It was done in pursuit of a dream: to carve a niche for themselves in independent filmmaking by making ultra-low-budget horror-westerns.

  The dream, although not yet a reality, has had some life breathed into it. The couple's latest feature, Blood and Lust, has been picked up by Gorevision, a company that distributes films in South America.

  The movie, produced at a cost of $5,500, is about a Transylvanian countess who is resurrected in frontier Texas and stays young by bathing in the blood of young women. The 87-minute film, which is set for a March release, will appear on cable television and in video stores in Argentina and Uruguay.

  "It's a 50-50 contract between us and them - if it makes any money," Richard Catt said. "They do all the advertising and direct sales. We have to send them a sleeve for [videocassette] box covers, a master tape and publicity stills if we have them."

  Although independent movies are gaining popularity, the odds for success are slim, even for so-called low-budget films that cost $20,000 to $2 million to make, said Dave Walker of Houston-based Indie Slate magazine, which tracks independent movie production.

  Only three in 10 low-budget flicks are ever seen by an audience - mostly at film festivals - and only one of 10 sees distribution, he said. That a project such as Blood and Lust was picked up is a rare feat, he said.

  "I doubt that anybody in the industry would believe that the Catts made a film. To them, anything less than $10,000 can't be done. That's less than the snack budget for a week on a big-budget production," Walker said. "But if he can make a sale, more power to him."

  The Catts got into filmmaking after a flirtation with acting, which began in the late 1980s as part of a mock gunfighting team. Later, they appeared in two area TV commercials. Richard Catt took acting classes and said he was an extra in the movie Born on the Fouth of July and in the first episode of the TV series Walker, Texas Ranger. He also appeared in the independent film Blood on the Badge.

  Between takes, Catt watched professional crews work, "to the point where I got in trouble a couple of times." At home, he indulged in his childhood passion - watching horror films.

  "Each time a new video store opens, I hit the horror section," he said. "One day, another store opened and I checked out a slew of them. After I watched a few, it occurred to me that we can do this."

  Thus was born Cattskill Productions, which began work in mid-1993 on its first movie, Frontier Evil. The plot, based on an American Indian zombie who terrorizes bounty hunters and settlers, was largely determined by props from gunfighting skits that the Catts had on hand.

  About 15 people, mostly family members and friends, participated in the three-month project, which was shot mostly on weekend nights for about $3,000. Pay for the cast - which doubled as crew and also built the set - hinged on whether the film made money, which it has yet to do.

  "We used a home movie camera and three clip-on lights from Kmart. We also ran 900 feet of extension cord from the nearest power outlet. A generator makes too much noise," Peggy Catt said.

  "We made the mistake of being under the flight path and near a highway that a lot of trucks use," Richard Catt said. "We also bought unshielded cable. So we also got to hear the pilots and the truckers talking."

  When the Catts pitched Frontier Evil to U.S. distributors, one responded by asking them to add nudity.

  "We do horror-westerns," Richard Catt said. "We were not going to have a bunch of naked people running around just so people will buy it."

  In early 1994, the Catts began filming Blood and Lust near Whitney, Bynum and Brandon in Hill County. This film also had problems - a pivotal actor quit after the first day.

  "We would literally rewrite the script as we drove to the set so we could shoot everything that did not involve that role," Peggy Catt said. "We wrote around it."

  The Catts put the film on the shelf, where it stayed for three years until Richard Catt decided to search the Internet for distributors. When he contacted Gorevision, the company, which is based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, asked to screen the movie.

  "I liked it because it was very ambitious," co-owner German Magarinos said. "It has a very old-fashioned style, which is really hard to find."

  Horror movie became popular in South America in the mid-1980s, when films such as The Toxic Avenger and Night of the Living Dead appeared, Magarinos said. But audiences have grown weary of the standard plots in many large productions, he said.

  "We're not going to get rich distributing gore movies. But there are a lot of fans who like them, and it's hard to get independent films here," Magarinos said. "This is a way to do something cool, and it helps independent movie makers enter the market. We'll see how Blood and Lust works out."