Gens Gets Cruel and Unusual

Horror fan Xavier Gens grew up on a steady diet of grindhouse shockers and drive-in action fare, soaking up the extremes of American filmmaking as a child in France. He can dissect a 1970s classic such as "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" as if analyzing Abel Gance's "Napoleon."

So when Mr. Gens finally got a chance to make his debut feature, "Frontier(s)" (last year's "Hitman" was shot after "Frontier(s)"), he filled the screen not just with geysers of blood and madly exaggerated contortions of evil, but with affectionate allusions to all his favorite shockers.

And then he jacked up the visceral elements. "I really loved the original 'Chainsaw Massacre,'" he said. "So I did some investigation of the real story that inspired the movie, the story of Ed Gein." Mr. Gens studied a documentary on the Wisconsin serial killer, whose taxidermic exploits also underpin Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho," and realized that "Chainsaw" director Tobe Hooper had left a few gory details to the imagination. "[Gein] really put his victims on hooks, like pigs. The truth is worse than fiction."

"Frontier(s)," which opens in New York on Friday, takes the porcine motif to a new level of smokehouse fulfillment. Set in 2002, amid riots in the Paris suburbs and an electoral shift to the right, the film follows a gang of underground radicals who flee to the countryside after killing a police officer. They find refuge in an isolated inn run by an eccentric farm family that has frightening notions about hospitality. One by one, the rebel Parisians learn that their hosts are a clan of inbred neo-Nazi cannibals, eager to keep their cellar stocked with fresh meat. But one of the captives, Yasmine (Karina Testa), has been earmarked for a different purpose, and she'll chew, claw, buzzsaw, and shotgun-blast her way out of hell to escape that fate.

"I had heard a story of a girl in the north of France who had escaped from a farm where she was held captive by strange people," Mr. Gens, 33, said. He was sharing the conversation with Ms. Testa, 26, last fall during a visit to the annual horror and fantasy film festival in Sitges, Spain, where "Frontier(s)" made its premiere. "She was found completely full of mud, disturbed, on the road."

Ms. Testa sacrifices any notion of vanity for the role, which she seized upon as an antidote for all the "girly girl" characters she is typically hired to play. One scene, in which she escapes a dungeon cell by submerging herself in a shallow puddle of pig slop, was more realistic than intended. Mr. Gens had prepared what he called "clean mud," but then one of the pigs recruited for the day went for a wallow, relieving itself of various wastes. The tight shooting schedule left no time for cleanup, so Ms. Testa took a big breath and dove in.

"It is very good for the skin," she said, laughing. "Look, now I am very beautiful."

Mr. Gens, who is as portly as his star is willowy, offered that he might have considered suffering the same indignity. "But I am too fat," he said, "and also not as brave."