So I’m a sucker for anthology horror movies, alright? Did you see Trick r’ Treat? It was actually one of the better scares of the past 5 years or so. One of the first horror movies I ever saw was actually Tales From The Darkside. I was definitely way too young to watch it, and it scared the shit out of me, and ever since then I can’t say no to an anthology. Which brings me to The Theater Bizarre, a new 6 segment (!) anthology film that opens on the 27th.
The trailer looks pretty good, if you ask me. At least we know it will have good effects, because the great Tom Savini is directing one of the segments. It’s also got features from the dude who did Hardware (remember Hardware by the way??) and also Douglas Buck who wrote the seminal Lloyd Kaufman masterpiece Terror Firmer. I know I’ll be there.
As I’ve espoused numerous times before, John Carpenter’s The Thing is not only my favorite horror movie but also one of my favorite movies of all time. It’s a true masterwork that has surprising depth, rewards repeat viewings, is always fun, and has the best effects I’ve ever come across. Clearly a lot of other people feel this way, and luckily some of them are much more talented and artistic than me. Which brings me to this stop-motion version of the film that stars penguins. Because why not.
Animator Lee Hardcastle co-opted the characters from weirdo Swiss kids animation Pingu and cast them in a breakneck remake of the film, grisly transformations and all. Look at how cute MacReady is! Childs is a seal! Bawwww. I’m particularly fond of the sweded version of the song that plays over the credits. Kudos to a YouTube commenter who pointed out the boat was missed on calling this Thingu. Thanks internet.
I will admit, I have yet to actually PLAY this game (as they only just started shipping it), but I have to say that from the looks and sounds of it, this is hands down the most incredible looking card and board game ever designed.
As a middle school aged obsessive and life long appreciator of wonderful things like Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons, and most kick ass fantasy based games, so Cave Evil is like something out of a wet dream for me.
I don’t really know or understand how the game is played exactly, but for example, if you need to know what happens “when attacking a squad containing a single Maw of Transcendence.” Or have a question like “How many abominations can you stack within a squad?” You can check the awesome Cave Evil forum. It’s really the black metal inspired dark art work of Cave Evil is why this game is so incredible to me.
All 343 cards or hand drawn charcoal illustrations by such talented artists under bizarre names like Manifester, MarderIII, Wizard333, and Commode Ministrels in Bullface. While I don’t exactly know who is operating under those names, i do know that one of my favorite artists in the world, true freak-genius- Mat Brinkman had a lot to do with the creation of the game.
And sure enough, like the cavernous dungeon-like worlds navigated through his masterpiece comic book, Multiforce, Cave Evil explores the magical depths found deep in the dark corners of our own human psyche.
A true work of art. So, go BUY THIS GAME, get off your computers, call up some friends, and explore this fucking evil cave.
British filmmaker Ben Wheatley gave audiences a look behind the suburban crime curtain with his strong 2009 debut Down Terrace. Wheatley’s latest film, Kill List, takes another look at the delicate intricacies of domestic life then burns the house down. By the time the end credits started rolling I was reeling – damn near suffocated by the smothering atmosphere of pure dread. Over its 90 minutes, the Kill List shifts from a Mike Leigh-style family drama to terrifying folk horror that left me shivering. You’ll never guess how it ends as the film’s beginning is made up of the marital bickering of middle class Englanders Jay (Neil Maskell) and Shel (MyAnna Buring).
Jay is an ex-soldier and contract killer who recently screwed his back up on a job in Kiev. His wife Shel thinks Jay’s back trouble is all in his head and her role as sole bread winner while Jay is shacked up is putting serious financial strain on the family. Caught in the middle of their knock-down drag-out bickering is their 10-year-old son. Jay’s ex-army buddy Gal (Michael Smiley) comes over for dinner with his new sweetheart Fiona (Emma Fryer), but Jay and Shel can’t hide their lingering anger at each other and the dinner ends with a bang (and with Jay attempting the ol’ tablecloth trick). Fed up with the financial strain and Shel’s incessant bitching, Jay accepts an offer by Gal to take on a new contract – a new “kill list.”
This is where I’ll shutup about Kill List‘s plot. To go on would only spoil the hurricane to hell that goes down during the film’s stunning final hour. The menace and creeping dread starts building up from the moment we sit down for dinner and reaches its apex in one of the most insane final sequences I’ve seen in forever. It’s like someone threw a honey badger in a film pedant’s dining room. Wheatley deserves some serious praise for pulling this off without having the film fly off the rails. There’s a lot of elements at play here including impressive cinematography from DP Laurie Rose. Then there’s the performances, which used a lot of improvised dialogue (the cast graciously gets a writing credit for their work).
Neil Maskell delivers a haunting performance as Jay – a killing machine that moves like a clenched fist. Jay’s got some demons in his past that Wheatley leaves up to our imaginations to fill in. He starts the film as a bad man and only gets worse. This is no redemption story about an aging hit man – more like a spiraling nightmare about a hit man thrown to the lions. MyAnna Buring is terrific as the suffering wife. Just like with Jay’s demons, we’re never given a clue what Shel thinks of Jay’s line of niche work. This may be the one flaw with Kill List: it’s a little too ambiguous when it comes to its characters. I’m perfectly happy not completely knowing what the hell is going on during the film’s enigmatic climax, but I would have liked to get some more dish on the characters.
What Wheatley accomplished with Kill List is exceptional. It’s one of the most genuinely scary and shocking films in years. It’s a goodie bag of domestic drama, folk horror, the occult, and unflinching graphic violence. Wheatley leaves a lot of unanswered questions but a second viewing of the film actually surfaced some nice little details that helped connect some of the dots for me. The complete shift in genre might rub some people the wrong way but those people are vapid idiots in my book and “they should suffer.”
Kill List is coming to Video on Demand courtesy of IFC on January 4th. Wheatley’s Down Terrace is currently available on Netflix Watch Instantly.
The folks at Intervision Picture Corp. killed it all year long with their special edition releases of hidden, shot-on-VHS gems. Releases like Sledgehammer and Things made Intervision a force to be reckoned with and they’re still showing no mercy with their Feb. 14 release of the depraved German gorefest The Burning Moon, banned in its Mother Land since its release in 1997!!! Awww just in time for Valentine’s Day!
Written and directed by German gore maestro Olaf Ittenbach, The Burning Moon is an anthology film that tells two bedtime stories told by a strung-out punker to his little sister. One is about a blind date serial killer and the other about a psychotic, raping priest who ends up in Hell. I’ve never seen the film, but our very own Matthew Caron (The Vidiot) watched it as part of Vice’s Movie Club. From reading their piece on it, Burning Moon sounds like one of the most fucking crazy horror films ever put to film. And now thanks to Intervision, we can all enjoy this treasured heap of depravity in smooth new packaging with a rare, recently unearthed 45 minute making-of documentary.
You can bet your ass you’ll see a review of The Burning Moon special edition DVD around Valentine’s Day here at the Bloglin. Because nothing says “I love you” more than watching a man’s groin split open as he screams in agony.
There is no modern horror franchise more inextricably linked to its creator than Hostel and Eli Roth. Like it or not (and I know for many it’s “not”) but Roth, as well as James Wan and Oren Peli are the Carpenter, Craven, and Hooper of our generation. Out of the three, Roth is also probably the best.
Though it’s often overshadowed by the era of torture porn it ended up inspiring, Hostel is a very good and very effective horror movie (as is Cabin Fever, to a lesser extent). It also has that mark of being produced by an auteur, a singular and unique vision that doesn’t really care what you think about it.
Which makes it all the weirder that there now exists a Hostel III that has absolutely nothing to do with Mr. Roth. How in the hell, I thought, could this franchise exist without him? The answer is, very mediocrely. Which is actually much better than I thought it would fare.
Shifting the action from Eastern Europe to, in an obvious but not uninteresting choice, Las Vegas, Hostel III follows a group of dudes on a bachelor party who end up in the hands of Elite Hunting. Hilarity ensues. Not really though. This straight to DVD sequel was actually a little confusing to me in its intent.
A lot of times in situations like this, you’ll find the producers just make the further iterations more ridiculous, more hopelessly bloody, or even much more comedic, just because there’s not usually a lot of room for nuance on the b-horror circuit. But, for the most part, Hostel III tries to be relatively straight up (at least considering the world of the franchise) and is the least gory of the three.
It also stars Kip Pardue as the sorta nefarious friend, which just had me laughing all the way through. I guess perhaps they were trying to capture a The Hangover vibe, but not even that is really committed to. It’s not terrible, not really, but with the noted absence of Roth it’s just missing that bloody, dangly-eyeballed spark. Hostel III is available on DVD tomorrow.
Hey hey hey, here’s the first trailer for Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel Prometheus that he bizarrely refuses to acknowledge is such despite the fact that it so very obviously is. He’s always remarked that it shares the same “DNA” as that series, but c’mon Ridley. The jig is up bro. Even the way the title is slowly revealed in this trailer is exactly the same way ALIEN was 30 years ago.
Alien is one of my favorite movies ever, so I’m pretty much ridiculously excited about this. It supposedly will deal with the origin of the xenomorphs (rumor) and also the Space Jockey, which you’ll remember as the gigantic dessicated alien corpse found above the egg room on LV-426 (which I think certain shots from this trailer confirm). Should I get out of the house more? Prometheus is out this summer.
Here’s an early Christmas present for you scumbags. Synapse Films (the folks who brought us the pristine Frankenhooker Blu-ray) is releasing the ’85 exploitation action classic Thou Shall Not Kill…Except on Blu-ray, March, 13 2012! Fans of Evil Dead should know this one – it features Bruce Campbell, writer/producer Scott Spiegel, Ted Raimi, composer Joe LoDuca, and Sam Raimi as a looney Charles Manson-like cult leader!!!
Jack Stryker returns home from ‘Nam to try and live a peaceful life with his girlfriend, Sally. But their peace doesn’t last long as Sally is kidnapped by a batshit cult leader who thinks he’s Jesus Christ and has been doing dirty deeds with his band of filthy hippies like blood sacrifices and playing lawn darts with cops. Stryker rounds up some old Marine buddies and they take on the killer cult – guns blazing!
Synapse is releasing Thou Shalt Not in an all new 2K high-definition transfer from the original negative. This’ll be a serious upgrade from the OOP Anchor Bay DVD from over a decade ago. They’re throwing in a plethora of insane special features like the original 8mm short film Stryker’s War, starring Bruce Campbell, and two audio commentaries from director Josh Becker, Bruce Campbell, and star Brian Schulz. Pre-order it now from Synapse before I hurl a lawn dart at your chest!
