FIRST-TIME director Matt Palmer knew he had a monster hit — when his thriller shocked horror legend Stephen King.

The Edinburgh-based movie maker was put through the wringer trying to complete his low-budget flick Calibre.

6 Calibre is based in the Highlands

That was after one of the actors broke an arm during filming, a crew member was involved in a road crash and snow threatened to ruin filming.

But it was all worthwhile when the king of horror tweeted his approval of the tense screen drama to his five million followers.

Stephen wrote: “Calibre, on Netflix: This one is a genuine nail-biter. It’s got a Hitchcock vibe with a little bit of The Wicker Man tossed in for good measure.”

Matt says: “Stephen King is one of the most respected voices in Hollywood, so to wake up to his comments about my little film on a Monday morning was just mind-blowing.”

Calibre features Dunkirk star Jack Lowden and Belfast-born actor Martin McCann as city slickers Vaughn and Marcus whose Highland hunting trip goes disastrously wrong with the accidental shooting of a child.

6 Matt Palmer was delighted when Stephen King gave his approval

Made for just £1.5million, it won the top prize at the Edinburgh Film Festival in June — on the day it began streaming on Netflix.

Matt says: “I’ll check on social media and there are people in places like Brazil and Russia tweeting about it. It’s quite incredible the audience you can reach with Netflix.”

Since then it’s been given rave reviews from the international press including The New York Times, who declared it had “shades” of Burt Reynolds’ 70s screen classic Deliverance.

But Matt insists: “Films like that always tend to portray the city folk as the good guys and the locals as being brutish and violent. It’s a bit of a movie cliché now. In Calibre it’s actually the locals who are pulled into this cycle of bad moral choices by these two city guys.”

6 King tweeted approval of the flick Credit: AP:Associated Press

6

Next Sunday the film is up for FIVE Scottish Baftas — including all three best actor gongs — at a glitzy ceremony in Glasgow.

But although Matt can now bask in glory, it was a hard slog to see his idea make the big screen.

The 45-year-old explains: “It came to me when I was sitting half asleep on the sofa one night. I had this image of a deer in the crosshairs and then its head drops out of the frame and there’s a little fella standing behind it.

“It was like being hit by a thunderbolt. I just knew I could build on that.

“Essentially, the whole movie is built around that one moment. But it took eight years to get it made.”

6 The crew were put through the wringer during filming

6 The film is available on Netflix

But the shoot was not without incident.

He explains: “One of the background actors Donald McLeary broke his arm during a fight scene when the locals bundled Vaughn into the barn.

“Incredibly he took his sling off to do the rest of his scenes. He even carries a tyre into the barn with his broken arm. He was a total hero.

“And one of the art department drove off the road in a Jeep on the way home. Fortunately, he was OK.

“Then when we were shooting the scene for the fire festival, the location was in Leadhills but it was mid-November and it snowed, so we had to shoot it in Moffat and only got the OK ten minutes before deadline.

“We really couldn’t afford to let a day of filming slip because it would have cost more than £25,000 — and our budget was stretched to the limit as it was.

“But everyone on set was determined to get it over the line.”

However, Matt admits he feared that his plot might be too far-fetched to be believable.

That was long before the accidental shooting of British mountain cyclist Marc Sutton by a hunter in the French Alps earlier this month.

He says: “I went up to Sutherland to do some research and I was worried what people might say. But when I asked ‘Could this scenario happen?’ one of the locals told me, ‘I’m surprised it never has’.

“As crazy as it sounds, in the Highlands you can hunt, walk and camp all in the same areas. The chances of being mistakenly shot is so remote — but it could happen.”

And Birmingham-born Matt, who moved to Scotland 25 years ago to study film and TV, knows how lucky he was to land rising star Jack.

The 28-year-old from the village of Oxton in the Borders appeared in the Hollywood epic Dunkirk alongside One Direction’s Harry Styles.

He will also feature in the big- budget Margot Robbie movie Mary, Queen Of Scots and the Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson flick Fighting With My Family.

Matt says: “Jack attached himself to the project about a year and a half ago, but then Christopher Nolan cast him in Dunkirk and we thought we had probably lost him.

“Jack is a proper actor. He won the Olivier Award when he was 24, which is the biggest accolade in theatre, so I always had this sneaking suspicion that the role of Vaughn was so intense that he would be up for doing it . . . and he was. But it was a massive coup.”

Matt also found the perfect forest location to match Leonardo DiCaprio’s Oscar-winner 2015 epic The Revenant.

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The director, who lives with partner Lauren Slater and their six-year-old son Casper, beams: “Beecraigs Country Park — which is halfway between Glasgow and Edinburgh.

“It just so happened that the best forest to film in — which looks most like The Revenant — was just off the M8.”

But the seal of approval from The Shining, IT and Misery creator King has been Matt’s childhood dream come true.

He explains: “I’m a huge horror fan. I was about 14 when I had the iconic Hellraiser poster hanging on my wall with a quote from Stephen King emblazoned across it.

“So to discover that Stephen has not only watched your movie but he’s tweeted about it to all his followers really is surreal. It’s like a dream come true.”

A one-off screening of Calibre with Q&A, sponsored by The British Independent Film Awards, will take place at Glasgow’s GFT on Saturday, November 3 at 2pm. It’s also available to watch now on Netflix.

matt.bendoris@the-sun.co.uk

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