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— by Larry Carroll
It began like so many other sunny Southern California afternoons, as two friends swam in a pool. Backstrokes were likely compared, cannonballs performed, and perhaps an umbrella-laden beverage or two made an appearance. But instead of discussing the UV protection of their sunblock, these two bathing buddies found their conversation wandering toward other bodily concerns — including severed toes, melted eyeballs and mutilated limbs.
"We'd swum in my pool a few times, but that was definitely the most productive," laughed Quentin Tarantino, Oscar-winning writer/director and producer of the gleefully nauseating horror flick "Hostel."
"We were in his swimming pool one day and I said, 'What do you think of this idea?' " remembered Eli Roth, a hot writer/director himself, thanks to 2002's "Cabin Fever." "[Tarantino] said, 'Are you kidding me? That is the sickest idea I have ever heard! Eli, man, you have got to write this! You have got to make this your next movie!' I ran home, unplugged my phone, shut off my e-mail and just burned out the draft. ... The whole genesis of 'Hostel' was never 'Let's produce this movie.' It was just all from hanging out with your friends, talking about horror movies."
"As we were swimming in the pool, we just kept talking about it, and talking about it, building on it and building more on it," Tarantino explained enthusiastically. "I was like, 'That's what you've got to do ... this is what the world wants to see.' "
If these two motormouthed, movie-obsessed geeks are right, the world should be ashamed of itself. Beginning with a dream-like tale of three friends enjoying a vacation in Europe, the movie takes them on the ultimate detour from hell: Instead of rest and relaxation, they are engulfed by rage and revulsion.
"It starts out fun — it's an X-rated Disneyland in Amsterdam," Roth laughed devilishly. "It slowly gets darker and more gray, and more bleak and more rough. And then the last 30 minutes is non-stop bloodbath. I wanted it to be brutal and realistic and really, really sick."
But unlike so many other horror flicks, what makes "Hostel" particularly terrifying is that Roth came up with the idea after researching real-life, foreign Web sites that offered the opportunity to torture other people — for a price. "It's something that can happen; it's a possibility," insisted Jay Hernandez ("Friday Night Lights"), who plays one of the film's imperiled youths. "Eli says he found this Web site where you can go to mutilate and kill and do all this stuff for a certain price. Who knows? Is it somewhere out there?"
"You could go to Thailand and, for $10,000, walk into a room and shoot someone in the head," Roth remembered of the Web page. "Just to know what it felt like — almost like a sexual act. I looked at the site and thought, 'Is this real? Could this possibly be real?' Then I thought it doesn't matter if it's real or fake, what matters is that someone conceptualized this. They realized that out there there's some businessman that's so bored with drugs, hookers and strip clubs that ... they want to know what it feels like to kill somebody. And that really, really disturbed me."
A few laps around the pool later, Roth had recruited himself a producer who had gained fame by chopping off ears ("Reservoir Dogs"), blowing off people's heads ("Pulp Fiction") and burying women alive ("Kill Bill"). Typically, such an executive reins in a director and keeps the material marketable — but not this time.
"What was really crazy was that I am that geek obsessed with Quentin Tarantino's movies," Roth insisted. "Quentin and I love violent movies. What's great about having an executive producer like Quentin on board is he'll read the script and go, 'Man, you should have a scene where he's cutting her toes off with a bolt cutter — just snipping them off one by one!' And I'm like, 'That's sick, we're putting that in there!' "
"Yeah, that was an idea of mine; I came up with a couple things like that," Tarantino said with a grin before revealing the one phrase that began virtually every sentence spoken in the swimming pool on that sunny afternoon: "Hey, wouldn't it be sick if ...?"
"If you like 'Saw,' I think you'll love this film," Hernandez said. "It's the next level of that, which is inspired by the Japanese horror films ... they really go for it. Horror, for them, is a whole other thing. They really take it seriously; it's definitely more advanced than American horror."
So, with an original concept at his disposal and Tarantino's permissive eyes watching over him, Roth set out to make the closest thing yet to an American version of the boundary-pushing Japanese flicks. " 'Cabin Fever' was very much influenced by American horror of the '70s and early '80s," Roth said. "But once I made that film, I started going to film festivals around the world and seeing movies by this guy Takashi Miike."
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For more than a century, the movies have beein foisting knife-, gun- and fang-wielding butchers on gleeful, cringing audiences. Here are a few blood-splattered flicks that stand menacingly above the rest.
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Stunned by the graphic nature of Miike's work, Roth felt like he was discovering movies again for the very first time. " 'Audition' [1999] and 'Ichi the Killer' [2001], these ultra-violent super-sick Japanese movies, were so far more disturbing than the girl in the well with the wet hair," he laughed, getting a dig in at the American "Ring" films.
"They were just beyond: People's nipples getting cut off, and tongues getting sliced up and eyes getting ripped out. This guy kinda became my hero, and I met him when he was in Los Angeles and helped him promote [2003's] 'Gozu.' " After the two hit it off, Roth told him about "Hostel" and offered a role to his muse. "I wrote a part for him in the movie where he could just come on and do a cameo. And the guy flew nine hours, from Japan to Prague, to do the cameo. He doesn't speak a word of English, but he learned the English phonetically and rehearsed it all day."
Later, Miike would provide the ultimate seal of approval. "I knew I was in good shape when I showed some of the footage to Miike, and Miike said, 'This is too disgusting. I can't watch this,' " Roth laughed. "I said, 'All right, if this is too disgusting for Miike, then we're on the right path.' "
"I was excited to meet the sick mind of Eli," Hernandez remembered while saying that Roth, like Tarantino, is quickly establishing himself as one of the most innovative, unapologetic sickos in Hollywood. Sure enough, he wasn't disappointed by the set: "There were bodies all over the place; severed legs and hands. It was kind of strange."
A strangeness that is all-too-appropriate for two movie-loving buddies who swim around in pools, talking about sick Web sites and innovative ways to torture people. Now, with their conversation fully realized at theaters nationwide, they're happily swimming in blood instead.
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