If you’re a regular reader of Horror Yearbook then it comes as no surprise to you that we are not always the most professional site on the web, but that’s what makes us so fun. So, in the spirit of our “fly by the seat of our pants” philosophy, we attempted to perform the most ghetto phone interview in the history of mankind. Since we basically shot our financial load on the computer we use to run this site, alcohol, and Burger King, we didn’t have the necessary equipment to record this interview (by which I mean an actual tape recorder). Our low budget replacement was me, furiously scribbling down everything that was said, on a 99 cents legal pad, in a friend’s hotel room, which we considered our poor man’s dollar store vacation. The subject of this insane Q&A session was ‘Dark Ride’ director Craig Singer, creator of one of the “8 Films to Die For” in the After Dark HorrorFest.
The film is what Singer calls “a retro ’70’s slasher.” He feels that, like those movies, ‘Dark Ride, takes the time to tell a story and develop characters rather than just setting up pins and knocking them over. This is something he feels is missing in most of today’s horror films - characters that are “not interchangeable.” “You feel like you’ve been with them for a little bit. They each have their own DNA.” He wanted to create a connection between the people onscreen and the people in the seats so he could “pull out the emotional safety net” from under the audience. When “heinous things” begin happening to these characters, he wants you to care. “It’s a slasher with heart.” Don’t be fooled by this description, however, Singer promises it gets “much more bloody and modern…there’s a lot of convention. It’s balls out horror.” One of the conventions HYB loves to ask about is the use of nudity, which receives a polite chuckle from the director. He says there is some “really cool ’70’s style nudity,” which will surely please all the pervs out there.
One of the things he feels connects an audience to a film character on a deeper level is the use of unknown actors in principal roles. It helps the audience “bring a fresh slate to the characters. You don’t sit there thinking of them as celebrities. There’s no WB fucking stunt casting where they put a shiny new face in a horror role.” In his mind, it’s one of the things that makes movies like ‘28 Days Later’ work so well, because you only know the actors from the role and not from a tabloid. In fact, he wasn’t really familiar with the work of one of his stars, Jamie Lynn Sigler, who is best known as Meadow Soprano on ‘The Sopranos.’ “I don’t get HBO,” he replied when asked if he was a fan of the show. The same applies to Patrick Renna, who plays Bill in ‘Dark Ride’ (or as WIL insists on calling him “the fat kid from ‘The Sandlot”). As a matter of fact, he got the role simply by walking past Craig Singer’s trailer on the Universal backlot. He was called in and asked to read the part and instantly impressed everyone. The unknown factor, however, really comes into play with Dave Warden, who plays the film’s villian Jonah, a role that is receiving a lot of postitive buzz. “It’s a challenge to come up with a new monster or killer that hasn’t been done before. David’s great. He’s a nice man, but he makes Jonah a lot scarier in the film than he even was on the page.” (When I try to pimp my “out of work actor” ass to him, with his love of unknowns and all, I am met with the story of how he cast Amanda Peet in her first film ‘Animal Room’ even though he was told she would “never amount to anything.” So I guess that’s a no? C’mon, I work cheap, just ask WIL! Anyway, I digress. Back to the story.)
‘Dark Ride’ itself is receiving a good deal of positive buzz these days, with a majority of it’s footage being used in the television ads. When it was originally screened for an audience of about 400 people, Singer was told “you should leave because it’s going to be painful, but you should stay because you will learn a lot.” In the end, he decided to stay, and in the subsequent Q&A session following the screening he listened to an overwhelming amount of positive feedback. It’s this kind of response which eventually led to ‘Dark Ride’s inclusion in After Dark. “We’re really pleased to be included,” he said.
The idea for ‘Dark Ride’ was born from a real life tragedy at a New Jersey theme park. “There was a fire at a Six Flags where people were killed in a dark ride.” This incident, along with the director’s love of dark rides up and down the Jersey shore, was the genesis of the film. The official press release contains the following:
“In the film, the amusement park location is an architectural co-conspirator, lending a feeling of innocence and nostalgia, that quickly disappears as the darkness descends. I am mindful that when placed in the dark, we as people resort to our most primal selves.”
When referencing movies of the ’70’s, it is this feeling that he is trying to invoke, the idea that people bring their emotional baggage to a film and when you tap into that, that is when you truly frighten them. “When ‘The Exorcist’ first came out it really affected some people, but when it was rereleased a few years ago, people laughed.” Values have changed, and the idea of what’s scary and what’s not has changed along with it, so you have to tap into the zeitgest and figure out what it is that really cuts to the core of people today. He cites ‘Night of the Living Dead’ as a movie that affected him for years, but kids who grew up on Freddy and Jason don’t necessarily have the same reaction.
Actually, during filming there was an incident that freaked out members of the cast and crew, the very people attempting to scare the audience. “We were using a 35 millimeter film rollout with a time clock, and six times the camera stopped on Patrick at 6:66.”
Ultimately, it was his love of the genre that inspired him to create ‘Dark Ride.’ Movies like Herschel Gordon Lewis’ “The Wizard of Gore” and “Color Me Blood Red,” the films of Dario Argento, and the aforementioned ‘Night of the Living Dead’ and ‘28 Days Later.’ He promises his next film will be a “more 21st century” horror film full of “grit” and “grime,” He is also kicking around a few other horror projects with his writing partners that he would love to see transferred to the screen. (I would love to share them, but we were sworn to secrecy. Sorry!)
“A hardcore Jersey guy,” Singer would love to base a few of these ideas in the Jersey area, but jokes that they’ll probably “make us shoot in Vancouver or Bulgaria.”
The one thing he would like to share with horror fans who want to get into the genre is that “creative partnerships are damn hard,” but it’s important to keep at it. Singer has worked with his partners Chris Williams and Robert Dean Klein for ten years, and is “proud we’ve been together for so long.” If the hype surrounding ‘Dark Ride’ is to be believed, we hope they will be together for ten more years, bringing us more hours of blood-soaked entertainment.
Catch ‘Dark Ride’ at After Dark Horrorfest:
11-17
6:00pm & 12:00am
11-21
4:00pm & 8:00pm
Check the After Dark website for theater near you.
Dark Ride at After Dark Horrorfest
Dark Ride Official Site
Dark Ride Trailer
Phone Interview by WIL Keiper
Article and Saving of Interview by Andrew Walsh
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