It's rare these days to see a horror film without an identifiable villain.

We got a lot of stupid comments from people saying, "Where's the killer? There's no killer!" When a [potential investor] would come up with a suggestion like, "We gotta have the disease start from aliens" -- which was an actual suggestion -- we'd say, "You're fucking ridiculous." When we were shooting two years ago, people kept saying, "Aw, God, the girl gets sick and they lock her in the shed? That's so horrible." But look what happened with SARS. When people don't understand something, they isolate it. It's something very dark in human nature that's been going on for hundreds of years, from leper colonies to smallpox isolation and now SARS.

I was surprised that your film contains nudity. Not only is that rare these days, but it's particularly effective when you see these nubile young bodies start to decompose.

That's the idea. But it was a nightmare to find a girl who could act who was beautiful and would take her clothes off. Peter Jackson told me, "I can't believe you had nudity in a horror film!"

Really? It was difficult? Once upon a time, nudity was mandatory in horror films.

Oh my God, no girls would do it. When people see nudity in a horror film script, they think it's going to haunt them for the rest of their lives. If you do nudity in an artsy movie like "Monster's Ball" then you're rewarded for it, but if you do it in the wrong movie, it ruins you. I'd come in and meet with these actresses and they'd be stunning and gorgeous and they could act and were perfect for the part and they'd say, "But I won't do the nudity. It's exploitation." They've just heard this term from their managers and don't understand it.

I'd say, well, what about the seven-page spread you did in Maxim magazine, topless, covering your nipples, with your legs spread in a G-string? What's that?" And they're like, "That's publicity. That's different." It's like saying, "Yeah, I'll be a secretary but I won't answer the phone." Acting is a job and there's certain things that are required of this particular job, and one of those things is being naked in a sex scene.

Your film is filled with explicit references to other films. "The Evil Dead"...

"The Texas Chain Saw Massacre"...

"Deliverance"...

"Dawn of the Dead"...

"Last House on the Left"...

"Night of the Living Dead," "After Hours"...

OK, so you're into all these great "feel bad" movies of the '70s, films that pressed buttons and pushed boundaries. Why don't horror films do that anymore?

What happened was, in the '70s making a horror film was taken seriously as an art form. You had every major director in the world, from Spielberg, Kubrick, Philip Kaufman, Richard Donner with "The Omen," Ridley Scott, William Friedkin, all making horror films, going, "I'm going to make the scariest movie I can. I'm going to get the best actors, the best screenwriter, the best D.P., the best composer, and make it a world-class production that could win Oscars." At the same time, you had a whole wave of young filmmakers making films about subjects that really terrified them. Tobe Hooper felt that you could be living right next to the Manson family, and so he made "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre." George Romero felt like America was cannibalizing itself and we were becoming zombie slaves to consumerism, and so he made "Dawn of the Dead."

Kind of like how you came up with "Cabin Fever" based on what scared you.

Exactly. Here's what killed horror: In the '80s the studio heads realized that even their shitty horror movies were making money. Movies like "Prom Night," which were fun, but they weren't "The Shining," they weren't "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre." The slasher films killed horror. And then in 1985 Schwarzenegger took over and every time he killed someone, like in "Commando," he made a pun and people ate that shit up. So now you have the Freddy Krueger sequels and every time he kills someone he makes a joke. By the end of the '80s, horror films were a joke -- filmmakers weren't taking them seriously, fans weren't taking them seriously, and at the same time there was a big backlash against the "Rambo" violence of the mid-'80s, so the MPAA starts cutting back on the gore and by 1990 you get the "Night of the Living Dead" remake and it's bloodless -- a bloodless movie! Then "The Silence of the Lambs" came out, right?

Right.

Fucking terrifying movie. But they go, "No, we're not a horror film" because they don't want to be associated with those shitty slasher movies, all those Freddy and Jason sequels. So they call it a "thriller" and it wins every Oscar. So then "Misery" comes out and they make a big stink saying they're a thriller. And they win Oscars.

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