Robert McKee’s Unconvincing Story
posted by Artw on Nov 14, 2009 - 75 comments

What's 51 years old and made of silicone with red food dye? The Blob, best known for it's work in The Blob, an independent film released in 1958, with Steve McQueen's second movie role (following Never Love a Stranger, which was released earlier that same year). The movie has been considered the definitive '50s film about a town that won't listen to the kids until it's too late (as noted in a review for the Criterion laserdisc release), with a super-catchy theme song (extended single version and b-side Saturday Night in Tiajuana) that was Burt Bacharach's third US hit song. (See more: theatrical trailer, full film on Veoh, full film as YouTube playlist) Times change, and so do monsters, and things got a bit wacky in the 1970s, with Beware! The Blob (aka Son of Blob; wiki, trailer, full film). The sequel played more to the slapstick comedy than the sci-fi/horror spectrum of things. Thirty years after the original, The Blob was remade in 1988 (wiki, trailer, full film), and is supposedly being re-created by Rob Zombie, though his statement about reviving The Blob without "the big red blobby thing" has people asking, then why remake The Blob? (previous blobby goodness) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief on Nov 3, 2009 - 53 comments

Lovecraft 101: Get To Know The Master of Scifi-Horror. For more detailed insights into each of Lovecraft's tales in publication order you might want to follow the H.P.Lovecraft Literary Podcast. For another story-by-story guide to Lovecraft you might want to check out Kenneth Hite's Tour De Lovecraft (also available in expanded form as a book). China Mieville on Lovecraft and racism and a lecture at Treadwells by Archaeologist James Holloway which delves deep into Lovecraft and identity. The making of the Call of Cthulhu RPG. The making of Cthulhu (Hipsters! Ego! Madness!). Happy Halloween with H.P. Lovecraft!
posted by Artw on Oct 31, 2009 - 54 comments

In a nameless city deluged by a continuous rain, three rabbits live with a fearful mystery... [more inside]
posted by Iridic on Oct 30, 2009 - 31 comments

Who Goes There - the John W. Campbell short story which inspired the movies The Thing from Another World and, closer to the original, The Thing (which, apparently, was horribly critically mauled upon release but has since become as much as a classic as the 50s film). The story is now being reprinted alongside a treatment by Logan's Run author William F. Nolan for an unmade 1978 screen version.
posted by Artw on Sep 1, 2009 - 18 comments

From the guys that brought you Hobo With A Shogun comes award-winning short, Treevenge (NSFW)
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Jul 13, 2009 - 34 comments

The American Nightmare (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) Documentary on US horror films of the 60s and 70s and how their themes reflected the society of the time. Includes contributions from John Carpenter, Wes Craven, David Cronenberg, Tobe Hooper, John Landis, George R. Romero and Tom Savini. NSFW - horror gore plus extreme reportage.
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Jun 20, 2009 - 44 comments

Tony Scott has confirmed that a prequel to Alien is in the works, with commercial director Carl Rinsch at the helm. Of course, his brother Ridley was no stranger to advertising. Meanwhile Dark Horse is celebrating 30 years of the franchise by releasing a new series of Aliens comics.
posted by Artw on May 30, 2009 - 188 comments

The Legend Of The 7 Golden Vampires combined the tail end of Hammer film's Dracula series with, the then, burgeoning martial arts craze to create "The First Kung Fu Horror Spectacular!" [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry on May 29, 2009 - 11 comments

Though film is not generally Andy Warhol's field of greatest fame, some see his long and storied history in film as "where Warhol's supreme achievement lies". And then there are the two horror films from 1973: Andy Warhol's Frankenstein (or Flesh for Frankenstein) and Andy Warhol's Dracula (or Blood for Dracula). The two films were filmed quickly and inexpensively in the Spring of 1973, using the Roger Corman method of filming two movies at one location using the same actors to decrease costs. Frankenstein was filmed first, using Space-Vision 3-D. But filming 3D footage was too expensive and time-consuming, so Dracula was shot in standard 35mm film. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief on May 21, 2009 - 23 comments

Over twelve years in the making, filmed on five continents, with a running time of over nine hours, easily the most terrifying flatware horror movie released this year. A Richard Gale film. [via]
posted by Combustible Edison Lighthouse on Mar 24, 2009 - 38 comments

Asian Horror Movies.com. 100's of free, streaming video, full movies, which have English subtitles. Index of titles updated regularly. Japanese, Korean, Thai. Includes a wide variety of films from an eccentric fantasy like 100% Wool to a psychological thriller like Angel Dust. [more inside]
posted by nickyskye on Jan 25, 2009 - 52 comments

Here's to Ray Dennis Steckler, the independent filmmaker who wrote, starred (as Cash Flagg) and directed influential films including The Thrill Killers, Rat Pfink a Boo Boo, and his masterpice The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies. A visionary artist whose influnce is clearly seen in contemporary cinema, Steckler was prolific (producing movies from 1963 until last year), economical (his films were self-produced, shot on 16mm film and later Hi-8 video), and brilliant (as clearly evidenced in this dance sequence from Creatures, "The First Monster Musical"). It hasn't been widely reported yet, but fans are mourning his passing. He died in his sleep yesterday, January 7th, aged 70. [more inside]
posted by Chinese Jet Pilot on Jan 8, 2009 - 26 comments

The Sea of Perdition - Children of the Kingdom - Black Tulips - Three short films by South African-born film director Richard Stanley. Stanley's career took off with Hardware (an unacknowledged adaptation the 2000ad story Shok!) and the apocalyptic African western/Horror movie Dust Devil, then hit the rocks with the doomed 1996 version of the Island of Doctor Moreau, from which he was fired and replaced by John Frankenheimer. Stanley hasn't directed a feature film since... though he now has two films in preproduction, Vacation and Bones of the Earth. The original script for Moreau can be read on his unofficial site, as well as the script for a sequel to Hardware. Richard Stanley's MySpace Blog is also very strange.
posted by Artw on Dec 26, 2008 - 18 comments

Harold "Herk" Harvey, a director of educational and industrial films for the Centron Corporation, was driving through Utah when he spotted the derelict Saltair Resort squatting on a mudded lakebed. The sight charged him with ideas, and when he returned home he recruited his Centron colleages and an unknown method actress to make a psychological horror movie. The atmospheric result, shot over three weeks at locations in Kansas and Utah, was 1962's Carnival of Souls. [more inside]
posted by Iridic on Oct 19, 2008 - 10 comments

It was the 80's. We were younger then, and anything seemed possible. So it all seemed part of Destiny when my very first screenplay was bought and produced; fame and fortune was surely just around the corner. HA! Fat chance.- The making of Forever Evil.
posted by Artw on Oct 4, 2008 - 6 comments

Doomed Moviethon exists as an excuse for Richard Schmidt to go on insane, caffeine-fueled horror movie benders and record his impressions as sanity erodes... Could you do 28 Giallos in 60 hours? [more inside]
posted by [NOT HERMITOSIS-IST] on Sep 30, 2008 - 19 comments

Director Mathieu Ratthe has created in a scene from Stephen King's The Talisman in the hope of convincing those holding the rights to let him make a full film version. See also his short film Lovefield. More King: 25 episode 'graphic video' adaptation of his short story N.
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Aug 1, 2008 - 23 comments

Australian short film - I Love Sarah Jane 'Jimbo is 13. All he can think about is one girl, Sarah Jane. And no matter what stands in his way - bullies, violence, chaos, zombies - nothing is going to stop him from finding a way into her world.' NSFW - swearing and gore. SLYT.
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Jul 30, 2008 - 16 comments

RIP Tartan Films. The UK-based film distribution company has gone into administration, laying off it's entire staff. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Jun 28, 2008 - 28 comments

La Cabina (The Telephone Box) 1, 2, 3, 4 Emmy winning short Spanish film. Saw this once as a kid and I’ve never forgotten it… There's no subtitles but that doesn't really matter.
posted by fearfulsymmetry on May 2, 2008 - 7 comments

Trailers From Hell. Cult directors (and other industry types) introduce and comment on trailers for cult films. For instance, Allison Anders on Peeping Tom, Rick Baker on The Man Of A Thousand Faces, Joe Dante on Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman, Jack Hill on White Heat, Dan Ireland on The Haunting, Mary Lambert on The Masque Of The Red Death and Edgar Wright on Carnage. (Flash menu and intro unfortunately)
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Jan 28, 2008 - 11 comments

Hammer films are back! ... The classic British horror film company has returned from the dead with the first new film in 20 years to be first broadcast in instalments via MySpace. This has allowed some news programs to camp it up just a little... See the trailer here. Behind the scenes. [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry on Dec 18, 2007 - 18 comments

Norman Bates and that oh, so famous shower scene... [more inside]
posted by miss lynnster on Nov 24, 2007 - 47 comments

Here are two seminal vampire films: Carl Dreyer's Vampyr and F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu. [more inside]
posted by Iridic on Oct 26, 2007 - 19 comments

"A group of teenagers, en route to attend a rock concert, lose their way when their car runs out of fuel in the dead of night. They find themselves in an unfamiliar rural backwater where they are confronted by flesh-eating zombies and a psychotic cannibalistic killer dressed in a sheet. It could be the plot to a thousand Hollywood horror films but while these teenagers may dress, talk and smoke dope like young Americans they are in fact young Pakistanis, and the film - Zibahkhana or Hell's Ground - is the first modern horror film to be filmed in Pakistan."
posted by brundlefly on Aug 15, 2007 - 12 comments

Night of the Living Jews: Exactly what it sounds like. The trailer is NSFW.
posted by brundlefly on Aug 4, 2007 - 22 comments

On October 26, 1965, a sixteen-year-old girl named Sylvia Marie Likens was reported dead to Indianapolis police. It was soon discovered that her death was the culmination of weeks of torture at the hands of an adult caretaker and several neighborhood children; when the case went to trial, the prosecutor declared it "the most terrible crime ever committed in the state of Indiana." In 2007, not one but two films inspired by the case make their debut: The Girl Next Door (trailer), based on a fictionalized version of the events, and the docudrama An American Crime (trailer). One person, at least, will probably be skipping both -- the victim's sister, who says of the latter film, "No one ever even asked us about it. It's their gain, our pain."
posted by kittens for breakfast on Jul 26, 2007 - 118 comments

Black Sheep Bloodthirsty, murderous sheep are on the loose in a small farming village. Keep your fingers crossed, this upcoming horror movie from New Zealand just might be Snakes on a Plane 2!
posted by dhammond on Jan 11, 2007 - 36 comments

Cthulhu: The Movie. Filmed not in Providence, but on the other side of the country in Astoria. Starring nobody I've ever heard of. Featuring a cameo by Tori Spelling. Given that previous attempts over the last forty or so to capture Lovecraft's mythos on film have been more miss than hit, all these signs point to yet another missed mark. But I must confess ... the last tracking shot over the water in the trailer compels me.
posted by grabbingsand on Jul 20, 2006 - 69 comments

There was a time when his scowling, oversized visage, his battered black fedora, and his long black coat, were as familiar to horror fans as such characters as Frankenstein and Dracula. This character, who appeared in three films, was called "The Brute Man" or "The Creeper."

Only that terrifying face wasn't a mask or a creation of makeup. It was an actual face, a product of a condition called agromegaly. And The Creeper never planned to be an actor at all, he was simply decorated war veteran-turned-Tampa reporter who had shown up one day to cover a film. The movie's director noticed him and recommended he move to Hollywood and pursue a career as a character actor.

He was Rondo Hatton.
posted by Astro Zombie on Mar 5, 2006 - 18 comments

"He was someone who acted out our psyches ... He somehow got into the shadows inside our bodies; he was able to nail down some of our secret fears and put them on-screen... the history of Lon Chaney is the history of unrequited loves. He brings that part of you out into the open, because you fear that you are not loved, you fear that you never will be loved, you fear there is some part of you that's grotesque, that the world will turn away from."
A Valentine for Lon Chaney, the Man of a Thousand Faces. (BugMeNot for the first link; more inside)
posted by matteo on Feb 18, 2006 - 14 comments

The house in Amityville with the fan-shaped windows making an inhuman face is the Godzilla of haunted house movies. The town and current owner of the house where the DeFeo family was murdered try to downplay (registration required) its signficance. The trademark windows in the original have been replaced to disguise its identity, and lawsuits force studios to use a house-double. Although latest remake claims the status of "true story," the case has been widely dismissed as a hoax and the 2005 film has even rased the ire of George Lutz for how he is portrayed as the haunted father-figure. Other people involved in the case including convicted murder DeFeo are unhappy with the new attention. Still, the story has its true believers and psychics who argue the debunkers have their own agenda. Then again, Texas Chainsaw Massacre was also claimed by the same production company to be "inspired by a true story."
posted by KirkJobSluder on Apr 15, 2005 - 12 comments

"You can fool everybody, but landie dearie me, you can't fool a cat. They seem to know who's not right". The psychoanalyst calmly explains to his patient that her idea that she is turning into a member of the cat family is a fantasy; she silences him with fang and talon.
Val Lewton made his name as a producer with the horror film Cat People, produced for RKO on a minuscule budget and directed by Jacques Tourneur. The star? French actress Simone Simon, who died today in Paris aged 93. More inside.
posted by matteo on Feb 23, 2005 - 6 comments

As the remake of Ringu opens in Japan, a rash of remakes of Asian horror movies seems to be winding its way through Hollywood. Not only has Hideo Nakata's latest movie, Honogurai mizu no soko kara (Dark Water), been optioned, the inevitable remake of Ringu 2 will occur, and the Hong Kong The Sixth Sense-esque The Eye has also been picked up for the Hollywood process. While it's nothing new to remake classic Japanese movies, this latest wave brings a lot of new questions. Is it near-impossible for the US to create horror movies that aren't increasingly self-referential? How long is it before we get remakes of Audition, Battle Royale, and Suicide Club? And will we eventually end up with a horror movie in the style of Fa talai jone, a Thailand Western influenced by Hollywood Westerns which were influenced by Japanese Samurai movies?
posted by Katemonkey on Nov 5, 2002 - 26 comments

100 scariest movie moments Retrocrush is listing their top 100 scariest movie moments, and so far, the quality is pretty high -- well-chosen scenes, and interesting writeups. And one exploding head. You've been warned. Happy Halloween!
posted by GaelFC on Oct 31, 2002 - 80 comments

Hello Kitty remakes "The Blair Witch Project." This is either the most clever or most inane Yahoo! Greeting I've ever seen...wait, is "inane Yahoo! Greeting" redundant? Happy pre-Halloween Friday...does anyone remember TBWP fondly these days, as the nights grow spooky? Going to see "The Ring" tonight?
posted by serafinapekkala on Oct 18, 2002 - 33 comments

Low or no budget horror films. They're awful, and oh so enticing (prolly 'cause they can be awful, amusing, and sometimes really good). How do you do special effects on no budget? Boggles the mind. As Halloween as it gets, the independant film makers and horror officiandos have their own portal. Crawl down these haunted corridors at your own risk.
posted by Wulfgar! on Oct 31, 2001 - 7 comments

Would someone please explain to me why anyone would want to play a computer game based on "The Blair Witch Project"?
posted by Steven Den Beste on Sep 6, 2000 - 8 comments