Rough Cut: In Production

Lighthouse

TOTAL FILM, november 1998

Principal photography for this $3-million budget Brit-chiller kicked off at Three Mills Island Studios, London in late July. Despite its low budget, the production involved building the largest set ever built at the East London film factory (including an 18-foot lighthouse model and an entire beach), with Oscar-winning Superman FX-guru Roy Field supervising the visual effects.

When a prison ship smashes into an old, lonely lighthouse in the Atlantic, the survivors find themselves stalked by a body-part-loving serial nutter (Chris Adamson), who wants their bits for his collection.

"But it's not a slasher," insists first-time director Hunter. "It's much more a Dead Calm-type of picture - Dead Calm set in a David Lean Oliver Twist world with crumbling architecture. The suspense of the situation is created by the confinement of the location, with the tight space of a lighthouse, a few rocks around it and nothing but ocean on every side." Mark Leake, co-producer with Tim Dennison for Tungsten Pictures Ltd, describes it as "an American-constructed film, yet the whole look and feel of it is very British. The last thing we saw like this was Shallow Grave, I guess. Lighthouse works on the same level."