What The Critics Say

"There’s almost a sense of guilt in enjoying a film like this—as if witnessing such grotesque and twisted acts can make one equally twisted. But Hostel isn’t a movie that requires one to act, or even react. Roth simply wants us to feel. And if being 'totally creeped out' is a legitimate feeling, then Roth succeeds beautifully." Tim Basham WEBWOMBAT "The upside is what you might call a 'pure-bred' horror movie: the kind of sweaty experience that genuinely leaves you craving a long shower afterwards, maybe a detox program." Luke Buckmaster IN FILM "A horrifying excursion into a nightmarish world few of us would ever want to experience firsthand" Edward Douglas COMINGSOON.NET "If you're looking for blood and gore, you've come to the right place, although it takes a while to get there. The substitute is lots of nudity. The violence is graphic, grisly, and designed for shock value." Cherryl Dawson and Leigh Ann Palone THEMOVIECHICKS.COM "Hostel is more artfully horrific than the usual gore flick, and more truly scary. It's a small classic of its awful kind." Kurt Loder MTV "It's a nasty piece of work, and work it does." Maitland McDonagh TV GUIDE'S MOVIE GUIDE "It should be noted, though, that this flick by director Eli (Cabin Fever) Roth is not simply ninety minutes of slow, grisly torture. It’s actually a really enjoyable, pacey, rollicking ride. Sure, it’s bloody enough to keep the gore hounds more than happy, but there’s a well-observed sense of adventure. It’s like Raiders Of The Lost Ark with amputations!" Anthony O’Connor IN FILM

The Inside Story

"A disturbing, uncompromising descent into the blackest corners of human nature." Dustin Putman THEMOVIEBOY.COM

There was a time when movie makers didn't need all the violence and graphic images to scare the crap out of a cinema audience. Back in the early days of cinema the fear factor that scared audiences was the fear of the unknown. The great Boris Karloff knew how to play an audience. I remember my mother telling me how scary he was in films such as "Frankenstein" [1931], "The Mask of Fu Manchu" [1932], "Son of Frankenstein" [1939] and "Isle of the Dead" [1945]. Into the fifties films such as "Creature From The Black Lagoon" [1954] and "Forbidden Planet" [1956] scared youngsters of my age. The mid-fifties marked a change for the genre when Hammer Films stamp their mark on the industry with films such as "The Hound of the Baskervilles" [1959] which starred two masters of suspence Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Fourty Long years before "Lord Of The Rings" was even thought of, Christopher Lee was making a name for himself with films such as "Dracula" [1958], "The Mummy" [1959], "Hands of a Strangler" [1961], "Dr Terror's House of Horrors" [1965] and "Dracula Has Risen from the Grave" [1968]. By the eighties a new breed were rewriting the genre. They'd found another way to absolutely terrify a new generation of horror fans. In 1984 the scariest of psycho monsters was let loose on an unsuspecting generation of cinemagoers. "Nightmare On Elm Street" introduced us to Freddy Krueger. Now he was 'really scary', I can tell you. Wes Craven went on to become the recognized master of the super scary film with "The Hills Have Eyes" [1985], Deadly Friend [1986], "The People Under the Stairs" [1992]. In 1994 Freddy Krueger returned to the screen in "Wes Craven's New Nightmare" and in 1996 Craven was highly successful with the film "Scream" which spawned the cult classic trilogy, "Scream", "Scream 2" [1997] and yes, Scream 3" [2000]. Of course Freddy Krueger wasn't the only character to terrify audiences all around the globe. Who could forget "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" [1974] and the mother of all horror films, the ground breaker that made Linda Blair a household name, "The Exorcist" [1973]. It was the benchmark for all films that followed. And amongst the many who would follow, there was Jason Voorhees, the psychopathic killer from "Friday the 13th" [1980] and all the various sequels it spawned. Filmmakers even tried to put to the test which of the two was the best, Freddy or Jason. It all happened in that 2003 production of "Freddy Vs Jason". It hardly created a ripple at the box-office. Freddy and Jason were past their use-by date. By now the two were 'old hat'. What has driven the change in the horror genre is that as film-making techniques have gotten better and special effects technology progressed, films became more graphic and took another turn. While many people today still long for those films which were purely driven by the 'dread within', the films of even a decade or so ago are not the fare a new generations of cinema 'horror' fans are demanding. Films such as "Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2", "Wrong Turn", "Cabin Fever", "Jeepers Creepers 2", "House of 1000 Corpses", The Devils Rejects", "Saw" and "Wolf Creek" have changed all that. Horror fans today have a taste for meatier, bloodier game, and that is why "Hostel" should pay its way at the box office even if it is rated R18+. The story behind the story of "Hostel" is an interesting one. Eli Roth says he was inspired to write the story after his friend Harry Knowles sent him the on-line address for an internet site which offered people the thrill of murdering a willing human victim for $10,000. "The concept instantly made me nauseous," Roth recalls. "But it also felt real. People are sick. There are no limits to what they will do to another person for their own pleasure, and that's the most horrifying thing of all. It's what always stuck with me." Roth revealled he initially decided to make a documentary on the subject but one day came to a sobering conclussion. "If I actually found anyone connected to an organization that profited from murder, why would they think twice about taking me out?" The documentary was dropped. Later, after his debut feature film "Cabin Fever" became Lion Gate Films top money earner in 2003, Roth would meet with "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" producers Mike Fleiss and Chris Briggs who "wanted to make a horror film called "Hostel", about young backpackers traveling through Central Europe." The idea appealed to Roth. "I had done a fair amount of traveling and backpacking during college, as had Chris and Mike, and we loved the possibilities for a horror movie set in an environment we hadn’t seen since "An American Werewolf in London". "But none of us really knew what the film was about beyond the title and the setting," Roth said. A hold was put on further developement. Two years later Roth asked himself, "why couldn’t "Hostel" be a film about the murder for profit business in Thailand? Roth imagined resetting the story in Slovakia, a location that was close enough to the usual Eurotrip routes of Paris, Amsterdam, and Spain, but also on the fringe of most travel itineraries. He envisioned two innocent American backpackers falling into a nefarious world of organized torture and murder." Instantly Roth "knew he had a story to tell." At the time he came to this conclusion, Roth was faced with another dilemma. He already had several projects on his plate and adding "Hostel" to the list made choosing a followup project an even harder decision. He decided to seek advice from friend, Quentin Tarantino ("My Best Friend's Birthday" and "Dance Me to the End of Love"). His reaction? Roth says, "he went crazy. Quentin’s an animated guy, and I’d never seen him this excited about anything. He was like, ‘Oh my fucking God! You have to write this! That’s the scariest fucking idea I’ve heard for a horror movie in years! Forget everything else you have in development at studios, go write this movie NOW." With the success Tarantino has had in Hollywood, only a dumb arse mother fucker would ignore advice that strongly worded. Roth says he "unplugged his phone, shut down his e-mail, locked himself in his office and begun furiously scribbling away. I’d call Quentin every few days if I was stuck on a story point, and he’d help reassure me that I was on the right path, or help me out of a story jam. “It was pretty incredible to have someone like him as a sounding board. I found myself writing nearly twenty pages a day. I couldn’t stop." In just three weeks he had produced a completed draft script. His partners in "Raw Nerve" Production Company "Boaz and Scott were incredibly enthusiastic about the project, and they contributed great ideas to the story," Roth says. "After months of looking for our next project together, we knew we had finally found it." But what did the great Tarantino think of the completed script? "Eli’s really found a way to push the envelope. No one’s ever seen anything like this," he said. And he decided "to make "Hostel" his next Quentin Tarantino Presents project." But the script wasn't finished yet. "Producers Mike Fleiss and Chris Briggs subsequently contributed their own ideas to Roth’s script, resulting in a production-ready draft that was even more frightening than before." Full of enthusiasm the wheels started turning. The producers found and established an office in Prague while Roth set about getting the cast & crew together. He cast American actors Jay Hernandez (Joaquin 'Wack' Campos in "The Rookie") and Derek Richardson ("Reeker") in the lead roles. Next he cast Eythor Gudjonsson, an Icelandic actor he'd met while promoting his film, "Cabin Fever". One big advantage he had when it came to casting was that the roles of the other cast members allowed for broken English to be spoken. That meant he was "able to cast the remaining roles within the Czech Republic." That was a bonus for the locals who usually only got bit parts in other films. "Most American movies that shoot in Prague cast out of the U.S. or England, and the Czech actors only get small parts and they are usually re-dubbed," says Barbara Nedljáková who works regularly in the famed Czech marionette theatre. "But with "Hostel, we weren’t trying to double for America. We could play Europeans and be ourselves. We all felt very lucky." Barbara, who plays the stunning femme fatale Natalya was joined in the cast by Jan Vlasák, one of the top Shakespearean actors in the country. To capture the right imagery, he once again followed Tarantino's advice by using a local Directory of Photography. Roth hired Milan Chadima, a Czech D.P. who had recently shot 2nd unit for Terry Gilliam on "The Brothers Grimm". The result of all this collaboration is a stunning production that will shock, terrify, stun and have you rivitted in your seat. Roth, who credits Asian and South Korean horror filmmaking as the inspiration for "Hostel" says, "I didn’t want to make another horror-comedy. "I wanted "Hostel" to be a pure horror film, one that starts out fun, but gets darker and darker and never looks back or winks at the audience." All I can add to that is, "he sure as hell has. Don't miss it!" Cast & Crew Bytes "HOSTEL" stars .......
Jay Hernandez ["Crazy/Beautiful", "Tourque", "Ladder 49" and "Friday Night Lights"]; Derek Richardson ["Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd", "Bring It On Again" and "Reeker"]; Eythor Gudjonsson ["Hostel"]; Barbara Nedeljakova ["Shanghai Knights"]; Jana Kaderabkova ["Hostel"]; Jan Vlasák ["The Pool", "Sealed In Salt", "Wolfgang A Mozart" and "Lovers & Murderers"] Jennifer Lim ["Rogue Trader", "Code 46", "Weights and Measures" and "Puritan"] and Rick Hoffman ["Conspiracy Theory", "Lethal Weapon 4", "Blood Work", "Cellular" and "Our Time Is Up"] as the American Client.
"HOSTEL" was .......
directed by Eli Roth ["Cabin Fever" and "The Rotten Fruit"]; screenplay by Eli Roth ["Cabin Fever" and "The Rotten Fruit"]; costume design by Franco-Giacomo Carbone ["Hostel"]; production design by Franco-Giacomo Carbone ["Kill the Man", "Psycho Beach Party", "Cabin Fever" and "Wonderland"]; edited by George Folsey Jr ["National Lampoon's Animal House", "The Blues Brothers", "Cheaper By The Dozen" and "The Pink Panther"]; cinematography by Milan Chadima ["The Affair of the Necklace", "Hart's War", "Van Helsing", "The Brothers Grimm" and "Doom"]; original music by Nathan Barr ["Traveling Companion", "The Hangman's Daughter", "Cabin Fever" and "The Dukes of Hazzard"] produced by Chris Briggs ["Godsend"], Mike Fleiss ["The Quest"] and Eli Roth ["Cabin Fever", "The Rotten Fruit", "Cabin Fever: Beneath the Skin" and "2001 Maniacs"]. What It's All About

"It's the kind of film where you avert your eyes from the screen only to have your curiosity force them back to the sheer brutality of the action." Dan Gross PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS

Americans Paxton and Josh have teamed up in Amsterdam with Icelander, Oli. Backpacking through Europe the three enjoy everything the Dutch city has to offer from smoking dope in Cafe`s, window shopping for sex and consuming plenty of alcohol. Paxton and Oli find it easy to enjoy every vice the city offers but Josh, who recently broke up with his girlfriend is finding the sex side a little hard to handle. Finally, in a sex club even he is seduced by the pleasures on offer. Later, by chance, the three guys are told of a place where the local women welcome men, especially Americans, with open arms and open legs. The women in Bratislava are unbelievabley beautiful and are starved for sex because all the young men are involved in fighting a war. Here there is a special Hostel, one they must visit. They decide to head off for Bratislava. After checking into the hostel the three travelers find they are sharing with two gorgeous eastern european women named Natalya and Svetlana, who by all appearances, are set for anything. The naive backbackers will soon discover that Natalya and Svetlana are not what they appear to be. First Oli leaves without an unannouncing his departure. Then Josh too unexpectedly checks out with out telling anyone. Paxton doesn't believe either of the guys would up and leave without first letting him know. Paxton will soon join his fellow travellers. Drugged by the girls, he comes to strapped and restrained in a chair. Suddenly two men appear. One is wearing surgical apparel. "American", the man behind the mask is told. Paxton screams he's not. "American", the man again repeats. The surgeon chooses an instrument . He's about to 'operate' on Paxton. Trouble is, Paxton hasn't been 'preped' for surgery and the man behind the surgical mask hasn't a clue about surgical proceedures. Not that he cares. He's paid good money to 'operate' on a healthy young American. Facing a horrible death Paxton pleads for mercy. His plea fall on deaf ears. The Verdict "Audaciously cruel, exceptionally violent, "Hostel" is one horror flick best avoided by the fainthearted or those with weak stomachs. One should never doubt that somewhere out there, awaiting the unwary, are sick fucks just like the vile dark characters featured in "Hostel". Never the less, mankinds curiosity for the 'unknown' and our fascination for things terribly 'morbid' will, like a moth to the flame, draw many of us to the cinema. Not because we condone the type of inhumane acts portrayed in "Hostel", nor because we wish to laud those who perpetrate such heinous crimes on our fellow human-beings, but rather because we choose to test our resolve, our ability to survive the onslaught that unfolds before us as though, we are the victims. If you believe you have the strength, you'll survive "Hostel". Otherwise, don't bother." Who's Who?

Jay Hernandez Derek Richardson Eythor Gudjonsson Barbara Nedeljakova Jana Kaderabkova Jan Vlasák Rick Hoffman Petr Janis Patrik Zigo Jennifer Lim Lubomir Bukovy Jana Havlickova Milda Jedi Havlas Martin Kubacák Miroslav Táborský Paula Wild Vladimir Silhavecky Barbora Oboznenkova Natali Tothova Petra Kubesova

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Paxton Josh Oli Natalya Svetlana The Dutch Businessman The American Client The German Surgeon Bubble Gum Gang Leader Kana Alex Vala Desk Clerk Jedi The Scarred Cab Driver The Friendly Police Officer Monique Yuri Disco Girl Natalya Shemp Svetlana Shemp

The Crew Directed by Eli Roth Written by Eli Roth Produced by Chris Briggs/Mike Fleiss/Eli Roth Executive Producers Scott Spiegel/Quentin Tarantino/Philip Waley/Boaz Yakin Original Music by Nathan Barr Cinematography by Milan Chadima Additional Photography by Shane Daly Film Editing by George Folsey Jr Casting by Ivan Vorlícek & Kelly Wagner Production Design by Franco-Giacomo Carbone Art Direction by David Baxa Set Decoration by Karel Vanásek Costume Design by Franco-Giacomo Carbone Run Time 93 minutes Rated R18+ [AUST] Copyright ©2006 - Lions Gate Films - All Rights Reserved Copyright Protected © 2006 - Impact Internet Services - All Rights Reserved