Rotten Tomatoes interviews Eli Roth about his film, Cabin Fever:
At the end of the 1970′s, horror films were written around the basic premise: what is horrifying? By the end of the 1980′s, horror films were written around the premise: how can we kill this group of kids?
The movie’s genesis scares me:
The initial idea for Cabin Fever came while I was working on a horse farm in Iceland when I was 19 years old. I had been cleaning out a barn and got a skin infection on my face. I woke up in the middle of the night scratching my cheek, thinking I had a mosquito bite. I looked down at my hand and saw chunks of skin. The next morning I attempted to shave and literally, shaved half my face off. The strangest part was not only did it not hurt — it actually satisfied some strange itch underneath my skin. I went to see a dermatologist, who, judging by the horrified and puzzled look on her face, had never seen anything like it before. She gave me steroid creme and luckily, my face cleared up.