Is the return of the cherished monster rally a healthy indicator of creature features to come, or is have we just reached the bottom of the barrel and are mixing things up just to appear fresh? In all likelihood it was Underworld that started the trend with its war between Werewolves and Vampires, but a few years later another project is hoping to combine vampires with the current fan favourite, zombies. From CHUD.

In Huston’s novel, vampires are, of course, afflicted with a virus, causing them to give up Diet Coke and forcing them to drink blood to survive. They’re keeping a low profile in Manhattan, but have their own sub-societal culture, complete with cliques varying from corporate suits to biker gangs. The protagonist is private eye Joe Pitt, hired to track down a high-profile daughter in the middle of a subculture at war against zombies, wraiths and the infighting vampire factions.

Alright, so they’re probably pre-Romero zombies as opposed to the modern type. But it’s just a matter of time before we once again see werewolves, vampires, the undead and mad scientists rubbing shoulders once again.

The infamous gossips at Page Six of the New York Post reveal the story behind Eli Roth’s new poster for Hostel II, which shows actress Bijou Phillips nude and beheaded. Uh oh.

Even better, the photo shoot for it was at the El Royale apartment complex in Hollywood with all the windows open. “The neighbors got an eyeful,” said our spy. Not that Phillips cares - she’s an exhibitionist.

Sex mixed with violence and a dash of dehumanization? Roth is mixing up a heady brew of controversy over this one. Maybe the MPAA-approved meat poster didn’t get the reaction he was hoping for. You can see the poster here, but be warned, it is definitely NSFW.

Eli Roth has confirmed at the New York Comic-Con that his next project after Hostel II will in fact be an adaptation of Stephen King’s Cell, the script for which is currently being written by 1408 screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. In other Roth news, Cinematical chatted to the director at the convention as he tried to juggle press conferences with meeting King to discuss the feature, and they certainly let him cut loose.

“…you know, the ‘Saw’ guys, we check in with each other. They call me and they’re like ‘Oh, we just filmed this fuckin’ scene and we got this guy and he’s got all these piercings and we’re going to rip ‘em out and he blows up.’ And I’m like, ‘Okay, Fuck! I had cut to interior torture room, Whitney gets her belly button ring ripped out.’ And I just crossed it out of the script. ‘Goddamn it! That was the perfect torture!’. We actually check in with each other, none of us want to repeat the same deaths they’re doing. I notice there’s the same plastic sheeting in ‘Saw III’ then we had in ‘Hostel: Part II’ but it’s okay. I guess Jigsaw and the factory, they all go to the same Torture Depot. We check in and talk about every kill and about what got in through the MPAA. There’s a real good ‘Splat Pack Line of Communication’.”

While he’s at it Roth expounds on The Signal, Thanksgiving, Tarantino and Woody Allen.

It’s obvious that the New York Comic-Con would be a hotbed of nerd activity, but I still find it shocking over just how much of that nerd energy is devoted to horror. From Eli Roth to Wes Craven to Stephen King, it appears that the convention was bursting with news from the world of horror. One unlikely name to add to that list would be Kevin Smith. As some of you may remember, Smith has been threatening to film a horror movie for a few months now. At the convention he solidified his stance somewhat by stating that he intends to shoot two films back-to-back within a year.

“The comedy we need some winter weather for us, so I imagine sometime post-January we’ll be shooting that. But the horror movie we don’t … need winter for, so I think we’ll be doing that kind of like soon. And then we’ll probably see which one is done first and put it out there.”

Smith has always been hit or miss for me, but I will be interested to see how someone does in a genre they’ve expressed a distaste for.

I had no idea what a big deal the New York Comic-Con would be. One of the major announcements to come out of the convention is the confimation that J. Michael Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5, is currently working up the script for Max Brooks’ World War Z. IGN relates some of what he had to say about the project.

“It’s very political, very smart, very cagey, but there’s no main character. So you have to create who the interviewer is and give him some background and bring him from place to place to place to place. And they said, ‘Feel free to get as political as you want, as incisive as you want, to play with it. You could look at this as a Katrina kind of catastrophe.’ But I’m being very faithful to the book, letter by letter when I can, and I’m on about page 70 right now and I’m really happy with it.”

Straczynski also mentions the possibility that since the film is being produced under Brad Pitt’s company that the actor may appear in the movie. I’m not that familiar with Straczynski’s work, but as I understand it he takes a very hard line on realism within genre, something a project like this could use. Here’s hoping he’s the right choice.

I used to read like a locust eats. Instead of picking my way through different titles by different authors I would pick one author and just devour practically everything he or she wrote then move onto the next victim. One advantage of this approach is that I’m fairly well-rounded in what I’ve read, but unfortunately I made my way through so many of them so quickly that most stories barely made a dent. One that did was Clive Barker’s Midnight Meat Train, which has been hovering over a cinematic production for some time now. Rope of Silicon reveals some interesting casting choices.

Vinnie Jones is set to star opposite Bradley Cooper in Clive Barker’s The Midnight Meat Train based on Barker’s short story published in his popular “Books of Blood” series. Jones will portray Mahogany, a serial killer who rides the midnight subways, looking for victims to butcher before the train reaches the last stop. Leslie Bibb and Brooke Shields have also taken roles in the film scheduled to begin production next month in Los Angeles.

I really like Vinne Jones, and I think a palpable sense of physical menace is almost mandatory for the role of Mahogany, so I certainly hope he’s capable of contributing to the subtler terrors in the story. If, that is, any are retained.

I remember reading about Vacancy a few months back and being taken by the premise. A young couple stranded overnight in the middle of nowhere come to the realization that their motel is a front for the production of snuff films. Simple yet effective. The first trailer for the movie, starring Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale, can be found over at Yahoo.

One of the surprisingly enjoyable aspects of this hobby is in posting a news item that I know is of interest to only one or two people. It’s like I’m sending code. Case in point, the Faye Dunaway vehicle Flick, in which she plays a one-armed American detective tracking down an undead kid from the ’50s in modern day Wales. An interview with director David Howard sheds some light on this intriguing premise.

Set in the late 1950s and the present day, Flick tells the tale of Johnny, a music-loving outsider driven to murder by rejection from the girl he lusts after. On the run, he crashes his car into a river, where it remains until it is dredged up in the modern day. Reanimated by the sound of ’50s rock music, he continues his journey of revenge on those who mocked him, and their children.

The whole thing is a great read, whether or not you’re as sold on the plot as I am. Howard discusses his reasons for abandoning a career as a lawyer to pursue B-movies, why he considers horror to be such a challenge, and just what it took for him to rope Dunaway in.

I’m all for artistic integrity, but I can’t help but get a little nostalgic for the old studio system, where movies were cranked out with little regard for individual expression. At a recent press junket, Dino De Laurentiis brought back a little of that old flavour by relating how Hannibal Rising came to be.

“When I did the promotion all around the world for Hannibal and Red Dragon, everybody asked me ‘Dino, we need to know when and where Hannibal Lecter started.’ I don’t give it much attention. But then I receive so much mail in a few years, with the same question, and I come to the conclusion that the audience wants to see the beginning of life for Hannibal Lecter. Anthony Hopkins, seventeen years old? We need a boy, nineteen years old. Ha! Now, I start to say ‘maybe this is an idea, to create a new franchise, with a new story, and tell the audience how Hannibal Lecter started. It was not so easy a problem. My first call to Tom Harris, he said ‘Dino, really, I don’t know…’ To make the story short, little by little, I convinced Tom Harris to create a new story.”

Now that’s how they did things back in the day.

As you’re probably already aware, it was reported over the weekend that Rob Zombie has started shooting on his “reimagining” of Halloween. This news was greeted with the most overtly ridiculous form of protest yet; an actual protest, with picketing and everything. I wonder if the protesters are upset by the fact that a remake is being produced for Halloween, or are mostly disturbed that it’s Zombie at the helm. I can’t imagine they would be happier if it were some first-time music video director throwing together a bland, by-the-numbers rehash rather than someone who has shown at least a few interesting stylistic flourishes. Which brings us to my reason for bringing the topic up. I’m also strongly against this remake of Halloween, but for the opposite reason. I think Rob Zombie is too good for Halloween.

I could do without House of 1,000 Corpses, but I imagine The Devil’s Rejects would be half the movie it turned out to be if it didn’t have Corpses as a lead-up and point of comparison. Whereas with House of 1,000 Corpses Zombie gave us a fairly straight, if incoherent, retelling of the psychotic family sub-genre, The Devil’s Rejects dragged the clan out from their comfort zone and into the bright light of day. There they were revealed as pathetic, doomed little deviants that couldn’t adapt enough to achieve freedom for even a couple of days. And where Zombie blew his load in homages for the first film, in the second he integrated them more successfully, with genuine cinematic skill mixed generously with the deep-fried cinema he loves. Other than Eli Roth’s Hostel, I can’t think of a sophomore effort that showed so much growth.

And now we have Halloween, a franchise which has potentially the worst rate of success in horror movie history. Is it possible that this is a case where there was only one good story to be told, with any subsequent efforts doomed to failure? As for Zombie in particular, with The Devil’s Rejects he was able to take the unbridled freedom of House of 1,000 Corpses and temper it with a great deal of subtlety. With Halloween it appears that he’s accepting outside limitations for the very first time, as he obviously has to follow the basic structure of the original Halloween, and this just when he seems to be mastering a decent level of control himself.

No one was more surprised than I was that Rob Zombie had the potential to become one of the new guard of horror, but The Devil’s Rejects certainly made me consider it. As he moved further away from his inspirations and toward new worlds, I was looking forward to seeing what he came up with next. Now I’m not so sure.

The suburbs can be stifling, Mr. Zombie. Tread with care.

The Mist has been at the top of the most-desired Stephen King adaptations for a long time now. I know people who have no time for King at all, with The Mist being the sole exception. When the film version was finally announced with The Shawshank Redemption director Frank Darabont attached, most fans of the novella were relieved, and it looked like the whole thing would go off without a hitch. Until now. According to The Mist star Thomas Jane in a talk with Fangoria.

“If you’ve read the novella, you understand the potential of the film, and Darabont has surpassed that. The script is missing the last 10 pages because he won’t divulge them to anybody—he’s changing the ending.”

The ending to The Mist is one of the reasons why it has such a devoted following. Darabont is taking a big risk changing possibly the most crucial aspect of the entire story. Here’s hoping he can pull it off.

Of far more interest than another fucking Halloween casting announcement is the news that Frank Henenlotter is releasing a new film called Bad Biology. For some reason this hasn’t really caught on with most of the horror news sites I visit, which is a damn shame. Considering it’s been fifteen years since his last feature I don’t blame you for not recognizing the name, but Henenlotter was responsible for some of the craziest flicks to escape New York at the tail end of the grindhouse era, with titles like Basket Case, Brain Damage and Frankenhooker.

Driven by biological excess, a young man and woman search for sexual fulfillment, unaware of each other’s existence. Unfortunately, they eventually meet, and the bonding of these two very unusual human beings ends in an explosive and ultimately over-the-top sexual experience, resulting in a truly godawful love story….

The man has some nerve. I never gave permission for him to film a biopic. More information can be found at the official Bad Biology MySpace page.

The road to respectability is a long, strange one. I wonder if this is the first occassion the New York Times has acknowledged grindhouse cinema.

The article in question sheds some light on a number of aspects of Tarantino and Rodriguez’ collaboration. Only four directors are cited for the trailers found between films, and one of them is not Quentin Tarantino with his Cowgirls of Sweden as previously reported. Both films are clocking in at under an hour and a half, which is great news for bladders everywhere. Tarantino is convinced that Death Proof will contain one of the top three car chases of all-time, which should add just a bit more excitement to the slightly overshadowed feature. And both Rodriguez and Tarantino have confirmed that not only will both films be artificially aged, but they will both also be missing a reel, so the action will cut out partway through and resume again without the audience knowing exactly what transpired. I bet theatre managers are really looking forward to that one.

“That’s part of the lurid quality. It feels like it’s a popular film that’s been screened a bunch of times. The texture, all the scratches, makes it look really creepy, like you’re watching something you’re not supposed to, where anything could happen at any moment.”

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Get your keister over to The New York Times website for the entire thing.

One of the selections from last year’s 8 To Die For festival goes solo with a trailer for The Abandoned. Though it appears to be yet another ghost story, director Nacho Cerdà has an interesting pedigree what with the controversial short Aftermath under his belt. This is his first feature, and if this is one-tenth as transgressive as his shorts I’ll be there on opening night. Kudos to Cinematical for the head’s up.

Not enough time for blogging when you’re out galivanting until 6 in the morning, but at the very least I knew I just had to post this picture of Sybil Danning from Werewolf Women of the SS, as originally presented by Fangoria.

Make sure you pop by tomorrow for another gathering of the grteatest minds in horror blogging, The Horror Roundtable. Oh, god. That’s so sad.