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.

MFF is a hip-hop horror duo that have cobbled together over 200 samples taken strictly from DVDs of the Evil Dead trilogy to create the world’s grooviest mash-up. My favourite part of the whole thing? The track originally appeared on their album, Twitch of the Def Nerve. Word!

There are few things in this world I enjoy more than homemade monster movies as made by kids. In fact, my favourite films by M. Night Shyamalan are the snippets of his home movies he includes on every DVD. Popcorn and Sticky Floors introduces another entry in this fascinating sub-genre, a Super8 version of Jaws. The transition between the stock footage of the shark and their paper mache model is seamless. And the chief of police is one of the craziest mofos I have ever seen.

This is about as good as it gets. Darkness director Leif Jonker has concluded a decades-long quest to find commercials he saw as a kid that showed a double bill of Phantasm and The Fog. And it wasn’t enough to find them, he felt he had to share them with the rest of the world. A second commercial can be found here.

While you’re at it, I recommend checking out the thread on DVD Maniacs where Jonker first posted the clips. There he talks about his quest, and other people join in with some great admats for other double bills of the era.

Some kind of entertainment news program in Italy has produced the first look at Argento’s next film, the eagerly anticipated finale to the Three Mothers trilogy, The Mother of Tears. The clip is buried partway into the program, just below the two minute mark. There is no way you could confuse me for an Argento expert, though I have enjoyed more than my share of his work over the years. However, when the clip finally made its way to his portion, it was unmistakably Argento. I was really shocked at just how much his style leapt out of the screen, though I guess I shouldn’t have been.

This clip is making the rounds without most sites crediting its discovery to anyone, though I have my doubts that many sites have been staying up nights trolling the Cinecetta website for news on Argento. For a lack of a better culprit, I choose Dark Dreams, who I first saw the clip from and who do seem to be that obsessive.

Sorry for the brief absence. Unfortunately, it’s most likely going to extend through the next week or two, with the exception of The Horror Roundtable which will be appearing on Fridays as usual. Enjoy your hot chocolate, everyone!

The Christmas Story clip courtesy of Film Junk.

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?

Sorry I haven’t been posting as much as usual. I’m taking a small break from horror to kick back and read some crime novels. I’m sure I’ll be back at it like gangbusters next week, and remember, there’s always The Horror Roundtable tomorrow. Until then, here’s a car commercial my friend worked on for an advertising agency in Germany. It’s not horror, but it is damn cool.

Sean T. Collins delivers the monster music goodness once again, this time with the video for Menomena’s song Cough Coughing. The video showcases a trashquatch Santa Claus wreaking havoc through suburbia. The narrative matches the editing of the video so closely you’d think the song was created for the visuals, and not vice versa.

I receive the occassional missive chiding me for covering a topic that doesn’t particularly seem genre-related. I think it’s a fair concern, though anyone who doesn’t find pterodactyls receiving bjs slightly horrific should reconsider their stance on the subject. That said, based on the teaser trailers I had no intention of covering Hot Fuzz, the latest film from the team that brought us Shaun of the Dead. So what changed my mind? The full theatrical trailer has been released and it fleshes out the story somewhat, including the introduction of the villain as a hooded serial killer. Courtesy of Film Junk.

Sean T. Collins over at Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat has posted a great little video entitled Sheena Was A Parasite by a band called The Horrors. I have many weaknesses, and one of them is purposely low-grade filmmaking masking high-end special effects (for another example of what I’m talking about, check the news footage in Signs). Academy award-nominee Samantha Morton plays the title parasite, which is kind of shocking considering her adorable portrayal in Sweet and Lowdown. The video was banned on MTV, not because of the disturbing hentai implications but because of all the strobing. I blame Poekmon.

With his feature film Fantasia, Walt Disney attempted to bridge the gap between what was perceived then as high culture and low culture by combining classical music with animation. Now, sixty-six years later, his legacy continues, this time with the use of symphonic beauty to underscore the fragile grace of depaitations, cranium spearings, and hyper-cerebral electrosis, or, to use layman’s terms, head explosions.

I’ve mentioned this a few times before, but I just can’t seem to get indignant about the recent trend in horror remakes. I’ve become hardened over the years. But there is one remake that pisses me off, and it’s The Hitcher, though not for any reason you may suspect. It’s not because I hold the original in high regard, or because the screenwriter is the same mastermind behind the recent When A Stranger Calls fiasco. No, my reason for hating The Hitcher remake before it’s release is admittedly stupid and petty on my part.

“The problem these days - I don’t know about in Australia, but here - nobody picks up hitchhikers anymore. So I had to work on making the villain a lot cleverer… more calculated.”

That is a quote from an interview with The Hitcher screenwriter Jake Wade Wall, and it drives up the wall. Has this guy ever stepped outside? How do you hire someone for a hitchhiking movie who isn’t aware, or willing to make himself aware, that although hitchhiking isn’t nearly as prevalent today as it was over twenty years ago it’s still practiced by thousands in North America alone. Not only have I hitchhiked quite a few times but I’ve also picked up hitchhikers on those rare occassions when I’ve been out driving, and I’ve never had to resort to clever or calculating ruses to sucker my rides. Just a thumb and some patience.

If you still want to subject yourself to the seizure-inducing trailer for The Hitcher remake, knock yourself out. Via Bloody Disgusting.

It’s my happening and Ia Ia Cthulhu F’tagn! Dark Lord Rob has contacted me about his first feature film, The Miskatonic Acid Test, and he wants to blow your mind.

It’s 1969, and cosmic horror infects a psychedelic rock “happening” in witch-haunted Arkham, Mass. It’s a zonked out brew of poetry, philosophy, metaphysical terror, and 60’s-style acid rock; probably the first horror movie that’s more heavily influenced by the Monkees’ “Head” than by George Romero. Sort of like Monterey Pop, only at the end monsters attack everybody.

Potentially even more important than the film is Dark Lord Rob’s efforts to preserve the long-lost Arkham Sound, even going so far as to make tracks from that era available for the first time in decades, including Erich Zann by The Howl and the legendary Come to Arkham (Wear the Wind in Your Hair) by Byron Fenris. I didn’t think these songs would ever turn up again. Praise Yog-Sothoth!

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.