Writer/director Eli Roth came up with the idea for his first film "Cabin Fever" after getting a flesh-eating virus in Iceland and taking off half his face while shaving one morning. His second film comes from something darker.
Friend Harry Knowles, during a late-night conversation, turned Roth onto a Web site where he found the inspiration for what later would become the film "Hostel."
"We were talking about the sickest thing you could possibly find on the Internet," Roth said.
And then they found it.
"Something that went beyond the usual bestiality, skateboarding accidents or even those two Japanese girls vomiting into each other's mouth in a bathtub."
Somewhere deep in the heart of Thailand was a business that thrived on society's fetish for fear and adrenaline. For a fee of $10,000, anyone who was so willing could be escorted into a room, handed a loaded weapon and then given another human being to kill.
"It made me sick because it's true," Roth said. "Somewhere out there is someone so bored, and hookers and drugs just don't get them off anymore."
The Web site stated that the practice was legal because the victims participated at their own freewill. They were supposedly desolate, poverty-stricken people who had families starving to death. Sacrificing themselves was the only way for them to make enough money to help their loved ones survive.
"The Web site made it sound as if the prospective killers were benefactors, like they were doing a service for the victims by way of this bizarre life insurance scheme," Roth said.
The Web site, along with an idea about backpackers being lost in a foreign land, stayed with Roth. He said shortly after "Cabin Fever" hit theaters, becoming the top-grossing film of the year for Lion's Gate Pictures, he began getting offers for other films.
"The stories were good, but the scripts sucked," Roth said.
One day, while chitchatting with fellow writer/director Quentin Tarantino, Roth gave him the idea about "Hostel" and he said the response from Mr. "Pulp Fiction" was immediate.
"He said that was the sickest (expletive) idea he'd ever heard and that I should start writing immediately," Roth said. "He said it could become the next American horror classic."
Roth dropped everything else on his plate and locked himself in a room and pounded out the script. He switched the location from Thailand to Central Europe where he could have two backpackers hiking through the country, much like the start of "An American Werewolf in London."
Tarantino would later come onto the project as a producer to make the film a "Quentin Tarantino Presents" project.
"He was always on board, so for him to become executive producer was a natural thing," Roth said.
While filming the movie in Europe, Roth said he witnessed the differences between there and America.
"We were shooting in the Czech Republic, and we had to do this whole thing where a gang of kids trashed a car," Roth said. "In America, there are laws to consider, but over there we gave out 15 lead pipes and just let them go to work and we filmed it."
In Roth's first film, "Cabin Fever," he went with a 1970s horror-style directing. He said those films always influenced him as a child, and he was so excited someone actually gave him a camera to shoot a movie that he wanted to pay tribute to so many people.
"For me, it's not about how many people go see the film opening weekend; it's about kids 30 years from now renting my movie on a Friday night and getting the shit scared out of them," Roth said.
After "Cabin Fever" Roth went on tour at horror festivals and watched films all day long. He said through experiencing the different filmmakers, he found a new style.
"I went with Asian shock horror for 'Hostel,'" Roth said. "This isn't a ghost in a well stuff, but actually violent Asian cinema."
With a cast of Jay Hernandez ("Friday Night Lights") in the lead role and Czech Republic actors filling in everywhere else, Roth was ready to take his show on the road.
He shot the entire film on location, moving 30 times from the 16th century village Czesky Krumlov to a basement of a closed mental hospital built in 1915.
"It was pretty freaky filming in the hospital late at night," Roth said.
The film was released Friday, and topped the weekend box office grossing more than $20 million.
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