The other day I had the honor of speaking with Jake West, the director of the upcoming horror/comedy Doghouse. Many genre fans will know Jake from his previous films Razor Blade Smile, Evil Aliens and Pumpkinhead Ashes to Ashes. Jake talks with me about how the Doghouse shoot went, upcoming projects and his favorite kill of all time. Enjoy this interview with one cool bloke!



Hello Jake, how are you doing today?

Jake West: Very good, very good. I just got back in, I had to assess the sound on the film [Doghouse] because we have a screening tomorrow. (May 12th)

Did everything go over well?

Jake: Yeah, haha, all is good. It's all ready now, I just finished the mix recently and I’m getting ready to show it to anybody for the first time, it’s all very exciting.

First off, I’d like to say that thank you for taking the time in your day to talk with me, we at UHM are huge fans of your work.

Jake: You're welcome. Yeah, I love all the stuff you guys do on your website, it’s great.

Now Jake, we have all seen movies that have the theme of “Battle of the Sexes” but we have never seen one with a zombie theme as well. Where did that idea of Doghouse come from?

Jake: The idea, the very initial idea are in the confines of the comic book creator Dan Schaffer, who wrote the script. We meet through a mutual friend and we really liked each others work and we were talking about doing a film script. So what started the idea originally was that his girlfriend was actually ill with the flu, she had a really bad flu. She was just really sick and she kind of reminded him of a zombie. Then we were just throwing around this idea, I don’t know if you have this saying in the states but if a guy gets the flu they call it “Man flu” or the women do?

No, I don’t think we have that.

Jake: Basically it’s a derogatory term, when a woman says a bloke has “man flu” it’s basically that they think that there isn’t anything wrong with them and he is doing it just to get the better off. So that whole idea I think incorporating a gender specific idea that someone could get ill and the fact that [Schaffer’s] girlfriend had the flu and looked like a bit like a zombie, all of those things sort of combined into the idea of doing a gender based zombie film where the virus will only affect one section of the population.

We just thought that was grand because the battle of the sexes idea is a theme that has been played around with over the years but certainly not with something I can think of where someone decided to do it in a horror film. And then the ideas of the zombies themselves, was to have each of them be a visual metaphor of different male anxieties about relationships. Therefore the character of the Snipper, she represents castration; The Bride represents fear of marriage. We wanted to add subtext to what is essentially a crazy zombie film.



Were there a lot of obstacles during the shoot or did everything go along smoothly?

Jake: The biggest obstacle probably doing the shoot was that we shot it around the end of last summer in the U.K. It was the first film I actually shot in the summer time so I had a lot of night shoots and we’ve only got certain amount of night cause it gets light earlier at that time of year. Also I was expecting good weather because my other films I shot during the Winter and Autumn and I’ve always had quite good weather but last year in the U.K it was just raining all the time. A lot of the time we were trying to shoot during the rain, you wont see it in the final cut of the film but we just had a lot of weather and seasonal hassles.

It was a problem at the time especially when your trying to shoot 20 women in prosthetic zombie make up and it gets wet and the make up starts failing, just stuff like that. Other than that it went incredibly well; we created a whole village and had complete control over the environment. So we could shoot all night and blow stuff up, all the things we couldn’t do if we were shooting in a real town. Plus I had access to a lot better actors as well. I have a BAFTA winner actor Noel Clarke in it, Stephen Graham who has been working with Martin Scorsese and Michael Mann and Danny Dyer who is a big star in the U.K.

I thinks it’s safe to say Evil Aliens was the most gory film you have done to date, will Doghouse overthrow that title when it is released?

Jake: I don’t think it will. Evil Aliens was designed to be a complete splatter fest. It was my homage to my favorite films The Evil Dead, Braindead or Dead Alive in the states; it was my love letter to the splatter films that I saw when I was a teenager. Doghouse has a good amount of splatter in it and quite a bit of horror but it’s not designed to be a splatter film like Evil Aliens was. It’s a horror comedy where the comedy comes from the characters interactions where Evil Aliens is a lot more Splatstick. So by that nature I think the film can’t be quite as over the top. But don’t worry there is still plenty of gore in it, it’s completely fucking insane!



Doghouse will be your second Horror comedy film, what do you like about the blend of comedy and horror?

Jake: I think the thing is that when you are working with horror you tend to find horror and laughter are quite aligned. In real life if something bad happens the instant reaction is to laugh at it. In a film if somebody gets scared they then get embarrassed that they were scared and then like to have a laugh. If you get the timing right with that you can get the audience both laughing and jumping. The films that I love, say An American Werewolf in London do that perfectly. It about finding the tone and that’s the hardest thing.

Nowadays it seems like all the good horror movies are being made overseas and not in the states, why do you think that is?

Jake: One of the things that seems to be going on in the states and I know a lot of horror fans find a bit frustrating, is there seems to be too many remakes and too many sequels. These re-imaginings are getting people fed up. We all want to see something new instead of Halloween being re-imagined and Friday the 13th re-imagined and Last House on the Left being re-imagined. We need to see new stuff because new horror stuff has the potential to have a lot of edge. I’m not saying those films are bad but the fans are just getting fed up. When they look overseas and see new original stuff coming out it’s refreshing to them. I reckon that’s the reason why.

Yeah I know me personally as a horror fan, I like watching new stuff. The remakes are alright but I’m always looking for something new and that I haven’t see before.

Jake: Absolutely. The thing is that you have so many filmmakers working in the states and there are original filmmakers in the states that are churning out original works as well. It’s one of those things the grass looks a bit greener on the other side because the studios dominate the industry so much that you really have to look for the new stuff.

Doghouse is going to be released June 12h in the U.K, when do you think us in the States will get to see it?

Jake: This is something we hope to find out fairly soon. Sony has picked it up in the U.K and Sony has got the option for the all of the worlds territories. So basically its up to them for what territories they want to buy and build on. Since I just finished the film none of the Sony people in the states have seen the film yet and we were holding off showing it to them till it was done. They might want to hold off and see how it does at the box office in the U.K before they make a commitment to the U.S. So at the moment I don’t know and hope we find out fairly soon.



How do you think the audience and critics are going to react in seeing Doghouse for the first time?

Jake: This is something as a filmmaker you just don’t know the answer to. I mean I would love to tell you that I think everyone is going to love it but you know when you make these genre films you get the feeling, especially a lot of the time with critics in the U.K who generally don’t like horror or horror comedies, that the critics wont get on board with it. I think the audience will love it. I hope that everyone loves it but my experience is that not always they do.

Based off the trailer that has just came out, I can already tell you that I’m going to see it and love it.

Jake: Yeah pretty much everyone who loved Evil Aliens will love it. Even people who thought Evil Aliens was perhaps silly, they can get into Doghouse because it has a bit more content in it.

It definitely sounds to me like you make your movies for the fans.

Jake: Yes all my films I do for the fans. I don’t think as a filmmaker should make a film for anyone else. Anyone who does will not make a good film because if you don’t like the film yourself fundamentally it’s not going to be good enough.

Over your career you have tackled Vampires, Flying Spheres, Aliens, Pumpkinhead and now Zombies– what’s next?

Jake: Well I’ve got a couple of scripts by Dan Schaffer who wrote Doghouse. One of them is called Kill Darlings that is based off a comic book he wrote that has not been published yet. Its kind of like American Psycho meets A Clockwork Orange, its about psychotic killer models; these high fashioned models who go on a killing spree but they only really kill celebrities. Its really insane and quite satirical as well and it will be full on horror. Next we have a really crazy over the top action flick called Rollover, as well, which has gore and laughs and different than anything you’ve seen before. We have quite a few things in the pipeline and depending on how Doghouse does we’ll see when we get those up and running.

And for my last question of the day, What is your favorite kill in all of horror movie history?!

Jake: Hahaha, oh man that is such a hard question because there is so many good ones. The one that I’d probably think of straight away when you say that would be the one in Day of the Dead when Captain Rhodes gets ripped in half. That’s the first time I saw make-up effects of that insane level of detail and I went “shit did that just actually happen?” That is the one that just sticks in my head.

That is a great choice.

Jake: Thank you.

Well Jake it was great talking to you and we can’t wait to see Doghouse and your upcoming projects.

Jake: Thank you, It was great speaking to you as well mate. I will keep you guys updated with exclusive material.