Halloween brings about many themed movies, television specials and community-driven events. Sci Fi has its own Headless Horseman airing this Saturday.

This rendition is about a group of teens who get lost on their way to a Halloween party and end up in a backwoods town where the locals want to sacrifice them to the Headless Horseman, a beast that preys on the town every seven years, taking seven victims.

Director Anthony C. Ferrante and stars Richard Moll, Joe Hartzler and Trish Coren, have a few things to say about the production.

This particular version of the Headless Horseman tale is slightly different than the traditional story. Director Ferrante explains, "We don't have a super large budget to be able to do huge epic sequences. So, the idea is, how can we make something really cool but make it a horror film, more of a, you know, sort of an old fashion, scary guy in the woods going after people. And I think that was the most exciting challenge.

"And how do you make it different. One of the things that we had in, I think in the original script, he didn't have a head the entire time. And I felt that at a certain point, you know, just removing heads with visual effects would get boring. So - and you can't really eliminate the guy at the end of the movie if he doesn't have a head.

"So, I figured it would be more interesting that with every head that gets chopped off his own head grows back. I thought that was our nice little twist because then we can have these different stages. And then by the end of the movie he's all in prosthetics.

"Certainly the production designers over there really did an amazing job with the look of the movie. It's really tricky to go and try to do that Ichabod Crane story all over again. It's Washington Irving, you know, really great story. It's been done to death. And the only way to kind of tweak it—and this is what I think Sci Fi does really well—is to take a concept that you know and then kind of put a whole other spin on it. And that's what Headless Horseman was.

"It was very fun getting into the universe. And owing to the story, but doing your own thing. So certainly the pumpkin, you know, had to be in there. It wasn't in the original draft, but we had to find a way to put the pumpkin on the head because that's sort of an iconic image. And I think there's even a reference to Ichabod Crane and the town on one of the signs that says Crane's Feed. So there's a lot of in jokes in the movie, but they're very thinly veiled."

Of course, including the pumpkin turned out to be a little hazardous to one of the lead actor's health. "I was on fire...third degree burns, you know, what am I going to do? Complain? I don't think so. I managed to get out alive which I consider a bit of a moral triumph," says Moll.

Moll wasn't the only one burning with excitement during filming— Coren was thrilled to have her fingers slammed in a door—but the winning experience definitely goes to Hartzler, "It's like the best feeling to be 2 o'clock in Romania and covered in blood and having just been decapitated and impaled." And he lived to tell about it!

Filming in Romania had its good and bad points. "It's creepy. There are places at night and things, you know...and some of the woods that we shot in that I definitely felt that I was in Romania and I was filming a horror movie...

"And then we got to go see some of the castles in Transylvania on one of our days off, and that was really cool. That was something that we did just to kind of see the other parts of the area. And it was just beautiful. You know, it's a really beautiful country when you get out into the country and in the mountains. Yes, it was great. The castles are really, for me, like a highlight," remarks Coren.

Hartzler actually had the opportunity to see an early cut of the film, "When I saw it I was amazed. I was like, oh my gosh, I better tell my mom to, you know...better warn her. This is a real horror movie. People are dying. There's a lot of - I couldn't believe how much awesome, awesome horror movie gore there was. You certainly get your fill with us."

I couldn't say it better myself! Don't miss Headless Horseman Saturday, October 27 at 9 p.m. ET on Sci Fi!

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Lory   |2008-04-12 12:31:52 this mvoie is kool Reply 0   0

jasmine   |2007-10-29 14:26:36 it sounds like the interview was a lot of fun! Reply 0   0

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."