By NATHAN DEAL Nathan.Deal@gjsentinel.com
Aug 19, 2026 Updated 2 hrs ago
The Grand Junction-produced film “American Vampires” was supposed to start at 7 p.m. at its premiere on Friday, Aug. 14, but the start time had to be pushed back about half an hour — because the line to get in was still wrapped around the outside of the Avalon Theatre.
Once the film began, a sold-out Avalon crowd of about 1,000 people watched the newest horror-comedy by local filmmaker Hank Braxtan. The film, shot entirely in Grand Junction, elicited reactions at its many local references, from a shot of Mount Garfield to a Main Street hallucination to a scene in the Feisty Pint in which the bartender bemoans complaints about what the city had done to Fourth and Fifth streets.
“It’s the best to grow up here and get to share something like this with your community. It’s all about community. That’s exactly what art is. Art is a shared experience. When you make a movie and put your emotions up on the screen, it’s a shared experience everyone is looking for. Other than concerts, I don’t think there’s a better shared art experience than film. That’s why theaters rule and your couch is lame,” Braxtan said.
“This film in particular, I wrote for this, for a screening at the Avalon. I wasn’t thinking about DVD sales or festivals or anything else. I was just thinking about this night and how fun it is to have the Grand Junction locals come out and see a movie on the big screen here at the illustrious Avalon Theatre, featuring local talent and locations.”
The film’s road to the silver screen was rocky, as a producer’s unexpected exit left the production scrambling and down to about a quarter of its originally planned budget. Braxtan and the crew, largely made up of students enrolled at Colorado Mesa University Tech working for their first professional credit, were able to “barely”, per Braxtan, finish the film. Braxtan, a U.S. Army veteran prior to his filmmaking career, called the process more stressful than basic training or any of his other military experiences.
“Making a movie is rough, especially with little to no budget where everyone’s doing it because they love it. We’re out in the middle of a wilderness preserve at 4 in the morning driving backward in a minivan 40 times to get enough footage for a ridiculous chase sequence that I should have just written out of the script,” Braxtan said.
“I try to describe filmmaking to my friends as starting three businesses at once, doing all the paperwork and all that stuff, and the businesses see you plan 12 weddings that all take place over the course of two and a half weeks, and you have two months to get this all done and prepped and invite everyone, and then, when the weddings are over, you have to get all of the videos together and edit it together, and everyone has to love it, or you’ll never work again.”
However, what ultimately mattered was that the movie was made.
The Daily Sentinel sat down at the premiere with Kevin Brooks, the co-lead who portrays one of the protagonists, and Ruben Pla, who plays the titular bloodsucker. Both actors met Braxtan while he was living in Los Angeles, and both have featured in multiple Braxtan films. Pla has appeared in five Braxtan movies — and is also the godfather to Braxtan’s daughter, who welcomed premiere attendees while dressed like a vampire.
Brooks joked that the two were “lassoed” by Braxtan to film movies in western Colorado.
“I did that first movie here and I fell in love with it. It’s a small mountain town that’s so awesome and fun, and everyone’s very kind, and shooting a movie here is genuinely incredible because no one’s bothered by it and everyone’s actually excited about it,” Brooks said.
“I love the hills here. I’ve been out and about looking for mountain lions,” Pla added. “I haven’t found one — yet — but I love doing it. This is my seventh time coming here, and I love going up and down those hills.”
Brooks describes the film as a “sweet bromance story” about two brothers-in-law — one portrayed by himself and the other by Tarkan Dospil — who unintentionally awaken Pla’s ancient evil. He compared the tone of the film to the 1985 horror-comedy “Fright Night.”
“We both have our specific growth through that situation and bond and find new ways to relate to each other,” Brooks said.
“Then I come in and bite them all,” Pla responded.
Both actors have experience in the horror genre. Pla briefly appeared in the 2010 horror film “Insidious” — making him the second actor from that movie to film a movie in Grand Junction along with Lin Shaye — and has taken on many other roles in the genre. Brooks then explained why horror is a genre that appeals to actors.
“Nothing is more fun than making a horror movie. You get really into it. When Tark and I were doing a specific scene, we got a little overzealous. It’s easy to get into it when you’re covered in blood,” Brooks said. “It’s not like looking at a tennis ball and being told, ‘Imagine that’s a scary monster.’ When you’re covered in blood and have a stake in your hand and you’re doing the thing, it’s easy to fall into it in a great way. No movie is more fun to make than a horror movie or a genre picture or movies where you have to do extraordinary acts.”
All ticket sales benefited the Avalon Theatre Foundation. The foundation’s development director, Matt Thornton, said fundraising efforts like these help fund projects like the Diann Admire Backstage Project, new dressing rooms that will be unveiled to the public in a Sept. 17 ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Dollars from the premiere will go toward the foundation’s next goals, which are to bring in new microphones for live performances and a new projector for film screenings.
Thornton called the premiere the latest example of the Avalon supporting the Western Slope filmmaking community as Colorado as a whole further prioritizes the film industry.
“We’re really tight with the film community. A number of our board members are filmmakers themselves, including Hank, and also film instructors. Before the Junktown Film Festival was our event, it was a sole endeavor by Jeff Gustafson, who’s a film professor at the college. He joined the board. We kind of took that event under our wing. I was a film mentor with the District 51 Film Exposure Program,” Thornton said.
“It’s a small community. We’re super passionate about having a local theater we can call our own, where we can screen our own movies. Being part of this foundation, it all kind of bled together — no pun intended.”
The film — as well as the thematically similar throwback-style advertisements before the film featuring entities like Roice-Hurst Humane Society and First Street Tattoo Parlor, comparable in spirit to the fake movie trailers from the 2007 Quentin Tarantino-Robert Rodriguez project “Grindhouse” — ultimately received positive responses from attendees. “American Vampires” will now seek out film festivals before its digital release.
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