NOTE: Yes, this is a re-print of an article originally published on 9/27/2012. Due to missing over a week of postings in late May (got kicked in the ass by pneumonia and the unexpected death of a good friend) things got pretty sparse here as everything else went out the window at the time …so I’m filling them in (and back-dating them for the days we were on the disabled list) in with cool stuff. Enjoy.
…South Korean boarding schools for girls (especially those that focus on the arts) seem like wretched enough places already without having to deal with ghosts suddenly swooping down at you from the ceiling when you’re trying to sleep in a dark, spooky room, or pale hands slipping out of nowhere to grasp your wrist or ankle in the middle of the night…
More skin-crawling Asian Horror- this time from South Korea.
I first saw this movie in Fall 2009, when it scared me so bad it actually kept me awake until I purposely watched the DVD extras to see interviews with the actresses to try to put things in perspective (just a movie…just a movie… ), got up and grabbed both our cats to sleep on the bed with me, and scooted as far over to…
I still remember watching William Lustig‘s original Maniac (1980) …on a VHS tape rental in my bedroom in high school; I had lugged the TV set and VCR in there because I was stuck in bed nursing a flu at the time.
I’m pretty sure Maniac (along with a few other serial-killer horror movies; I saw Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer at SIFF in 1990 and purchased my first purse-sized canister of pepper spray shortly after) was a big part of the reason I took the first “Self-Defense for Women” class I could find (and the second, and the third, and the…) and developed habits that I keep to this day, like always having my car keys in my hand by the time I left a building to walk through the parking lot to my car, even if it’s only ten yards away. Also probably among the reasons why, after dark, I keep them in my hand, with the self-defense trick of holding them in your fist with the pointy end of the keys jammed between my fingers and pointing out, so you have a better chance of breaking your attacker’s skin, or putting out an eye, if you need to strike out to defend yourself.
Frank Zito’s victims get themselves some payback in the fucking blood-curdling, nightmarish finale of the original Maniac (1980).
Here’s the HD red band trailer for the Maniac (2012) remake – there’s a separate piece coming on why I’m actually optimistic about the chances of it being successful. Don’t expect to see the titular character Frank Zito even remotely resembling Joe Spinell, though!
*I didn’t actually SEE it in 1980 (that’d be a great movie for a girl still in elementary school to watch, scarred for life? Check!), I think it was 1984. My mom would buy me a Fangoria–and even Famous Monsters Magazine– in 1981, though. Towards the end of the run of Famous Monsters of Filmland, I had a subscription. I wish I’d held onto it!
Having sex in all twelve of them? Where 46,000 people died in this last stop alone? Purposely in the most evil, ghastly spots, does anyone really think that’s a good idea (especially on American Horror Story)? Are they TRYING to rack up the worst karma possible?
First things first! Watch the first sick five minutes of American Horror Story: Asylum below – including the disturbing new opening credits! Same soundtrack, new hideous images. If you weren’t quite sold before, if you’re a horror fan, these sick (in the best way) five minutes will sell you. They actually make the first five minutes of Season One look tame (and the first five minutes of American Horror Story Season One weren’t too shabby. But this, THIS stuff, is terrifying and twisted and dirty and disturbing and extremely NSFW, and I love every freaky minute of it. There, I said it. Somebody had to say it! So, check THIS crazy, scary, and fun footage out — what are you waiting for? We’ve been waiting all year!
Last stop on the “haunted honeymoon tour”. 46,000 people died there? Her ideal honeymoon is having sex with her new husband in the twelve most haunted places in the world? I wouldn’t even want to go NEAR them, except maybe during a guided tour in the daytime. The closest we got on our honeymoon was The Haunted Mansion at Disneyland.*
Having sex in all twelve of them? Purposely in the most evil, ghastly spots, does anyone really think that’s a good idea (especially on American Horror Story)? Are they TRYING to rack up the worst karma possible (and that’s at best, assuming none of these places are really haunted, and there’s no squatters or any kind of cult living there). Yes, having sex on an old electroshock therapy table and laughing about it, then sticking your hand into a slot in the cell wall where the most ‘famous inmate’, a notorious serial killer who liked to skin his victim’s faces (yes, I know what his bride’s little reward for that was), even though it’s pitch black. How could THIS go wrong? Enjoy that kinky sex while you can, happy young couple, because something tells me it’s going to be the last time you ever have fun again…
HOAH! They’re not screwing around in the title credits this season.
I’m working on a gallery from the opening credits. But I know one thing. If I could pick one word to describe what this season is going to be like for horror fans and fans of the show, that word would be:
Fun FUN! Oh, baby…
*Uh, I should clarify …NO, we did not have sex in, on, or around The Haunted Mansion. Not only would we probably get arrested and never get to go on the ride again, but it would have been hard to look around and see all the awesome Haunted Mansion sights. Also, it’d be hard enough to manage sex in a “Doom Buggy”, but with the Haunted Hitchhikers in there, it’d definitely be too crowded!
I have two trailers for the October 23rd DTV release of Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines. One is Red Band, the second is really, REALLY Red Band. It’s probably oh, I don’t know, the goriest, most NSFW teaser trailer I’ve posted (so far) on Horror Boom. The ABCs of Death trailer was spectacularly gory, but that turned out to be composed entirely of snippets from all the entries in the 26th Director Contest run last year, so it might not count completely. I’m glad that most of the directors got featured—even if the clips flash by pretty fast—because as you know from reading my Horror Boom Picks for the top twenty (out of over 160) entries for the T is for… entries, at least twenty of them were kick-ass great. If you want to catch up on the first three articles, please do by all means (it turned out to be an insanely time-consuming project, but I don’t regret it). You can find Part 2/5 here and Part 3/5 here. The final two parts WILL be coming later, though I’m thinking of spreading them out two at a time instead of five at a time.
But I digress. OK, first up, the (slightly) less offensive and shorter spot for Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines can be found below. It made me laugh the first time I saw it even though I had an ugly headache at the time. Still makes me smile (you’ll know the funny part when you see it):
Here’s the official plot description (or excuse for the mayhem, this go-round, anyway):
The cutting-edge terror continues when a small mining town hosts the legendary Mountain Man Festival on Halloween, where crowds of costumed party-goers gather for a wild night of music and mischief. But a killer celebration soon gives way to a blood-soaked feeding frenzy when an inbred family of hillbilly cannibals trick and treat themselves to a group of visiting college students who are just dying for a good time…
The DVD/Blu-ray details are a little, ahem, juicier:
Now that horror fans have the backstory on the Hillbilly Cannibals’ “Bloody Beginnings”, the franchise rejoins the infamous disfigured brothers as they return when WRONG TURN 5: BLOODLINES debuts on unrated Blu-ray, DVD, and, for the first time ever, Digital Copy on October 23rd from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment. This all-new terrifying film boasts the talent of horror movie veteran Doug Bradley (Hellraiser) along with “Game of Thrones”’ Roxanne McKee.
With hours of bonus footage including behind-the-scenes featurettes and commentary “DIE-aries” from director Declan O’Brien (Wrong Turn 4, Sharktopus), WRONG TURN 5: BLOODLINES will give audiences an extra scare this Halloween season. Available on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital Copy October 23rd.
Special Features A Day in the Death Hillbilly Kills Director’s Die-aries Audio Commentary by Declan O’Brien
Speaking of “Hillbilly Kills”, here’s the REALLY offensive, gruesome teaser trailer that debuted in the last 24 hours, although it’s closer to a ‘tightly edited Death Reel’ from parts one through four. THEN, they tacked on a fun Director’s DIE-ary that was also shown at SDCC 2012. Almost everywhere but You Tube, they require age-verification, and HOAH! you’ll soon see why. Check it out below…
If you want to go to the official site and see it bigger, click on this link here. It’s the closest they have to an official Wrong Turn 5 site for now anyway, though I’ll be keeping an eye out for an official Facebook page (they did one for the prequel last year, also with a ton of fun stuff).
I am kind of bummed, though, that the DVD cover I voted on a few months ago didn’t get picked, because I thought it was way cooler. Found it:
What’s not to like?
I also really prefer “Bloodbath” instead of “Bloodlines” after the title, especially if this is going to be the ‘the most gruesome Wrong Turn ever”. Maybe it had something to do with the inclusion of Doug Bradley in the cast, as a kind of in-joke, but come on, you’re going to pick Bloodlines over BLOODBATH? Unless they’re saving it for the next movie, planning to REALLY out-do themselves, that’s just not acceptable to me. (Mm’kay?}
If you want to see more, our good fiends/friends at Dread Central have a giant gallery of photos from their on-set visit (to Bulgaria), and it looks like they’re gonna be going with at least SOME practical effects. The only things in the previous entries that have bothered me CGI-wise were a few really shoddy CGI blood squirts that looked one notch above someone drawing them on the frame with a red Sharpie. I know they don’t have an eight-figure budget or anything (see:filming in Bulgaria), but do film-makers who use CGI blood really think we’re not going to be able to tell the difference between that and the real thing? Hey, when they can do a good enough job that we can’t tell the difference between CGI blood and practical blood, fine, but if not, please don’t insult our intelligence.
From the prequel – this happened in the first ten minutes, possibly even before the opening credits. Sold!
Though, speaking of intelligence, looks like I’m one of the last fans to be aware that the family is known as “The Hillicker Brothers” –though I know there was at least one female in Wrong Turn Two:Dead End. I remember a scene pretty early on of her getting jealous of her brother secretly peeking from the woods and drooling at a naked reality-show bimbo, and then stabbing her so fiercely and so many times that you could see her spine by the time the mutant sister was done. I think she may have done the tongue bite-off at the opening, too, but right now I’m too tired to check.
Guess now it’s down to Three Finger, One-Eye, and Snaggletoof Saw Tooth. Oh well, keep things entertaining and I’ll overlook that. Declan O’Brien’s Part 3 —he wrote, but did not direct— did so little for me I think I only watched it once, but he improved a hell of a lot when he wrote and directed the prequel, Bloody Beginnings, which didn’t try to be anything it wasn’t, just embraced the horror and gore. Both had some really mean-spirited endings, but best of all, he really seemed to be having fun.
…South Korean boarding schools for girls (especially those that focus on the arts) seem like wretched enough places already without having to deal with ghosts suddenly swooping down at you from the ceiling when you’re trying to sleep in a dark, spooky room, or pale hands slipping out of nowhere to grasp your wrist or ankle in the middle of the night…
More skin-crawling Asian Horror- this time from South Korea.
I first saw this movie in Fall 2009, when it scared me so bad it actually kept me awake until I purposely watched the DVD extras to see interviews with the actresses to try to put things in perspective (just a movie…just a movie… ), got up and grabbed both our cats to sleep on the bed with me, and scooted as far over to my husband’s side of the bed as I could without danger of injury. I’m pretty sure that was probably the last time I watched anything from the South Korean Whispering Corridors series (this is #3, and probably the second-most frightening) after dark for quite some time. As I was writing this article, I realized to myself that the last time I watched any J-horror by myself after dark was around 2005 (and it may have been earlier than that). The last J-horror movie I remember watching after dark, period, was Uzakami (2000, AKA Spiral) in Summer 2008. I have a piece written up on the movie and the equally nightmarish manga written up, but I want to flesh it out some first, and there’s no goddamned way I’m touching on the most frightening elements, including getting out my copies of the paperback to refresh my memory, and posting it at 3AM!
Here’s the unnerving trailer for The Wishing Stairs:
Do you dare to climb the 29th step?No, as a matter of fact, I fucking don’t! What do you think I am, crazy?
I do highly recommend the movie, and as soon as I can find a HD version of the trailer I’ll post it. South Korean boarding schools for girls (especially those that focus on the arts) look like wretched enough places already without having to deal with ghosts suddenly swooping down at you from the ceiling when you’re trying to sleep in a dark, spooky room, or pale hands slipping out of nowhere to grasp your wrist or ankle in the middle of the night. I recall reading reports that yes, bullying is as bad as it is in this series. That’s abuse from the students and some of the teachers. I don’t know if things have improved in the last ten years, but when I did research, I’m genuinely sorry to report that I was assured the attempted suicide, and suicide rates were significant (and that’s without supernatural elements).
Do you ever watch a trailer for an upcoming movie and sort of hope it won’t be that good, because you know if it is, you’re going to have to wait what seems like forever to see it?*
Well, with The Bay, I saw the poster (above) and thought OK, bland title, but it looks interesting.Body horror! Maybe even a creature feature! As soon as the trailer started I thought, oh shit! Not more found footage! My current opinion on found-footage horror movies, based on sitting through one too many of them, is that for every great, entertaining found-footage horror movie there’s about ten boring, forgettable, frustrating, or just downright shitty ones, now that everybody has cashed in (or at least tried to) on it.
…seems like a fresh breath for found footage horror. Actually, a pretty fresh breath for a medium-to- wide-release horror movie, whether it’s found footage or not. Contagion was very effective, but did the virus manifest itself in the form of parasites eating the infected ‘from the inside out,’ including their tongues? No, it did not!
The trailer for The Bay RAINED found-footage clichés.* Opening of trailer consists of transcript of a woman calling 911, the operator calm but the female caller crying and panicking? Check. Title card describing vague mysterious incident that happened in specific location on specific date? Check. Title card informing us that the US government/military/CDC has held back this footage (…Until Now )? Check. Someone earnestly talking to the camera about how important it is that this footage gets out? Check. Screams, crying, other incoherent sounds of people seriously losing their shit off-camera/out of frame? Check. Security-camera footage integrated? Check. Shaky-cam? Check. Night-vision? Check. Skype? Check. Sound of police radio, walkie-talkie or other static-y communication device indicating the situation is deteriorating/ escalating (“…repeat, we have a code blue, request back-up immediately…”)? Check. Picture suddenly going into static/pixels right after jump moment? Check.
From what I’ve read, the horrible thing is this is actually a very early stage of the virus…
I’m going to stop listing them now out of compassion for you, the reader, but it’s safe to say we hit the majority of them here. However, there’s not nearly enough clichés to make me roll my eyes and forget about it the second the trailer ends. Check out the trailer for The Bay below…
Did that look boring? Nope! Here’s what the trailer has going for it that I think most horror fans, even those that found-footage has just about worn out their welcome with as much as me, will make a mental note NOT to miss The Bay for:
What seems like a fresh plot for found footage horror. Actually, a pretty fresh plot for a medium-to- wide-release horror movie, whether it’s found footage or not. Contagion was very effective, (I’m not even a mild germaphobe, but it made my blood run cold more than once) but did the virus manifest itself in the form of parasites eating the infected ‘from the inside out,’ including their tongues ? No, it did not!
‘Body horror’. Someone involved in the creation of The Bay has to be a Cronenberg fan.
Also, gory medical horror is all but guaranteed from the trailer.
Since the novelty of found footage dissolved, I’ve found the smaller number of characters it focuses on, the less excited I get about seeing it. The Bay seems to have an ensemble cast and a larger scale.
The ‘Miss Crustacean’ Beauty Pageant is already fun as hell – imagine adding body-eating parasites into that scenario. Hopefully during a Fourth of July parade.
Certain moments in the trailer gave me a genuine feeling of dread.
A strong “Don’t Screw With Mother Nature” theme
The sense that we might get we may get an ‘all hell completely breaking loose resulting in total fucking gory chaos everywhere’ scene. When the film-makers get it just right, I practically levitate and forget everything and everyone around me, including the fact I’m sitting in a theater… and when really done right, repeat viewings give me the same high, and just as pure. I realize that it sounds like I’m talking about uncut Heisenberg-formula blue crystal meth cooked up by Walter White and Jesse Pinkman themselves when I try to describe my visceral reaction to these kind of scenes …but I’m pretty sure there’s no narcotic in the world that could make me feel as great as I did watching, say, the last act of The Cabin in the Woods.
OK, I admit it– The Bay had me at “eating them from the inside out”.
*Now all the reviews from TIFF are coming in, and everyone has more or less raved about the movie. The word “skin-crawling” comes up a lot in the reviews. The only complaints are that it’s too gruesome, and OHGODDAMNIT HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO WAIT TILL NOVEMBER2nd? THAT’S OVER A FUCKING MONTH! OK… breathe…
**Let’s see, where’s that list for my Found Footage Horror Movie Drinking Game™ I was putting together? I’m not joking. I’ve been jotting things down and I still plan to post it once I add some more clichés, then figure out a way to lay out the rules so no-one ends up passing out halfway through the movie.
So really, and you know this for sure if you’re well-versed in the Saw series and saw The Collector and this new trailer for The Collection, this sick bastard almost makes John Kramer look rather quaint…
When I first saw the poster art (more on that art later) on Dreadcentral.com a couple of weeks ago for The Collection (2012), my immediate reaction (as soon as I realized what I was looking at) was not just to think, but actually say out loud, “That …is …fucked-up!” even though I was the only person in the house at the time. I assumed it was some new French Extremist horror film and NOT a semi-mainstream US Theatrical release, and I’m actually still amazed this is the case. Take a look at the trailer that just debuted below– unless you’ve already seen enough disturbing trailers the past week, in which case you might prefer to wait.
Oh! Doesn’t look like they’re going for the slow burn approach on this sequel to 2009’s The Collector. I honestly had no idea a sequel was even in the works until I saw the seriously fucked-up nightmarish poster art on Dread Central. I noticed the image before I even considered what the movie was; I actually was reminded of the art for The Profane Exhibit, an upcoming horror anthology movie that’s been on my radar for quite some time.
“The Real Black Friday Begins November 30th”
Just for comparison, here’s the Profane Exhibit art, below. I’m going to have to see if it’s even in post-production, because other than some really cool stills, I haven’t heard a peep.
“There Are No Boundaries”. Also “No R-Rating”, that’s for DAMN sure.
Anyway, The Profane Exhibit is a piece for another day. Back to the shamelessly fucked-up pair of Collector movies. Here’s the official plot description (with one little obvious edit I couldn’t resist), also released today. Oh, and when I say “today” I mean “Thursday, September 20,” as the cut-off time for WordPress is 5PM Pacific Time.*
When Elena’s (Emma Fitzpatrick) friends take her to a secret giant threshing machine massacre party at an undisclosed location, she never imagined she would become the latest victim of The Collector, a psychopathic killer. The Collector kidnaps and transports her to an abandoned hotel he’s transformed into his own private maze of torture and death. Upon learning of his daughter’s disappearance, Elena’s wealthy father (Christopher McDonald) hires a group of mercenaries to retrieve her from the vicious grips of The Collector. These mercenaries coerce Arkin (Josh Stewart), the only man to have escaped the wrath of this heinous monster, to lead them through the gruesome labyrinth. Now, Arkin finds himself fighting for his own life in order to save Elena. “The Collection,” directed by Marcus Dunstan and written by Dunstan and Patrick Melton, is a suspense horror film with nonstop thrills at every turn, starring Josh Stewart (The Dark Knight Rises), Emma Fitzpatrick (The Social Network), and Christopher McDonald (Requiem for a Dream). LD Entertainment will release The Collection in theaters November 30, 2012.
I may have mentioned before that I’m not a super-fan of the ‘guy wearing a black leather fetish mask who never speaks, brandishing a sharp instrument’ genre –especially when you add torture-porn into the mix. However, The Collection looks to be a notch up from that. Definitely has a more interesting plot line. I also hear they dialed down the torture-porn aspects while amping up the gore (and the stakes). Granted, the original Collector seemed to me to basically be Saw without the victim having to make a beat-the-clock horrible choice because the killer wants to teach them some kind of moral lesson and send a message. This guy, ‘the collector’, just gets off on torture and his cleverness setting up his elaborate system of painful, nasty, deathly traps. Sometimes he just kills them himself (remember the unarguably vile bathtub torture/murder from The Collector? Gah!) and also at the very least felt up some of his victims. Also, Jig Saw’s victims usually had done something shitty, or in some cases downright evil, to end up in one of his ‘games’.
Well, guess what? The Collector could care less whether you’ve made questionable moral choices in the past. Nope! To end up dying a slow horrible death at his hands, you just had to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Seriously, just show up, and you’re completely fucked. Honestly, I’d rather take my chances with Jigsaw; at least no matter how grisly and painful his traps were they only lasted for a minute, not to mention no-one would try to molest you sexually during the process (you just got horribly mangled). Furthermore, Jigsaw didn’t toss innocent animals into the mix, either. So really, and you know this for sure if you’re well-versed in the Saw series and saw The Collector and this new trailer for The Collection, this sick bastard almost makes John Kramer look rather quaint.
I’m not sure what the story behind this ‘jump moment’ in the trailer is, but it ain’t gonna be pretty. Am I sick for looking forward to finding out the context of this moment? Probably. Am I proud of it? Not really!
If you have NOT seen The Collector, don’t really plan to, but are morbidly curious how grisly and dark it gets? Well, just check out the IMDB Parent’s Guide for 2009’s The Collector here. If you do read it, consider this- does this film REALLY fall into the ‘Suspense-Thriller’ genre as it is listed on Netflix? And maybe I somehow rented an uncut version that the contributor to the Parent’s Guide didn’t, but from what I recall, this list actually LEAVES OUT a couple things. Consider yourself officially warned! I read it ahead of time before putting it in my queue because I heard a poor, unlucky cat gets caught in a trap and loses all nine lives, and only watched the movie after making careful notes on the running time the scene occurs in.** . Oh, and speaking of animals, you could not pay me enough to film this scene unless CGI made these guys:
OK, Mr. Collector, I quit. Just give me a Xanax and toss me into that nightclub threshing-machine, I’ll deal. With the ambiance and the shitty music at that place, I’d probably want to be put out of my misery anyway!
So, if there’s no animal violence in The Collection, I guess I’m in. Probably at the theater. Probably by myself, even though this one seems less torture porn-y, no way my husband and/or my friends are up for it! It beats being anywhere near the retail Black Friday…
Artist’s depiction of the mall on Black Friday
And last but not least, this just in: The Collection will be having its World Premiere at Fantastic Fest 2012! So we can expect some advance reviews.
*I decided recently to stop racing against the clock to publish my post by 5PM and just go with it.
**Make fun of me all you want, call me a pussy (they have a good laugh/jeer at me on the IMDB boards when I bring up the subject) but I can’t stand to see animal violence depicted in a movie, even off-screen. Yes, I know it’s fake. Sorry, can’t watch it.
…That I posted the scary-ass theatrical trailer for last week. After I watched the Mama short below (in the middle of the night, only one awake in the house, you know, the stupid viewing method I keep swearing I’m going to stop doing) I had a nightmare. A very specific nightmare; the kind you know a certain something horror-related that you watched before bed-time inspired.
So what WAS I thinking when I watched it after dark, alone in the house? It was probably related to the fact that I’d just spent a boring half an hour searching for scary-ass shorts to share it with you fellow horror fans, watching a few horror shorts claiming to be SUPER!! SCARY!!! that weren’t too scary, original, or even that gracefully put-together. As I discovered with the Scariest Short of the Week (Bedfellows) that I posted two weeks ago, just because a short is less than four minutes long doesn’t mean it can’t be well-made, tightly edited, and scare the living shit out of you. Longer ones (in the eight-to-ten-minute range) could also be sleep-with-the-lights on scary (or TRY to sleep with the lights on scary, yet you still end up wide-awake) as well; intense, perfectly paced, and a little too memorable than you’d like to experience right before bedtime – see my post on Cleansed, the scariest short of LAST week.
yes, go Go GO GO!
Well, not the case last night. So anyway, I was just about to say the hell with it and watch the end of 2007’s The Orphanage* (review coming – it was even more haunting than I expected, ALSO a Del Toro-presented production by the way, and I can’t recommend it enough) when I remembered something. Hey, wasn’t that upcoming, ultra-creepy Mama movie that I posted the ‘Spooky-ass Trailer’ for recently actually based on a short film by the same director? Well, might as well see if… oh, hey, here it was! Popped up right away in the search! I’d just watched several horror shorts claiming to be SUPER!SCARY! that just ended up being, well …stupid. How could this be too freaky to watch before bedtime?
Watch it below to judge for yourself. If you’re feeling brave, turn all the lights off and the sound up like I did! Hey, it’s less than four minutes long, right?
Fuck! (I think that was also my one-word You Tube comment I posted after I caught my breath). Yes, indeed, definitely the inspiration for the upcoming movie presented by Guillermo Del Toro, and directed and written by…
*It’s possible the first half of The Orphanage also contributed to my nightmare, and it was the combination of the two, but I hadn’t even got to the really wrenching moments and reveals by time I turned off the TV and conked out last night. Pretty sure it was the short.
Whenever a movie’s tagline could be replaced with “It’s Just So Wrong,” it goes on my watch list (Inbred‘s actual tagline: They Came In Peace But Left In Pieces).
Alex Chandon pitches things perfectly between gory homage and something a little bit different from what we’ve seen many times before. The big difference adding freshness to the material is the way in which the onscreen horror is turned into a bit of a show by the villagers, adding a surreal aspect to proceedings. It’s like seeing a chamber of horrors being touted by P. T. Barnum.
Check out the latest red band trailer*, which was actually age-restricted when I first saw it on Dread Central. No such restriction on You Tube, though!
OK, I’ve actually done more than watch trailers. I’ve read plenty of print media giving Inbred reviews ranging from glowing to raving. Online, they’ve also gone the extra mile to promote the film everywhere, including personal responses to my questions (most of my questions are usually a more polite, articulate version of “WHEEEEEENNNN???”) on the official Facebook page, and a pretty impressive official website I’ve been following since I found it. I’d recommend joining the Inbred ‘group’ on Facebook for the most up-to-the-minute news; combine that with the enthusiastic Inbred website and you’ve got pretty much everything a fan could want. Once I read the ‘Director’s Statement’ on the site, I was 100% in, especially when he described Inbred as “the film I would love to sneak in and see aged 14 and feel very naughty doing so. It’s very wrong but very right.”
Done and DONE!
The first teaser trailer, which I literally saw around a year ago as of this writing (soon after Inbred’s debut at the London Frightfest in August 2011), had me sold off the bat at the very memorable image below:
It’s not just the gore. Oh, don’t get me wrong, that’s a big part of what got my attention, I’m just saying there’s other aspects. That initial trailer had little-to-no dialogue, which made me curious. what… the… FFFUUU— What was that, a gunshot wound to the head? Was it an accident, or deliberate? Is the guy turning around because he was going to retaliate, or just in shock? Is he going to stumble blindly around for awhile, or drop to the ground the second after what we saw ends? I’m kind of hoping it was a horrible mistake in a string of shocking events that makes whatever situation the protagonists are in even worse, but I want to know! Do you know how hard it is for a recovered spoiler-whore(you’re talking to one right now) to avoid spoilers for an ENTIRE YEAR? Three months before the Spatartus: Revenge season premiere on STARZ and I was falling off that wagon, shamelessly typing “Spartacus Season Two Spoilers” into the Google search box during weak moments.
The plot description/synopsis (that I read a year ago) as soon as I followed the URL from the trailer also gave me a good gut feeling about the movie. Here is the latest, from the official Inbred site:
A disparate group of young urban offenders and their care workers embark on a community service weekend in the strange, remote Yorkshire village of Mortlake, which prides on keeping itself to itself. A minor incident with some local inbred youths rapidly escalates into a blood-soaked, deliriously warped nightmare for all involved. This is a demented horror film with nowt taken out.
Better, check out this official background, also from the site; it really told me all I needed to know…
INBRED is the warped brain child of UK writer/director Alex Chandon, who is responsible for the independent cult feature films CRADLE OF FEAR (2001) and PERVIRELLA (1997) as well as numerous award winning shorts and music promos. The script was written in 2009 and it immediately piqued the interest of New Flesh Films, who were looking for a strong feature to launch their company’s slate of productions. Private investors loved the INBRED script and decided to back the movie and so the wheels were set in motion. Alex developed a few drafts of the script and the final draft is co-written by his long time collaborator Paul Shrimpton, who lives in Yorkshire, where the film was eventually set. It was while staying with Paul that Alex decided that Yorkshire was the perfect location for the film; Paul’s hometown of Thirsk has some stunning locations and a community untouched by film-makers and so they were all eager to help and get involved. Producer Margaret Milner Schmueck previously worked on the production of Alex’s CRADLE OF FEAR and had in the interim period produced a body of award-winning shorts. Her strong connections with northern crew and talent sources made an interesting fit for INBRED so when Alex invited her on board as delegate producer to head up the production, Split Second Films (splitsecond-films.com) the Midlands based independent production company which Margaret co-founded became the UK production company. In early June 2010 an 8 week pre-production period started for a 4 week shoot through August 2010. INBRED had a successful 26 day shoot and then the long post production stage went into progress. INBRED has over 170 shots that require some sort of digital visual effects. This process was undertaken by Alex Chandon and a select crew of talented artists and took 6 months to complete. INBRED premiered at the prestigious FRIGHTFEST FILM FESTIVAL in London, UK in August 2011 to rave reviews and then played at a select few European festivals in late 2011, which also generated great positive feedback, which resulted in Darclight Films becoming the sales agent for INBRED at the very end of 2011. So we all hope that 2012 is indeed the year of the INBRED!
That’s looking like a distinct possibility! Inbred finally has a UK DVD/Blu-Ray release date of October 15th, a UK theatrical release on September 21st, and best of all, a US release confirmed for this year. Many fans on various boards are so excited they’re buying a copy, sight unseen (hell, since I have a region-free player, I’d do the same thing if I wasn’t on such a low budget). When a movie is compared favorably to Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive by multiple critics and reviewers, I start to pay attention really fucking fast. Did I mention Alex Chandon is also a genre fan also grew up in the 80s horror boom?
Wait. What’s that? You’d like to see ‘The Inbred Song’, AKA ‘EE BY GUM’, as (apparently) performed in the actual movie? Well, okay! It’s worth it for the lyrics alone.
Say, that banjo player looks a little familiar, did he happen to have a memorable moment in most of the trailers?
*Oh, and they’re right, it IS harder to hold my breath for thirty seconds than I assumed (it’s either the subject matter, me being more out of shape than I thought, or a combination of the two).
You’re a very troubled little girl. -William (John Waters)
(Raising her hand to calmly ask a question in Anatomy Class) Can you contract an STD from having sex with a dead person? -Pauline, Excision
Okaaay! Uh… wow. I remember seeing a piece on this movie somewhere; I think the movie might have been in production (or post) at the time. I recall hearing that there weren’t just walk-outs, there were actual PASS-outs, when it played at the 2012 Sydney Film Festival (and one or two other showings). At some point I added it to my IMDB Watch List. When I saw the image above, it came back to me. Today I finally saw the full-blown intense Red Band trailer below. I know I hadn’t seen it before, because I would have remembered John Waters showing up in it (for one).
You might want to put down anything you’re eating before you watch this..
The official website for the film has some lush, vivid stills so twisted I didn’t even consider putting them here; at least one of them, anyway, grossed me out just to look at. If/when you look at the “Stills” section of the elaborate website, you’ll know the one I mean as soon as you see it. Gah. There’s a ton of media, both stunning and grotesque, and news galore on the official site. There’s less NSFW content –but loads of updates– on the official Facebook page for the movie.
If you’re looking forward to seeing Excision as much as I am (hey, why are you looking at me like that? Don’t judge me!) then you’ll be happy to know the release date for the DVD and Blu-ray is coming up faster than Pauline’s lunch in the trailer you watched. OK, maybe not that quickly, but soon! Here’s the official Press Release:
On October 16th, Anchor Bay Films presents the harrowing coming-of-age horror film, and instant cult classic, Excision, from writer/director Richard Bates, Jr., which the Sundance Channel deemed, “Without question the most mind-blowing grotesque film to screen at this year’s fest.” Boasting an impressive and eclectic cast including AnnaLynne McCord (The CW’s “90210,” Transporter 2, Fired Up, FX’s “Nip/Tuck”), Traci Lords (Blade, Zack & Miri Make a Porno, Cry Baby), Ariel Winter (ABC’s “Modern Family”), Roger Bart (Hostel Part II, Law Abiding Citizen, American Gangster), Malcolm McDowell (The Artist, A Clockwork Orange, Rob Zombie’s Halloween, HBO’s “Entourage”) and cameos including Ray Wise, director John Waters, and Academy Award® winner Marlee Matlin, Excision comes to Blu-ray™ for an SRP of $24.99 and DVD for an SRP of $22.98.
Excision turned critics’ stomachs as well as heads, garnering much attention at festivals this past year. Noel Murray of AV Club calls it, “One of the damnedest ‘adolescent misfit’ movies you’ll ever see — for those who can stomach the splatter, that is,” and Chris Bumbray of JoBlo exclaims, “While it’s more than a little sick, and will likely leave you queasy by the time the credits roll, Excision is nonetheless a truly unique horror ride into the scariest of all place:s the mind of a teenaged misfit.” Excision holds a 94% “want to see” rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Based on a short film of the same name, Excision follows a disturbed and delusional high school student, Pauline (AnnaLynne McCord), who, with aspirations of a career in medicine, goes to extremes to earn the approval of her controlling mother (Traci Lords). While dealing with being an outcast teenager and obsession over curing her sister’s cystic fibrosis, Pauline becomes continually deranged as her fascination with surgery and the human flesh grows into something abysmal and demonic.
Bonus feature on the Excision Blu-ray™ and DVD: audio commentary with writer/director Richard Bates, Jr., and AnnaLynne McCord.
Thanks, Official Press Release (and Anchor Bay)! Nice to start the week with some good news. I have no idea how they got stunning AnnaLynne McCord to look so terrible; when I watched the trailer I didn’t recognize her until her credit came up. In some of the freaky dream sequences/fantasies I can recognize her, with all the glamour make-up on and fetish costumes. I’m confident she call pull it off; in addition to some of the rave reviews her acting in this movie is getting, she played a teenaged, breathtakingly gorgeous but vile, sick little bitch on Season Five of FX’s Nip/Tuck who, among other malignant things, taught an eleven-year-old girl how to make herself throw up to keep her weight down, because 80 lbs was ‘too fat’.*
I’m also tweeting the first clip that was released. Remember when you’re watching it that A. that is not an actual dead bird, it’s only a movie and B. not to watch while you’re eating anything …or feeling queasy already, because it even made me wince a little. I’m tweeting it too, though, mainly because the clip’s title is “Bird Surgery” and maybe I can come up with some corn, hack-y joke.
Whoop! Sorry, I seem to have accidentally posted some images of the lead actress in an upcoming unrated French horror movie instead of… no, wait, I was right the first time, these *are* in fact some images of the lead actress from “Excision!”
*which she did sheerly –and successfully– out of spite, because she hated the girl’s mother (for sleeping with HER mother, mainly …longer story than you’d probably care for right now). Her horrible character also banged the girl’s father for the same reason. Oh, I’m looking forward to posting my list of Ten F*cked-Up Things That Happened On Nip/Tuck. That piece just wrote itself (if anything, I had trouble narrowing it down to ten)!
HORROR BOOM 