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How does a filmmaker cause us tolose our dinner in a bloodfest ofguts and gore? Most of us want to own our own home. For somepeople it doesn’t matter much whether it is a littleapartment up several flights of stairs but forothers space and a view of the sea are mandatory.But who can afford a glitzy apartment overlooking Victoria Harbour?And if you can’t pay for it, would you kill for it? That was thequestion that gave Pan Ho Cheung the inspiration for his latest film.Josie Ho stars in Dream Home, a woman so obsessed with herdream apartment that when its owners ask for more money thanshe can afford, she devises a novel – and gruesome – way todevalue local property prices. Pang Ho Cheung sends his leadinglady into the neighbours’ apartments with murder in mind. AndrewLin, he of boy band ALIVE with Conroy Chan, heads the visualeffects and make-up team in this local horror story and he broughtone of the actors, Phat from rap sensation 24 Herbs, to meet bc todiscuss the blood, the gore and the special effects in Pang’s film.

If anything represents horror in the movies, it is blood – and thecolour of blood. A tinge of red creeping out from under a door canmake audiences shiver, even though they have no idea what orwhose body it comes from. What can you say then about the floodthat splashes out of the elevators in The Shining? Dream Homedoesn’t stint on the red stuff either and, as Andrew Lin explains, thefilmmakers got the best effects with some good quality control.

‘We use three types of blood in Dream Home,’ he says. ‘There is alighter red colour, a medium, and a deep red. Each is divided intotwo consistencies – a thin, watery type that can be used to spray,and a thicker one with more substance that the actors bleed out. We bought the primary ingredients from abroad but mix each ofthem ourselves, so that we control the quality of the blood used ineach scene. Usually local films use only one shade of red, that’s whywhen someone is shot you only see one big patch of bright red. Itdoesn’t look natural, and certainly doesn’t look real either. We’reputting in the extra detail considering the important role blood playsin the film.’

In Dream Home, blood is not the only thing to make your hair standon end – your bile may well rise when, for instance, a person’sstomach is slashed open and their guts pour out. It happens to Phatand in the film, the bloody mess certainly looks like the real thing –one only hopes the props dept were being clever once again. ‘At firstwe wanted to use fake organs,’ says Lin, ‘but director Pang wantedsome of the intestines to fall out onto the floor. In that case theintestines could not be made with plastic because fake plastic onesdon’t have a substantial feeling. We considered the possibilities ofusing real organs and intestines, and then the idea of using pigorgans came to mind. It works, but just barely, because the gutsfrom a pig are larger than those of a human being. So to maximizethe effect we needed to make sure the organs were trimmed so thaton screen everything would look proportional. We also needed to

use one set of pig organs in the day andone set at night, and they all had to becleaned and soaked thoroughly beforeshooting.

Lin says it was certainly not easy ‘Thesmell was pretty gruesome.’ For threedays they had to put up with it as theywent through eight sets of intestines. Butthat wasn’t all. ‘We needed to know thearrangements of organs within the humansystem, like where and how the intestinesare bent, and figure out how the organswill fall from an exposed wound,’ explainsLin. ‘It’s not just a ‘splat’ moment and everything falls out bloodyand hanging. We needed to do it with style, so that it looks real.That’s the most important.’

Phat, from 24 Herbs, plays the guy whose stomach is slashed.Wasn’t he a bit horrified – even terrified? No – rather than beingsickened, he says, he was excited about the scene. ‘The crew tailor-made a fake stomach bag for me to wear. Inside this bag were theorgans. Since the bag was worn with some weight in the front, whenit was violently slashed across, not only did the organs andintestines fall out, the fake stomach also trembled a little,dramatically resembling a real bloody slash into my body.’ But forthe actor, even more shiver-inducing was the following scene. ‘I wassitting on the ground, and Josie (Ho) was supposed to check on meto see if I had died. Although I was about to, as someone who lovedto get high, I needed a fix even on the verge of death. I wassupposed to smoke the last few puffs of a joint, yet when shootingbegan, the joint had burnt out. I tried to light it again, but it didn’tcatch at all.

‘Since the camera was still rolling and director Pang didn’t call ‘Cut’to stop filming, the only thing I could do was stay in character, andthat’s what I did. I looked at the burnt-out joint. I couldn’t get it tolight up, and in the end I had to shoot without it, making upreactions as I went on. Even when the scene was supposed to havefinished, filming continued, so I kept my cool and also continued forabout two more minutes until I couldn’t take it any longer. That’swhen director Pang called ‘Cut’.

‘That extra two minutes of acting in agony was a breakthrough forme – by the time the camera stopped rolling, the entire crew in theroom was applauding, and that gave me satisfaction for the nextthree days!’ says Phat.

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