Black Eyed Susan: Scooter McCrae wraps production on darkly erotic sci-fi film starring Damian Maffei

Scooter McCrae is a name that will always catch my attention, because he and his feature directorial debut Shatter Dead seemed to be getting a lot of coverage in the pages of Fangoria magazine back in the early ’90s. He made his second feature, Sixteen Tongues, in 1999 – and now, more than twenty years later, Deadline reports that he has finally gotten a third feature through production. The latest Scooter McCrae film is a “darkly erotic sci-fi” project called Black Eyed Susan, starring Damian Maffei of The Strangers: Prey at Night.

Deadline notes that Black Eyed Susan was one of the first projects to secure a SAG-AFTRA interim agreement when the strike got started. Shot on 16mm film, it centers on Derek, who after finding himself desperate for work, accepts a job replacing his recently-deceased friend at a tech startup. Continuing to develop the company’s innovative project means working intimately with Susan, a bleeding-edge BDSM sex doll meant to receive and appreciate punishment as an integral part of her evolving AI. Derek will soon test the limits of his own desires and explore the nature of man and woman, pleasure and pain, and life and death in a morally uncertain future world.

Maffei plays Derek, while newcomer Yvonne Emilie Thälker takes on the role of Susan. Marc Romeo (The Breakup Artist) and former WWE wrestler Scott Fowler (The Murder Tapes) are also in the cast.

Black Eyed Susan is a co-production between Not the Funeral Home (the company responsible for the Shudder streaming series The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs), Little Cannonballs, and the recently-launched Vinegar Syndrome Pictures. The film was produced by Justin A. Martell, Aimee Kuge, Seager Dixon, and Maureen Costello.

Italian composer Fabio Frizzi is providing the music for the film. This is the second time McCrae and Frizzi have worked together, as they previously collaborated on the 2015 short Saint Frankenstein.

The filmmakers expect Black Eyed Susan to be released sometime in 2024.

Does Black Eyed Susan sound interesting to you? Have you seen Scooter McCrae’s previous films? Let us know by leaving a comment below.