Screenhead

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.

I find myself horrified to announce that, apparently, there will be another Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie coming out, though not from Platinum Dunes.  This minor gleam of hope is dashed by the announcement that it will be coming out in 3-D.

Word is that producer Mark Burg wants to take the whole Leatherface concept and move it into the modern day, setting it in an “urban” environment and bringing it up to 2010.

This poses some serious boggles as far as that goes–for crying out loud, you’ve got what amounts to a seventy year old Leatherface, unless you try to do something with his age or make him all Jason-Voorhees-immortal or worse yet, introduce a NEW Leatherface.  Sure, having Leatherface run amok in, say, an upscale hotel or the ghetto might be entertaining.  Kind of a deranged Beverly Hillbillies or something.  But there’s entirely too much that could go wrong for me to hold out any kind of optimism on this one.

So will it work?  Only time will tell, but considering that Twisted Pictures is handling this one, it’s quite literally anybody’s guess.

Whoa.  I really hadn’t expected to see the Nightmare on Elm Street trailer up, and frankly, I had to watch it through once before I could even write about it.  I had already been rickrolled several times prior, you understand, and so I watched, and I was downright surprised.

See, the fact that Michael Bay is attached to this for anything more responsible than fetching coffee and signing checks has me pathologically unnerved.  But when I watched it, and saw how at least fairly close to the original it seemed, I was actually really surprised.  Sufficiently surprised to issue a statement of support for this one.

I’m amazed to say it but this might actually be good.  Jackie Earle Haley definitely has some serious chops, and his Rorschach was a great jumping off point for Krueger who, when you come right down to it, is essentially acting as a vigilante in his own twisted logic.  But anyway–the trailer is directly below, and rest assured, this one should amaze you as much as it did me.

Sarcasm is dripping off that title like drool from a fanboy’s mouth when you start talking about the next Guillermo Del Toro movie.

But it’s no less true for the scathing sarcasm–Michael Bay really IS planning yet another remake for his Platinum Dunes studio, and this time, he’s going after…The Tenant.

Yeah, I know, I’m kind of freaked out too.  Frankly, I hadn’t even HEARD of this relic of a bygone era, and had to investigate it.  Amazon didn’t even have it, and only the IMDB could save me here.

It was an old Roman Polanski film, for crying out loud.  It involved a man taking an apartment in which a man had committed suicide, and was apparently the inspiration for David Croenenburg, which proves that it’s going to be about three hundred pounds of weird in a half-pound sack.  Roman Polanski by himself is a catastrophic study in screwed-up but when you consider that this helped MAKE CROENENBURG, well, then there’s nothing to do but just lock up the acid and keep your sponsor on speed dial because your world is about to get horrendously messed up.

So the thought of Michael Bay trying to remake this steaming pile of lunacy just puzzles me.  I actually admit I’m looking forward to it.  What will a complete lack of talent do to a movie that’s such an incredible mindbomb that it made Croenenburg?

I’m so freaked out it’s not even funny.

Following the success of the Friday the 13^th remake, New Line and Platinum Dunes are moving ahead with a sequel.

More of a follow-up rather than a direct sequel, an all new cast is expected with Jason Voorhees donning the hockey mask for the villain. Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, who penned the reboot, recently began work on the script.

The reboot used elements from the first four films in the original franchise; however, this film won’t be doing any such homage to the other four sequels in the original series.

Marcus Nispel might return to helm the film, though it is expected someone else will be hired for the job.

With the Friday the 13th reboot coming up, it was only a matter of time before Freddy Krueger made his appearance. And that time is now, as Platinum Dunes co-heads Brad Fuller and Andrew Form told STYD that the deal is done to reboot the classic ‘80s horror franchise.

"It’s our next movie, hopefully shooting this spring" said Form, referring to Nightmare on Elm Street.

"It’s not Freddy cracking jokes. We want to make a horrifying movie. The concept is so scary, don’t fall asleep or you’ll die. This guy gets you when you’re most vulnerable, in your sleep. We love that. That’s the basis of the movie. It’ll be most similar to the first one but in terms of kills and dreams we’ll borrow from the entire series," says Fuller.

Original Freddy star Robert Englund will be back for a role, though someone new will step into the dream-hopping demon’s role.

It appears that plans to remake Kathryn Bigelow’s 1987 vampire western classic Near Dark have been cancelled. You can blame Twilight’s success for that, according to Empire.

"I think that ‘Twilight’ was the same type of thing we were going for although ‘Near Dark’ was a much darker, sexier, rated R version of that,” said producer Brad Fuller. “But I’m concerned that, conceptually, that ‘Near Dark’ and ‘Twilight’ are too similar in terms of a vampire movie. For now, that movie is on hold…with the success of that film [Twilight], we would not measure up. It’s not the right time to make that."

The original film had a young farmer falling in love with a girl to find out she’s a vampire. Platinum Dunes, the studio, is instead going forward with an as-yet-untitled supernatural thriller about satanic cults.