Welcome back to Behind The Scenes Saturday!! I wanted to dedicate today’s post to one of my favorite vampire films, 30 Days Of Night! I’ve been wanting to do a post on this film for a LONG time and I finally decided to work on it. So, beware of strangers craving raw meat, keep those UV-lights handy, and enjoy these fun pictures and bits of trivia!!

(Trivia provided by IMDb.com)

(Pictures provided by google.com and IMDb.com)

(SPOILER ALERT!!!)

• The language that the vampires speak was completely made up for the film. A linguistics professor at a university in New Zealand helped create the language.
• In reality, Utqiagvik (formerly known as Barrow), Alaska doesn’t see the sun for about 67 days during the winter.
• Steve Niles, the creator of the graphic novel, originally conceived this story as a film. His story concept got rejected by studios for years before he decided to publish it as a graphic novel instead. One of the studios who rejected the original screenplay suddenly found interest in the comic version. They ended up paying much more than the original screenplay cost years before.

• Most of the night shots had to be filmed during the daytime, using the day-for-night process.
• While the characters were hiding in the attic in one of the houses, you can see a picture of Steve Niles in the background.
• The whole film was shot in New Zealand. Nearly half the cast were either New Zealand natives or from Australia.

• In the original comics, the head vampire, Vicente travels to Barrow to try and stop the other vampires’ plans in order to protect their secrecy.
• During filming, Josh Hartnett (Eben) was sick with Mono for two weeks. During that period, he had to work on this film while ALSO traveling to Venice, London, Los Angeles, and New York for the premieres of his other film, The Black Dahlia.
• Sam Raimi was originally approached to direct this film. At some point, he opted to produce the film instead and David Slade stepped in to direct.

• Josh Hartnett did his own stunts in the film, and Melissa George (Stella) did most of her own driving.
• All of the vampires have names (of course) but we don’t know what they are until the end credits.
• A lot of the vampires’ sounds were created with a mixture of the actors’ screams, local death metal singers, and various marsupials. They accomplished their signature screeches by screaming while inhaling.

• If you look carefully, you might notice the little girl vampire’s (Abbey-May Wakefield) arm tattoos. The stick figure tattoo on her right arm is the logo of a German industrial band, Einstürzende Neubauten.
• During the film’s massacre scene, the iconic Wilhelm Scream can be heard as a man is thrown off of a metal roof by one of the vampires.
• David Slade’s top choice for Beau (Mark Boone Junior) was Forest Whitaker.

• In the comics, Eben’s last name was Olemaun. They changed it to Oleson for the film as a nod to the man who was the real Sheriff of Barrow at the time.
• The snow in the film was not real snow. Most of it was salt and some of the snow was digitally added to make it look real.
• The vampire, Arvin was only supposed to have one scene in the film: the utilidor attack. However, Andrew Stehlin stood out the most to David Slade during the rehearsal with the vampire cast. Because of this, any time a scene needed an unspecified vampire, Slade had him step in for it. The filmmakers also decided that because Arvin would be more recognizable to audiences due to being featured more, the utilidor attack scene would be much more climatic.

• This is Mark Boone Junior’s second vampire-themed movie. His first was John Carpenter’s Vampires.
• This is the second film where Melissa George had to deal with lack of sunshine. The first was Dark City.
• Prints of the film were shipped to theaters under the fake name, Red Impression.

• According to the artist of the comic series, Ben Templesmith, the working title for the film was Crackers In Alaska.
• Rey-Phillip Santos was originally cast as Arvin the vampire.
• In the original script, Helen (Elizabeth McRae) and The Stranger (Ben Foster) were killed during the same attack. The scenes where Eben and Stella find The Stranger still in his cell, and where Marlow comes back and kills him, were written during production and sort of squeezed into the shooting schedule. It was understood that the scenes might not be used, but they ended up being put into the film after all.

• This film includes some elements from the sequel graphic novel, 30 Days Of Night: Return To Barrow. One element involved the character, Billy Kitka (Manu Bennett) who, through a series of diary entries, discussed how he killed his family to prevent them from being slaughtered by the vampires. Another element was the use of the UV-lights against the vampires and one of the vampires being mercy-killed by their own after getting blasted with the UV-rays.
• One fan theory circulated that the character of The Stranger was a modern R.M. Renfield from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Both men were approached by the vampires, both had a hunger for blood, both were locked away for the safety of other, both expected to be rewarded for their assistance, and both were ultimately killed by the vampires they aided.
• Fans noted a few similarities to this film and Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot. 1.) Both stories center around a small town attacked by vampires and a small group of humans who fight back. 2.) Both stories have a human who prepares the town for the vampires’ arrival. 3.) The head vampire in ‘Salem’s Lot is named Barlow and the head vampire in this film is names Marlow. 4.) The town burns in the end, by the heroes in ‘Salem’s Lot and by the villains in this film. 5.) One half of a romantic couple is turned into a vampire: Susan in ‘Salem’s Lot and Eben in this film. 6.) Both head vampires are killed and the remaining vampires escape.