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“Basically, the film is about a bunch of hikers who get lost in a place called the Lost Ravine,” he tells Fango, “and the concept is that something really horrible happened there in 1825. That was the mountain man period, when scalping actually occurred quite often. So we blended elements of the past and the present colliding, and one thing we did that was very cool was make sure that the weapons we used were authentic replicas of the type you would see back then. And you will see a couple of scalpings, no question.”

Chau, who “wrote, directed and edited, a whole bunch of things,” self-financed SCALP and shot it over a total of 18 days. “We shot for two weeks straight and then we took a break, because we had to wait for the seasons to change,” he explains. “Then we shot another week. Being that most of it was outdoors, I was very concerned about controlling the lighting. We used a lot of shading to make sure we got some good shots, and while we had some strobing issues, the camera we used did an amazing job in the low light.” The cast also includes Jaclynn Doucette, David Holt, Patrick Cohen, Brian Murphy and Amy Rutledge; Anthony DiFolco did the makeup FX. “He did a great job, he was very enthusiastic,” Chau says.

SCALP, which marks Chau’s filmmaking debut, was informed by both Chau’s lifelong love of horror and his interest in American history. “I studied Indian torture at one point,” he says, “but more than that, I’ve always loved the mountain man period—Jim Bridger, Kit Carson—and I thought that if I did something set in the woods, I’d love to bring some of that era into it, so it wouldn’t be just a bunch of kids running around screaming. The film is actually very different from what you would expect.”

Looking beyond the Tribeca run, Chau reports that SCALP will also be screening at the Bram Stoker International Film Festival,  which takes place October 16-19 in Whitby, England, and that a follow-up feature is in the cards. “We’re planning to shoot the sequel in 2010,” he says. “We actually have very strong ideas for a prequel and a sequel, and we’re hoping that with the Tribeca run, there’ll be interest. Beyond that, we’re doing a couple of cool things outside horror: I did a documentary called LIFE OF AN ACTRESS in which we profiled 11 actresses aged 23-70, to see what their lives are really like; we’re working toward showing it to Oxygen and Bravo, so we’ll see what happens. The other project I’m working on is musical called SIGNS OF LIFE, which is about Terazine, a Jewish ghetto where the Nazis used to transfer people to Auschwitz, That’s hitting Off-Broadway in the fall.”

For tickets to SCALP’s Tribeca Cinemas run, go here.
and see the movie’s official website here.