Blood Spring: Missouri-Made Supernatural Horror Movie Brings the Ozarks to the Screen
A locally produced historical horror film shot in Perryville, Ste. Genevieve and Marquand showcases Missouri locations, independent filmmaking and local talent.
Locally produced in the 573. Set in the Ozarks. Filmed in Perryville, Ste. Genevieve and Marqaund. Blood Spring — The new locally produced Missouri-made historical supernatural horror, now streaming on Prime.
Shot in the Missouri Ozarks by a local production company, Motion Dog Films (MotionDogFilms.com) located in Farmington. This is the 4th feature film Motion Dog Films has released, leveraging local locations and developing crew and actors to make their low-budget productions look and feel like much larger budgets, thanks to strong relationships with local towns and businesses.
Dual-role actor in Blood Spring Mary Michell plays the family's evil matriarch, Phidora Buel— who was once owned, now the owner.
Local actor Eli Tallent plays post-war Union Major Gould, the provost marshal tasked with stopping the murderous clan.
Independent filmmaker Thomas Smugala and his company of misfits is set to drop two new features in 2026 that refuse to play nice. 2Heads, a comedy-horror, and Blood Spring, a historical horror-thriller, both dig into subjects most studios still treat like live wires: LGBT identity, race, mental fracture, and the specific brand of American craziness that thrives in the heartland.
Smugala, the Missouri-based writer-director behind Interviewing Monsters and Bigfoot (2019), is not soft-pedaling his new films. Both films treat identity, trauma, and cultural fault lines as raw material for genre storytelling rather than careful messaging. Early reactions from festival programmers are positive, and industry readers have already labeled the projects “provocative.”
2Heads weaponizes comedy-horror to explore fractured identity and the public performance of self.
2Heads weaponizes comedy-horror to explore fractured identity and the public performance of self. The film follows characters whose personal and sexual identities collide with small-town expectations, institutional power, and the kind of everyday American madness that rarely makes the news until someone ends up bleeding. It offers no neat affirmation or tidy condemnation. It offers glorious discomfort—2Headsmovie.com.
Watch the trailer for Blood Spring.
Blood Spring goes further back and deeper into the dirt. Set against the historical and mythic landscape of the Ozarks, the film examines legacy, violence, racial memory, cannibalism, family inheritance, and sanity. Time, bloodlines, and the land itself become characters. The result is a historical horror-thriller that treats American history as something still wet and unfinished—BloodSpringMovie.com
Dual-role St. Louis actor Scott Dunn plays the killer Jonas Buel in 1870 and Samuel Buel in modern times.
Mary Michell and local actor Reagan Evans made the perfect match in Blood Spring.
We met up with a talented young woman who played a duel role in Blood Spring. She is super talented and wants more roles as an actor both stage and film. Meet local Cape actor Willow Belle.
An art-fashion shoot with Willow at Fredrock Glamping. Willow tells us about her experience on set —Blood Spring.
My name is Willow Belle. I recently turned 17. I live on my family’s farm with my mom and my golden doodle, named baby. Our house is in a field that is part of a century farm our family owns and has farmed for over a century. My great-grandfather followed in the footsteps of his dad and his family before him. He created a successful farmer out of my poppa. Our family grows corn, wheat, beans, and cotton. My grandparents only live a few minutes away, so I’m always visiting them. As for myself, I like to draw, especially still life, and I like to sing and dance as well. I’m really into singing. I’m a sophomore in high school and a thespian for my high school’s theatre troupe.
Willow has an amazing sense of timing and inner peace in front of the camera on set.
Willow tells us about her duel role in the film.
Stylist and owner of Fredrock, Misty Brown gets Willow ready for the photo shoot. Fredrock is an amazing place in this world—if you like such things.
I really want to be an actor someday because I enjoy the art of acting and theatre. I love putting myself in a different person's shoes and being able to tuck my own problems and my own personality away for a while—there is something wonderful about all of it.
Misty transformed Willow into a natural beauty with minimal makeup—it was a perfect look for a very busy gown.
I’m really excited about Blood Spring being released. It’s so cool to be in a film produced here in Missouri. I played two roles in two different times in the movie. In modern times, I play a sort of bratty smart-aleck kid who had just found a dead body killed by The Poser Killer, the bad guy in the movie. We shot that at the old car at the Artium Hotel in Perryville.
There has to be room in this fake AI world for real human beauty and passion at real places.
In the second role, I play a poor girl in the 1870s who finds a wallet on an old bridge,
and when I give the wallet to the man who lost it, my reward is only to be killed in return—I really loved the 19th-century wardrobe and set in that scene. We shot that on the old bridge in Marquand. I can’t wait to see what my friends think of the movie.
Special thanks to DRESS 2 IMPRESS BOUTIQUE in Farmington for providing Willow's gown and vintage short coat.
You can see the passion for acting in her eyes—it is something you can’t teach.
In her modern-day role, Willow played a bratty kid who found a dead girl.
In her 1870 role, Willow played a helpful orphan girl who helps the wrong man—a super talented young actor.
About the Blood Spring film—In modern-day Perryville, Missouri, a town eerily preserved in history, a feisty Realene Basset, from the wrong side of the tracks, fights to clear her name of murder charges while taking on a family of serial killers that’s been terrorizing Perryville for 150 years. When Realene finds a historic gold and ruby ring, the mesmerizing piece of jewelry unlocks a supernatural link to 1870s post-Civil War America, and the horrific practice of human color-breeding and a family of cannibalistic serial killers led by ruthless matriarch Phidora Buel, whose descendants are still operating today. Blood Spring, a gripping supernatural thriller of survival and vengeance. Stream or buy Blood Spring on PRIME Now.
Now, GET OUT THERE!
Take a hike. Start a business. Take a day trip. Star in a movie. Do anything. Do something. Get out there, that sunken sofa won't miss you—time's a-wasting!
—Pics & Words by T. Smugala.
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