McKidd row

Hailed, with some justification, as the best horror film since Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1982), the blood-curdling but coarsely funny werewolf movie Dog Soldiers marks an undoubted career highlight to date from Scots-born actor Kevin McKidd. Though probably best known up to this point for having lent his services to Trainspotting as Tommy, the junkie who eventually overshoots the mark, Elgin native McKidd has built up an impressive resume since then with creditable turns in Regeneration and Topsy Turvy, and plays a blinder opposite Sean Pertwee in Dog Soldiers.

A cheap but very spirited affair with a pretty massive guts-and-gore quotient, the film concerns six Para-type British soldiers who are stranded in a remote woodland (of uncertain geographical location), and are hunted down for sport by a monstrously bloodthirsty pack of werewolves with a fondness for the taste of human entrails. The results, while truly disgusting to behold, are quite a lot of fun, with the film’s originality and relentless gallows humour more than making up for any potential puke-your-ring factor.

"It’s a really cool film," McKidd enthuses, "and I’m really really proud of it, it’s everything that we wanted it to be when we set out to shoot it, which is pretty rare."

Had playing one made him lament the fact that he’d never become a squaddy?

"No, no, I couldn’t have done that. Too much like hard work. This was I think the most fun I’ve ever had, running around the (Scottish) Highlands in the middle of the night, every actor’s dream."

Werewolf movies have in general tended to be pretty awful and low-rent, but debut director Neil Marshall’s enthusiasm ensured that McKidd never had any serious doubts about involving himself in Dog Soldiers. "Initially, I wondered if it was a good idea, y’know ‘will this work?’, but when I met Neil it was obvious he had a pretty strong vision of what he wanted to do. It was a gamble, cause it comes down to whether audiences and critics like it, but it’s worked out. Neil’s creative, but it’s all very collaborative as well."

All McKidd’s projects to date have been UK-based: does he have any interest whatsoever in attempting to ‘crack’ Hollywood?

"It’s not that I’m not interested – it’s just that the opportunities haven’t really come and I’ve never seen any good reason to go over there. I’ll end up going out there for this. But LA’s a very fickle place where everything’s about selling and they want people to be bankable and all that. And I’m living near London and I’ve got a family and all that."