[IMG:L]Michael Katleman might be known for his family friendly fare like Gilmore Girls and Smallville, but that didn’t stop the director and producer from risking deadlier waters for his first feature length film, Primeval, which is now available on DVD.
Based on true encounters, Katleman recreated the story of Gustave, a killer crocodile with a taste for human flesh, believed to have taken the lives of hundreds of people in Africa. The director enlisted Prison Break’s Dominic Purcell and funnyman Orlando Jones to portray a news crew hoping to capture the beast before it kills again.
Hollywood.com caught up with Katleman to find out more about the gore.
Hollywood.com: Can you tell us a bit about the real Gustave?
Michael Katleman: As the myth goes, Gustave has been stalking people for up to 100 years and has killed over 300 people. Obviously, in our film, he is a supercroc, but in reality, once he got the taste of human blood and realized that humans move a lot slower than other animals, I think he simply realized that it would take a lot less effort to snack on humans at will. He has been shot at, stabbed, but it just seems there is no way to take him down. Who knows, maybe he has been dead for a long time, but I for one think it’s cool to imagine he’s still out there.
HW: Was Jaws a big inspiration for how you showed him to the audience?
MK: Jaws was a huge influence and inspiration. I still remember the first time I saw that film, and I basically grew up in the water surfing all my life, and even I have to admit that I was afraid to get back in the ocean after that film. If I could come close to putting that kind of fear into people, I would consider this a huge success.
HW: How did you gauge the gross-out and gore factor?
MK: I just wanted to make every kill different from the next, and if I didn’t squirm when I first saw it, I knew it wasn’t enough.
HW: When Primeval opened theaters last January, what did you think of the decision to bill the movie as a “serial killer” theme, rather than a killer croc?
MK: I’ll be honest, I wasn’t crazy about it. In a film like this, the croc is the star, and I think that the fans of films of this genre want to know going into it that they are going to see a killer croc movie. Unfortunately, it caused a lot of frustration with the fans, and at the end of the day, they felt deceived.
HW: This isn’t traditional fodder for a horror film — and I like how you treat it more like a science documentary. What inspired you to tell this particular story in this particular way?
MK: I really like the fact that if you go to the water, there’s a crocodile. If you go to the land, there are warlords. There really is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. It gave me a great opportunity to not only shoot a horror film, but to shoot a horror/action film.
HW: What was the ratio of CG to practical effects?
MK: [It is] 100 percent CG. Zero percent practical effects. We started out with an animatronic croc, in hopes of shooting as much with it as possible. But, once we got the animatronic in the water in Africa, it just didn’t look that scary or believable, so we made a last minute change to not use it at all. We went 100 percent CG instead, which not only posed some CG challenges, but really affected the film financially.
HW: If you could tweak or change anything about the final product, what would it be?
MK: I am pleased, but I’ll be honest, I would tweak everything more. I don’t think you’re ever satisfied that you’ve spent enough time on everything. The reality is, it’s a race against the clock. The one thing I would point to first would be the crocodile…I would have liked to have seen more personality in its eyes, I would have liked to enhance the movement and made it more aggressive, and in the original conception, I had envisioned Gustave-vision, which I just ran out of time and couldn’t develop to my satisfaction. So, I ended up cutting it from the film.
HW: Dominic looks like he could wrestle a croc bare handed! Is that all acting, or is he a bit of a tough guy in real life?
MK: Dom is definitely a tough guy in real life. In fact, in the first week of shooting, when he was running from the truck as it was chasing him down in the grass, he dove under a tree and actually separated his shoulder. Without missing a beat, he kept on filming, finished the day out, went to the hospital, had it wrapped, and came back to work the next day, still begging to do his own stunts.
HW: Between this and Prison Break, I am curious: is he capable of buttoning his shirt?
MK: It was actually in his contract that it had to be unbuttoned, so I’m not sure what comes next for him.
HW: Did Orlando ad-lib a lot of his lines or was the character written to be sort of a wise guy?
MK: The character was written to be sort of a wise-guy, but having said that, Orlando did ad-lib a large majority of his lines. I have to say that was probably one of the most fun parts – turning the camera on, saying action, and seeing what came out of Orlando‘s mouth.
Reporting by Kit Bowen
