It was a quiet weekday in Mobile, with no external signs to suggest that supernatural horrors were roaming the curtained darkness of the Mobile Carnival Museum, and that the only thing protecting the public from an encounter with madness was the fact that the museum happens to be closed on Thursdays.

Well, none except that one of the cars in the parking lot had a decal on the back window that only fans would recognize as a silhouette from the jokey cult series “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” It was a subtle hint, but it went far to explain why paranormal detective Nick Moon was in the museum and, as usual, in over his head.

The “Demon Squad” gang is at it again.

Back in 2015 or so, a Mobile-based company called Fighting Owl Films shot a microbudget film that ended up being released in 2019 as “Demon Squad.” Co-written by Thomas Smith, who directed it, and Erin Lilley Smith, who had a prominent role and a multitude of backstage jobs, It starred Khristian Fulmer as Moon.

Two years later, something crazy happened: the Fighting Owl squad learned (through a random YouTube comment) that their film was going to be showcased by “MST3K.” This was potentially a mixed blessing: The show’s schtick is built around making fun of horror and sci-fi movies whose artistry falls short of their ambition. But on the upside, “MST3K’s” humor tends not to be mean-spirited, and it’s a long-running franchise with a large and devoted audience.

In June 2022, “Demon Squad” aired as part of the show’s 13th season, meaning that the film got exposed to a lot of new viewers. (Note: Both “Demon Squad” and the entire “MST3K” episode built around it can be seen on YouTube, among other streaming outlets.) Naturally, that kind of exposure seemed to open the way for a crowdfunded sequel. An initial Kickstarter drive fell well short of its ambitious $125,000 goal, but a second attempt blew past its $20,000 target and collected $30,000.

The resulting project will be titled “Demon Squad: Tooth & Claw.” Filming has been under way for a while now, and Thomas Smith said this day at the Carnival Museum represented Day 7 of an anticipated 17 days of filming. Smith had a couple of quick scenes that he’d originally envisioned as taking place in a generic alley.

But getting permission to shoot in the Carnival Museum was a substantial upgrade: Instead of trash cans and puddles of who-knows-what, he got a hallway lined with mannequins in wild costumes. Artifacts lending to the atmosphere included a positively Satanic-looking wooden goat commissioned by the Strikers mystic society in 1870.

The first scene witnessed by a reporter presented a textbook example of low-budget filmmaking’s practical side. One image Smith wanted was of a demon peering out of a shadowy doorway that Moon has just passed through. Smith said that the hellish entity is nicknamed Corky. “He’s not really a bad guy, he’s just looking for his missing pet,” he said.

To get the shot, the director himself donned the tight-fitting horned mask, which rapidly began to fill with sweat even in the cool museum environment. “Our actual [actor for] this monster is from Atlanta and he’ll be down later,” said Lilley Smith, “but it seems silly to have him come all the way down here for like one close-up.”

With Smith in position, director of photography called to Caleb Lockwood, another key member of the production crew. “Hey, Caleb,” he said. “Would you come over here with your cell phone, please? I just need you to light him for a second so I can make sure he’s in focus.”

Lockwood’s phone provided the necessary light, a cost-free but undeniably elegant way of getting it done. After the shot, Smith was very happy to get out of the mask. Lilley Smith had dabbed dark paint on his face, so that the skin around his eyes didn’t show; now it looked like he was wearing mascara. There was, to be honest, some debate about whether or not to remind him to take it off.

“He looks like one of the guys who has a goth girlfriend and he’s trying to be goth for her,” said Jessica Salter, dressed in black as a scary version of Joe Cain’s Merry Widows, a fixture of Mobile’s Mardi Gras traditions.

“He’s trying so hard,” said Lilley Smith, enjoying the mental image of the pseudo-goth boyfriend. Ultimately, she found a makeup wipe for her husband.

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For the next shot, they moved to an adjacent room. After consulting his book of planned shots, then said to Fulmer: “So we’ll have you walk in here looking around, step on something squishy, look down and then go ahead and kneel down.”

That description focused tightly on Fulmer’s body movements, but the ensuing preparations revealed that a lot more was going on in the scene. For starters, the “something squishy” was blood, and Lilley Smith began laying out pieces of resin that looked like little puddles and splashes of blood but wouldn’t soak into the museum carpet like liquid fake blood.

She was arranging them artfully around the real object of Moon’s attention, a body. Or rather, half a body. The victim, known to the crew as Skip, was in bad shape. With the blood in place, Lilley Smith began painting portions of Skip’s much-damaged anatomy with a liquid to make the carnage look a little juicier. In Hollywood, they probably use something expensive, formulated just for the purpose; this, Lilley Smith explained, was a water-based personal lubricant.

Meanwhile, just outside the room, Skoda and Lockwood were hanging panels and tarps on lighting stands, in order to create a narrow shaft of light shining down the hallway. The desired effect was that as Salter crept across the hallway, sneaking toward the preoccupied Moon, she would pass through the light briefly as she moved from one shadow to another.

The preparations were so detailed that the actual shot seemed almost anticlimactic. After reviewing a take and finding it satisfactory, the crew broke for a lunch of Subway sandwiches.

This day of work, he said, probably would nail down 10 minutes or less of footage. Plans call for filming to be done in June, and the hope is that the finished product will be ready for distribution at the beginning of 2025.

As for what that distribution might look like, that’s still anyone’s guess. “Right now it’s like the wild West,” he said. “People are figuring it out.”

“The small guys like us, we’re not going to make a dime out of any of it,” he said. “We’re really not. We’re used to that by now.”

That glorious “MST3K” exposure hasn’t made micro-budget filmmaking less of a challenge, he said, though the Kickstarter funding allows Fighting Owl to proceed with a lot more confidence.

“It’s been more difficult this go-round to find good locations,” Smith said. “I don’t know why exactly. I think the last time we shot, it was around that big film boom when some of the Nicolas Cage stuff was coming … and I feel like maybe that helped make it a little easier. But since there hasn’t been as much lately, I feel like people are maybe a little bit more hesitant.”

Overall, he said, Fighting Owl’s moment in the “MST3K” spotlight was a positive thing.

“We’ve taken the constructive criticism or constructive feedback people had and took it into consideration and looking at things a little differently,” he said. The aim is for the “Demon Squad” sequel to give people a little more of what they liked, and a little less of what the “MST3K” jokesters found most amusing.

“We made a lot of friends out of it,” he said. “People have been really nice. We got some good feedback and it was a good experience. It was really fun.”

He paused.

“We’re trying to, you know, avoid having this movie end up there,” he said.