Costume Quest available Halloween for PS3 and Xbox

It may come as a surprise to all of you, (yeah right) that my favorite holiday of the year is Halloween. And with as great as it is, it has never really gotten the level of admiration that Christmas does. Although within recent years, October 31, and all its traditions and decorations seems to have jumped a quantum leap in recognition. I think the turning point was the huge success of Tim Burton's wonderful film Nightmare Before Christmas.

I already mentioned in my previous posts that AMC's The Walking Dead will premier on Halloween this year, and I just found out today that PS3 Network and Xbox Live will have the game Costume Quest available for download purchase only!



This is the first video game that actually has the holiday of Halloween and all of it's atmosphere and traditions as the main theme and focus of the story. You play small children who face a group of witches and monsters that are out to ruin All Hallow's Eve. Through practicing minigames like trick or treat, and bobbing for apples you gain RPG style experience and abilities that allow you to progress further.



And the most endearing part of it to me is that your characters are dressed in extremely homemade traditional costumes such as a robot made out of cardboard boxes, but you can gain powerups to transform your costume into it's ultimate imaginary ideal (such as in the screenshot above). This attention to making a game be all about children is something I find to be tremendously engaging as it is all too easy to look at Halloween anymore as an "adult" holiday filled with drunken parties and skanky outifts. Not that I have a problem with those things, but too much of old school Halloween activites are almost non existint lately.

The creator of the critically acclaimed Psychonauts from a couple years ago is behind this, and he has a reputation for very witty dialogue and fun gameplay style, so I have high hopes for this.

Check out the link to the main page here at costumequestgame.com. There isn't much there at the moment, but there is a preview video that should give everyone a very clear idea as to whether or not this is for you. Let me know what you think!

Not Of This Earth (1988) being re-released!

According to Digital Bits, the next wave of Roger Corman's Cult Classics line available on November 2 will include a re-release of 1988's Not Of This Earth, which was the last nude apearance of Traci Lords before she went all serious on us.



This has been out of print on DVD for awhile but what makes this of more interest is that every one of these single title re-releases such as Piranha, Humanoids From The Deep, Forbidden World, etc. Have also had simultaneous Blu-Ray versions as well. The link to it on Amazon doesn't list Blu-Ray as an option, but hopefully that will change. Special features include the following:

New Interview With Traci Lords
New Commentary With Traci Lords And Director Jim Wynorski
Original Commentary With Director Jim Wynorski
Theatrical Trailer

So at least they made it worth a double dip for people like me that already own the original DVD

Also listed as a double feature disc coming out the same day is The Terror Within / Dead Space.



And as usual, anyone that buys anything from Amazon after clicking one of my links, helps me out as I get a small cut of what is ordered, so if you do, thanks!

On a side note, originally there was supposed to be a double feature release in October for Warrior and the Sorceress / Barbarian Queen, but I think that may have been cancelled due to problems regarding the unfortunate murder of actress Lana Clarkson a couple years ago.

AMC releases launch date and trailer for Walking Dead

I know that everyone in the horror blogosphere will be posting this, but I figured, hey, why not me too?

I found out at Fear.net that AMC revealed that the 90 minute premiere of The Walking Dead will be on Halloween night at 10PM.

Along with this info they released the trailer that they showed at Comiccon this year. It is AMAZING. My expectations for this show were already through the roof before I saw a single frame of footage, and now I can't believe Halloween is still so far away. I am so excited for this series.

Check out the trailer below and share with me your thoughts!

Piranha 3D...Why is no one seeing this?

Soooo I am coming out of my slack period in maintaining any semblance of regularity of posting to ask the following question:

Why in the FUCK is Piranha coming in 6th place on it's opening weekend, when it's major competition is Vampires Suck and LOTTERY TICKET?!?!

It's deja vu all over again, with the Weinstein curse in full effect. Just like with Grindhouse we are being given a treat of a movie that everyone is raving about, and is something that nobody has really been able to experience before: A fun, blood and tits filled movie that doesn't even make the attempt at being a serious film of any kind. It's something that most people have only experienced in a home video setting and even then it's the type of gonzo horror film that we haven't seen since the 80's era of Re-Animator and Humanoids From The Deep.

Everyone has been given this rave reviews. Rotten Tomatoes has it at a 81% fresh status as we speak, while Lottery Ticket is at 32% rotten and Vampires Suck is at an astonishly emberassing 3% rotten

Despite all of this, not nearly enough people are going to go see Piranha. WHY?!?! If you haven't seen it already please go see it, and bring someone with you. If you have already and enjoyed it, please go a second time if you can afford to do so. Because I really dont want the studios to see these box office numbers and give us another 3 years of PG-13 crap like Prom Night or The Messengers, or Shutter, or Mirrors or etc etc etc etc.