When Eli Roth stopped by to talk about his new "Hostel" DVDs, he had plenty to say about murder, Metallica and pissed-off fans. The only subject that quieted him up seemed to be "Trailer Trash," the top-secret "Grindhouse"-inspired film he's working on.

Which is why we were all the more amazed when we actually got him to spill some significant beans.

"When I made that fake trailer for "Thanksgiving," it was the most fun I've ever had shooting anything. It was just off-the-hook for two days ... I thought, 'God, there are so many ideas that I have, that I don't think I could stretch out to a feature film, but that would make a fantastic trailer or even a fake movie,'" he explained. "You could take your most terrible, terrible idea that you're so embarrassed to tell anybody, and turn it into a trailer for a terrible film - and it would be an awesome comedy." Read more...

Batman keeps getting new gadgets, Indy keeps getting new friends, and Owen Wilson keeps working with Ben Stiller. That and more in our links of the day.

- The Batcycle! Click source link for full-size image. (L.A. Times)

- Jim Broadbent cast in "Indy 4”? (AICN)

- Eli Roth lashes out at pirates for box office failure of "Hostel: Part II." (Myspace)

- Alas, John Cusack. Patrick Wilson more or less confirms he's cast as Nite Owl in Zack Snyder's "Watchmen." (ComingSoon)

- Tuesdays with Adam. Sports columnist and best-selling author Mitch Albom writing baseball script for Adam Sandler. (Variety)

- Owen Wilson and Nick Nolte join Ben Stiller's "Tropic Thunder." (Variety)

- "The Cat Burglars" and "Operation Rudolph" among upcoming films from "Wallace and Gromit" studio Aardman Features. (Variety)

- Forest Whitaker and Jude Law set for "The Repossession Mambo," morality tale about seizing black market organs. (Variety)

Eli Roth has been documenting the making of "Hostel: Part II" with a series of diary entries for MTV. Last time Roth discussed the rules of the "Masters of Horror" dinners. Today he talks about the healthy competition between he and the other elite horror directors today.

Right now we're at an interesting time in American horror. 2003 was the year that R-rated horror returned with a vengeance, starting off with "House of 1000 Corpses," followed by "28 Days Later," then "Freddy vs. Jason," "Cabin Fever," and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." The public was hungry for violent films, and in 2004 R-rated horror went even more mainstream, with hits like "Dawn of the Dead," and of course, "Saw."

The "Saw" phenomenon fired up all the studios to make grisly horror films, and there were many rip-offs that went into production, none of which captured what made "Saw" work so well. The guys who make "Saw" genuinely love these films, and like the other horror directors, are making films that we'd want to see. People in the industry also love to declare horror dead, which is completely ridiculous. I've been hearing that one for years. Horror isn't dead, crappy films are dead. If you make a bad film, people aren't going to see it, and if you make a great one that excites audiences and gives them an experience unlike anything they've ever had before, they'll come out in droves. Read more...

You answer an unknown call on your cell phone and seconds later you're a raging, homicidal maniac. No, it wasn't your ex-girlfriend or your mother-in-law, it's a strange pulse that has transformed you -- and everyone else with a cell phone -- into a new breed of zombie. As if it needed any more introduction, welcome to the insane mind of Stephen King, the literary luddite whose "Cell" is being adapted for the big screen for director Eli Roth.

Scared of the living dead? Don't be. It's the plain living who should trouble you, Roth insisted. "Everyone on a cell phone gets zapped with this pulse and they all go completely insane. But, what happens is, the generators go out, the power goes out, the water goes bad, so the people that survive suddenly become more dangerous than the phone crazies," Roth said of the frights in his next flick. "Like, the people outside running around killing, they actually become the least of the problems." Read more...

Eli Roth has been documenting the making of "Hostel: Part II" with a series of diary entries for MTV. Yesterday Roth talked about hearing the final sound mix for the film for the first time. Today he discusses how he and his peers came to be known as "The Splat Pack."

About a year ago, I read an article by the British film journalist Alan Jones, who referred to the current wave of new horror directors as "The Splat Pack." This group was myself, James Wan ("Saw"), Neil Marshall ("The Descent"), Alex Aja ("The Hills Have Eyes"), Darren Boussman ("Saw II"), Leigh Whannell (who wrote the first three "Saw" films) Greg McLean ("Wolf Creek"), and Rob Zombie.

Having met most of these guys, we all immediately learned that we had one thing in common: we love R-rated horror movies, and we felt that horror had gone soft, and we wanted to bring back the "hard" R. Everyone, in their own way, wanted to make the kinds of films they grew up on that they felt was missing in mainstream cinema today. Rob Zombie had been making "House of 1000 Corpses" while I was making "Cabin Fever," without any knowledge of each other's films. When I first met Rob, we talked about the horror films we grew up on and how we missed the visceral, grizzly, realistic horror films. We couldn't figure out why sex and nudity had evaporated from scary movies, and we talked about how horror fans want their horror movies horrific, not safe and PG-13. Not that there's anything wrong with PG-13, but that rating tends to best suit more supernatural movies like "The Grudge" and "The Sixth Sense," whereas the films we were making were more realistic, and more brutal. Read more...

It's no secret that the "Saw" and "Hostel" films are closely linked; torture, complex plots, and a willingness to test the MPAA would pair them together, even if the franchises weren't housed at the same studio. But, as "Saw IV" continues production, "Hostel: Part II" director and MTV blogger Eli Roth pointed out one significant difference between the two series: There'll be no more sequels to his. Ever. "There are no more 'Hostels'," a defiant Roth revealed to us this week. "There is 'Hostel' and 'Hostel 2’ and that's it. It's like 'Kill Bill Volume 1’ and 'Kill Bill Volume 2.'"

When "Part II" hits theaters June 8th, it will pick up at the same gruesome moment where last year's torture blockbuster ended - much like such Roth favorites as "Halloween 2." Calling out lame sequels that manufacture plots simply to bring back characters, the down-to-earth writer/director insisted that his two freaky flicks have said all there is to say.

"I hate a lame third sequel, and I don't want there to be one," Roth said. "I wish 'Beyond Thunderdome' didn't exist; I wish there was just 'Mad Max' and 'The Road Warrior.' I really wasn't crazy about 'Spider-Man 3.' I wanted it after 'Spider-Man 1’ and 'Spider-Man 2,' but with 'Spider-Man 3’ I was really disappointed when I saw that film; that will never happen with 'Hostel.'"

Instead, Roth will turn his attention to the upcoming projects "Cell" (an adaptation of the Stephen King zombie book) and "Trailer Trash" (a "Kentucky Fried Movie"-like flick filled with fake trailers). Eli swung by the MTV studios bearing tons of info about those upcoming flicks, as well as some exclusive "Hostel" goodies. Keep checking back, as we'll roll them out in the next few days!

Eli Roth has been documenting the making of "Hostel: Part II" with a series of diary entries for MTV. Yesterday he discussed his battles and unlikely friendship with the MPAA. Today Roth talks about hearing the final sound mix for the film for the first time.

Once the film's cut, we mix the sound, which is what I've been doing at the Alfred Hitchcock Stage at Universal Studios for the past two weeks. Our mixers, Chris Jenkins and Frankie Montano, are awesome, and just did "300," amongst other films. They're amazing. My sound guys -- Brian Best, Kami Asgar and Sean McCormack -- are doing all the sound design, continuing the work they did from the first "Hostel." I worked again with my composer Nathan Barr, who I have worked with since "Cabin Fever," and he did another brilliant, terrifying score.

I obsess over every sound detail, and have to hear every single branch crack, footstep, and knife stab in every scene before we mix it. If something doesn't sound right in my mind's ear it will drive me crazy, and Brian will go and search for the sound until he has it exactly. The simplest sound can make a scene scary, even when you never intended to have it there in the first place. We can add a door creak or a metal scrape to an empty room, and suddenly it feels more creepy. You can't really explain it, you just have to feel it. We just played back the film and listened to all the reels all mixed. It was horrifying. Some of the scenes sound so beautiful you could just lie there and listen to the music for hours, and other scenes are so horrific and painful you're certain the screams will give you nightmares. But seeing the film today I felt a great sense of inner peace. It was the first time I'd seen the film all together, with music and sound effects. Read more...

Eli Roth has been documenting the making of "Hostel: Part II" with a series of diary entries for MTV. Yesterday he discussed the music of his forthcoming film. Today Roth writes about his battles and unlikely friendship with the MPAA.

Contractually, for theatrical release I have to get an R-rating. This is not always easy, especially as the climate of the culture changes and parents groups get more and more upset about violence in films and on television. "Hostel Part II" is a more violent and scary film than the first "Hostel," and a lot of that has to do with the fact that this time it's happening to girls. It's just more horrific.

I was careful about how I used the violence, and really wanted to create an overall more terrifying film experience, and not just make a gore-fest. You can always make a film more gory by adding more tools and more bodies, but what I really wanted to do was create classic horror movie moments and make the entire film scary from start to finish. The problem is if your film's too intense, the MPAA will rate your film NC-17, which means that the studio won't release your film in theaters, except maybe a few art house cinemas. I cut the film for what would ultimately be an unrated DVD, but I was hoping to get as much of that violence as possible through the ratings board. Read more...

The world of "Hostel" is a dark, mysterious place. But with these horrifying new clips leaked to MTV, the story of next month's sequel is beginning to take shape.

"What is this place?" actress Lauren German asks in one of the "Hostel Part II" scenes, finding herself in the torture palace we came to know and fear last year. "This place," responds her friend. "People come here to kill people."

Despite previous rumors to the contrary, we see the three main actresses (Heather Matarazzo, Bijou Phillips and German) being led to Prague by a sexy female siren named Axelle (Vera Jordanova), who promises them "The best natural hot springs in the world." The day of beauty goes bad, however, in "Spa Escape," a second clip that has the white-robed German running for her life.

View the first clip below, and the second (as well as comments from the film's cast) after the jump.

Read more...

Eli Roth has been documenting the making of "Hostel: Part II" with a series of diary entries for MTV. Yesterday Roth wrote about his secret weapon in the edit room. Today he talks about his favorite mode of transportation on the lot.

One of the other advantages to working with [editor] George Folsey Jr. is that he's always working, and has great contacts at every studio. Right before "Hostel: Part II," George cut a kids movie for Warner Bros. called "Unaccompanied Minors," so he had all his editing machines set up on the Warner lot. Instead of moving to a new place, Warner Bros. just let us stay in the editing rooms, since no one else was scheduled to move into those rooms for a few months.

Warner Bros. has a beautiful, beautiful lot, and every day that I go to work, it feels like something out of "Pee Wee's Big Adventure" or the beginning of "Ed Wood." I see directors like Chris Nolan and Zack Snyder around, and I'm editing next door to Wolfgang Petersen, who's editing his director's cut DVD of "Troy." (That's right, I get to share the same bathroom as Wolfgang Petersen. Kinda awesome. )

But the best thing about working on the Warner lot, by far, is that we have our own golf cart. I couldn't believe it when I first saw it. I mean, I have a thing for golf carts anyway, but to have my own golf cart on a movie lot...this was a dream come true. I ride around in that cart all the time. I have absolutely no idea what we could ever possibly use it for, except for giving tours to friends when they come to visit me in the editing room. I ride all over the lot, looking at the different shows and movies shooting, and usually wind up getting lost or stuck in a dead end somewhere around Joel Silver's company. There's a nice small-town America back-lot where I like to drive to, with fake stores and a fake school and everything. It's so cool. And somewhere in between the coffee drinking and golf cart rides, I have to edit the movie.

Missed any of his daily entries? Click here for the "Eli Roth Diaries" archive.