The story centers on a film fanatic whose obsession with finding a complete print of an infamous slasher movie leads him and two friends into the backwoods where the film was shot. They realize too late that filming never ended -- and now they must survive a nightmarish onslaught or become part of the movie forever.

BLOODY DISGUSTING: Where did the idea of HILLS RUN RED come about?

DAVE PARKER: The idea of Hills Run Red came from a production company out of New York – Fever Dreams LLC. They had commissioned the original script from ideas that John Carchietta came up with and had Jon Dombrow write the initial script. That script had the basic ideas of a group of film students searching for the lost film and having it go bad. When they hired Robert Meyer Burnett and myself, they agreed to let us basically overhaul the script as long as we retained the elements of searching for the lost film and the main characters being involved in film.

To tell the truth I wasn’t too crazy at first about doing a movie about people making a movie, because I knew people would accuse me that I was basically mining the same material that was in my first movie The Dead Hate the Living.

The reality was that I hadn’t directed a movie in awhile, and if I wanted to be a director I had to take the opportunity that was given to me and make the best movie I could under those circumstances.

When we brought David J. Schow (The Crow) to rewrite the movie I knew that he would bring his unique voice to the characters and situations. There were certain aspects to the slasher film that we wanted to do – and in some ways try to capture the feel of those original 80’s slasher movies, and then turn those conventions on their head during the middle and certainly the 3rd act. I hope that people who watch it realize it is its own animal and not the same old thing. They do need to give it some time to play out before the payoffs begin, but when they do I think the audience is in for a wild ride.

BD: What films inspired HILLS?

DP: Inspiration comes in many forms. Obviously I love the genre and growing up I was devouring all the early 80’s slasher movies like Madman, The Burning, Friday the 13th basically everything with a body count. The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a big influence for sure. What attracted me to the original script was the fact that there was a masked killer. I’ve always loved masked killers with distinct looks and worked really hard with my designer Michael Broom to create Babyface, our killer. We spent a lot of time trying to come up with something nightmarish that I hope audiences will remember. We went for a pretty gritty feel, but executed it in a more modern way as far as the technical and editorial aspects go.

The trick of it was that we were making the movie under the umbrella of a major studio and there were certain aspects and scenes that some of the powers that be thought we pushed too far and in editing we had to pull back on. I personally don’t feel you can push this kind of movie too far. It’s clear that we are not dealing with reality here – this is a popcorn movie, a pulp horror movie and to me those are exactly the kinds of movies where you should push the limits because there is less financial risk. At the end of the day though you realize that not everyone is going to see eye to eye on everything and you take it from there and make it work the best it can. I do want to say that even with some of the compromises that we had I had great support from Dark Castle Entertainment, especially my producers Joel Silver, Erik Olsen, Steve Richards and Ethan Erwin. They do love the genre and have been really been there with me through the tougher times. Even though we did have to loose some things, I do think that we have a pretty nasty movie that will surprise fans.

BD: How bloody is it?

DP: This was never designed as just a blood and guts show, but obviously we knew what and whom we were making this movie for. It became a matter of doing our best to balance the bloody stuff with other kinds of horrific things. In the end I think the MPAA rating sums it up pretty well - Rated R for strong bloody horror violence and torture, grisly images, sexual content, nudity, language and some drug use.

BD: Give me an example of a cool gag

DP: Our most elaborate kill starts with a young woman suspended between two trees. She has large hooks going through each shoulder, through her feet, her arms are tied with barbed wire and the whole thing is rigged with ropes that when the killer cuts the rope…well let’s just say that I think horror fans will be pleased with the outcome.

BD: How was it working with Sophia Monk? Lots of awesome nudity.... was it hard getting her to go that far?

DP: I have to say that I was incredibly fortunate with all the cast. Sophie Monk really wanted to push herself and show that she could do more than just be insanely hot. She was fearless when it came to doing anything in the movie – including the nudity. Her part is really the anchor of the film and was very demanding on many levels and I think she’s going to surprise people who expect her to be just the typical pretty face. Tad Hilgenbrinck also really went out of his comfort zone. He was well aware of fans reaction to Lost Boys and wanted to show he was capable of more. In some ways he and Alex Wyndham have the tougher roles in a way because they are not flashy parts. They sort of ground the movie and for most of it are playing the kinds of people who watch these movies. Janet Montgomery came in fresh – it was her first movie – and like Sophie, she was fearless. She just went for it and it was a lot more demanding than the usual girlfriend role would call for, physically and emotionally. That was the exciting part to me about what Schow did with these characters, taking them into areas and having them do things that the audience wouldn’t expect in this kind of movie. And of course having William Sadler in the film just made it that much cooler. He’s such a great actor with such experience that he really upped everyone’s game. I feel really lucky to have had such open and collaborative actors be apart of this. There were no egos, everyone was just in it and making it the best it could be with what we had to work with.

BD: Whats next? more horror? Can u give any details?

DP: I’m working on several scripts and projects now that are horror in one-way or another. Nothing about filmmakers haha, but the reality is that a lot depends on how well Hills does when it comes out. The nature of this business is less about how a movie is as opposed to how well it does. That’s not saying that it doesn’t matter if a movie is good or not – that does matter. What’s exciting is that the projects I am working on are very different from each other. One’s with author John Skipp while another one is based on a comic book. It’s a tricky time right now for guys at my level, but I’m hopeful that very soon I will be behind the camera calling action and making blood flow.