2013 April 17 « HORROR BOOM

Let’s start with a quote from an interview with Eli Roth (read it here), who seems to be the main face/name for the Netflix series Hemlock Grove.* This despite the fact he only executive-produces three episodes; (one of which he does have directing credit, the premiere with the fun title “Jellyfish In the Sky”) and didn’t in fact create the series – Hemlock Grove is based on a novel of the same name by first-time author Brian McGreevy (released on March 27, 2012). Even if Roth has little participation, the below quote was more or less exactly what we wanted to hear!

I thought about the average viewers that have watched Twilight and seen the transformation of a shirtless guy walking by a tree and transforms*. Our idea of a transformation is Rick Baker and Rob Bottin. So, we’ve got to do something modern that’s in the classic tradition. It has to be a violent birth, I want it to eat its placenta after and Deran was into it. It should shake off all of the blood and goo. And that’s how we approached all of the kill scenes.

–Eli Roth, on his vision for Hemlock Grove‘s werewolf transformations

Check out the clip of the grisly transformation below (which appears in one of the six episodes directed by Deran Serafian; his first directing credit is episode three, titled The Order of the Dragon), and decide for yourself if they hit their goal. It IS a pretty ugly, painful “violent birth”…

Novel synopsis (official): A young girl is brutally murdered and found near the former Godfrey steel mill. As rumors mount, two of the suspects in her killing—Peter Rumancek, a 17-year-old Gypsy trailer trash kid rumored to be a werewolf, and Roman, the heir to the Godfrey estate—decide to find the killer themselves.

The novel’s author Brian McGreevy wrote five of the episodes, which include the premiere and the finale. The episodes will also mark his screenwriting début.

We love the cut-aways; Lilly Taylor’s character is just smiling calmly to herself like she’s watching a Mickey Mouse cartoon, while the other character watching looks shocked and horrified:

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me…”

He’s pretty wide-eyed as he gapes at Peter’s wolf transformation, but hey, it could have been worse:

Hemlock Grove will be available on Netflix this Friday …all thirteen of them will go up at once. Let’s cross our fingers that the show will have us so hooked that we mainline all of them in one (or two to three, since we have to eat and most of us have to work) greedy marathon/s. We don’t exactly have a busy social calendar this Friday, and no deadlines coming up, so let’s hope is turns out to be addictively entertaining!

HOAH!

*BOOOOO! on the candy-ass movie series and the technique! With the exception being Joe Manganiello (AKA “Sexiest Goddamned Werewolf Alive”) stripping naked down to his ~~cock sock~~ “modesty sock” on True Blood and the bonus of seeing his bare ass for a second before he shifts. And the way he growls is just so …OK, we better just shut this footnote down right now.

Exactly how does Peter turn back into a human when the time comes?

Check Out Entertaining, Twisted New “Hemlock Grove” Red Band Trailer – NSFW, HD (Toothpaste Not Included) (horrorboom.com)
Eli Roth On Hemlock Grove’s Werewolf Transformation, Italian Horror Connection, and Mainstream Gore (Shock Till You Drop) (horrorboom.com)
Netflix’s ‘Hemlock Grove’ Takes On ‘True Blood’ (thinkprogress.org)
Hemlock Grove – Eli Roth directs Werewolf goodness on Netflix (thepuremassacre.com)

“From director Eli Roth, developed by Brian McGreevy and Lee Shipman, with Famke Janssen (“X-Men”), Bill Skarsgård (“Simon & The Oaks”), Landon Liboiron (“Terra Nova“), Penelope Mitchell (“6 Plots”), Freya Tingley (“X”), and Dougray Scott (“Mission Impossible II“). Sexy, gripping, emotional and twisted, Hemlock Grove is unlike anything else you’ve ever seen.”

We don’t know about that, but after seeing this we’re sure going to give it a chance.

Well! Hemlock Grove suddenly looks a lot more watchable than the first trailer we saw several months ago, despite the always-entertaining Famke Janssen playing another fun femme fatale and the promise of “a small town filled with secrets”.

Now we’re talking flesh covered in maggots (see horrific photo in gallery below), a young guy enthusiastically doing blow off a glass coffee table, screaming characters covered in their own blood, intense sex scenes that look like they might be on the verge of turning animalistic, grisly werewolf transformation shots, a chick suddenly vomiting up a gallon or so of some unnatural-looking mealy white goop including a live maggot, a girl kissing the upper half of a female corpse (the bottom half is raggedly torn off and nowhere to be seen), Nazis exhuming a corpse*, two good-looking (and very alive this time) young women making out, even a couple of lines showing a sense of humor, including a nod to one of the most well-known lines from John Carpenter’s The Thing (you’ll know it when you see it). Wow, House of Cards ( the most recent other Netflix Original Series) might have had the sex and some substance abuse, but only metaphorical back-stabbing and ripping to pieces. Check out the new HD trailer below- it’s much more flashy –and splashy– than the teaser, we’ll give it that! In case the descriptions above didn’t clue you in (pretty sure 99% of readers already got the gist) it’s definitely NSFW.

Though Eli Roth’s name is featured prominently in all the advertising, making it seem like he created all aspects of Hemlock Grove and was involved in every episode, IMDB shows that technically, his involvement is limited to executive-producing three episodes. Well, we’re more interested in his next project being Green Inferno than we would a series.