If you woke up to find you had super powers, would you squeeze into your sister’s tights and set out to fight other guys in tights … or would you use those powers to scare kids and get women naked? That’s the dilemma facing three teenage boys in 20th Century Fox’s thought provoking found-footage sci-fi drama Chronicle.
Directed by Josh Trank from a script by Max Landis, son of John Landis (An American Werewolf in London), the film stars Michael B. Jordan (“Friday Night Lights”), Alex Russell (Bait), Dane DeHaan (“In Treatment”), Joe Vaz (Lost Boys: The Thirst), Anna Wood, and Ashley Hinshaw (Rites of Passage).
Want to see a fight between a zombie and a shark? Then you won’t want to miss Blue Underground’s special midnight showings of horror icon Lucio Fulci’s 1979 gore classic Zombie, playing in theaters Oct. 21 and 22. Digitally restored and remastered from the original uncut and uncensored camera negative, the film will also be available on DVD and Blu-ray on 2-disc sets on Oct. 25.
Fulci’s ZOMBIE contains the greatest scene ever committed to celluloid, and that is a zombie fighting a shark. Fulci put a stuntman dressed as a zombie in a tank with a live shark and made them fight – it’s one of the craziest, most insane and irresponsible scenes ever put on film.
This was 1980, years before CG. And the zombie wins! To this day, nobody knows how in the hell he did it, it’s simply jaw-dropping. There’s nothing you will see in any modern zombie movie that comes close to what Fulci did in 1980. Viva Fulci!
Zombie, originally released in Italy as an unofficial sequel to George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, centers on a woman’s (Tisa Farrow) search for her sick and missing father (Ugo Bologna) on the island of Matool, where a local doctor (Richard Johnson) is attempting to find a way to stop the undead from eating the living. The film is beloved by gore-geeks and cited as influential by filmmakers such as Roth and Guillermo del Toro.
Zombie plays in Los Angeles tonight at the New Beverly Cinema. To find a theater showing near you, go here.
Back in my youth, when I used to frequent bars to meet up with hookers friends, I sometimes arrived too early and had no choice but to sit alone and pretend to watch whatever game was on the big screen. Without fail, some sports-loving social-butterfly would approach me and ask my opinion on a game, team, or player.
Unfortunately, I was too be busy setting fires and torturing small animals as a kid to ever take an interest in sports. To this day, I feel so excluded when people carry on about football, basketball, hockey, ping-pong, and so on. But, that changes today … today, I’m talking football!
Cheerleaders for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers recently took their tone and scantily-clad butts down to the Howl-O-Scream haunted event at the Busch Gardens theme park in Tampa, FL. While the maze (see video below) doesn’t look all that frightful, the girls nonetheless shriek, run, and jiggle like true scream queens.
Dimension Films premiered a teaser for director John Gulager’s Piranha 3-DD at the 6th annual Spike TV Scream Awards. The clip is only 30-seconds long, but reveals David Hasselhoff’s inspired cameo and a pair of running DD-breasts so spectacular you’ll spend the rest of the work week searching the web for the aspiring actress that owns them.
Colombian actress Catalina Sandino Moreno has signed on to star in writer/director Tommy O’Haver’s (Ella Enchanted) new psycho-killer thriller Spree. The 30-year-old looker will costar opposite “The Big C’s” Hugh Dancy in a story that follows a would-be groom as he murders everyone at his bachelor party while recording his kills on a flip cam.
Hmm. I thought it was common practice to just kill the strippers.
Moreno, an Academy Award nominee for her performance in 2004’s drug trafficking drama Maria Full of Grace, is coming off of Summit’s The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, in which she played Mexican vamp Maria. She will next be seen in Chilean director Sebastian Silva’s Magic, Magic. a vacation-set frightener costarring Emily Browning and Juno Temple.
Charlize Theron is set to produce and star in Summit Entertainment’s remake of the Dutch ghost-thriller Zwart Water (known internationally as Two Eyes Staring). According to Heat Vision, Exorcism of Emily Rose director Scott Derrickson will helm the project from a script by Rose co-writer Paul Harris Boardman.
Zwart Water centers on a nine-year-old girl who befriends the malevolent spirit of her slightly deranged mother’s dead twin. Theron will play the girl’s mother and produce under her Denver and Delilah Films shingle.
The Academy award-winning starlet will next be seen in the hilariously twisted Diablo Cody (Jennifer’s Body) penned comedy Young Adult, Ridley Scott’s epic Alien counterpart Prometheus and Universal Pictures’ dark re-imagining of Snow White and the Huntsman.
Rocker-turned-director Rob Zombie continues to dust off horror icons for his now-in-production rock-and-roll witchcraft frightener The Lords of Salem. Oft nude scream queen Barbara Crampton, best known for her roles in Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator and From Beyond, is the latest to join Zombie’s eclectic cast.
Says Zombie:
Salem re-animates! Barbara Crampton has joined the cast of THE LORDS OF SALEM as Virginia Cable, a camera operator for a local kid’s show at Salem Public Access TV called LOBSTER JOE’S FISHY FUN SHOW. She should be safe enough working there… or is she?
Joining Crampton in the project are old-schoolers Dee Wallace (The Howling), Meg Foster (They Live), Lisa Marie (Ed Wood), Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead, 1978), Richard Lynch (The Sword and the Sorcerer), Billy Drago (Vamp), Bruce Dern (Silent Running), Ernest Thomas (“What’s Happening”) and Maria Conchita Alonso (The Running Man).
The Lords of Salem follows a 300-year-old coven of witches masquerading as a rock outfit to take over a small town. Oren Peli, Jason Blum, and Steven Schneider—the team behind Paranormal Activity and Insidious—will produce through their company Haunted Films.
Crampton, now 52, will also be seen next year in surprise Toronto International Film Festival darling You’re Next, a hardcore home invasion thriller starring Step Up 3’s Sharni Vinson that Lionsgate hopes to launch into a franchise.
Maya Entertainment, the folks behind the fun ’80s-inspired psycho-bitch thriller Playing House, are back to their evil ways with the new gruesome slasher Beware, out on DVD today. Directed by Jason Daly, the indie-frightener stars sexy/curvy newcomer Brandy Whitford (pictured above).
The film’s synopsis reads:
The town of Shady Grove holds many dark secrets. Amongst them is the sadistic tale of “Shane,“ a boy who was tortured and chained to a tree as a youngster. Legend has it that he wanders the woods in search of revenge. But no proof of his existence has ever been discovered… until now.
Beware costars Adam Leadbeater (“True Blood”), Alex Livinalli (Mandrake), Cecilia Huete (Carpe Diem) and Colombian stunner Vivi Pineda (“Perro Amor”). To ogle learn more about Brandy Whitford, visit her Facebook fan page.
Katie Featherston is reuniting with Paranormal Activity director Oren Peli to shake things up on an episode of ABC’s new Peli-produced supernatural adventure series “The River.” Featherston leaked the news via her Twitter account last week, but didn’t reveal any details about her role. She did, however, provide the following update late last night:
Shooting at night in the dark jungle … spooky.
“The River” revolves around the search for wildlife expert and TV personality Emmet Cole, who has gone missing while shooting footage in the Amazon. The show stars Bruce Greenwood (Super 8), Leslie Hope (“24”), Joe Anderson (The Crazies), Jeff Galfer (“All My Children”), Eloise Mumford (“Lonestar”) and Thomas Kretschmann (Hostel 3).
Jaume Collet-Serra (Orphan, Unknown) directs the pilot from a script by Peli, Michael Perry (Paranormal Activity 2), and veteran scribe Michael Green (“Heroes”). No word yet as to when exactly the mid-season replacement show will air.
Pell James is set to star in Dark Circles, the first announced frightener for 2012 from After Dark Originals. She joins a cast that includes Jonathan Schaech (ChromeSkull: Laid to Rest 2), Philippe Brenninkmeyer (Beerfest), Michael Patrick Rogers (Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3-D) and Andrea Frankle (The Haunting in Georgia).
The film’s synopsis reads:
Urbanites Alex and Penny escape their stuffy city life to raise their newborn in the country. Instead, they find their spacious farmhome harbors horrors that threaten their relationship, imperil their son, and drive them to acts that neither believed they were capable of, but both are powerless to stop.
Horror fans may recognize James as stab victim Cecelia Shepard in David Fincher’s snorefest Zodiac and as sexy coke-head Bobbi in Jennifer Lynch’s superb serial-killer thriller Surveillance. The 34-year-old starlet also appeared in the popular cult comedy Fanboys.
Paul Soter (of moderately humorous comedy troupe Broken Lizard … ok, they suck) is attached to direct Dark Circles.
