"Remember how you felt about going back into the water after you saw 'Jaws,'" asks producer Stan Winston. "After seeing Wrong Turn, you'll feel the same about camping in the woods…I guarantee it."

Winston, a living legend in Hollywood whose award-winning career has contributed to scaring countless moviegoers for more than three decades, should know. "Stan loves being scared and loves scaring other people," says director Rob Schmidt. "Stan's a bit of a paradox, too. He's a sort of father figure to many of us on this movie, a really loving guy who seemingly has no issues because he 'gets it all out' by killing people on film. I mean he absolutely loves the horror genre and his passion is why it is thrilling for us to work with him."

The genesis of the project began when screenwriter Alan B. McElroy submitted his script to his friend Brian Gilbert, who is Senior Vice President at Stan Winston Productions and Stan Winston's producing partner. Gilbert loved the script, and in turn, gave it to Winston to read.

"I was scared, excited and blown away by Alan's script," recalls Winston. "It was one of the scariest scripts I'd ever read and I knew immediately that Stan Winston Productions was going to make this movie."

A short time later, Summit Entertainment's Erik Feig, who also knew of McElroy's work, heard about Wrong Turn and approached Winston and Gilbert about becoming partners on the project. That partnership, in turn, led to the involvement of Rob Schmidt as director.

"Rob's enthusiasm about the genre combined with the artistic look of his prior films and his true understanding of the piece made him the perfect guy to direct Wrong Turn," says Winston. "He had a passion for doing a film like this. Visually, this film has an elegant quality not seen before in a horror movie. Rob has really raised the bar within the genre with Wrong Turn."

filming wrong turn
Several of Toronto's municipal parks and outlying "wilderness" areas were used to double West Virginia. Much of the filming took place at the principal sets -a mountain Cabin and forest treetops - both designed by production designer Alicia Keywan.

"Alicia is as brilliant as any production designer I have ever worked with and I don't say that lightly," says Stan Winston. "The terror in Wrong Turn goes beyond the three mountain men. The cabin set Alicia designed is frightening because it is so real and filled with the horrific details that tell us about these terrible men.

"What's so great about it," continues Winston, "is that when you walk into the cabin, it doesn't feel like a movie set. It was constructed as a real cabin, with different rooms and entrances and exits. All fours walls are there. It truly felt as if you were stepping into the 'family home' in West Virginia. We even constructed it outdoors at a local Toronto park and situated it between a dirt road and a river bed. Audiences will believe that this place has been there for years. I'm sure the walls would talk of bloodthirsty carnage."

"The cabin is my favorite character in the movie," says director Schmidt. "Alicia has created an actual character by endowing the place with a variety of ghostly and ghastly flea market oddities. This is the kind of place that the audience will immediately identify with as being dangerous. They'll see it in the distance and immediately think to themselves 'Don't go near that house.' That's what builds the tension in horror movies and it's what makes them so much fun to make."

The Forest Treetops set was constructed inside a soundstage just east of downtown Toronto. Production designer Keywan and her art direction, set dressing and construction teams literally built a forest using a meshwork of half-inch steel tubing covered by artificial "bark," which made it easier to pop off branches and limbs to accommodate lighting, camera angles and placement of actors and stunt players.

"Each tree you see in the sequence is actually forty to sixty feet high in the air," explains Keywan, "and this is where all of the action takes place - up in the treetops, not down on the forest floor."

"Moviegoers are used to seeing things take place on the ground," says Winston, "but in our movie it's a helluva lot scarier up in the trees with the 'wildlife.'"

The filmmakers were determined that the film's environments would look and feel realistic. Reality, too, played a huge part in the design, creation and implementation of the special effects makeup for the three mountain men.

The mountain men, played by Julian Richings, Garry Robbins and Ted Clark, endured several hours in the makeup chair each day they worked while Mahan and his team of artists transformed them into the characters Three-Finger, Saw-Tooth and One-Eye.

"I like to think that everything we do at Stan Winston Studios is grounded in reality," says Winston. "If you're creating aliens they have to be grounded in a reality. I'd say our dinosaurs in 'Jurassic Park' are the most paleontologically correct ever created for film. So it only makes sense that we base these mountain men in a human reality, albeit a gruesome and grotesque one.

"Making things as real as possible in a film like this is paramount to its success," adds Winston, "because if the audience believes what they see then we can take them even further toward the edge. Then we can really terrify them by putting these six very likeable characters in jeopardy. That's how the audience can relate to the characters.

"Does that mean we're going to wreak some havoc on our characters?" he asks. "Could be. Could be."

director rob schmidt
His feature film credits include "American Heroes," "Crime and Punishment in Suburbia" (which was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival and the Grand Special Prize at the 2000 Deauville Film Festival) and "Saturn," which he also wrote. For television, Schmidt directed the series "An American Town."

screenwriter alan b. mcelroy
He  wrote the screenplay for "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" and the horror fantasy feature  "Spawn," based on the popular Todd McFarlane comic book. He also wrote and directed the  thriller "Layover."  Among his other screenplay credits are the action comedy "Rolling  Thunder," "Rapid Fire," "Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers," and the drama "Left Behind." His television writing credits include "Murder by Night" and "Wheels of Terror." Born in Cleveland, Ohio, McElroy had planned on becoming a novelist while majoring in psychology at Boston University, at the University of Ohio and in Luxembourg before becoming interested in writing screenplays. He is an alumnus of the Columbia Pictures Writing Program.