Blackest Eyes - Horror movie culture and commentary

Here Lies Blackest Eyes

2009-07-18T08:26:00.000-07:00

Effective July 2009, I'm concentrating my ghoulish efforts elsewhere.

Keep up with my various non-horror scribbles at jdeadly.tumblr.com.

Seth Grahame-Smith Eats Jane Austen's Heart Out

2009-02-10T22:52:00.000-08:00

While the rest of the world continues to amuse itself by adding the phrase "in bed" to the end of whatever very American-ish adage it finds in its fortune cookies ("You will prosper greatly...in bed;" "An hour with a friend is greater than a year with 10 strangers... in bed;" "Milk Duds are better... in bed."), Seth Grahame-Smith (author of a variety of guidebooks covering topics from politics to porn... and Spider-Man) has raised the cultural adaptation bar 100-fold by imagining what great wonders might result when one tacks the words "and zombies" onto titles of classic English literature.

Smith's book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which supposedly contains the original text of Jane Austen's novel amended with interstitial scenes of unapologetic zombie-on-human violence, is currently ranked at #86 on Amazon's top-selling titles... three months before it's even released. I'm pretty sure we haven't seen anticipation of this magnitude since the Punky Brewster cliffhanger episode where Punky got trapped in a cave with the spider from It.

No word from Smith on whether he plans to "plus" other classic novels, but I'm hoping his next target is Hemingway; he'd add a whole new dimension to A Farewell to Arms.

Back in 5 | Or, Sabbatical of the Living Dead

2009-01-20T20:37:00.000-08:00

If you've been diligently checking back here over the last couple months, I owe you. How does a handful of leftover Christmas candy sound?

This is not one of those "I'm shutting down" messages, nor is it a litany of excuses about the lack of anything worth talking about; these eyes have just had to focus on other endeavors, some of which remain ongoing, most of which involve creating stuff instead of just commenting on stuff, and all of which require too much concentration to allow me to post here as frequently as I'd like.

But things will keep rolling. Not at some indefinite point in the future; they'll keep rolling right now. They just might not roll as often as that other blog you read. You know, the one with the rodeo clown.

Thanks for hanging. I've done some housecleaning to show my gratitude. Click around and let me know what you think. About anything. Especially anything that involves monkeys.

Mezco wants to go to bed with you.

2008-10-29T12:52:00.000-07:00

It's not as torrid as it sounds.

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.

It's a SAW World After All

2008-10-20T20:06:00.000-07:00

If Rick Moranis and Ellen Degeneres can get their own theme park attractions, why not Jigsaw?

Maybe that's not the exact rationale that went into Thorpe Park's decision to build a new roller coaster themed to the Saw movies, but I'm sure it's reasonably close.

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.

Hmmm...

Treatwatch 2008

2008-10-10T20:14:00.000-07:00

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 Treat finally 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.

Treat Talk:

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.

Mouse of Usher

2008-10-09T19:22:00.000-07:00

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).

Circle Takes the Square, Florence Henderson Takes a Hit, and The Paul Lynde Halloween Special Takes Your Soul

2008-10-08T20:44:00.000-07:00

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.

The Paul Lynde Halloween Special is not one of them.

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.

Haigslist and The New Face of FEARnet

2008-10-06T22:59:00.000-07:00

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 n e w c ontent. The immediate standout among all of the new features is undoubtedly a blog by Sid H a i g 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.

Two Hearts Are Better Than None. Or Are They?

2008-10-03T08:47:00.000-07:00

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.

Welcome Back to the Orange and Black

2008-10-01T00:10:00.000-07:00

Hype O-Negative

2008-09-30T01:44:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-29T11:44:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-26T16:12:00.000-07:00

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:

Wild About Larry

2008-09-24T22:09:00.001-07:00

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

2008-09-23T14:22:00.000-07:00

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.

Your Patriotic Duty

2008-07-04T00:55:00.000-07:00

Answer the call.

When there's no more room in hell, the dead will play hockey

2008-07-02T22:47:00.001-07:00

It’s been so long since I actively followed the making and marketing of Kevin Smith’s movies that I completely forgot that there are actually people out there who do. Bless ‘em all, though, for without a few other pairs of observant eyes, I wouldn’t know about Smith’s first foray into fear flicks.

Those who do keep tabs on Smith and his View Askewiverse might assume I’m referring to Red State, the politically overt horror film he’s been working on (currently slated for a 2010 release). But while Smith temporarily tabled that project so he could squeeze out another wacky, offbeat romantic comedy, his interest in horror is manifesting on the big screen nonetheless, albeit on Seth Rogen’s sweaty chest.

The promotional still above, from a scene in Smith’s latest, features Rogen and New Jersey’s favorite video store clerk paying homage to the original Dawn of the Dead as teammates on a hockey team titled the Monroeville Zombies. The new film was shot and is reportedly set in Monroeville, PA, and includes scenes filmed in the same shopping mall where the dead once famously walked the earth. And, as is typical with the props and fake brands featured in View Askew movies, Smith’s stick-wielding stiffs have shambled onto real-world jerseys you can buy from his Secret Stash comic shop.

And that’s just the start of Monroeville’s resurging undead infamy. While attending the June HorrorHound Weekend in the Pittsburgh ‘burb, the crew of NOTLP met and interviewed one of the guys behind Monroeville Zombies: The Zombie Experience, described as sort of a zombie museum/theme park/gift shop hybrid coming soon to a vacant mall storefront. There’s not much up on the project’s website yet, but it definitely sounds like it will be worth a trip to Pittsburgh.

Whether or not it justifies actually braving a shopping mall is another matter entirely…

Who's the fairest French horror auteur of all?

2008-07-01T13:32:00.001-07:00

So pummeled into indifference was I by the Hills Have Eyes remake that I'd forgotten how much it excites me to see Alexandre Aja's name attached to something.

Not that the theatrical poster for his latest film, Mirrors, (which Shock broke last week) needed anyone's name on it to generate excitement. Stark and rich all at the same time, the only thing that could make this one-sheet more breathtaking would be the absence of names - cut the credits, drop the "From the director of..." heading, and alter the title treatment so just that one backwards 'R' is red to match the nicely highlighted rating, and this thing would be a masterpiece. Even without any clues regarding the film's plot (which, for the record, sounds equally rad -- check the brief details here), it swallows me whole and makes August 15 seem impossibly far away.

UPDATE: The film's red band trailer debuted today, and it takes a decidedly less subtle approach than the poster above. But if there's one filmmaker who's been consistently successful conveying brutal, relentless horror, it's ~~Alexandre Aja~~ Neal Marshall. But if there's a filmmaker who's been moderately successful at that approach, it's Alexandre Aja, so we'll keep the books open on this one until it spills for real on August 15.

Eyes on the Road

2008-06-30T20:39:00.000-07:00

2 months. If it had been a movie, Dennis Hopper would have come looking for me with chainsaws strapped to his junk.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, I did make it out of Texas alive… only to be consumed by a month and a half of 12-hour workdays. All attempts to post took place at the end of said workdays and ended with my face pressed against the home row keys, and really, as banal as blogging sometimes gets, even I couldn’t justify posting kafdlkjghjjfhghlkjasdfhghjjfhglkjasdflkgh.

If you do the math, however, you’ll realize that the month and a half I just mentioned doesn’t quite account for the full 2 months I’ve been absent. That other half-month was spent on the road; including, most importantly, an extended weekend in the (allegedly) most haunted city in America, Savannah, GA, where, just moments before embarking on a trolley tour hosted by Wednesday Adams, I proposed to De of the Dead and she accepted. Give it up for reciprocal love and spending the night of your engagement on the top floor of a haunted hotel.

Which, by the way, is the real subject of this post. Years ago, while a member of the horror site so cool it couldn’t last, I was privileged to sponsor the initial online incarnation of good friend Tom Gleason’s travel guide to terror, which over the last couple years has grown and flourished into Dark Destinations, an index of user-generated profiles detailing all manner of horror and paranormal-related locations around the world. Want to walk in Albert Fish’s footsteps? Make on offer on the Poltergeist house? Dark Destinations can help you get there.

When you go to a place as ripe for paranormal research as Savannah, you can’t help but share your findings, which is what I’ve been doing while settling back into my subterranean abode. So far I’ve added two locations to the Dark Destinations database, but the interface is so easy that I can practically crank ‘em out while pouring a bowl of Count Chocula, so expect more in the future. For now, check out my profile of the spooky site where De and I rested our weary bones while in Savannah, The Marshall House Hotel, and a local St. Louis haunt located right across the street from some friends of mine.

After some site maintenance and design touch-ups, we should be back to our regularly scheduled bloodletting. On the review front, watch for my upcoming take on The Eye 3, Grizzly Park, Hybrid, The Possession of Joel Delaney, and the vampire romance Let the Right One In.

Dinner With the Family

2008-04-22T01:10:00.000-07:00

I’m unexpectedly bound for Texas this week due to some unfortunate circumstances, but I’m looking forward to spending time with the lady’s family (end even more time with a plate of breakfast tacos).

Should we lose our way, though, I’m glad to know we need not starve out on the backroads; we’ll just do dinner Sawyer Family style, at the farm house from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I learned about the house’s second life as a restaurant while in college (you’d be surprised what kind of term paper topics you can get away with when your instructors are more concerned with their smoke breaks than their syllabus), but it wasn’t until recently that a visit actually seemed plausible. Now I just need to sell my traveling companions, who watch horror movies about as often as I read Cosmo, on the plan.

I’ve got an idea, though…

Be back in a week.

Public Display of Affection

2008-04-18T00:20:00.000-07:00

Baseball. Gardening. Senioritis. Allergy headaches. The dawn of spring wears many faces.

But if you’re a fan of distinct film-viewing experiences (or just distinct viewing experiences), the arrival of tolerable temps always translate to one thing: drive-in season.

As the ‘70s sweep into town this weekend, it’s hard to resist a night under the stars with some flick – ideally a horror movie, but it really doesn’t matter what it is (my nearby movie lot is packing Cloverfield and The Ruins back-to-back – unspooling several rows of cars up ahead. Preferably without any moans coming from the car next door.

If you’re lucky enough to have one in your area, dump your DVDs this weekend and cruise on out to the local o-zoner. Before the mosquitoes get there.

Snack Bar:

• Drive-In.com -- It ain’t pretty, but neither is a drive-in restroom; you’ve still gotta go there eventually. Find your nearest drive-in here.

• Brian’s Drive-In Theater -- Don’t know John Agar from John Saxon? Countdown the hours till sunset by doing some homework.

• DVD Drive-In -- If you absolutely can’t make it out to a drive-in, just knock down the wall between your living room and your garage and take in a recommendation from this trusted joint.

If I Only Had 18 Bucks

2008-04-16T08:01:00.000-07:00

For the first time ever, tax season has come and gone without a check from the government hitting my mailbox. This year Washington plucked a few bucks from my bank account instead, which is unfortunate, because if I did have a few extra bones lying around, I’d be stimulating the economy over at Busted Tees by picking up the best T-shirt this side of the rainbow.

A Tale of Two Layouts (and One Aging, Narcissistic Intercessor)

2008-04-14T21:49:00.000-07:00

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Some people call it a space cowboy, but I call it April.

We shouldn’t complain about three new theatrical genre releases in as many Fridays, but the last few weeks haven’t exactly delivered the most potent 1-2-3 punch. The Ruins got fooled on April 4; more kids turned out last week for the Prom, but hardly had a night to remember; a killer paints with body parts in this week’s Anamorph, but only on select screens.

Half-hearted horror is typical for this time of year, with studios emptying out their junk drawers to make room for more prints of Iron Man and Indiana Jones -- which makes it as good a time as any to stay in and freshen things up around here. All four frequent readers will notice a new layout, still evolving as I try to decide between functionality and form (and figure out a good place to hide some surprise Jon Mikl-Thor pictures -- found one!).

Much cooler stuff is coming soon, including an interview with the trinity of soul-stealing awesomeness that is Calabrese, and a tribute to sex in conversion vans. If the RSS feed’s a-rockin…

I Want Uwe!

2008-04-08T17:13:00.000-07:00

Or, "Keep the Boll Rolling!"

Monsterfest passed along word of a new FEARnet interview with German director/cerebral sadist Uwe Boll posted last week. Like Boll’s films, it’s full of unintentional humor (including a quote in which Boll attempts to position himself as a satirist while in the same breath referencing The Naked Gun).

Most amusing, however, is Boll’s acknowledgement of an online petition requesting that he retire from filmmaking. At the time of the interview it held 18,000 signatures, which Boll deemed inadequate, claiming it would take a million signatures before he’d stop making shitty movies. As of today, not even five days after the interview was posted, more than 120,000 people have signed it. The joke’s on Uwe.

One signature you won’t find on that roster is mine -- not because I disagree with the undersigned’s assertions of Boll’s “complete lack of comprehension” and “ham-fisted approach to horror,” but because those same characteristics make Boll one of the most reliable filmmakers working today. With any other director, there’s a certain degree of quality variance from product to product. Only with Boll can you count on crap, which is why I encourage everyone to think beyond his or her gut reaction and imagine what the world would be like if Claudio Fragasso’s career had been squelched before he’d been able to make Troll II.

Miss Horrorless

2008-04-07T01:09:00.000-07:00

The Revenge of the Day Job buried all my attempts to post last week, but I did find a sliver of free time this weekend to get reacquainted with the couch and some friends and catch up on the 2007 After Dark Horrorfest films that eluded me on the festival weekend. Now out on DVD, the ’07 alumni aren’t nearly as bad as I’d been led to believe; just undermined by a misguided promotion and After Dark’s apparent insistence that horror fans are all goth idiots.

In addition to fest flick trailers and some film-related bonus features, each of the Horrorfest DVDs includes some webisodes from the 2007 Miss Horrorfest competition, potentially the most heinous use of the video medium since the debut of Crystal Pepsi. I’d previously thought the “contest” was strictly a one-round vote kind of thing with YouTube viewers picking their favorite audition video from the country’s finest crop of cabaret dancers with dyed black hair and tattoos. What I didn’t realize was that After Dark had crafted an entire pseudo-reality series around the concept, with the girls subjected to an episodically broadcast series of tests and scenarios from which one unlucky contestant was eliminated each week. The only thing that kept the series from fulfilling its aspirations completely was the absence of Flava Flav in a jack-o-lantern costume.

Within seconds of watching Countess Bathory and the Morbid Sisters prance around the Queen Mary, I witnessed a second competition in the confines of my viewing quarters as young adults of varying age, gender, and intoxication level battled for the chance to desecrate the DVD.

After screening the final episode and learning the outcome, I’m still a little unclear on what benefits the Miss Horrorfest moniker grants to the winner, though based on what I’ve seen I’d say acting lessons and a gift card to Anne Taylor would be universally valuable. This seems to be an annual thing for After Dark, so assuming Horrorfest ’08 is still going to happen (the ’07 round licked box-office carpet last November), any interested candidates have about six months to stockpile eyeliner and come up with a macabre alliterative nickname. First person to e-mail me with synonym for “evil” that begins with “J” gets a Horrorfest DVD only slightly caked with kitty litter.

Wicked Lame

2008-04-06T23:06:00.000-07:00

By this point, I suppose it should come as no surprise when adamant horror fans become moderately professional filmmakers only to produce unabashed crap.

Bubbling up late last week, the key art for the feature screenwriting debut of Going to Pieces author Adam Rockoff failed to accomplish much of anything except reinforcing my assumption that Wicked Lake will be every bit as negligible as it sounds. I’d like to maintain hope that whatever Rockoff has rocked off in this flick will benefit from his knowledge of the genre and therefore not be an insult to it, but the film’s promo material does little to shake the I Spit on Your Craft vibe I’ve been getting. It makes the film look like something scripted by Kevin Williamson, not the guy who literally wrote the book on slasher movies.

Play Misty For Me

2008-03-27T22:04:00.000-07:00

Since I saw The Mist last November, not a single foggy day has passed without me wanting to watch it again. Walking outside into a milky vapor instantly transports me back to the theater, and I find myself worrying less about whether or not I remembered to wear socks and more with how I’m going to survive an encounter with acid-web-spinning spider thingies, should any cross my path. I’m pretty sure I’ve come within inches of killing a pedestrian or two on my way to work, staring up at a blank, murky sky in search of six-legged, tentacled AT-AT walkers instead of watching the road in front of me. When I go to the supermarket, I subconsciously hoard boxes of Cocoa Pebbles just in case some religious zealot should suddenly label them a tool of Satan and ban them from stores.

Contrary to popular belief, this is not my normal behavior.

I don’t often get this fixated on a single movie. The last time I can remember it happening was the first time I saw Scanners, when I kept rewinding and rewatching the head explosion to see if I could figure out what happened to the guy’s nostrils. Poorly rendered tentacles notwithstanding, I’ve got mad, mad love for The Mist, the kind of affection most people reserve for sports teams and hair care products. And now that the movie’s out on DVD, I’m determined to infect everyone else with that love, until the point where the movie sits in its rightful spot beside The Thing and other what the fuck were we thinking when we collectively let this tank at the box-office movies.

I’m not prone to hyperbole (unless I’m talking about Steve Guttenberg), but I can’t escape the feeling that this must become a horror classic. Even if it costs me my Cocoa Pebbles.

More Mist:

• Dread Central Podcast interview with Frank Darabont
• Darbont, Greg Nicotero, and Thomas Jane discuss the making of the Mist monsters
• Darabont on adapting Stephen King

Johnston's Got Nards

2008-03-25T00:01:00.000-07:00

So implies Scott Stuber, one of the producers on Universal’s Wolfman remake, in this interview with Empire. He goes on to elaborate a bit on the narrative, the special effects (no CG!), and Benicio Del Toro’s wolfmanphilia. Mostly, though, he talks up director Joe Johnston, which some are interpreting as a direct reaction to negative press that bubbled up when original director Mark Romanek left the project.

While I’m just as excited as everyone else about the two promo stills that emerged last week, and at the prospect of Rick Baker doing another werewolf movie, the idea of Universal doing damage control this earlier in the film’s gestation does raise some questions.

Right now my only question is: anybody got a spare $8,000?

Starting March 28, four of Stan Winston’s original monster costumes are up for bids on eBay. You can see the rest of the bunch here, here, and here.

Scream Streams: GINGER SNAPS BACK: THE BEGINNING

2008-03-21T15:03:00.000-07:00

”What a lovely shade of dead.”

When you’re really attached to a set of characters, you’re willing to follow along on their adventures no matter where they lead. Even if they lead to Wal-Mart; or, in the case of the third and final chapter in the Ginger Snaps series, the 19th Century Canadian wilderness.

Abandoning the continuity of its two kinda-sorta awesome predecessors, Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning strands teenage sisters Ginger and Brigitte at an early 1800s French-Canadian trading outpost frequently besieged by werewolves. Apparently not even time-travel can keep their paws off Katherine Isabelle. It may not hold a Canadian candle to the first two films, but it’s better than the third Howling movie. And it’s free this week on FEARnet.

Highlights include:
• Typically strong performances from Katherine Isabelle and Emily Perkins (in period clothing, to boot)
• A spooky Native American soothsayer
• Fantastic cinematography
• Numerous arrow-induced wounds
• Ginger’s spot-on, period-specific dialogue, including such commonplace Colonial phrases as “these people are fucked.”

Love is Strange

2008-03-19T20:02:00.000-07:00

How do you call your loverboy?

Right now I call mine The Strangers, the object of my first full-on movie crush in what seems like years. It had me at “hello,” which in this case was a green band signifying approval for all ages, followed by a simple pick-up line and 90 seconds of spooky flirtations. I think we’re going to go all the way.

In the meantime, though, I just lovingly stare at its picture – the most awesome theatrical poster I’ve seen since the 28 Weeks Later teaser.

As if the Alice, Sweet Alice/Dolls-ish vibe weren’t old-school enough, dig the fold crease marks that make it look like it’s been sitting in a drawer in the basement of some downtown dive since 1981.

When the film hits DVD it will probably be masked in the airbrush jowls of Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman, and by then the honeymoon may be over, anyway, but as of this moment, I remain so recklessly infatuated that I can’t help but carve our initials in the interrnet.

Postcards From the Post-Apocalypse

2008-03-18T22:28:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I get the feeling that come the end of the world, I’ll feel fine.

For about as long as I can remember (which at times stretches as far back as the day I split my two-year-old lip open and calmly explained to my mother that I thought a visit to the emergency room might be in order), I’ve had a thing for post-apocalyptic dystopias. From telling my grade school principal to take her stinking paws off me to welcoming 1997 with a Snake Pliskin drinking game, I’ve spent a lot of my formative years longing for the end of days.

In honor of the Final Girl-sponsored Hey Internet, Stop Being Such Cynical Fucking Douchebags Blog-a-Thon (and Neil “I Somehow Manage to Keep Living Up to All the Hype” Marshall), I take a break from berating Rob Zombie today and instead present these loving wishes to black leather, nuclear fallout, and the drinking of one’s own pee.

Escape From New York
Growing up in the Midwest, by the time I was about four I had developed a serious case of Los Angelenvy. This is the condition one acquires by watching a constant string of early ‘80s movies that were all filmed in the suburbs of L.A. Every time a swimming pool was dug in my neighborhood, I secretly hoped corpses would start popping up out of the hole and paranormal investigators would show up and rip off their own faces. In the sixth grade, I desperately wanted to take my first-ever date to Golf N’ Stuff. But at some point in my adolescence, I finally discovered a cool movie that had not been filmed or set in SoCal. In fact, said cool movie had actually been filmed on my home turf (apparently the streets of New York were not run-down and shitty enough to pass for a post-apocalyptic warzone, but St. Louis fit the bill perfectly). I heart pretty much any John Carpenter movie from the ‘80s, but there will always be a special pocket of love reserved for EFNY. There will always be a special pocket of love reserved for Harry Dean Stanton, too, but that’s a post for another HISBSCFD-blog-a-thon.

Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
The third Mad Max movie is not better than the first two. It’s not even anywhere near as good as either of them. In fact, it’s not really good at all. But come on, the word Thunderdome is in the frickin’ title! Incidentally, do you remember how those rumors about Michael Jackson buying the Elephant Man’s bones started circulating in the late ‘80s? I always thought Trent Reznor had perpetrated a similarly ridiculous purchase of the Thunderdome for use in his 1992 “Wish” music video (this was right after the rumor about him having his ribs surgically removed so he could fellatiate himself on stage emerged, so I assumed he must have gotten some kind of deal on the ‘dome from Tina Turner).

Waterworld
Like just about every summer movie that came out after 1993, seeing Waterworld was supposed to be more important than having sex. Or eating. Or going to college.
It was not.
But it did feature and still holds the record for the best scene ever filmed in which a man who once made out with Susan Sarandon drinks his own urine.

Tank Girl
Coinciding with my lifelong fascination with post-apocalyptic movies is my lifelong fascination with girls who could kick my ass. This affair sort of reached its pinnacle when I saw Lori Petty’s performance in Tank Girl. If The Donnas collectively ate Japan and washed it down with a bottle of Manic Panic, the morning-after result would be Lori Petty as Tank Girl.

A Boy and His Dog
In my junior year in college I took an eight-week Friday night class on science fiction movies. With nearly 20 years as a nerd under my belt, I thought for sure this would cover material I was already familiar with and be an easy ace. Instead I ended up seeing eight movies I’d never seen of, most of which I hadn’t even heard of. A Boy and His Dog was one of those movies. I didn’t particularly care for it, but I wanted to include it on this list because I think it’s noteworthy that I received college credit for watching a movie starring Don Johnson.

Doomsday
Worried about how the dollar is doing against the Euro right now? Just wait till Neil Marshall gets a hold of it. Not even Shaun of the Dead duo Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg know how to rescue a traditionally American horror subgenre that’s flagging the way this guy does. I’m pretty sure the man secretes awesomeness from his pores and just sprinkles it on whatever movie set he’s working on at the time. This movie might as well be The Road Warriorette Escapes From Edinburgh, which is exactly why it’s the greatest thing to ever happen in the month of March, 2008.

The next best thing is the HISBSCFD blog-a-thon, so go read the other entries and don’t come back till somebody drops the big one.

Scream Streams: PARENTS

2008-03-13T20:18:00.000-07:00

Lately there’s been an influx of great bad movies popping up for free online viewing, so I’ve decided to start spotlighting one weekly. I figure it’ll ensure at least a semi-regular posting schedule, and help me earn my merit badge in Randy Quaid appreciation.

To that end, if you find yourself with 81 free minutes this week but no copy of Caddyshack II handy, just point your finger clicky thing over to Hulu.com and take in the next best example of Quaidness in the 1988 suburban cannibal satire Parents.

Highlights include:
• A delightful mid-century production design
• Meat that comes to life
• A scene in which an elementary school teacher sneaks into the young hero’s home, hides inside the kitchen pantry when she hears someone else in the house, and then inexplicably grabs hold of a carving knife, slicing open her own hands.
• Randy Quaid writhing on a blood-soaked bed.

Creating A Monster?

2008-03-11T19:31:00.000-07:00

In a later chapter of Susan Tyler Hitchcock’s entertaining Cultural History of Frankenstein, the scholar/instructor/Frankenut notes how the rising popularity of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s classic novel in the mid-late 20th century spawned a legion of literary “adaptations” designed for a variety of reading levels, mostly the Scholastic Book Fair crowd – condensed versions that skip the literary whipped cream and present a bare-bones story in a simplistic fashion: guy makes monster, monster kills guy’s wife, guy and monster go ice surfing. As I considered the proliferation of these, it occurred to me that I couldn’t remember for sure if I’d ever actually read the real novel, or just some Golden Books knockoff.

While exploring the labyrinthine recesses of a recently released DVD, desperately wishing for a trail of digital breadcrumbs, I started wondering if the same thing could someday happen with movies – if it hasn’t already. Last summer, following the release of ~~Rob Zombie’s Halloween~~ The Michael Myers After School Special, “the boards” predictably filled up with fan reaction and commentary, but the bulk of the horror kids weren’t LOLing about what was shown in theaters. A significantly different “workprint” of the film that had leaked online a week prior dominated most of the chatter. Even some major news sites slanted their coverage/reviews toward the workprint, most of them citing it as a superior film. I didn’t see the workprint, preferring to spend my time studying the art of noodling rather than waste another 90 minutes on Rob Zombie’s vision of Haddonfield, but I couldn’t help but wonder about the origin of the workprint and how its widespread exposure might affect the overall legacy of the film. Was it Zombie’s initial cut? A test print used to gauge audience reaction? And what happens if the workprint becomes more popular and commonly regarded than the “official” cut? What makes the “official” cut… official?

The matter was muddied even further when the film was released on DVD, including one disc that presents a version that incorporates some of the elements that appeared in the workprint, but not all – a hybrid cut. Is this now the definitive cut? Is Zombie going to pull a Blade Runner and wait 25 years before he makes up his mind? By that point, Halloween will have been remade four more times, each with fourteen different home video releases featuring variant holofoil/scratch-n-sniff covers. How can one be bothered to even watch a movie when there’s a scratch-n-sniff cover?

The new I Am Legend DVD raises similar questions by providing the film’s original ending as part of a second full-length presentation of the film. Those who prefer the original ending can now throw out Disc 1 and pretend like the theatrical version didn’t even exist. But what happens if their tastes change over time and suddenly they decide they want to like the theatrical release better? Do they remain faithful? Do they develop split personalities, each with his or her own favorite version of the film? Will Pop Rocks and Coke kill you?

While we wait for the answers, check out Hitchock’s Monster Sightings blog, which chronicles the appearance of Frankenstein references throughout culture and society. I wonder if this post qualifies.

Slightly Less Lame, But No More Legendary

2008-03-07T22:24:00.000-08:00

I think it’s a given that the literal ending of Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend novel translates rather unsatisfactorily to the screen (see the ending of the otherwise excellent Last Man on Earth for viewable proof), but I’d take an inadequate rendering of Matheson’s scribbles over what Warner Brothers and Francis Lawrence gave us in the most recent Legend adaptation.

That ending was a late-in-the-game reshoot, prompted either by the studio’s or test audiences’ displeasure with Lawrence‘s original conclusion. The WB is including the original ending as a bonus feature on the film’s upcoming DVD, but those who can’t wait to start debating the pros and cons of each can see it here now (hurry! Warners’ lawyers come out at sundown in search of video pirates’ blood).

Based on the commentary that accompanies the clip at the above link, there are some who clearly feel that the original ending was vastly better than what made it to theater screens. If Lawrence continues to have a solid career, there may even be film classes fifty years from now in which students and instructors point to Legend as yet another example of a Hollywood studio quashing the far superior vision of a director. But I’m not biting.

I’ll agree with anyone who feels that the last minute or so of the theatrical cut felt like a church bake sale tacked onto the end of a two-hour striptease, but I can’t say that Lawrence‘s original closing does the film that preceded it any better justice. My disappointment with the film started twenty minutes before its conclusion, when two needless characters crashed Will Smith’s party and what had been an impressive lead performance degenerated into a Tom Hanksian train wreck, an error Lawrence failed to correct with his original capper. And while the biggest gripe about the theatrical release among Legendites is its complete disregard for Matheson’s central theme and the inspiration for the title itself, this clip doesn’t come any closer to solving that problem. If anything, it’s even less faithful to the spirit of the book; imagine if Spielberg’s adaptation of Duel had ended with the diabolical semi making junkyard love to Dennis Weaver‘s Plymouth -- Legend’s original close is basically the same thing.

Just nowhere near as brilliant.

EDIT: After revisiting the film (and both endings) on DVD, I'm feel compelled to retract some thoughts above and align myself with the original ending. It may not maintain the themes of the novel as explicitly as the theatrical ending, but at least it doesn't pander or bludgeon me over the head with its intent.

Now, on to more pressing questions regarding the film -- like, for instance, why don't the putty vampire people wear more clothes?

Hail to the King, Baby

2008-03-04T14:19:00.000-08:00

While I was in Hollywood this weekend enjoying good times with good friends (and a peanut butter & honey milkshake chaser), King Kong celebrated his 75th anniversary. It’s not too late to send him a birthday present; I hear Peter Jackson’s severed head is right near the top of his list.

Ruinations

2008-02-25T13:59:00.000-08:00

Despite my disappointment with Scott Smith’s novel (which fights the good fight to maintain an even balance of character and creepiness but gets its teeth kicked out on both counts), I’ve been pretty pumped about The Ruins. I’m counting on the movie being a bit more intense than the book, hopefully with a bit of the sordid, pulpy vibe sorely lacking in the novel – the kind of thing that can make even adventure-horror crap like The Tomb seem more appealing than it actually is.

That’s why I’m trying to avoid the film’s promotional campaign – I’d like to maintain my ignorant enthusiasm, but that ain’t happening if I keep running into posters like this:

If only Swamp Thing had legal counsel…

The graphics themselves look like they were swiped from the wall of your local video store in 1994, but I might be able to get past the visuals if it weren’t for the hackneyed tagline tucked in beneath them. Terror may have evolved, but Dreamworks’ prosaic approach to marketing apparently hasn’t, a fact that’s reinforced when you head over to the film’s website, which evokes none of the creepy jungle atmosphere of the movie’s setting, but does remind us that “there are places man was not meant to go.”

Remember that when they ask for your $9.50 at the box office.

The Midnite Special

2008-02-20T18:52:00.000-08:00

HD-DVD is officially dead, and Blu-Ray holds the dagger. Et tu, Blu-Ray?

Since I don’t own either kind of player, yesterday’s announcement means little to me. I assume I’ll eventually upgrade to a high-def home vid format, but considering the piles of unwatched “traditional” DVDs I’ve amassed, it’s hardly a priority.

More importantly, as cursory search reveals, the pickin’s ain’t plump. Of the tiny horror crop currently available on the Blu-Ray format, there are only a handful of flicks I’d be interested, all of which I already own in standard DVD form (or, in the case of the original Dawn of the Dead, on standard DVD, VHS, Beta, Laserdisc, Video CD, stone etching, cave painting, etc.). Old-school DVD (what do you even call that, anyway? Clear-Ray?) is where it’s at for obscure discoveries or treasured trash, and fans of both will find good news over at DVD Drive-In.

Fox/MGM have launched a new site for their Midnite Movies line, and in addition to trivia, trailers, and my favorite page layout of the last 14 minutes (just listen to the crickets!), the site offers the opportunity to buy previously out-of-print double-features (along with all of the current/new releases) directly from Fox, all wrapped up with garish cover art that makes me want lick Sam Arkoff's ear. You’re not gonna find The House on Skull Mountain on frickin’ Blu-Ray, doll.

The Thrill of It All

2008-02-16T11:50:00.000-08:00

This year De of the Dead made my bloody valentine by gifting me with the 25th Anniversary edition of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, which includes a DVD featuring the complete 13-minute mini-horror film that first taught me to love zombies and dance poorly.

The video is still amazingly fresh and effective (probably in part because we’re not used to seeing a Michael Jackson that resembles a human being with a real nose, let alone one that’s wolfed out or been zombified), and features what I to this day consider to be one of the top three “corpses coming out of the ground” sequences of all time (the other two appear in Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things and the original Return of the Living Dead).

But a true acknowledgement of “Thriller’s” legacy is really not complete without recognizing some of the masterpieces the video inspired, all of which are now preserved forever (or until the FCC goes all Orwell) on YouTube:

The Michael Jackson Original
Co-starring the voice of Vincent Price and a girl I always thought was Tootie from The Facts of Life.

The Indian Version
This is easily my favorite “Thriller” knockoff, if not for the weird “chicken variation” on the signature “creep” dance, then for the muffled mystical voice at the beginning that makes it sound like the paunchy lead is being turned into a monster by the ride operator on the Tilt-A-Whirl.

The Lego Adaptation
Amazing. Someone buy these guys some space sets so they can remake Moonwalker.

The CPDRC Inmates Version
You’ve got to wonder how they decided who would play the girl.

No Love for New Line

2008-02-14T10:15:00.000-08:00

2008 may be the last year that Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes gets a valentine from Bob Shaye.

In response to the recent suicidal tendencies of TW’s stock price, Bewkes has started eyeing cost-cutting options, and the first name on his kill list appears to be Shaye’s New Line Cinema label. Founded by Shaye and partner Michael Lynne, New Line was for a long time regarded by horror fans as “the house that Freddy built” for the phenomenal financial haul of A Nightmare on Elm Street, which first established New Line as an economically viable independent studio. Time Warner acquired the company when it bought up Ted Turner’s media assets, and has since run the studio separately from its Warner Bros. division (per Shaye’s wishes) with Lynne and Shaye as its co-chairs.

While he hasn’t always made the best choices as studio head (in reality, Bewkes’ decision to cut New Line may depend on whether or not Shaye gives him back that $8.00 he spent on a ticket to Man’s Best Friend), Shaye has never tried to hide or back away from his involvement in horror. In the dark ages of the early ‘90s, New Line was virtually the only studio regularly putting horror movies into theaters. Were it not for Shaye’s unpopular decision to back movies like In the Mouth of Madness, future installments of those “Scariest Movie Moments” specials that run on Bravo around Halloween would be forced to refer to the period as “the Vidmark Era.”

If TW does cut New Line (and Shaye and Lynne), it will most likely fold all of its assets into the Warner Bros. division. Shaye and Lynne would loose valuable fallback franchises like the Nightmare, Friday the 13th, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre series, though considering how those are faring these days, they might be better off rotting in the WB vault.

Of course, the break could provide the opportunity for Shaye and Lynne to revisit their Reagan-hippy roots and start up their own new company like the Weinsteins did, but then again, we all know how well that turned out.

Where's George?

2008-02-11T09:40:00.000-08:00

George Romero is appearing everywhere this week the opening of Diary of the Dead -- except, most likely, for a theater near you.

I’d known all along that any theatrical release granted to Diary (which Grandpa George intended to send directly to video, initially) would be limited, but to the Weinstein company, “limited release” is apparently code for, “We are afraid of the Midwest.”

The official Diary of the Dead MySpace page (a phrase that's probably a more telling social portrait than the film itself) posted some additional theater listings last Friday, including some in Chicago and Kansas City, but while the film is playing on multiple screens in several cities, there are practically entire time zones of the country that would need a few tanks of gas and a couple days off work to make it to a screening.

Here’s the latest list, and below are some digital Diary nuggets posted around the web (including some originating from archaic regions beyond the coasts!):

• Romero’s chat with EW
• George’s impassioned plea to kids who’ve never heard of him
• One large popcorn, a box of Skittles, and a massive wound to the head
• DOTD on the Rot-o-Meter

Have a Howling Weekend

2008-02-08T15:13:00.001-08:00

Here's to the full moon, the Chinese New Year, and the keytar.

Par Three

2008-02-06T19:20:00.000-08:00

As remakes go, Michael Haneke’s new take on his own 1997 film Funny Games is a horse of a different color. A very stark, white one, based on a lot of the film’s promo materials. As of this week, there are now three posters for the film in circulation, and two of them resemble Apple ads. Who knew Helvetica could be so scary?

The first piece is perfect, if your name is Criterion Collection and you’re selling special edition DVDs. Theatrically, though, I don’t think it works. I like the tear in Naomi Watts’ eye, but when I see this shot I can’t help but think it’s advertising a remake of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” video rather than a twisted psychological horror movie.

And while we're wang-chunging... did Duran Duran just take the stage? Or is it Hall & Oates? They can't be Milli Vanilli; they don't have the shoulder pads. Utterly awful design.

But the third bowl of porridge is just right. It looks more like a teaser poster as it is, but just slap the credits on the bottom and you’re done. The artwork does the movie’s job for it, really. Looking at this image, your mind starts to churn up all sorts of nasty uses for that golf club. Tut, tut. Good show, gents.

Slash on Demand

2008-02-04T14:21:00.000-08:00

Not counting the aftermath of Brittney’s evitable self-destruction, the day following the Super Bowl will probably go down as YouTube’s busiest day this year. Even I had to find out what Alice Cooper and Richard Simmons have in common. But if Clydesdales and Coke ads don’t tempt your clicker finger, just try putting some slash in your search bar.

Over the last few months, YouTuber Taylor has been quietly uploading slasher crap and classics alike to his SlasherTV channel, providing 24/7 access to streaming screams from the glory days of campground massacres and suburban dismemberment. Has your local Blockbuster lost its copy of Bava’s Blade in the Dark? Can’t get past the hideous case art for Happy Birthday to Me enough to actually pick up the DVD?? No worries, they’re all here, complete and uncut (albeit broken into segments), along with some relics that may never find their way to any “official” digital format. Case in point, Taylor’s most recently unearthed treasure, the rare backyard Betacam extravaganza Boardinghouse (which, incidentally has been on Code Red’s DVD release roster for over a year now).

Print and transmission quality varies from flick to flick, but these aren’t the kind of movies you’d want to blow up to full-screen mode anyway; they’re much better as background fare, something to listen to while you browse and flip back to just as John gets a shish kebab skewer through the throat.

With Hollywood being all litigious and stuff, there’s no telling how long the channel will be broadcasting, so get your kicks while you can.

The Sophomore Slum

2008-01-31T22:07:00.000-08:00

The trailer for the Butcher Bros.' remake of April Fool's Day hit the net today, and it's predictably awful, the film looking like what might happen if the characters from Sweet Valley High took a wrong turn at the mall and accidentally stumbled into an R.L. Stine novel.

I realize we haven't seen the final film, and of course I'm a little biased, being a big fan of the original (some call the ending a cheat -- to which I say, "the movie is called April Fool's Day, Holmes!"), but I think it's simply irrefutable that this movie looks like manure. All integrity or artistic value aside, at the very least a contemporary horror movie should feel more intense than one made 20 years ago, right? Not so here, if this trailer is to be trusted.

I don't want to keep harping on the remakes...oh hell, let's harp on them! The most disturbing trend in horror today may not be the predominance of remakes, but the waste of good talent that's going into producing them. The Butcher Brothers were responsible for, arguably, the most original and engaging vampire movie of the decade (the '07 After Dark Horrorfest standout The Hamiltons). The forecast called for great stuff in their second outing, but instead they're treading in lame teen territory not even Kevin Williamson would touch.

And they're not the first horror ingénues to squander their clout on a remake copout. In Haute Tension, Alexandre Asa blended up a near-perfect concoction of emotional intensity and graphic initiative, then followed it up by taking a crap in Wes Craven’s toilet. Might as well call out James Wong and that other guy who did the Final Destination movies, too. They practically own real estate in Mediocre Remakeville after the Crispin Glover Willard redo and the... thing they call Black Christmas.

Who’s next for sophomore shame? Douglas Buck may be in line with his take on De Palma’s Sisters, and the Weinsteins have all but doomed the careers of Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury (the team behind the French sensation À l'intérieur (Inside)) by hiring them to remake Hellraiser.

And while no one’s attached to the Friday the 13th and Nightmare projects festering on Michael Bay’s production slate, the directorial want list is no doubt topped with popular freshmen on the fright scene. After all, why make the grueling climb to new creative heights when you can just sink your career to the bottom of Crystal Lake?

FEARnot

2008-01-30T14:54:00.000-08:00

In general, I’m a fan of FEARnet. While the wait for a widely accessible television network devoted to horror drags on, there are seemingly dozens of broadband/niche companies currently streaming horror content online or on-demand via digital cable, but FEARnet’s web component is the only one thus far to actually include full-length movies in its online viewing lineup (excluding the various online outlets that offer downloadable public domain titles culled from the dollar bin at Target). Even more endearing (to everyone except, maybe, people like Metallica), FEARnet allows anyone to access its offerings free of charge, without any subscriptions or memberships. Most of the movies are crap, but whenever you’re hit with that driving need to watch Wishmaster again, FEARnet’s got your back (I’m personally forever indebted to the network for making the 1982 opus Frightmare, starring a barely pubescent Jeffrey Combs, readily available 24/7 last year). The site also premiered two well-rated web series (the 30 Days of Night prequel Blood Trails and Buried Alive), along with an original feature set in a Velvet Revolver music video.

But in a recent article on the most anticipated horror movies of 2008, the site seems to have mistargeted its users’ tastes. There’s more horror in a Happy Meal than there is on this list. I’m not sure what’s more disconcerting – the article’s relative lack of horror titles, or the five lines of type it devotes to Robert Downey, Jr. as Iron Man. And while I wouldn’t call flicks like The Signal, France’s Ils (Them), or The Lost Boys sequel major cinematic events, they at least deserve a mention over the Day the Earth Stood Still remake.

The problem is – and this is the scary part – right now there aren’t a ton of horror movies on the horizon that are worth anticipating. A PG-13 Prom Night redux and the fifth Saw flick (who the hell let this series get that high?) won’t have me camping out for tickets.

That said, there are a few anticipated genre releases that are way more compelling than a new Roland Emmerich movie. Here’s a brief guide based on tentative schedules:

February
Diary of the Dead -- I remain skeptical about the place of Romero’s latest in his overall zombie pantheon, but after Land of the Dead, who isn’t looking forward to him giving it another go?

March
Doomsday -- The latest Spielberg flick makes FEARnet’s list, but Neil (The Descent) Marshall’s doesn’t? Whuhuh? Britain goes post-apocalyptic; sign me up. Better still – no sign of Shia LaBeouf to be found.

Sisters -- Yeah, it’s another remake, but since 85% of the original De Palma movie was lifted from Hitchcock movies in the first place, there’s a good chance Douglas Buck’s version will actually be more original. For what it’s worth, with his dark Family Portraits trilogy, Buck’s definitely the right guy for the job.

April
Repo! The Genetic Opera -- Bill Moseley sings.

May
Frontiere(s) -- It sounds an awful lot like last year’s Severence, minus the spiteful wit, but these days French horror is la merde.

June
The Happening -- While the rest of the public seems to think that M. Night lost is Shyamamlamagic a long time ago, I thought The Village was a totally engrossing character study, and Lady in the Water was...well, just too absurd to dislike. What is it with all of the end of the world flicks this year? Apocalypse is the new black.

Undated
Mother of Tears (La Terza Madre) -- Can the final film in Argento’s Three Mothers live up to expectations and restore faith in the guy with the black gloves? Debatable, but early reports suggest a visual feast done Dario-style, and that’s enough to have me eatin’ Italian food until showtime.

Rec -- Another first-person POV flick attempts to bring a new perspective to an old archetype (apparently vérité horror is also the new black), but word is Jaume Balagueró has finally crafted a film that’s as scary as his horror debut, The Nameless -- if not more so. “The scariest movie in years,” reviewers call it. I’m not going to assume that’s true, but I can’t

Plan 9.5

2008-01-28T20:17:00.000-08:00

In which the remains of a beloved Hollywood horror icon will hopefully be interred in a place equally suited for peaceful rest and shameless tourism.

Early last week some friends of the late Maila Nurmi (better known as the original late-night TV horror host, Vampira), who died on January 10 at the age of 85, issued a release detailing plans to have the actress immortalized in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. The group has established a MySpace page to solicit donations (they need to raise $8,000 – no word on where the running total sits).

Hollywood Forever is a morbid wonderland of celebrity memoriam nestled in vintage Hollywood, right next to the Paramount Pictures backlot (the close proximity of the two provided the setting and inspiration for Ray Bradbury’s novel A Graveyard for Lunatics). Part resting place, part theme park, part coffee shop, the relatively small cemetery is the final home to some of classic cinema’s biggest stars, including several horror notables like Peter Lorre Fay Wray, and as such draws many more visitors than the average graveyard. Local wanderers frequently haunt the place, some picnicking or sitting watch among the tombstones daily, and in October the gates are opened for outdoor screenings of classic horror movies. Originally known as Hollywood Memorial --, the park fell into disrepair over the latter half of the last century, but was purchased and restored by St. Louis-based Forever Cemeteries. The HBO documentary The Young and the Dead is a great chronicle of the refurbishment process.

If there's anyone in Hollyweird who truly belongs in such auspicious surroundings for all of eternity, it's Vampira. Help her legacy live by donating here.

A Tale of Two Sisters

2008-01-27T20:13:00.000-08:00

I don't know about you, but when I picture upscale urban life in the '70s, certain things come immediately to mind. Muted colors, perpetual cold, dead trees...and vaguely incestuous relationships.

That in mind, the poster for Douglas Buck's Sisters remake hits a conceptual home run, tagging all of the bases and even throwing in a cool, sparse font as a Crackerjack prize. Scratch off the words and you've got a haunting work of digitally doctored photography suitable for framing. I'm not even sure if Buck's version is a period piece or set in the present day, but regardless, it's an aesthetic leap from the original film's one-sheet, and arguably more in line with the story's subversive tone.

Pop appeal noted and aside, there's very little that's subversive about this tabloid screamer. I'd give it credit for the cracked-in-half title treatment hinting at the fractured familial dynamics explored in the movie, but this being a De Palma flick, it was probably just cribbed from Psycho.

The Shocking Return

2008-01-25T08:49:00.000-08:00

It’s been a little while, but I’m back from the grave and ready to party.

While this space has been silent the last few months, I’ve been click-clacking away elsewhere. Late last summer (coincidentally around the time the posts stopped flowing here) longtime colleague Ryan “Rotten” Turek put out the call for contributing reviewers for his horror branch of the ComingSoon.Net franchise, Shock Till You Drop. It had been many full moons since I’d done regular reviewing duty – going back years to around ‘04 or ’05 – but the chance to really dive back into the genre after a bit of a hiatus and get to work with Ryan was too good to pass up (and that’s not just e-brown nosing; Ryan’s easily one of the best journalists in the genre. I was a fan when he co-helmed the original Creature Corner and Dread Central, a follower during his stint with Fangoria, and am honored to now have him as a friend and editor).

You can see the fruits of this collaboration over on the right, an ongoing archive of my Shock reviews, along with some other new features I’ll be adding and tweaking over time to hopefully make this joint feel a little more integrated with the genre at large and a little less like somebody’s very narrowly focused bathroom wall scribblings.

I’ve also decided it might finally be time to start pimpin’ this place. When I got into this I was just really itchin’ to start talking horror again, even if nobody was listening, but whether the result of the Shock gig or something else, I’m craving a little more feedback these days, so help me out by either throwing out your thoughts or passin’ me along to your friends and loved ones.

You can start by telling me if you’d be interested in hearing a podcast of horror-themed music. There are several shows out there that occasionally play horror music, but it’s usually an accent to a film discussion or something; I’d be rocking it straight out, with the horror film/book/TV/etc. stuff being the accent. In order to create such audio awesomeness I would be sacrificing the three and a half minutes of sleep I currently get, so I haven’t taken it beyond the idea stage yet, but I think it would be fun.

And finally tonight, there are new links to explore, all of them certified cool (or as cool as the official endorsement of a horror nerd can be). Cast your eyes their way, but get yer carcass back here soon.

The Bust Hits the Big Time

2007-08-08T00:48:00.000-07:00

Last week’s issue of Variety (dated July 30 – August 5) spotlights several articles on the declining profits and shifting focus of Hollywood horror movies. One writer places the blame on a glut of indistinguishable films (namely the so-called “torture porn” subgenre, a term that’s starting to sound to me like modern horror’s version of the “all your base are belong to us” phenomenon), while another cites fickle audiences.

Both are partially accurate, but in making their diagnoses, neither article acknowledges or even hints at the greatest threat to Hollywood horror’s health: a pervasive chain of really, really shitty movies and the continued negligence of the studio executives who continue to make them.

“It’s an old story that if a movie works, people will show up,” says the iconic producer Joel Silver. “If it’s scary and it’s fun, you’ll have an audience.” This is an interesting statement coming from a guy whose horror label Dark Castle has yet to issue a film that excelled in either category.

“Audiences change their taste every six months,” asserts Daniel Alter, producer of the upcoming slasher satire/comic adaptation Hack/Slash. “People want to see something new.”

Do they? I do. But if Hollywood knows that audiences want something new, why does the upcoming horror slate detailed in this same series of articles consist almost exclusively of more remakes (Prom Night, Piranha, Last House on the Left, The Tingler, Terror Train, The Stepfather, The Evil Dead, The Birds), more unnecessary Americanizations of Asian films (The Eye, The Echo, Tale of Two Sisters), more Stephen King adaptations (Cell, The Mist), more Friday the 13th, Halloween, and Hellraiser crap, more classic monster revamps (The Wolf Man, The Creature From the Black Lagoon, the Mummy), more video game horror (Castlevania), and more fucking Saw sequels?

Fortunately, another article in this issue addresses the migration of the big studios’ genre labels (Rogue Pictures, Fox Atomic, etc.) away from horror and onto greener pastiches; because, really, why waste time trying to be innovative in horror when you can just recycle the same teen comedy or B-action picture concepts, right?

Tricked Out

2007-07-23T21:21:00.000-07:00

It’s not too often a major studio heads into the October Country (unless that studio is Dimension and it’s looking to team Michael Myers with another aging rap icon), let alone in the form of an anthology film, so when Dread Central broke the rumor that The Usual Suspects/Superman Returns director Bryan Singer’s company was producing a big-studio horror film set at Halloween called Trick ‘r Treat, to be written and directed by Singer’s Superman co-writer Michael Dougherty, I got far more excited about the project than the other Halloween-themed release coming this fall.

In fact, I kind of view the premise behind Trick ‘r Treat (which reportedly interweaves four loosely related short horror tales) as the Halloween treatments that never were. There was allegedly a time when Halloween producers John Carpenter and Debra Hill pushed to continue the Halloween franchise as an anthology series of new storylines unrelated to the Myers saga (ala the controversial Halloween III: Season of the Witch) but all set at or inspired by Halloween, which, considering the limitless potential, is a glorious idea. Especially given how the series has actually progressed. While Trick r Treat’s stories are apparently linked via a single central character (most likely one of evil intent), its anthology approach is ambitious and daring, considering most anthology films fail at the box-office no matter how good they are (the last major studio horror anthology to hit theaters was the underrated Tales From the Hood in 1995).

Equally bold and intriguing are many of the details and stills from Trick ‘r Treat that have been creeping out (like the haunting image above), giving me hope that this might be the 2007 equivalent of Haute Tension or The Descent -- sharp, potent movies outside the common boundaries of Hollywood horror (not surprisingly, both were imports) that nonetheless received wide theatrical releases.

That might be why the flms’s official trailer, which snuck onto the net last week, feels like just a bit of a buzzkill. As good previews should, it features some dynamic imagery and compelling hints, particularly regarding that schoolbus sequence, but there are a lot of moments in it that look like typical horror hokum.

The argument’s not new, but it’s clearly still valid: the most effective trailers are the ones that reveal the least. While the trailer for Trick ‘r Treat is hardly cause for writing off the film, it does undermine its own goals by removing the film’s mask a little too early.

The Bodies Count: The Curious Value of Character in the Friday the 13th Flicks

2007-07-13T15:20:00.000-07:00

From the time I was eight-years-old, not a single Friday the 13th has passed without my special observance, first in the form of caffeine-fueled adolescent sleepovers and USA’s Up All Night movie marathons, then later raucous Friday drinking games and illicit, hockey-masked runs through forested nooks and cemeteries, and, in the digital age, faux Jason interviews and ridiculously detailed and lengthy online articles on everything from the top 13 sex-related deaths to “those damn enchiladas” from Friday V.

Thus, though my interest in the series has waned over the last few years and it’s a little on the fringe of this joint’s thematic intent, when Final Girl Stacie Ponder issued an open call for Friday-centric blog posts, I couldn’t resist throwing something together and pimping what I feel is one of the more under-appreciated elements of the series, something this lingering saga of a lovable backwoods mamma’s boy and his bond with a severed head is not particularly well-known for: its characters.

In the slasher genre, where 95% of all individuals are quickly introduced specifically for the purpose of a sensationally graphic or even comic demise soon afterwards, first impressions are essential, but seldom lasting. In most traditional slashers, the killer is really the star, if not the killings themselves. Nobody remembers Mabel from My Bloody Valentine for her wholesome, small-town, apple-pie charm; they remember her for her death via tumble dryer. Understandably, as the Friday franchise was dragged into its teen years by Jason Goes to Hell and, with Jason X and Freddy Vs. Jason, into its early- to mid-20s, all attention was increasingly focused solely on Jason and some high-profile and highly illogical slayings (or, in the case of the latter example, Jason, Freddy, and Monica Keena’s irritating, nasally whine).

But over the last few years, as my thoughts returned to Crystal Lake with every Friday the 13th, and as I’ve tried to understand and explain to others why the early Paramount-era movies are so much fun while the later-day New Line ventures make Uwe Boll seem like the Orson Welles of horror, I’ve found myself remembering and caring less and less about Jason and his exploits and focusing more attention on the freaks, tramps, and bad dancers who’ve helped make the series so endearingly awful. These days, when I talk about the movies with friends, nobody mentions the infamous sleeping bag death from Part VII or the dimensionally popping eye from Part III; we talk about bicycle-riding soothsayers, post-coital handstands, and “Star Mummy.” We talk about screen-wide denim cut-offs, strip Monopoly, perverted morgue attendants, Crispin “Dead Fuck” Glover, and, of course, those damn enchiladas.

The Halloween movies are memorable for their palpable dread, their unsettling, genuine ambiance, and their stark approach to the concept of evil. The Nightmare series enraptures with fantastic visuals and an equally fantastic twist on the American dream, appealing to teenage audiences by catering to the idea of parents as an adversarial force responsible for their own progeny’s undoing. I think the Friday the 13th franchise stands out from the slasher pack because of its cast of inexplicably and yet irresistibly compelling anthropological sideshows – a collective group not too dissimilar from a bunch of Jerry Springer Show rejects gone to summer camp. The guy with the mask and the machete is just a bonus.

If your celebratory plans call for revisiting the series, as many will today, pay a little extra attention to the characters that populate its wacky world, the equally wacky things they do; just remember to stay away from those damn enchiladas.

Happy Friday the 13th!

The Blah Behind the Mask

2007-06-02T00:47:00.000-07:00

I've avoided talking much about Rob Zombie's Halloween remake because I don't want to be a member of that oft-criticized group of people who defame movies before they've seen them. In the post-post-post-punk era, the mere mention of doubt seems to be perceived as a premature attack on one's creativity, and I sure don't want to undermine the creativity of someone who's invested a year or so of their life into crafting a remake.

Ahem.

But now that the poster art has been released, we finally have at least one tangible, finished product related to Rob's holiday in Haddonfield about which the field of discussion is wide open. And I know that Rob didn't have much to do with this poster, so I feel entitled to rip its creativity. Or lack thereof.

I appreciate the attempt to visually acknowledge the legacy of the Halloween series. This image is clearly attempting to appeal to the mythic quality the Halloween movies have acquired among fans, with a Myers mask that's obviously larger than life, and the problems begin right there.

For a film that's proposing to revolutionize the series, this is an awfully traditional key advertising image. Not only does it evoke the same marketing ploy used (poorly) in past non-H20 installments of the series (every film from Part 4 onward has incorporated a close up of the Myers mask into its signage), but its juxtaposition of iconic incarnate evil (in this case, the mask) with the presumably innocent frame of a young boy is so cliched even George Lucas has used it.

As I said, I'm relieving Rob of the blame for this one, assuming that most, if not all, of the fault for the image is the Weinstein Co/Dimension Films marketing department, which seems to reserve all of its creativity for Quentin Tarantino's films (although they really dropped the ball on the Kill Bill campaign). That said, Zombie's greatest strength as a filmmaker is in his ability to craft a very specific, exacting visual style out of his films, and in the past that style has translated marvelously well to his movies' posters. Case in point, the outstanding one-sheet image for The Devil's Rejects.

Hopefully the Hallowfodder Dimension has devised thus far will prove to only be the teaser, with a more original design in the cards for the full release one-sheet. Or, at the very least, more than meets the mask.

Biting Criticism: The Curse of Postmodern Vampires

2007-05-14T21:38:00.000-07:00

Based on a friend’s recommendation, I recently rented the Russian horror/sci-fi/action blockbuster Night Watch. I’d long been skeptical about the film and the trilogy of which it is a part (the second installment, Day Watch, is currently in limited theatrical release), curious about the majority of somewhat positive reviews for it but finding little of interest in the premise or the previews I’d seen. My response to it was close to what I’d expected; as I told my friend, I wish there were a rating in Netflix’s user review system that signified, “I like this movie but I’m really, really sick of postmodern vampires.”

It’s a sentiment that applies to a lot of the bloodsucker flicks that have hit over the last decade or so, the progeny of a culture that discovered movies like The Lost Boys and Near Dark while playing White Wolf’s role-playing games and then went off to college to subsist on Hong Kong action pics for four years (or five, or six, or seven…) and got a girlfriend who owned autographed copies of all of Laurel K. Hamilton’s books. Suddenly, beginning sometime in the mid-90s, nearly every vampire movie that gurgled its way across the big or small screen featured attractive young actors in tight leather and dark denim, pouting like someone from a Calvin Klein ad in one frame and then brandishing the Terminator’s shotgun and/or motorcycle in the next. There was typically at least one sequence in which someone writhed orgasmically on a bed or bathtub, and another involving one of the vampire characters being shot by a human, only to shrug off the blast with a terrible one-liner. Wesley Snipes owes his summer home to this phenomenon.

The formula was stale before it had finished unspooling through the projector, and yet traces of it still plague the genre to this day, undermining some otherwise unique and engaging movies. Case in point, The Hamiltons, which came out at the top of last year’s After Dark Horrorfest crop (or at least the top of those films not named The Abandoned; I’ve yet to see that one).

The Hamiltons, a story about an trio of odd siblings orphaned and living on their own following the death of their parents, was also recommended to me by a friend and holds up to her promises of smart, compelling, character-driven horror. Its narrative organically integrates a lot of the traditional vampire conventions into a story that’s actually about more than just people being vampires. Its subtlety defies the aggressive nature of most modern vampire movies, forgoing hypercut chase-sequences and fight scenes set to pounding heavy metal in favor of quiet, methodical talks at a kitchen table and the drawn out, palpable anxiety of characters placed in uncomfortable situations. It’s a movie, not just a horror movie, and not even just a genre movie.

Yet despite its originality and nerve, The Hamiltons is slighted, and slighted heavily, by pandering to the lowest common vampire film-viewing denominator in the form of two characters who seem to have walked right off the set of Blade 4. By lingering on these two – a pair of sexually lecherous, morally antagonistic, OMG HOTT! young twins clad in stylishly dingy garb from Hot Topic – for a good portion of the film and fetishizing their actions, the directing team of the Butcher Brothers pull us away from the The Hamiltons’ core (the coming-of-age of its young and confused protagonist) and turn the proceedings into an MTV horror movie.

The twins don’t completely stake the heart of The Hamiltons, but they do perpetuate many of the problems of the modern vampire movie within the last realm of horror cinema once thought safe from their bite: the art-house pic. More importantly, they rob modern horror of yet another otherwise viable candidate for the overall horror pantheon.

In other words, like the seemingly immortal curse of the postmodern vamp, they suck.

But if you can get past them, maybe you’ll catch a glimpse of what the post-postmodern vamp film will one day look like – ambitious, thought-provoking, challenging, and naturally scary.

WARNING! Do no proceed beyond this poster!

2007-04-20T21:01:00.000-07:00

While the film itself appears to reek of franchisitis (that being the disease of film sequels created not to organically advance a cinematic mythology but to perpetuate a series for financial exploitation), Fox's advance poster for 28 Weeks Later is without a doubt the best horror theatrical poster so far this year. The striking image both generates curiosity and unease in the viewer and a places one within the context of the film.

Not to mention a subtle similarity to one of the many unofficial graphic designs for the original Dawn of the Dead.

Which Witch?

2007-04-09T19:21:00.000-07:00

I don't have much tonight, but I thought it worth noting that I took a walk to the library this evening and happened to breeze by the video section and see Suspiria sitting on the shelf. I don't know why I grabbed it, really; I did't anticipate having much time to watch it in the near future. But I was ecstatic on the walk home. With the sun down and the wind blowing, I felt like Suzy Banyon on my approach to a prestigious German dance academy. Some people get spring fever. I get Suspiria fever.

The experience unexpectedly reawakened interest in Argento's Three Mothers Trilogy, a saga I'd only loosely followed in the past. The first time I saw Suspiria, I fell asleep within the first five minutes, a fact I attribute more to my physical state at the time and less to the power of the movie. The second time I saw it, I was sufficiently blown away and freaked out for its entire 100-minute runtime, swept up in the sheer visceral pummeling of it. I didn't come away from the film loving it, but I definitely respected it. It was one of those wonderful horror movies that I didn't particularly care to ever watch again.

So what happened tonight? I'm not sure, but I threw the tape in when I got home and have been kind of glancing at it every now and then as if I were baby-sitting it, and in the process of doing so I'm really finally beginning to appreciate it for its overt artistry. Having Suspiria playing in the background makes me feel like I'm sitting in an art gallery with a television in place of a painting. I've long thought of Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow, another movie about a witch, as my pick for the most beautiful horror film (or at least the most beautiful modern horror film; it's hard to compare anything to some of the Universal classics from the '30s and have it rank well), but tonight I'm inclined to at least accept Suspiria as a worthy contender, if not a new champion.

A Taste of Sleaze to Come?

2007-04-09T00:00:00.000-07:00

I haven’t seen Grindhouse yet, but the fact that box-office analysts are already calling it a failure is more irritating than it is discouraging. Though it may have performed below financial hopes or expectations, the film’s lackluster popularity among the weekend moviegoing crowd is not going to dissuade me or most other horror fans from seeing it – or appreciating and enjoying it, if predominant reviews are to be trusted. Grindhouse is a movie that was made for and marketed to what is essentially a niche audience, albeit a comparatively large niche, of cultish genre and Tarantino/Rodriguez fans, and success by those standards is difficult to gauge in terms of gross profits. Plus, I’m betting the thing makes serious bank when it opens overseas and on video.

What bothers me is the industry perception of success, or lack thereof, because it is that perception that more often than not dictates the future. Grindhouse was funded on the Weinsteins’ faith in Tarantino and Rodriguez, which itself was based on the financial accomplishments of their previous movies (which cost little to produce and yielded high returns). Kill Bill proved to the suits that calculatedly “cult” movies could make money, so there was little reservation in throwing $53 million at Tarantino and Rodriguez so they could spend a summer in Austin with a bunch of strippers and a truck full of fake blood. The perception, however misguided or incomplete, that this experiment is a failure is bad news for people who dig this stuff. People like, oh, me.

The idea of a double-feature of sleazy “vintage” horror films with fake trailers for other sleazy vintage horror films sandwiched in-between is the kind of thing that gets me excited. I’m pretty sure I’ve watched Eli Roth’s fake Thanksgiving trailer 14 times since it was posted online last week, and it’s not because I was in a holiday mood. There’s a palpable sense of heart and enthusiasm behind an atypical project like this. In an interview conducted for a MySpace promo clip, Tarantino says he feels compelled to make movies for audiences of a particular persuasion because he’s lucky enough to be able to do so, that it’s his duty, and I think that’s a genuine statement. I want to see more movies made this way, and not just horror films. I want to see more people taking risks and making movies that they’re excited about from a perspective of appreciation, even if the object of that passion is just something as relatively inconsequential as the glory days of the grind house. At one time there was talk of direct-to-video “spinoffs” of Grindhouse based potentially on the fake trailers shown between the features (plans which might be in jeopardy with Grindhouse now branded a “failure”). I want to see more film franchises handled in a similar fashion, not with sequels and remakes but with fresh ideas inspired by a compelling concept.

I want to flip the cinematic finger at the box-office nay-sayers and make Grindhouse a success in whatever terms necessary to make more horror happen this way.

And most of all, intead of another lame torture movie, I want Roth to make Thanksgiving and release it on video in one of those old giant VHS boxes the size of Hungry Man frozen dinners. For that kind of holiday feast, I’d save room for seconds.

Silent Night

2007-04-05T17:49:00.000-07:00

An unexpected but fond farewell to Bob Clark, who died last night in an automobile accident with a drunk driver, and whose limited but highly respected and influential work in the horror genre endeared him to many and will likely one day put his name among that of Tod Browning, James Whale, and the like.

About three years ago I had the opportunity to interview Bob for Fright Media, the site I was writing for. At the time this was something of an honor, not only because I really enjoyed his horror films (Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, Deathdream/Dead of Night, and, most noteworthy of all, the original Black Christmas -- one of the few movies that always seem capable of scaring me all these jaded years later), but also because interviews with Bob weren't very common. His was a name that everyone in the genre knew, but would always prompt an "Oh yeah" response, always an afterthought in a discussion about great horror directors.

As we talked, it became clear to me that Bob was not really much of a "horror fan," though he knew the genre and its signature films, as well as his place in it. He pointed to A Christmas Story as the most important film in his career, as it was the one that made him a "Hollywood director," as he put it. I was a little disheartened to hear that the man primarily responsible for what I've long considered to be some top-tier horror films looked to his "mainstream" work as the watermark for his success in film, but after all, John Carpenter's admitted he's only after the money, and we still continue to fawn over him. Besides, Clark's work remains just as effective for those who know what his motivations were as it does for those blissfully unaware.

At the time we spoke Bob was in the negotiation process of getting Black Christmas remade, and was writing the script for a remake of Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things. Neither one seemed like a good idea to me, and I've yet to see the James Wong-helmed Christmas redo, but I remember being satisfied just knowing that Clark was willing to come back to the genre, even if it was only for the potential money involved. Perhaps, I thought, the remakes would be successful and would encourage him to make new horror movies based on new ideas.

Perhaps the most tragic aspect of Bob's death, for horror fans, is that now we'll never know.

Goodnight, Bob.

You Could Learn a Lot From a Dummy

2007-04-02T22:26:00.000-07:00

If stupid truly is as stupid does, modern horror rides the short bus.

Sure, there are films out there that at least have their GEDs, but by and large, these days the genre seems more than content to loiter in the tenth grade.

Still, there’s an inherent value in certain kinds of stupidity, the somewhat calculated kind that may be self-aware but is not transcendent, the kind that’s the cinematic equivalent of the really smart kid who could have impressive grades and be on student council but prefers to sit in the back of the room setting guys’ hair on fire; the kind of value that’s only evident when you see a movie like Dead Silence.

Here is an example of the rare Stupid Horror Movie (SHM) that is both cumulative and quantitative in its idiocy and is yet miraculously effective in most if not all ways. One can catalog its numerous affronts to viewer intelligence, but is not compelled to do so unless it is for the purposes of enhancing by way of contrast the sense of irrational, inexplicable satisfaction one gets from such an obviously dumb movie; as if to say with awe, “This movie is utterly retarded and quite enjoyable because of it.” Of course the notion of a man driving vast distances with the ventriloquist doll he suspects may have murdered his wife sitting behind him in the back seat is absurd, but in the case of Dead Silence, that kind of thing is like another grain of sugar on a bowl of Frosted Flakes.

I admit that pleasurable stupidity in horror is a fine line to walk. James Wan and Leigh Whannel, the writer/director duo behind Dead Silence toed this line before in their first film, Saw, with a gravelly, cackling doll on a tricycle and Cary Elwes’ bombastic yelping. And they failed. Oh, Saw was stupid, but only endearingly so to a certain point, after which the film became feeble and lame, an eye-roller. In Dead Silence, though, Wan and Whannel go the absurd distance, their contrived plot yanking the huffing and puffing leading man from one ridiculous set-piece to another, tailed ever-closely by electric razor-toting Donnie Whalberg as the least believable police detective in America. Tongues are severed, dolls come to life, and preposterous climaxes beget preposterous climaxes beget preposterous climaxes in a manner not seen in horror cinema since the Scooby-Doo schenanegans in Happy Birthday to Me.

But at each ludicrous turn, the film also layers on lush cinematography, vibrant, terrifying make-up, and a charmingly juvenile backstory involving a murdered ventriloquist-turned-ghostly doll on decades-old quest for vengeance. Careening along at a spastic pace through a glorious pastiche of "old dark house" movie elements, it becomes something that popular film critics often refer to as an “enjoyable romp.” This isn’t a movie that carelessly, winkingly opens with the old classic Universal logo that adorned decades of horror classics; this is a movie that earns the right to bear that symbol; a relatively safe, surprisingly reserved (at least compared to the indulgent brutality of movies like Saw) spooky ghost movie.

The Sci-Fi Channel only wishes it could come up with something this entertainingly stupid.