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Although set in Louisiana, RED WATER was actually filmed in South Africa. “I really didn’t know what to expect when they said this was going to shoot in South Africa,” Lou Diamond Phillips recalls. “It’s amazing, though, how much this place actually looks like Louisiana.”

Much of the action was filmed on a private, family-owned orchard about 60 kilometers outside of Cape Town. “As a location for film production, this place is perfect,” says Phillips. “They have all of the support staff you need and all of the equipment. And the people are just ridiculously friendly. This is certainly one of the most polite film crews I’ve ever worked with.”

Where’s Coolio?

In order to prepare for shooting, the cast of RED WATER had to attend a weeklong scuba diving course. “There was trepidation at the beginning of the course,” Lou Diamond Phillips explains. “But it ended up being an amazing experience that really brought the cast together.”

During one of the cast’s ocean dives towards the end of the course, Phillips and co-star Kristy Swanson were swimming near each other when Phillips noticed that another of their co-stars, Coolio, had disappeared. Coolio had actually gone to the surface to get a new mask.

Turning to Swanson, Phillips attempted to use hand signals to ask her where Coolio was. Unfortunately, in his attempt to use his hands to imitate Coolio’s Mohawk hairstyle, he actually gave the signal for shark.

“I freaked out,” recalls Swanson, who has always had a deadly fear of sharks. She began looking high and low for the shark she thought her co-star was warning her about, only to realize later that he was actually just looking for Coolio.

Dances with Sharks

The cast of RED WATER had the time of their lives when they took time during a day off to go diving with sharks.

“We went on a shark dive,” Kristy Swanson says. “We drove out about four hours on a boat. Then anyone who wanted to could get in the shark cage and dive with the sharks.”

Swanson opted to stay on board, however, and shoot video, including many hilarious shots of co-star Rob Boltin vomiting over the side of the boat during the trip out.

Once the boat reached its destination, Lou Diamond Phillips got his turn in the cage. “I was the second one in the cage, and a Great White shows up,” he recalls. “It started going after the bait, and it was just floating about six inches in front of me. It was almost completely vertical, just dancing there. It was the experience of a lifetime.”

Building the Shark

Like Jaws before it, RED WATER incorporates the use of several mechanical sharks in order to bring its monstrous creation to life. “We have three sharks that were used into his movie,” says executive producer Michael Larkin, “We have a full-body shark with hydraulics, which we nicknamed Bubba; a tail and dorsal fin, which we use for speed and surface shots; and a puppet-head, which is used for action close-ups.”

The producers originally worried that they would not be able to find anyone in South Africa to make their mechanical sharks, and certainly not anyone who could make one that would surpass the mechanical sharks used in previous movies.

“Sony had contacted major shark-builders around the world,” says producer Mitch Engel. “But it turned out there were a couple of guys here in South Africa who could build us the best mechanical shark ever created for the movies.”

Time was tight, however, but the builders, Dennis Beechy and Rob Carlisle, were up to the challenge. “They had six weeks to build a fully functioning shark,” says Engel. “When we tested the full shark for the first time, we did it in a swimming pool in Cape Town. We really expected that the entire thing would be dragged around by cables. But they had built a remote control for it, and when they put it in the water, it literally started swimming around like a real fish. We’re very proud of our Bubba.”

Even the cast found the results to be startling. Kristy Swanson says, “The shark that we’re using looks so real. I know it’s fake and that it can’t hurt me, but when that thing comes hurtling out of the water right at you, you can’t help but get creeped out by it.”

Lou Diamond Phillips agrees, “My only hope is that there’s an off switch. That’s all I would need is to get eaten by a fake shark.”

Just How Real Is that Black Eye?

Early on in shooting for RED WATER, Lou Diamond Phillips and newcomer Langley Kirkwood were filming a climactic fight scene. Kirkwood, however, had never filmed a fight scene for a movie. So when he went to throw his first punch, his elbow hit Phillips squarely in the eye.

“Lou somehow managed to get his eye into my elbow,” Kirkwood jokes. “He was cool about it, though, and he made me feel a little better about it.”

Mimicking the scene from Jaws in which the three principal characters boast about their many scars, Phillips proceeded to show Kirkwood the scars he had received on previous movies.

“Luckily the bruising and the swelling weren’t too bad,” Kirkwood says. “And we were even able to incorporate it into the movie.”

And so they did. For the rest of the movie, Phillips sports a black eye and a cut. Even after the wound had healed, make-up artists had to recreate it for the scenes that still had to be shot. And the shot in which Kirkwood accidentally made contact with Phillips face remains in the movie.

Director or Stunt Man?

Lou Diamond Phillips is enough of an athlete that he is often allowed to perform his own stunts. That includes a high-dive he makes during RED WATER from the top of his fishing boat into the river below.

The night before shooting the dive, Phillips had expressed some concerns. He originally thought the dive would be from the boat’s deck, not from the bridge, which is considerably higher. Director Charlie Carner assured him that if he didn’t feel comfortable with the dive, he wouldn’t have to do it.

“We showed up the morning of the dive,” Phillips says. “So we’re talking about the shot, and suddenly Charlie strips down to his bathing suit, goes up to the top of the boat and dives off.”

After seeing that, Phillips decided he couldn’t back out of the dive. And he credits Carner for his no-holds-barred directing style. “Charlie asks nothing of his troops that he wouldn’t do himself,” he says.

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