Birth nameStephen McHattie Smith Birth information3 February 1947, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada BioNo information available

Release Date: May 29
Director: Bruce McDonald
Writer: Tony Burgess
Cinematographer: Miroslaw Baszak
Starring: Stephen McHattie, Lisa Houle, Georgina Reilly
Studio/Run Time: IFC Films, 95 mins.


Talk-radio zombies from Canada
In the wee hours, in the snow-covered Canadian village of Pontypool, DJ Grant Mazzy begins his nightly radio show. The children are asleep, the insomniacs and third-shifters are tuned in, and, if the bizarre reports coming into the station are to be believed, zombies are gradually taking over the town. Mazzy is a deep-voiced, veteran shock jock, a cowboy-hat-wearing troublemaker whose radio show—by his own admission—works best when it pisses people off. As Mazzy explains, a pissed-off listener doesn’t switch stations, plus he might even call his friends and get them mad, too, and when this simple talk-radio strategy of viral anger finds its eerie parallel in a zombie epidemic, Bruce McDonald’s Pontypool begins to throb with horror-tinged social commentary.

Read the full article on pastemagazine.com

Maybe it's that they're Canadian, or that they're promoting a very unusual zombie movie, or just that they're good people, but Bruce McDonald, Stephen McHattie and Lisa Houle are a relaxed bunch of people to interview. I had seen the three of the them the night before at a Q&A after the screening of their film Pontypool, and was mostly hoping to be able to ask some questions they hadn't already heard the night before. Turns out director McDonald started the questioning, asking me about the Flip camera I held in my hand and seeming genuinely intrigued by the technology. I had come prepared to talk about the revolutionary Red camera he used to film Pontypool; he wanted to know about my HD cam the size of an iPod. McHattie and Houle are two of the three main stars of Pontypool, a film that documents a zombie infection ...

Read the full article on cinemablend.com

Though it’s unfairly playing second fiddle to another, higher profile horror movie also hitting theaters this week, Bruce McDonald’s Pontypool offers a classic case study in the genre’s fullest potential. Drenched in atmospheric malaise, it functions on the base visceral level mandatory for any such effort. At the same time, the screenplay by Tony Burgess (based on his novel "Pontypool Changes Everything") unashamedly stabs at sweeping social relevance with a narrative that condemns the bastardization of the English language that’s a regular feature of our twittered, instant messaged lives and the media fed bombast that enables it. The great, criminally underappreciated Stephen McHattie stars as Grant Mazzy, a cowboy hat affixed shock jock who has tumbled from the heights of his profession to its dregs: hosting a morning show in a small, bleak Ontario town. Joining him at work are his producer Sydney Briar (Lisa Houle) and a new assistant named Laurel Ann
Robert Levin

Read the full article on filmschoolrejects.com