I didn’t get a chance to write about it before the story got too old to bother with, but I have to admit I was plenty excited by the possibility of Jason Voorhees hitting the small screen in an appearance on Supernatural. It seemed like a win-win scenario, with New Line keeping the Voorhees brand in public view and priming the pump for his inevitable return to cinemas, and the CW getting the bump in viewership that such a guest appearance would entail, with the possible side effect of enticing some new blood into their viewership. In hindsight I’m glad I didn’t post the original rumour, because it turns out it isn’t true. Instead a masked fascimile of Jason will be facing the Winchester Boys.

I’ll admit to being a little bent out of shape about this. In the original article that revealed the Voorhees/Supernatural mash-up, show creator Eric Kripke states “We have cleared the rights to actually use Jason,” but Supernatural producer John Shiban later makes the claim that rights clearance issues prevent them from using the character, making it seem as if that’s how it’s always been. So, was Kripke mistaken? Was he misquoted? Did New Line pull their support? Did they just decide not to go with the real Jason Voorhees despite having the rights? Or is this some sort of bait and switch? Because I’ve spoken to a fair amount of people, none of whom had ever watched the show previously, who were very excited about this episode and I have to admit that a stunt like this isn’t likely to endear the show to potential viewers, myself included.

Of all the horror sub-genres the one that seems the least likely to succeed as a comic book is also one of the ones that has been attempted the most often; the slasher. Tim Seeley is a man who finally got it right, by taking the emphasis off of the villains and placing it on their unlikely enemy, the final girl, in his horror comic series Hack/Slash. You would figure that this preoccupation with slasher fare would be reflected in what scared him, right?

The last thing that creeped me out was the H.P. Lovecraft story “The Whisperer in the Darkness.” The way he describes the method of communication between the creepy crab/fungoid aliens was both otherworldy weird, and oddly familair…the man is THE master for a reason. He could make bizarre, incomprehensible things eerily possible, and the skittering, flying crab thingies were no exceptions. It didn’t hurt that I read it while I was vacation in San Francisco, and had spent the day at Fisherman’s wharf, surrounded by the boiled bodies of those delicious water bugs.

Why introduce today’s guest when he’s more than willing to do it himself? And with 300% more haiku, to boot. Ladies, gentlemen, and regular readers of The Horror Blog, I present Stu Charno, known in some circles as Ted, the prank playing misfit from Friday the 13th Part 2.

After 40 year playing jazz piano, twenty-five as an working actor, twenty teaching internal martial arts, and fifteen building one-of-a-kind furninture, I’m now mostly writing. My life has led up to this — a just published book of haiku, called “High Koo — Wisdumb from our time…”. It’s available on Amazon. (A Haiku is a Japanese verse form, with 3 lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables, respectively)

Such doozies as;

Being can tickle
Certainty gets in the way
Enjoy not knowing…

Anyone asked why
will tell you all kinds of things
Words can’t hold the truth…

It only looks like
other people are thinking
We’re on the same bus….

www.StuCharno.com is where to find further invitations…

Smiles n’ vertical head shakes,

utS

Like a magician’s assistant, who knows the tricks, I’m no longer ordinarily scared or as entertained by films, as others may be. But, before I became an actor, the film, “The Haunting”, scared me senseless.

I think that madness is much scarier than gore, and that movie pointed in that direction beautifully, and scares me to this day. Bellowing walls and doors, squeaking their horror-filled resistance, are the stuff of my nightmares…

I’m giving away one copy of the soundtrack for Rob Zombie’s Halloween, featuring KISS and Alice Fucking Cooper, provided by the fine folks at Deep Focus. To win, simply name the Halloween films that correspond with the masks shown above. Answers should be left in the comments. The first person to name them all correctly, or the person with the most correct answers by next Monday, gets the soundtrack. Good Luck! Halloween hits theatres August 31st.

I never realized until I started this blog that there are certain topics that keep attracting comments long after most everyone has moved on. Case in point, the Blind Dead vs. Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers rumble from last year’s Horror Blog Monster Rally. There are 15 comments up there at this point, 14 of which were made long after the contest closed, 8 of them in just one day by the same person, and practically all of them discussing a fight other than the one originally presented. Obviously reading comprehension skills are not necessary at Chateau Horror Blog.

no the f he is not jason is way way bigger then micheael and stronger too

MICHEAEL CANT WIN AGIANTS JASON VOORHEES HANDS DOWN JASON WILL WIN MICHEAELS NOT AS BIG OR AS STRONG AS JASON

Apologies to Sean for the title.

If you read any horror sites other than this one, odds are good that you’ve already come across Eli Roth’s faux-trailer for Grindhouse. If you’re one of the handful of people who hasn’t, here you go. Be warned, it packs an awful lot of nastiness into it’s short running time.

One of the things I find most fascinating about the release of this trailer is it’s use as a marketing ploy. Instead of the usual selection of trailers which are only slightly different from one another, the movie itself has generated alternate advertising material to keep the film fresh and exciting in people’s minds. Of all their attempts to emulate the exploitation movie experience, I think this is Team Grindhouse’s most successful yet.

Drilltar! As Paul mentioned in the comments of an earlier post, vinyl and soundtrack sharity blogs have a short shelf life. The erratic nature of the downloads is the main reason I haven’t linked to any in the past few months. Well, it’s about time I got back into the swing of things, and what better way to reintroduce the world to the wonders of obscure music then through The Slumber Party Massacre. Parts 1 and 2, no less, from the super fine proprieter of The Manchester Morgue. Make sure you read all the way through for links to even more slasher soundtracks.

You nearly had me, Rob Zombie. The director of the upcoming “reimagining” (I always picture saying that word as if I were Doug Henning) of Halloween shed some light on the project over at MTV Movies. While I despised House of 1000 Corpses, I really enjoyed The Devil’s Rejects, and I was hoping to see this upward swing of quality continue into Zombie’s next films. In fact, it’s evident that Zombie isn’t just doing this as a cash grab, so that’s refreshing. Then we hit the snag.

“I want the lead character to be Michael Myers,” Zombie said. “He’s not just a faceless thing floating around in the background and then you focus on these girls. I feel that that’s where you can make it different and that’s where you can make it more intense.”

Does anyone else find it funny that the remake of a film, Halloween, which was heavily influenced by another, Black Christmas, seems to be making that remake’s mistakes? Did that sentence even make any sense? Doubleplusgood! Take it from someone who scared the hell out of countless little kids last night, faceless things floating around in the background is about as intense as you can get.

Obviously Not Work Safe! Also Contains Spoilers!

I just know someone out there is going to jack off to this. Today’s clip mixes every on-screen death from the Friday the 13th movies into one big jamboree, with a handy body count in the lower right-hand corner. I never realized just how many people get something sharp stuck through them from below in those movies.

I was looking for the scene with the most ugly example of nakedness in cinema history, but I’m pretty sure it was #105 and they just snipped the ugly nakedness out.

Are you in the market for a new home? Would you be willing to join the local block parent/vigilante group? And most importantly, do you have $1 million and change lying around? If yes, then you could be living on the most infamous street in slasher history. Nancy Thompson’s house from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street is up for grabs.

Nightmare on Elm Street house with basement for “Freddie” Kruger. Spaulding Square fixer opportunity screaming “Buy Me, Buy Me!”. With some work this could be your Family Dream Home, backyard with pool 4 entertaining, 4 bedrooms 3.5 bath & office. Terrific living room with fireplace, formal dining room and bar set up.

As much as the horror geek in me would love to have a live-in conversation piece like this, I know that I would be really creeped out, particularly when night fell and you could hear every creak in the place as it settled. Would anyone else be freaked, or am I just a wuss?

Just when you thought that the rumours were finally dead, along comes more dirt on Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash. I didn’t think it would be at all feasible unless they found a really great concept to work with. Looks like Ronny Yu has that covered.

CS: Any chance you might direct a sequel to “Freddy vs. Jason” if New Line decides to do one?

Yu: Yeah, they’ve been talking about it, and they even talk about bringing Ash [from Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” movies] into the equation, and I thought it’s terrific. It’s almost like an updated version of “The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.” If they really want to do it and they want me to do it, I’d love to do it. It would be a lot of fun.

As much as I’d love to see this happen, the question remains; would the public’s general lack of knowledge as to who Ash is hurt the chances of this getting made, and if it did get the go-ahead, would Ash just confuse moviegoers?

Found courtesy of The Movie Blog.

X-Entertainment takes a good long look at The Freddy Game.

Being Freddy fucking rules, but it won’t do you any good if you lack the cards to make him stab people. Plus, it isn’t as if the other players are defenseless to Freddy’s inclinations. In fact, it’s just as easy to kill Freddy as it is for him to kill you. Obviously, “The Freddy Game” was based on the last three minutes of every Elm Street flick.

Despite what the person writing the article says, I would love to own this just to have a board game with a player piece that reads “Empty Grave Grandpa.”

Found via The Rue Mortuary.

When I first heard that screenwriter and producer Joseph Stefano had passed away, my most vivid thought wasn’t of his script for Psycho or his creation with Leslie Stevens of seminal television creature feature The Outer Limits. No, my attention was riveted by the news that the writer for Snowbeast had died.

Made-for-TV in the 70s, Snowbeast involves a sasquatch which terrorizes a ski resort, not unlike Jaws in the snow. Snowbeast is legendary at the studio where I work, and it comes up in conversation at least once every two or three weeks, so it saddens me that someone who created a work that brought so much joy into the lives of so many has left us.

So here’s to a man who, despite his reservations towards the genre, was remarkably talented nonetheless. Rest in peace, Mr. Stefano.

The big news of the day appears to be Horror Roundtable miscreant Don May, Jr. and Billy Kirkus’ discovery of a large amount of unused footage from John Carpenter’s Halloween. These are the multiple takes that ended up on the cutting room floor. Though the boxes haven’t been completely catalogued yet, May seems convinced that it will contain at least a few interesting surprises.

“The most exciting possibility is that Wallace told me about the original ending—and if this is indeed all the original camera negative, then we certainly have it. Wallace explained that he always thought it was funny that, even in the ‘original shooting scripts’ that are for sale for HALLOWEEEN, the ending always has Michael Myers disappearing at the end. That isn’t the way they originally shot it. The original shooting script, and the way the movie was initially filmed, had Michael dying at the end.”

May has also been offering up a few tidbits on the DVD Maniacs message board.

“One of the things I am hoping to find is the original opening sequence, without the mask overlay. I’ll have to ask Wallace (or Carpenter, if he calls me) about it, but I think, when little Michael goes to the house and puts on the mask before he kills his sister, that the “mask” portion of the screen may be an optical effect. If so, chances are we may have the un-masked version, or an alternate take version, of the opening scene death scene without the mask covering the picture! THAT is something I want to see…”

I’m not that big a fan of Halloween (more of a Black Christmas man, myself) but I love the discovery of hidden treasures from the days before every piece of footage from even the most unassuming movies was tucked away for the inevitable DVD extras. It would be especially instructive watching Carpenter at work and actually seeing the process that went into making a low-budget horror film of that era.