We had the pleasure of talking with Kaare Andrews Director of the superb Cabin Fever Patient Zero (will be released on VOD on June 26th and In Theaters and i-Tunes on August 1st) and comic creator.

LEGLESS CORPSE: How did you snag the directing gig on CABIN FEVER: PATIENT ZERO?

KAARE ANDREWS: Well the writer, Jake Wade Wall, was a client of my Agent at the time, and he had just finished the first draft. My Agent recommended me for the job. I read the script and liked it. Then I had a small conversation with the Producer, Evan Astrowsky, who Produced the original Cabin Fever. He liked what I had to say and offered me the job. It was just fairly straight forward, simple process.

LC: As a comic artist and writer, do you feel that background helped you transition over into filmmaking as far as a visual standpoint?

KA: Well I have always looked at my film making career as a completely separate thing. I worked my way up in comic books starting at the worst period in the comic book industry, in the history of comic books. After the big boom in the late 1990′s when they would tell you the medium would not be around in five years, that’s when I chose to break in. I worked my way up to now, where I’m fairly well established. In film, I took the same approach. I really started off at the bottom and in a very separate way of my comic book career. I started writing and directing short films, then started writing features, and got Agents. It’s really a completely separate life. When I’m up for a job or talking to people in the film world they have no idea I even do comic books. It’s a completely separate experience. Once I had a meeting at Lionsgate and they arranged a private screening for me to watch the new Hulk animated movie, just me, because I was drawing the cover art for the DVD, and the same day I had a very low entry meet and greet meeting with their TV and Film folks. You feel very schizophrenic sometimes in that situation.

But in terms of applying those skills to film making, there is some crossover. I draw all my own storyboards, my own designs, I communicate through visuals, I really get to use a lot of the skill sets that are in comic book creating. The big difference though, and it seems simple and small but I think this is where it trips up a lot of comic book creators trying to make films, comic books are about a single image and a series of those single images representing something else. Film is about movement and about moving images, and moving the camera, and moving the actors, not snapshots in time, but an experience through time all cut together in a linear situation where you can control the pace. In comic books you can’t control the pace. So there are some fundamental differences between the two. You can’t just view it like one IS the other because they are completely different. It’s like a Cop trying to put out a fire. There’s a very similar skill sets between Firefighters and Police, but the job itself is completely different. You really have to approach it in a completely different way.

LC: The cat fight on the beach was the wettest, messiest, goriest cat fight I’ve ever seen, was that something that was scripted that graphic or was the scene expanded upon when shooting?

KA: Well when I started Eli Roth sent me a nice email of encouragement welcoming me to the project and saying the Cabin Fever franchise is one that will withstand any kind of crazy you throw at it. So just feel free to go crazy. I took that to heart. There was a version of that (cat fight) in the first draft of the script that I read. It was a much smaller deal. I knew it was one that I hadn’t seen like that before and I knew it was a moment that people would talk about and would define the movie even after the movie had come and gone. I got excited about that particular scene. I actually had much bigger plans for it but because we were such a small movie we ended up shooting it in one day with no stunt performers, just our actors, our two ladies. For Lydia Hearst it was her last day in the Dominican Republic and for Jillian Murray it was her first day in the Dominican Republic. They had one day in their acting work and we put both of them through like nine hours of makeup. We didn’t start shooting until midnight, when it got dark, and the nights were so short at the time we had like six hours or five hours, whatever it was, to get that whole sequence. To have these actors who aren’t trained as stunt people to like roll around and flip each other around, while covered in full body makeup around propane campfires, in and out of tents, and special arm rigs, blood and vomit and tearing each other’s stomach’s apart. It was a crazy situation and I have very clear memories of it. Every time you shoot a day in film making they give you sides, it’s like a mini version of the script. My sides got covered in blood and I kept that. Now it’s in my little trophy case here because I think it’s such a fun thing. But after shooting that scene I remember the sun was coming up and I was sitting with my DP Norm (Li) we were looking at each other with a blank gaze because we had just pushed that one night of shooting as far as humanly possible. We were just exhausted.

LC: There are contradicting theories on the internet whether Patient Zero is a prequel or a sequel. One comes to the determination that it’s called Patient Zero so it’s a prequel, but Patient Zero could have been tracked down after the events of the first film. Is there a definitive answer to the debate?

KA: Well I’m not sure if there’s a definitive answer. I believe it’s a film that takes place fairly concurrently with the first Cabin Fever. It’s a separate story in the same universe with different characters, and the same virus. The idea was, in the opening of the film, when the doctors are talking about there’s been an outbreak in the states that talks about the first Cabin Fever movie. If you really broke it down to a timeline it could take place before the first film, it could take place concurrently, it could take place afterward. The reason why we kept it so open ended that way is because I think someone else might own the prequel rights to Cabin Fever, So technically I don’t think it’s a prequel, but it could be. I view it as something more concurrent to the first film. You could easily place it after the first film as well.

LC: With the ABC’s of death under your belt and now with Patient Zero’s release date coming June 26th, what other works do you have lined up we can look out for?

KA: Well I also have this comic book job. Right now, in stores, you can pick up Iron Fist: The Living Weapon, which I’m writing and drawing. I can really own that book in a way that I haven’t been able to own a film yet. I was able to own my segment in ABC’s Of Death in a very real way. It was my script, my directing, my designs, all that stuff. My next film I’m developing will be something I can own, own the process of film making in a way that I can own it in comics.

I’m working on this action movie. It’s like if Blade Runner was a Ninja movie set in present day without any Ninja’s. It’s Noir, tense heightened extreme physical action in a very designed and visual and visceral way. It’s kind of in the early stages and we’ll be focusing on the comic book stuff exclusively for the next few months to make my deadlines. But that’s probably the next film that will happen. I’m super excited to incorporate a lot of things that you can only do if you control the process, specific visuals, specific designs, specific storytelling, specific ideas and just own a film completely in a way I haven’t been able to as of yet.