Caffeinated Clint
The sequel to the DVD Premiere from Raw Feed
You may have recently rented a little film called “Rest Stop” – if you haven’t caught it – it’s a DVD premiere, which means it’s only available at your local rental haunt – give it a look; it isn’t half-bad.
Its the first film from the newly invented ‘Raw Feed’ group – which consists of Tony Krantz from “24”; John Shiban of “X-Files” fame and Dan Myrick of “Blair Witch” notoriety – and though no match for a lot of the pricier and flashier theatrically-released horror films, it has its merits.
Its not so much the pacing or structure of the film itself – the screenplay needed to be baked a little longer before served, in my opinion – but more so the fact that they’ve created a great new character and set-up here; something that could be, and will be, used in several films to follow.
Basically, you’ve got a madman (think John Ryder from “The Hitcher” meets Michael Myers) hanging around a deserted public restroom. Whoever decides to stop for a leak – ends up either dead on arrival, or trapped in the loo … only to suffer the full extent of the psycho’s torture.
The first, directed by Shiban, saw Nicole (Jaimie Alexander, right) experiencing the toilet of terror.
When two runaway lovers pause at an abandoned rest stop, the boyfriend disappears. And someone else appears – someone with his own demented sense of fun. With drills. Staple guns. Box cutters. All the tearing, grinding, ripping tools you need to hew wood. Or metal. Or people. Especially young, pretty people just like Nicole.
“Rest Stop” (which apparently cost well under $5 million) has apparently been such a success on DVD – I’m assuming a lot of folks rented it for the gratuitous sex scene, at the beginning of the movie, alone – that Warner has commissioned a sequel from the Raw Feed gang.
Just had a chance to speak to Shiban about the sequel.
“Domestically, in the U.S, it [Rest Stop] has done so well – for Warners, for an original DVD, its sold more than any in their history – that now I have to come up with another one. I actually just started … digging into the outline. It’s going to be fun”.
Shiban says he’d like to try and get original star Jaimie Alexander involved. “I’m going to try, yeah. This is how I see it – and this is the way I explained it to Warners – ‘remember Mad Max? and remember the Road Warrior? It was the same mythology and same character but it not only took it up a step, it took it in a different direction. I definitely want to bring back a number of the [original] people and keep the mythology going – but I just want to do a much different kind of movie.
Shiban says the idea for the “Rest Stop” franchise started with “Spielberg’s Duel. I saw that when I was very young and it just stuck with me. Its truly realistic horror. In fact a lot of the seventies horror movies were an influence. Unlike say, the gothic style of horror movies of the 30s or 40s, I wanted to say ‘this is the real world’. It is gritty. Its not fantasyland. Its my town – and there’s something terrible happening here.”
Look out for our full interview with Shiban in a few weeks.
Meantime, here’s the trailer for the original “Rest Stop” …
