After first winning attention on the genre scene for his 2005 chiller SHALLOW GROUND, director Sheldon Wilson has been busy bringing terror to the Syfy channel with the likes of CARNY, MOTHMAN and RED: WEREWOLF HUNTER. For his latest movie for the network, premiering this Saturday at 9/8 Central, he went up a KILLER MOUNTAIN and lived to tell Fango the tale, and send a few exclusive photos.

“KILLER MOUNTAIN very nearly was…almost,” he tells us. “We shot the majority of the movie just outside the small town of Hope, British Columbia, doing the mountain-climbing sequences at a spot known as the Hope Slide. In 1965, the entire side of the mountain there slid off, completely burying a mile-long stretch of the highway, trapping and killing four people in their cars who were never recovered. The place is creepy as hell. A few weeks after we finished shooting, another massive piece of the mountain slid off. Luckily, there were no new additions to the four unlucky souls already buried there.”

The terror in KILLER MOUNTAIN is more fantastical: slithery monsters that lurk within Gangkhar Puensum, the world’s highest unclimbed mountain, in Bhutan. A team led by an experienced climber, Ward (Aaron Douglas), and hired by a billionaire (Andrew Airlee) attempts an ascent in search of a missing research expedition that was headed by Ward’s ex-girlfriend (genre stalwart Emmanuelle Vaugier), and has a series of deadly encounters with the creature. The location may have been foreboding, but Wilson says, “Fortunately, we had a great cast that always kept things fun, even in the worst of locations. Aaron Douglas and Paul Campbell, both from BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, were hell-bent on sneaking BATTLESTAR references into the movie. I’ll be curious to see how many of those the audience catches.”

Evidently, those actors had a better time than a star who shot a movie in the area three decades ago. “Hope, as it turns out, is the same small town Sylvester Stallone shot to hell in FIRST BLOOD,” Wilson reveals. “One of the locals told me that Stallone had to stop going out to the bars there at night, because there were always two or three local guys who wanted to be able to say they were the ones who kicked Rocky’s ass. Fortunately for us, we had a much better experience with the nightlife in Hope—as little of it as there was.” Check out a lengthy trailer for KILLER MOUNTAIN below.

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