Interviews

If you're a fan of Tooth & Nail, one of the better selections After Dark Films has picked up for their past Horrorfest slates, take notice: director Mark Young has a new film on the horizon that you should keep an eye out for. The Killing Jar, starring Michael Madsen, Harold Perrineau, Amber Benson, Kevin Cage, Jake Busey, and Danny Trejo will be making its way to theaters in New York and LA this Friday, March 19th, with 7 other markets to follow later.

Horror Squad recently got a chance to volley some questions off of Young regarding The Killing Jar, which is about a handful of diner patrons held hostage by a psycho, only the psycho might not be as dangerous as the secret one of the patrons may or may not be hiding. Don't worry, this is all spoiler free.

Horror Squad: I'm curious where your starting point for The Killing Jar was in regards to the setting. Did you know you wanted to make a film set in one location and then wrote around that? Did you know that you wanted to tell this story and then decided it would work best set in one location?

Mark Young: I had this story in the back of my head; a handful of ordinary people trapped in a roadside diner by a mysterious man with a shotgun - sort of an Edward Hopper painting gone berserk. I had limited access to funds and a paltry budget, and knew intuitively that shooting in a single location would translate into an economical production. So I wrote to that. Midway through the writing process, I really started to embrace the novelty that the audience's point-of-view never leaves the diner. It adds to the claustrophobia.

I don't care much for Feast and I'm not a fan of the Saw series but writer Patrick Melton and co-writer/director Marcus Dunstan's The Collector is definitely my cup of team and Melton recently spoke with Dread Central about the possibility of a sequel to the home invasion horror flick. He also chatted with Dread about Saw II, 3D technology, the Oscar's awkward nod to horror films and more.

The duo is penning the script for the latest installment in the Saw series (lucky number 7) and director Kevin Greutert is halfway through principal photography after a studio debacle where Lionsgate went head-to-head with Paramount and exercised an option in Greutert's contract to force him off Paranormal Activity 2 and back to the Saw series. Adding insult to injury, this happened literally a few weeks before filming. What kind of film can you expect when the helmer has been unwillingly plopped into a chair just days away from shooting? Melton is keeping the faith:

" ... If anyone can do it, it's Kevin. He's been involved in every single Saw movie, and he directed the last one so he knows the limitations of the crew and the limitations of the resources, and so he's been able to adapt pretty quickly, and it's looking good. Because we are playing with the idea that this may be the last Saw movie and we are trying to wrap things up, it's made it a ton more ambitious."

Filmmaker Richard Ledes and co-producer Lila Yomtoob are part of the team behind Rot & Decay Films and a new short, Haiti and Horror Movies. You can watch the six-minute video about the influence of Haitian culture on horror films after the jump.

In the wake of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, Ledes explains in the video that he became conscious of a special connection to Haiti as a director about to make a horror movie. The director is talking bout his upcoming feature, Foreclosure, which tells the story of a broken family trying to stay together while a curse and the ghosts of a haunted house try to tear them apart. In Haiti and Horror Movies, Ledes details several films that have had a relationship to Haitian culture -- in particular, the reimagining (and often misrepresentation) of Voodoo. Ledes goes on to describe his amazement that the horror media was not discussing this subject and was shocked that the only person who was making the horror and Haiti connection was Televangelist Pat Robertson, who has been very vocal about making "demonic" connections to the Haitian people.

You can learn more about Ledes' new feature, Foreclosure, on the fim's official website. Hit the jump to watch the Haiti and Horror Movies short and read my recent interview with the director.

Chiller Theatre is hosting the Italian Invasion II in Parsippany, NJ for the April 16-18 horror convention and have lined up a trio of directors who Italian horror enthusiasts will be foaming at the mouth to see. Ruggero Deodato (Cannibal Holocaust), Sergio Martino (Torso) and Lamberto Bava (Demons) will all be appearing at the fiendish gathering along with a slew of other horror greats.

Joining the directors will be actors Francesca Ciardi and Carl Gabriel Yorke (Cannibal Holocaust), Geretta Geretta (Demons) and Irene Miracle (Inferno). You won't find the splatterific trio of helmers together very often so this is a rare treat for fans of the genre -- making this an event you won't want to miss.

I recently had the opportunity to interview Demons actress Geretta Geretta, who played a netherworldly creature set loose in a movie theater in Lamberto Bava's cult classic. Get to know her better after the jump.

By William Goss

Several journalists were invited to the Chicago-based set of Platinum Dunes' remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street last June, and at this point, we're all standing in the trailer where an uncomfortable Jackie Earle Haley has been sitting for the better part of what will take more than three hours.

"We've gotten [the process] down to three hours and twenty [minutes]," said make-up artist Andrew Clement. "Every day, we shave a couple minutes off of it. It had started at six hours; we were working it all out, didn't have the coloring and all of our choices done, so it was just seeing what it was all about."

When asked if he ever wanted to just run around the neighborhood with the make-up on, the future Freddy Krueger said no. "There is a strong temptation to just rip it off my face, though."

Timothy Olyphant seems right at home playing a sheriff in Breck Eisner's remake of George Romero's 1973 film, The Crazies. Though his career started with roles in films like Scream 2 and Go, the Hawaiian-born, California-raised actor is best known for playing Sheriff Seth Bullock on HBO's western-drama series, Deadwood. He'll also be playing the lead role of banished US Marshall Rayland Givens in the upcoming FX series Justified, but this Friday he wears the badge of Sheriff Dutton--a man unprepared for the havoc about to be wrecked upon the quiet Iowa town he presides over.

Eisner's reimagining of Romero's story similarly explores the people of a small town trying to come to grips with what is happening to their friends and loved ones when a mysterious toxin contaminates the water supply--transforming everyone they know into mindless killers. Hysteria sets in when the military closes off the town in an attempt to contain the virus. Olyphant's character, David Dutton, is the sheriff leading a group of uninfected townspeople in the fight for survival, alongside his pregnant wife, Judy, played by Radha Mitchell.

When the trailer for Ben Hibon's animated zombie epic A.D. debuted earlier this month (check it out here), the Internet got excited. While the project is still in the early stages of the development process, there's no denying that the clip looks amazing. To paraphrase one YouTube commenter, "it's like Pixar grew balls."

The guys over at Machinima's web show ETC got a chance to sit down and interview three of the film's producers along with director Hibon and screenwriter Haylar Garcia. The eight minute clip turned up on YouTube recently (thanks to Bloody-Disgusting for catching it and sharing) and you can check it out for yourself beyond the jump.

Hearing Hibon and Garcia talk about their vision for the film is inspiring stuff. A.D. looks like a videogame--albeit one that doesn't require you to pick up a controller and complete hours of arbitrary tasks to see the next story interlude. The animation is impressive and the fact that the film doesn't use physical actors or sets would seem to make it easier for the filmmakers to pull out all the stops in creating their horrifying vision of the zombie apocalypse.

No word on when we might see a finished version of the film. As one producer points out, they're still in the "seeking financial backing" stage of the development cycle. Let's hope some adventurous investors get on board soon, because this is one film I really wanna see.

Ryan McDermott has been generating a nice little buzz about his award winning horror comedy short, Mark Macready and the Archangel Murders. The British producer, writer, editor and lead actor of the 33 minute film helped bring home the award for 'Most Original Horror Film' award at the Horror UK Film Festival last year and 'Special Commendation in Indie Filmmaking' at the 20th Festival of Fantastic Films. "We previously won a BBC new filmmaker award before this film. Winning that encouraged us to make the short," McDermott revealed during our interview.

Macready's story goes a little something like this: the detective wakes from a coma after being attacked by an unseen enemy only to discover that his wife Christina is missing and a monster known as 'The Archangel' has been slaughtering everything in sight. He makes the connection between his wife's disappearance and the monster, which sends him on a search through the supernatural underbelly of Manchester, battling ghouls and demons at every turn. Can he bring Archangel to justice?

McDermott plays the lead character of Detective Mark Macready and has been hailed as a "British Hellboy". It seems that director Sean Candon and company may have been influenced by other occult heroes while creating Mcready, such as John Constantine, perhaps a little bit of Cal McDonald or even the B.P.R.D. My immediate impression was a Garth Marenghi and Clive Owen hybrid, but enough with the comparisons already. If the film finds the right following, McDermott told me the team will be turning Mark Macready into a full length feature. "We really tried to change up the short film scene. It's all rape, guns and drugs here in UK."

The film's official website will go live in a few weeks, where you'll be able to watch it in its entirety. McDermott will be previewing the short on Twitter if it garners enough attention, and you can visit the Facebook fan page for other updates. For now, hit the jump to watch the trailer for Mark Macready and the Archangel Murders and let me know what you think.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge fan of British director Christopher Smith's work. So, when First Look Pictures reached out to Horror Squad for the US release of Smith's third film, Triangle, I must admit; I kind of geeked out. We talked about everything from his forthcoming kids-as-spys film (that isn't exactly for kids), to his just-completed journey back to Medieval times in search of a plague-causing necromancer (Black Death), to Back to the Future, to what he'd do with a Creep 2. Oh, and, of course we talked about a twisted little enigma called Triangle, starring Melissa George as a woman trapped on an ocean liner, and out on DVD and Blu-ray today.

Horror Squad: How are you? How are things?

Christopher Smith: I just finished Black Death and I'm sitting in a coffee shop about to get on writing this kids film I've been working on for a number of years called CHERUB. It's kind of like a Rodriguez Spy Kids but not a big budget version; like a Shane Meadows Spy Kids movie. It's that kind of film. It's about a bunch of state kids working for the government, it's quite a cool film based on a series of books.

Horror Squad: Very cool, when's that going into production?

Christopher Smith: We're hoping to shoot in the summer. There's a big franchise of books in England called CHERUB and what it is is like a Nikita story. It's about a young kid from a broken family who suddenly realizes that he's an orphan and he's being cared for by the government. We're doing it quite realistically, so instead of the kids, ya' know, jumping out of helicopters and doing that, it's more about how the government uses kids in the same way drug dealers would use kids to traffic things. It's more Bourne Identity than it is James Bond.

A special thank you to post-apocalyptic aficionados Quiet Earth for bringing to my attention the fantastic short film Plague, written and directed by Matt Simpson and co-directed and starring Joseph Luke Avery. Plague follows a man named Vilhelm, a gun-and-migrant runner who aims to leave his past behind and start fresh in London. Upon his arrival in London, however, he comes across the walking dead and a whole new set of challenges.

Influenced by World War Z and I am Legend, Simpson wanted to make a film that focused on one individual instead of "the usual scenario of an unlikely group of people coming together and bonding amidst the chaos." In doing so he managed to not only put a unique spin on the zombie genre, but did it all with a meager budget, which is something that always impresses me. Speaking with Revenant Magazine, he states:

"There was pretty much no budget for the film, I really hate not paying people, but there just wasn't any money to go around. The crew worked long hours for little more than a baked potato with beans or cheese. We begged and borrowed both kit and talent. (Producer) Frances and I, fronted somewhere between 2-3000 pounds which went of food and make up supplies, and a camera dolly and track. "

Despite the meager budget, the film is incredible looking, and boasts stellar make-up and special effects comparable to many feature length zombie flicks. The entire interview can be found here, and the short film in its entirety can be found after the jump.