One of the most anticipated releases of the Halloween season is David Slade’s adaptation of Norman Patridge’s Dark Harvest.
Ahead of its release on VOD on 11 October 2023, we caught up with Slade to find out all about his take on Sawtoothed Jack.
How much did you know about Norman Patridge’s novel going into Dark Harvest?
I had read the novel a few years previously and i was struck with the originality of the story. While i loved the polemic of the book, there were fantasy aspects I felt distracted from a cinematic adaptation. I would later talk with Norman & Michael about manifesting the analogy for the vietnam war with more of a dramatic approach and less fantasy. This was also Michael’s instinct so we both wanted to make the same movie from the get-go.
What were your early conversations with Michael Gilio about the script?
In our first meeting with MGM publicity, they asked us to play down Halloween and make it a kind of weird cult Harvest, they were afraid that making a Halloween movie would be difficult to sell as the Halloween franchise was still alive and thus would limit them to releasing the movie at Halloween only.
We agreed to disagree on this point and went for a gritty small-town Halloween gathering in the early sixties.
Michael had the flash of genius to make the film sort of a sequel to the book with Richie in the shadow of his brother who had won the annual Halloween event “The Run” which I thought brought great tension. Spoiler alert {it also allowed us to focus on Sawtooth as a monster that becomes a character of tragedy in the final act and keep most of the supernatural aspects of the story within a realistic frame}
The script I read was already plotted out this way and I was excited about it, I remember very few fundamental changes to Michael’s interpretation until we hit post-production. My main drive was to keep as much of the film immediate as possible.
What can you tell us about October Boy?
He’s an agent of cosmic horror, I don’t know how long he spends on this earth, but certainly since Moloch. His appearance is constant but his consciousness is transient, he represents the power of blood sacrifice.
We worked with a lot of practical effects and the amazing actor Dustin Ceithamer in the rubber suit, I worked with Dustin and “Planet of the Apes” movement choreographer Terry Notary, to manifest his physicality.
As an exercise during the process of birthing Sawtooth Jack, we did extensive rehearsals, I found it very useful to go through Michael’s scenes and give Dustin a written account of each from Sawtooth’s POV, the idea was to map the development of his consciousness from fight or flight newborn to sentient creature understanding his past.
How does Dark Harvest compare to your other work in the genre such as 30 Days of Night and Hannibal?
Once I have done enough research and figured out what I want to say and see with a film I go through a process of meditation on each scene with a lot of espresso coffee, I go into an altered state and pull out the fragments of the dream in my subconscious, then I do drawing of each scene to be clear and be able to communicate with those whose telepathic connection might not be as strong as the one I have with Michael.
Then it’s months of work 10,000 post-it notes and a million storyboards to shape film.
It’s pretty much the same process for all my films.
Were there discussions about the film being released theatrically?
The film is having a limited one night 29 screen theatrical release with Alamo Drafthouse, most are sold out.
Dark Harvest is released on VOD on 11 October 2023.
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