No more days till Halloween, Halloween, Halloween!
No more days till Halloween, Halloween, Halloween…
We would recommend NOT looking at the magic pumpkin on the TV while wearing a Silver Shamrock mask!
We also thank you for being so patient with the sporadic posts. 2016 was a rough year that included the sudden death of Mrs. Horror Boom’s father, along with plenty of other horrible events. Again, we can’t thank you enough …when we get our laptop replaced (which we hope is soon), you can expect to see much more frequent posts… including one fro Mrs. Horror Boom called “Horror Movies My Dad Took Me To See”, which she has been jotting down notes for all year.
Meanwhile, enjoy your Halloween and check out the following You Tube video that consists of every Halloween trailer:
What’s that? You want to see a little more gore? We’ve got you covered with this nasty death scene from Halloween 3 – Season of the Witch:
So yeah, don’t try fucking around with the chip in the mask…
James Wan’s The Conjuring 2 did well in theaters and with critics, and it’s finally available for rental! There are no major spoilers here, just some fun trivia that we would be surprised if you had heard all about before now.
2/3. See that featured image up at the top of this piece? Notice the letters on the bookshelves? V-A-L-A-K. Also, check out the colorful letters on the window below…
4. Lily Taylor blew her voice out from screaming during filming of the first Conjuring. Vera Farmiga did her one better and blew out a damned lymph node from screaming (multiple takes were needed, which made it worse) filming her role as Elizabeth Warren during The Conjuring 2. Jesus! Ouch! [source: IMDB]
5. Did you know that to promote the DVD/Blu-ray release, the studio put out a trailer that consists of the original trailer backwards, and it is somehow even creepier that way? You can watch it right here (EW.com made it an exclusive, so no insert)… and (hint) listen.
6. Speaking of very scary voices, the actual recording of the possessed Janet Hodgson is played over the end credits. The dialogue in the movie follows the recording closely. If you are feeling brave and the lights are on, you can listen to it below (this recording goes for a full twelve minutes, unlike the condensed version played in The Conjuring 2). Regardless of your level of skepticism, does THIS sound like an 11-year old girl to you? The working class Hodgson family did not exactly have access to sophisticated voice-altering technology. Today it could be easily be faked …but not back in 1977. Listeners beware, however; this made the hair on our bodies stand on end.
7. You probably spotted Annabelle (you don’t forget that thing’s face) in her glass cabinet, along with the music box from The Conjuring in the Warren’s museum, but did you see the black and white painting hanging in the Warren’s office?
It’s the house from The Conjuring, along with that very distinctive tree. Minus Bathsheba’s shadow hanging from the tree, it looks very close to the image on the theatrical poster.
8. Here’s an extremely creepy one. During the Amityville séance cold-open, Elizabeth Warren is terrorized by (among other things) a demonic-looking little boy whose eyes glow a white-silver. Director James Wan was inspired by the following notorious photo claiming to show the youngest victim of the DeFeo massacre (copyright: Paranormal Guide), AKA the “Amityville Ghost Boy”.
9. There is yet another image where you can pick out the demon Valak’s name. This one, you need to be looking for (thank you, IMDB trivia section, for telling us the time mark in the movie). You can see the “V” in the “love” plaque, and the rest…
Oh, GIMME A FREAKIN’ BREAK! Stupidest thing we ever heard, pffffft! We rented the movie on VOD and watched it Saturday night, and we’re fine! Calling bullshit on this one, because… because… what was that noise?
It’s about time Hannibal ‘s back! We’ll need something to fill the void after the American Horror Story Coven finale at the end of January, too (unfortunately, we’ll have to wait for Friday, February 28th for the Hannibal season 2 premiere). The tagline for Hannibal Season Two premiere teasers? “Embrace the Madness“.
As soon as they start running raw new footage in the promos, we’ll let you know! Bring it on.
Del Toro wound up creating a mash-up love letter to all sorts of his horror/fantasy inspirations in paying tribute to The Simpsons, while taking a page from Mad magazine’s Mort Drucker, Will Elder and Harvey Kurtzman. “They would try to cram so many references in,” he says. “You as a kid could spend an afternoon on your bed with your magnifying glass going through a frame of Mad magazine and finding all these references to this and that.” Keep your eyes peeled for a Futurama nod too. (“I integrate[d] Lisa falling through the couch like Alice in Wonderland but in the dress of the girl from Pan’s Labyrinth, and instead of landing next to the giant toad in Pan’s Labyrinth, she lands next to the Hypnotoad from Futurama.) He stuffed in as many horror/fantasy masters and iconic characters as he could (from H.P. Lovecraft to Edgar Allen Poe to Stephen King to the Universal monsters), though many more had to be left on the cutting room floor. “At the last minute I wanted to put a Mexican wrestler in there,” he notes with a chuckle, “but [casting producer] Bonnie Pietila said to me, ‘We’ve got to go! We cannot keep adding and adding stuff.”
–From the EW.com piece by Dan Snierson (see below)
Seen it now? Told you it was pretty goddamned cool! The below gallery would be bigger (and we’d have some informal ‘catch the obscure horror references’ contest), but we’re having a couple technical difficulties, plus this writer has a splitting headache. We’ll add to it before Sunday if we can.
(Click on any screen-cap to enlarge) Let’s see, off the top of my (tired, aching) head, what did you spot besides the following:
Charles Burns (the artist)
The Shining
Clash of The Titans
The Day the Earth Stood Still (the original)
Ray Bradbury
Edgar Allen Poe
The Illustrated Man
Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds
The Fly (original)
Cronos
The Invisible Man
Blade
Classic Universal Studios monsters
Hellboy
The Mist
Hot Fuzz (we think)
Todd Browning’s Freaks
HP Lovecraft
Mars Attacks! Trading cards
Pan’s Labyrinth (you don’t need a sharp eye to spot these particular homages)
If you’re getting the sense that del Toro is a big fan of The Simpsons, you’re right. Not only did he slip a few homages to The Simpsons in Hellboy (“Mmmm, nachos” “Why you little…!”), he has a room in his house that’s brimming with Simpsons memorabilia. “My favorite is a 30-inch tall Mr. Burns as Dracula that they only make in Germany,” he says. “It’s a really good sculpture. It’s going to run away eventually, but I think that’s very appropriate.”
-from the EW.com article by Dan Snierson
Don’t miss this! It is almost impossible to count the homages and references here. The classic Universal Studios monsters, artist Charles Burns, Brian DePalma‘s Phantom of Paradise, Lovecraft, Bong June Ho’s The Host,Ray Bradbury‘s The Illustrated Man (short story collection and the movie), Todd Browning’s Freaks (watch for the pinhead from the movie; I’d say it was an American Horror Story Asylum reference but it’s in a shot with a bunch of really old-school monsters and aliens, including the Ray Harryhausen skeletons)… they have to be into the triple-digits. Mrs. Horror Boom was going to be all clever and try and list them all, but that’s pretty time-consuming even without a nasty headache. Of course, special attention is paid to Guillermo Del Toro‘s movies (even ones that most moviegoers aren’t familiar with), especially Pan’s Labyrinth. Just check out the screen caps in the gallery link right here, and see how many you can spot… and enjoy this year’s Treehouse of Horror, which airs this Sunday, October 6th!
In a departure from the usual wargaming stuff, we go to the realms of movieland and the undead, Ladies and Gentlemen, prepare for Tom Savini‘s Death Island!!
Ok, so if you don’t know who Tom Savini is, you might as well be a zombie! Serious fans of the horror genre will instantly recognise the legendary man behind this brilliant new Indiegogo campaign to raise $1 million to fund a new zombie film, Death Island.
Tom is a SFX pioneer, accomplished actor (Knightriders, Dawn of the dead (original & remake), From Dusk till Dawn) , director and producer, and this new movie will mark his return as director since he did the remake of Romero’s original Night of the Living dead. With the help of us lot, we could make this a reality and even get a speaking role in the upcoming film (Yeah, I…
4/4 Update! Alas, someone ended up narcing to Tri Star Studios, and Vimeo had to remove the copyright-violating footage on 4/2 (surprised it was up for over a week before it got yanked). Hopefully everyone who wanted to see it and be spoiled got to, and now that The Evil Dead IS NOW IN THEATERS, HELL YEAH, WOOOOOO-HOOOOO!you can see it that way. STAY AFTER THE CREDITS! If you still want to use the link below to the Spoiler-Rama page, we’ll describe it briefly and you can highlight it to read. Now we don’t have to feel like Horror Boom has potentially offended …uh, the two guys involved in it.
-Mrs. Horror Boom
It’s exactly what you were hoping for …but somehow cooler.
That being said, if you can wait until you see it in the theater, WAIT AND SEE IT AFTER THE CREDITS THEN. It’s seconds long and worth waiting for. IF YOU HAVE WILLPOWER, JUST WAIT! The quality will be better in the theater, too. But if you break down and watch it, you’ll get the idea. Don’t forget the get the volume cranked up, too.
It is something filmed new, not archival footage from one of the originals.
HORROR BOOM 