I may have been hasty in denouncing the new, sunnier ending concocted for the most recent adaptation of I Am Legend. I’ve spent the last 24 hours, both asleep and awake, happily imagining new ways to end the film.

For instance, the creatures capture Will Smith and drag him blindfolded to his fate. They reach their destination, take off the blindfold, and Will Smith discovers that they’ve resculpted the Statue of Liberty in his image, with the inscription “I Am Lejend” scratched into the base, not unlike the statue of Michael Jackson from the infamous HIStory video. Speechless in his disbelief, Will Smith turns to the leader of the creatures who rests his hand on Smith’s chest and intones, with some difficulty, the word “Friend”. Will Smith replies in kind, and the screen fades to black as the sun rises on a new day.

Leave your own faux-happy endings, for I Am Legend or any other downbeat horror movie, in the comments below. My favourite entry will receive a DVD copy of the surprisingly fun Flight of the Living Dead as well as any other goodies I can gather together.

Thanks to JA for “Lejend”.

It’s Toonie Tuesday at The Horror Blog, and today I’m offering up two fellow Canadians who are keeping the fine tradition of Canuxploitation alive and well into the 21st Century.

Brett Kelly directed one of my favourite horror films of last year, My Dead Girlfriend, recently wrapped Prey for the Beast with screenwriter and Horror Roundtable contributor Jeff O’Brien and is hard at work on a remake of Attack of the Giant Leeches.

When I was a kid I think the piece of art that frightened me the most was the old Michael Redgrave movie “Dead of Night”, there was a scene involving a coachman and a prmonition of death that freaked me out. I still love that movie.

Nothing recently has scared me.

David DeCoteau has been crafting totally hot horror films for more than two decades, including Creepazoids, The Brotherhood, Witchhouse and personal favourite Leeches! and shows no sign of slowing down.

I remember back in December 1978 I was invited to a sneak preview of a little horror movie called HALLOWEEN. The movie scared the crap out of me and my friends. Never heard an audience scream louder since! Amazing evening!

Like many young horror movie directors, J.R. Bookwalter set his sights impossibly high. Unlike most of his peers he not only completed his project, the epic zombie flick The Dead Next Door, but also spun that cult classic into a career that’s still going strong over twenty years later, culminating in the founding of Tempe Entertainment, home of some of my favourite direct-to-video releases. What terrible things could possibly set a young man on this path to madness?

It may sound like a cheesy choice, but I remember as a kid watching the Dan Curtis TV movie BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA starring Jack Palance and it scared the hell out of me… there was some scene where Dracula was trying to get into a locked door and the man or woman inside the room were freaking out… it’s one of the only times I went running to my mother’s bedroom after watching a horror flick on TV, that’s for sure!

Runner up has to go to the also-cheesy ’70s documentary THE MYSTERIOUS MONSTERS… the reenactment scene where Bigfoot smashes his arm through the window to grab someone sitting next to it totally had me moving my bed away from the window for weeks afterward… and my bedroom was on the second floor!

It was recently announced that horror DVD staple Anchor Bay would be undergoing a makeover to better align itself with parent company Starz. Obviously one of the most pressing concerns for horror fans was whether this new incarnation would continue its mandate of presenting cult classics in packages that were, at times, even more impressive then the film itself. But there was another, more superficial question tossed around after the announcement was made; what would happen to the sailboat?

The Anchor Bay logo, and its embrace by the horror community, is precisely the kind of “happy mistake” that I love to see in fandom. You couldn’t choose a more inappropriate symbol for a horror icon. I’ll admit that my first thought wasn’t whether Starz would be ditching the horror titles that made Anchor Bay’s name, but that I would miss watching that incongruous sailboat making its way across the screen directly before the carnage of Evil Dead, Halloween or C.H.U.D. begins. How much misplaced pleasure have I taken from simply glancing at my shelves and seeing a world of terror weighed down by that innocuous logo?

Happily, Starz has issued an assurance that the Anchor Bay name and logo will stay in place, at least for their horror output. Hey, when you’re this successful with a sailboat as your logo, don’t fix what ain’t broke.

Back in August I wrote a post entitled The Stack of Shame, which was comprised of a list of movies I own but have not actually watched yet. Since that time I have watched exactly one movie from the list and added dozens more for a grand total of 135 unloved films.

Reeker, Komodo vs. Cobra, The Dark, Evil Aliens, Peeping Tom, Funny Games, The Devils, Street Trash, Martyr, I Spit On Your Grave, Last House on the Left, Maniac, Nudist Colony of the Dead, The Nun, White of the Eye, Venom, Call of Cthulhu, Snake People, Snake Woman, Black Cobra Woman, Horror Express, Frogs, Curse of the Devil, Fear No Evil, Miner’s Massacre.

The Bunker, Deathwatch, Slash, Fiend, Amityville 3-D, Sleepaway Camp 3 - Teenage Wasteland, Flesheater, Schoolgirl Killer, Bloody Brood, The Haunting, Lady Frankenstein, Rituals, The Prowler, Tom Savini’s Scream Greats, Intruder, Silent Night, Deadly Night, To All A Goodnight, Bad Taste, Blood Diner, The Kiss, Tourist Trap, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Deathdream, Soul Survivor, Begotten, The Curse of the Living Corpse.

Werewolves on Wheels, Legend of Hell House, Don’t Go In The Woods Alone, When The Screaming Stops, The Sorcerors, Bikini Party Massacre, It Came From Beneath The Sea, Tarantulas, Frankenfish, The Tenant, The Brain, The Chilling, My Bloody Valentine, Frankenhooker, Squirm, The Car.

13 Tzameti, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, Onibaba, Hatchet For The Honeymoon, Hell of the Living Dead, Return of the Evil Dead, The Ghost Galleon, Night of the Seagulls, Satanico Pandemonium, Fury of the Wolfman, Ils, Baise Moi, Tale of Two Sisters, Curse of the Crying Woman, House on Sorority Row, Santo versus the Zombies, Herzog’s Nosferatu, Burst City, The Beast Must Die, Marebito, Images in a Convent, Small Gauge Trauma, Vampyres, The Werewolf and The Yeti, Twins of Evil, The Whip and the Body, Les Demons.

Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Death Carries A Cane, Torso, Blood and Black Lace, Seven Blood-Stained Orchids, Case of the Scorpion’s Tail, The Iguana With A Tongue of Fire, Blood and Black Lace, Amuck!, Lizard in a Woman’s Skin, Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have The Key, Who Saw Her Die?

Son of Frankenstein, Ghost of Frankenstein, House of Frankenstein, Invisible Man returns, Invisible Woman, Invisible Agent, Invisible Man’s Revenge, Dracula’s Daughter, Son of Dracula, House of Dracula, Werewolf of London, Frankenstein meets the Wolfman, She-Wolf of London.

Gojira, Godzilla Tokyo S.O.S., Godzilla vs. Biollante, Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla, Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah - All-Out Giant Monster Attack, Godzilla vs. Destroyer, War of the Gargantuas, Monster From a Prehistoric Planet, Gamera 2 - Advent of Legion, Gamera 3 - Revenge of Iris, Rodan, Gamera The Invincible, War of the Monsters, Destroy All Planets. Godzilla: Final Wars.

To help whittle the list down a bit, I’d like your suggestions for which one of these films you believe I should put at the top of the pile. Leave your suggestions in the comments below, and I will adjust my viewing habits according to your whims. Help me choose! Thanks!

SEX MACHINE “bootleg” trailer

Bow chika wow wouw. Horror Roundtable Direct-To-DVD specialist Bill Cunningham has directed his considerable pulp prowess towards promoting a little film called Sex Machine. From the press release.

Sex Machine , which takes its name from a mysterious tattoo on the hero’s arm is the gripping story of a man who wakes up in the middle of a gangland hit to discover that his limbs are not his own. Frank is a tough-talking patchwork assassin, stitched together from the body parts of other failed assassins. When Frank learns that his ex-girlfriend is the next test subject, he opens both barrels on his “creators” and unleashes a gory bloodbath of revenge.

Add to that some mad science, strip clubs and a mystery man with a bandaged face, and how could you possibly go wrong?

I’ve always been attracted to good backyard filmmaking, be it Criterion’s recent release of Equinox, M. Night Shyamalan’s home movie clips or even Plaga Zombie. One DVD that I would like to own but I haven’t had a chance to track down yet is Monster Kid Home Movies, which is a collection of creature-filled shorts directed by kids and teens on 8mm from back in the day. The trailer above is for that release, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun all on its own.

I received my copy of The Criterion Collection’s Jigoku today, and tucked away in the case was a postcard promoting their upcoming release of Divorce - Italian Style. I was so taken by Jaime Hernandez’ artwork on the postcard that it took me a second look to realize how macabre it actually is.

I can’t believe I nearly allowed this to pass me by. A few weeks ago cult DVD company Panik House announced that they were going to be releasing a special edition of Chained Heat. They also revealed that they had even bigger news on the horizon. This was big news in itself, since what could possibly be more exciting than Chained Heat? Well, last week they finally revealed their latest project.

Panik House is entering into a production partnership with Synapse Films to release seven more films from the Toei vaults. Five proto-Pinky Violence films and two films of a new genre: Pinky Horror!

Kaidan Hebi-onna; aka Snake Woman’s Curse This was the first of the Pinky Horror films released by Toei. It was helmed by master director Nobuo Nakagawa, who has been called the Japanese Hitchcock, and Akemi Negishi (Sex & Fury, Lady Snowblood) stars.

There’s been a bit of a Rampo resurgence recently. I admit that I had never heard about him until recently, but after reading a piece on his work in Rue Morgue I tracked down a few of his translated short stories and enjoyed them immensely. Also, I have Panik House’s release of Sex and Fury and it’s pure gold, so I have high hopes for these releases.

As my unwatched movie collection grows closer to the 100 mark, I find that I’m trading in my former obsession with quantity for a new appreciation for quality. And even though I still love hamburgers (or, in most cases, sloppy joes), sometimes I just need to sink my teeth into a juicy steak.

The Criterion Collection usually only releases a horror film once a year or so, but 2006 has seen a bumper crop for creepy films. First there was their Equinox release, which I picked up a little over a week ago, and now they’re getting ready to spring two ghostly tales from foreign lands upon an unsuspecting public, The Spirit of the Beehive and Jigoku.

In a small Castilian village in 1940, in the wake of the country’s devastating civil war, six-year-old Ana attends a traveling movie show of Frankenstein and becomes possessed by the memory of it. Produced as Franco’s long regime was nearing its end, The Spirit of the Beehive is a bewitching portrait of a child’s haunted inner life and one of the most visually arresting movies ever made.

Shocking, outrageous, and poetic, Jigoku (Hell, a.k.a. The Sinners of Hell) is the most innovative creation from Nobuo Nakagawa, the father of the Japanese horror film. After a young theology student flees a hit-and-run accident, he is plagued by both his own guilt-ridden conscience and a mysterious, diabolical doppelganger. But all possible escape routes lead straight to hell, literally. In the gloriously gory final third of the film, Nakagawa offers up his vision of the underworld in a tour de force of torture and degradation. A striking departure from traditional Japanese ghost stories, Jigoku, with its truly eye-popping (and -gouging) imagery, created aftershocks that are still reverberating in contemporary world horror cinema.

I hope this trend continues and Criterion releases further horror films in the near future, be they esoteric gems or established classics.

I try my best to post only horror items on this blog. I know that discussing topics other than horror is a slippery slope, and if I let myself go even a little bit it could become a routine. This is why I will only post those non-horror items which I consider to be of the utmost importance and gravity; earth-shattering announcements that simply must be conveyed to my readers.

At long last, Gymkata is being released on DVD.

I have a very special relationship with Gymkata. Everytime I visited J. in Montreal we would head over to the Metro Video at Du Parc. They had a phenomenal collection of cult movies, and nestled in their action section was a big-ass box full of gymnastic martial arts mayhem. As the store slowly replaced their VHS with DVD, I would enquire as to the purchase of Gymkata and each time I was denied. On a few occassions I offered to pay for the movie but let them keep it in perpetuity as their sole film considered irreplacable. Once again, not realizing my sincerity, my offer was denied. The last time I was in there, Gymkata was gone. And so was a little piece of my soul.

But now the world rejoices, for Gymkata will be released on January 30th, 2007. Truly we will witness the skill of gymnastics, and the kill of karate!

GYMKATA!

A funny thing happened when I started this blog. Since I spend so much time writing about horror movies, I find that I have less time to actually watch them. However, while my viewing habits may have decreased, my desire to accumulate horror movies has not. Chalk it up to a general lack of other vices.

In an effort to curb my spending at this weekend’s Festival of Fear, I have decided to list all the horror movies that I own but have yet to watch fully.

Godzilla Tokyo S.O.S., Godzilla vs. Biollante, Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla, Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah - All-Out Giant Monster Attack, Godzilla vs. Destroyer, War of the Gargantuas, Monster From a Prehistoric Planet, Gamera 2 - Advent of Legion, Gamera 3 - Revenge of Iris, Rodan, Gamera The Invincible, War of the Monsters, Destroy All Planets.

Death Carries A Cane, Torso, Blood and Black Lace, Seven Blood-Stained Orchids, Case of the Scorpion’s Tail, Amuck, Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have The Key, Who Saw Her Die?

Son of Frankenstein, Ghost of Frankenstein, House of Frankenstein, Invisible Man returns, Invisible Woman, Invisible Agent, Invisible Man’s Revenge, Dracula’s Daughter, Son of Dracula, House of Dracula, Werewolf of London, Frankenstein meets the Wolfman, She-Wolf of London.

Reeker, Komodo vs. Cobra, The Dark, Evil Aliens, Peeping Tom, Funny Games, The Devils, Street Trash, Martyr, Tale of Two Sisters, I Spit On Your Grave, Last House on the Left, Baise Moi, Maniac, Nudist Colony of the Dead, Bird with the Crystal Plumage, The Nun, 13 Tzameti, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, Onibaba, White of the Eye, Ils, Venom, Call of Cthulhu, Hell of the Living Dead, Return of the Evil Dead, The Ghost Galleon, Night of the Seagulls, Snake People, Snake Woman, Black Cobra Woman, Fury of the Wolfman, Horror Express, Sandman, Skinned Deep, Frogs, Curse of the Devil, Fear No Evil, Miner’s Massacre, Satanico Pandemonium, The Bunker, Deathwatch, Slash, Fiend, Amityville 3-D, Sleepaway Camp 3 - Teenage Wasteland.

You know you have a problem when you’re relieved that you only came close to breaking 100.

“Hi, iguana. I’m going to call him Jub Jub.”

A woman cursed to have snakes burst from her body is smuggled in from Mexico by her husband, a shaman who hopes to find a cure for her ailment in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, her condition deteriorates after they stow away onboard a train filled with unsuspecting passengers.

A co-worker watched Snakes on a Train a few days before me, and he attempted to warn me away from it. He also told me that if I happened to enjoy it he would lose all respect for me and begin to question my sanity.

It won’t be the first time, Rony. And I doubt it will be the last.

Snakes on a Train is a southern-fried exploitation rip-off on the cheap that steamrolls over every continuity gaffe, erratic pacing, shoddy make-up effect and bad CGI snake that make up the majority of its running time. Under all the trappings inherent in this low-budget shocker there beats a cold, black heart, one that gleefully pulls out nearly all the stops to make you either wince, give a high-five, or deliver both at the same time.

This is the type of movie where the sets are filthy and nearly everyone is a scumbag. Even the people who should have it together the most are using lightbulbs for bongs. Vulgar and sometimes strangely inappropriate swearing is scattered throughout, breasts are bared under duress, some of the only nice people in the film get torn apart and gratuitious homoeroticism runs rampant. I only wish my floors were sticky to add to the ambience.

The standout performance, and the glue that holds the whole thing together, is Ryanne Ruiz who plays the cursed snake woman. She grimaces and squirms so well that she actually manages to sell the lacklustre make-up, and she seemingly has the ability to make small sections of her face uncontrollably twitch independent of the rest of her body. But the most admirable aspect of her performance is her willingness to stuff her mouth full of snakes at the slightest provocation. By far the best special effect in the entire movie is watching Ruiz roll tiny, live snakes around with her tongue. This is precisely the kind of virtuoso performance that makes doing this blog worthwhile.

This isn’t a masterpiece by any means, and the shocks are more of the grossout type than from fear, but if you’re looking for a slutty, vicious lay of a popcorn flick you could do a whole lot worse.

“My birthday’s coming up. I’ll only be 10, but I feel very old.”

When the opportunity arose to take a crack at reviewing some upcoming releases, I wasn’t entirely sure how to approach a direct-to-DVD movie. I didn’t know whether I was meant to be just as hard on it as I would a theatrical film, or give it a pass based on its obvious financial limitations. Happily, with Dawn I didn’t have to make that decision.

Dawn is a nine-year-old vampire. She travels from town to town with her human father, stopping every once in awhile to feed on the old and dying, for whom she has a natural ability to track down. For her tenth birthday, Dawn wants nothing else but to visit her mother’s final resting place, another vampire who died giving birth to her. Unfortunately, within the same town resides a man with a vendetta and the means to hunt them down.

Dawn’s world is filled with average people, a sight rarely caught on film and whose normalacy underscores the fact that all the main protagonists are weak in some fashion; from Dawn herself to the MS-afflicted vampire hunter to Dawn’s father, who is in way over his head. The only dominant character in the entire movie is the deceased mother, who we only see in flashbacks. By far the best actor in the bunch is little Kacie Young as the title character. Her performance managed to reel me in without my even realizing it, and made the inevitably tragic, and abrupt, finale all the more shocking.

Dawn is a model of shot-on-video restraint. Unlike many other independent endeavours, Dawn doesn’t overstep its financial limitations. Every aspect of the film is crafted to not only remain within it’s no-budget confines, but actually thrive on them. Even though the effects, make-up and gore are on the cheap, they’re used quite sparingly and thoughtfully. The cinematography is direct and to the point, and the use of black-and-white digital photography renders everything flat, emphasizing the mundanity of the world. Even the grotesque routines Dawn and her father have fallen into before and after a kill create a sense of the ordinary in an extraordinary situation, like a quieter version of Near Dark.

There are a few missteps. Some of the actors have the tendency to spit out their lines on occassion, a few of the actors in smaller roles are especially bad and coincidences abound where some minor tightening of the plot would have helped. But overall I was pleasantly surprised by Dawn. Make no mistake, this is a gentle, character-driven movie and should be only watched when in a particular type of mood. While there are a few tense moments, they’re primarily built upon the relationships established and not due to actual scares. With the right mind-set, Dawn is a tale made grim, sweet, and satisfying.

Dawn is available today from Tempe Video.

Via the always delightful Film Junk comes news of yet another campaign to bring director Fred Dekker’s Night of the Creeps and The Monster Squad to DVD. The person behind the drive to have the movies released has taken a page from Ain’t It Cool News book and created ads detailing where to write the owners of the properties through actual letters as opposed to email.

For the sake of your sanity, I will post the contact info below as the ads themselves are ginormous.

For Monster Squad:

Mr. Sumner M. Redstone
Viacom
1515 Broadway
New York, NY 10036

For Night of the Creeps:

Mr. Michael Lynton
Mr. Bob Osher
Sony Pictures Entertainment
10202 West Washingtopn Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90232

To be honest, I hope that the companies involved eventually lose interest and grant the rights to Anchor Bay, who has been chomping at the bit to get their hands on these movies and would probably do them right.