RIP Dan O'Bannon

Seems I'm late with this bit of news, and frankly I am getting tired of constantly learning of the deaths of genre greats this past year, but I was not about to ignore the passing of the writer of 2 of my favorite fright flicks. Dan O'Bannon has lost his 30 year battle with Crohn's disease. He is responsible for Lifeforce, one of my favorite guilty pleasures and Return Of The Living Dead, which stands today as one of the greatest zombie movies, wether you are looking at it as comedy or horror.
Thank you Dan, your rest is well deserved.

MMMMM...Reindeer meat....

Considering I just lost one of my followers, I thought it was about time I posted again. Sorry I have been away. Holidays can get in the way sometimes.

Maybe what we need is a good old fashioned zombie outbreak during this time of year to kind of whittle down the pesky invasiveness of these holidays.

Luckily there is a movie on it's way that gives us just that. Entitled "12/24" It looks like a joyous time is to be had by all. Well, maybe not the characters in this film who will wind up in the bellies of the undead. Hee hee


Looks fun to me! Here is a link to their facebook page with more articles and videos to peruse: http://www.facebook.com/pages/1224-The-Movie/85707753364

Oh and before I forget, one of the stars is my fave scream queen Tiffany Shepis who seems determined to be in more movies than Brinke, Linnea, and Michelle combined.



Some of you would say that I'm just using this as an excuse to post pics of Tiffany and you may be right, but I honestly did try to find some more pics from the movie and came up empty except the one at the top. So, here's some more of the lovely Ms. Shepis...

Happy Halloween everyone!!!

Here is a selection of spooky cartoons to enjoy. Please go out and trick or treat, go to a party, have a horror movie marathon with a loved one or do SOMETHING to celebrate the holiday!!!!






I will have another batch later tonight so hope everyone has fun!

Michael Dougherty involved in new Godzilla???

A little while ago I posted a news item stating that Legendary Pictures was possibly going to restart the Godzilla franchise with a new American made and released film. While there was no more information than that, we may have another tidbit of info now.

I picked up the new issue of Rue Morgue Magazine this week (which is an amazing issue you should pick it up) and in an article on Michael Dougherty's long awaited film Trick 'R' Treat, was this final paragraph at the end:

"Every project I do goes back to what I was exposed to as a kid: X-Men, Superman, Halloween. I can't elaborate too much on my next film, but I'll just say my other passion growing up was Godzilla. I'm crossing off a checklist that I first wrote when I was about nine."

If both of these things mesh into what I'm thinking, then this will be a dream come true for myself and other Godzilla fans. I can't think of anyone more suited for the project other than Peter Jackson, and let's face it, that would never happen.

Demand to see Paranormal Activity in your area!

RIP: Dick Durock

I found out this evening that actor and stuntman Dick Durock passed away last week from pancreatic cancer at the age of 72. He was mostly known for his role as Alec Holland, the Swamp Thing, in the Wes Craven film based on the DC comics character, as well as it's sequal Return Of Swamp Thing.

He was also heavily utilized as a stuntman and bit actor in the 80's on many TV shows as The Incredible Hulk, Battlestar Galactica and The A-Team.



It absolutely shocks me that I discovered this news from a toy blog that I peruse (thanks Toyriffic), but not anywhere else in all the dozens and dozens of horror blogs that I follow.
The Wes Craven movie wasn't fantastic, and the sequal was done for laughs, but no one can deny that it was Mr. Durock's acting that gave a sense of integrity to either of those films, especially in the first one. It was one of my favorite films as a child and I really thought the thankless job of having to act under all that latex and foam rubber was handled very well, and very professionally.

R.I.P. Dick Durock and thank you for my fond memories of bringing to life one of my favorite comic characters.

Contest at AtomicFox!

Just wanted to let you all know about another contest with the same rules as the Grimvision one below. The prize is this cute skeleton bride and groom couple, and it's being brought to us from a new blogger I wasn't aware of(!)and you can find her here:

http://atomicfox.blogspot.com/

18 years old, female AND a horror fan??? LOL awesome! She has a nice little blog going and she even alerted to me to a piece of news I hadn't heard of, Rob Zombie's pending remake of The Blob!! That got me all kinds of excited!
Thanks sweetie!

skull, book and candle prop contest

Take a look at the site grimvisions to enter the contest for this beautiful Halloween decoration. They specialize in fantastic one of a kind spooky pieces of artwork. This looks like it came straight out of a Corman / Poe movie ^_^ It won't be easy to win one though, looks like a lot of people are entering for this!
http://www.grimvisions.com/giveaway/skull-book-giveaway

Wolfman Trailer

This should go a very long way in relieving some of the fears brought on by a post I made a little while ago about Universal's intent to change the iconic look of this character.
Now that there is an actual full length trailer out that clearly shows what the Wolfman looks like, I feel any changes they make will be superficial at best.
Feast your eyes on this beautiful trailer!!!! In fact since imbedding the youtube player cuts off almost half of the frame of their HD videos, you owe it to yourself to use the link below to go directly to youtube and watch it in all its glory

(EDIT) Well, trust me it was great. Looks like the trailer has been pulled off of youtube. Sorry folks

Artist spotlight: Bryan Baugh

Thought I would do something a little different tonight and direct all of your attention to an artist that I have been a big fan of for about a year now, Bryan Baugh. His works are in the vein of EC Comics mixed with the blood and babes of classic and current horror movies. He cites Bernie Wrightson and Jack Davis as inspirations, and you can absolutely see a lot of Jack Davis influence in his linework. Most of Wrightson's influence is noticeable in his composition and the design of his creatures, especially rotting shambling corpses. His pieces are fantastic in black and white, but what I'm also a huge fan of is his colored work. Bright and vibrant when they need to be, and murky and dark when it's called for. There are so many to choose from this will be kind of a long post because I could't narrow down what I wanted to include here.
Clicking on any of the images will blow them up to their full resolution. I highly reccomend it to see all the detail in these.




I love the computer coloring in this adding the shadow of the floor grates on to everyone. It really punches it up and makes the light source coming from underneath very obvious.



Let's hope the new Wolf Man movie has a creature that looks this good. One of my favorite classic monsters and one of my favorite pieces from Bryan.


Absolutely perfect colors on this lots of darkness reminding you of where the crate was located in the film, in a deep dark corner underneath the stairs, and then a BLAST of bright red and blue colors right before she gets bitten. Incredible!



This one has everything that made the movie so fantastic, and quite fitting that Mathilda May is the center of the piece.









I would LOVE to have both of Bryan's Creature pieces on aqua colored t-shirts that match the backround of each piece and on the back in huge lettering, have the Creature From The Black Lagoon title logo. Both of these are so beautiful.









I love all the gonzo elements in this that remind me of how friggin wild this movie was, right down to Meg's blood slobbered nips!



Like I said there were so many to choose from and there is at least twice this, if you want to check out his Deviantart page at http://bryanbaugh.deviantart.com/ He is also being spotlighted in the 25th issue of the comic book Hack And Slash, which is a title that everyone should already be picking up anyway. If you're not, what are you waiting for!?!?!

Possible relaunch of Godzilla for US?!?!?!

According to Monster Island News it's been revealed that Legendary Pictures is in the process of producing a relaunch of the Godzilla franchise for US theatrical release.

Absolutely nothing else is known at this time, not even whether or not they would be starting from scratch with an eentirely new concept or giving us a sequal to the abysmal film by Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin a few years back

I find this to be very exciting news as anything the studio would do would be a vast improvement on the last American movie and I'm sure that Legendary Pictures is aware of the level of hatred Godzilla fans have for that film, so here's hoping they do it right. And by right I mean have it look like Godzilla for starters (see above) and have it be a serious movie. Tragic and a little scary.

Can't wait to get more and more news on this as it develops

The Collector

So I was just last week bemoaning the fact that small but excellent independant horror films are not getting theatrical releases. Brilliant films such as Rogue, and Midnight Meat Train are getting sent straight to DVD despite great reviews from critics and preview audiences alike.

Maybe that is slowly changing...and if it is, then this film should truly start the ball rolling!


This was such a pleasant surprise for the wife and I, that we couldn't believe it. Truly suspenseful with lots of cringeworthy gore, violent inventive deaths, a creepy as hell villain, a hero character that hasn't really been done before, a great great nude scene, and perfect use of sound design including a music score comprised of ambient sounds, and the use of Bauhaus' Bela Lugosi's Dead.

A perfect mix of a first time director getting to stretch his wings and show what he can do, coupled with a great scriptwriting team who gave us Feast and Saw IV-VI.

PLEASE support horror this weekend, especially independant horror, and go see this movie. I would let slip a couple of the nicer setpieces of the movie but I knew very little going into this and I think it would work best for others if they did the same

Enjoy, and as always let me know what you think!

Universal's Wolf Man postponed...AGAIN

Just found out from Ken at Monster Island News that Universal has changed the release date for their Wolf Man remake for the astonishing 4th TIME, now coming out in February instead of November to avoid competition with the Twilight sequal. As if that wasn't bad enough, they are taking "advantage" of the time in between to add new special effects scenes that will change the title creature from the original Lon Chaney type 2 legged creature to a 4 legged one that will more resemble a wolf.

I can't for the life of me understand the need for this change. This is right up there with all the changes to the character of Godzilla in his Tri-Star remake years back. If you are going to alter things that much, why bother calling it The Wolf Man? It also seems like an insult to Rick Baker's talents and efforts who had designed an amazing tribute to the makeup of the original film, not to mention that Universal has already posted lots of publicity photos of the original look over the past year or so (remember, this was supposed to be out 2 years ago!!!)

Hopefully this news is a little premature and it won't be that radical of a difference. I wouldn't mind if the character de-evolved over the course of the film with the 4 legged animal only being in the last 10 minutes or so. Also if they play up the tragic romance of the storyline, the move to February may be a great idea, making it a Valentine's Day release would be perfect strategy for the studio.

What's everyone think?

New stuff

Added some items to the page over the past few days, including about 35 more tracks on the music player including the theme song to the original Prom Night which blew me away that I could find that! Also added more to the always updated list of blogs that would be of interest to anyone that comes here. Please check them often as I will be adding more. Lastly near the top of the page I put in a Netflix widget that shows 10 random titles from my Qeue list. Check it out and let me know what I should watch next!

Review: BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB

So it seems like I've been on a mummy bender lately, and I've seen about 6 or 7 of these in the past few weeks. I noticed I had never seen this before, hell I had never even seen a trailer for it. but, it was a Hammer picture, albeit a late entry for the studio, so I thought it would be a fun one to get me back in the game of reviewing.

A word of warning afendi, this falls in that despised category of mummy films (at least despised to me). In other words, it is a mummy film without a mummy in it. When you sit down in your carsophagus with a bowl of tana leaves to snack on and pop in any movie with the word Mummy in the title, what you are expecting to see is a guy in a red fez and a pencil thin moustache directing an unstoppable shambling corpse wrapped in moldy bandages, that goes around strangling anyone who gets in it's way. This one, however is primarily about reincarnation and the paranormal acquisiton of artifacts.

Having said that, I will remind you that this is a Hammer Studios Production, so there is a level of quality to this that saves it. It was released in 1971 and appears to take place roughly in that time period, so I was expecting the groovy mad mod feel to their later films that ruined the Dracula series (for a perfect example of this go see Dracula A.D. 1972) Fortunately it still looked and felt like the gothic masterpieces that Hammer excels in.

Also what Hammer was known for at the time was their films becoming increasingly sexier and gorier in an effort to keep people coming to see their films, so there is quite a bit of tame gore in this in the form of severed hands, bleeding stumps and torn throats. As for the sexy side of things within 1 second of the opening credits finishing we are treated to the heaving bosum of Valerie Leon whose credits include a few of the british Carry On series of films, and Queen Kong. This girl has the best cleavage I have ever seen in a Hammer film, and she personally saved the movie for me.



It is a fairly interesting story and visually it tried to be more than what it was so it fit the bill for an entertaining diversion, but without any major stars such as Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee (Hell, it doesn't even have Michael Ripper in it), it just seems to fall a little flat...except in the case of Valerie Leon.



So where can you see this if you so choose to? Well, unfortunately it appears to be out of print at the moment. It is available on Netflix, which is where I got it, or you can try finding a local video store that has a copy for rent. I included the Amazon link below, as it looks like a few people have copies for sale there, and it doesn't yet appear to cost a Pharoah's ransom compared to the cost of most out of print titles I've seen.


So I am always searching for people's input here and I know there aren't too many people that come here yet, but if you have any thoughts or comments on this flick or any others let me know, or just drop me a comment to talk about anything you want. Constructive criticism is welcome!

suspended animation

Ok, it's been brought to my attention (finally by someone other than myself) that the 7 months since my last update to this blog is long enough of a break. Having said that, I am going to take advantage of my abundant free time, to make this a somewhat fun place to be to the 2 people who may randomly stop in to see it (Hi Jessica and Vanessa ^_^)
I'm going to assume that since it's come and gone in theaters, and is now available on DVD that everyone has seen My Bloody Valentine 3-D, so I won't bother with the review I was going to do for it except to say I loved it, and if you haven't seen it, go buy it and watch it! BUT don't bother watching it in 3-D at home. That still hasn't been perfected yet.
SO! While I am thinking of some fun things to do to spruce up the joint, I'm going to ask my immense fanbase if there is anything they wish me to write about? Any movies that you're curious about and want a review for? Is there anything you've seen lately that you enjoyed and recommend?

My Bloody Valentine 3-D

I'm going to see My Bloody Valentine tomorrow, but since I live 500 miles from a decent movie theater, I have to see it in traditional 2-D :( I'll write up a review for it tomorror night! Check out the trailer, and also, use the link below to get the uncut special edition of the original that came out this week!

Twilight on DVD

Well, for better or worse, it's coming out on DVD. This is one of those movies where the people who are tremendous fanatics of the books, are incredibly thrilled with how the movie turned out, just because it's Twilight. As long as it provided more merchandising to buy at Hot Topic for the next year, it could do no wrong.
Does that make it a bad movie in my eyes? No, actually I kind of enjoyed it. Did they do things wrong in it? Of course they did it's a movie adaptation of a popular book. That goes without saying. But it was entertaining, and there was a couple of elements of the book that they actually improved on, for instance actually being able to witness the fight at the climax and introducing the bad guys as a viable threat early on instead of in the last 15 minutes.
Things that they really didn't do well with was the visual of Edward in the sun, Bella's rush to blind trust in Edward, and the actual casting of Edward himself. I'm sorry but the guy was far from the beautiful thing that he was supposed to be. He looked like a freaking zombie in most shots, especially next to the rest of his family.
But overall, they did a fairly good job on it, especially the visuals. I understand that the director will not be coming back for the officially greenlit sequal, which can only hurt the project I think.
What's everyone else's take on it?