You don’t want to get stuck in DETENTION in SABRETOOTH/CHILDREN OF THE CORN III director James D.R. Hickox’s new horror thriller about all the things wrong with staying after school. The film, not to be confused with the recent same-titled Sony acquisition, hits DVD this month from American World Pictures and Take 2 Releasing. This bloody DETENTION stars David Carradine (as the boozy high school principal) in one of his last roles. Check out comments from star and producer Alexa Jago, as well as exclusive photos, below the jump.

When a group of high school students are abandoned and trapped in detention after their gym teacher disappears, they discover something else staying after class with them…and it’s not human. But once the students escape from their classroom prison, seeking refuge from ghosts is the least of their problems when it’s the school itself that is the most dangerous. Besides Carradine, DETENTION features TRUE BLOOD’s Preston Jones, NINJA CHEERLEADERS’ Maitland McConnell and Zelda Williams (daughter of Robin). “I had been looking for a script that combined THE BREAKFAST CLUB with THE GRUDGE,” says actress/producer Jago. “I have always been a fan of surprise endings like SIXTH SENSE and THE OTHERS, whilst John Stienfield, my partner in New Horizon Pictures, loved coming of age and frightening stories. After having looked for the perfect script for a while, John decided to come up with his own idea, and with our other producer Mike Muscal, came up with the outline for DETENTION. A theme that has always horrified me is being trapped, a claustrophobic situation, and we wanted people to feel that these kids were trapped in the school and that there was no way out.”

Jago reveals that the casting of DETENTION was initially “set to be a pure teen movie, but as it was set in a school, which we felt was a character itself, we needed some grownups to be the teachers. That is where David Carradine came in as the high school principal, myself as the history teacher and Thomas Calabro as the gym teacher. I had never played this type of role before—without giving away the ending of the film—and that was what interested me about Miss Cipher, as well as working with Thomas and David, who I loved as in KILL BILL. David had already worked with our director’s older brother, Anthony Hickox, on WAXWORK II and SUNDOWN, so he also felt like the perfect choice, as James told us what a lovely man he was.”

When it came to her own character of Cipher, Jago developed her own history based on personal experiences. “I came up with a back story based on an obsessive mother who I knew who dominated her son and ruled his life well into his 40s,” she says. “Although you don’t see that progression of time in this film, you do see a boy who has been dominated by his mother. Then we took that idea and stretched it to the extreme. There were a lot of layers to this character, which were interesting to play. I have never played evil before and it was fun to hide it and then to reveal it.”

Jago also describes acting with the late Carradine as a memorable experience. “He was wonderful to work with; very generous actor,” she says. “He would move so that I was always in the best place for the camera and never got bothered when people would come up to ask him about KILL BILL or KUNG FU, whether it was one of the young actors or a gardener at the location who saw him, David took time to talk to them. He was elegant, professional and warm. I know all the young actors enjoyed him very much. He had a lot of great stories to tell. He was a huge fan of Quentin Tarantino as a director and a writer and told me how he had followed him around from film festival to film festival to try to get him to cast him in one of his movies. Apparently, Tarantino told him, ‘I don’t just want you to be in one of my movies, I want to write one for you.’ And so he did with KILL BILL, written especially with David in mind.”

The main stars of DETENTION, though, are the students. “Zelda Williams really made her role her own,” says Jago. “We initially saw her role [of] Sara quite differently, but she has such a great look and feel to her that she transformed Sara into a unique character, as did Michael Mitchell, who played Sam. He is terrifying and eerily like a young Jack Nicholson. Lil J McDaniel [of the upcoming KILL KATIE MALONE] gave a great performance; his scene in the theater and the kitchen still scares me, helped along by James McConnel’s score.”

Not only does DETENTION take place in a haunted high school, but it was filmed in one as well. “Reseda High School, we were told, actually did have its own ghost,” Jago says. “If you went into the auditorium alone, people had been known to see a ghost. Apparently there had been a murder at the school years ago, a girl killed by a thwarted lover and their theory was that she still haunted the school to this day.”

The producer insists DETENTION differs from other recent slasher flicks because of the film’s character-driven and psychologically disturbing story, without relying on special FX. “If you don't care about the characters, you don't care when they are killed,” says Jago. “I really think we accomplished this in the film; each character has his/her very different edge and arc, so when they meet their doom, it has something to do with their weaknesses getting the better of them. I think there are some pretty original deaths, such as the apparition of one kid’s father when he was his age, convincing his own son to commit suicide by cutting his own wrists. It is part ghost story, part thriller, part slasher…you name it, it’s got it!”

As for the future, Jago has her plate full. “I have three films in preproduction with New Horizon Pictures: DIAMETER OF THE BOMB, based on a true story; BLITZ KIDS, another true story about the 1944 Utah basketball team; and a great new horror story we are working on. We also have two reality TV shows, one set in London, England and one in the U.S. I am focusing on both acting and producing and spending my life flying from LA to London and back.”

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