Exclusive : Monroe on Spit On Your Grave

My good friend, director Steven Monroe (whose last film, “Complacent”, I was a producer on – please check it out if it’s playing in your city! Turkey’s are getting more expensive by the day, and Christmas is approaching quicker than a hair-beseeching magpie!) is knee-deep in a remake of horror classic “I Spit On Your Grave” at the moment….yep, “I Spit on Your Grave”! – and yes, he’s quite aware he’s got his work cut out for him.

Had a bit of a chinwag to Monroe about the flick this morning – which again tells of an aspiring writer who is repeatedly gang-raped, humiliated, and left for dead by four men whom she systematically hunts down to seek revenge – and he’s excited to get going on it, if only because he was such a big fan of the Meir Zarchi-directed original. And as a fan of the 1978 film, Monroe is determined not to put a contemptible, schlocky remake out in the market place.

“I always have a lot of respect for people who make films that push the envelope and I remember seeing the film in 1980 and even when re-watching recently that it disturbed me enough that each time it stayed with me for several days. So I feel that Meir Zarchi deserves a lot of respect and kudos for having the guts to make the film especially when it was made. I know that fans of the film and haters of the film are already up in arms about the remake and already saying that I am going to screw it up and chicken out of doing this and doing that… But I hope that maybe they can at least wait till the film is released and make a educated decision then, even if they still hate it, they have at least seen it.’’

Steven says the new version, which is being produced by Cinetel and distributed by Anchor Bay, will be updated a bit.

“We wanted to stay as true to the original as possible while making sure it was updated in a few ways. There is one additional lead character, a Sheriff played by Andrew Howard, and of course we upped the brutality and length of the tortures and kills – as they were quite short in the original – which was really a disturbing Thriller at heart not a Horror film. I also wanted to update the look of the film and give it a very voyeuristic quality and gritty realism”.

The filmmaker says he’s got a top-notch cast onboard including newcomer Sarah Butler, Rodney Eastman (“A Nightmare on Elm Street 4”) and Chad Lindberg (TVs “CSI : New York”), and that “they were all so fantastic and believable that I was constantly blown away”.

“I believe Sarah Butler is going to be a huge star”, Monroe says of the actress playing heroine, Jennifer. “She took this role on fearlessly and nailed it like I don’t think anyone else could have. I can’t and will never say enough about her. There are also a lot of horror fans out there already complaining that the cast is all no names, I can personally guarantee you that no actress with a name would have had the guts to pull of what Sarah did or went through during shooting, no way. She is awesome.’’

So they can take advantage of the great tax benefits, the filmmakers opted to shoot the flick in Shreveport, LA.

‘’But the location actually fit this film very well. So this time it was actually a good thing’’, he says, adding. ‘’While we were shooting there was a very big budget film shooting in Shreveport, but the film was supposed to take place in Los Angeles… Figure out that one…’’