I woke up on my own, with a dry mouth and horribly starving. I looked over at the clock and realized that my ride will be there in less than five minutes - so I call the front desk and ask where my f-cking wake-up call was to which she replied “whoops”. Yeah, whoops indeed. I was definitely crabby as I got incredibly shitty the night before and only took in about three hours of sleep. Once on set I go straight to the coffee and then rush on over to Eli to tell him the great news… the Box Office Mojo reported that SAW III took in an estimated $14 million on Friday alone – all of those people seeing the HOSTEL II trailer for the first time! Horror lives baby!

So it’s the ‘last day of school’ on set, which means it’s the final day as well. Everything was going as planned and it looked like they’d wrap extremely early. I go and get situated next to Eli near the monitor room where he’s shooting some (seemingly simple) pick-up shots involving buttons being pushed and switches being thrown. Minutes turn into hours and frustration fills the air as it’s taking a ridiculous amount of time to light the shot- and to make matters worse the buttons are acting goofy. Something that should take seconds has now turned into hours. When Eli starts planning some shots of the monitor and guard, they start having reflection issues and you can sense everyone just “wants to go home.” The entire cast and crew had this look on their faces just like we all had on the last day of school. You can see people looking at their watches and sighing- it wasn’t that they weren’t happy to be working, it was the anticipation building up inside them. Eli is still focused and completely calm, maybe because talking to me was killing the down time. Anyhow, this was taking so ridiculously long I decided to go hang out with the KNB crew as they prepped for the big finale, a scene involving dozens of nails. Below you’ll find my interview with the boys from KNB (Chad Atkinson, Kevin Wasner and Mike McCarty):



Now as I’m watching KNB do their thing, the set designers are hard at work transforming a room into one of the coolest torture scenarios yet. Inside this room was a giant wooden semi-cross (the bottom split out for each leg) with a giant tray to the right, which carried massive rusty nails and mallets. It becomes increasingly obvious what I’ll be watching them film this evening.

One of the assistants (Rick James) earned the right to play an extra in the scene, which involved getting down to his boxers and having fake nails placed all over his body. He gets strung up on this apparatus and looks so incredibly uncomfortable (as you can see by the image). The set up is gorgeous and Eli’s placement of the camera is the work of someone who truly cares about each and every frame. The scene involved a torturer, who after talking to someone at the door, walks over to Rick and hammers another nail into his flesh. While they shoot this you can tell the end is near…. the bell is about to ring. Around me everyone sits in anticipation:

Each scene Rick gets nailed he screams at the top of his lungs. On one take he yells “Jesus!! AHHH,” which I thought was funny for obvious reasons. His voice is starting to give out and then Eli runs into the room and screams “That’s a wrap guys!” Everyone cheers and claps while champagne is passed around the room. How often do you get to watch a film wrap on set? This was one hell of an experience. Everyone congratulated each other and then quickly left to get ready for the big wrap party.

Sure the 40-day shoot was now complete, but some of the crew still has to head to Iceland for some random pick up shots. The after party was a blast and I got to talk with Producers Mike Fleiss and Christopher Briggs and stars Stanislav Ianevski and Vera Jordanova. Everyone was loosened up and having a great time. On the monitors they were showing a looped video that will find it’s way onto the website (here) and maybe even the DVD. It was a holding cell with six kids handcuffed with bags on their heads. One by one their taken out of the room by two giant security guards and fight until the very end.

Later in the evening I was treated to something I had not expected… we watched the entire movie in still form. It was astounding what was shot for nearly the same amount of money as the first. The set pieces are even more elaborate than what I saw and some of the scenes look ferocious and extremely vicious (think Elizabeth Bathory). Obviously I can’t make a judgment call from pictures alone, but damn it did look like a kick ass movie. As you expected the rest of the evening involved us drinking ourselves stupid and finding our way back to the hotel around 6 AM (Axelle and I got lost and had no cash on us… smaaarrtttt).

So here I am on my way home, no sleep yet another night. I’m on the verge of collapsing as I write this. On the first flight I couldn’t sleep because I had the guy behind me with his knees in my back and the lady in front of me needed to lean her chair back THAT bad (so selfish). While switching planes in Paris I experience the worst nightmare ever - I have no time and they have me going from building to building concluding with them f-cking up my ticket. But here I am, 2 AM in my mind still up writing this piece. I have work tomorrow and my friends’ Halloween party tonight. Am I complaining? No I don’t think so, because I’m on my way back from the best set visit of all-time (yeah better than the TEXAS CHAINSAW set). When HOSTEL: PART II hits theaters on June 8 I know I’m going to be at the first showing to see how the final product turned out- I can pretty much guarantee fans of the first film are going to flip their sh-t when they see how far Eli and co. take the sequel. SAW III, HOSTEL, HILLS HAVE EYES and now this? Let the battle of the “snuff” films begin… who will take the crown in 2007? My money is on HOSTEL: PART II…

To be continued with our final piece... on set video interviews!

Other Articles
PART 1: A Tease to the Torture
PART 2: Arrival
PART 3: Losing More Sleep and a Little Bit (TONS) of Blood…
PART 4: Day Two – Only Getting Better
PART 5: A Preview of Hell is Sexy…
PART 6: Wake Up Call, Where Are You???
PART 7: Exclusive On Set Video Interviews

Visit the official website for more!