Exclusives
‘Herbert West’ Returns as a Teenager in New ‘Re-Animator’ Series!
We learned exclusively that Transition Entertainment is shooting a pilot presentation next April that will bring RE-ANIMATOR’s Herbert West back as “a teenage Dr. Frankenstein for the new millennium”. Entitled HERBERT WEST: RE-ANIMATOR THE SERIES, the pilot episode was written by Meredith Red and William Butler, with a director yet to be named. Beyond the break you’ll find the exclusive casting breakdown that was sent into us by a requested ‘anonymous’ B-D regular.
[HERBERT WEST] (18) – is a teenage Dr. Frankenstein for the new millennium. He’s a dark, shy, somewhat sexy and narcissistic young man obsessed with finding the secret to life and learning the formula that will reanimate the dead. His philosophy, “Sometimes you have to cause death to lay the foundation for life” leaves him often-criticized by his young contemporaries. His unconventional theories about life and death make him a legend early on at Miskatonic University, yet he is respected as a brilliant young man of science. It takes him a while to see that his fellow classmate Harley is quietly developing feelings for him. There are many layers to Herbert’s complicated personality and little by little we will reveal each layer, learning about his past and what drives him to discover the secret of reanimation.
[RANDY CARTER] (18) – Arkham local and Herbert West’s good-looking roommate as well as his moral compass, sometimes struggles to understand that Herbert is conducting his experiments for the greater good. While trying to keep Herbert in check, Randy is slowly convinced there’s more than meets the eye going on at the University campus. Eventually he begins a secret investigation into the scientific and paranormal phenomenon on campus and surrounding area, often getting himself and his comrades into serious trouble. Yet slowly convinced that he himself is possibly onto some kind of scientific breakthrough, he keeps the clues and phenomenon experience between himself and his friends. Randy comes to believe that the young man that went berserk on the campus was driven by a force unknown. Randy is always tinkering with his motorcycle.
[HARLEY WARREN] (18) – is nerdy-hot, sexy, smart, slowly begins to show that she secretly longs for Herbert’s approval and affection. Even though her experiments are bold and her desire to help him on his journey are clear, Herbert fears she doesn’t have the constitution and foresight for his kind of work. Constantly pushing to be an accepted member of the team, Harley sometimes takes things too far and has to go to Herbert and Randy for help to clean things up – that’s if she can get away to call for help.
[CRAWFORD TILLINGHAST] (18) – Miskatonic’s resident stud and bad boy. He’s cocky, competitive and highly intelligent, but his jealousy of Herbert could be his downfall if he’s not careful. A student whose research revolves around metaphysics and time manipulation and is also fascinated by the possibility of multi-dimensional planes of existence. Early on, he learns of Herbert’s goal and he immediately begins to plot and scheme to find and fine tune the formula before Herbert does – sometimes with disastrous results. His obsession often leads to trouble where he too is forced to ask the others for help. Somewhere in season two, we will slowly learn that Crawford is secretly Dean Halsey’s pawn as the old man, who claims to be the gangs’ mentor and friend is really the cause of all the strange goings on at the university.
[MEGAN ARMITAGE] (18) – A smoking hot young psych student and the daughter of Henry Armitage, the university librarian. Skeptical of all of the supposed goings on at Miskatonic, Megan often loses her patience with her boyfriend Randy, using her sexuality to pull his focus. Though her tantrums, shameless flirting and arrogance can sometimes appear humorous, we will later find that Megan is not who she seems as she teams with others who intend to cause the gang harm. This is only foreshadowed as she eventually leaves Randy for Crawford.
[DEAN JONATHAN HALSEY] (50’s) – After surviving the horrible event at Miskatonic that still haunts him, Dean Halsey befriends the newcomers, fascinated by their growing curiosity for the unexplored avenues of science. He secretly supports Herbert and the gang, often providing them with supplies and information as well as covering for them when things get a bit out of control. It won’t be till later that we realize, through Carter’s driving curiosity and amateur detective work that Dean Halsey has an agenda of his own, having conducted his own experiments in the unknown sciences and supernatural…the true cause of all of the trouble on campus – both old and new. Once he believes he no longer needs Herbert and the rest to attain his true goal – to find the key to opening another dimension, he plans to dispose of them all. “This is a vortex for activity, let this be our secret.”
[STACI CARTER] (17) -Randy’s younger sister. A cute young thing who goes to the local high school and works at their hangout…a rundown café where the gang often meets late at night to makes plans or sometimes recover from them. Stacy has a mad, unrequited crush on Crawford, so is always trying to hang around to be near him. Her desire to connect with him, sometimes gets her involved in the action.
[ADAM CHADWICK] (17) – Staci’s handsome and closeted gay male friend. Confused why her friend never responds to her subtle flirting and advances, Staci eventually realizes that it’s males he’d rather be with as he confides in her. Smart and fearless, Adam has uncanny ability to find a joke even in the most harrowing of situations. We will slowly find that he has a secret crush on Crawford – a crush that will eventually get everyone into a terrible mess, when Crawford manipulates him into helping him get what he wants.
[HOWIE PETERSON] (18) – aspires to be a science fiction writer and sometimes accidentally comes up with a clue or possibility by making reference to the tons of literature he has poured through in his life. It turns out his last name is really Lovecraft, but he doesn’t use it because his father left he and his mother at a very young age.
[BURKE AND HARE] (20’s) The Silent Bob and Jay of the show. The boys are local swindlers who Herbert befriends early in our story and that will do almost anything for a buck. Whether it be keeping Herbert in touch with the freshest specimens or risking their lives to find occult oddities that Carter requests – they are fearless and at their service. Sometimes they unwittingly save the day.
Exclusives
‘Tarot’ Filmmakers Spenser Cohen & Anna Halberg on Practical Creature Effects and ‘Insidious’ Inspirations
An evil curse gets awakened in Screen Gems horror movie Tarot when a group of friends recklessly ignore a sacred rule: never use someone else’s deck. Writers/Directors Spenser Cohen & Anna Halberg unleash a variety of Tarot card-inspired entities on the group through practical effects, and create an unexpected connection to Insidious along the way.
The film comes exclusively to movie theaters on May 3, 2024.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with Cohen and Halberg ahead of Tarot‘s release, where the pair shared more about the film’s practical effects-driven horrors and revealed how Tarot drew from Insidious in a specific way.
To start, though, the filmmakers reveal just how closely their horror movie sticks to the source novel Horrorscope by Nicholas Adams. The short answer is, well, it doesn’t at all!
Cohen explains, “It’s so different. We never even read the book and took nothing from the book. The only thing, the studio had a title that they liked, and so that’s why there was an association. Then we changed the title. So, now there’s literally zero connection to the book.“
“Sony had come to us wanting to make a horror movie about astrology, but there’s nothing that’s inherently scary to us about Zodiac signs. So, we came up with the idea of combining tarot readings and tarot cards with astrology, and that’s what ended up becoming the movie. There’s such incredible iconography in these cards that we really had a plethora of amazing characters to choose from,” Halberg adds.
Adain Bradley ‘Grant’ and Jacob Batalon ‘Paxton’ in Screen Gems TAROT
With a group of seven friends, expect to see their fates sealed by a number of cards. In other words, expect to see a wide variety of Tarot-inspired creatures tormenting the protagonists. The filmmakers stressed the importance of practical effects for their creatures.
Cohen tells us, “From the get-go, we said every creature is going to be practical. We were thinking of [David] Cronenberg, of Alien and The Thing, and we want our actors responding to real things, not a tennis ball. It always just looks better. You get better performances. With the designs themselves, if you look at the tarot cards and these specific characters, there’s nothing inherently terrifying about them, even though we associate the cards with being supernatural and terrifying. And [it’s] why we partnered with Trevor [Henderson], who was the only designer we met with. We were like, this is our guy because he has this ability to make the familiar feel unnatural.
“His designs are really grounded. I am sure you’ve seen a lot of his stuff where it’s like a hallway, and there’s something there, and something’s off about it, but it really feels like it’s in the space. We knew that he has a special brain for creating unique creatures, and he hadn’t done a movie, which is just shocking to us. Then, we knew that in order to pull that off, we would need a design team with equal skill. That was Dan Martin and his amazing team who worked hand in hand with Trevor to bring those to life.”
Larsen Thompson ‘Elise’ in Screen Gems TAROT
Great designs and practical effects are one thing, but it also falls to the performers to infuse these monsters with personality to make them memorable. That was also at the forefront of the filmmakers’ minds.
“In order for the creatures to translate, underneath all the prosthetics, you have to have great actors,” Cohen confirms. “We met with a lot of people. We were looking for people who were talking to us about the psychology and the movement and how they could move in a way that we hadn’t seen before or incorporate dance. We were looking for those outliers, and basically, everyone we hired approached the part as if there were no makeup or prosthetics. It’s like, ‘I am the Magician, so this is what I want to do. I’m going to have a limp. My body’s going to do this. I feel like my head is hunched.’ And we would watch these actors just embody these roles. It was really just picking great people, honestly. It’s hard to act through prosthetics and create emotion and fear and other things. You have to have an incredible control to be able to do that.”
Halberg elaborates,” Even though we enhanced some of the creatures with visual effects, we didn’t want to rely on that. So we needed people, like Spenser said, who each brought their own unique feel to these characters. They were just as important as all of the other actors in the movie and are so crucial to making sure that these sequences are scary and believable.”
Humberly González ‘Madeline’ in Screen Gems TAROT
One of the many Tarot creatures in the film is the Magician, who comes with an original song by the film’s composer, Joseph Bishara. While Bishara has delivered no shortage of great contemporary horror scores, including The Conjuring and Malignant, horror fans are likely more familiar with Bishara as the Lipstick Demon in the Insidious franchise. Cohen and Halberg can be counted among Insidious fans, so much so that they wanted an original song from the Lipstick Demon himself.
They explain, “We actually, in prep, we called Joe, and we said, ‘Hey, we’re going to do some kind of an old-timey song there.’ We knew something creepy, very Shining-esque. Then we had the idea to do a song called ‘I Saw You’ to be a pun on that whole thing. And actually use saws as the instrument. We found these YouTube videos, and our DP, I think, Elie [Smolkin] had found these videos of someone playing a saw. We were like, that’s terrifying.
“So we called Joe, and we said, ‘You know Tiptoe through the Tulips, how that’s like in Insidious?’ That’s the thing you leave the theater thinking about, and it gets under your skin. We were like, ‘Can you do that for us with an original song?’ He said yes. What you hear in the movie is basically what he played for us the first time. He was just like, ‘I have an idea. I’ll talk to you guys in a week.’ And then that was what we heard, and it was amazing.”
With so many entities and horror sequences, Halberg can’t pick a favorite. Instead, she offers one last tease, “I hope people come away with the realization that each of the sequences is so unique and different, and that each of the creatures is so special because we took a lot of time trying to craft each of these kills or scares to be their own thing and to feel different.
“Hopefully everybody can choose their own favorite.”
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