Well surprise surprise, it’s another heart-pounder of a short horror film by Bloody Cuts UK! We posted another short horror film a couple of years ago with the same basic plot, but this one was different–and frightening enough–that we didn’t let that stop us from picking this creeper for scariest of the week.
Check out “Stitches,” the second (out of thirteen) short Bloody Cuts released, right here… and don’t forget to stick around until after the credits have finished rolling. Oh, unless clowns creep you the hell out, in which case consider yourself warned:
In case you’re interested in being terrified some more, here’s a link to the similar film I was talking about. It’s longer and does a different take, but is still “12 Minutes of Must-See Terror!” as we titled the post when we first published it a little over two years ago. We’re leaving out the title so as not to spoil you, just in case you haven’t watched the above short yet. Again, be warned: you WILL jump!
OK, what is the LAST kind of “urgent newsbreak” you want to see while you’re babysitting?
Also, as usual, Bloody Cuts put up a “Making-Of” video for the short. I don’t know about you, but usually I watch these to remind me the short that just actively frightened me was only make-believe. Though they are also very informative, and it’s so cool to see what a team of creative, talented people can create with a low-budget when they really throw their hearts into making the best short they can. Interested (or need to be reminded what you just saw was fiction)? Watch the behind-the-scenes featurette below.
This is the eighth and final short film in the series from Bloody Cuts (unless you count the example short they made for the “Who’s There” contest, which we’ll also be posting), and while it’s too bad it’s the last, it’s certainly an excellent one to finish out the series with. This is more fun the less you know going in, but I should note it is definitely gory enough to not be suitable for kids. Crank the sound on this one, and not just because it’s scarier that way, but because of the amazing sound/foley art (worth an award right there). The same goes for the visuals- anything less than HD and you’ll be missing out on some amazing effects.
Just to give you an idea of how much work (and blood) was put into Don’t Move, it features the biggest cast, the most deaths, the heaviest visual FX and the largest crew to date; over thirty people came together to make the bloodiest & tensest cut yet. Oh, and the Don’t Move shoot was so messy that fake carpet had to be laid down… and director Anthony Melton was forced to spend Monday morning cleaning blood off the walls. (Source: Bloody Cuts UK)
So what are you waiting for (other than daylight)?
Now THAT is how you fucking end a gory short horror film. BOOM! We’re not surprised that the director’s favorite horror film is Hellraiser (I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that visual will be leaving my head for weeks months). If you want to know about Don’t Move, we’ve got plenty of goodies for you. Read on!
Here is what Bloody Cuts UK officially has to say about “Don’t Move” (on their website):
‘Don’t Move’ represents the directorial début of Bloody Cuts producer Anthony Melton, and his love of horror classics such as Hellraiser ensured ‘Don’t Move’ has become a tense, disturbing and brutally bloody short.
Developed as a challenge to create a horror script with little movement and hardly any dialogue, ‘Don’t Move’ crawled out of writer David Scullion’s twisted brain in 2010, where he promptly left it on a shelf to gather dust. When producer Ben Franklin discovered it in a basement two years later, Bloody Cuts quickly realized they had found their Episode 8.
Funded by the fantastic generosity of Horror-lovers all over the globe, the month-long Kickstarter campaign for ‘Don’t Move’ raised over £3000 and ensured Anthony’s ambitious vision was able to be realized… in spectacular fashion.
‘Don’t Move’ once again uses the special effects make-up talents of Neill Gorton’s Millennium FX (Doctor Who), who continue to bring their fresh and terrifying creations to life, and stars an excellent cast that includes Rachel Bright, Ian Whyte (Game of Thrones, Prometheus) and Jake Hendricks (Hollyoaks).
Incidentally, director / producer Anthony Melton’s favourite horror film is Hellraiser and the demonic entity in ‘Don’t Move’ was designed & created by industry-legend Cliff Wallace… who actually worked on the original Hellraiser! An absolute honour.
Trivia: the voice of ‘Paul’ at the beginning of ‘Don’t Move’ isn’t actually voiced by actor Martin Skipper. This was added later by Ben Tillett, who is also the director, writer and ‘Narrator’ of https://horrorboom.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.phpSuckablood… did you spot the Phantom in the opening Steadicam Shot? [Ed. note: we still haven’t. Did you any of you guys?]
Here we have is the “making of” video; highly recommended watching… they worked their ASSES off on this one (and there’s less CGI than I thought).
I’m surprised they managed to shoot it over one weekend, I mean got-damn, it’s pretty elaborate.
Here’s something we thought was really cool. There’s a WordPress blog called Write-Shoot-Cut, and this page features an introduction by Neil Rolland (who got to see Don’t Move on the big screen as part of a special showcase event at the Bootleg Film Festival, Edinburgh) and a piece by the screenwriter of Don’t Move, David Scullion. He rightly points out that the script is ridiculously tame compared to the final product (but don’t let that stop you from reading it). Our personal favorite extra goodie we found is the actual script, a 12-page .PDF file that you can download on the page; here’s the link again.
Here’s the Kickstarter campaign page for Don’t Move, which also makes for interesting reading …and watching. There’s a cool video “pitch” which I can’t embed, so check it out on Kickstarter. I’m suddenly VERY bummed all over again that Bloody Cuts will not be continuing in its current form.
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.
(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.
Yeah, we’ve been putting off watching “Dead Man’s Lake” because …well… honestly, we got sort of impatient waiting for it to snap out of “80s Slasher Film Mode”. At the time we were watching snappy horror shorts around five minutes (or less, sometimes) that scared the beejezus out of us almost right off the bat, hey, not much happening here, probably some candy-ass teen-slasher genre tribute…. We admit it, we got spoiled, OK?
We decided to give this one a chance, because of all the great press it’s been getting; plus it’s an indie, which means Bloody Cuts and the entire team went all out throwing themselves into it. Sure, it might be little slow, with lots of stereotypical 80s Teen Camping Stalk/Slash footage, but that’s just the first few minutes. So just keep watching, because all of a sudden, HOAH! All HELL breaks loose, rattling and rolling its way to a very clever ending reveal that was done so perfectly, I’d recommend it for that alone! If you’re thinking shades of Cabin Fever (which I was predicting 2/3 in while patting myself on the back for thinking I was super-cool because I knew where it was going), well …you would be wrong.
…but surprise surprise, that fun weekend doesn’t go too fucking well!
Now I know why it’s so popular. BTW, you probably don’t want to eat (especially anything warm) while watching this, but Dead Man’s Lake REALLY deserves a look! Not to mention, Dead Man’s Lake is very hard to second-guess. It’s also just a teeny bit disturbing… something tells me I’m in for some real bad dreams tonight! Also, I wish I’d seen the above KICK-ASS poster art for the short before I watched …but you should check it out before you watch! Oh, and here’s a link to the IMDB page for Dead Man’s Lake, if the writing on the poster art for the credits isn’t big enough print (I almost had to get out a magnifying glass). Save it for after you see it, though, just go in clean and check this short out fast! Especially since the first twenty seconds or so below consist of this:
…aaaaand you’re ON! When you’re done, visit the kick-ass official website by clicking here (Note: also spoiler-y, watch the short film first, but take a look, because it’s got all kinds of extras and other cool shit)!
I’ve been following the progress and development for “Dead Man’s Lake” through Bloody Cuts, which have been covering it amazingly. I’m now pleased to say that they have officially released the short “Dead Man’s Lake”.
When 3 campers visit a private lakeside hideaway for some summer fun, little do they know the horror that awaits them…
“Dead Man’s Lake”, an homage to the classic slasher flicks of the ’80s, is the sixth episode in the Bloody Cuts anthology, as well as being the directorial debut of series producer/creator Ben Franklin.
If you want to get the most of watching Dead Man’s Lake then turn out the lights and plug-in your earphones!! Enjoy…
HORROR BOOM 