Blood on the Cutting Room Floor

Shaun Charles:
26 deaths in a 75-minute film- that ain't easy. It's a death every three minutes. That doesn't leave much time for character development and narrative arc.

Andrew McGahan:
"Bonefinger" was a demanding role. But we had a long talk with Dave about the part- and he agreed that the constant nudity was essential to the motivation of the character. This is a guy who has no blood of his own, right, like a vampire- only he's not a vampire, he can't suck blood in through his fangs, he doesn't have fangs- no, the only way he can get blood is by absorbing it through his skin, so he has to be as naked as he can be, and covered in as much blood as he can be, all the time, otherwise he can't absorb enough blood to survive. Right? You see the metaphor here?

Andrew McGahan:
That first script- we sent it in to all the funding bodies, and you can't imagine the hostility. They said, 'You can't have a feature-length script with only three pages of dialogue.' And I say, 'Yeah, well what about David Lynch's Eraserhead?'. They said, 'You can't have a film with full-frontal nudity in every single scene. And I say, 'Yeah, what about Genesis in the bible? Adam and Eve are naked for the first two reels.' They said, 'Actors shouldn't have to work neck-deep in raw sewage!'. And I say, 'Jesus, no wonder the industry is in crisis in this country.'

Andrew McGahan:
We got a great deal on the location. The abattoir was closing down anyway. So all those animal parts, and all that pig's blood- it was free.