Hype O-Negative

The news that Six Feet Under creator Alan Ball plans to make some additional dips into the horror genre is probably very, very exciting to all horror and Alan Ball fans, if by "all horror and Alan Ball fans" you mean horror or Alan Ball fans who haven't actually seen his first fright effort, True Blood; purportedly a dramedic series about vampires living among humans, but really just a means of upping the number of crappy southern accents on cable television.

Like a lot of HBO series, this is probably one of those shows that's intentionally inaccessible and unrewarding to viewers at its outset in order to generate cult cred and a second-season stride, which might be a good strategy if it didn't require people to even consider that Anna Paquin might one day be tolerable. In daring such an assumption, HBO makes an ass of you and umption.

Admittedly, the three minutes of the show I was able to stand before severing the power cord from my television and shoving it into all of the orifices I use for breathing probably wasn't enough to accurately convey how the series will ultimately shape up, but if an Emmy nominee and Oscar-winner can't make vampires interesting in three minutes, maybe he dug up the wrong idea.

Bat Brew

If you're a little freaked out by the current economic climate, as I am, try to take solace in the fact that at least there is no guano in your coffee grounds.

I guess you could argue that this story has little correlation to horror movies, but I'll be damned if the last sentence doesn't make me think of something out of Gremlins:

[Officials] say the bat was sent to a state lab for testing but its brain was too cooked by the heat of the brewing water to determine if it had rabies.

"F" for Finally

God bless the Halloween DVD season. Were it not for Best Buy and Blockbuster's annual need to fill up endcaps with something cheap and horror-related, the only new releases we'd be seeing 'round this time of year would be Anchor Bay's 47th edition of Halloween and a commemorative Evil Dead set packaged in a life-size latex replica of Bruce Campbell's chin.

Fortunately, for those of you who, like me, spend less time in October opening candy wrappers and more time opening your wallets, the harvest is plentiful this year, especially if you're inclined toward bad slasher movies, or bad-good slasher movies, or Final Exam.

Since seeing it for the first time about ten years ago, I've searched long and hard for someone else who actually liked Final Exam. Fans of "new" horror say it's too slow; fans of "old" horror say it's too much like Halloween (a detraction that's never really made much sense to me -- that's kind of like saying Diet Coke tastes too much like Coke). That's because Final Exam isn't really like any other movie from its era, or any era. It's classier than, say, Cheerleader Camp, but not exactly Carpenteresque; it's essentially just another school slasher, but probably the only one that successfully favors characters over carnage for a good hour. It's derivative, but daring. And thanks to the endless e-mail onslaught by the 14 people who enjoy it enough to have worn out their old VHS tapes, it's finally out on DVD.

No sign of any special features, so you'll have to live with a DVD on your shelf that isn't a 2-disc, high-def, scratch-n-sniff, sing-along edition, but that just means you'll have more room for that inevitable rubber chin.

Cheat Sheet:

• Bleeding Skull's timely and exhaustive appreciation of Final Exam
• Horror Movie A Day christens March 14 Final Exam day
• Final Exam for short attention spans
  

Wild About Larry

I’m not ashamed to admit that, up until not long ago, I pretty much knew Larry Fessenden exclusively as that guy that makes nap-inducing art-horror -- mostly because that’s how just about everyone comes to know Larry Fessenden. From Habit to the first of his numerous flirtations with the legend of the Wendigo, the one thing I could always grant him was consistency; his movies never failed to, quite literally, knock me out.

But over the summer, as I’ve had to more closely analyze some of Fessenden’s recent work for reviews, I’ve found a new appreciation for him, largely due to the realization that he’s completely batshit crazy.

Do a Google Image search for Fessenden and you’ll note one common characteristic: in all of his photos Fessenden looks remarkably like Jack Nicholson’s grizzled, mid-winter Jack Torrence from The Shining. After researching him a bit, I’m fairly certain this is no coincidence, and that if left in a haunted hotel with only his wife, his son, and his typewriter, Fessenden might very well start kissing corpses in bathtubs. And I love him for this.

Actually, as fringe filmmakers go, Fessenden seems to be a pretty moderate voice. Though his latest film, The Last Winter (left to wander the festival wasteland for nearly two ridiculous years before getting distribution), deals with climate change, ecological disturbances resulting from the quest for oil, and vengeful undead elks, the heart of the film is less concerned with sociopolitical issues and more with believable characters and the realistic interpersonal relationships they share. No hip-hop artists talking to plants, either.

That said, Fessenden’s work does artistically express his beliefs and opinions, whether intentionally or not, but he’s not shackled to his commentary to the detriment of the movies (coughcoughDiaryoftheDeadcoughcough).

Perhaps most endearing of all, I’m pretty sure the Muppet “Crazy Harry” was based on Fessenden. Jim Henson was just never very good with spelling.

Peeping Tom Savini

Ryan has posted a great write-up/photo gallery on the forthcoming Friday the 13th doc His Name is Jason over at Shock, including word on the "restaging" of key sequences from the films, like the wheelchair death from Part 2 and the strip poker game from the first film (now accompanied, in a stroke perhaps more amusing than the producers even intended, by the prying eyes of FX legend and documentary host Tom Savini doing his best "Crazy Ralph").

My fingers are crossed for a reimagining of the convenience shop owner eating his own donuts from Part 3 and the outhouse serenade from Part V.

Oh yeah, and I'm back.