When I visited the set of Uwe Boll’s upcoming epic fantasy, In the Name of the King (then-titled Dungeon Siege) a few months back, I was not sure what to expect. I had only seen one Boll film at the time, but I’d gotten an eyeful about the director’s reputation from reading reviews and posts online. He’s been called everything from a madman to the second coming of Ed Wood — and those are the compliments.

Aside from witnessing a meltdown by star Ray Liotta, any hopes of writing a salacious report were soon dashed after I met Boll and hung out on the set for several hours. Not only was the director kind, well-spoken and composed, his cast and crew were obviously content despite it being near the end of a hectic shooting schedule.

Will Sanderson, an actor who’s appeared in several of Boll’s films, took a few minutes to chat with me about his role in the upcoming vampire action/adventure film BloodRayne (January 6), his longtime collaboration with the German director, and what we can expect from him in In the Name of the King (due out in theaters next November).

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Staci Layne Wilson / Horror.com: Who do you play in BloodRayne?

Will Sanderson: In BloodRayne I play a Domastir, Kagan's right hand man. He does all of Kagan's bidding. Kagan's the evilest vampire of them all. I'm what’s called a thrall, a human that does vampire work. There's lots of bad stuff going on with me. I do some bad things.

Q: What’s the gore factor?

Sanderson: BloodRayne is a very, very, very, gory movie. As a matter of fact, when I saw it for the first time, there's a bunch of shots that I hadn't seen yet… I can honestly say that there was some major crunching going on. I thought that was probably the most disgusting thing about it… the sounds. You'll have to see the movie to see which ones I'm talking about, but it was very gory. I'm sure that there's going to be a cut for the theaters for the MPAA and I think that Uwe is probably going to release a directors cut. A non-rated cut eventually, too.

Q: You've been in quite a few of these horror movies. Are you a fan? Do you go seek them out?

Sanderson: Oh yeah, I'm a huge horror fan, you know. All the Halloween movies… its not really horror, but the Alien flicks. Yeah, I'm a huge horror fan.

Q: So how would you define horror? Because I would say that Alien is a horror movie.

Sanderson: You know, you're probably right. I just thought that if I said Alien was a horror movie that I might get roasted by the horror fans so I had to cover my bases. (laughs) I don't know. How would you define horror?

Q: It has to scare you.

Sanderson: It has to scare you. So any movie that scares you is a horror movie?

Q: Well not necessarily, I mean to a degree. Did you see The Devil's Rejects, Rob Zombie's follow up of the House of a Thousand Corpses?

Sanderson: I didn't see it, no

Q: Ok, well a lot of people say that it's not a horror movie. But it's about the horror what humans can so to each other. There's no supernatural elements but it's quite disturbing and scary.

Sanderson: I think that's a very good definition. If it scares you it's a horror movie. There you go.

Q: And what movies have scared you? What are some of your favorites aside from, say the Halloween franchise?

Sanderson: I don't know if you've seen House of the Dead, but it scared me.

Q: Actually I had never seen any of Uwe's movies before, until last weekend, when I checked out House of the Dead on Showtime.

Sanderson: Yes, House of the Dead, right. Very scary. What else scared me? You know, to be totally honest, the um ... What was the Jessica Biel movie?

Q: Oh yeah, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. That one?

Sanderson: I gotta be honest. That really scared me. I almost cried.

Q: So maniacal killers are triggers.

Sanderson: Yes maniacal killers don't do me any good at night when I'm dreaming! (laughs)

Q: A little bit more on BloodRayne: What is the tone ... is it close to the video game?

Sanderson: No it's not terribly close to the video game. It's kind of a prequel to the game in a sense because it's like, I think it's eighteenth century Romania, or seventeenth Transylvania. It’s not specified. The game's set in twentieth century, so that's different.

Q: What's your feel on what fans will think?

Sanderson: I think fans shouldn't go to a video game movie expecting to see the actual video game because the video game is there for a reason. You can't do exactly what you do in the game. It wouldn't be a very entertaining movie. It has to fit into a film structure. I think if you come in with that mindset, you want to go see a kid movie that's inspired by the game, you'll see a great movie in BloodRayne.

Q: Not being a video game person, but having just seen House of the Dead, I must ask: Why was there a video game segment cut into the action sequences? Weren't they from that game?

Sanderson: Well, the video game sequences in House of the Dead the movie were out of House of the Dead the game. The question is so why they were in the movie, has been asked I think. No, not by you. I'm saying Uwe has a hard time from putting footage in the movie. It's kind of an inside joke, because he always talks about how everybody slams him for putting the video game footage in the movie.

I think that was a choice where Uwe, I think, heard a lot from fans and that was his way of kind of making the movie relate to the game. You can debate as to whether or not he was successful. [But] He's decided to not put the different footage in the movies anymore. I'm not saying he's made that a firm decision 'cause you'll have to ask him, but I don't think he's put anymore video game footage in the movies.

Q: How did you first meet him? I think it's pretty cool that you got to be in all his movies with so many top-name actors like Ben Kingsley, Ray Liotta, and so on.

Sanderson: Yeah, I know. It's really cool that I get to work with Uwe as much as I do. We're pretty close friends now, I'd say he's one of my closest friends. I auditioned for a movie called Black Woods that he did a couple of years ago. I guess five or six years ago now. He cast me in that and we worked together, and kind of built a bit of a friendship and started hanging out a little bit. Then when he came back from Vancouver for his next movie, Homeroom, which is now called Heart of America — a great movie by the way — I auditioned for him again. He'd remembered me and said "Hey! We'll find a part for you in this movie." So that was the second and last time I'd ever actually did for Uwe.

Ever since then I've been fortunate enough to have the parts offered to me largely based on our relationship, and of course he knows what I can do. He has faith in me as an actor. I did House of the Dead, and then Alone in the Dark, and then BloodRayne last year in Romania, and now Dungeon Siege, or In the Name of the King as it's affectionately called. So yeah, it's a great working relationship. I love working with him. Obviously because he's a close friend of mine [and] I think he appreciates my work as well.

Q: Well one thing I have to say is that being, like I say a novice to Uwe's work, I'd only seen that one movie — but I'd heard bad things about him on-line but I actually was pretty impressed with what I've seen today. He seems very nice, accommodating, and open. Everyone here seems to like him. What do you have to say to his critics? Anything?

Sanderson: Well he's gotten a pretty bad rap. I think there's a lot a people out there that don't have anything better to do so they sit at home and criticize other people and they're not really doing anything themselves. To be totally honest, I think it's easy to sit behind a computer and be a critic. That being said, I think the combination of Uwe's very frank personality, his background, the way that he tells it like it really is. [But] he's nice. He's a really funny guy. I think it makes him an easy target for a lot of fans. Kind of like the Yankees; everybody loves to hate the Yankees, I think everybody loves to hate Uwe Boll. Is it warranted? No. I don't think it's warranted. I think he's a great film director.

Q: And he's a producer.

Sanderson: Absolutely! He's a great businessman. He's a great producer. He's an absolutely great director, he's great with all the actors, he's great with his crew. I can honestly say that every movie that I've done with him, crews end up saying, "I will do another Uwe movie again." So as far as the people that he works with, everybody loves him.

Q: You wouldn't see the same people coming back all the time.

Sanderson: No, you wouldn't. But you see a lot of people returning, even people saying, you know, even if we do a smaller budget movie, they'd come back. People who tend to work on higher budget movies would do a lower budget movie with Uwe cause it's a really good time. It's comfortable, and it's fun to come to work every day. As far as his work goes... Yeah, I think he got a bad rap. I think those people that have criticized him ... you know what? To be honest, I think he's gotten criticized because the first time people saw him on a wide scale, was when House of the Dead came out. It was a big wide release, you know, it was a two thousand screen theater release.

To be honest, House of the Dead suffered from a lot of script problems. I think what happens is that if the script isn't solid, a lot of times people will give the director [crap]. People who don't know a lot about the movie industry, they will just say, "The director's the guy that made the movie. So we're going to blame him for everything that went wrong with it." It is his responsibility to some extent, but House of the Dead suffered from a script that I think was sub-par in some respects. I think the job Uwe did as a director was really outstanding. Alone in the Dark suffered from some of the same problems with the story. There was a little bit of, you know, story issues there. It was still, for what it was, a great movie for that genre. I think people will see BloodRayne, and also with this movie, In the Name of the King, that he can do some really, really, really great movies. I think people will see that.

Read Part Two of Two [1]