of employment. He accepts a job offer to replace his recently deceased friend at a tech startup. His role involves working closely with Susan (Thälker), a cutting-edge BDSM sex doll designed to embrace punishment as an essential aspect of her evolving artificial intelligence.

As Derek becomes more deeply entwined in this unique project, he begins to test the boundaries of his own desires and explores complex themes such as masculinity and femininity, pleasure and pain, and life and death in a morally ambiguous future society.

McCrae, recognized for his previous shot-on-video (SOV) horror and sci-fi films like “Shatter Dead” (1994) and “Sixteen Tongues” (2003), expressed his excitement about shooting “Black Eyed Susan” on film stock. He commented, “My so-called ‘career’ seems to have been built upon shooting on whatever format is least fashionable at the time, hence shooting on analog and digital video when film ruled the Earth, and now shooting film stock while the rest of the world has comfortably settled into digital capture mode. I guess I’m only comfortable when I’m an iconoclast.”

Additionally, “Black Eyed Susan” marks McCrae’s second collaboration with the legendary Italian composer Fabio Frizzi, renowned for his work with fellow countryman Lucio Fulci. Frizzi is best known for his contributions to horror classics such as “Zombie,” “The Beyond,” and “City of the Living Dead.” McCrae and Frizzi previously worked together on the award-winning 2015 short film “Saint Frankenstein.”

McCrae shared his enthusiasm for working with Frizzi again, stating, “I think the driving force behind wanting to make another movie at all was to have another chance to work with Maestro Frizzi. I’m incredibly lucky to count him not only as a friend but a collaborator, and the music he conjured for ‘Saint Frankenstein’ was so hauntingly beautiful that I wanted another opportunity to create more sonic magic together.”

“Black Eyed Susan” is a co-production involving Not the Funeral Home (known for “The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs”), Little Cannonballs, and Vinegar Syndrome Pictures (New York Ninja). The film’s production team includes Justin A. Martell (“Subspecies V: Bloodrise”), Aimee Kuge (upcoming “Cannibal Mukbang”), Seager Dixon, and Maureen Costello.