“HOLY JUMPED-UP BALDHEADED JESUS PALOMINO!”
I’m back, folks! Sorry for the absence last weekend. The world conspired against me and won for a once. The tide has changed and I have returned with a few more tidbits. I say a few because not much has really happened in the past two weeks outside of the morsels below and a few bigger stories that have been covered throughout the week. Enough with the chit-chat though. Let’s get this bastard a-movin’…
As many of you know, Eli Roth is finally returning to the director’s chair after being absent from feature filmmaking since 2007’s extremely underrated Hostel: Part II. While he’s appeared in and produced a ton of stuff since, it’s nice to see him back where he belongs. He’ll be rearing his head again with a one-two punch of The Green Inferno and Thanksgiving. The former is gearing up to begin shooting next month and a cast has finally been announced: Daryl Sabara, Aaron Burns, Kirby Bliss Blanton, Magda Apanowicz, and Sky Ferreria. It’s a cannibal flick inspired by the works of Ruggero Deodoto and Antonio Climati and they will actually be shooting the film somewhere up the Amazon River in an actual native village with none of usual modern niceties (running water, electricity, etc.). What are these natives getting in return? Their first boat. If you are laughing, hold that chuckling for something more fitting. These people had never witnessed the wizardry of film or television before and needed to know what in the flying fuck this production team was going to be doing in their village. So they rigged up a way to show them something on a TV. What did they show these villagers for their very first film experience. CANNIBAL motherfucking HOLOCAUST!?! The apparent reaction? They thought it was hilarious. I find this both exciting and disturbing. If we never see The Green Inferno or Thanksgiving on the silver screen over the next two years because Roth & co. have seemingly disappeared…well, it’s not like the signs weren’t there from the get-go. The Amazon is a treacherous place regardless, so keep safe you loony bastards!
I Spit On Your Grave Too, the sequel to the 2010 remake, is nearing production. Steven Monroe is returning to direct the follow-up, which finds a young woman trying to make it as a model in New York. She shows up at what appears to be a legitimate photo shoot and, well, you know the rest. After being kidnapped, raped, tortured, AND buried alive in a foreign country, the vengeful vixen sets about getting some payback. I’ve heard good things about the remake, but have yet to pull the trigger on watching it. Why? I finally caught the original earlier this year and was significantly less than impressed. I’m sorry folks, but it’s a piece of shit. I’ll pop the remake in eventually, but my disappointment in the so-called “classic” original has dampened my enthusiasm for the time being.
Roasting your chestnuts this Dec.!!!
Speaking of remakes, we’ve covered the Silent Night, Deadly Night [another disappointing “classic”] one before. As expected it’s merely getting a limited release before hitting Blu-ray/DVD. Silent Night will have its theatrical bow on November 30th and then hit store shelves a few days later on December 4th. The Steven C. Miller (The Aggression Scale)-directed redo stars Donal Logue, Jaime King, Malcolm McDowell, Jamie Kennedy, Ellen Wong, Brendan Fehr, and Lisa Marie. Perhaps I’ll pull a double-feature of this and I Spit On Your Grave (2010) at some point and then dish out my thoughts. Would any of you be up for that? Moving on…
Sinister director Scott Derrickson is developing an adaptation of the Stephen King novella The Breathing Method for Blumhouse Productions. If it comes together, the entirety of King’s anthology Different Seasons will have been adapted to film. The project is in very early stages at the moment and might not be Derrickson’s next project.
Blumhouse will also be getting into the King business with Mercy, an adaptation of “Gramma” from Skeleton Crew. Peter Cornwell (The Haunting In Connecticut) will helm this particular tale of terror and Frances O’Connor is set to star. Given the massive amount of King projects over at Warner Bros., as well as these and a few others, it looks like we’re in for a Frankenstorm of King adaptations over the next few years.
Not horror news per se, but Heather Langenkamp will have a cameo role in Star Trek Into Darkness. She and her hubby have done make-up effects for both films in the newly rebooted franchise…and also worked on The Cabin In The Woods!
Clive Barker really is the Quentin Tarantino (circa mid-90s to mid-00s, at least) of literature. Ever-promising upcoming projects, but rarely actually delivering them. What we do get is almost always worth the wait, but the constant teasing gets exasperating at times. He was proclaiming loud and proud last year that The Scarlet Gospels, his Hellraiser/Lord of Illusions crossover novel, was finally finished. A massive tome, it apparently only needed some editing and a publisher willing to unleash it upon the horror-fiends of the world. Apparently that wasn’t actually true though. Now he is claiming that it is only partially written and he likely won’t get around to actually finishing it until he wraps up the final two Abarat novels. I’m cool with you putting your current (and best-selling) franchise ahead of this long-promised work, Clive. No biggie there. What I’m not cool with is being lied to. Don’t tell me it’s virtually completed and I should have it in my hands within a year or so when you haven’t finished writing it and likely won’t for a few more years. Just be honest, that’s all I ask!
“I’m on my way…I’m on my WAAAAY….HOME SWEET HOOOOME!”
Warner Bros. recently struck a deal with Paramount for home video rights on upwards of 600 of the company’s titles. Included in said deal are the rights to the Friday The 13th franchise. What does this mean? It means we will be getting a COMPLETE franchise set on Blu-ray/DVD at some point. For those not aware, Paramount owns the rights to the first 8 films in the franchise, while Warner Bros (via subsidiary New Line) own Jason Goes To Hell, Jason X, Freddy vs. Jason, and the Friday The 13th remake. While I doubt the latter two will appear in any future set (especially since the ANOES remake wasn’t included in that particular franchise’s recent set), this will mark the first time the 9th & 10th films in the series will be able to sit alongside the preceding entries in one collection. Paramount put out nice special editions of their entries on DVD over the past few years, but stopped porting them up to Blu after the first three. While they are ALL available toe watch in HD on Netflix Instant, the rest are still awaiting Blu release. I’m sure WB will port all current extras up just like they have done with this Fall’s A Nightmare On Elm Street collection, but it remains to be seen if anything new will be created for it. More as it develops, both with this and any other pending horror title that they might have snagged.
Bound for Blu-ray in 2013!
What’s the latest from Scream Factory? The Vampire Lovers (1970), The Incredible Melting Man (1977), Schizoid (1980), The Godsend (1980), and X-Ray (1981) have all been added to next year’s release schedule. A-fucking-men, my brothers & sisters. I’ve only seen one of those (the first one), but you know what? I think I might pick ’em all up. This label is the closest I’ll ever get to reliving my VHS-capades at the locale rental hole from when I was little. A few horror flicks of (likely) questionable quality with badass cover art coming out every month next year? Yes please!
And that’s it for this week. Given that Halloween is almost upon us, we can only hope for a giant smattering of horror news over the coming weeks. I’ll be right here to dish it out to you, be it thick or thin. See you next week!