Exclusives
[Exclusive] Dirge Within’s Jeremy Genske Shares His Top 10 WORST Horror Movies
We’re all a fan of horror movies, right? Otherwise, why would you be here? And we’ve all got our own personal tastes of what makes a great horror movie versus a terrible one. The same goes with Jeremy “Jerms” Genske, vocalist of Chicago heavy metal band Dirge Within. So much so that he decided to whip up a list of his Top 10 WORST horror movies. This list, which is pretty damn hilarious if you ask me, covers a few big name entries but also several more under the radar selections. Check out the list below and leave a comment with YOUR worst horror movie!
Dirge Within’s latest album is There Will Be Blood (Amazon). The band has a few tour dates as well, which you can see below.
Jerms from Dirge Within here! Now, I love horror movies. Seriously, I love them. So much so that I’ve dedicated my whole arm to the 80’s classics! But just like any medium there are gems, and there is total sh*t. Right now we’re gonna talk about the ones that fall into the “total sh*t” category. The ones that fly under the horror movie radar, the ones that never should have made it on the shelves, ones that were so f*cking bad the people that wrote/directed them are now bus drivers. Don’t get me wrong, I still love these movies. Almost to a fault (I’m addicted to buying those 6-8 movie packs in the $5.00 dvd bins) Anyway, here’s my top ten of those craptastic horror movies you can’t help but love!
10. The Nightmare on Elm Street (2010 Remake): Now I’m sure people are thinking, WHY?! It’s new! It’s modern! In my opinion, this franchise should have not been touched at all! To me, the NOES series was just fine the way it was. Freddy Krueger is to be played by Robert Englund ONLY! Even when the dude’s 90 years old and can barely walk, if he looked up at you and uttered the phrase “Welcome to my world, b*tch.” I’m pretty sure you’d still piss yourself. Sorry but the guy that played Rorschach in The Watchmen will never be as naturally and flawlessly evil. So with that I start my list.
9. Sleepaway Camp 2: I mean, c’mon now. Don’t get me wrong, I love this movie. It could easily go under the “Classic” category, but the movie itself is just terrible. I mean the big plot twist is that SHE used to be a HE, and the reason she killed everyone was because she was picked on when she was a little boy. Great, thanks for that. One big happy ray of f*ckin’ sunshine she was. Or he. Or she…whatever.
8. Jeepers Creepers 1 & 2: Now, I know I may get a lot of sh*t for this one because there are a lot of people that actually like these movies. But since this is my list, I don’t give a sh*t. I thought both of those movies were terrible! A murderous scarecrow with a GINORMOUS wingspan is after Justin Long?!? Nooooo!!! About the only creepy part of these movies is the song itself. I bet even Justin Long leaves that movie out of the conversation when discussing his film repertoire. And the second one…a bunch of kids trapped on a bus in the middle of nowhere while on a school trip…while hilarious to watch..not scary.
7. Killjoy: A nerdy kid gets beaten and murdered for talking to a gang-banger’s girlfriend and turns into an evil clown with gingivitis and he kills his murderers by pulling them into his dream world. Do I need to say more?
6. Pulse: As they said in the movie “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”, OH MY GOD! My cell phone is out to kill me! Seriously, ghosts can travel between all our electronic devices and kill us. Wow. Whoever thought this was a good idea to remake and had the wherewithal to convince someone to actually DO it, should get an award or something. Way to dupe some assh*le into buying that crap. You seriously deserve a free dinner for 2 at Golden Corral. I know at the time it was popular to remake Japanese horror movies, but this one should have been left in japan. I turned this movie off about halfway through, but then kept watching because I remembered that Kristen Bell is smokin’ hot. So that’s about the only saving grace.
5. Big Tit Zombies: Speaking of Japanese imports….here’s this gem of a horror movie. A bunch of Japanese strippers get infected with the “dead” disease from some homeless guy. Then some other Japanese girl with a big ass Katana shows up like she’s a pro zombie killer. She teams up with a lowly couple of strippers and they fight zombies together. Even the first two words in the title of this movie, while accurate, could not save this movie. At all.
4. Jason X: Seriously…what the f*ck?! Jason Voorhees…in space?!?! All of a sudden in the 25th century Jason wakes up in a spaceship and becomes uber buff with a new shiny metal hockey mask?!?! I seriously wanted to take a machete and show the ass clown that wrote and directed this piece of sh*te what Jason Voorhees was all about. How that movie happened, the world will never know.
3. Any and ALL of the Wrong Turn movies: Do I really need an explanation on this one?
2. Parents: I’m a huge Randy Quaid fan in the 80’s and 90’s. So when I saw that he was in a horror movie I was stoked! And then I turned it on…and watched it. Ok yeah the parents are cannibals…I can live with that. That’s all fine and dandy. But the whole movie leading up to that revelation is so ridiculously hard to follow. It makes NO sense at all. Randy Quaid…you have disappointed me. Now go back to playing Cousin Eddie in the Vacation movies!
1. Blood Diner: This movie is BY FAR the WORST horror movie I have ever seen! Two guys that own a vegetarian diner murder women and take various body parts to rebuild a voodoo goddess’s body and resurrect her. Being ordered to do so by the talking brain of their dead uncle. All the while feeding the remains of their victims to the patrons of their diner. There is absolutely NO redeeming quality of this movie from start to finish. Not even the gratuitous topless aerobics class scene. By the end of the movie I felt as bad as I did when I watched ONE episode of Jersey Shore. I was ashamed and wanted the time of my life I wasted watching it back. It’s just so..bad. Not even so bad that it’s actually amazing…just bad.
Upcoming Dirge Within tour dates:
August 10 – Fort Wayne, Indiana @ Piere’s w/Fear Factory
August 11 – Twin Lakes, Wisconsin @ Shadow Hill Ranch [WIIL ROCK FEST]
August 12 – Chesterfield, Michigan @ New York New York w/Fear Factory
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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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