After years of successfully convincing horror fans to buy multiple action figure versions of the same three characters, toy manufacturer Mezco is branching out with…the same three characters.
Realizing that most of its core customer base has likely run out of shelf space several times over thanks to the continuous stream of varied Freddy, Jason, and Leatherface toys, Mezco (which seems to have gotten its name following a drunken discussion of North American geography) has repurposed its Cinema of Fear line for the plush doll crowd, resulting in three of the most heinous hunks of plastic to ever roll off a Chinese assembly line.
The company’s second wave of roto-plush slasher icons dolls are out now, and they’re every bit as asinine as you’d expect. While I have to commend the sculptors behind these for their meticulous attention to detail, I simply can’t endorse the creation of a Leatherface toy that looks like a disheveled Paul Reiser covered in half-chewed Milk Duds.
Whatever the case, Thorpe is building a new ride inspired by Jigsaw's exploits, and they've posted a teaser site that presents such a detailed account of the design, ongoing construction, and ultimate realization of the ride that you can practically feel the hard rubber headrests (designed to look like that jaw-trap thingy from the first film, of course) banging against your noggin at high velocity makes absolutely no effing sense whatsoever. At least it's faithful to the film series that inspired it.
As pathetically obsessed with theme parks as I am with horror, I have every reason to be excited about this announcement, except for the fact that: 1. By the time I'm able to afford a trip to England I'll be too old blink, let alone go on roller coasters; and 2: The Saw series is completely, utterly stupid.
Then again, I suppose this development is better than something like Hostel: Live On Stage.
If I could be anywhere in the world tonight -- excluding Drew Barrymore's couch -- I'd be at Screamfest 2008, where Michael Doherty's film Trick 'r Treatfinally makes its world premiere in just a few short traffic-laden West Coast hours. Much like House of 1000 Corpses did back, Treat has turned into something a minor legend due to its shuffling release dates and the yes-we-will/no-we-won't game Warner Bros. continues to play with it, to the point that I often worry if maybe we're better off never seeing it; as if maybe there's just no way it could ever live up to the controversy that continues to grow around it, and it's much more valuable to us as a modern-day London After Midnight, talked of in complete reverence because no one knows any better.
And then I watch the trailer again.
If I could have one influential wish on Hollywood, it would not be the eradication of Jar Jar Binks, or a charity boxing match between Uwe Boll and Kevin Williamson, or a sequel to The Monster Squad. It would simply be that this film be released widely and just turn out half as awesome as this trailer.
But since the likelihood of that happening is probably less than even that of the other three, I'll settle for some reviews. When not out pumpkin' picking this weekend, I'll be scanning for reviews from tonight's screening and posting them here. If you come across one, earn yourself a nice spot in the heaven of conscientious e-mailers (and a free Slurpee, should we ever meet) and e-mail it to me. I'll look 'em over and post some overall impressions on Monday. And then I'll mail four severed ears and a broken crock pot to Warner Bros.
UPDATE: "...I can’t imagine a single horror fan that won’t fall head over heels in love with it."
Read only the first paragraph of any of the reviews posted above and you'll see similar conclusions drawn. Surely there are those who were underwhelmed by the film, but if they are out they're, they're not writing about their feelings and posting them on the Internet. That doesn't necessarily mean anything conclusive, but in a world where test screenings count more than contracts or common sense, it's possibly the biggest help the film can get right now. Doherty may have essentially washed his claws of the film, but if it ever does creep its way out from behind the Warner studio gates, it will most likely rest heavily on the shoulders of the comments he heard Friday night and the digital words spilled in the screening's wake. If it doesn't ever see an official release, it will most likely displace this as the pinnacle of all things viewable in a 2x2" frame.
AMC's Website Runs Better Movies Than Its Cable Channel
It's been a long time since the acronym "AMC" represented "American Movie Classics" in TV channel listings. The phrase that usually comes to my mind when I see those letters strung together is "Any More Channels?" Since the late '90s, right around the time Rupert Murdoch acquired the network and started breaking the films up for commercials, there's been little about AMC that's been "classic" (unless you're talking "classic Swayze," in which case the channel's ceaseless airing of Road House might qualify). Sure, you can still sometimes catch an old talkie from the '30s or '40s during the Cialis hours of the day, AMC's attempt to wrest Neilsen shares away from The Price is Right and Matlock, but when a channel's running movies like Chain Reaction in prime evening timeslots, it's clearly headed back down the mountain of cultural relevance.
Fortunately someone forgot to tell that to the people that run the channel's horror dept. Despite its obvious decline in just about every other realm, AMC continues to be the only fairly reliable resource for decent horror on widespread basic cable (the descriptor "decent" automatically disqualifies 97% of what airs on the Sci-Fi Channel). Between its weekly Fear Friday block and the annual weeklong Fearfest (not to mention the Horror Hacker blog), the channel continues to cater quite well to the horror crowd. Yeah, the movies are edited and riddled with commercials, but pretty soon we'll all be seeing ads on our toilet paper; that's capitalism. At least the cinematic toilet paper on AMC's roll more often than not stars Adrienne Barbeau.
And, with the recent launch of their 2008 Fearfest promo site, AMC's actually taken their TP into two-ply territory, making a handful of good oldies available for instant online viewing. And we're not talking about The Lawnmower Man or Bloody Murder 2, here. The initial wave of online Fearfest flicks actually includes some movies worth watching, especially if you're a Vincent Price fan or can't get enough of Lance Henrikson's hair.
AMC's also sponsoring a contest to award $4,000 to one aspiring horror filmmaker, but be warned: the final round guest judge is Rob Zombie, so unless your one-minute movie submission happens to be The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or a classic slasher film remade into a crappy, self-indulgent after-school special, you might be better off waiting for AMC to sponsor a Road House fest (which should kick-off right around November 1).
Every October for nearly a decade straight, until I lost access to cable, I would unwrap a new VHS tape and park it in my VCR (lol OLD!! wtf) and leave it there for the duration of the month or until I'd manage to fill it up with 6-to-8 hours of holiday programming. Months later when my craving returned, I would revisit my growing collection and soak up as much creepy cathode nonsense as I could to carry me through the spring and summer months.
In the early years of this practice I was largely indiscriminate, setting the VCR timer to grab anything even remotely Hallowesque. The resulting surplus of Big Wolf on Campus episodes eventually convinced me to be a little more selective with my archiving, which made the whole process a little more challenging, but also equally rewarding. There's a goldmine of endearing, thematically rich Halloween TV specials waiting to be discovered if you're willing to wade through all of the Travel Channel's Most Haunted Outhouses and Phone Booths specials and Emeril's Gourmet Gourds on the Food Network.
You'll find no perennial viewing material here; just a cantankerous game show host in a bat bow-tie and a musical performance by a Florence Henderson so visibly doped she doesn't notice that she's about to inhale the camera.
Along the way, Carol Burnett Show alumni like Betty White and Tim Conway show up to remind people that it's only 1976 and they're not dead yet, even though their careers might as well be. Oh yeah, and KISS make their television debut lip-synching to "Detroit Rock City," displaying chest hair so substantial the likes of which would not be seen again on network TV until Knight Rider.
Pop cultists have for years pointed to the Star Wars Holiday Special as the single worst piece of programming ever aired, but that's only because the Paul Lynde Halloween Special has been missing since its original broadcast date. Rescued from Lynde's derelict Winnebago in Fullerton, the only surviving master tape has now been "restored" and digitized so that all future generations can enjoy 51 incessant minutes of Lynde's snide quips backed up by disco numbers.
Despite its somewhat pandering news content and the juvenile hostility that pervades its comment fields, I've long been a tempered supporter of FEARnet's online presence. The selection of free movies available for immediate viewing on FEARnet.com has never been very vast or widely compelling, but thus far theirs has been the only site to successfully license a continually evolving roster of horror movies and original programming that people might actually want to watch.
The site's never been much on looks, though, between all of the banner ads, bumpers, and a layout that resembled every horror fan's ideal HTML execution circa 1997 (all that was missing was a dripping blood .gif).
I must not have been the only one who knew FEARnet could do better, for the site has recently sold its soul to the devil (or Hulu) and re-emerged with a cleaner design and lots of new content. The immediate standout among all of the new features is undoubtedly a blog by Sid Haig you can use to stay on top of Sid's latest cinematic projects movies to avoid at Blockbuster and read all about what he had for breakfast at the Holiday Inn buffet during his most recent horror con appearance (assuming he ever makes a second post), but perhaps the most telling sign that FEARnet has landed a new sugar daddy is its new crop of free movies, presented uncut and uninterupted. The bulk are still late-'90s DTV nap fodder, the site's acquisition of respectable fare like Near Dark and The Devil's Rejects more than makes up for the fact that some poor bastard is likely watching a Brian Yuzna movie right now.
What we've got here is a failure to communicate...
I was initially pretty ambivalent about the changes required by the MPAA for the My Bloody Valentine remake teaser poster to get a passing grade (above on the left is the original version; to the right is the doctored U.S. one-sheet, which is either a brilliant inversion of Alfred Hitchock's chocolate-syrup-for-blood technique from Psycho, or just Lionsgate being lazy); I figured, hey, at least it's not another floating-heads job.
But the more I think about it, the more this incident bothers me. It's not that I'm expecting great things from the movie (if the 3-D aspect didn't temper my hopes, the involvement of Patrick Lussier -- who's sort of the Rick Rosenthal of the 21st-century -- certainly shoved a pick-ax in them) and feel it's been unfairly maligned (the MPAA applies its no-blood or low-blood policy to all posters it approves). It's the further implications of this case that are somewhat irritating.
The one assurance offered all along by those involved with the remake as a consolation to fans of the still-just-as-potent-as-ever-in-all-the-right-(and wrong)-ways original film has been the production team's dedication to making a brutally violent, gory film, maintaining the shameless Tales From the Crypty approach to the material that helps the '80s version endure so well. Had Lionsgate forged ahead with their campaign in the states (the original poster above still hangs in European cinemas), particularly in spite of the MPAA's decree, it might have sent a clear signal of intent and re-established the ballsy integrity the firm once had among genre fans (lost amid a swollen catalog of Saw sequels and shitty direct-to-video drops). Instead, one is forced to call into question all that we've heard about the film's splatter quotient and wonder if this is going to be another edited print dropped in theaters to grab some opening-weekend bank and then released later on an unrated DVD. Sure, there are worse fates to befall a movie, but it's a lot harder for me to keep my dismissive tendencies at bay and even give something a chance if I don't think the people responsible for its creation have put their... uhh, you know... into it.
It's not as torrid as it sounds.
