I had never actually heard the term “geek-crush” before, but I’m pretty sure that I have one on horror writer/director Eric Red.

I first encountered the phrase while reading a blog post about Red, and one Google search told me that it means someone that slightly geeky people think is the bees’ knees. UrbanDictionary.com defines a geek-crush as “Perhaps the most pathetic behavior of the modern male (esp. teenage) geek, this term refers to the tendency of male geeks to become irrationally infatuated with nearly any girl who is willing to speak to them, eben [sic] if such occurances [sic] are not really all that rare.”

I’m opting for the former.

Red’s new film, 100 Feet, stars Famke Janssen as Marnie Watson, a woman convicted of killing her abusive husband Mike and sentenced to house arrest. But when Mike returns to his old, albeit now supernatural, ways, an eternal question springs to mind: “You think you can get rid of me that easily?” Or maybe, “This house ain’t big enough for the two of us.”

Oh, and by the way? Best. Taglines. Ever.

Till Death Do Us Part Wasn’t Enough

Her Husband’s Dead, And He’s Taking the News Badly…

And speaking of taking the news badly, the film received more than one offer for a theatrical release from Magnolia and Ghosthouse, but instead is slated for an April premiere on the Sci-Fi Channel.

“It’s going straight to the Sci-Fi Channel because the people that were responsible and involved with the distribution of the picture were basically a group of incompetents. They just completely mishandled it,” said Red. “They were offered a few more dollars to go for this cable release, and decisions were made by the powers that be that were definitely not in the interest of the movie and I’m not happy about it.”

Eric Red began his journey as a filmmaker on a practical path. Instead of meandering through film school in New York City, he went right for the throat of the industry at age 19 and scored a national distribution for a short film called Gunman’s Blues. The film showed on the USA variety show Night Flight in 1981, during the infancy of the offbeat TV program. Said Red, “It was just something that I always wanted to do.”

Red’s name continues to pop up again and again in the not-so-hallowed ranks of horror films and cult favorites. He is perhaps best known for his script to The Hitcher, a creepy-as-hell-P.S.-your-mother-wasn’t-kidding-about-hitchhiking thriller starring C. Thomas Howell, Rutger Hauer, and Jennifer Jason Leigh. The original was made in 1986, and an eerily similar remake with Sean Bean surfaced in 2007. Since his first success, Red has hit all the major hot spots of the horror and thriller genre, from serial killers to werewolves and yes, even vampires (even though 1987’s Near Dark never mentions the word).

His newest project, a film called Nightlife, will be a vampire love triangle. But these aren’t the chaste vampires from Twilight-land. According to Red in an interview with the UK-based EyeforFilm.co.uk, “It’s very erotic and bloody. To me, vampire films require graphic nudity and gore. Sex and pain are tied in.”

Red fits into the world of horror filmmaking. He says he makes them because it’s fun to get such an immediate reaction from an audience. “You know, they’re probably like comedy is for people who are funny,” he said.

Although he assumes the role of writer/director for most of his films, it’s the writing where he has the strongest connection with the material. “I’m a writer first,” he said. He has even written a graphic novel called Containment, which highlights one of the only horror sub-genres he hasn’t yet attacked in film: zombies. And the sub-sub genre: zombies in space.

For Red, the line between film and graphic novels is not as opaque as the drawings. “The thing that’s intriguing about graphic novels, and what makes it a very fun format to work in, is that it’s kind of a synthesis of a lot of things. It’s a story, it’s a dramatic narrative; it’s a little bit like movie storyboarding.”

“If you’re a writer/director coming to graphic novels, it’s actually a very familiar kind of process,” he added.

Throughout his over 30 years in filmmaking, Red has maintained a fanbase while still managing to acquire new ones with his violently addictive films. He has found a niche that he loves and that loves him back.

It’s hard to say who influenced Red to become the filmmaker he is today. “There’s millions of good films,” he said, “but the films that influence you are the ones that you do.” If you have a resume as impressive as Eric Red’s, this is an easy statement to make. The rest of us will just have to content ourselves with pining for our geek crushes. I know I will be.

Be sure to catch 100 Feet on April 26th at 9 PM on the Sci-Fi Channel. And keep an eye out for Nightlife.