Category: Horror

Guillermo del Toro & Ron Perlman’s Hellboy vs Neil Marshall & David Harbour’s Hellboy

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This shot of David Harbour as Hellboy is making the rounds because of how well it looks to capture Mignola’s Hellboy.

Some folks are upset that Ron Perlman and Guillermo del Toro won’t be coming back to complete their Hellboy trilogy.  I was disappointed as well, but that won’t stop me from seeing Neil Marshall’s darker, rated-R version.

I’ve also seen complaints that Harbour’s Hellboy looks like Perlman’s Hellboy.  Ok.  Let’s think about that for a second.  They’re both playing the same character, so shouldn’t they look similar?

I’m a fan of Perlman and Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy and hope to be of  Marshall & Harbour’s Hellboy as well.

Hellboy directed by Neil Marshall, starring David Harbour, Mila Jovovich, Ian McShane and Daniel Dae Kim premieres January 11, 2019.

Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (1949) / Z-View

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Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (1949)

Director: Charles T. Barton

Screenplay: Hugh Wedlock Jr. & Howard Snyder

Stars:  Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Boris Karloff

The Pitch: “It’s time for Bud and Lou to meet Boris!”

Tagline: MORE GHOULISH GLEE THAN WHEN THEY MET FRANKENSTEIN

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

When the bellboy (Costello) becomes the prime suspect of a murder in a remote hotel full of shady characters, only the hotel dick (Abbott) believes his innocence.  The race is on to find the killer before he kills again… and the bellboy is in the killer’s sights!

I was surprised that Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff didn’t hold up as well as I remembered it.  I was sure it would get a “B” rating or higher.  As a kid, it would have gotten an “A” — yet it is still fun with some good laughs.

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20 Million Miles to Earth (1957) / Z-View

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20 Million Miles to Earth (1957)

Director: Nathan Juran

Screenplay:  Robert Creighton Williams (as Bob Williams) & Christopher Knopf from a story by  Charlotte Knight (as Charlott Knight)

Stars:  William Hopper, Joan Taylor, Thomas Browne Henry

The Pitch: “Let’s make a monster movie!”

Tagline: Greatest Monster Since King Kong Ravishes the Earth!

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

When the first spacecraft returning from Venus crash-lands in the ocean it releases a small creature that quickly grows to gigantic proportions and terrorizes Rome!

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Tarantula (1955) / Z-View

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Tarantula (1955)

Director: Jack Arnold

Screenplay: Robert M. Fresco and Martin Berkeley from a story by Jack Arnold and Robert M. Fresco.

Stars:  John Agar, Mara Corday, Leo G. Carroll and Clint Eastwood

The Pitch: “Let’s make a giant spider movie!”

Tagline: Bullets Can’t Stop It! Dynamite Can’t Kill It!

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

Scientists working with experimental growth formulas accidently create and release on the world a giant spider!

Look for Clint Eastwood in one of his first roles.

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Cabin Fever (2002) / Z-View

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Cabin Fever (2002)

Director: Eli Roth

Screenplay: Eli Roth & Randy Pearlstein from a story by Eli Roth

Stars:  Jordan Ladd, Rider Strong and James DeBello

The Pitch: “Let’s make a horror movie about college kids and a flesh-eating virus!”

Tagline: Terror… In the flesh.

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

Five college kids head to a remote cabin where they encounter a strange flesh-eating virus.

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Frailty (2001) / Z-View

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Frailty (2001)

Director: Bill Paxton

Screenplay: Brent Hanley

Stars:  Bill Paxton, Matthew McConaughey, Powers Boothe

The Pitch: “Bill Paxton wants to direct ‘Frailty’ – let’s do it!”

Tagline: There are demons among us

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

Adam and Fenton are young brothers, being raised by their single parent dad. Dad is a hard-working loving parent and all is well with the family… until one night when their father wakes them up to reveal that he had been visited by an Angel.  The Angel told dad that demons live among them and they have been chosen to slay them.

Fenton realizes his father had gone crazy, while Adam is convinced their dad was visited by an Angel.  Fenton hopes this will pass, but when dad brings home a normal looking man who dad claims to be a demon and kills him, Fenton knows this is just the start…

Frailty is a classic that gets better with repeated viewings.  Paxton’s acting and direction (the only film he directed!) is point on.  Powers Boothe is, as always, excellent.  This may be Matthew McConaughey’s best performance.  Love the twists and turns.

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23 Things We Learned from Ridley Scott’s ‘Alien Covenant’ Commentary

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Rob Hunter and Film School Rejects present 23 Things We Learned from Ridley Scott’s Alien Covenant Commentary.  Here are three of my favorites…

9.   At 24:26 he acknowledges this is the “same plot as the original Alien, there’s a transmission, they go and find out.”

11.   Astronauts and NASA scientists have told him that they sometimes get ideas from science fiction films because filmmakers have thought their way around problems in ways that they themselves don’t.

14. More than once Scott says he’s going to hold back from saying something so as not to spoil it for listeners — as if people are listening to the commentary for their first watch of the film.

 

Gargoyles (1972) / Z-View

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Gargoyles (1972)

Director: Bill Norton (as B.W.L. Norton)

Screenplay: Steven Karpf (as Stephen Karpf) and Elinor Karpf

Stars:  Cornel Wilde, Jennifer Salt, Grayson Hall, Bernie Casey and Scott Glenn.

The Pitch: “Let’s make a monster movie!”

Tagline: Watch Out! The Gargoyles Are Here.

The Overview:  Beware of Spoilers…

When a best-selling anthropologist/paleontologist (Wilde) gets word of a mysterious skeleton found in the desert, he decides to drive out for a look.  He takes his photographer daughter with him even though he believes the skeleton will turn out to be a hoax.  Shortly after arriving he and the small town find themselves under attack by Gargoyles!

Scott Glenn and Bernie Casey in early roles plus a young Stan Winston provides the Gargoyles!

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16 Unbelievable “The Walking Dead” Fan Theories

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Gem Seddon and GamesRadar present 16 Unbelievable The Walking Dead Fan Theories.  Below are three of my favorites with my comments to follow…

14. The show is being told by Old Man Carl
What it means: Rick’s a troubled hero. He’s more beards than a hipster convention, and dodged a gajillion bullets, wire-wrapped baseball bats and the hungry, gnashing teeth of thousands of walkers. Why is he the centre of attention? What makes Mr. Grimes so darn special? Simple: because Carl idolises his father and it’s Carl who’s telling the entire story of the show.

The series will end with a major time skip where we see a much older Carl, with an eyepatch, recanting the story of how he grew up in the zombie apocalypse to someone offscreen. As he wraps up his tale, a walker shuffles nearby. “It’s time go Judith,” he says, as the camera pulls to back to reveal the young woman he’s been talking to – his teenage sister wearing Rick’s old Sheriff hat. She slays the zombie and the pair trot off into the distance.

12. Eugene is responsible for the outbreak
What it means: Eugene is actually who he says he is. Sort of.

Way back when we first met Eugene, we learned that he worked on the Human Genome Project and knew of a virus cure. The mulletted oaf told a massive lie to keep himself safe. Then the truth emerges in season 5. He confesses, revealing that he’s not a scientists. BUT he does say that he “knows things.”

This makes sense when you consider the fact that he also admits to being a “very good liar.” If that’s true then it’s impossible to tell when he’s telling the truth and when he’s making stuff up. The reason this theory has gained momentum is down to what Eugene told Negan this past season: the same damn thing. He worked at the Human Genome Project weaponizing diseases as a way to fight other military forces.

Eugene acts like he’s not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. But when you think about it, what he’s accomplished reeks of a science background – he made bullets and a poison pill. The way he talks about his “fake backstory” has a ring of authenticity to it. It’s detailed and in-depth. So what if he really was involved with the creation of the virus and it’s his fault that it was unleashed? While he was telling the truth that he doesn’t know of a cure, he’s not coughed up the biggest truth yet: that everything that’s happening is completely his fault.

11. The US is quarantined – because the virus is a botched military weapon

What it means: The USA is the only country to have fallen under the zombie regime, according to this theory. The reason? A military experiment that went horribly, horribly wrong. Fans suggest that a biological weapon was either intentionally or accidentally released, it infected the public, and the US had no way of controlling the subsequent outbreak of flesh-eating groaners. North America is quarantined to prevent the spread to other continents.

That would make for a killer ending of the show: to discover that the entire time the remainder of the world has been happily ticking along, letting North America fall. Sonequa Martin-Green, aka Sasha, even has a concept for how that would play out in the series finale: “How about last shot, last everything, whoever’s there, we get to the coast, you pan out, and you see all this ships blockading, in which you find out that it’s just America.”

Military shenanigans a la the X-Files? This shimmers with a hint of truth. Especially as sister show Fear the Walking Dead kicks off with a bold military presence, as if to imply that the government knew what was happening all along…

My favorite fan theory is that we discover that Carl is the one telling the story of the zombie apocalypse.  It makes a lot of sense, would give a fitting ending to the series and we get to see a hero develop from a small child to full-blown apocalyptic leader.

It would be a surprise to find out Eugene was behind the accidental release of the cause of the zombie apocalypse and that could even be tied in with the idea that the zombie outbreak is confined to the US. (Although I find the second part hard to believe.)

The 25 Best Action Movies to Get Your Blood Pumping

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Gem Seddon and GamesRadar present The 25 Best Action Movies to Get Your Blood Pumping.  Seddon has come up with a great list.  It was hard to pick just three, so depending on my mood, my choices could change.  But for now, here they are (with some thoughts to follow)…

5. Aliens (1986)
Action hero: Ellen Ripley

The film: Ridley Scott’s atmospheric opener saw Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) trapped on a spaceship with a single Xenomorph, so it made sense for James Cameron’s sequel to try and up the ante: an abandoned space colony, a unit of gung-ho marines and an entire hive of acid bleeding bugs.

Most action-packed scene: Confronting the queen in the bowels of the industrial complex, Ripley has a few nice mother-to-mother moments before later strapping into the power loader and fighting her claw to claw.

 

2. Die Hard (1988)
Action hero: John McClane

The film: New York cop John McClane picks the first of many wrong places and wrong times to visit his wife at work, but for star Bruce Willis and director John McTiernan, the timing couldn’t have been better. Putting an ordinary Joe in the middle of a firefight, confining a terrorist takeover to a single, claustrophobic building, and balancing quip-smart dialogue with hard and heavy action set-pieces, Die Hard set the mold and broke it at the same time.

Most action-packed scene: A rooftop bomb. A short fire hose. A plate glass window. The rest is history.

 

8. John Wick (2014)
Action hero: John Wick

The film: Director Chad Stahelski overcomes first-time jitters in his filmmaking debut, largely due to his experiences as a martial arts stunt co-ordinator. This revenge actioner throws in some dark motivating factors for Keanu Reeves leading man. His vendetta kill mission is the most dazzling work Reeves has accomplished since his first time tackling Neo.

Most action-packed scene: Wick enters a club wherein he punches, kicks, headbutts and shoots anyone who crosses his path. Each strike hits with an eerie precision.

I was glad to see Stallone made the top 25 with First Blood. I was also happy to see both John Wick films made the cut.  If it was my list I would have found room for Rambo and Enter the Dragon.

31 Things We Learned from Frank Darabont’s “The Mist” Commentary

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Rob Hunter and Film School Rejects present 31 Things We Learned from Frank Darabont’s The Mist Commentary.  Here are three of my favorites…

1. The opening set, where David Drayton (Thomas Jane) is painting, is designed after Drew Struzan’s actual studio and features copies of his most famous poster work including The Thing and Pan’s Labyrinth. “My idea was our artist here is painting a movie poster for a fictional Dark Tower film.”

6. He picked Melissa McBride (The Walking Dead) from tapes given them by the local casting director, and she impressed even the more seasoned actors during her initial scene in the market where she’s concerned about her kids. “The audition was thrilling, but what she did on set was even more thrilling.” The cast and crew burst into applause when he called cut.

23. The jump scare at 1:24:53 — William Sadler pounding on the glass door — made King jump in his seat on first viewing. “It was really one of the most gratifying moments because I scared the crap out of Stephen King, with the oldest trick in the book.”

 

The Walking Dead: 15 Mysteries The Creators Have Completely Neglected

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Tara Diaz and ScreenRant present The Walking Dead: 15 Mysteries The Creators Have Completely Neglected.  Here are three of my favorites and my thoughts on each…

15. WHAT’S WITH THE FREAKY ZOMBIE SOLDIER THAT RICK ENCOUNTERS?
Little has been mentioned about the military operations that took place at the start of the spread, and this has a lot to do with the fact that Rick is in a coma while a big chunk of the action occurs. In the very first episode, Rick climbs into a tank to protect himself and rather awkwardly bumps into a zombie soldier who is extremely unwelcoming.

This tells us that there was some attempt to contain or diminish the epidemic, but how and why it failed is never really looked into at all. The whole premise of the show revolves around the aftermath, so it’s understandable why the creators have decided not to show this, but still, it would be interesting to see if there were any mistakes made on the government’s part. Fear the Walking Dead‘s attempts to do so were…we’ll say ineffective.

For me, the most exciting part of any zombie tale is when the outbreak starts and nobody knows what is going on or what to do.  It might be interesting to see a flashback to the start of the outbreak following a heroic soldier who, you guessed it, ends up as a zombie in the tank with Rick.

6. WHAT’S ZOMBIE GIRL’S DEAL?
Zombie girl with the little teddy bear is the first ever walker Rick sees and kills. And of course, this is an extremely emotional moment for Rick, as he comes to terms with the fact that he’s going to have to blow this little monster away. Big ones, little ones, they’re all the same. They’re monsters, they’re no longer people, and they’ll have to be put down.

Something that stands out as slightly off is the fact that Zombie girl bends down to pick up a teddy bear to take with her. This seems rather odd, considering the walkers don’t possess human traits or emotions and only really seem to care about getting their five humans a day, if you know what we mean.

I don’t like zombies who can think.  They shouldn’t be pumping gas or firing guns or using rocks to break windows (although I can over look that in Romero’s NOTLD car scene).  Yet, for some reason the little girl picking up the stuffed teddy bear didn’t bother me.  Maybe because it seemed more of an instinctive act than a premeditated action.

1. HOW DID THE VIRUS EVEN START?
They haven’t really touched on this subject, although there’s been a few attempts to find a cure. What we do know is that humans, or most of them, already live with the zombie pathogen which will become active upon their death. ‘Zombification’ can also be caused by a walker’s bite or scratch, which transmits an infection that kills and subsequently releases the pathogen.

The brain is directly affected; a walker displays no human intelligence or emotion (except for the occasional teddy bear attachment), yet has primal abilities such as smell and movement. The only way to destroy a walker is to damage their brain, and there has been no mention of a permanent cure, as of yet. It would be interesting to find out what triggered the infection in the first place and whether this was man made or a natural occurrence. None of the characters seem to have any real knowledge on the subject, and it’s possible no one really knows what happened! Except Robert Kirkman, of course.

While it might be interesting to discover how the virus started, it is kind of cool that no one seems to know.