Previews and Reviews that are Z's Views
Here’s the final trailer for the BBC/Netflix Dracula. I’m looking forward to this one!
He’s been around for centuries, but what happens when a worthy adversary bites back? From the makers of “Sherlock,” Claes Bang stars as Dracula in this brand-new series inspired by Bram Stoker’s classic novel. On Netflix Jan 4.
Following the deadly events at home, the Abbott family (Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe) must now face the terrors of the outside world as they continue their fight for survival in silence. Forced to venture into the unknown, they quickly realize that the creatures that hunt by sound are not the only threats that lurk beyond the sand path.
A Quiet Place was a critical and box office success. I’m on board with the critics and the crowd. I love that the trailer for A Quiet Place 2 keeps the focus on the Abbott family and gives us a glimpse of how the invasion started as well as the outside world long after.
Max Allan Collins posted an excellent piece on The Shining – the book, the movie and the differences that Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick had in regard to their versions. As a bonus Collins looks at Doctor Sleep and the 1997 TV mini-series of Stephen King’s The Shining.
Max Allan Collins’ blog is always worth reading (as are his novels) and his “Shining” post is just an example of the fun to be had.
F. Paul Wilson’s popular character Repairman Jack will be appearing in a 120 page graphic novel published by Dynamite Comics in 2020. Wilson will team with artist Antonio Fuso, colorist Pippa Bowland and letterer Crank to produce Repairman Jack: Scar-Lip Redux.
Got a problem? He can fix it. He thought he’d seen the last of the Rakoshi, but one has survived. A particularly cunning and deadly Rakosh known to Jack as Scar-Lip. Now, Jack faces the fights of his life as he seeks to end the creature once and for all, before it ends him!
Source: Bleeding Cool.
For years The Twilight Zone Marathon on the Syfy Channel was a Zablo family New Year’s Eve tradition. I’m happy to report that the TZ Marathon is back starting at 6:00am est on December 31st.
If you can record ’em all, then do it! If you’d like to know the top ten I suggest to not miss, then set the DVR for…
Dec. 31st
7:30 pm Time Enough at Last
8:30 pm The Monsters are Due on Maple Street
9:00 pm Eye of the Beholder
9:30 pm The Invaders
10:00 pm It’s a Good Life
Jan. 1st
2:30 pm The Shelter
9:30 pm Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?
10:00 pm The Midnight Sun
10:30 pm To Serve Man
11:00 pm Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
Speaking of posters and trailers that I like, check out the poster above and trailers below for the BBC’s new Dracula mini-series which comes to Netflix on January 4th.
Wow! This came out of left field. Legendary artist (and one I thought who had retired) Barry Windsor Smith has announced he plans to publish a new graphic novel in 2020!
Monsters is a 250-plus page story about “two disparate American families fatefully connected by an abandoned Nazi project in genetic engineering that has been covertly revived by the U.S. government.”
If this interests you, click over to NEWSaRAMA for full details. I’m looking forward to more info about this one!
VFW, directed by Joe Begos and staring Stephen Lang, William Sadler, Fred Williamson, Martin Kove, Sierra McCormick and David Patrick Kelly is like something you’d see at a drive-in back in the day. And you know how much I loved drive-ins.
VFW looks like Assault on Precinct 13 meets The Wild Bunch. That can’t be a bad thing, can it?
Stallone fans are going to love this: Eye See You is getting a special edition Blu-ray release from MVD Collector’s Brands. What makes this release especially special is that in addition to the theatrical Eye See You release, the disc will also contain director Jim Gillespie’s cut known as Detox!
From MVD Collector’s Brands’ release (bold text is my doing)…
EYE SEE YOU – Update!
It’s with great pleasure that I am able to report that director Jim Gillespie (the guy that made “I Know What You Did Last Summer”) took time and energy to dig up and locate a copy his original cut of “Eye See You”, known as “Detox” (that’s how it’s spelled on his cut of the film). While I personally have not seen this version yet (it’s being used to author the disc right now), I’m told that it’s a “darker” and more horror-ish in tone (Fincher’s “Seven” was what I think they were going for here) version of the film, which was his original intention before the film was recut, re-titled and changed.
“Detox” is being included on this disc as a bonus feature. It is not in HD. The quality is VHS. It is in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio and had time code under the letterbox (see image for reference). We will be reformatting the image for 16 x 9 which should eliminate most (if not all) of the time code. I don’t know what the audio quality is but given the quality of the video I would say manage your expectations accordingly.
We’ve included all of the previous available bonus features and we’ve also adding a new photo gallery (see list of “final” bonus features below). I have also made the decision to create a LIMITED RUN SLIPCOVER for the first pressing (as you know we really don’t do slips for Marquee titles anymore but I’m making an exception for this one) so if you want to guarantee a slipcover, I would suggest pre-ordering this title. After street it’s hit or miss.
I’m really excited to have produced this new “Special Edition” Blu-ray release of ‘Eye See You”. I’ve always considered this to be an underrated title. In my opinion, it’s the closest thing to a horror movie Sylvester Stallone has ever done (at least up til now) and hopefully this alternative cut will finally give everyone a chance to see what director Jim Gillespie had intended.
STREET DATE = April 14, 2020
You can pre-order using this link.
SURVIVAL IS A KILLER.
A brutal serial killer is targeting cops, and detective Jake Malloy is on the warpath. But now the killer is making it personal, and this dedicated agent is twisted in an emotional nightmare. Time is running out, and so are the options, as Malloy engages in an extreme game of cat-and-mouse with a killer who won’t be stopped.
I’m on board! Who’s with me?
Today we have a new poster for Underwater.
When I was a kid, in the years before the dawn of the internet, easy access to trailers and movie news, a movie poster was often THE thing that made folks want to see a movie. If the poster was good, if it made you want to see the movie, you did. Often the poster was better than the movie.
I’m getting that vibe for Underwater. I really like this poster. I’m not sure I’m going to feel the same about the movie.
Mike Mignola is mainly known as the writer/artist who created Hellboy, but he’s done so much more. For example, Mignola created the covers for the three issue mini-series The Frankenstein Dracula War. Above is the cover to issue three. You can see all three covers in a bigger version at The Bristol Board.
Below is the trailer for V Wars the new series based on Jonathan Maberry and Alan Robinson’s comic series.
I’m really looking forward to V Wars. It has a vibe similar to The Strain and The Passage.
V Wars premieres on December 5th on Netflix.
The poster and trailer to Fantasy Island are here. The poster is pretty “meh” but that trailer was a surprise. Definitely not the Fantasy Island I was expecting or grew up with… and that’s a good thing!
Here’s a vintage drawing by Mike Mignola, the creator of Hellboy. I love how he took the classic Universal Monsters Wolfman as the basis for his werewolf. Although I usually prefer the Curse of the Werewolf design, I wouldn’t mind seeing a story about this guy.
Source: Cool Comic Art.
Lon Chaney is my favorite silent movie star. (Take that, Chaplin fans!) Hopefully you will enjoy that Jane Rose and Mental Floss present 9 Transformative Facts About Lon Chaney Sr. as much as me. Here are three of my favorites…
1. LON CHANEY SR. WAS KNOWN AS “THE MAN OF 1,000 FACES.”
Unlike many of Hollywood’s leading men, who trade on their good looks and recognizable faces, Lon Chaney Sr. made his name by donning a series of disguises and elaborate makeups, completely changing his appearance from film to film. Chaney, an early character actor, gravitated toward bizarre and distinct roles—playing a series of criminals, toughs, circus performers, clowns, pirates, ghouls, and vampires. His ability to disappear into his roles soon earned him the moniker “The Man of 1,000 Faces.” It also made him the subject of a popular joke at the time: “Don’t step on that spider! It might be Lon Chaney!”
3. SOME OF LON CHANEY SR.’S MOST MEMORABLE FILMS WERE MADE WITH DIRECTOR TOD BROWNING AT THE HELM.
Chaney had been working in movies for more than a decade before he began his frequent collaborations with director Tod Browning, who is best known for putting Bela Lugosi on the map with the 1931 film Dracula (and most infamously known for directing the 1932 movie Freaks). But when they did finally come together, it was a meeting of macabre minds. To begin with, Chaney and Browning had several things in common: Both had experienced past brushes with personal tragedy (Browning had been the driver in a car accident that killed actor Elmer Booth; Chaney’s first wife had tried to kill herself); both came from a Vaudevillian background; and both had a penchant for spectacle and the grotesque.
Among Chaney and Browning’s collaborations were the 1925 silent version of The Unholy Three, in which Chaney plays a sideshow ventriloquist masquerading as a kindly grandmother; the 1927 film The Unknown, in which Chaney plays a fugitive masquerading as an armless knife thrower, who later blackmails a surgeon to amputate his arms in order to win the woman he loves (the film is one of several in which Chaney and Browning concocted a bizarre character and built an entire film around it); and the 1927 film London After Midnight, in which Chaney plays a vampire-like figure. Tragically, this film is also famous forbeing lost; the last known copy was destroyed in a 1965 MGM vault fire.
7. LON CHANEY SR. HATED PUBLICITY.
Chaney was a mysterious presence both onscreen and off. He disliked hobnobbing with the Hollywood set, going to premieres, giving interviews, and/or signing autographs (except for fans behind bars—Chaney was a self-taught penologist, or student of prisons and convict rehabilitation). He once boasted that he would “fix it so no one will write my autobiography after I’m gone.”In fact, details of Chaney’s life were so scarce that actor James Cagney had a difficult time researching the part of Chaney for 1957 biopic Man of a Thousand Faces. While he was no doubt genuinely reclusive to an extent, Chaney’s reticence may have in fact been the smartest publicity move of all, as his mystery only added to his allure.
