Rank and Vile

Steffen Schlachtenhaufen is the screenwriter of the new action comedy thriller Danger One. Steffen is best known for the screenplay for the Jeffrey Combs film Would You Rather.

Danger One stars Tom Everett Scott, Denis O’Hare, and Michael O’Neil, and it features whip-smart dialogue and neck-breaking action.

I caught up with Steffen over email to talk to him about his ghoulish tendencies.

Quincy: How do you write a screenplay for a horror film versus a crime thriller? Is there a key difference in your approach?

Steffen: I'd have to say that the approach is pretty similar, at least with this crime thriller anyway. I think there is a horror element to these kinds of crime movies. First, it's mostly contained in one hellish night and all of the characters are trapped in a life or death situation. It's almost like greed is the monster here, infecting the characters and pushing them [to] commit some pretty horrific violence.

Q: Dean and Eric aren’t good people, and yet I root for them from the very start of Danger One. What’s the key to creating characters that an audience will pull for?

S: That's right. When we meet Eric, he's not exactly coming off as a very supportive spouse and Dean is probably a psychopath completely unconcerned with consequences. I think writers can get bogged down with trying to create characters that are "likable." Indeed, it's one of the most common notes people like to give--Character X needs to be more likable. I'm more interested in just making them interesting. Making them relatable can be part of that. Most of the characters at the center of Danger One are dissatisfied with their jobs and the money is simply a way out--even Denis O'Hare's Craddock is daydreaming of [a] career in music. He doesn't really want to be doing any of this. So, while most of us would never take the actions these people do, we can at least relate to their situations of being dissatisfied with their current station in life.

Q: What got you into horror in the first place? Can you remember a gateway film or book?

S: I can give you a few things. I grew up in Wisconsin and was naturally drawn to and at the same time haunted by the woods we lived in. I sought stories that evoked the sounds and shadows that were already scaring me at night... So Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark was pretty formative. But even before that, some of the children's books my folks read to me unintentionally planted a seed. Like, check out Favorite Tales of Monsters and Trolls. The artwork is just bananas. Movie wise, my mom turned me on to Hitchcock pretty early on. Later, Evil Dead II, Alien and The Thing were big turning points for me. 

Q: Which film is better: The Night of the Hunter or Eyes Without a Face?

S: Robert Mitchum gives an absolute juggernaut of a performance, but if I had to pick one to watch again right now it would be Eyes Without a Face. I think you can include this in the French New Wave, right? I love so many of the filmmakers of that time, especially Truffaut and Jean-Pierre Melville. They pushed everything forward. Eyes Without a Face is still a deeply unsettling watch. It's fun to imagine how audiences would have handled it back then. 

Q: What are you working on next?

S: I teamed up with David Guy Levy again to do The Mandela Effect, which wrapped post this summer. Hopefully we'll have something about to announce the release soon. Danger One's Tom Oesch and I have been working on a ghost story and I've also been writing a spec that combines cold war era espionage with some elements of  supernatural horror.