Rider Strong riding high

Television sitcom fans are in for a shocker if they see the new horror film Cabin Fever. The actor playing Paul, a sweet-natured college student who goes psycho when threatened by a flesh-eating virus, is a friendly, familiar face.

He’s Rider Strong, best known for playing Shawn on ABC’s Boy Meets World (cancelled in 2000, but a popular rerun staple on the Disney Channel). Shawn’s worst dilemmas included whether or not to hit his teacher’s motorcycle with a baseball bat at the behest of high school bullies. In Cabin Fever, Strong’s character has to decide whether or not to smash his first love’s head in with a shovel because a virus has dissolved her facial flesh.

“I can’t wait for the 13-year-old Disney Channel watchers to drag their parents to see Cabin Fever, and it traumatizes them for life!” Strong says jokingly during a phone interview from San Francisco. “Doing TV was fun, but this film is more up my alley.”

One could think that writer-director Eli Roth’s casting of Strong might’ve been a twisted stunt, putting a television actor well known for G-rated entertainment and Tiger Beat Magazine covers into a role of shocking, super-violent contrast. Strong asserts that this was not the case.

“Eli had no idea who I was when I walked in for the audition,” he says. “I think this worked in my favor because, unfortunately, industry people are resistant to letting you break out of what you’ve done before.”

Strong’s character qualifies as the film’s unconventional hero, committing many atrocities as he attempts to contain and avoid the killer virus. The film features Strong’s first sex scenes, although they are two of the more traumatizing, bloody sex scenes ever put to screen. When I recount a certain sequence with actress Jordan Ladd that gives finger sex a bad name, Strong acknowledges the shock value.

“It’s going to turn some people off of me, I know this. On the other hand, it will have some thinking that I’m not the Boy Meets World guy anymore, and that’s all right by me.”

Strong saw Cabin Fever as his chance for a breakout role, but production struggles almost shot down his career aspirations.

“We didn’t think this movie was going to get made,” he says. “The first day of shooting, our independent investors pulled out because of the anthrax scare.” (Cabin Fever started shooting just one month after Sept. 11.)

Strong also explains that Roth’s association with David Lynch got the film targeted by unions who mistook the low-budget affair for a Lynch production. Lynch, as a strange sort of favor, removed his name as executive producer, filming continued uninhibited, and Strong went on to endure many hours caked with fake blood.

“That stuff (the fake blood) looks wet, but it’s dry, and it sticks to your skin.” Strong recalls. “I’m like Carrie at the prom for the second half of the movie, so uncomfortable. It was like that for four straight nights, with this corn syrup stuff sticking to my skin. Anything for art’s sake.”

Cabin Fever hearkens back to a time when horror films were full of sick humor and directors didn’t care about filling the audience’s collective heart with optimism.

“We wanted to go back to the nihilistic tradition of the old horror films, where there were no happy endings.” Strong says. “In Cabin Fever, everyone just dies in an awful cycle of ‘This world sucks, so deal with it!’ “

Leading up to the film’s successful debut at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Strong was unsure whether audiences would accept Eli Roth’s demented vision and sick sense of humor.

“Eli was confident, but the actors were all sort of holding their breath, thinking ‘Will they get it? Will they get it?’ “ says Strong. “The audience loved it, and they were howling with laughter. Eli was really invested in those old school horror movies, and he ended up making one. He knows what he is doing.”

I tell Strong that critics watching the film with me at a recent press screening walked out during the more extreme scenes.

“We’ll be excited when a couple of people walk out of this movie,” he says. “That means we’re doing something right. We just wanted to go all the way with this one, and we’re lucky we got an R rating. We thought we were going to have to cut everything to get the R, but they cleared us.”

On the eve of Cabin Fever‘s nationwide release, Strong has just completed a successful run at San Francisco’s Curran Theatre playing Benjamin to Jerry Hall’s Mrs. Robinson in the stage adaptation of The Graduate (Strong, a former Sonoma County resident, points out that the Curran was actually where he made his stage debut, at the age of ten, in Les Miserables). The Graduate will tour the country, after which Strong hopes to fulfill seven more credits at Columbia University and receive his degree.

As for acting, Strong sees the future as being wide open after his blood-soaked antics in Cabin Fever.

“I really can’t go wrong now. The only thing I could do nastier than Cabin Fever is a porn film. I’ve got the name for it, unfortunately."