'Lucifer's Unholy Desire' Headed to Film Festivals

Filming for North Strabane newspaper publisher-turned-screenplay writer Cody Knotts wrapped up last month, with post-production scheduled to be complete as early as this fall.

Knotts, the two-time Republican state House candidate who now publishes The Weekly Recorder newspaper, said a trailer of the movie will be presented next weekend at the Pittsburgh Horror Film Festival—where he hopes to get people buzzing about “Lucifer’s Unholy Desire.”

He has described "Lucifer's Unholy Desire" as a Christian horror film that deals with possession and ultimately, redemption.

“I’m in a quandary,” he said when asked what comes after that. “We are still deciding, ‘Do we do Sundance, or don’t we do Sundance?’”

Knotts said there are five major film festivals he and investors are considering, and they are still wading through the stipulations inherent to each of them.

But he is confident of this: He won’t have any trouble finding a distributor for the $24,000 film—especially if reaction to the trailer is any indication.

“The response has been overwhelming,” Knotts said of the trailer, which has been viewed more than 500 times since being posted on YouTube. “They say, ‘Wow. That’s so much better than I thought it would be.’ And I say, ‘Uh, yeah!’”

And while he admits some people took offense to the strong sexual themes in the movie, Knotts said the trailer gives people a more clear, in-depth look into the film—and its message.

He said lead actress Emily Cordes, who plays Susie, a college-aged teenager possessed by a demon and trying to seduce a minister played by Knotts, helpsconvey some of the deeper archtypical themes in the movie.

“She brings out those deep desires that everybody has but nobody wants to talk about. I’m in a very ‘no bull(expletive deleted)’ stage of my life right now,” he said. “And I like the idea of a movie about both stark Evil and Good—even if Good has problems.”

And he said in the case of “Lucifer’s Unholy Desire,” even the worst-case scenario isn’t all that bad.

“You can do self-distribution successfully,” he said. “It takes a lot of hard work, but it can be done. ‘Billy Jack’ did it in the ‘70s.”