HOUSE RED PRODUCTION.
SEEING THE LIGHT The embattled production faced difficulties from all angles, from funding and equipment going missing to threats of Mafia retribution
I f it wasn’t for bad luck, the team behind recent horror film House Red wouldn’t have had any luck at all. Initially, it was set to be a breeze. A beautiful Tuscan castello and vineyard; Tamer Hassan ( Layer Cake, The Business ), Clara Paget ( Fast & Furious 6 ) and Natasha Henstridge ( The Whole Nine Yards ); legendary DOP Douglas Milsome, with the late Darius Campbell Danesh as executive producer – the film, on the surface at least, couldn’t have looked much better. But things started to take a turn for the worse when the truck carrying all the crew’s equipment got stuck in Switzerland – the result of poor decision making by the driver. The situation was compounded just four days into what was supposed to be a 20-day shoot (later cut down to 16), when a call from producer Camilla Storey to Hassan almost brought House Red down.
“Camilla called and asked if I was sitting down,” recalls Hassan. “That can mean good or bad news. She then told me that a key investor had pulled out.” The British actor had asked several friends and contacts to work on the film, so he desperately wanted to make sure he didn’t let any of them down. Instead of panicking, Hassan was pragmatic. “These things happen, people let you down all the time,” he rationalises. “The problem was that we didn’t have a backup. So, I called in some favours from actors and people in the industry I have known for years and handed Camilla my credit card. Something had to be done, because we had a hardcore landlady who had said: ‘If you don’t pay me, I’m calling my Sardinian friends to come and sort you out!’” Hassan invested £200k of his own money, and the figure was matched
“We had a hardcore landlady who had said: ‘If you don’t pay me, I’m calling my Sardinian friends to come and sort you out’”
09. FEBRUARY 2023
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