The Czech actors were thrilled to play parts that were more than the usual walk-on bits offered by American productions. “Most American movies that shoot in Prague cast out of the U.S. or England, and the Czech actors only get small parts and they are usually re-dubbed,” says Barbara Nedljáková. “But with HOSTEL, we weren’t trying to double for America. We could play Europeans and be ourselves. We all felt very lucky.”
Wanting HOSTEL to look and feel authentically European, Roth hired Milan Chadima, a Czech D.P. who had recently shot 2nd unit for Terry Gilliam on THE BROTHERS GRIMM. Says Tarantino, “I urged Roth to hire a European D.P. because they see things differently than Americans. They have a naturally more poetic sensibility.”
Roth and Chadima collaborated with production designer Franco Carbone, who had worked with Roth on CABIN FEVER, to create a fun, bright atmosphere that slowly evolves into a bleak and nightmarish universe where the only color is blood. The team carefully chose a color and texture palate for every scene, deriving their aesthetic from the macabre photographs of Joel Peter Witkin and the dark short films of the London-based Brothers Quay (STREET OF CROCODILES).
In order to enhance the story’s visual authenticity, the production shot entirely on location. During the course of the forty-day shoot, the production moved locations 30 times, from the exotic 16th century village Czesky Krumlov, which doubles as the film’s Slovakian village, to the basement of a closed down mental hospital built in 1915.
Throughout the production process, Roth knew that HOSTEL would be a marked departure from CABIN FEVER. “I didn’t want to make another horror-comedy,” reports the director. “I wanted HOSTEL to be a pure horror film – one that starts out fun, but gets darker and darker and never looks back or winks at the audience.”
If classic 1970s American horror was the inspiration for CABIN FEVER, then Roth credits Asian and South Korean horror filmmaking as the inspiration for HOSTEL. Yet Roth was relatively ignorant of young Asian masters like Hideo Nakata, Park Chan-Wook, and Takashi Miike until he attended world film festivals during the promotion of CABIN FEVER. “I was exposed to a whole new world of Asian cinema I never knew existed. I was stunned,” says the director. “Their horror films are so much more creative, disturbing, and effective than anything I have seen coming out of America. I started watching as many Asian and South Korean films I could get my hands on.”
Roth cites films like Miike’s AUDITION, Park’s SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE, and older films like Sluizer’s THE VANISHING and Hardy’s THE WICKER MAN as important touchstones in the development of HOSTEL. Particularly fond of Miike, Roth even wrote a part in HOSTEL for the cult Japanese director, and was honored when Miike flew to Prague from Japan to play the role.
Relentlessly graphic and deeply disturbing, HOSTEL should confirm Roth as an exciting director poised at the cutting edge of modern horror filmmaking. Like his Asian counterparts, he deliberately stretches genre boundaries in an effort to locate authentic, raw terror. “Directors like Miike and Park have been pushing the envelope of cinema for years,” says Roth. “And that’s always been my goal from the beginning. I think HOSTEL will surprise even hard core genre fans.”
Movie Database
In Theaters
