‘Suburban Gothic’, From The Director of ‘Excision’, Is A Likeably Wiseass Horror-Comedy

27 January 2015

“Meanwhile, landscaper Hector (Mel Rodriguez) and his crew accidentally dig up a child’s skeleton in the family’s backyard, unleashing a vengeful spirit that first makes its presence known via visions and nightmares suffered by Raymond, who as a child used to experience “paranormal stuff.” He enlists a similarly caustic local misfit, goth-styled bartender Becca (Kat Dennings, of “2 Broke Girls” and “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist”), to help him guide the ghost toward eternal peace before it wreaks total havoc.”

-From the Variety.com review by Dennis Harvey

Wow, this doesn’t sound at all like 2012’s Excision (the début feature from Richard Bates Jr.), but it sounds like fun. Big selling points for us: he got John Waters back in the cast AND Jeffrey Combs (who per IMDB, plays a doctor; Combs always shines playing doctors*, as Re-Animator and its two sequels, not to mention House on Haunted Hill, proved) in supporting roles. The Soska Sisters have cameos! Ray Wise (Twin Peaks, Robocop, and the deeply disturbing Dead End) has a lead role. Matthew Gray Gubler (Life After Beth and Criminal Minds) won the Festival Trophy for Best Actor at Screamfest 2014, for this movie, too.

We’re all in on January 30th, when this horror-comedy hits VOD!

To read Variety.com’s entire review, click the “View original” link in the lower left.

The photo is not in the actual movie, it’s just a really cool-ass gothic house/home.

*He REALLY shines when he’s playing Edgar Allan Poe, too.

GROOVY NEWS! ‘Evil Dead’ TV show Starring Bruce Campbell Officially Greenlit by Starz

11 November 2014

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It’s official! Also, they can get away with pretty much anything on Starz. Watch this space for more as it comes in!

Variety’s Rave Review For Kiwi Horror-Comedy ‘Housebound’: “Near Flawless” and “Marvelously Entertaining”

8 August 2014

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In a hilarious opening sequence, the dislodged head of a sledgehammer spectacularly curtails an ATM smash-and-grab robbery attempt by petty criminal Kylie Bucknell (O’Reilly) and an anonymous male accomplice. A snarling ball of venom with a lengthy rap sheet, twentysomething Kylie is spared prison by a lenient judge who says home detention and regular sessions with a psychologist, Dennis (Cameron Rhodes), will provide the stable environment she needs to turn her wayward life around.

With those words still lingering, audiences will chuckle when Kylie arrives at the creepy-looking house of her childhood to begin an eight-month stretch. The dwelling is home to her stepfather, Graeme (Ross Harper), an oddball who’s seen but rarely heard, and her mother, Miriam (Rima Te Wiata), an endearing chatterbox who believes the house is haunted. Kylie’s petulant behavior and eye-rolling mockery of Miriam’s claim establishes a dysfunctional mother-daughter relationship that will eventually outgrow its comical roots and bring real heart to the story. The slow change starts when Kylie begins seeing things that make her believe “something” is indeed lurking in the basement and within the walls. Several spine-tingling incidents later, Kylie seeks help from Amos (Glen-Paul Waru), the security company guy hired to monitor her electronic ankle bracelet. Cleverly introduced as a fairly bland and functional character, Amos leaps wonderfully to life at the first mention of supernatural activity. Armed with old-school equipment, including a Polaroid camera and a microcassette recorder, this sweet-natured nerd with a passion for all things paranormal forms a splendidly eccentric detective partnership with the tough but mellowing Kylie.

-from the Variety review by Richard Kuipers

So apparently, Housebound (whose official site can be found here) played at SXSW this year and went over so well with the crowd (and critics) that it was not only picking up a buzz as ‘a comeback for New Zealand horror-comedy’, but the world sales rights were also acquired within weeks by Paris-based Films Distribution. Right now Housebound–the feature debut of Gerard Johnstone– is still making the genre circuit, but don’t worry about having to wait years to see it; XLrator Media has acquired U.S. sales rights and plans a theatrical and day-and-date VOD release [Source: Variety.com]. That ‘day-and-date’ will be October 17th, when the film will be released on VOD, iTunes, and select theaters. Here’s the trailer:

Check out the complete review below (to read the entire Variety review, click on “View original” in the lower left. This one is definitely going on our must-watch list!

Conan O’Brien’s Cameo In Sharktopus VS. Pteracuda Is Even Better (And Gorier) Than You Thought – Watch Here!

26 July 2014

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So, we thought he’d probably get killed, but it turned out to be even more entertaining than we thought! Man, the Sharktopus REALLY hates Conan. Check out the entire clip (with the intro) below.

Wow, their prosthetics are even worse than their CGI (no need to bother with a head-cast), but we weren’t exactly expecting The Thing. Official (unnecessary) synopsis: Sharktopus VS Pteracuda finds an American scientist up to no good (as usual) by creating the half-pterodactyl, half-barracuda: Pteracuda. When the creature inevitably escapes, it’s up to Sharktopus to stop him.

Sharktopus VS. Pteracuda premieres Saturday, August 2nd on (where else?) Syfy.

“Cut” (2013): Watch This Fun Little Gem, Another Winner From “Who’s There” Horror Short Contest!

1 June 2014

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Straight up! This one won’t scare the bejeezus out of you, give you nightmares, insomnia, possibly soiled underwear, etc like “Lights Out,” our pick for the scariest short horror film of May.

“Cut” is another winner from this cool contest for Best Cinematography, and we enjoyed it as much as the judges clearly did. This little flick was written and directed by Peter Lemper. Take a gander below…

By the way, the Bloody Cuts Horror Challenge sported some pretty impressive judges; more on that later, but how would you feel if Joe Dante, the Soska Sisters, or Gale Ann Hurd picked your entry as an award-winner for this challenge? Now imagine all three of them plus seven others (plus Drew Daywalt, who is mainly known for a series of short horror films including the pretty goddamned scary short Bedfellows, widely agreed to be one of the most frightening short films of the last ten years) said your film stood out over all the other entries.

More entries will definitely be posted, we’re going through them now. It’s taking a little longer because we need to watch most of them before it gets dark out. Right now this writer is currently keeping the sleeping hours of a crack whore,* thus the delay. Stay tuned, and in the meantime, here’s links to some really nightmarish shorts we’ve featured as “Scariest of the Week”. Not all the ones we EVER poster (you can type “horror short” in the Search box up top if you feel like going all of them at once, which we don’t recommend if you need to sleep sometime in the next 24 hours); for this list, we stuck to four Drew Daywalt creations. At least one of these, but probably all of them, will scare the shit out of you.

Bedfellows

Spoon

Mockingbird (very short but with a nasty kick in the teeth)

Cleansed

(Seriously, don’t watch them all in a row after dark. You have now been officially warned).

*NOT voluntarily. Mrs. Horror Boom here has blown off entire careers so I can keep my own hours and sleep till noon if I want instead of getting up when it’s still dark out to go to an office that I don’t even want to be at. Being self-employed is really, really cool, but I didn’t do it to have the complexion of someone in the first stages of zombie infection. Let’s hope by oh, Independence Day, I’ll work my way around to WAY more daylight so I don’t have to start taking vitamin D supplements.

Here Comes The Fuzz! Gory, Hilarious ‘Wolfcop’ Trailer Arrives – Don’t Miss This One!

27 April 2014

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Lon Chaney Jr. and Universal Studios maintain that’s the mark of the Wolfman!

Damn! Do NOT miss this fun, bat-shit crazy theatrical trailer. Click here to see the EW.com article including the fun 80s horror boom-style poster AND the awesome main character of WOLFCOP, Lou Garou (get it?) who looks to be half alcoholic cop, half werewolf! Damn, we wish we had a US release date- we’ll let you now when we know. Arrrooooooooo!

Check Out Variety’s Tribeca Film Review of ‘Zombeavers’

23 April 2014

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Rubin and company have clearly made a close study of Raimi’s original “Evil Dead” (and its inspired, latter-day successor “Cabin in the Woods”) as well as such tongue-in-cheek invasive-critter pics as “Gremlins,” “Ghoulies” and James Gunn’s marvelous “Slither.” But the best of those movies achieved a deadpan grace, a certain conviction in their own absurdity, that “Zombeavers” never approaches. Rubin’s style is more Wayans brothers than Zucker brothers, with a lot of how-low-can-you-go gross-out gags (including a bit of beaver-assisted castration) and lots of shouted line readings in place of characters whose survival (or lack thereof) might engender even the slightest rooting interest.

-from the Variety review by Scott Foundas

Yeah, well, I ~~suffered~~ sat through fucking Beneath yesterday (the only reason I bothered to watch the entire thing was out of hatred for the characters and the chance to see them die horribly*), and even with this, well, mixed review from Variety, Zombeavers still doesn’t sound too bad. I think I can stand 76 minutes of a ‘one note horror parody’ when the filmmakers were trying for ‘Sam Raimi meets Jim Henson’, even if they didn’t quite get there, and give Zombeavers a shot. Also, the end-credits teaser described –you’ll have to read the entire Variety review to find out the title– sounds worth the rental alone.

*I ended up giving “Beneath” two out of ten stars on IMDB, one for casting Mark Margolis–who deserves much, much better even if he hadn’t played Hector, AKA Uncle Ring-a-Ding, on Breaking Bad–and one for using practical makeup/creature FX. Two stars still seems generous, though.

‘Zombeavers’ director Jordan Rubin on his dammed horror-comedy — EXCLUSIVE NSFW IMAGES (EW.com)

27 February 2014

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OK, I’m not saying this doesn’t look ridiculous, but it also doesn’t look half-bad. I’d rather watch prosthetic creature effects over half-ass CGI anyway. Plus, Bill Burr is in it, and he usually doesn’t sign on to act in shitty movies (or TV series – case in point, Breaking Bad) and he’s also funny as hell. Check out the photos (at least one is really gory; I almost used it as the ‘featured image’ but chickened out at the last second) and the trailer. Director Jordan Rubin also digs 80s horror and says in the EW.com article that “I would say it’s a horror movie in the traditional, ‘80s-sense… it’s played completely straight in the face of the ludicrous conceit, which is obviously complete insanity.” So far, so good. (Click on “View Original” to check out all the gory pics and the fun trailer)

‘Walking Dead’ pranks NYC with zombie attacks

7 February 2014

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Check out the other videos, if you haven’t seen them yet. The zombies would be one thing after you got past the initial scare of them lunging at you out of the blue (while you were minding your own business), but the meteor attack? Looks waaaaay too close to a terrorist attack, or some other apocalyptic event that’d give you a fucking heart attack–keep it supernatural, please. How about a nice Mars Attacks! flying saucer? With the awesome Martian Ambassador right at the helm in full view? We’d sign the release form for that.

The Walking Dead returns to AMC this Sunday, February 9th, at 9:00 PM.

WE–COME–IN–PEACE

‘You’re Next’: How a group of indie filmmakers produced one of 2013’s most terrifying movies

18 August 2013

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…Lionsgate has made up for delaying the film’s release by diligently, and cleverly, promoting the movie… earlier this year posters for Lionsgate offerings were emblazoned with ghostly images of the movie’s masked maniacs. “I thought that was really brilliant,” says Wingard. “Simon and I are really only established filmmakers on the independent scene and by and large our cast is relatively unknown. So it’s an interesting way for Lionsgate to say, ‘We’ve got a lot of faith in this movie,’ and juxtaposing it with things that do have name value… They’re just trying to find ways to make it something your everyday audience member can comprehend, just like using ‘Perfect Day’ in the trailer. They spent a lot of money putting that song in the trailer. Honestly, I think that trailer cost almost as much as the film.” At the recent Comic-Con in San Diego, Lionsgate distributed replicas of the You’re Next masks and the film received an unexpected publicity boost when Michael Fassbender appeared at the panel for X-Men: Days of Future Past wearing one. “That blew my mind,” says Wingard. “I don’t know what the deal is — or if he’s just passing a hint for You’re Next 2.” (excerpt from the article)

If Adam Wingard directed it, we might consider seeing a horror movie about a giant, skinless, suburbia-terrorizing dog named Roger… Takashi Miike could probably have lots of fun with it, too. We are, however, going to do our best at pretending we never heard the term ‘Mumblecore‘ (also referred to later in the article as ‘Mumblegore’). Just ~~our opin~~i… ugh. Other than that? A great, in-depth article that delves deeply not just into the making/producing of You’re Next, but the indie filmmakers behind it, and their background, thoughtfully written by Clark Collis of Entertainment Weekly. The EW.com piece also carefully avoids spoilers. Enjoy!

[Simon] Barrett reveals they have a “cool idea” about how to turn You’re Next into a trilogy if the film makes the same impact nationally as it did at SXSW. “A friend of mine came to see it at SXSW and had to walk out,” says You’re Next actress Sharni Vinson. “I was completely in shock because this person is an actor themselves, so they know all the tricks of the trade and how this is obviously not real. I just thought ‘Wow, that’s awesome!’” (from the attached ew.com article)

An audience walkout (for the right reasons to a horror buff, i.e. needing to head to the lobby for a break to try to temporarily escape and calm down)? That’s a plus in our book. You’re Next opens August 23rd, and there’s plenty of chances to catch it before then (our piece here with the gallery has a ton of links) –even if you missed the pre-screenings, you can bet your ass there’ll be early showings on August 22nd. You may have much more of a hassle getting tickets and waiting in line, but you can bet the crowd reactions will be worth it, if you’re going because you love seeing a horror movie in a theater packed with like-minded fans who are not shy about expressing their enthusiasm. At Horror Boom, none of us would have an early showing–or an opening night– for a horror movie we’ve been counting the days to any other way. It’s so fucking worth it!