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I watched The Hills Run Red to prepare for an interview with director Dave Parker, just to cover the horror interests of our audience. I had no idea someone had actually made a real movie for the DVD premiere market. The Hills Run Red goes more meta than Scream, blurring the lines of filmmaker and film obsessed characters commenting on the scenes going on in the film. If you really don’t want anything spoiled, get the DVD before you read this, but certainly analyze the film with us after you’ve seen it.
Crave Online: Is this the first post post postmodern horror movie, two generations past Scream?
Dave Parker: Yeah, it’s a little bit of an incestuous circle there as far as that goes. A lot of that was really our screenwriter David Schow putting that stuff in there because I think he had some things he wanted to get off his chest as far as commenting on that type of thing. I really like the first Scream movie a lot. It was certainly something that was in the zeitgeist but it wasn’t a real conscious choice, let’s comment on other movies and make as much of a deal about it. So I think we did it and how we tried to use it was to set up these rules and stuff so then we can turn it back on them and twist it and use it against them as much as possible to hopefully create what we think were some pretty interesting scenarios for them.
Crave Online: Well, if anyone can comment on it, it’s Schow.
Dave Parker: He certainly knows the genre pretty well in and out but what I like about his writing is he’s got a real unique voice and different slant as far as he’s not afraid to delve into the dark and nasty corners of the human soul so to speak. That part was exciting.
Crave Online: Did you also have to think about doing a forest filmmaker movie post Blair Witch?
Dave Parker: Yeah, that’s the thing. With the nature of the setup and the story, the original script that we were given had these elements to it that they wanted to retain and that the studio responded to. So it was a challenge because obviously you’re going to get comparisons but you want to strike out and be viewed differently. So all these things were running in my mind, and then being the horror aficionado that I am, going back even further to Italian films like Cannibal Holocaust and that type of thing, so it was like even Cigarette Burns, John Carpenter’s Masters of Horror episode dealt with a lost film. I think there are these common elements with these type of stories that you have to deal with. Especially just slasher movies in general, there are these elements especially. Someone going out in the woods, that you have to deal with. You sort of embrace that knowing that once we went further down the line in the movie, we were going to turn all that against the audience so they really didn’t know where they were going to stand as the movie progressed.
Crave Online: Was there any resistance to making a movie that goes there sexually too?
Dave Parker: They used to. That was the thing that even Warner Brothers and Warner Premiere liked about it. This is an adult horror movie and it does have the sexual element to it. To me, I think it’s been lacking. It’s not that I think that horror films have gotten incredibly conservative. I think since Saw, we’ve seen a real turn to very nonconservative type of horror, at least as far as the gore goes. Hostel you get some sex in it too but a lot of it’s, to me, very playful in a way. They’re in Amsterdam type of areas and oh, it’s fun in that sense.
Crave Online: Was it tough to find an actress who could go there?
Dave Parker: Yeah, we searched for a while and it was our producers at Warner Brothers, at Dark Castle, specifically Erik Olsen who suggested Sophie. I honestly hadn’t really heard of her before and I saw a couple of her things. I saw her Entourage episode and stuff and I was like, well, she’s a comedy actress, I don't know. Obviously she’s beautiful. She’s absolutely stunning, so I wasn’t worried about that but we made it very clear when we met with her, when we met with all the actresses, that there’s going to be nudity and there’s going to be sex in the movie. That was an element we were not going to cut away from. It was not going to be something that we’re going to get on the set and they’re going to go, “I don’t feel comfortable doing this.” Everyone knew from the very beginning what they had to do.
Crave Online: Was it rare to find someone who was comfortable doing the nudity, but who could act too?
Dave Parker: Absolutely, and that was the thing. With both roles, with Sophie and with Janet, the thing is they seem like one thing at first and then the characters become something different so there were multiple levels to play. So we really needed people who weren’t just fearless but were also very gifted and skilled. I think we were really blessed with not only talented actresses but ones who were willing to go there and in some ways I think brave enough to do it. People’s managers and agents would probably tell them to shy away from this type of thing. It was Janet’s first film so she was game for anything. Sophie, a little different. Her career is going in a trajectory. She wanted to do something different and show people that she wasn’t just a comedy actress. We were very lucky
Crave Online: You have the strip club gratuitous, which might be what viewers think you’re doing at first, but you go there during the violence too. Why have there been so many films about asexual killers, as if a deranged killer wouldn’t have sexual interests?
Dave Parker: Again, our whole thing with our killer is the fact that much like the characters who are hunting after him in the movie, he’s watched all these movies too and he’s grown up with this movie. So of course he’s interested in sex but he’s also making himself into a Jason type character. He wants to be that but he’s also not all that he would on the surface seem to be. I think that’s where, again, Dave brought the script to a different level that was interesting, then us executing it.
