Okies Freak Out Over Horror Movie Trailer

Despite being born and raised in New York City, I am the last person to ever come off as a snooty city slicker. But if this isn't some provincial, backwoods nonsense, then I don't know what is.

Apparently, a horror short subject has been banned from the Bare Bones International Independent Film Festival in Muskogee, Oklahoma due to a viral-marketing style trailer that got town residents in such a tizzy they actually contacted the FBI for fear of a terrorist threat.

Here's a news report showing some of the trailer, and detailing various bits of associated buffoonery:



The ultra-low budget film is called A Beautiful Day, and is put out by Outsider Productions, whose MySpace page you can find here.

As punishment for the scary trailer, Outsider Productions not only had A Beautiful Day booted from the film festival, but all their other entries as well. Producer James Bridges issued an apology, but to no avail.

Look, I'm trying to give everyone the benefit of the doubt here, but I'd be hard-pressed to imagine something like this happening at, say, the Tribeca Film Festival--which actually takes place in a city that was attacked by terrorists. Way to beat those stereotypes, people of Muskogee. It's times like this that I can understand how Orson Welles pulled off that little stunt of his 70 years ago.