DIRECTOR ELI ROTH: GIVING TRUE HORROR FANS A NEW HOPE
In 1979 an eight-year old kid by the name of Eli Roth was sitting in a darkened movie theater waiting for the featured film to start. He had no idea what was coming next, but as soon as the creature popped out of John Hurt’s stomach in the horror classic “Alien”, Roth knew what he wanted to be when he grew up... a horror film director. As soon as he was old enough to figure out how a super-8 movie camera worked, he and his brothers filmed 50 short movies that covered every movie genre possible in a quick span of 5 years.
After giving up his Super-8 movie camera for loftier goals, Roth started NYU film school in 1990 and graduated Suma Cum Laude in 1994. Graduating from NYU with that special distinction was a major watershed moment for Roth. He realized that he did have enough talent to make it in Hollywood, so after spending five years in New York City working as an assistant director, production assistant and various other jobs in the city, he flew out to Hollywood. There, he would attempt to acquire his dream job that he first discovered so many years ago in that darkened movie theater: horror director extraordinaire.
ROTH GETS “CABIN FEVER” WHILE WORKING FOR HOWARD STERN
During the two-year period leading up to Roth’s flight to Hollywood from NYC, Roth decided to write a horror movie with his partner Randy Pearlstein. They decided to write a low-budget horror film about five college students who run into trouble out in the woods after encountering a disease-ridden dog and start developing zombie-like afflictions. The move was entitled “Cabin Fever” and Roth was actually in the process of writing the screenplay when he was contacted by the producers of “Howard Stern’s Private Parts” to ask him if he would like to stand guard by Stern’s movie trailer to make sure nobody interrupted Stern while he was learning his lines.
So Roth worked 10 hours a day on finishing up his “Cabin Fever” script while sitting on the hard concrete floor near Howard Stern’s main trailer door, fending off uninvited guests of Stern’s while completing the screenplay that would bring him his first taste of true Hollywood success.
LION’S GATE SNAPS UP “CABIN FEVER”
After raising $1.5 million from private investors, Roth finished filming “Cabin Fever” in 2001. The independent film company Lion’s Gate bid $3.5 million for it at the Toronto Film Festival in 2002 and won the right to distribute the horror flick worldwide. Luckily enough for Lion’s Gate, “Cabin Fever” would go on and gross over $30 million world wide, which made the movie the highest earner for Lion’s Gate that year.
Due to his success at creating such a huge movie debut with “Cabin Fever”, Roth took some time out and made a smaller animated feature called “Chowdheads”. It was a work of pure passion for Roth as he is quite an accomplished animator as well as talented director. He was still single at this time and he would take advantage of his newfound fame by picking up a stunning variety of very attractive females during this time period. He would soon be having so much fun of this sort as he tackled his next big-time horror movie epic entitled “Hostel”, that he imagined it would interfere with his work.
ENJOYING THE SINGLE LIFE WHILE SHOOTING “HOSTEL”
Roth himself admitted on the Howard Stern Show in 2005 that he was having too much of a good time with the sundry female models and adult movie actresses on the set of “Hostel” that he was shooting in the desolate area of Slovakia. The women in the area were just too attractive for Roth and crew to pass up, so the film set would enjoy numerous alcohol-fueled parties after shooting every single day. This would not have a negative effect on “Hostel’s” ultimate success at the box office, as the movie grossed over $20 million on opening day alone.
The movie took in over $180 million worldwide and those huge profits finally allowed Roth to take his fair share of the box office receipts because he helped form “Hostel LLC” just for this one movie. Instead of Lion’s Gate just paying him a salary and then reneging on giving Roth any future profits on “Cabin Fever” as they did three years earlier, Roth was now able to keep back-end profits of more than $25 million from the success of “Hostel” alone. The movie debut even edged out the huge family movie “The Chronicles of Narnia” for the #1 spot at the box office in January of 2006.
Roth’s success with “Hostel” even went so far as creating an ultimate victory for R-rated horror movies in general. Roth shot “Hostel” while aiming for an NC-17 rating due to graphic violence and gore that was included in his brutal screenplay, but the MPAA actually let the film be released as an R-rated movie instead. Since the MPAA gave such a bloody movie as “Hostel” a big thumbs up when it came to rating it, other horror directors since then have been able to include buckets of blood and gore as well, never having to cut scenes from their movie out of the fear that the MPAA will give them the horrible stamp of disapproval that comes with an NC-17 rating.
THE FAILURE OF “HOSTEL 2” AND THE FUTURE FOR ELI ROTH
After basking in the success of “Hostel”, Roth wrote and directed “Hostel 2” in under a year and had it available for worldwide release on June 8th of 2007. While the movie was budgeted at just $10 million, the sequel to “Hostel” has a very Hollywood gloss to its overall look. That new Hollywood sheen that the film radiated off the screen proved to repel every major horror movie fan the world over. “Hostel 2” managed to make its money back over three weekends, but it was nowhere near as successful as “Hostel” or even “Cabin Fever”, critically or commercially.
All reviewers of the movie complained about the same thing: this was just a repeat of the earlier movie with no new enhancement to the plot whatsoever. While “Hostel 2” is definitely a major setback in the career of Eli Roth, it is by no means the final nail in his creative coffin. He is currently working on the screenplay for the Universal teen comedy “Scavenger Hunt” and another extreme horror movie entitled “The Box”. He will be directing “The Box” as well as co-writing the movie with Richard Kelly. In 2003, Roth, along with Greenestreet Films and three other filmmakers, formed Raw Nerve, LLC. This production company plans to produce on average at least five low-budget horror films each year.
Every true horror movie fan out there should be happy that directors such as Eli Roth are currently working today. Otherwise, horror movies might still be stifled in that horrible phase that we already lived through when “Scream” ruled at the box office and the horror genre was reduced to being seen as nothing more than a cheap way for Hollywood to make a quick buck. Eli Roth will hopefully continue to push the horror movie envelope, bringing real horror movies the respect that they truly deserve.