pitch black

In a way, Vin Diesel was quite impressed with Coober Pedy. “It’s an amazing place in the middle of the desert: not a tree, not a thing in sight, other than dirt,” says the Saving Private Ryan star, who spent three weeks in the Australian outback township in the summer of 1998 shooting the sci-fi thriller Pitch Black. But the scale of the place was another matter entirely. Coober Pedy, an isolated mining town perched on the eastern edge of the Nullarbor - that 1,000 mile-plus stretch of treeless plain that makes up the Dead Heart of Australia - boasts a population of around 2,000 people. “I’m from New York,” deadpans Diesel. “I grew up in a building of 2,000 people!” For all its reduced proportions and extreme remoteness, however, Coober Pedy is no stranger to movie crews. The surrounding landscape, compared by many to the surface of the moon, is covered in deposits of gypsum which sparkle like diamonds in the sunlight. It has provided the location for a whole host of films, most notably the trio of Mad Max movies (Road Warrior to US audiences) which made Mel Gibson a star.

Rhiana Griffith (below) as Jackie and Vin Diesel (above) as Riddick have to brave the fierce daytime heat of the barren planet on which they crash-land. But even the daytime heat is better than what comes out after dark.

It comes as little surprise to learn that two of the men who created the world of Mad Max - veteran Australian production designer Graham ‘Grace’ Walker and cinematographer David Eggby (whose recent credits include Dragonheart and Blue Streak) - were also responsible for the look of Pitch Black. And the look of Pitch Black is something else: it is the stuff of nightmares. Directed and co-written by David Twohy - whose writing credits include Terminal Velocity, Waterworld, G.I. Jane and Disaster in Time (aka The Grand Tour), and who made his directorial debut with sci-fi actioner The Arrival (featured in Preview 20, back in March 1996) - Pitch Black is set on a distant, inhospitable planet where the heat of the day is almost unbearable. But even that is preferable to what comes out at night.

Pitch Black is set on a planet that is hot as hell by day - and scarier than hell after dark. Hal Hayes reports on how director David Twohy steered his team through the demands of the story - and the challenge of the location.

“To me,” says producer Tom Engelman, “it’s a movie about the worst of your childhood fears. I clearly remember my first sleepover experience when I was about five years old. I woke up in the dark in a strange room and was immediately terrified. I fell off the top bunk onto the floor, and was so scared that I ran home, screaming all the way, with everything I saw perceived as a monster or a demon. When I read this script for the first time, I thought it was all about that childhood fear of the dark that most of us never really grow out of.”