Steven Sheil Interview

• 31st Mar 2011

The Cruel Britannia Season on The Horror Channel is almost upon us and we recently caught up with director Steven Sheil for a quick chat about his debut film and all things horror. His brilliant film Mum & Dad is set to open the Cruel Britannia Season on Friday 8^th April followed by Tony, Salvage and The Living and the Dead.

Do you consider yourself a fan of horror?

When I was growing up it was around the time of the video nasty era. The first horror film that I remember is Halloween after my dad brought it home for us to watch on video. I must have watched that every day for a month. Then, to be fair, I kind of got out of horror from my teenage years through to my early twenties due to the overall lack of quality. Then at university a friend showed me Argento films and I was already making shorts that slowly began to be become more horror based as I got back into horror films in general.

So, can you tell me where the inspiration came for Mum And Dad?

It’s a real mixture of things; having been working on other people’s films for a while I was trying to get finance for my own project. So I began to develop an idea that would be possible given the finances and the very strong film making community that there is here in Nottingham. I began to develop an idea of a fucked up family that slaughtered people and then I got told about this micro budget film scheme in London. On the way to that meeting I started to think about London and growing up near Heathrow airport. Most of my family worked at the airport and there was a specific house right at the end of the runway which sits alone in the middle of a field. So I pitched a family in this house at the end of a runway killing people.

Given the violent content of the film was there any reservation when it came to funding?

Weirdly we didn’t have problems when we were pitching as I think that the scheme wasn’t genre based and they weren’t necessarily horror fans. We knew our audience and what they wanted and we knew how to publicise the film via specific film festivals which appealed to them. After we actually finished the filming then certain people became a little nervous. To be fair though I was never asked to cut anything or to make any changes.

Given the budget of only £100,000 how was the superb look of the film achieved?

We got a superb director of photography and a brilliant designer and crew and we were just lucky. The other thing that helps is a brilliant cast that really played it for real.

Given the excellent cast could you tell me how you came around to Perry Benson and Dido Miles as Mum and Dad?

We did have auditions but Perry had been someone that had been suggested by director friends of mine. He has a history of playing a lot of comic roles but I wanted an actor who is seen as a b-movie actor and give him a big role. The kind of actor you recognise from a lot of other things without knowing exactly who he is. Perry also has a natural outsider feeling to him giving him a nice edge in a lot of ways, given the life he’s lived and the directors he’s worked which such as Alan Clarke and Alex Cox. There was a slight worry from some of the producers given his comedy background but the character needed to pass as a normal dad that you’d see in everyday life. We had a lot of people who came in for the role that simply would not do some of the things in the script, Perry did it all with gusto.  Dido just played the role perfectly and her audition was superb as she actually played up the emotion of the character. She really believed that this girl she was torturing should be happy. She actually got offended when she tried to escape and got really upset by the sense of betrayal. The reason this works is that her character is far more cold and sadistic than Dad. The father role is far more a brutal pervert whereas she is far more considered and calculated with the idea being that he’s like a hammer and she’s more like a knitting needle.

Could you just talk a little bit about the Christmas sequence as it really is shocking the first time round?

Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a real influence on the film and they have a set piece dinner towards the end of the film. So I was thinking of having a Christmas scene as all the film up to that has been a separation between the domestic side and sadistic side of the house. So the Christmas scene was meant to muddle up both sides as it all comes together. Here was an opportunity to bring the whole family together and hope that the audience had, at this point, got the dark humour of the film.

Given that Mum & Dad is going to premiere on the Horror Channel as part of the Cruel Britannia season, what do you think of British horror film-making at the moment?

I think there are a lot of excellent horror film directors in the UK right now. Looking back at the 90s you see that it was a very lean period. But since Dog Soldiers I think there has been a new wave of very good British horror films. It’s still very hard to get horror films made in the UK, not sure if people just mistrust the genre in general. Looking back at this period in 20 years’ time and I think people will see that it was a very interesting time with a lot of talented film makers making very good horror movies. I think we have seen a growth of more street level horror films which for me, in terms of Mum and Dad, was influenced by British exploitation films of the 70s. Look at Cruel Britannia and I think you can see a fascinating mix of social realism and horror.

I assume the films of Pete Walker would play into 70s exploitation?

Absolutely; I love Frightmare as a superb English version of a highly disturbed family, this did undoubtedly feed into Mum and Dad.

I could also see The House of Whipcord in some of Mum and Dad.

Yes, no doubt, with the difference being that those families were far more middle class and my background isn’t that at all so I think Mum and Dad is about a working class family.

So what’s next for you? Are we close to a new film?

I’m close to getting a project off the ground and hopefully will be up and running later in the year. I’ve also written another script for another film called Gozo which will be shot in the next couple of months as well. There is also a sci-fi project and a short film project that I’m developing but it’s hard work to get any kind of film project off the ground. Hopefully we will have something down in the next year.

Aled Jones