Eli Roth burst onto the scene at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival with his horrific feature debut Cabin Fever, which was acquired by Lionsgate and released a year later, when it became a breakout hit and the highest-grossing film for the company that year. Starring the likes of Rider Strong and Jordan Ladd, the film quickly established Roth as a new horror stalwart who would deliver some of the most gory, twisted movies released by a mainstream distributor at the time and since.
This month, Lionsgate Limited brought this iconic horror outing back into the spotlight with its 4K UHD Blu-Ray debut that presents the film newly remastered in 4K UHD from the uncut Original Camera Negative with Dolby Vision and an all-new Dolby Atmos presentation. The label also reunited a majority of the original cast members and key creative figures for a now hour-long documentary, along with virtually all of the previous supplemental features, for what should be considered the definitive release for this cult favorite. In honor of this release, Eli Roth stopped by No Streaming Required to talk to GVN about the value of physical media, the involvement in the new Cabin Fever release, the status of his other films on 4K UHD, his insane new film, and more. Watch the full interview below and read on for an overview of our chat:
The following interview has been edited for clarity.
Dillon Gonzales (GVN): The first thing I want to discuss with you, Eli, is I’ve gathered both from your own releases and seeing you on other physical media releases, like showing up on the Wicker Man 4K UHD release or the Get Crazy commentary track, which I thought was pretty amazing, you seem to be a really big fan of physical media. Can you tell me a little bit about what physical media means to you?
Eli Roth: Oh, yeah. I mean, physical media, I mean, until CERN creates an alternate timeline we’re all in, is the only way for your stuff to not get memory-holed. I mean, it’s crazy when stuff goes online or streaming and then disappears. If you don’t have a physical copy of it, it’s gone forever.
That can happen for any number of reasons. There are some movies, like someone yesterday was talking about the Zemeckis film, I Wanna Hold Your Hand. And I remember that movie. And then someone said, yeah, it’s not released anywhere. And I thought, “What? It’s not out? You can’t find it? Why?” That’s Robert Zemeckis. It’s such a great film. And Nancy Allen. (Editor’s Note: I Wanna Hold Your Hand is thankfully available from the Criterion Collection, but the point stands for a number of classic films.)
So I think that collecting media, first, I was always obsessed with getting the VHS tapes when I was a kid. Then, when Laserdisc started, it was like, oh, wow, you can see every storyboard from Alien. You can hear Paul Verhoeven talking about Robocop and Basic Instinct, Scorsese and Taxi Driver. I thought when I do my first movie, with Cabin Fever, we did five commentaries. People didn’t know you could do multiple commentaries, especially Lionsgate. It’s like, you can add a second commentary track. I’m like, really? So we did five tracks of commentaries. I had so much to say.
Lloyd Kaufman had asked me to help out with the Bloodsucking Freaks commentary when I was 25 and before I had any credits. My friend worked at Troma. He was like, yeah, my friend Eli loves this movie. Lloyd’s like, let’s bring him on as the blood and guts expert. So they just made up a title. And I tracked down original cast members.
I just wanted to know, what was that like? Because it’s also the only way to preserve the history. You know, that was one of the reasons I did History of Horror was, when these people die, their stories go with them. Like Tobe Hooper making Texas Chainsaw Massacre and George Romero, when he passed, all those stories about making those films are gone. So I think that the physical media is a great way to preserve that and to preserve the movies so they don’t get lost forever.
I’m very thankful that this technology exists because I finally feel like the movie’s done. We shot on film, and we shot Super 35. I didn’t know this, but when you do Super 35, you have to do a squeezed interpositive. You do the interpositive and the squeezed internegative. And then the print is squeezed. Then it’s uncompressed, there’s a specific lens that gets put on the projector to unsqueeze it to make it 2.35.
What happens is you get these layers of contrast that get added in the IP and the IN process. And suddenly, when you’re filming stuff on the edge of darkness, like the detail and the hermit’s skin rotting and his eyes, all this makeup we did, a lot of that got lost when you added contrast.
Also, Scott Kevan, my DP, and I, we did this thing called a bleach bypass, where you can kind of add the contrast and drain the color by percentages per reel. So reel one and two, everything’s fine. No bleach bypass. Reels three and four, it was 25%. Reel five is 50%, and reel six it’s 75%. So that’s why it looks very dark and grainy and Texas Chainsaw Massacre-y, and gives it kind of a Super 16 feel.
What happened was when you go in the cave, you couldn’t see the worms in my ear. You couldn’t really see my face. You couldn’t see the guts. So now with 4K, we just went right to the original negative, and Lionsgate had to hunt for it because a lot of it was lost, but they found it, and it was my director’s cut, and we found the sound, and we remastered it in 7.1. Brian Best, our sound designer, put so many different layers of bugs and details and flesh and the leg shaving, all this stuff.
It looks and sounds so beautiful. Then we did a kind of an updated documentary, “making of,” everyone’s memories of it. But now I feel like, oh, this is the definitive. Like what I did with the Knock Knock 4K that Lionsgate also has, like, this is it. I could finally brighten up shots of Ana de Armas and Lorenzo Izzo’s eyes and Keanu Reeves shoulder injury.
*I hold up the Knock Knock 4K UHD release*
Oh, there you go. By the way, I talked to them. I was like, what’s with this packaging? I didn’t know they were going to do that. They go, yeah, we experimented. It was a little too skinny. It’s beautiful. It’s gorgeous artwork. I highly recommend it. But yeah, this one, I was like, can we please do a steelbook for Cabin Fever? They go, yeah, we’ll do that.
GVN: I love that you answered like three questions I was going to ask in that answer. And I wasn’t planning on mentioning it, but your History of Horror show, I have all three seasons on Blu-ray.
Eli Roth: Oh, thank you!
GVN: For any horror fanatics who don’t own it, it’s just a great starting point for getting deep into that knowledge.
But to stick with Cabin Fever, you did mention kind of the restoration process and the implementation of Dolby Vision and HDR and all that kind of stuff. And you did go into this quite a bit, but was there anything surprising you learned throughout this restoration process, or did you need to be kind of convinced of anything throughout this?
Eli Roth: No, I’m all about it. I was so excited for it and getting to sit there and, not re-time the movie, but tweak stuff that I was always frustrated that I didn’t go far enough in the making of it, when the hermit pops up out of the ravine, he’s not sick enough, but now we can really pop his eyes a little to see that his eyes, on the day when we were shooting it, you could really see it. And then the way I photographed it, he went in and out of shadow, and I didn’t get enough, I didn’t establish it well enough. Shooting the movie in 22 days, it’s your first movie. And it’s like, oh, it’s great. It’s great. So then you go, oh, I wish I had done more.
So I could really, like, when he shows up at the door, really show the flesh rotting. And it just reinforced why the fuck did we get rid of film? It was so beautiful because it looks like we shot it this morning. I know digital is great, digital is easy, but now the problem with film is there are no labs. Even if I’m in Toronto filming, you have to ship your footage to New York or California, which means you’ve got to hold the location for another day and wait for negative clearance, and insurance doesn’t want to do that. So suddenly, there’s all these other weird costs that add up. There aren’t enough people who know how to do it.
So it is this almost lost art where we watch, and we go, we had it. We had the best possible thing ever. Why did we get rid of it? It looks so perfect because a lot of those hard drives in the mid 2000s froze. A lot of those movies that were shot then, they can’t even access the footage because the hard drives are too old. The technology doesn’t work. It’s like trying to use punch cards from NASA from the early 70s. No one knows how to get them working again.
So it is a thing where I thought, you know, man, we blew it. I’m glad I got to shoot three movies. And look, I shot some film stuff on Ice Cream Man and stuff, but it’s more of a niche boutique thing now, unless you have the huge money to do it.
GVN: I haven’t been able to see the finished 4K disc yet, but just judging based on previous 4K releases, I know, especially features shot on film, it just looks so much richer and way better than things that have been confined, especially to the digital intermediates of the early 2000s. I’m really excited to see how this looks newly restored on 4K.
But one thing I did get to get an advanced look at the special features. I’ve had my DVD copy since 2004, first day. What I love about this new 4K UHD release is that it carries over all of the special features from this DVD, all the original five commentary tracks that you talked about, and your sixth commentary track that you did for the unrated cut for the Blu-ray release. So knowing that all of that’s included, Lionsgate did that new documentary that you talked about, which is fantastic. It’s almost an hour long, and I enjoyed every single second of it. I think anyone who’s a fan will love some of the stories you were talking about with all the festival drama, the SAG drama…
Eli Roth: So many times this movie fell apart and almost didn’t happen.
And we just, it was like duct tape. I look at it now, and I can’t believe that we actually finished it, but it’s really a story about just perseverance and bringing people together and everyone believing in it and sharing. And the thing is when you make a movie, especially when you’ve never made a movie before, that’s the thing that’s so, you know, I watched Marty Supreme and people would say, well, he’s an unlikable character. I was like, no, that’s exactly what I was like making Cabin Fever. I was completely not taking no for an answer, would always find a way to do it. Someone said, no, you’re like, no, we’ve got to do this. We’ve got to do that.
I mean, I wasn’t like, you know, falling bathtubs through ceilings or anything, but I was like, I understood that feeling of like, I don’t care if I never do anything else in my life. The only thing that matters to me is that I have to make this horror movie. If I never do it again, at least I got to do this. And that was the feeling. I try to maintain that on all my movies, like, if I don’t have that, then what’s the point?
GVN: I love that this movie is getting this release because it is very special. And like I said, all the special features, the new restoration, everything. I have to imagine that this means a lot, being your first feature, and that it is being preserved in this ultimate way by Lionsgate.
Whenever they approached you with this release, how did that make you feel? And what do you hope people take away all these years later from Cabin Fever now that it is getting this ultimate release?
Eli Roth: Well, I got to tell you, it was the fans. I started doing the convention circuit after Thanksgiving. I was totally unaware of how much it completely exploded. I’m going to do Days of the Dead in Vegas with the whole cast this weekend.
So I started seeing everyone collecting physical media. So we went to Terror Vision Records, saying let’s do a vinyl. Sean at Terror Vision, we’ve been putting that together. So it’s incredible. It’s got every single piece of music from Cabin Fever, everything that’s in the movie on a double disc. Then I said to Lionsgate, I just started hitting up everybody going, when can we do a 4K? When can we do a 4K? And I think they were like, oh yeah, that’s great, if I’m excited about it.
It was me just reaching out to Lionsgate, Sony, Universal, everyone, going, “When can we do a 4K? When can we do a 4K?” It’s just me hammering them, again, the Marty Supreme. And they go, yeah, we, we’d love to. Is there an anniversary coming up? I go, well, we just passed 20 years. Like, it doesn’t matter. Nobody cares. Like, yes, there’ll be a Hostel anniversary. Let’s just get it out there. So they were really great. Stephanie was amazing.
I think coming off of Thanksgiving was a great moment to do it. Because we had a big hit, very well critically received. It sort of showed me doing it in multiple decades with another kind of franchise starter. And I was like, guys, we want to. Also, there’s other stuff I want to continue with Cabin Fever. So let’s get the disc out there. The fans want it.
And they were so excited. American Psycho sold so well on VHS. They said, let’s do a VHS release. So we’re also, and they said, do you want it letterboxed? I go, no, no, no. I want it to look shitty, pan and scan SLP. Like it should look like a VHS release. Let’s not play around. Let’s make it look like VHS and even the box. So we’re doing the perfect, perfect version and a fun VHS release too.
GVN: I love that. And you kind of touched on this a little bit, but every movie that you have put out on 4K is in my collection somewhere. But there are a couple that are missing: The Hostel films and Green Inferno. Are there any teases that you can give for any potential 4K upgrades of those?
Eli Roth: Yeah. Hostel. I can tease. I mean, they haven’t announced the date yet, but trust me, I’m pushing it on all of them and using the excitement about Knock Knock and Cabin Fever to do it. You know, I want 4Ks on everything. So I’m pushing all of it. But, yeah, like Hostel one or two are looking great, and Green Inferno, I think will be up next.
But I think with Hostel, I don’t want to just remaster it. I want to do a really good behind-the-scenes. And there’s 80 hours of making-of footage that we’re just chewing our way through to. With Cabin Fever, we did it fast. There was some stuff, but not a ton. We could do a new thing with the cast. With Hostel. We’re documenting everything from day one.
So right now we’re like, we thought, do we want to rush it? The 20th anniversary was last week, and we had a discussion. We said, do we want to just take the transfer and put it out with the old features? And I said, no, I said, whether it’s January or September, October, I think people would rather have a disc with a really good look back. Look what we did on Cabin Fever.
I said, it’s great to hear people talk about it from the perspective of 20 years later, telling stories, going back, updating it, you know? The transfers are spectacular, and I want the special features to be at the level of the transfers. So that’s what we’re working on now.
GVN: One final question. You mentioned it a little bit, the Ice Cream Man. Are there any teases you can give for that? I know it seems like a pretty personal or long-running project for you.
Eli Roth: It is. I want this to be the craziest film I’ve ever made. I mean, I want to outdo Hostel and Green Inferno and Cabin Fever in terms of bat shit crazy. And we just shot it. I’m in post on it now. No release date yet, but thinking maybe late summer. But it’s totally insane.
It’s like The Birds but with children. I filmed with a hundred kids going completely nuts with like axes and tools, and the kids just kill all the adults, but then they’re playing jump rope with the guts and tetherball with a head. I mean, it’s totally insane. And I filmed with kids during the summer, and it was one of the funniest, most nuts, the kids were, it was like Christmas morning.
You’ve never seen children happier than when they’re like covered in blood running around with a fake head and like jumping up and down on, like sitting on teeter totters with headless bodies, squirting blood. It was, it was wild.
GVN: That sounds amazing. I know any and all horror fans are going to be so excited to see that whenever it comes out this year. Thank you so much for taking the time. This has been such an honor to talk to you.
Eli Roth: Thank you so much. They can follow us on Horror Section Studios. That’s like all the socials. We’ll have updates coming soon.
The 4K UHD Blu-Ray release of Cabin Fever is available now exclusively at Lionsgate Limited.
Dillon is most comfortable sitting around in a theatre all day watching both big budget and independent movies.
