Did you know there was a sequel to the iconic coming-of-age dramedy Stand By Me? And that it was a zombie movie? Well, that's probably because you didn't see it. Danny McBride, he of Eastbound and Down and the upcoming Alien: Covenant, admitted that he filmed an unofficial Stand By Me 2 when he was a kid, experimenting with film, and described it as such:
One of our friends happened to have a video camera in the sixth grade. So that was when we started to make our first film. And it was called Stand By Me 2. It was a sequel. And Ray Brower, the kid who's dead in the first one, comes back as a zombie to kill all the kids that saw his dead body. [Laughs] To get revenge. It was great. It was really fun. We got pretty wild with it. Everyone played a character. I was Gordy. We were shooting my death scene, and one of my older brothers had a car. And I was like, 'Just come at me with the car. Not at a fast speed. I'll jump onto the hood, and it will be fine. Just go slow.' I literally got hit by a car, rolled off the hood, and just limped home for dinner.
Sounds amazing, right? No one thinks that the body of Ray Brower -- the kid who Gordy (Wil Wheaton), Chris (River Phoenix), Teddy (Corey Feldman) and Vern (Jerry O'Connell) trek out to find one afternoon -- would come back to haunt the people who saw his corpse. It sounds morbid. And possibly funny. This is Danny McBride, after all. So, how can we watch Stand By Me 2? I have bad news, as McBride told Stephen Colbert:
I'm the only person who has a copy of it, and no one will ever see it.
That's too bad. But also understandable. Danny McBride was in sixth grade, messing around with his friends. He doesn't need the equivalent of a student film bouncing around. He's too busy promoting major blockbusters like Alien: Covenant, where he plays a spacecraft pilot who goes toe-to-toe with the latest version of the dreaded Xenomorph.
Hear Danny McBride tell the true story of the making of Stand By Me 2 in this full interview with Stephen Colbert:
Stand By Me didn't need a sequel. Alien: Covenant IS a sequel. You can see it in theaters starting this Friday, May 19.
