Screenhead

It is very rare that I will post two posters from the same movie at the same time, but I just love these posters. The film noir is so authentic and practical to the theme of the movie.  If you have seen the trailer, you know director Joe Johnston created a Gothic film that is horrific. 

AICN made the first poster available while Cinematical introduced the second poster. Which one do you like the best?

I can’t wait until this movie comes out; it will rock your senses. 

The second poster is so simple but catches the viewers attention. So much so that we know the wolfman is not far and perhaps the frightened woman, Emily Blunt, is only a deadly tear away.

On behalf of Overture Films, Screenhead presents a new production still featuring Radha Mitchell from The Crazies, starring Timothy Olyphant, Radha Mitchell, Danielle Panabaker and Joe Anderson.  Quite a bit has been posted here about The Crazies, which opens February 26, 2010. 

The story is about a small town where everything is safe and happy…until suddenly it isn’t. In a terrifying tale of the “American Dream” gone horribly wrong, four friends find themselves trapped in their hometown in The Crazies, a reinvention of the George Romero classic directed by Breck Eisner from a screenplay by Ray Wright (Pulse, Case 39) and Scott Kosar (The Amityville Horror, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre).

I am NOT a huge fan of Jack Ketchum’s work.  Ever since I saw The Lost–in which only I really lost, about ninety minutes of my life and a sinking feeling that someone somehow was making a living at writing torture porn–I looked at pretty much everything he did with a sinking suspicion.

So when I settled in with a copy of Offspring, one of the newest parts of the Ghost House Underground collection, which the folks at Lions Gate sent my way, I wasn’t expecting much good to come of it.  Were my suspicions met?  You’ll find out directly.

First, the plot.  We’re going back to Maine, a land that Stephen King pretty much managed to convert almost singlehandedly into the horror capitol of the world.  But the town of Dead River is playing host to a secret that even King might have had a hard time swallowing–a clan of flesh-eating monstrosities that propagates seemingly entirely by abduction.  And when the local sheriff is forced to step in and deal with them, he’s reminded all too clearly of the last time he took these killers on.

This one is, somewhat, different.  In fact, “graphically screwed up” might be a better term.  In fact, if you want to get an idea of what it’s like, imagine Clan of the Cave Bear intermingled with The Hills Have Eyes.  And you’ll be mostly horrified, but at the same time, you’ll be so catastrophically weirded out by the whole thing that you’ll scarcely know what to think.  Watching these dirt people tear apart actual humans and eat flesh is…well…it’s not the kind of thing you’ve seen lately, I guarantee that.

It’s graphic, it’s violent, it’s grotesque in the absolute…but it IS unique.  And that definitely gives it at least a point in its favor.  But the sheer horrendousness of the content leaves it difficult to recommend.

It’s downright painful to be looking at a movie that’s the most unique thing I’ve seen in a good while, but have it be so thoroughly repugnant that it’s tough to recommend.  It’s really just painful.

The Screenhead Ten Scale shares my consternation and hands The Offspring a thoroughly confused five out of ten.  It’s too unique to not bear mentioning, but it’s too downright vulgar to encourage anyone to watch.

You’ve got to give the crew behind Creeper a little credit for effort–they recorded all their own music to add onto this three minute short film. It’s too bad that that’s pretty much the only area in which they succeeded.

In this one, a young man finds himself running afoul of some random monster or possibly human that sounds like he’s been chain-smoking rope since the eighties.  Anyway, this human / monster thing is dispatched to kill the young man for some reason, but we don’t know what that reason is.  All we know is, his time is UP.

And yes, the musical score is pretty nifty, but what they forgot to do was actually make a movie.  There’s no coherent plot here outside of some fart noises on voice mail and a guy getting killed for no clear reason.  I’m not even sure whether the guy that did the killing was a man or a monster.  And what’s with all the coughing?  The movie was actually TOO short, leaving a lot of its issues unresolved.

There are a great many questions that I don’t have answers to because Creeper didn’t bother to create them.

The Screenhead Ten Scale respects the musical side of this whole short endeavor, but at the same time, can’t help but be a little unsettled by the fact that there’s not much of a, you know, MOVIE here.  It thusly hands out a three out of ten.

So Lions Gate has brought up a bit of that old retro horror with the rerelease of The Gate, now out on DVD. And as always, the question we’re out to tackle today is, is it worth your rental dollar?

The plot is a little convoluted, and basically requires you to suspend disbelief like no tomorrow.  But after an old tree is pulled out of a suburban family’s backyard, it’s left a whole lot of trouble in its wake.  Like a load of fairly valuable geodes.  And a reeking pit in the backyard that just happens to be full of demons.  TINY demons.

And now it’s left to the kids of the suburban family to take on the horde of tiny demons that have burst forth from the hole in the backyard.

See, this may sound just plain old loopy to horror buffs of the modern era, but this kind of thing happened ALL THE TIME in eighties horror flicks, especially ones that carried that malign PG-13 rating, the rating usually reserved for half-baked slasher flicks today.

And frankly, it IS loopy.  How do we discover what’s going on under the surface?  Simple–the characters learn about it from the album cover of a heavy metal band from “Europe”, and more than likely, from Finland.  Because as we all know now, thanks to Metalocalypse and the various Lordi incursions, Finland and metal go together like peanut butter and jelly.

The farther in you get in this thing, the steadily more insane the whole thing gets.  In fact, it’s like that loopy uncle of yours that lives in the attic and won’t stop screaming about how the government’s putting mind control suicide chips in the flouride in the water–it’s absolutely insane, and yet at the same time, it’s also entertaining in a creepy sort of way.

If you’re up for a history lesson, then The Gate will provide it.  If you just want a creepy and fun little movie with some occasional scares, then The Gate will provide that too.

The Screenhead Ten Scale can’t help but give due props to this piece of the past, and thus issues a seven out of ten for being fun, even if absolutely looney.

When a film company titles itself Mediocre Films, it’s hard to tell whether you should expect their work to be good or expect to be, well, mediocre.  But today’s short film, a fairly interesting piece from Mediocre entitled Trick or Treat, is at least fairly good.

Two guys are hanging out in one of their houses and talking about movies they should make when they get the idea to make a documentary.   Wondering who would make the best documentary target, they hit on a random stranger hanging around outside the house who knocks on the door with one message–trick or treat.  But when we find out more about the random stranger, we discover that he brings plenty of trouble in his trick or treat bag.

It’s hard to tell where Trick or Treat is going, primarily because it makes almost no sense at all for most of its six minute run time.  By the time it gets to the horror part of the show, you’re so abjectly lost that literally anything could happen.  This is actually an interesting effect as most horror flicks like to telegraph their punches from the word go, but this one will keep you guessing.

In fact, if you can stay interested until the very end, you’ll likely discover that the whole thing makes a lot more sense looking back than going forward, and that’s a lot like life itself.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives this strange analogy for life itself a six out of ten–it’s confusing, yes, but it’s also funny and just a bit creepy, and that’s a great combination.

I don’t know where to begin telling you how HORRIBLE an idea this is.

See, there was something I noticed long, long ago that I quickly developed into a law of horror movies.  Ouija Boards Are Always Bad News.

I thought it was strange that, pretty much every time one of them was used in a horror flick, it was only a matter of time before someone got haunted, possessed or just plain old dead outright. And upon further investigation, I discovered that  Ouija boards were roundly condemned by–and you’re going to want to brace yourself for this:

1. Virtually every Christian group (no real surprise there)

2. Most every type of pagan

3. The paranormal research community

Look, under normal circumstances, getting these three to agree on ANYTHING is tougher than getting the Mossad and PLO to double-date (thank you Bruce Bethke!), so when they all agree on something you’d best pay attention.

And now I hear that Platinum Dunes is developing a movie around these?

Yeah, great work guys…I loved your movie the first time I saw it.  Back in the early nineties. When it was called Witchboard.  It had a SEQUEL, you jackasses.

Ouija, however, will be coming to theaters sometime in 2010, or so the current word goes.

You’ve got to hand it to a movie like Sat Nav for putting out one of the strangest concepts I’ve seen lately.  But can they follow through?  Read on.

What Sat Nav is about is, pretty much, a satellite navigation system.  But it’s a badly flawed system–so badly flawed it’s actually evil.And when the evil sat nav sends a group of Halloween party-seekers on their way to a Halloween party at a place they’ve never been before, well, you know all hell’s going to break loose.

On the one hand, yes, it’s a great idea and there are plenty of creepy scenes.  But on the other hand, there are plenty of scenes where you can’t see anything because, once again, they’ve filmed at night and they don’t really know how to do it so you can actually see stuff.  That and there’s this horrendous sequence at the end that’s way too loud.

So the Screenhead Ten Scale is left to split its decision for a movie that’s got plenty of good for all its bad and give a five out of ten.  It’s a great idea, poorly executed.

Michael Capp is our winner — congratulations!!

Sam Raimi does a great job with this movie. I’d watch but I am too chicken.  Enjoy the movie Michael!

Screenhead has joined Universal Studios in the celebration of director Sam Raimi returning to the horror genre with a vengeance by directing the critically acclaimed Drag Me to Hell available on DVD and Blu-ray. This movie is a spine-tingling tale of a young woman’s desperate quest to break an evil curse and save her soul from eternal damnation.  

Raimi’s work on this film is brilliant. He doesn’t miss a beat of pulsating horror.  I am glad he’s back doing what he does best – horror movies. 

The story follows Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is on her way to having it all: a devoted boyfriend (Justin Long), a hard-earned job position, and a bright future. But when she’s forced to make a tough decision that evicts an elderly woman from her house, Christine becomes the victim of an evil curse. Now she has only three days to dissuade a dark spirit from stealing her soul before she is dragged to hell for an eternity of unthinkable torment. 

Both the Blu-ray Hi-Def and DVD releases of Drag Me to Hell will contain the frightening, never-before-seen unrated director’s cut deemed too terrifying for theaters, as well as the theatrical version of the film.  The Blu-ray release also contains a digital copy of the film for a limited time only.  The perfect entertainment for horror fans and suspense addicts from the master of mayhem, Drag Me to Hell is the perfect entertainment for the Halloween season.

I have a confession to make:  Somehow, for a brief moment or two, I had Paranormal Activity and The Fourth Kind one of the same. I am sure it’s because both movies are about the unknown to a certain extent.  That said, here are a couple of production stills from The Fourth Kind. The movie has bigger stars (Milla Jovovich, Will Patton) than Paranormal Activity.

Another similarity is both films seem to have real footage. The Fourth Kind uses never-before-seen archival footage that is integrated into the film; The Fourth Kind exposes the terrified revelations of multiple witnesses.  Their accounts of being visited by alien figures all share disturbingly identical details, the validity of which is investigated throughout the film.