Ti West
Rising New King Of Horror!
By Rych McCain, International/Nationally Syndicated Entertainment columnist
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| Ti West (Photo Courtesy of Magnet Films) |
The film genre of horror and the paranormal
has always been popular and a money maker for the Hollywood studios since the
early Dracula and Frankenstein flicks of the 1930’s and 40’s that became the
foundational backbone of Universal Pictures’ success which built that studio.
Whereas Vampire themed movies have become more of an “in” fad for the big and
little screens and have surrendered much of their fright factor to the vamps
now being sexy, suave and social; ghost stories still rein supreme at the top
of the list for raising the hair on their viewers heads. A rising new star on
the film making side of the horror genre is writer, producer, director and
editor Ti West. The youthful West is a native of Wilmington, Delaware and a
graduate of New York’s School of the Visual Arts. He is on a sure fast track to
becoming an iconic horror superstar film maker in the vein of the greats before
him like Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho, The
Birds), Stanley Kubrick (The Shining,
Clockwork Orange), Zombie master George Romero (Night of the Living Dead), Wes Craven (Nightmare On Elm Street) and John Carpenter (Halloween) to name some.
Upon graduation from SVA, West made his
first feature “The Roost” which he
sold to Showtime in 2005. That was followed by “Trigger Man” in 2007 which made it to the big screen. The year
2008 marked West’s entry into the big time with “The House Of The Devil” which was a box office and DVD hit. West’s
latest offering is “The Inn Keepers.”
This is truly a scary film especially if you are afraid of ghost stories. It is
about a hotel named The Yankee Pedlar that has the reputation of being haunted.
The place is about to close after being in business since 1891 and during its
last week of operation, two armature ghost hunters, Claire and Luke set out to
either find the ghost(s) or prove that they don’t exist. The film was shot on
location at the actual Yankee Pedlar Hotel in Torrington, Connecticut. The real
life Yankee Pedlar is also said to be haunted. The crew and cast actually
stayed there for two months during the entire shoot and they did report strange
happenings but no one actually saw a ghost.
West and his film crew stayed at The Yankee
Pedlar Hotel when they shot “House of The
Devil” and that experience inspired him to write the script to “The Inn Keepers” which he did in three
days. He explains, “We (the crew) more or less lived this movie. So when I sat
down to write it, the location existed exactly as it is. It was so mapped out
because it was real, that it was actually a matter of just typing that. All of
the work actually went into creating the dynamics of the characters. The rest
of the movie was on auto-pilot.” How did West become aware of The Yankee Pedlar
Hotel in the first place? He laughs, “When we made my previous movie “House Of The Devil,” we stayed there
because it was a cheap place to put the crew up. We would go out into the woods
and make this horror movie and weirder stuff would happen back at the hotel.
Slowly but surely the whole cast and crew started to believe that it was
haunted.
It’s a very iconic place in terms of Connecticut. The whole place and
the people who work there thinks it’s haunted. They have stories, a guy has a
ghost hunting website; it was just like, as I’m trying to make this other
movie, I’m just inundated with all of this weird stuff is going on.” West then
had some free time during the Christmas holidays a year and a half later and
when thinking of something to do he said to himself, “We’ll we did live a ghost
story so what if I wrote the one we just lived? That would come very natural to
me.” West adds a little reality humor when he says, “I’m not really qualified
to do anything but either make movies or be a bus boy.”
©
2012 Rych McCain
Media/Syndication TM
(You
DID
Hear It From Me)!
E-Mail:
feedbackrych@sbcglobal.net
