The definitive Jake West interview

Jake West is a British horror film director. His fourth feature, Doghouse, opens in cinemas this Friday (June 12th). IMO was invited into the exuberant director’s home to quiz him about his film experiences and marvel at his encyclopaedic knowledge of the horror genre. What we were really after, of course, was insight into the mind of the man who created that alien combine harvester massacre.

The interior of Jake West's home is perhaps an accurate reflection of the inside of his head. An entire wall is given over to his DVD collection, fronted by collections of rare and original horror box sets. More DVDs spill onto the floor and sofa. A huge poster of his first feature, Razor Blade Smile, dominates another wall with the fierce, fanged presence of Eileen Daly. On a coffee table perches an alarmingly realistic severed hand – a latex prop, as it turns out, from Doghouse. His latest feature is again in evidence on his computer screen, as we've interrupted him while he was cutting together a trailer. Nonetheless, the director of the new British zombie film couldn't be nicer about our request to ... umm ... pick his brains.  

IMO: You were in Cannes this year, promoting Doghouse. Was it your first year and how did you find that?

JW: It wasn’t my first year, no. I’ve been there with pretty much all of my films. What was interesting this year was that Doghouse didn’t screen there. With Doghouse, because everyone loved the script so much – the great script by Dan Schaffer, the comic book artist – we actually got Sony interested in coming on board as distributor before we shot it. It’s the first time that’s ever happened to me with any of the projects I’ve done

IMO: That’s very rare.

JW: It’s rare for any indie film to have that. So, Cannes this year was about me talking about the film to a few people, doing a few interviews, then trying to set up some meetings for future work. Sam Raimi was out there and then he came over to London. I saw Drag Me To Hell at the ICA with Frightfest and Sam introduced it, which was amazing because he was just there (he gestures about a foot away).

IMO: Your budget for Razor Blade Smile was about £20,000, Evil Aliens was about £287,000 and Doghouse was £2 million. Next time, will you not get out of bed for less than £20 million?

JW: If that was the case, I think I’d be a bit of a Rip Van Winkle. (In a mock serious tone) Yeah, you’re right. I’m not going to get out of bed for less than £20 million (he laughs).

To be perfectly honest, even though my budgets have gone up, it’s taken a long time to reach a decent level. Two million is just about respectable. Those other films were done in a real independent guerrilla style with small crews and in very difficult conditions. The two million for Doghouse was great because it meant I could have better crew, better actors. In a weird sense it’s like my debut film. Most directors start with two million. So I’ve gone though the real indie route of doing a movie. Next film I would be happy if we get two million and one pound. I’d be happy to get out of bed for anyone who wants to give me some money for a film.

IMO: My favourite scene in Evil Aliens was the infamous combine harvester massacre. It was quintessentially English, very funny and one of those perfect splatter moments, where you think: I’ve always wondered what that would look like. Is this the kind of set piece we can look forward to in Doghouse?

JW: Doghouse has got some pretty fun set pieces but there’s a slight difference between Evil Aliens and Doghouse in the sense that Evil Aliens was designed to be a splatstick film. Tongue through cheek, you know. Everything is ridiculously over the top. Doghouse has gore and splatter, but it’s not splatstick, it’s not designed around – like if someone pulls on someone’s arm, it’s not going to come off, which is what Evil Aliens is all about. [SPOILER:] So, when Emily [Booth] gets her legs pulled off, how exactly does that happen? It doesn’t matter. It’s splatstick. So the comedy is ridiculous.

With Doghouse, it’s more about the characters. They’re realistic. They come across this situation – a zombie outbreak that only affects women in this little village – and the comedy comes from their inability to deal with the situation and their views on gender politics. It’s a film with a bit more depth than Evil Aliens. I don’t think the fans will be disappointed, though. Tonally, Doghouse is more like Shaun of the Dead, whereas Evil Aliens is more like Braindead. There’s some great set pieces in Doghouse that I think people will enjoy. A great scene where they’re using golf balls as weapons. There are some nice axe moments. (Laughs) I don’t really want to give too much away.

IMO: The style and feel of it have clearly moved a long way from the early Raimi/Jackson look of Evil Aliens. Which directors inspired you for this film?

JW: I’m always inspired by Sam Raimi. There’s a little nod to Evil Dead in the first ten minutes of Doghouse. In the comic book shop, right behind him there’s an Evil Dead poster which is the original UK quad, the Palace Pictures one. The comic he tries to sell the kid is the Evil Dead comic. And the fact he’s arguing about them not being zombies is because they’re not actually zombies in Evil Dead, they’re possessed by spirits, so they’re not dead. So there’s this whole argument about zombies that we’re having a geek out about.

Our zombies – the zombirds – are not actually the risen dead, they’re virally infected. Which is always the argument that horror fans have about zombies: they should be undead if they’re really zombies. That was what that argument is about in the shop and the fact that he’s arguing with a ten year old kid is just quite amusing. He’s passionate about it.

IMO: You’re a director who’s been very outspoken about the difficulties of filming on a low budget. When you say that you have to cut corners, what does that mean in practice? Compromising on methods of doing things? Or leaving out entire ideas?

JW: In the past, it’s meant having to leave things out altogether. When you have a great idea in a script, you look at it and then you look at the reality of how to do it. For instance, the combine harvester sequence was very difficult to stage because a combine harvester itself is a really dangerous thing. One misstep and you’re going to kill somebody, so that was pretty difficult to pull off on a low budget because you have to hire a combine harvester, and a driver, and you have to buy the field of wheat that you’re going to destroy. All these things start adding up. Now on a Hollywood production obviously that doesn’t mean anything, but when you haven’t got a lot of money, all of a sudden you’re spending your budget on this sequence, so all the rest of it starts feeling like: ‘We’ve only got ten quid for this other thing.’

I had some scenes in Evil Aliens which got cut, where I wanted to be a lot more elaborate, like when she takes the probe out of her nose. I wanted to do mucus jets (he gestures as to how huge and gross the jets would have been) but we didn’t have the money to build a complete fake head and rig it. The whole film would have been even more insane if I’d had more money. In the past, it’s always been the case that money stops you from realising your crazier ideas. Which is a shame. But it also makes you more inventive.

Also, when I’m directing a film like Evil Aliens, I am also the guy driving the van and unloading it. That’s when the low budget tends to cripple some ideas. Having more money means you can be truer to your script.

IMO: You have some incredible actors in this film, most notably Stephen Graham, who is obviously set for huge things.

JW: Oh, he is. Right now he’s working in New York, playing Al Capone for Martin Scorsese. His career is going off the charts. He did Season of the Witch with Nicolas Cage, he just finished that in Bulgaria. He's in Public Enemies which is coming out in a few weeks, with Johnny Depp.

IMO: He’s chameleonic.

JW: He’s such a great actor and he’s such an intense character. He’s so passionate about it as well, so working with him was phenomenal. He’s probably the most talented actor I’ve worked with. He was excited because doing a part in a genre film was new to him. What attracted him was the script and the character of Vince, beautifully written by Dan. I don’t think he would’ve done Evil Aliens, put it like that, because I don’t think any of the characters would have been good enough. That’s the advantage of having Dan write the script. His characterisations are brilliant. It was a real treat to work with someone like that. Watch Stephen Graham. He’s really on his way.

IMO: And obviously Noel Clarke and Danny Dyer, who are two major faces of the British film industry right now. To have these actors in one project is really something.

JW: Once again, it was the script that attracted them. When Dan and I were working on it, we thought it’d be done for just about a million quid, and that we’d have to cut a lot more corners. So when we had the script going out and we started getting actors interested in it, like Danny when he came on board, all of a sudden it was like: that’s the guy who was our first choice for this role! So it was amazing.

Then Noel came along too, and he’d just done Adulthood, which was a huge success. He was so passionate about wanting to do the script and wanting to do the character. I think that the cast that we’ve got is really special. Lee Ingleby, for example, who plays Matt the comic book geek. He’s a fantastic actor. He’s been in quite a few TV things; he’s in one of the Harry Potter films as Stan Shunpike, the knight bus conductor. And he was in Spaced. He was the Romford guy from the shoot out!

IMO: No way!

JW: He’s the leader of the pack! (does a spookily accurate impression of Romford guy’s voice from the famous Spaced scene) What’re you talking about?

IMO: (once I regained my composure) Who would you love to work with in the future?

JW: Oh gosh. I’ve always said over the years, it would be a dream come true – I’ve got to try and work with Bruce Campbell. Because of the Evil Dead films, obviously. But I also think he’s a good actor, if you see what he did in Bubba Ho Tep. It’s interesting, Sam Raimi and Don Coscarelli are the only directors who seem to get really good stuff out of Bruce. I saw his film, My Name is Bruce. He came and did the intro. He’s brilliant. Fucking hilarious. It’s almost like: forget about the film, let’s just have Bruce talking. But directing himself, he’s not as good at getting Bruce onscreen as Sam is. I’d like to work with him and see if I could get a ‘Bruce’ performance out of him. Get the chin working.

There are a lot of actors I’d like to work with. Gary Oldman has always been one of my favourite actors. I think he’s just a genius. Angelina Jolie, I think is amazing. When I saw her early performances, she looks like she’s willing and able to do anything. But now she’s become Hollywood royalty so it's unlikely someone like me could get her in a film, unless I get that twenty million. (Pauses). That’s her fee, isn’t it?

IMO: Forbes has just named her as the most influential celebrity in the world.

JW: That’s right. Someone like her, to me, was a bit of an outsider, and phenomenally talented. I said years ago I’d like to put her and Bruce Campbell in a film. Which I thought would’ve been hilarious. Nowadays, Bruce would be like an extra and she’d be the lead.

IMO: He would probably go for that.

JW: To be honest, I think there are so many wonderful actors out there. It’s nice to work with some of the new, upcoming talent.

IMO: In your personal opinion, what is the zombie resurgence all about?

JW: I think the thing is that zombies rise from the dead: you can’t keep them down. I think there was a period, as I recall in the eighties – mid eighties to the nineties – where zombies disappeared for a while. But then they came back big style. I think these things moves in cycles. Horror movies move in cycles. And now we’re having a little vampire resurgence, and werewolves are coming back in as well.

The thing about zombies – and it’s probably because of what George Romero did originally – they’re so good for sub-textual metaphor. In Doghouse we’ve got a battle of the sexes subtext in there and the idea of the zombirds is that they’re visual representations of male fears about women. So the Bride represents fear of marriage and commitment, the Snipper represents castration anxiety, the Witch represents the female intuitive understanding of nature. And I think that’s why the better zombie films work – because there is some level of subtext to the zombies, whether it's the decay of society and consumerism or a fear of sickness and pandemics. Zombies seem to reflect that back very well.

Also, as a horror filmmaker, you really want to do your own take on a zombie film. In Doghouse, the initial idea came from a conversation we had when Dan’s girlfriend had come down with flu and we were all joking about man-flu and bird flu, because that was in the news. But that idea of genderising flu appealed to us and we thought, what if a virus only affected one section of the population? It could be men, it could be women. But we couldn’t think of any film that had done that. You’re always looking for a fresh spin when you’re making a film and we thought: that’s it. We asked everyone we knew if they could think of any horror films where just one gender is affected? Subsequently, someone said there’s a book by Jack Ketcham called Ladies’ Night, which has this notion. But that’s not something we knew about.

We did it because we thought it was the chance to do something original. How often does that come along? Because obviously all horror films are re-presentation; everyone knows the basic form of the film. But that allowed us to have this battle of the sexes subtext, which gives the film substance, it gives it meaning. With the backdrop of a zombie action film. All the films that do that tend to be better films, I think.

IMO: You could be adding a new chapter to zombie lore, and people will refer back to that.

JW: That would be ideal. That’s kind of what we hope will happen. That we have created a different variation on the theme. But that’s what makes the theme so rich. And no doubt somebody else is coming up with something new as well. I mean, I know George Romero’s is working on a new film now. Let’s hope that the new _ of the Dead is great. But not as good as Doghouse.

IMO: Earlier this year, Cordon and Horne’s Lesbian Vampire Killers had a broadly similar plot to Doghouse. To help a friend get over a break-up, some guys go to the country, where they visit an isolated small town that’s been overtaken by undead, man-hating female monsters who they have to kill to redeem their masculinity. Should girls be worried by this trend?

JW: I don’t think so. Well, with Lesbian Vampire Killers, maybe you should. I don’t think LVK had much awareness of the gender politics at play in the film, whereas Doghouse does.

It’s something I’ve had to think about a lot but when I saw Lesbian Vampire Killers all my fears went away, because it’s so different. It’s one of those things where two ideas which seemed quite similar popped up at the same time. Unfortunately for us, LVK came out first. But because of Dan’s writing background and my horror background I think we brought a pedigree to the film, which I’m not sure that the LVK people did. I’m not trying to belittle it – it was designed to be fun for teenage boys. But with Doghouse, hopefully it will stay in popular culture as a film that has some landmark aspects to it.

Every single horror film has the set up where a group of people go off to a remote place and get attacked by an evil force. That doesn’t make Doghouse similar to LVK, it just makes all horror films similar to each other. Because it’s all about putting people in a situation they can’t get out of. In Doghouse, the story is really about friendship between the guys. It’s the characters that inform the story.

On the surface, Doghouse appears like a very laddy film but it puts laddism under the microscope. Each of the male characters is designed to show different aspects of the male psyche. For example, Danny Dyer is the ultimate lad in many people’s eyes and because of his character’s views, he ends up suffering more than the others.

You also get to see women as the strong ones. If we’d done it the other way round, it would just be a standard horror film. Normally, women are the victims. In this film, it’s a bit more complicated than that. Still, if we get a chance to do a sequel, the idea is set up that the virus will mutate again and then it’ll affect the men. And the women will be the protagonists.

Lesbian vampires are hardly a new concept. The idea goes back to Sheridan le Fanu’s Carmilla. LVK was paying homage to Hammer films, whereas we were trying to do something new with the zombie genre: this genderisation of the virus. We were trying to be more progressive. And Dan’s come from the comic world, so we were going for something that felt more graphic novel-y.

IMO: Sam Raimi’s new film has a monstrous female antagonist in it too. I think it’s kind of cool that you can have these female monsters now and that they're effective.

JW: It’s progressive that women can be scary now. Why should they be victims all the time?

IMO: Or if they’re villains, they’ve traditionally been quite campy or sexualised.

JW: Right. It means they’re not powerful because they’re like fantasy images. Whereas in my film we have a bunch of zombirds fighting over a head – which looks a bit like Harry Potter – fighting over it, to eat it.

IMO: Moving on from severed heads, I noted the Watchman lighter that plays a key role in Evil Aliens.

JW: In fact, lighters are characters in my films. I’ve got a thing about lighters.

IMO: Yes! In Doghouse, Vince has a lighter with a paw print on it.

JW: That’s a symbol of his male inner strength (he laughs).

IMO: How did you feel about Zack Snyder’s adaptation of the graphic novel?

JW: I felt mixed about it because I thought it was as visually incredibly truthful to the comic book – about as truthful as you’re going to get, to be honest. The visuals were beautiful and there were a couple of performances that really stood out. (He mentions Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Carla Gugino.) I thought that the film had a lot of beauty in it and there were some great moments. In some ways it was breathtaking, in others disappointing.

IMO: Why is it that so many up-and-coming directors are incorporating genre elements to their films? Is it because we’re children of the 80s pop culture boom?

JW: I can’t really speak for other directors because I’ve always worked in genre from my very earliest films. I’m a true genre fan. I love horror and fantastic films because you can visualise stuff you can’t see in real life. In real life, you’re not going to experience a zombie outbreak. These are the things that only exist in your imagination. So to visualise them and put them on screen is great fun because you’re creating a world that isn’t quite the real world we live in. It’s a world where stories take place. That’s what I like about horror films. The visual density of them. There’s a real thrill about making those kind of movies. I think we were a generation that grew up loving movies and I think films have gotten in our psyches.

IMO: There’s a kind of paradoxical spirit in lots of genre filmmakers, where you know you’re going to be limited by budget but this seems to make you more ambitious. Is this kind of kamikaze vision part of what gets a film made?

JW: To get a film made you have to be obsessed. It possesses you, a film. So when you are making it, you start becoming mad. You don’t really think how absurd it is you’re going to do something. There should be some sort of mathematical formula for filmmakers, some sort of inverse rule of reality versus stupidity – and somewhere in the middle you become a filmmaker. Part of what’s exciting in being creative, whether you’re a filmmaker, or an artist or a musician or whatever, is thinking: I’m going to make something and I don’t know how it’s going to turn out. But you put all your energy in and then you can look at the result. The thing with film is, if you get it right, it’s wonderful.

Doghouse is out in cinemas this Friday, 12th June. You can watch Evil Aliens here on Indiemoviesonline.