Take wrestler-turned-actor The Rock, relocate him to Guadalajara by way of northern Ontario, and divide his fee by about 10,000 (that’s a guess) and you’ll get Ian Hodgkinson, better known to Mexican wrestling fans as El Vampiro Canadienese.

He may not be a big name at home, but Hodgkinson ‘cannot take one step down the street without getting mobbed’ by fans south of the border, says producer Robert Menzies, who recently put the Thunder Bay native in the middle of two movie projects: a documentary about his life and the low-budget actioner The Dead Sleep Easy. The latter has played at small movie houses in Toronto and Ottawa, and is booked mid-March at Cinéma du Parc in Montreal. It’s also due at the Fantasia fest later this year.

The picture, produced by Menzies’ Zed Filmworks in Ottawa, shot in Mexico for $20,000, with 31-year-old Hodgkinson playing to his strengths as a wrestler who falls in with the mob and an immigrant smuggling ring. The cast is rounded out by lesser- and unknowns including Martin Kove, Talia Russo and Phil Caracas, seen previously in 2001’s Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. (A ‘what the hell?’ moment in Canadian film if there ever was one.)

The Dead Sleep Easy, like JCVH, comes from writer Ian Driscoll and director Lee Demarbre of Odessa Filmworks. Driscoll knew Menzies from previous work in the advertising biz, and brought him on board for Dead. Driscoll and Demarbre have turned out a few other B movies – Harry Knuckles and the Treasure of the Aztec Mummy, for one, going back to 1998.

These titles bring to mind this year’s Slamdance festival, where the Ottawa-shot and like-minded Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer was sold for the ‘mid six figures’ to Anchor Bay Entertainment. So what is it about Ottawa and B movies?

‘It’s true, we do have that reputation,’ says Menzies, laughing. ‘We’re kind of detached from the filmmaking community. We do what we want to do.’ That, he adds, is also the philosophy of Zed.

Demarbre is directing the documentary about Hodgkinson, which will take a run at this year’s Hot Docs fest.

Zed, meanwhile, is moving forward on Colour It Blood Red, a horror homage to Herschell Gordon Lewis, a cult director with a grindhouse résumé (She-Devils on Wheels) going back to the ’60s.