Category: Horror

Bone Tomahawk (2015) / Z-View

Posted on by

Bone Tomahawk (2015)

Director: S. Craig Zahler

Screenplay: S. Craig Zahler

Stars: Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox, Richard Jenkins, Lili Simmons, David Arquette, Sid Haig, Michael Pare, and Sean Young.

The Pitch: “S. Craig Zahler is a writer/director to watch.  Let’s give him the 1.8 million he needs to make ‘Bone Tomahawk.’”

The Tagline: “May the Lord have mercy and grant you a swift death.”

 

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

A raiding party of cannibalistic Troglodytes are led to farm on the outskirts of a small western town.  The cannibals kill some settlers and kidnap others.  The town folk are too frightened to go after them except for the Sherriff [Russell], the injured husband [Wilson] of the woman kidnapped [Simmons],  the old deputy [Jenkins] and a gunfighter [Fox].

What begins as almost a character study turns into one of the most tense, frightening and violent movies in recent history.  The characters are so well written/played that I loved their interactions and the pace leading up to the action.  It was also fun seeing name actors in smaller roles.  Jenkins as the old deputy is a joy!

S. Craig Zahler moved to the must-watch list with Bone Tomahawk.

Rating:

13 Thrilling Facts About The Original “House of Wax”

Posted on by

Mark Mancini and Mental_Floss present 13 Thrilling Facts About The Original House of Wax.  Here are three of my favorites…

8. IT COMES WITH AN INTERMISSION.
Prior to the late 1970s, “epic” films would often treat their viewers to a built-in bathroom break. Midway through screenings of Gone With the Wind and other, extra-long classics, the action would pause, the theater lights would brighten, and the word “Intermission” would appear onscreen. Ordinarily, this practice was reserved for movies with bladder-testing runtimes of two and a half hours or more. By comparison, House of Wax flies by with its breezy 88-minute runtime. Yet, unconventionally for a short picture, it contains an intermission. Why? Screening the 3D film required two projectors running simultaneously. The respite was necessary because it allowed theater employees to change both reels an hour into the movie.

9. A FUNCTIONING GUILLOTINE WAS USED IN THE CLIMAX.
Toward the end of the film, Igor gets into a big fight with Sue’s boyfriend, Scott, played by Paul Picerni. From the get-go, there’s no doubt about which one has the upper hand, as Igor seizes poor Scott and shoves his head under a guillotine in the museum’s French Revolution display. Luckily, the police arrive in time to rescue our hero, pulling him out of harm’s way seconds before the blade comes crashing down.

Just like his character, Picerni came dangerously close to getting his head chopped off, Louis XVI-style—because this guillotine was 100 percent real. Rather than film the scene in segments, de Toth wanted to shoot the whole thing in one take. With blithe nonchalance, he told Picerni to go and stick his head under the razor-sharp blade of this death device.

Naturally, Picerni objected. At a 2006 House of Wax Q&A, the star reminisced at length about the argument that followed. “I asked de Toth, ‘How are you going to control the blade?’ He said the property master was going to sit on top of the guillotine, holding the blade between his legs, then let it drop after my head was removed.” When the actor opined that this sounded dangerous, de Toth replied, “What are you, chicken sh*t?” In the end, Picerni agreed to do the scene in one take, on the condition that a metal bar be inserted under the blade to keep it from falling prematurely.

11. BELA LUGOSI ATTENDED THE PREMIERE—ALONG WITH A GUY IN A GORILLA SUIT.
Although the star of Universal’s Dracula (1931) did not appear in House of Wax, he did help promote it. The film’s world premiere was held at the Paramount Theater in Los Angeles on April 16, 1953. As a publicity stunt, Lugosi was invited to attend the big event. Clad in a vampire cape, he emerged from his limousine with a chain link leash, which was attached to an actor in an ape costume—a clear homage to the 1952 comedy Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla.

Werewolf of London (1935) / Z-View

Posted on by

Werewolf of London (1935)

Director: Stuart Walker

Screenplay: John Colton (based on a story by Robert Harris)

Stars: Henry Hull, Warner Oland and Valerie Hobson

The Pitch: “Monster movies are making dough.  Let’s make a werewolf movie!”

The Tagline: “Beware the Stalking Being – Half-Human – Half-Beast!”

 

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

While on a expedition to Tibet, botanist Dr. Glendon [Hull] is attacked and bitten by a strange beast.  Although he survives and returns to his home in London, Glendon turns into a werewolf each night of a full moon.

Will Gelndon find a cure before he kills again or he is discovered to be the werewolf terrorizing the city…

Rating:

13 Kooky Facts About “The Addams Family”

Posted on by

Stacy Conradt and Mental_Floss present 13 Kooky Facts About The Addams Family.  Here are three of my favorites…

3. JOHN ASTIN WAS ORIGINALLY CONSIDERED FOR LURCH.
Though John Astin auditioned for the role of the butler, it’s no wonder casting directors assigned him to Gomez, instead—the actor and the character apparently share a lot of similarities. “My brother said that Gomez is the clearest extension of my personality than anything else I’ve done,” Astin said. “That’s really who I am.”

5. LURCH WAS INTENDED TO BE MUTE.
But then actor Ted Cassidy ad-libbed the line, “You rang?” and Lurch was given a voice. He still wasn’t one for much conversation, but he did spit out a few words here and there—and even had a brief side career as a rock star.

12. THE NEW YORKER REFUSED TO RUN THE CARTOON WHEN THE SHOW CAME OUT.
Despite the fact that Charles Addams had been illustrating the creepy characters for The New Yorker since 1938, the esteemed publication didn’t want to be associated with the television show. Still, Addams was occasionally able to sneak them into other cartoons he drew for the magazine.

 

Kill Switch by Jonathan Maberry

Posted on by

Kill Switch by Jonathan Maberry

What do you do when the power goes off?

 

  • Terrorists have acquired a terrible new weapon that can crash the power grid and plunge America into a new dark age. A coordinated attack is planned to shut out all lights and emergency services to ten major cities. Planes will fall, hospitals will go dark, no help will come.
  • And in that terrible darkness, a dreadful plague will be released. If the lights go off, nothing can stop the bioweapon from killing millions.
  • At the same time, the intelligence services are being torn apart from within by a plague of betrayal, murder, and suicide. Even the Department of Military Sciences is stumbling in its response to the growing threat.
  • Time is running out, and Joe is being hunted by a terrifying new kind of assassin. A team of remote viewers have the ability to take over any person and turn ordinary citizens into killers. Where can you turn when there’s nobody left to trust?
  • Joe Ledger faces his deadliest challenge as friends and allies become enemies and all of the lights begin to go out…

Maberry puts the DMS in the worst place yet against perhaps their toughest adversaries.  The clock is ticking down to an bio-weapon attack on ten cities.  The terrorists have the ability to take over the minds of anyone to do their bidding and the DMS has been ordered to stand down by the President.

You know that’s not going to happen.  Sadly people we have grown to know and care for are going to die trying to save our country.  Maberry creates characters that feel real so when we lose them (and we do throughout the course of the series) it hurts.

Kill Switch mixes just the right amount of actions (tons), suspense (much), and humor (as needed) to propel you to the bloody climax.  I can’t wait for Ledger’s next mission!

Rating:

Guillermo del Toro’s Top 5 Horror Movies & His 1 Real-Life Ghost Experience

Posted on by

In the video below Guillermo del Toro ranks his top five horror films aka the films “that actually scare you.”

What’s interesting to me isn’t the films that Guillermo selected, but the fact that a movie that didn’t scare him as a kid (The Exorcist) is terribly frightening to him as an adult… and Guillermo’s one true life ghost experience in a haunted hotel room.

The “Walking Dead” Attraction at Universal Studios

Posted on by

As a fan who has been touting The Walking Dead comic since issue one, it still surprises me how well the comic series translated into a tv series which caught on with the general population.

Not only has The Walking Dead  tv series lasted six plus years, but has spun off the Fear the Walking Dead tv series and is now becoming a major attraction at Universal Studios.

11 Terrifying Facts About “The Hills Have Eyes”

Posted on by

Matthew Jackson and Mental_Floss present 11 Terrifying Facts About The Hills Have Eyes.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. IT WAS BASED ON A TRUE STORY.
According to writer/director Wes Craven, The Hills Have Eyes was inspired by the story of Sawney Bean, the head of wild Scottish clan who murdered and cannibalized numerous people during the Middle Ages. Craven heard the story of the Bean clan, and noted that the road near where they lived was believed to be haunted because people kept disappearing while traveling on it. He adapted the story to instead be about a group of wild people in the American West, and The Hills Have Eyes was born.

8. MICHAEL BERRYMAN CONSTANTLY FACED HEATSTROKE.1-
Berryman, who became a horror icon thanks to this film, was apparently game for just about anything Craven and company wanted him to do, though he personally told the producers he was born with “26 birth defects.” Among those birth defects was a lack of sweat glands, which meant that the intense desert heat was particularly hazardous to his health. He soldiered on, though, even in intense action sequences.

“We always had to cover him up as soon as we finished these scenes,” Craven recalled.

11. IT STARTED AN INTERESTING CHAIN OF HORROR HOMAGES.
The Hills Have Eyes is admired by fellow horror filmmakers, so much so that one of them—Evil Dead director Sam Raimi—chose to pay homage to it in a strange way. In the scene in which Brenda is quivering in bed after having been brutalized by Pluto and Mars, a ripped poster for Steven Spielberg’s Jaws is visible above her head. Raimi saw it as a message.

“I took it to mean that Wes Craven … was saying ‘Jaws was just pop horror. What I have here isreal horror.’”

As a joking response to the scene, Raimi put a ripped poster for The Hills Have Eyes in his now-classic film The Evil Dead (1981). Not to be outdone, Craven responded by including a clip from The Evil Dead in his classic A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).

30 Things We Learned from the “Planet Terror” Commentary

Posted on by

Rob Hunter and Film School Rejects present 30 Things We Learned from the Planet Terror Commentary.  Here are three of my favorites…

7. Bruce Willis enjoyed his time on Sin City so much that he told Rodriguez “any time, any where, I’ll come make anything with you.” The director called his bluff and convinced him to play the bad guy here knowing it would only be two days work. Tarantino visited the set — both to say hi and because he shot some 2nd unit for the film — and was surprised to Willis in costume.

17. Michael Biehn, who plays Sheriff Hague, approached Rodriguez at one point to say he had fired six shots from his revolver and his character would need to reload before firing more. “Don’t worry about it,” replied the director, “it’s not that kind of movie.”
23. The “missing reel” gag was inspired by the time Tarantino screened an Oliver Reed film at an Alamo Drafthouse that was in fact missing a reel. The idea of not knowing what scenes you’re missing appealed to Rodriguez and used it here both as a gag and because his script was already growing too long.