One of the most violent & disturbing films ever recorded. The poster promises human dart boards, brain surgery and dental hi-jinks... and that is not even barely a scrape of the surface!
Over the next 31 days I plan on reviewing MY PERSONAL FAVORITE HORROR FILMS... and I am going to do it in exactly 31 words!
Today's Entry (10/12/16) - Let Me In (2010)
That rare case when the remake is on par with the original, Smit-McPhee & Moretz shine as a bullied teen & his newfound friend... who happens to be a 12 year old VAMPIRE!
Over the next 31 days I plan on reviewing MY PERSONAL FAVORITE HORROR FILMS... and I am going to do it in exactly 31 words!
Today's Entry (10/10/16) - Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)
This movie gets a bad rap. An excellent use of the source material without having to be a direct rehash. They ditch found footage and implement the concept of lost time.
Over the next 31 days I plan on reviewing MY PERSONAL FAVORITE HORROR FILMS... and I am going to do it in exactly 31 words!
Today's Entry (10/7/16) - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
The granddaddy of all slasher films, this film’s use of psychological terror and off-screen violence going hand in hand with the limited gore to create a perfect synergy. Headcheese for all.
Over the next 31 days I plan on reviewing MY PERSONAL FAVORITE HORROR FILMS... and I am going to do it in exactly 31 words!
Today's Entry (10/6/16) - The Devil's Rejects (2005)
The very rare superior sequel, this is the grail of Zombie’s filmography. Vicious, raw & action packed. Insanely good use of music and imagery to create a total package. Tutti Fucking Fruity.
Over the next 31 days I plan on reviewing MY PERSONAL FAVORITE HORROR FILMS... and I am going to do it in exactly 31 words!
Today's Entry (10/3/16) - Audition (1999)
Miike's masterpiece, which is saying alot considering his filmography. An interesting twist on how finding an ideal mate can be TORTUROUS. You will never look at piano wire the same again!
Over the next 31 days I plan on reviewing MY PERSONAL FAVORITE HORROR FILMS... and I am going to do it in exactly 31 WORDS!
Today's entry (10/2/16) - Suicide Club (2001)
This Japanese film may be the most bizarre on the list. Suicide cults, J-Pop groups, white sacks and rolled up skin. Can you figure out who is behind the Suicide Club?
The horror genre has had many peaks and valley, but when it comes to the gore and slasher genres, 1987 is about as prime a year as there can be. Todd Rogers of Junk Fed was at that perfect,formative, age at the time, and takes us back to a time to the Halloween of dreams. Find out how he developed a latex allergy, used to "worship" the dead and watched Last House on the Left with his grandmother...
By the 8th grade my horror movie immersion was at its zenith. I had a subscription to Fangoria and would supplement the time in-between issues with copies of Gorezone, among others. I had amassed an impressive mask collection from Halloweens past, my favorite of which was the full head and shoulders rotted skull mask that I had worn the year I went as Big Ben from the movie House. Freddy Krueger and Iron Maiden posters decorated the walls of my bedroom (I wasn't even an Iron Maiden fan, I just loved Eddie, the band's undead mascot), a hockey mask hung from my bedpost, and a rubber severed hand gripped the bedroom doorknob. When I wasn’t wearing my Freddy Krueger sweater, I sported a Nightmare on Elm Street 3 T-Shirt or one that featured a glow-in-the-dark rib cage. I had just moved to Connecticut with my mom after having lived with dad for a few years in Massachusetts. My mother was genuinely worried.
1980s horror movie magazines
I’ve always had an appreciation for monsters and the macabre but in my single digit years I'd get my fix from more innocuous things like the classics shown on The Creature Double Feature, Scooby-Doo, or The Munsters. I didn’t miss the opportunity to tune in to the 3D broadcasts of Gorilla at Large and Creature from the Black Lagoon. But when it came to the more realistic blood and guts kind of stuff, I was terrified. One Halloween, an older next door neighbor came up to our apartment to show off his Halloween makeup. Trying to spare me grief, my friend Aaron bounded past him up the stairs calling, "it's only makeup, it's only makeup!"It looked like one of his eyes had melted into a bloody knot of flesh down one side of his face. Terrified, I broke into tears.
Despite the risk of running into something terrifying, I adored Halloween. I couldn’t wait for late September, when the back to school hoopla was stricken from department store shelves and replaced with Halloween provisions. In my neighborhood, most of the Halloween shopping was done at the local K-Mart, where an entire oasis dedicated to all things spooky had sprung up overnight. The isles were stocked with die cut cardboard decorations like witches, arched black cats, full-sized poseable skeletons and Frankenstein's Monsters, or the strangely textured plastic popcorn decorations which looked to me like crayons melted into the image of jack-o-lanterns, skulls and ghosts. There, I'd procure the obligatory set of glow-in-the-dark fangs and a tube of fake blood gel by Imagineering. Though I had no intention of going as a Dracula, these items served as party favors to celebrate the coming of Halloween.
Vampire Kit by Imagineering
Trick or treating at the end of the 1970s into the early 1980s meant that I'd be dressed in a cheap, store-bought costume that featured a vacuum formed mask and vinyl jumpsuit emblazoned with a bright illustration and/or logo depicting the very character you were supposed to be dressed as. These costumes, manufactured by either the Ben Cooper or Collegeville companies, were the standard throughout my tenure of trick-or-treating. I'd carefully select my costume from a stack of options sold in flimsy colorful boxes with cellophane windows from which eyeless faces peered creepily. The boxes featured a blank side panel stamped with the character name and costume size, and were stocked with these panels facing out making the costume selection process like a fun version of shoe shopping.
Not surprisingly, I tended to gravitate toward the Star Wars costumes, selecting one that would complement the one my best friend Aaron would be wearing. When, for two years in a row, he dressed as Darth Vader, I accompanied him as a Stormtrooper and then as Boba Fett. Aaron's mother and grandmother ran a Halloween costume creation and rental business out of the basement of our shared three family house, so on a couple of occasions our costumes benefited from their combined talents. One year, Aaron's vinyl Darth Vader smock was replaced with a more theatrically accurate custom job, and a few years later my Yoda costume featured cloth robes, with a built-in hunched back. With our chaperones on the sidewalk keeping a lookout for Halloween baddies, we'd stand shoulder to shoulder with the rest of the neighborhood kids ringing door bells and holding out our plastic jack-o-lantern buckets collecting treats that kept our dentists in business. I loved kicking though the leaves in our neighborhood on those brisk nights, face sweating under the cheap plastic mask, peering out at the other kids in their similar getups. Inevitably, two kids would pass and crane their heads to look at each other in compensation for the obliterated peripheral vision realizing that they had made identical costume choices. We were surreal in our motionless faces going door to door as miniature members of Galactic Empire, Batmen with chiseled man-chins, Strawberry Shortcakes, Smurfs, Hazzard County cousins, perma-smiling Wonder Women, or Hairy & Scary Draculas and She-Hulks with rooted curly hair. We'd press our masks tighter to our faces, allowing a clearer view through the eye-holes, and try our best not to trip on a porch step or curb and risk tearing our flimsy plastic smocks. It was unsafe, a little spooky, and inherently thrilling.
Ben Cooper Hairy & Scary Dracula mask
In the presence of my father, my fortitude was tested and primed regularly. On many occasions he'd drag me to the drive-in to see movies like Dawn of the Dead, Mother's Day, Cujo, and Christine. Also, my dad was a moth drawn to The Movie Loft on TV-38 when it aired something like The Shining or The Exorcist. I viewed all of these movies from under a blanket, or sleeping bag, covering my face when the terror was too much to bear, and all before the age of ten. My dad would explain that the blood and viscera were only special effects, but this never alleviated my fear, nor did it deter him from exposing me to such images. These movies were terror-fuel for my active imagination but were benign compared to the horror my father experienced during his draft in Vietnam, most of which replaced typical "when I was your age" mythology. For him, the horror and gore media consumption was a way to master and control his trauma. Unfortunately, being a kid, I wasn’t as well versed in compartmentalizing. I masterfully fashioned monsters and maniacs out of the shadows in my bedroom which were marginally repelled by a mandatory. In addition I'd cocoon myself under the covers to get any sleeping done. Understanding that horror would be a foundation of my relationship with my father, combined with my Y chromosome, I ultimately relented to and relished in the macabre in a sort of if you can't beat 'em, join 'em way. In the fifth grade, I acquired a book called Make-Up Monsters by Marcia Lynn Cox. It offered step-by-step instructions on how to create make-up effects for an assortment of monsters. Along with standards like Count Dracula, The Mummy and the Wolfman, it featured slightly more grotesque tutorials for things like Reptile Man, who looked like a hideous Kermit the Frog, and Dripping Face, whose face was...well, dripping. I tried out many of the books' tutorials, and did achieve some success with the ones that called for supplies within my grasp. However, when it came to creating the werewolf-which called for Dr. Scholl's Lamb's Wool for the fur and the wax that comes on the outside of cheese wheels for the teeth-I was out of luck. Mine wasn’t a cheese wheel family, and apparently lamb's wool wasn’t in high demand in my neighborhood. Unable to find the makeup supplies, I settled for my first rubber mask, a Wolfman, effectively graduating from my Ben Cooper Days.
Make-Up Monsters by Marcia Lynn Cox
Make-Up Monsters served as a gateway to magazines like Cinemagic, Starlog, and Fangoria, which offered readers a behind the scenes peek at movie magic including the very special effects that had frightened me not long before. Armed with insider knowledge on how it all worked, I became obsessed with horror movies, the gorier the better. This revelation coincided with my family's introduction to the VCR. My dad and I would frequent the local video store with a special focus on the horror section. If it was in the horror section we rented it. Unfortunately, this meant that we'd sit through a lot of stinkers, and certainly my adolescence would have been just fine had I gone without viewing I Spit on Your Grave. In the same room as my father. And my grandmother. In the 8th grade, my art class converted the studio portion of the art room into a haunted House. We created a maze through the studio by duct taping refrigerator boxes together and painting them black. We built a tiny graveyard in the corner by the kiln and painted skeletons, ghosts, and dismembered bodies on the walls in white paint that would glow when lit with black lights. I loaned my mask collection to the effort and created a generous amount of fake blood with corn syrup and food coloring. Our cast of creeps included witches, a werewolf, Jason Voorhees, a grim reaper, Norman Bates and Marion Crane. I made a Leatherface costume for myself by hand sewing a mask out of denim that I painted and shined with shoe polish to give it a leathery look. Prop chainsaws weren’t easy to come by in 1987 so I was resigned to wielding a plastic axe. For the week of Halloween, the younger classes from the school as well as students from a couple of neighboring schools would make their way through our haunted house as we tried our best to terrify them. Here, my father's questionable decision to overexpose me to horror movies at a young age served me well. Unfortunately it didn't have many other practical uses other than a few interesting conversations with a shrink.
Posing in our haunted house costumes, 1987
A video of our haunted house exists. It's a dress rehearsal shot with all of the lights on but it captures the effort that we all put into it. I find my commitment to the performance and pre-pubescent squeal of my voice embarrassing; nearly impossible for me to watch. Nonetheless, I'm glad that it exists. It's a time capsule into one of my favorite Halloweens of all time.
I entertained the idea of moving to California after high school to go special effects school and I even went as far as ordering brochures from schools advertised in Fangoria. I imagined myself as the next Rick Baker, Tom Savini, or Kevin Yagher. Around this time, my mother went from being a lapsed catholic to born again Christian. Her concerns about my fascination with the macabre were rendered as proof that she needed to save my soul and I was forced to take down my posters, and get rid of my masks and props. I packed them up and kept them at my dad's house, where my horror mania was born. Years later, my mother forced me to take down my Jim Morrison posters in a similar effort to keep me out of the Devil's hands. Her concern was that I was worshipping the dead. The Doors are one of my favorite bands, but I can't say that my fandom ever reached worship status. Not in the way a person might worship Jesus Christ, who happens to be a dead guy. Eventually, my horror mania faded. Instead of makeup effects, I opted to study art at a local college. My interests broadened and I felt that most of the horror movies released after the 80s paled in comparison to those that had come before. This is not to say that I don't love a good horror movie, when a good one comes along that is. Most modern offerings suffer from hyper-slick production, numbingly predictable plots, and inflated budgets yet neglect to tap organic fear that was so present in the iconic movies of the 70s and 80s. Still, I celebrated Halloween with zeal, planning my costumes at the close of summer. My last big hurrah was Nosferatu costume that involved teeth and nails that made eating and bathroom usage very difficult. You try unzipping your fly with Lee Press On Nails.
Nosferatu hanging with the Grim Reaper, 1997
It's probably for the best that I started packing away all of my horror business with the rest of the Halloween decorations every year. While I still disagree with my mother regarding the state of my soul, my fanaticism was becoming an eccentricity akin to people who wearing Christmas sweaters all year round. It's mostly harmless but a little bit weird. Also, I’ve developed a bit of a latex allergy. Just touching a rubber mask makes my lips go numb. I'm told that this is the beginning stages of anaphylaxis, and is likely attributable to repeated exposure to latex. Too much of a good thing I suppose. I haven't really put much effort into Halloween lately. But what I would give for an adult sized Ben Cooper costume, and a neighborhood that welcomed a costumed man in his forties begging for candy.
X-Necrosha was a huge cross over event that took place in the various X comics of the Marvel Universe (X-Men, X-Force, New Mutants, etc) back in 2009 involving the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club Selene and her quest to become a goddess. Part of the plot revolved around her resurrecting past mutants who had died in the past and involved things like zombification and vampirism. During the original run of these books the higher ups at Marvel thought this would be a great opportunity to cross over these book covers with horror movie classic posters. Lost Boys, Dracula, The Exorcist, The Terminator, Blade Trinity, Underworld, From Dusk Till Dawn, Interview With A Vampire, John Carpenters Vampire$ all get there shot... and these covers are just fantastic! I never seen these when they were out, but they are boss. I am definitely gonna search these particular issues out in cons to come. Check out a full gallery of the covers after the jump along with the original posters that they are based on...
X-Necrosha #1
Necrosha: The Gathering One Shot
X-Force #21
X-Force #22
X-Force #23
X-Force #24
X-Force #25
New X Men Vol 1 #141
New X-Men vol 2 #8
Fletch is killing me with these finds!!!! Keep em coming!!!!
Finally... there is justice in the world! Trick r' Treat is one of the greatest movies ever made that was not theatrically released. First time director Michael Dougherty really knocked this horror anthology out of the park, and boy did he get a hell of a cast together for the film. Brain Cox, Dyaln Baker, Anna Paquin, and Leslie Bibb are just a few of the names that litter the IMDB listing for this movie... and all of them delivered on the screen. We were also introduced to one of the most memorable ORIGINAL horror characters in a really long time in the burlap sack headed Sam, who is tiny and spooky as shit. But when the movie was made back in 2007, it sat on the shelf due to a various amount of asinine reasons. The film languished on Legendary Pictures back list for almost 2 years, doing only a handful of screenings at various special film festivals and events like San Diego Comic Con. But in 2009 the film finally gained some traction with the release of the film on Blu Ray and DVD, and it really took off after the start of streaming via Netflix in 2010 to become a cult classic. In the years that followed Trick R' Treat has received cult status due to things like the 24 hour marathon showing Fear Net offers to its viewers on Halloween and statues/toys from reputable collectible companies like Neca... and it is still expanding its audience with roadshow type screenings of the film. Now the news comes out that at one of those screenings in LA recently that we will be seeing a Trick R' Treat 2 sooner rather than later! Check out the news after the jump...
I for one can't wait to see what Dougherty has in store for us. I always have loved the anthology format, and Trick r' Treat really knocked it out of the box for me. I also feel like the film has enough of a cult status that will generate interest from talented actors & actresses to want to make the film. Finally, I always love the little 30 second short films that Dougherty throws together for Fear Net to promote the amount of time before Halloween arrives. They are brilliant. I know my buddies Rob Martin and Jeff Bond will be excited by this idea. Check out the details of the screening and some pics from that night below...
Fellow fans of Michael Dougherty's cult classic Trick 'r Treat, get ready to rejoice! The news we've all been waiting for has finally arrived! After years of longing for it, a sequel is officially on its way!
Sean Decker called in from the screening at the Egyptian Theatre which took place during the Los Angeles Beyond Fest. The scene went down like this...
Tonight happened to be director Dougherty's birthday, and while taking part in a panel hosted by Seth Green and featuring the likes of Brian Cox and Bryan Singer, "Sam" himself (itself?) brought Dougherty out a card which read simply, "MAKE A SEQUEL." Dougherty responded that it’s not his call… it’s Thomas Tull from Legendary’s call.
Then Tull stood up in the audience and exclaimed, "I can’t say no to Sam. Let’s make a sequel!" At this point the title card for Trick 'r Treat 2 splashed across the screen, and the crowd went CRAZY!
Great, great news! Stay tuned for an official announcement and more! In the interim check out some images from the event courtesy of Sean.
I have been waiting to get some promo materials from the upcoming horror film 'You're Next' because it looks fucking fantastic. It revolves around a family reunion that takes place at a country estate, and the group of family members who are gathered there are menaced by a set of killers looking to make the weekend a bloody mess. These bad ass murderers have creepy ass animal masks and plan on making easy work of the unsuspecting family... but may meet a challenge from some unlikely family members who aren't ready to just role over and die. The movie is a few years old but has been in distribution hell... and with it's recent screening at SXSW, it is gaining steam again. The trailer comes out tomorrow, but so far we got some cool character posters of the killers... and they are very menacing to say the least. the movie comes out August 23rd, and you should 'Like' the movies Facebook page by clicking here. I will post the trailer once it is out, and you can see the character posters after the jump...
One of the biggest parts of the movie going experience for me has always been the movies promotional posters. Usually it is the first piece of promotional material we ever get to see about a film, and it is the first place we begin to form an impression about what the film may develop into or actually be about. A good poster can actually inspire you to want to see a film you may have no interest in whatsoever, or may heighten your interest even more due to the images of the film finally being revealed. We post a ton of film related posters here at CCD, so I thought it would be kind of cool to go back and look at some of my favorites from a particular group or genres of films. Today we take on one of my all time favorite genres, horror movies... specifically horror movie sequels!!! Read more after the jump...
I love to collect movie posters and have recently been using them to decorate my house. It is so great to walk around my crib and see some of my favorite film memories up on the wall as decoration. No through the power of the Internet posters and frames are much easier to come by. Posters can be found almost anywhere, most notably AllPosters.com which has one of the hugest selections you will ever see. I also use WholesalePosterFrames.com for all my framing needs, because they offer many possibilities when it comes to frame selections, from fancy and expensive to cheap and efficient. I even have two of the posters from this list that is about to follow up in my house right now! Moving right along....
1) Friday the 13th Part 2 - 1981
The reason I decided to make this post was because I awoke early this morning to the opening scene of Friday the 13th Part 2... and I was instantly transported back into time to my mom and pop video shop on 110 st in Richmond Hill, NY. Home video rentals were driven by the horror genre, and teens renting horror movies made up a huge percentage of the films being rented. Store owners weren't stupid, so the began to highlight film posters for horror movies front and center. One of the creepiest posters I ever remember seeing had to be Friday the 13th Part 2. The silhouette of a menacing Jason's body (no picture of Jason's face in sight) carrying a bloody axe wigged me out, and always scared me more because I knew this was the first real incarnation of Jason (given that it was Mama Vorhees in Part 1). Everytime I walked into that store the poster creeped me out... and that is why it was of my all time favorites!
2) Evil Dead 2 - 1987
Is there a more iconic horror movie sequel image than the Evil Dead 2 poster? Cause if there is, I certainly can't remember... What makes the Evil Dead 2 poster so fantastic has to be two things: 1) The simplistic nature of the design and 2) The fucked up fact that the skeleton has eyeballs! Come on, a bare skull with normal fucking eyeballs? That is so fucked up!!! What I find most ironic is that the skull creature never appears in Evil Dead 2 at all... despite the fact there are many other deadite monsters that could have made an appearance on the poster for Sam Raimi's masterpiece. Skeleton's would play an important part in one of my favorite scenes in Evil Dead 3 (Army of Darkness), but that is a whole different conversation for another day....
3) Halloween III: Season of the Witch - 1982
What can I say... I am a sucker for 80's horror, the cheesier the better! Halloween III is bad... epically bad in fact. It is the first (and only) film in the franchises long and storied history that deviates from Michael Myers being the main threat and instead focuses on the evil owner of a company that manufactures Halloween masks. Silver Shamrock's mask have a little something extra in them, and owner Cochran plans to use it to kill many children in the process. This one falls into the so bad its good categories, and I always loved the creepy witch mask image on the top of the poster as well as the images of the three unsuspecting children trick r' treating. So awesome...
4) Creepshow 2 - 1987
Once again, I have to turn to my youth for the next entry. Creepshow was fantastic, but Creepshow 2 improved every aspect of the original film and then some. They also came with the funk for the poster, playing up the movie theme from the first films poster by showing what Death himself would look like taking in a flick. I love the old school feel of the poster, and it brings back some great movie memories. Old Chief Woodn'head, The Raft, and The Hitch Hiker are three of my favorite horror stories ever. Great poster from a great movie...
5) Silence of the Lambs -1991
Technically Silence of the Lambs is a sequel, following up the very underrated Manhunter as the second time we meet the charming cannibal Hannibal Lecter. It features the very stoic looking Jodie Fosters pure visage being obscured by the colorful moth (a key plot point in the film). It is creepy as fuck, and also a great job of using themes from the film to create a killer poster. I know Silence of the Lambs is often considered a thriller more than a horror movie, but in my mind any movie about serial killers and cannibals is a horror movie to me!
So there you go. Enjoy my picks, and get some movie posters of your own to decorate your crib. What better way to celebrate the films you love than to put them up on your own walls. See ya next time...
This is a very interesting anthology horror film project from the gang over at Magnet. 26 different directors. 26 short films. Shot in 15 countries around the globe. All of the clips having one thing in common: they deal with death in some way, shape or form. There are some great directors on this list (check out the list after the jump), from Nacho Vigalondo to Ti West. My interest is piqued. Magnet has been hitting homers left & right lately (Tucker & Dale vs Evil, V/H/S, The Innkeepers) so I will definitely give it a shot. It will be hitting a limited theatrical run and VOD towards the end of January. Enjoy the trailer after the jump....
So here is the second set of Hartter's wonderful Halloween Movie Poster Project. If you like the first set (see #1-15 here), than you are really gonna love these. Sean took a turn for the seriously weird and obscure with this second set, and he has also added a few fan favorite horror films (and some of mine as well!!!). Later on today I will be posting the CCD Exclusive Movie Poster that Sean did for us as a Halloween treat! Enjoy #16-31 after the jump...
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