BD Horror News - Horrorfest: B-D Chats With 'Tooth & Nail' Director

With After Dark Films' Horrorfest kicking off this weekend, we caught up with a few director's to chat about their entries into the fest. Inside you'll find our exclusive chat with Mark Young, director of Tooth and Nail. In the film a small group of survivors in a post-apocalyptic world take refuge in an empty hospital with plans on re-building society. They rescue a young girl who is the victim of a brutal attack, but soon discover that they were followed by a savage band of cannibals known as Rovers. The Rovers begin to kill them one by one, and the trapped survivors must find a way to outwit their stalkers.

With After Dark Films� HORRORFEST only a few weeks away we decided to chat with Mark Young, director of TOOTH & NAIL, one of the eight films to die for. Early in our conversation he talked a bit about how the film came to be, which is pretty interesting, �The producers had a film that dropped out at the last minute and I had the opportunity to present,� he explains, �There were two criteria: it had to take place at an old hospital and it had to be a horror film, which was fine with me because I dug the hospital and am a big horror fan.� The idea then came into fold as the hospital lead way to the idea, �The hospital was really, really run down, that suggested the post apocalyptic thing. The rest of the storyline came from stuff I�m personally interested in - it�s FORBIDDEN PLANET meets LORD OF THE FLIES.�

One the apocalyptic setting was in place everything became clear to Young, �It�s kind of a combination of things, but the whole thing kind of came out of the premise, the apocalyptic setting � one group of people are essentially trying to rebuild society and another content to eat off of them.�

The film has a pretty strong cast as Vinnie Jones, Rider Strong and Michael Madsen all star, he chatted about how being well connected played a huge roll, �We had a phenomenally good cast for such a low budget film; my producers are really well connected. They have great relationships with talent and agencies in LA.�

Sure they had big names, but the film is still extremely low budget. Young chats about just how constraining it was, ��The way the whole thing came about we only had two weeks to write the script and only a few weeks to produce it. We had a 20 day shoot total. It came off really well. The things you miss out on are the big sweeping CGI shots.�

And like many films before it, TOOTH & NAIL stars a strong female lead, �I had seen THE DESCENT and I liked the burning expectation and the vulnerability of the female lead. It worked well with the story.�

Young also talked a bit with us about how us horror fans generally accept crappy films and it�s rare when we get something with quality, �I love the genre, its my favorite genre� but my issue has been that it�s so rare that you get well made horror films. Our threshold for acceptance is so much lower. We take anything we get and are happy to have it. In general it�s lacking a good story and characterization.�

But just how bloody is the film? Young calls it brutal, �It�s brutal, I know on one set we went through an enormous amount of blood. We were fearful we were not going to get an R rating.�

Check out TOOTH & NAIL as part of After Dark Horrorfest November 9-18 Nationwide.