Yet for A24’s buzzy Backrooms, age seems to be a sticking point. Much has been publicized about then 19-year-old Kane Parsons as the youngest to helm an A24 title, even sparking debate online as to how involved the director was on his own project. But cinema, and horror in particular, has a sturdy track record filled with maverick young filmmakers forging new ground in the genre.

So much so that Kane Parsons isn’t the first teen horror filmmaker, nor the youngest. 

It’s not remotely atypical or unconventional for filmmakers to develop their love of film from a very early age, where they hone their craft on home video, but some prove their ambitions remarkably early.

Such is the case with the horror movies on this list; these seven horror movies hail from directors who made them before reaching the age of 25. Moreover, these films marked the start of ongoing careers.

 So Vam – Alice Maio Mackay

Australian filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay was just 16 during production on her feature debut, a scrappy coming-of-age horror story that sees an outcast join rebellious vampires who feed on bigots and abusers. So Vam was released by Shudder after a successful festival run, but Maio Mackay was already hard at work on her next project and doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon. The now 21-year-old has since directed five additional features, including this year’s The Serpent’s Skin.

Hell of a Summer – Billy Bryk & Finn Wolfhard 

This slasher comedy centers around a twenty-something camp counselor who feels deeply out of touch with his younger colleagues when a masked killer arrives to pick them off one by one. It’s co-written, co-directed, and co-stars Billy Bryk and Finn Wolfhard, who were 22 and 19, respectively, during the film’s 2022 production. The pair met and quickly bonded on set of Ghostbusters: Afterlife over their love of comedy and horror films, channeling that into their debut project that initially struggled to secure financing due to Wolfhard’s young age.

 Pathogen – Emily Hagens

Pathogen gives a unique spin on the zombie subgenre, centered around a 14-year-old and her middle school peers. The film’s writer/director/producer, Emily Hagens (Sorry About the Demon), was only 12 when she made it, even despite grownups trying to convince her to condense her script into a more manageable short film format. The Austin-based film premiered in 2006 at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema and eventually received a Vinegar Syndrome release in 2022, while Hagens has kept busy in horror over the years.

The Evil Dead – Sam Raimi 

Legendary director Sam Raimi might be a household name now, but he wasn’t even 20 when he shot the short film “Within the Woods” as proof of concept to secure financing for The Evil Dead. He succeeded and turned 20 just before production began. And production on this ambitiously scrappy project ran long, with the young filmmaker working around various production delays, from weather to funding. Its eventual release, itself a winding road, would solidify The Evil Dead as an enduring horror classic and its director a horror master.

Phantasm – Don Coscarelli 

The cult classic that follows an orphaned teen as he faces off against the otherworldly Tall Man and his bizarre arsenal of weaponry was inspired by writer/director Don Coscarelli’s nightmares as a teen himself. Filming began in 1977, when Coscarelli was 23. Much like The Evil Dead, financing and production proved tricky and stretched on for a long while. His feature directorial debut, Jim the World’s Greatest, was made with co-director Craig Mitchell when they were 18.

Bad Taste – Peter Jackson

Like Sam Raimi and Don Coscarelli, Peter Jackson’s first feature was a DIY effort shot over multiple years thanks to production starts and stops. Bad Taste began as a 20-minute short film called Roast of the Day before Jackson’s ambitions ballooned the project into a practical effects showcase of a splatter film. He completed and sold the film, shot over roughly four years and primarily on weekends, at the age of 25, marking the start of his splatter era. The rest, as they say, is history.

Duel – Steven Spielberg

Four years before forever changing the summer blockbuster with Jaws, Steven Spielberg made his feature debut with a 1971 adaptation of Richard Matheson’s road thriller that sees a motorist terrorized by a road-raged tanker in the California desert. Not only is Duel considered one of the greatest television movies of all time, but it honed Spielberg’s craft as a precursor to Jaws. He was only 25 when the film made its debut.

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The enduring appeal of these stories lies in the sub-genre’s ability to tap into universal fears—abandonment, the unknown, and the unsettling notion that our homes, meant to be places of safety, can become sites of terror. While traditional tropes like creaky floorboards, flickering lights, tragic backstories, and isolated locations have certainly shaped the subgenre’s identity, films that challenge and expand these tried and true tropes have allowed the subgenre to evolve and flourish.

With Presence, Soderbergh puts his own unique spin on the haunted house film by shifting the perspective from the haunted to the haunter. While this POV shift undoubtedly subverts the classic haunted house narrative stance, it’s not the only innovative card Soderbergh has to play. To celebrate the release of Presence, here are a few other haunted house films that flipped the script and dared to do things a little differently.

House (1977)

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Nobuhiko Obayashi’s film House (Hausu) is a cinematic experience like no other. After being encouraged to make a film similar to Jaws, Obayashi consulted his daughter Chigumi to learn more about her childhood fears. Obayashi then combined Chigumi’s vivid and highly creative ideas with his own memories and ideas surrounding the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What resulted was a script that follows a girl named Gorgeous and her six friends as they visit her aunt’s isolated country home, which devours the girls one by one.

Despite having a creepy cat and a basic framework that fits the classic haunted house tradition, nothing else about House is basic. Or traditional. Obayashi juxtaposed live action with dazzling hand-drawn animations to beef up the more bizarre elements of the story, like the aggressively violent piano, disembodied heads, and myriad vicious household items. The combination of these psychedelic visuals and absurdist-style horrors is truly something to behold and has only further solidified the film’s cult classic status as time marches on. Safe to say, there will never be another film like it.

The Deep House (2021)

Few movies take the classic spooky, isolated house on the hill idea and flip it more literally than The Deep House. Directed by the dynamic French duo Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo
(Inside, The Soul Eater), the film follows Ben, an ambitious YouTuber (James Jagger) and his adventurous girlfriend Tina (Camille Rowe). Hearing about a sanatorium in France that became submerged during the creation of an artificial lake in the 1980s, the pair can hardly pack fast enough as Ben fantasizes about all the views such a unique site will bring.

After arriving at the lake, Ben’s dreams dissipate when they discover the location has become a hot spot for tourists and content creators alike. Lucky for Ben, a local named Pierre tips the couple off to a lesser-known, perfectly preserved submerged house and even offers to take them to it. As those fluent in horror may guess, Pierre’s kindness is no accident and costs the brave duo dearly.

Setting most of the film underwater, Maury and Bustillo push the boundaries of many familiar haunted house tropes while reaping the anxiety-inducing benefits of aquatic horror. While it was surely no easy feat for cinematographer Jacques Ballard, The Deep House is haunting and incredibly eerie. The water setting injects an unnerving surreality that supports a nearly constant sense of dread and claustrophobia. By creatively blending two seemingly disparate horror subgenres, Maury and Bustillo add something truly singular to the haunted house roster.

Thir13en Ghosts (2001)

Part of the early 2000s horror remake boom, Steve Beck’s Thir13en Ghosts dusted off William Castle’s 1960 classic for a whole new generation of horror fans. While the totally rad spelling of the 2001 version might lead one to believe that few remnants of the original source material survive intact, there is a surprising amount of shared DNA between the two. For example, both films feature an obsessive ghost collector, his massive house filled with distinctive ghosts, his poor relatives who inherit way more than they bargained for, and an unfortunate series of events that soon spiral out of control.

Alongside these more standard traits, Thir13en Ghosts also features some unique attributes that deviate from the formula and have seared into many a millennial brain. Instead of an old, creaky, gothic abode, Thir13en Ghosts trades in the stained wood and crown molding for a state-of-the-art glass monstrosity with an occult-fueled machine at its core. Outfitted with the latest in paranormal technology, this modern marvel boasts Latin barrier-spell-etched Ectobar glass throughout to keep the house’s carefully curated assortment of dangerous ghosts in check. At the same time, specially designed spectral goggles allow mere mortals to keep tabs on the ghosts while looking super cool in the process. A memorable haunted house for the Y2K era, indeed.

The Frighteners (1996)

One of the most common tropes in haunted house movies is the malevolent spirit or entity that is either summoned or somehow attached to a property. More often than not, these ghosts and ghouls are presented as either tragic or evil beings up to no good. And while there are a few sinful specters in The Frighteners, co-writer Fran Walsh and director/co-writer Peter Jackson gleefully wink at the trope by having ghosts play both heroes and villains to delightful and genuinely clever effect.

In the movie, Michael J. Fox stars as Frank Bannister, a terrible driver and psychic investigator haunted by far more than ghosts. After a horrific car accident and losing his wife, Frank discovers his brush with death has given him the ability to communicate with ghosts. Naturally, Frank assembles a motley crew of ghost friends and begins running a shady ghost-busting business (aka, a staged haunted house con). However, when an ominous, cloaked figure causes a series of mysterious deaths, Frank must set aside his grift and confront his past to stop the entity for good.

Ghostwatch (1992)

Originally broadcast on Halloween night in 1992 as part of the BBC One series Screen One, Ghostwatch was presented as a live news broadcast investigation that sought to capture proof of the paranormal. In the film, a team of real BBC television anchors and personalities look into a supposed haunting in a suburban London home. While the mysterious happenings initially seem to all be a hoax perpetrated by one of the young girls living in the home, this assumption is quickly proven so very wrong.

Ghostwatch‘s premise is indeed clever, and based on the story of the Enfield Poltergeist. But even after all these years, its most brilliant aspect is its documentary style. Upon its initial release, the film was so compelling and convincing that thousands of viewers mistook it for live events. By daring to present itself as an actual news special, Ghostwatch sparked a massive amount of controversy and garnered instant cult classic status in the process.

House II: The Second Story (1987)

Some movies intentionally set out to push boundaries, subvert tropes, and play with expectations to deliver something new and different. And then there are some movies that achieve these same goals by being so absolutely bonkers it seemingly defies logic. House II: The Second Story, written and directed by Ethan Wiley, is one of the latter.

In typical haunted house style, the film follows a young man named Jesse (Arye Gross), who inherits a creaky old mansion. While the movie starts simple enough, things quickly go off the rails when Jesse discovers his great-great-grandfather once possessed a large crystal skull. Thinking that he may have been buried with it, Jesse and his friend Charlie decide to dig up the old man, just in case. While hoping to find treasure, they instead discover the zombified cowboy corpse of dear old Gramps, who’s ready to party.

Before long, Jesse and his friends are traversing time and space, befriending Cater-Puppies, teaming up with an electrician who is also a part-time adventurer, and experiencing all sorts of supernatural mayhem related to the house’s magical powers. Unfolding like a muddled retelling of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull by a highly imaginative 8-year-old, House II mixes horror, humor, and fantasy into a signature cocktail all its own.

Skinamarink (2022)

After garnering significant buzz during its initial festival run, whispers about Kyle Edward Ball’s Skinamarink soon became shouts when a leaked version of the film hit the internet. Demand for the film resulted in a surprisingly successful theatrical run and countless divisive follow-up conversations and opinions. Shot from the literal perspective of a child, the movie follows two young 90s kids who wake up in the middle of the night to find their dad missing and all the doors and windows in their home vanished. Though initially just a little confused, the kids’ puzzlement soon shifts to terror when they discover that they aren’t exactly alone after all.

Uncomfortable, weird, experimental, and amorphous, Skinamarink is a movie that hypnotically flows like molasses. Everything about how modern cinematic stories are made and told is challenged here. For some, Ball’s daring approach and lo-fi liminal style resonate with deep-seated childhood memories and fears. For others, it is nothing more than an analog slog. No matter where one ultimately falls on the Skinamarink fandom spectrum, the ballsiness of Ball’s novel approach to relaying a haunted house-style story cannot be denied.

Honorable Mentions:

●  The Others (2001)
●  Paranormal Activity (2007)
●  Insidious (2010)
●  Below (2002)
●  The Sentinel (1977)
●  Housebound (2014)

Presence is now playing in theaters. In her four-skull review, Meagan Navarro calls it “an innovative and grim nail-biter with more on its mind than the logline suggests.” Get tickets now.

The post Flipping the Foundation: 7 Haunted House Films That Dare to be Different appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

We’ve all heard the saying “less is more.” Marie Kondo championed this minimalist sentiment when convincing us to rid our homes of unwanted items and Coco Chanel lived by the rule of taking one accessory off before leaving the house. We’re not sure Peter Jackson has ever heard this saying as his films tend to be extravaganzas filled with lavish plotting, eccentric characters, and over-the-top effects. And we’re not mad about it. Years before he wowed the world with expansive adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and a mammoth remake of the 1933 classic King Kong, Jackson honed his delightful excesses in the horror genre culminating in the 1996 splatstick comedy The Frighteners.

Michael J. Fox stars as Frank Bannister, a widower blessed – or cursed – with the ability to see the dead. When he runs afoul of a ghostly killer and his surprising accomplice, Frank must team up with his ghoulish buddies and a crush-worthy doctor to stop the numeric killing spree before the body count grows any higher. With perplexing roles by horror royalty and a cartoonish approach to the world of the dead, The Frighteners charms with its 90s nostalgia, perplexes with indulgent characterization, and wins us over with its stunning and sexy female killer.

In a new episode of The Lady Killers, co-hosts Jenn Adams, Sammie Kuykendall, Mae Shults, and Rocco T. Thompson dust off their Ouija boards and rush their ashes to the chapel as they discuss aspirational crones, creepy manors, supernatural kink, and off-putting sidekicks. Is Patricia a villain or the victim of an older man? Why are we so attracted to a murderous Jake Busey? What’s going on in that opening scene and what movie does Jeffrey Combs think he’s in? They’ll count off each of these questions and more as they carve numbers into their foreheads and hop on the express bus to hell in a “more is more” episode on a smokin’ hot killer couple.

Stream the episode below or subscribe now via Apple Podcasts and Spotify for future episodes that drop every Thursday.

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A surprising uncredited cameo by director Peter Jackson confirms that the characters from his raunchy spluppet feature (splatter + puppet), Meet the Feebles, exist within the same world as the Muppets, making for one of horror’s most surprising crossovers.

“Track 7: Eight Days a Week” is the seventh episode of the season, which sees the Muppets’ music exec Nora (Lilly Singh) attempt to create a documentary about the band. Enter director Peter Jackson, playing himself. The Award-winning director is there with a crew, and the band recognizes him instantly.

In a bizarre exchange, Muppet Floyd Pepper (Matt Vogel) reveals that not only does the band have a history with Jackson, but his Feebles as well. Jackson gives Floyd Pepper a grim update on the Feebles: “Two of them are in witness protection. The rest are in prison.”

That’s no surprise to those who have seen the spluppet feature. Poor Floyd seems a bit traumatized by the encounter, for good reason.

Meet the Feebles was the second film in Jackson’s splatter phase between Bad Taste and Braindead (Dead Alive). Originally intended to be a TV series, surprising enthusiasm from Japanese investors instead turned this into a feature-length film that followed the cast and crew behind the scenes of a Muppet-like variety show. There’s no concise central narrative to this film; Meet the Feebles is just an exploration of the sleazy underbelly of showbiz.

Though the audience spends the most time with aging star Heidi the Hippo and innocent newcomer Robert the Hedgehog, we also spend time with just about every character and facet of the show and every possible bodily fluid in the process. It begins tame enough as it introduces all the characters, mostly just sex and cursing. Still, it gradually builds into the most shocking puppet film that will likely ever be committed to celluloid.

There’s attempted rape, drug use, paternity battles, a Vietnam War flashback in the vein of Deer Hunter, puppet porn, puppet sex, murder, nudity, and almost every crude and rude vice or joke on display here. It’s also extremely gross.

“The Muppets Mayhem” was developed by Adam F. Goldberg, Bill Barretta, and Jeff Yorkes. Goldberg previously created the long-running sitcom “The Goldbergs,” which saw the return of Elvira and Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger.

It’s clear that Goldberg is a horror fan, and we salute the boldness of creating this unique Muppet crossover.

All episodes of “The Muppet Mayhem” are available now, but you can check out the Meet the Feebles crossover exchange below.

The post “The Muppets Mayhem” – Peter Jackson’s Surprise Cameo Brings ‘Meet the Feebles’ Crossover to Disney+ Show appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

With so many genre filmmakers choosing to support interactive digital art, we’ve decided to come up with a list celebrating six times that masters of horror contributed to videogames. After all, from famous writers to big-name directors, there are plenty of examples of multimedia collaboration in gaming.

As usual, we’ll be abiding by a couple of rules. First, we’ll only be including masters of horror that don’t specialize in videogames (that means no Shinji Mikami!). Second, the contribution has to be in the game itself and not the marketing or trailers (so we won’t be mentioning George A. Romero’s live-action teaser for Resident Evil 2).

With that out of the way, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite horror collaborations in gaming.

Now, onto the list…

6. John Carpenter – F.3.A.R. (2011)

It’s no secret that John Carpenter is an avid gamer, as there are several instances of him publicly declaring himself a fan of franchises like Dead Space and Fallout, but it’s a shame that the iconic director has never helmed a game of his own. That being said, the folks at Day 1 Studios actually recruited Carpenter to consult on their sequel to Monolith’s F.E.A.R. games.

While the director’s participation was greatly exaggerated by the title’s marketing team, Carpenter held a handful of long-distance conference calls with lead writer Steve Niles (co-creator of 30 Days of Night) and offered several notes and suggestions to the development team. It’s not exactly the ideal role for one of the greatest genre filmmakers alive, but it’s still cool that he had a hand in the finished game.

5. Guillermo del Toro – Silent Hills/P.T. (2014)

Hideo Kojima’s ill-fated Silent Hills has gone down in gaming history as one of the most influential unreleased projects of all time, but at least we can still look back on its Playable Teaser as a more-or-less self-contained piece of highly-effective horror. Of course, one of the things that made this cancelled title such a missed opportunity is the fact that the demo was co-directed by Academy-Award-winning genre filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, who contributed to the project with monster designs and story ideas that were only hinted at in the teaser.

While the Oscar winning director would later partner with Kojima on Death Stranding, Del Toro has claimed that Silent Hills’ cancellation was one of the most moronic things he’s ever witnessed. I tend to agree, especially when you realize that the game was also supposed to feature creature designs by esteemed manga artist Junji Ito, another veritable master of horror.

It’s already been 8 years, but I don’t think horror fans are going to get over this anytime soon…

4. James Gunn – Lollipop Chainsaw (2012)

These days, James Gunn is mostly associated with super-hero flicks, having achieved worldwide fame with Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy franchise. However, the director actually got his start working on low-budget genre flicks that would likely shock folks who are only familiar with his blockbuster output. That’s why Grasshopper Manufacture contacted the filmmaker back during the development of 2012’s Lollipop Chainsaw, with Suda51 wanting a genre specialist to help craft the game’s grindhouse-inspired story and characters.

The end product was a gloriously violent hodgepodge of zombie tropes and risqué comedy (which makes sense when you consider Gunn’s history with Troma), with the game selling over a million copies and impressing most critics. While it didn’t exactly become a household name, Lollipop Chainsaw went on to influence Gunn’s take on Harley Quinn in his Suicide Squad reboot, and Dragami Games has also announced a next-gem remake set to release later this year.

3. Stephen King – The Mist (1985)

I always thought it was strange that the literary multiverse of Stephen King never became the basis for a successful video game franchise, especially since the Dark Tower books are so well suited for over-the-top adventure. As it stands, there are only a handful of Stephen King inspired games, and most of them are based on adaptations rather than his original source material. One exception is Angelsoft’s The Mist, a 1985 text adventure that King had a had in.

While the writer didn’t actively take part in programming this spooky little adventure title, preferring to give Angelsoft developer Raymond Benson free reign to adapt the story however he saw fit, Benson actually made a point of using most of the novella’s original text in his interactive retelling. This results in a unique interactive experience that’s still mostly written by King, making this the most faithful adaptation of one of his stories to date.

2. Peter Jackson – Peter Jackson’s King Kong – The Official Game of the Movie (2005)

Younger readers might be surprised to learn that Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson was once heralded as an up-and-coming master of horror, helming a series of incredibly violent splatter flicks before delving into middle earth. However, while you can take the filmmaker out of horror, you can’t really take the horror out of the filmmaker.

Not only was Jackson’s 2005 remake of King Kong a welcome return to schlocky genre flicks (despite its studio-friendly lack of gore), but it was also accompanied by a tie-in game which saw the filmmaker collaborating with Beyond Good & Evil director Michel Ancel. A full-on survival horror experience with a much darker and scarier tone than the movie it was based on, the interactive version of King Kong still hasn’t been matched when it comes turning a fun blockbuster into a chilling ordeal.

1. Clive Barker – Clive Barker’s Undying (1999)

With a story proudly penned by Barker and even boasting a character voiced by the renowned horror writer himself, Clive Barker’s Undying is more than just a throwback to the gothic classics of old – it’s also one hell of a fun first-person shooter. In fact, the game serves as a great starting point for folks who’ve never engaged with Barker’s work before, offering up plenty of disturbing imagery and complex characters.

Sure, Undying isn’t the author’s only contribution to gaming, with Barker also producing 2006’s ill-fated Jericho, but EA’s underrated shooter still remains his best foray into the world of interactive fiction (though I’d still recommend seeking out the criminally under-played Nightbreed: The Interactive Movie).

The post Carpenter, Barker and King: 6 Times Masters of Horror Contributed to Video Games appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

In celebration of the splatstick horror rom-com’s 30th anniversary, here are 30 reasons we’re still so in love with Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive/Braindead.

30. The ‘50s Setting

Peter Jackson and co-writers Stephen Sinclair and Frances Walsh ensure you’ve never seen the ’50s depicted like this. The story takes place almost entirely in the quaint city of Wellington in 1957. Pastel houses and trolley cars moving down the main street belie the absolute carnage ensuing. Atomic ’50s horror, eat your heart out.

29. It Begins on Skull Island

How do you start a zombie outbreak in New Zealand’s capital? You illegally smuggle a heinous creature from the same island where King Kong resides, of course. The overt nod to the giant ape indicated Jackson’s love of King Kong and unwittingly foreshadowed his eventual tackling of a big screen King Kong film in 2005.

28. The Sumatran Rat-Monkey

The creature in question is the hideous, vicious Sumatran Rat-Monkey, a hairless animal with an even more grotesque origin story. Not exactly a huge attrraction at the zoo, which becomes ground zero for infection when Lionel and Paquita decide to have their first date there.

27. The Stop Motion Animation

Special effects drew Peter Jackson to filmmaking, so it’s no surprise that the director employs various techniques. The Sumatran Rat-Monkey gets brought to life via stop-motion animation, for example, making it even more menacing.

26. Lionel Cosgrove

Timothy Balme’s plucky protagonist doesn’t set out to become a hero; Lionel merely wants to get out from under his mom’s overbearing thumb so he can find love with Paquita. His inherent sweetness makes it easy to see why Paquita would willingly endure so much for him, even as he fumbles his way through it all.

25. Paquita María Sánchez 

Paquita’s insatiable drive and persistence to find love are endearing, let alone the driving force of the entire story. If anyone was going to whip mama’s boy Lionel into fighting shape, it’s Paquita.

24. Mommy Dearest, Vera Cosgrove

From the moment we meet Mommy Dearest, played by frequent Jackson collaborator Elizabeth Moody, we know she’s bad news. Vera’s jealousy over her son’s attention is palpable, and her emotional manipulations of him earn our ire. It becomes progressively worse as her transformation into head zombie grows worse.

23. The Other King Kong Cameo

Forrest J. Ackerman in ‘Dead Alive’

Skull Island gets all of the credit regarding King Kong nods, but there’s another; Forry, the tourist at the zoo with the Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. Forry is played by Forrest J. Ackerman, the founding editor of the magazine who also cameoed in the 1976 King Kong.

22. The Use of Miniatures

Dead Alive (Braindead)

Jackson’s love of miniatures is evident throughout his work, from The Frighteners to The Lord of the Rings. The director employs this incredible art form in Dead Alive to establish the 1957 setting in an economical, though no less effective way.

21. A Tarot Card Inspired Love Match

When we meet Paquita, she’s got her eyes set on another man. But the Spanish Romani shopkeeper’s daughter listens to family and winds up taking her romance cues from her tarot-reading grandmother. The mysticism is a helpful guide when navigating and combating the zombie shenanigans.

20. The Custard Scene

Blood and guts are par for the course in zombie features, but Jackson escalates the gross-out factor by including green goo and pus. Even those with iron stomachs struggle with the gruesome scene of an infected Vera falling apart during a luncheon with guests, right down to her wound spurting puss into her guest’s custard as he eats it up with gusto.

19. “Your mother ate my dog.”

This line is one of countless that highlight the enduring quotability of the movie. But it’s also a humorous moment establishing just how dedicated Paquita is toward love. If Lionel’s monstrous mommy devouring her dog won’t thwart her romantic intentions, what will?

18. Peter Jackson Tackles the Undertaker Sandwich Trope

A recurring trope in true crime fiction and horror is that of the nonplussed undertaker or medical examiner so hardened by death that they’ll eat a sandwich while on duty. Occasionally, they’ll even eat a sandwich over the body. Jackson takes this trope to a new, icky level with an onscreen cameo as the undertaker’s assistant, who grabs and devours a sandwich just as Vera’s body explodes with formaldehyde and chemicals.

17. The Meet the Feebles Nod

Jackson pays homage to his previous splatter film, Meet the Feebles, during Vera’s funeral. If you listen closely, you can hear “Sodomy” playing on the organ as the mourners prepare to enter the church. It’s one of the countless examples of Jackson’s twisted sense of humor.

16. “That’s my mother you’re pissing on.”

Dead Alive/Braindead assembles a motley crew of zombies for Lionel to work through his mommy issues. This memorable line introduces Void (Jed Brophy), the Rockabilly gang leader that interrupts Lionel’s attempts to tranquilize his undead mom from her grave.

15. “I Kick Ass for the Lord!”

Just as things go to hell in the cemetery, a hero emerges. Father McGruder (Stuart Devenie) demonstrates a knack for kicking trouble to the curb as he flips over the cemetery wall and attempts to control the trouble brewing. His declaration in the name of his lord as he does is the cherry on top; too bad it doesn’t last.

14. Zombie Love

Poor Father McGruder’s heroic efforts get snugged out all too quickly, but his consolation prize comes in the form of something he gave up in commitment to the church; carnal pleasure. The undead priest immediately strikes an attraction with zombie nurse McTavish (Brenda Kendall) and then acts on it.

13. Zombie Baby

First comes undead love, then comes undead baby. If Dead Alive hadn’t already established an “anything goes” vibe with this zombie outbreak, then Baby Selwyn solidifies it. Biology and physiology be damned, there are no rules here. Zombies can and will procreate.

12. Zombie Baby’s Day Out

One of the most extended physical comedy moments comes via a playground excursion. Lionel attempts to care for Baby Selwyn by taking it to a crowded park, even going so far as to mirror other doting moms. Of course, the baby has its designs on fun and borrows a page from Buster Keaton in terms of slapstick humor. Look for a cameo by screenwriter Fran Walsh as a judgy park mom.

11. Everything is a Weapon

Dead Alive is one of the early adopters of the “anything can be a weapon” trope. When tranquilizers no longer keep the zombies at bay, and a house party threatens to spiral out of control, anything and everything becomes a weapon against the undead. Kitchen blenders, lawn appliances, and even light bulbs come in handy.

10. Zombie Baby Pilots Adult Zombie

That “anything is a weapon” mentality applies to zombies, too. Baby Selwyn decides his tiny body is ineffective against Lionel and decides to hijack the body of another puppet instead, creating one of the more striking gore images of the film.

9. Zombie Entrails Attack

Another case in point; dismembering zombies becomes useless when every fiber of a zombie’s being is determined to slay Lionel. When Lionel cuts zombie Void in half, trapping its upper torso in the toilet, the organs band together to continue the pursuit.

8. Family Skeletons in the Attic

Lionel’s entire character arc is defined by his attempts to cut the umbilical cord, metaphorically speaking, and memories of his dad’s death explain why he fell prey to his mom’s overbearing ways. That comes to a boil when he’s chased by the organs into the attic, only to find the truth of dad’s death locked away in a trunk.

7. The Lawnmower Climax

Jackson ensured Dead Alive would be impossible to follow the level of gore involved once he introduced Lionel to the lawnmower. Lionel plows through the undead mobs, spraying everything with guts and blood. Nothing is left uncovered with the red stuff as Lionel prepares for the big showdown with mom.

6. One Monstrously Overbearing Mum

Dead Alive takes the overbearing mommy dearest type to monstrous levels, leaving the lovebirds to face off against a giant, Rat-Monkey-like Vera. Where most zombie movies overwhelm in numbers, Dead Alive overwhelms with zombie size and monster creativity.

5. Back into the Womb!

The final confrontation between mom and son begins with mom’s womb splitting open to welcome her son home. It’s difficult not to appreciate how literally Jackson takes this codependent metaphor, ensuring a gruesome finale as Lionel must carve his way out of his mom’s womb to become a man worthy of Paquita’s love.

4. The Self-Contained Zombie Story

Whereas the conventional zombie narrative tends to end on a dour, apocalyptic note for humanity, Dead Alive ends with uplifting hope and a happily ever after. Lionel succeeds in containing this nasty outbreak to the walls of his childhood home, making for a refreshingly self-contained zombie story.

3. Its Modern Influence

Peter Jackson in ‘Hot Fuzz’

Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead draws inspiration from Peter Jackson’s tender yet gory-as-hell rom-com. It’s unsurprising that Jackson was a fan of the rom-com and later cameoed in Wright’s Hot Fuzz.

2. SFX Masters Bob McCarron and Richard Taylor’s Gore and FX

Between the prosthetics, the thousands upon thousands of gallons of fake blood, the puppetry, the stop motion animation, and gag-inducing body fluids, Bob McCarron and Richard Taylor’s SFX work ensures Dead Alive’s unwavering commitment to practical effects withstands time.

1. A Down-to-Earth Love Story for the Ages

For all the fantastical splatstick horror elements at play, it’s the grounded love story that anchors Jackson’s film. There’s nothing special about Lionel and Paquita’s unassuming yet ordinary quest for love, except for how Jackson transforms the dominating mom interfering with love into something befitting of a gory creature feature. The earnestness between Paquita and Lionel makes Dead Alive so affecting and winsome, retaining rooting interest even as pus, guts, and blood get flung about the room. It’s truly a horror romance for the ages.

Bonus: For all of the reasons we love Dead Alive/Braindead, there’s one thing we don’t love: Peter Jackson’s splatstick romance still isn’t available in current-gen high definition.

Jackson did recently share that 4K upgrades of Braindead and his other earlier works are still in the pipeline, though, and the wait should prove to be worth it. 

The post ‘Dead Alive’ at 30 – 30 Reasons We Still Adore Peter Jackson’s Splatstick Horror Romance appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

That’s why it’s no surprise that popular culture’s favorite giant ape has seen so many different incarnations over the years, from Dino De Laurentis’ ecological parable in 1976 to Legendary’s Vietnam-inspired Kong: Skull Island. While there’s some merit to all of these different versions of the story, my personal favorite will always be Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake. I’m clearly not the only fan of the film, as it was a massive box-office hit despite its absurdly inflated budget, but one thing that caught many filmgoers by surprise was the movie’s surprisingly brazen horror elements.

While some amount of scares were to be expected due to Jackson’s unwavering love of the horror genre (after all, even the Lord of the Rings films boasted a handful of unexpectedly schlocky genre moments), 2005’s King Kong took things up a notch when compared to the original. Despite a PG-13 rating, the movie contained plenty of grisly violence and a generally darker tone than its source material, with Jackson going so far as to include several nods to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in this dark monster flick.

Featuring everything from giant demonic bats to Andy Serkis being eaten live by giant leeches, it’s pretty obvious that this blockbuster was made by a horror filmmaker, with the film even including a reference to the infamous Sumatran Rat Monkey from Dead-Alive/Braindead. However, what I’d like to discuss is how the film subtly dabbles in Cosmic Horror, with this gigantic love-letter to classic cinema also serving as a rare example of big-budget movies doing right by H.P. Lovecraft.

Nope, nope, nope!

For those who don’t know, Cosmic Horror (also known as “Lovecraftian Horror”) is a storytelling style popularized by the weird fiction of American author H.P. Lovecraft. These disturbing tales tend to focus on the sickening dread that comes with realizing humankind’s apparent insignificance in the grand scheme of the universe, usually focusing on protagonists who discover something that drives them to re-evaluate their place in the world. So how does this relate to a movie about a great-depression-era film crew fighting off dinosaurs as they attempt to capture a giant gorilla? Well, fans of Cosmic Horror fiction will likely recognize some familiar themes and motifs in King Kong if they just take a closer look.

The original film’s premise already hinged on a primitive tribe offering up sacrifices to an “Elder God”, with the natives attempting to appease Kong with “brides”, not unlike the way that the Esoteric Order of Dagon offered up women to their fish god in Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Unwilling sacrifice for the greater good is already Cosmic Horror 101, but Jackson’s take on the story made it even scarier by depicting the drawn-out ritual through which Kong is summoned, as well as his complete indifference to his worshippers – which is yet another similarity to the Elder Gods.

And while we’re on the subject of the tribespeople of Skull Island, one of the most interesting aspects of the remake is how it justifies the primitivism of the 1933 version of the islanders by making them a group of desperate survivors this time around. If you pay attention to the implied worldbuilding (or read/watch some of the film’s excellent supplemental material), it becomes clear that the natives here are not the same people who built the imposing stone fortresses and intricate statues scattered across Skull Island. These cult-like remnants are actually what’s left of the original inhabitants after some unnamable apocalypse drove their ancestors back towards the sea, with the giant walls surrounding their fishing village – and Kong himself – serving as the last line of defense for a once-thriving civilization that’s now on the brink of extinction.

This fascination with long-lost civilizations and how they hint at the inevitable downfall of our species is yet another popular Cosmic Horror trope, and while the film mostly keeps these apocalyptic themes in the background, it still gives King Kong an eerie anthropological edge usually only seen in Lovecraft yarns like The Shadow Out of Time.

While it’s a bit of a stretch to claim that Jack Black’s increasingly psychotic portrayal of the Orson-Welles-inspired Carl Denham is a classic example of a Lovecraftian protagonist losing his mind after encountering eldritch horrors, certain details like the character quoting faux Arabian proverbs and acquiring eerie maps of cursed places are definite staples of Lovecraft’s Necronomicon-based yarns. The director’s depiction as an over-ambitious artist that goes too far in search of glory is even similar to characters like Richard Pickman (from Pickman’s Model), adding to the overall Cosmic Horror feel of the flick even if that’s not the point of the story.

How many Sanity Points does Anne lose by the end of the picture?

Lastly, the film features plenty of prehistoric monsters engaging in terrifying battles as human beings become caught in the titanic crossfire, with most of these giant creatures regarding our main characters as little more than an edible nuisance. In some ways, the film feels like a big-budget adaptation of a pulpy Call of Cthulhu RPG adventure, complete with intrepid 1930s heroes embarking on a perilous quest and facing all manner of creatures that should not exist only to learn that their superior firepower is no match for an uncaring universe. Again, these ideas are mostly relegated to the background, but they still make the experience more interesting.

Many of these elements were already present in the original film, and while it’s not out of the question that Merian C. Cooper and his writers may have read a Lovecraft yarn or two when coming up with the 1933 classic, I’ll admit that horror was never meant to be the focus here. After all, the premise owes a lot more to the paleontological thrills of novels (and subsequent films) like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World and real-world horrors like the then-recent discovery of the Komodo Dragon than to any form of Cosmic Horror. Jackson simply decided to take the scary elements more seriously in his remake, capitalizing on the fear of human beings reconciling with their own insignificance in a hostile world and most likely stumbling onto elements of Cosmic terror in the process.

Many of these supposed references can be explained away as either complete coincidences or surface-level similarities due to the story’s 1930s setting, but I’d argue that the film’s tie-in videogame suggests that Jackson knew what he was doing when he added some of these elements to the story. Developed by Ubisoft, King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie is a fully-fledged survival horror experience curated by Jackson himself, featuring even more elements of Cosmic Horror (from unkillable boss monsters to more detailed looks at Skull Island’s insane past and ecosystem) and a generally creepier mood – allegedly more in line with the director’s original intent for the blockbuster movie. It’s entirely possible that Jackson originally set out to create a legitimate horror film and merely settled for an action-adventure when he realized the kind of budget he would need to tell this story.

Whether or not these elements of Cosmic Horror were a happy accident, I honestly believe that King Kong contains some of the most faithful recreations of an H.P. Lovecraft story ever put to film, which is another reason why I often revisit this three-hour epic. It may not be a traditional horror flick, but I’d still love to see its pulpy thrills and eerie atmosphere (intentionally) recreated in future scary movies. Maybe in something like that At The Mountains of Madness adaptation that has been stuck in development hell since the early 2000s…

“We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.”

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Additionally, he teased that Meet the Feebles and Heavenly Creatures were going to be restored in 4K by the WETA Digital VFX team as well, potentially for a big ole box set release.

“I’ve done some tests on Braindead (aka Dead Alive), where we took the 16mm negative and put it through our restoration pipeline — and shit, it looks fantastic!” Jackson told THR at the time. “I’m pretty keen to actually just get them back out there again. That’s sort of my plan for now: to do a nice little box set — the early years! The naughty years!”

“I’ve always had video diaries being shot,” Jackson also explained. “So I’ve got about an hour or two of us shooting Bad Taste, seven or eight hours of us shooting Meet the Feebles, 50 to 60 hours of us filming Braindead, and at least 70 hours of us doing Heavenly Creatures. And it’s not just people talking to camera. It’s actually a guy on the set filming us making the film. So there’s some pretty interesting stuff there and none of it has ever been out.”

So what’s the latest on all that? While out promoting his new project The Beatles: Get Back, Jackson just told Uproxx that the new restorations of his old horror films are coming soon!

“We are doing a remastering and whole digital 4K thing and it looks great,” Jackson updates. “But we’ve been trying to do all that in between Beatles stuff, and that’s been put on a shelf for a while. But, hopefully, within another year or so they’ll come out remastered.”

Stay tuned for more as we learn it.

‘Bad Taste’ (1987)

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Even the most precursory glance at Peter Jackson’s filmography indicates a filmmaker who enjoys playing around in special effects more than just about any other facet of filmmaking. From his early splatter phase that meant creating effects-heavy gore comedies from shoestring budgets shot over the weekends to large-scaled studio-driven fantasy epics, his trajectory just about covers it all. Before The Frighteners, Jackson directed the acclaimed Heavenly Creatures, the start of his dabbling with VFX. Armed with a much larger budget, Jackson expanded on the VFX for The Frighteners, using it to create the ghostly effects.

Beneath the computer-generated ectoplasm lay practical makeup effects. Legendary makeup effects artist Rick Baker notably designed and created the makeup for The Judge, the affable yet decaying gunslinger played by John Astin. Outside of Baker, the creature effects are attributed to long-time Jackson collaborator Richard Taylor, who created the gore and creature effects for Dead Alive (Braindead) and the puppets for Meet the Feebles. While Taylor and his team helped bring ghostly sidekicks Stuart (Jim Fyfe) and Cyrus (Chi McBride) to undead life, as well as Jake Busey‘s Grim Reaper-like Johnny Bartlett, Taylor is also credited for handling the miniature effects. Miniature effects that are so perfectly executed that you’d be hard-pressed to notice them at all if you didn’t read the opening credits.

Dead Alive (Braindead)

Miniatures and miniature photography make for a more economical means of capturing landscapes, environments, or events that couldn’t be replicated easily, if at all, in reality. In addition to Meet the Feebles’ puppet work, Taylor crafted the miniature model of the stretch limo, a variation of the Morris Minor also seen in Braindead and Bad Taste. Its most noticeable scene sees Bletch the Walrus ordering his driver to plow through a whale after a series of criminal hijinks at the docks. Jackson helped build the miniature sets in Braindead, an impressively intricate recreation of 1957 Wellington. Both used the more economical miniatures to varying effects. The former gave hand-crafted puppets DIY sets to match, while the latter recreated a bygone era through a cheaper means.

Jackson’s immediate follow-up to his 1996 horror-comedy, the award-winning The Lord of the Rings trilogy, most famously utilized “Bigatures,” or large-scaled miniature sets of Middle Earth’s most fantastical settings. Minas Tirith, Helm’s Deep, or the stairs of Khazad-Dum were just a few of the intricately crafted bigature sets created for the sprawling fantasy trilogy. Jackson’s take on 2005’s King Kong also continued using miniatures both on Skull Island and the SS Venture that ferried the giant ape.

The Lord of the Rings

Like The Lord of the Rings and King Kong, The Frighteners‘ use of miniatures gives the visual effects a sense of realism. Grounding VFX to a practical set helps to trick the eye. In a late scene that sees Frank Bannister (Michael J. Fox) searching for the Grim Reaper killer after being put under a hypothermic-induced sleep, Lucy (Trini Alvarado) gets kidnapped and taken to the cemetery. Jackson employs miniature photography, sweeping over the miniature sets of the town and through the graveyard to mimic the Grim Reaper’s POV as he eagerly hunts Lucy. A rotoscoped R. Lee Ermey is composited onto the miniature set in his confrontation with the VFX rendered Grim Reaper, who then continues his sweeping prowl. It ends in another composite shot, this time of Alvarado in the back of the mini patrol car nestled in the tiny graveyard. 

The visual effects take the focus of these scenes. The viewer’s eye naturally follows the characters’ movements, and so the attention falls on Lucy’s attempts to break out of the patrol car or on the battle between ghosts. The use of miniatures helps make the VFX feel more authentic and textured. It’s so effective that Taylor’s exquisite miniature work often goes undetected. In that way, it’s another example of practical effects used to enhance visual effects, with the latter taking all of the credit.

The Frighteners shrunk in the shadows of box office juggernaut Independence Day in its initial release but -like most horror movies- developed a stalwart following in the decades since. The charming horror-comedy boasts a talented cast, new and fun rules for its world of ghosts, and the transition into digital effects. But for The Frighteners‘ silver anniversary, it’s long past time to pay respects to the practical work that laid the groundwork for the visual effects. Miniatures present one of the more unsung components of Jackson’s early work, at least pre-Lord of the Rings. While technology has increasingly negated the need for miniatures, it’s Jackson’s horror work with miniatures that reminds us why the artform is so remarkable. 

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Earning a cumulative gross of $3 billion, alongside 17 Oscar trophies, Jackson’s adaptation of Lord of the Rings is an unparalleled achievement. No other franchise has managed to be so financially lucrative whilst simultaneously receiving such fervent praise from critics. Even the pop-culture juggernauts of Star Wars and Marvel cannot compete with that kind of legacy. There’s just not been anything else quite like it, before or since. 

For Jackson’s part, it also happened to be an incredibly tough act to follow. Skyrocketing from a film wherein a cat performs fellatio on a walrus, to a franchise that is now held in such high esteem that all three of its entries can be found hovering around the IMDB top 20, is a pretty steep ascent. It therefore shouldn’t come as a surprise that (after such a dramatic peak) things inevitably took a bit of a downward turn. 2009’s The Lovely Bones was a mawkish misfire, whilst Jackson’s long-awaited return to Middle Earth (in the form of synthetic-looking and overstretched Hobbit prequels) failed to recapture that earlier sense of magic. 

By all accounts, Jackson didn’t have the best experience working on those later projects either, remarking that he often felt hamstrung by obtrusive studio interference and unfeasible time pressures. As such, he took a conspicuous step back from directorial gigs after The Battle of the Five Armies, with his only subsequent credits being on the WW1 archival restoration, They Shall Not Grow Old, as well as an upcoming Beatles documentary. Other than that, he’s been completely dormant. Which is a shame for someone who grew up in the noughties like myself, because Jackson’s offerings were really formative parts of my childhood. 

If he truly has grown weary of helming these prestige pictures, then maybe it’s time for him to revisit his humble genre roots. After all, it’s been 25 years since he last made a full-blown splatter movie and it could be precisely the shot in the arm that he needs in order to reinvigorate his career. He’s actually alluded to this possibility himself, confirming that he’d be ‘’very happy to be disgusting again if the right [job] comes along.”

Until such an opportunity arises, the nearest that Jackson has ventured into horror recently has been with moments of indulgence in his fantasy tent poles. The Fellowship of the Ring strays into gothic territory when the Nazgûl’ conduct a nocturnal raid on the Prancing Pony; The Two Towers sees Frodo and Sam trudging through the ghoulish Dead Marshes; and The Return of the King features an overgrown-arachnid named Shelob.

However, if you want to see where Jackson properly let loose then you ought to revisit the flick that bridged the gap between his two Tolkien trilogies. That being his hugely underrated remake of King Kong. Immaculately constructed, overflowing with creative set-pieces, and unmistakably heartfelt, I sincerely believe that it’s one of his best, as well as one of the greatest action-adventures of the 21st century. 

To be fair, it couldn’t have hit multiplexes at a more opportune moment for me. I was on the cusp of turning 11 years old at the time, and counted The Two Towers and Jurassic Park amongst my favourite ever things. So, naturally, when I heard that the director of the former was making a film about a gargantuan gorilla duking it out with prehistoric creatures, I prejudged it as a masterpiece. And the promise that I would get to bask in this spectacle for over 3 hours felt like a bonus to me. 

If you’re somehow unfamiliar with the plot, it’s very much in step with the iconic 1933 magnum opus. As before, it revolves around a Hollywood production who charters a vessel to an exotic location. Upon arrival at the ominously named ‘’Skull Island’’, their leading lady Ann (played by Naomi Watts) is captured by the local tribespeople and offered up as a sacrifice to their simian deity: a 25-foot Silverback dubbed ‘’Kong’’ (Motion Captured to perfection by Andy Serkis). A rescue mission is promptly instigated, with the crew heading out into the thick jungle, where all manner of primeval beasts roam about freely.

Kong ‘05 was my ideal film as a kid and I’m happy to concede that I don’t have the most objective view of it as a result. Inseparable nostalgia aside, I do genuinely still think that it deserves more credit than modern audiences are willing to grant it. For a start, it boasts all the emotional content, patient storytelling, and awe-inspiring visuals that many pundits find lacking from contemporary blockbusters. Meanwhile, the special effects hold up spectacularly well (with the exception of some wonky green-screen) and you’ll struggle to find more believable CG characters elsewhere.

Anyway, I could gush non-stop about this unfairly maligned passion project: from its beautiful music; to its gorgeous production design’ to its romantic spirit, and peerless V-Rex fight. But that’s not what I’m driving at here. Rather, what I want to talk about is how it might be Jackson’s ultimate accomplishment as a horror auteur. That’s right, not Bad Taste. Not Braindead. Not even The Frighteners. King Kong. 

Granted, its runtime is not totally devoted to scares, with most of the terror being concentrated around the 2nd act. Nevertheless, though few and far between, those intermittent jolts are pulse-pounding and rival anything that you would see in a James Wan or Wes Craven joint. 

A big part of this is the director’s revamped vision for the rainforest environs themselves, which are given a hostile aesthetic here. Ranging from murky quagmires to eldritch outposts, perilous caverns, and desolate graveyards littered with dinosaur bones; the spooky locations wouldn’t be out of place in a classic Universal Monsters picture. Except they’re considerably more tactical and grimy, thanks to the wonders of modern production design and CGI wizardry.

Likewise, the denizens of Skull Island are freakier than ever before when rendered through Weta Digital’s impeccable VFX. Not only do they look just as authentic now as they did back in 2005 (it’s worth reiterating that these effects have aged phenomenally), but their designs are bloody damn intimidating to boot. There’s the scar-ridden Foetodon – a massive crocodilian with a prodigious set of fangs – that stalks Ann in a nail biting game of cat and mouse. Then there are the wrinkled Terapusmordax – aerial carnivores that resemble giant bats – with their malevolent countenances and soulless eyes that are enough to make anyone shudder. 

And who could forget the colossal Piranhadon, which calls to mind the ungodly fauna that you’d find lurking beneath the Amazon River? Only here it’s been blown up to the size of an adult sperm whale! With such a menacing appearance, this toothy leviathan could easily lead a creature-feature of its very own yet, unfortunately, it didn’t make it into the theatrical cut. But if you check out the extended edition, you’ll be treated to a wonderfully suspenseful sequence that recalls the ferocity of the original Jaws. Based on how skillfully he handles the gradual reveal of the Piranhadon, as well as how atmospherically he portrays its swampland lair, it’s clear that Jackson hasn’t lost his touch for putting audiences on edge. 

Don’t let this fool you into thinking that he’s become utterly reliant on CG effects though, as he does some pretty nasty things in-camera too. For evidence, look no further than the chilling island native scene, which goes to show just how much intensity you can get away with in a PG-13 movie. Less goofy than the ‘30s iteration – and standing in diametric opposition to the more sympathetic portrayal in Kong: Skull Island – Jackson’s take on the indigenous tribe feels like it’s been ripped straight out of Cannibal Holocaust. 

The sudden divergence into visceral scares used to creep the hell out of me, on account of the disorienting slow-mo and hellish sound mixing. It’s got the oppressive quality of a particularly vivid nightmare and (as if the filmmaking style wasn’t distressing enough) the actual content of the scene is unusually graphic as well. Helpless innocents are violently bludgeoned to death, extras are impaled through the chest with jagged spears, and one of our heroes is placed face down in a bloodstained execution spot. All whilst an eerie hag inches ever closer to the camera, chanting maniacally in a way that’s guaranteed to send shivers down your spine. From the unnerving score to the fervent performances, everything about the construction of this scene is incredibly disturbing; especially when you consider that this is, for all intents and purposes, a kid’s movie. 

Of course, the Piranhadon massacre, the native ambush, and the various dinosaur set-pieces are all mere appetizers for what is surely the most infamous sequence in King Kong. A sequence that you’ve probably been waiting for me to bring up throughout the entirety of this piece and one that induces goosebumps in even the most desensitized of viewers. Particularly those who suffer from entomophobia.

Ranking amongst the most elusive deleted scenes in cinema history, the ‘’Bug Pit’’ attack was supposed to be included in the 1933 version of King Kong, until it was removed at the last minute following worrying test screenings. You see – according to industry legend – theatregoers were thoroughly repulsed by this ghastly clip, prompting director Merian C. Cooper to get cold feet about how the backlash could potentially overshadow the rest of his movie. Concerned about the negative reaction (alongside unrelated pacing issues), Cooper literally tossed the offending footage into a trash canister, from which it has never been recovered. The only remnant of its existence nowadays is an old shooting script that fans have spent years trying to decipher, in the hope that they will one day be able to envision what was apparently so objectionable back in 1933. 

As a matter of fact, Jackson himself had already given it a decent shot as a Kong enthusiast, when he recreated the controversial sequence using monochrome photography and vintage stop motion techniques, so that it could be neatly spliced into the original reel. For that experimental side project, he stuck rigidly to the events laid out in the classic screenplay, preserving what was already there and refraining from taking any artistic liberties. 

However, when it later came to updating the phantasmagoria for his own film, the director went nuts and giddily reveled in the task of one-upping the (relatively tame) original. Unfettered by either the conservative tastes of the 1930s or budgetary limitations, his demented imagination went into overdrive, with giant crabs tossing people around like ragdolls and one guy being forcibly yanked through a tight crevice, causing his entire anatomy to be brutally contorted. 

The sadism on display is borderline excessive, culminating in what must be the grisliest cinematic kill to not involve a single droplet of blood. I’m obviously talking about the cruel death of Andy Serkis’ Lumpy, who doesn’t commit any egregious sin in the narrative to justify such a harrowing demise. Encircled by a nest of what can only be described as undulated penis-worms, the hapless chef is devoured piecemeal by the insects as they individually latch onto his separate limbs and swallow them whole into their gaping maws. All whilst stragglers ineffectually peck at his torso. It’s hard to imagine a more tortuous fate than Lumpy’s, and no one would blame you for watching it through your fingers. 

In summary, the ‘’ Bug Pit’’ is a jaw-dropping onslaught of haunting imagery, complemented by an assortment of unnerving creature designs and shocking gore. Taken on its own terms, as a kind of short film, it’s a mini-masterpiece and demonstrates that Jackson’s knack for gross out thrills wasn’t remotely diminished after he became a ‘’respectable’’ artiste. He really is firing on all cylinders with this one.

So, irrespective of whether he embarks on that proposed genre homecoming any time soon, you can hardly complain of a lack of juicy horror content in the director’s oeuvre. From the squelchy delights of Braindead to the macabre pleasures of The Frighteners, right through to the succulent tidbits found in King Kong, there’s plenty of stuff to enjoy beyond just his Lord of The Rings movies. Of course, that’s not the only reason to check out this brilliant and affectionate remake on its 15th anniversary. But it is a damn good one.

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When most people hear the name Peter Jackson, they think of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit series, King Kong, and blockbuster spectacles. For horror fans, he’s the director that delivered the fun horror comedy The Frighteners. And before that? A career debut with a trio of horror’s goriest splatter comedies, starting with Bad Taste.

The irony is that Jackson didn’t really have any interest in directing when he began. That interest came later. He was much more interested in special effects, and heavily influenced by the work of Tom Savini. So, he set out to make a 10-15 minute short film with an old 16mm camera. He shot on the weekends over the course of a year, just sticking tins of film under his bed as he went without much thought. After taking a week off of work to edit the footage, he realized he had a 60-minute movie on his hands without an ending. Which meant there was no other direction to go but to add on to the runtime and give it a proper ending.

Jackson also noticed that his rough first cut wasn’t very exciting. Since special effects is what got him interested in filmmaking in the first place, it was an easy fix- throw in all the gore he could manage. In addition to writing, directing, producing, handling cinematography, and appearing on screen in numerous roles, Jackson handled the film’s special effects and makeup effects. The most effective aspect of the movie, no matter how over-the-top the gore gags get.

The plot is pretty simple. The residents in the town of Kaihoro have gone missing, and Astro Investigation and Defence Service (AIDS) sends out four agents to investigate. They find the residents have been replaced by man-eating aliens disguised as humans in blue button-down shirts. Of the four agents, Jackson plays Derek, the most tenacious and persistent of the heroes. Derek is the comedic relief, and as such takes an insane amount of injury and abuse until he’s had enough of the alien menace.

Heads are blown to smithereens. Aliens puke neon green goo to be passed around and slurped up. And then there’s Derek. He falls off cliffs headfirst onto rocks. He survives and puts his brain back in his head, to be secured in place with a belt. It becomes a running gag for Derek to have to stuff those brains back in his skull in the midst of alien battle. Look for Derek to be “born again” via chainsaw in the film’s final moments; a precursor to Lionel’s bloody lawnmower triumph in Dead Alive/Braindead to be sure.

Four years later, and with the financial help of the New Zealand Film Commission, Bad Taste was completed and sold to many countries after playing at the Cannes Film Festival. A lighthearted comedy compared to Jackson’s immediate follow-up, Meet the Feebles. As it stands, Bad Taste is a goofy DIY splatstick film that has no aim beyond pure entertainment. There’s no hidden message or agenda, just an aspiring special effects artist teaching himself how to make a film. His love of gore and special effects foremost on display.

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It was a rainy mid-December day in 2005 when my mom chose to take me—her 10 year-old monster-loving son—to see Peter Jackson’s epic-scale (in runtime and craftsmanship) remake of the 1933 Cooper and Schoedsack King Kong which, as it turns out, was aptly named King Kong. Besides sharing a similar through-line plot and title, Peter Jackson’s film is very, very much its own being. Like Kong, it is big and, amongst other things, it feels dangerous. My mom, bless her heart, didn’t know what we were in for. Hell, it was all fun and games and buttery popcorn fingers up until the bug-pit set-piece. That was where Jackson’s film careened into full-on horror.

Despite my love of monsters, my 10-year-old self could not handle what was being projected onto the big screen—sailors being ripped apart by giant scorpion-like bugs with sharp pincers, Tommy Guns shredding the carapaces of various other too-big-for-my-liking bugs, bodies being feasted upon by giant centipedes and, finally, that slug(s) scene. That poor, poor cook. Once his head was writhing under the toothed maw of a slimy giant slug, I lost it.

We left the theater. My mom, seeing my current state of mind, felt bad. So, we walked over to the Media Play that was next to the theater (remember Media Play?) and she said I could get a video game of my choosing as an early Christmas present, and, dear reader, this was the rarest of occurrences. 

Like any good 10 year old boy, the horror of bug-pit scene was two Coca Colas and a box of Sno-Caps behind me. In a sugar-induced haze, I had forgotten the unease it made me feel. Game after game, I looked and looked. The Xbox 360 was new and there was not much to choose from. I already had Call of Duty 2, I wasn’t allowed to play GUN, so what was I to choose? Well, as fate may have it, my eyes and sticky fingers landed on the video game tie-in for King Kong which was (horribly) named: Peter Jackson’s King Kong The Official Game of the Movie. A horror of copywriting, that name is. 

Even more importantly, the King Kong tie-in video game is a horror game. Well, to me it is and I shall endeavour to tell you why. Yes, the game scared me as a 10 year old, but as an adult I have gone back and played it from beginning to end (it is now a part of Microsoft’s backwards compatibility lineup). It is a AAA survival horror experience in the guise of a T-rated forgettable movie tie-in game. But it is so much more than just a piece of forgettable pop-culture ephemera. 

For the majority of the game’s 6 hour run-time, the player controls screenwriter-turned-survivalist Jack Driscoll as he fights his way across Skull Island in search of Ann Darrow. The damsel-in-distress narrative is a tired and often gross trope, and it is no different here. But what makes this title so special and so specifically scary is how Driscoll fights his way across the island. Eschewing popular trends of the time, King Kong (I refuse to type in the game’s whole name again) does not contain a HUD.

Everything the player needs to know about their character is contextual in the world of the game. This was a truly fascinating, but not wholly original, design motif for such a mass-market experience. If the player wants to know how much ammo Jack’s pump-action shotgun has, they simply press a button (“B” on an Xbox controller) and he checks his ammo and calls out how much ammo he has left. If he is out of ammo or needs a gun, the player can make Jack interact with a fellow companion to either borrow ammo or take someone else’s firearm. There are no context clues, just common sense (and clever tutorials).

Health is read through screen darkening a la Call of Duty 2. The player must chart their own path which happens to be quite easy due to the game’s linearity. This obfuscation of common design elements and necessary information builds tension, and combat encounters become all the more harrowing. 

Furthermore, how the player fires their weapon is, oddly enough, quite similar to Resident Evil 4 even though King Kong is a first-person experience. The player’s weapon is not always aimed as it is in most other first-person shooters. The left trigger must be pulled in order to shoulder the weapon and only then can it be fired, but unlike Resident Evil 4 the player can move—albeit at a slower pace—while firing. Making firing a weapon a two-button action not only slows down how quickly a player can react to a threat, it makes the player become more methodical, and as player’s are overrun by enemies, it makes the playing of the game genuinely scary.

But it is rated T, how can it be scary? Gore, viscera and jet-black themes are not needed for horror. There is enough tension and uneasy imagery in King Kong to make it seem like a true horror experience. 

The gameplay is purposefully clunky, ammo is scarce, and when ammo is dried up, the player must use Skull Island, itself, as a weapon. Spears can be set on fire and tossed into shrubbery to spread a blaze that keeps monsters at bay and/or kills them outright. The fire is dynamic—one cannot help but think that the fire physics in this game were a testing ground for what was to come in a later Ubisoft title, Far Cry 2, but the beasts of the island also act like animals. There is a simple ecosystem at play. Big animals eat smaller animals and the player can weaponize this system in order to survive. Injure a small animal and maybe a larger beast will finish the job for you. But these beasts are not your friends. In fact, the animals that inhabit Skull Island is where King Kong most obviously becomes a horror experience. 

Giant crabs erupt from shallow water with murderous intent, prehistoric centipedes move in an otherworldly manner just before they stiffen and cock back right before they pounce at you (more on this later), and there are even dinosaurs that will want you dead. But these are not the clean Spielbergian dinosaurs of Jurassic Park, no, these beasts are made to be scary rather than to elicit awe.

The first time the player encounters a T-Rex is one of the scariest and most memorable experiences I have ever had in a game. All is still and then everything is chaos. The T-Rex breaks through the tree line, men scream in fear, men scream in agony, men die, and the beast roars with prehistoric bloodlust. Fighting the dangers of Skull Island becomes a game of forethought, of preparation like many other survival horror games. Things go well, then they don’t, and then the player must improvise. But how does one try to remain strategic when one of the scariest monsters in all of video games is vying to kill you? 

The answer to that question, for me, is that I threw all strategy out of the window the first time I saw one of the in-game colossal centipedes. The base idea of a giant centipede is scary enough, but how it moves is something else entirely. The habitus of these centipedes if familiar yet otherworldly. They have lots of legs, their feelers move of their own accord, their mouth-pincers click and clatter, but how they move and interact with their surroundings feels not of this world, not of the game’s world. They are unique in their terror. The centipedes flail and move with a sense of rapidity that is spine-chilling, and they may be easy to fell with a shotgun, but I was most afraid of them when I’d throw a spear at them.

The spear would pin them to a wall or the ground and their bodies with writhe with a desperate desire for freedom of motion and from their immediate pain. That is when the player is supposed to kill them, but sometimes they’d get away. Sometimes they’d get to close. And when they are close to the player, their bodies stiffen and rear back like a rubber band stretched between one’s pointer finger and thumb. Their potential energy becomes deadly, and it is then released in a kinetic force of pincers and teeth and limbs that creates a rapid-moving image that I will never forget. They are the scariest and most unnervingly animated beings I’ve ever encountered in a video game. They made me forget all of my survival horror skills and left me with just a desire to not have to cast my eyes upon them anymore. 

Ubisoft’s King Kong is an odd little survival horror experience, that much is for sure, but what happens when player-control is shifted to Kong? What happens to the survival horror elements that have been laid out and expanded upon over the past few hours? They are immolated in a mass of gargantuan muscles, fur, and teeth. Kong is the biggest and most dangerous thing on Skull Island. There is nothing to fear when playing as him; it is a power-trip that serves to make the return to controlling Jack Driscoll all the more terrifying and humbling. Kong rips jaws from T-Rexs, he drums his chest knowing he will forever remain unchallenged on Skull Island, but he is eventually brought to New York City against his will. The concrete and steel megalopolis is unknowable to him, controlling him in New York City is a balancing act between power and fear-of-the-unknown.

Eventually, the city gets the better of him. He slumps bullet-ridden and leaking from the Empire State Building and falls to his death. Even giant beasts—one of a kind monsters—have something to be afraid of, and Ubisoft’s King Kong makes fear malleable, it scales fear up and down to a dramatic and, usually successful, effect.

Also in the Based on the Hit Film Series:

• Blair Witch
• Jaws
• Evil Dead
• The Grudge
• Ring
• The Thing
• Saw

The post [Based on the Hit Film] The 2005 ‘King Kong’ Movie Tie-In Game Nailed Teen-Rated Horror appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

In a new chat with THR, Jackson seems pretty open to the idea.

“Oh, I’m very happy to be disgusting again if the right project comes along,” he told the site. “It would be interesting to see how disgusting [co-writer Fran Walsh] and I could be in our older age compared to our younger years because we’ve learned a few things since then.”

He added, “We know a little bit more about the world than we did then, so maybe our levels of disgusting could go into whole new places!”

Jackson hasn’t returned to his horror roots since The Frighteners in 1996, and fans of Bad Taste and Dead Alive have been long begging for more splatter from him. Here’s hoping!

The post Peter Jackson On a Potential Return to Horror; “I’m Very Happy to Be Disgusting Again” appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

“I’ve done some tests on Braindead (aka Dead Alive), where we took the 16mm negative and put it through our restoration pipeline — and shit, it looks fantastic!” Jackson just told THR. “I’m pretty keen to actually just get them back out there again. That’s sort of my plan for now: to do a nice little box set — the early years! The naughty years!”

“The mixes on those films were pretty much all stereo in those days, so we’re going to get the old soundtracks out and do a 5.1 mix,” Jackson added, noting that both audio and video will be restored. He also teased that the eventual box set release will be packed with bonus features that have not previously been seen by any of us!

“I’ve always had video diaries being shot,” he explains. “So I’ve got about an hour or two of us shooting Bad Taste, seven or eight hours of us shooting Meet the Feebles, 50 to 60 hours of us filming Braindead, and at least 70 hours of us doing Heavenly Creatures. And it’s not just people talking to camera. It’s actually a guy on the set filming us making the film. So there’s some pretty interesting stuff there and none of it has ever been out.”

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“He has spent 100s of years taking lives in the most brutal and horrific way,” Lang teases in the video, while Jackson calls the character the most interesting one in the film.

Meet Shrike below.

The film’s title refers to MASSIVE vehicles that are literally entire cities on wheels, traversing a post-apocalyptic landscape not unlike one you’d see in a Mad Max film…

Thousands of years after civilization was destroyed by a cataclysmic event, humankind has adapted and a new way of living has evolved. Gigantic moving cities now roam the Earth, ruthlessly preying upon smaller traction towns.

Mortal Engines arrives in theaters on December 14.

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Before he went and made the greatest fantasy epics of all time, Peter Jackson made his name with over-the-top gonzo fare like Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles, and Dead Alive a.k.a. Braindead. After he switched gears to the grounded psychological drama Heavenly Creatures, Hollywood began to take notice of the New Zealand filmmaker. Famed director/producer Robert Zemeckis swooped up Jackson and his partner Fran Walsh in the hopes that they would write a script for a film that would act as a spin-off to the highly successful Tales from the Crypt television show. After reading the script, Zemeckis handed off directing duties to Jackson.

That film would end up being 1996’s The Frighteners.

The story revolves around Frank Bannister (Michael J. Fox in his to-date last lead on-screen performance in a feature film), a washed-up architect who has gained the ability to see ghosts after a tragic accident that claimed the life of his wife. He parlays this power into setting up hauntings that he then exorcises for a hefty fee. Unfortunately, it turns out that a real malevolent spirit is stalking around town and killing people, and Frank ends up running afoul of this spectral serial killer.

After all that factual preamble, it’s time for me to let out a big sigh and start gushing about The Frighteners. Because this is a gushworthy flick. Jackson takes all of the kinetic filmmaking he honed from his previous projects and pumps into a movie that is bursting with fun and smarts in every moment. The script by Jackson and Walsh is superb with its world-building and mythology. We get a confident pacing when it comes to introducing us to how this fantasy works and what it’s like for these characters to live in this world. For a movie that has to take a familiar concept — ghosts — and give us new rules about them, The Frighteners is a masterclass in getting an audience to buy into your high concept.

It should also be noted that The Frighteners is overflowing with a phenomenal cast. This will probably cause a flurry of comments, but Fox’s performance as Frank Bannister rivals and in some ways tops his iconic role of Marty McFly. Frank is a funny scoundrel that ends up having a truly dark and painful past, and Fox plays the character with just the right balance of humanity and cartoon charm. Not to mention ridiculously entertaining turns from Jeffrey Combs, Dee Wallace Stone, John Astin, and Jake Busey. This is a dream team of genre actors and they are let loose with the kind of abandon we don’t see a lot in mainstream horror offerings. It really is a treasure trove of performances.

Plus, The Frighteners is steeped in the kind of spook-a-blast shenanigans that would make Sam Raimi proud. The movie deftly walks the line between horror and comedy, never tumbling over too far into one genre or the other like most genre hybrids. It’s astounding to see how broadly appealing the film’s tone is without ever coming off as pandering or neutered. Watching The Frighteners today feels like you’re watching a movie that should have been a blockbuster hit.

Sadly, that wasn’t the case. Though, The Frighteners has shored up a healthy cult following in recent years. Some of that is thanks to the director’s cut of the film being released on home video. The current Blu-ray release features both the director’s cut and the theatrical version. My advice: if you’re watching The Frighteners for the first time, go with the theatrical version. The director’s cut adds 12 minutes of additional character beats that are fun and functional, but those beats work best for people who are already on board with the movie and want a little something extra.

Regardless of what version you see, you should see The Frighteners. It’s the kind of crowdpleaser that should be a part of anyone’s Halloween viewing schedule. It’s an infectiously delightful film that delivers horror, comedy, and even some affecting drama in equal parts. When it comes to ‘90s horror, The Frighteners should be regarded as one of the decade’s absolute best.

The post [We Love ’90s Horror] Peter Jackson’s ‘The Frighteners’ Blended Horror and Comedy to Perfection appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

“Anything from those films that is available is, like, 1990s Telecine things, which is the best that we had… compared now, they look bloody awful,” Jackson told the podcast. “I just haven’t re-released them because, if I do, I want them to look really good. We’ve actually done some experiments. They look bloody fantastic. They look like they’re shot on 35mm.”

“So yeah, what we’ll do now is.. get really nice 4K copies of these fully restored and back out into circulation again,” Jackson added.

Jackson’s Meet the Feebles will also be restored.

Thanks to @DawnoftheDiscs for the heads up!

The post Peter Jackson and His Team are Fully Restoring ‘Dead Alive’ and ‘Bad Taste’ for 4K Releases! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

There’s really no central narrative to this film, Meet the Feebles is just an exploration of the sleazy underbelly of showbiz. Though the audience spends the most time with aging star Heidi the Hippo and innocent newcomer Robert the Hedgehog, we spend time with just about every character and facet of the show, and every possible bodily fluid in the process. It begins tame enough at it introduces all of the characters, mostly just sex and cursing, but gradually builds into the most shocking puppet film that will likely ever be committed to celluloid.

There’s attempted rape, drug use, paternity battles, a Vietnam war flashback in the vein of Deer Hunter, puppet porn, puppet sex, murder, nudity and just about every crude and rude vice and joke you can think of on display here. It’s also extremely gross. Harry the Rabbit, the MC of the variety show, starts coming down with gnarly symptoms after a three-way sex scene. He’s diagnosed with a gruesome STD, a possible puppet equivalent to AIDS, and spends the rest of the film progressing into grosser states of illness with profuse vomiting and oozing, popping boils and legions all over. There’s a paparazzi Fly character that fittingly eats poop, an elephant that urinates over smaller characters, blood, and more. This is a Jackson splatter film, after all.

The grand finale is a showstopping musical number about sodomy, complete with large glittery phallic statues and backup singers. It’s spliced with a shocking mass shooting in the theater; a character pushed to their breaking point after a failed suicide who then decides to gun down everyone else instead. Considering today’s climate, it’s a finale that has a greater shock impact today than it did in 1989.

The low production values and Jackson’s no holds barred approach to the savage, sleazy nature of showbiz is a crude, low budget take on Grand Guignol theatrics. It’s as subversive as it is gross, and Jackson uses the puppets to get away with, well, everything. Meet the Feebles pushes the envelope farther than any other film and gets away with it because its characters aren’t human. Typical of this era of Jackson’s work, Meet the Feebles is meant for those with a demented sense of humor and a strong stomach. Fans of his splatter phase work will also find Jackson in the audience of the variety show in character as an alien from Bad Taste. Jackson set the bar high in 1989 (or low, depending on tastes) for offensive puppet comedies. It’s so outlandish, graphic, and disturbing, that there’s really no other audience for it outside of horror.

If you’ve yet to see the original “spluppet” film, Meet the Feebles can currently be streamed for free on Tubi.TV

The post Peter Jackson’s Savage ‘Meet the Feebles’ Invented the Offensive Puppet Shocker appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

“Yeah, there’s a shit load of material you haven’t seen,” Busey told Bloody Disgusting.

“I think you need to petition and lobby Peter Jackson for an original director’s cut. You want to ask him to release the five-hour director’s cut. It should be a miniseries broken up into three films.”

It’s pretty normal for early cuts of a film to run four or five hours. Those are called assemblies, with every scene and take strung together before it’s whittled down. Busey asserts that there is five hours of legitimate Frighteners material.

“I think his first on it was seven or eight hours,” Busey revealed.

Busey outlined some of the subplots that could make a more epic version of The Frighteners. Since most of the characters involved were ghosts, it may involve finishing visual effects shots from 1996.

“There was so much material, but see they may have cut it before they did the post,” Busey said. “They may not have done all the animating and all that so it might not even be available but they filmed so much material on John Astin and his judge with the dog and the old west. He had this whole thing in the courtroom. He had a whole segment in his house and in the old west town. The movie goes back in time to the old west when he was really a judge and alive. There’s so much more with the ghosts, with Chi McBride. It was just way too much movie to try to cram into two hours. John Astin shot like a month’s worth of stuff that didn’t even make it into the film just because of time. It just got to be such a long-running thing, so they had to cut it down. You should definitely ask Peter for the five-hour director’s cut.”

As the film’s villain, Johnny Bartlett, Busey does not recall any missing footage of his own. He just wants to see all his costars’ work.

“I had little edges here and there but there was nothing that I said, ‘Oh shoot, I wish they’d have put that in there.’ They pretty much used all of my stuff to the best of my knowledge. It is 20 years ago now.”

The post [Exclusive] Jake Busey Details the Five Hour Version of Peter Jackson’s ‘The Frighteners’ We’ve Never Seen appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

It was nearly ten years ago that we first reported on Peter Jackson being attached to a feature adaptation of Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines book series, so this one has needless to say been a long time coming. Oscar-winning visual effects artist Christian Rivers directed the film, which just got an official trailer via Universal Pictures.

The title refers to MASSIVE vehicles that are literally entire cities on wheels, traversing a post-apocalyptic landscape not unlike one you’d see in a Mad Max film…

Thousands of years after civilization was destroyed by a cataclysmic event, humankind has adapted and a new way of living has evolved. Gigantic moving cities now roam the Earth, ruthlessly preying upon smaller traction towns.

Check out the full trailer below!

Tom Natsworthy (Robert Sheehan)—who hails from a Lower Tier of the great traction city of London—finds himself fighting for his own survival after he encounters the dangerous fugitive Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar). Two opposites, whose paths should never have crossed, forge an unlikely alliance that is destined to change the course of the future.

Mortal Engines is the startling, new epic adventure directed by Oscar®-winning visual-effects artist Christian Rivers (King Kong). Joining Rivers are The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogies three-time Academy Award®-winning filmmakers Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, who have penned the screenplay. The Universal and MRC adaptation is from the award-winning book series by Philip Reeve, published in 2001 by Scholastic. On board as producers are Zane Weiner (The Hobbit trilogy), Amanda Walker (The Hobbit trilogy) and Deborah Forte (Goosebumps), as well as Walsh and Jackson. Ken Kamins (The Hobbit trilogy) joins Boyens as executive producer. Universal will distribute the film worldwide.

The Mortal Engines arrive on December 14, 2018.

The post Wild World Building on Full Display in Official Trailer for Peter Jackson-Produced ‘Mortal Engines’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Jackson also showed a flare for the comedic aspect of filmmaking with his delightfully twisted 1989 film Meet the Feebles, which in itself is not a horror film, but deserves a mention here based on its insane concept of what has been described as the Muppets on crack. The combination of violence, depravity and comedic elements come together for a truly unique experience that any horror fanatic could appreciate.

Jackson visited the horror genre once more in 1996 with The Frighteners.

Executive Produced by Robert Zemeckis (Back to Future trilogy) and originally intended as a directorial vehicle for Zemeckis as a spin-off feature film of the Tales From the Crypt franchise, the film marks the last live action film that Michael J. Fox headlined (he would reveal his ongoing battle with Parkinson’s Disease two years later). It’s a film that showcases Jackson’s love of the horror genre, while also boasting a great supporting cast that includes horror icons Dee Wallace (The Howling) and Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator), along with John Astin, Chi McBride, Jake Busey and R. Lee Ermey in a cameo role that was intended as a spoof tribute to his character of Gunnery Sgt. Hartman from Full Metal Jacket (1987).

The film tells the story of Frank Bannister, an architect turned psychic investigator, who develops the psychic ability to interact with ghosts after the tragic death of his wife due to a car accident. Rather than continue and finish his “dream home” he intended to build for he and his wife, Frank decides to use his newly developed psychic abilities to con people into believing their homes are haunted and in need of his services to rid their lives of paranormal entities… for a small fee of course.

He enlists the help of three ghosts played by Chi McBride, Jim Fyfe and John Astin (in a memorable role as The Judge) to help scare up business. However, after witnessing the death of a man by a spiritual entity in a black robe, Frank discovers a long-deceased killer has returned from beyond the grave in the form of Death itself, to continue a murder spree that began decades earlier, with ties to a local woman by the name of Patricia Ann Bradley (Dee Wallace). Frank must discover Death’s true identity and stop this murder spree before it consumes him entirely, all while an FBI agent (Jeffrey Combs), who had previously investigated Bannister for the death of his wife years earlier, is convinced Frank is the one responsible for these new deaths.

Upon initial release, the film was only able to bring in a total of approximately $29 million worldwide (on a $30 million-dollar budget). Jackson and Zemeckis wanted to release the film in October of 1996 but were forced to release it in July of 1996 instead at the studio’s demand. As a result, the film opened against films that were still pulling big box office numbers: Independence Day and The Nutty Professor. However, since its release on home formats such as VHS, DVD and Blu Ray, The Frighteners has garnered cult status amongst some horror fans.

What makes The Frighteners memorable is the performances by the ensemble cast. Michael J. Fox gives arguably his best performance outside of the Back to the Future trilogy as a man who is haunted by his past, while John Astin’s Judge steals every scene he is in with an over the top performance magnified by the excellent prosthetic makeup design by the legendary Academy Award winning makeup and effects designer Rick Baker (An American Werewolf in London). Jeffrey Combs is another standout, giving an over the top performance as a demented FBI agent with masochistic tendencies and a gag reflex triggered by strong-willed women (he hates being yelled at). And let’s not forget R. Lee Ermey, who dishes out punishment the only way he knows how. See if you can spot the cameo by Peter Jackson in the film as well.

Although the technology may be dated by today’s standards, the visual effects in the film (which were done by Jackson’s company Weta Digital) are impressive for its time and were directly responsible for laying the groundwork for the visual effects that would be implemented in Jackson’s next venture, The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Jackson does a great job of creating a creepy tone throughout the film that is only magnified by the impressive score by long-time Tim Burton collaborator, Danny Elfman, with some scenes feeling authentic enough to be directly copied from a documentary on the Manson family. Jackson’s ability to mix horror and comedy comes to full fruition in this film.

One can only hope that Jackson returns to the world of horror sooner rather than later. In the meantime, do yourself a favor and check out this gem.

The post Peter Jackson’s ‘The Frighteners’: An Unjustly Forgotten Gem appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Love is in the air this week, which means celebrating romance in horror. Not just any romance, though, but Peter Jackson’s splatstick love story between meek mama’s boy Lionel Cosgrove and hungry-for-love shopgirl Paquita Maria Sanchez. And the horde of undead by way of Skull Island Sumatran Rat-Monkey that stands between them, naturally. Without Peter Jackson’s zombie love story, we wouldn’t have Simon Pegg’s Shaun of the Dead, a zombie rom-com on which Dead Alive (Braindead in New Zealand) played a major influence. It also happens to be the 25th anniversary of the film, having released in the U.S. on February 12, 1993.

At its core, it’s a narrative about Lionel finally standing up to his overbearing mother, Vera, and confronting deep-seated guilt regarding his upbringing with the help of new lady love Paquita, a woman who believes they’re destined for each other thanks to a tarot reading. In other words, these two lovebirds are perfect for each other. When Vera sees her firm grip on her only son slipping away, she gets herself bitten by the Sumatran Rat-Monkey and begins rotting away, zombification taking root. Her bite wound squirting bloody puss into the pudding of her luncheon companion, eating it up and enjoying every disgusting bite, unaware that anything is amiss. It’s this gross-out scene that signals the extreme bloodbath that’s to come, but it still doesn’t quite prepare you for what Peter Jackson and creature and gore effects leader Richard Taylor unleash.

A practical effect haven that defied its low budget, Dead Alive showcased Peter Jackson’s talent for stop-motion animation, puppeteering, and a slew of creative gore effects. The Cosgrove household was built on a set four feet off the ground so that the special effects team could get underneath to puppeteer. As for the Rat-Monkey, there was no animal reference, just Peter Jackson dancing it out on camera for a visual reference point to create the frame by frame animation.

One of the film’s most infamous zombies is that of baby Selwyn, the zombie offspring between the zombie Nurse and zombie “I kick ass for the lord!” Father McGruder. A costume built for a two-year-old, that impressively, they actually talked a mother into letting their child wear for the film. My personal favorite zombie would be the puppet zombified entrails that become a huge nuisance for poor Lionel.

Quite possibly the bloodiest film of the decade, if not all time, the final climactic battle that culminates in one last showdown between Lionel and a monstrous Vero was said to have used nearly 80 gallons of fake blood, though this number is far too low to be anywhere close to accurate. The best sequence of the film, involving Lionel’s use of the lawnmower as a weapon, pumped in about 5 gallons per second. That alone would be impressive, but the lawnmower had real blades that were being fed wax limbs for the zombie slaughter effect. With that much blood covering nearly every surface, the floor had to have been extremely slippery. Which meant Richard Taylor, the only one brave enough to feed the lawnmower fake limbs, could have easily lost one of his own limbs with one slick misstep by either him or lead actor Timothy Balme as Lionel, the one wielding the lawnmower.

Dead Alive may be one of the greatest splatter comedies in existence, but it was one that took a long time to build an audience. It bombed at the box office, and while the memorable VHS cover art lured in devoted viewers, it was Jackson’s work on The Lord of the Rings trilogy (also with longtime effects partner Richard Taylor) that caused even more to seek out his older work. Though Jackson’s older work in gory horror superficially has little in common with his more recent visual spectacles, Dead Alive made it easy to see why Jackson was handed the reigns for J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary classic. Insanely creative with an uncanny ability to do so much with budgetary limitations, Dead Alive could’ve easily gotten away with its insane gore and blood-geyser effects. But Jackson wove in clever pathos with Lionel’s family history and a touching love story between Lionel and Paquita. Theirs is a bloody romance worth celebrating this Valentine’s Day.

The post [Butcher Block] Peter Jackson’s Gory Love Story ‘Dead Alive’! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

It was nearly ten years ago that we first reported on Peter Jackson being attached to a feature adaptation of Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines book series, so this one has needless to say been a long time coming. Oscar-winning visual effects artist Christian Rivers directed the film, which just got an official teaser trailer via Universal Pictures.

The title refers to MASSIVE vehicles that are literally entire cities on wheels, traversing a post-apocalyptic landscape not unlike one you’d see in a Mad Max film.

Check out the teaser below.

“Thousands of years after civilization was destroyed by a cataclysmic event, humankind has adapted and a new way of living has evolved. Gigantic moving cities now roam the Earth, ruthlessly preying upon smaller traction towns. Tom Natsworthy (Robert Sheehan)—who hails from a Lower Tier of the great traction city of London—finds himself fighting for his own survival after he encounters the dangerous fugitive Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar). Two opposites, whose paths should never have crossed, forge an unlikely alliance that is destined to change the course of the future.”

Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens penned the screenplay.

The Universal and MRC adaptation is from the book series by Philip Reeve, published in 2001 by Scholastic. On board as producers are Zane Weiner (The Hobbit trilogy), Amanda Walker (The Hobbit trilogy) and Deborah Forte (Goosebumps), as well as Walsh and Jackson. Ken Kamins (The Hobbit trilogy) joins Boyens as executive producer.

The Mortal Engines arrive on December 14, 2018.

The post [Trailer] Entire Cities Hit the Road in Peter Jackson-Produced ‘Mortal Engines’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

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“The Horror Show” is hosted by two childhood friends, Sean and Joe, getting together to discuss the horror movies you love as well as the ones you love to hate each and every week. The Horror Show’s goal is to “make horror a threat again” by weaving their specific brand of comedy and personal anecdotes into their weekly discussions about movies across the huge spectrum of the genre.

You can interact with Sean and Joe on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram.

The Bloody Disgusting Podcast Network consists of The Horror Show, Women in Caskets, Forever Midnight, Test Pattern, and Virtual Pros. All of these shows can be found on our iTunes Provider Page as well as the Bloody Disgusting App on all iOS and Android devices.

The post [Podcasts] The Horror Show #126: Bad Taste appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

In case you hadn’t noticed, snack foods have gotten pretty weird in recent years. Brands like Hostess, Nabisco, and Kellogg’s have been working hard to out-do each other in the weird department, unleashing Twinkies, Oreos, and Pop-Tarts with increasingly bizarre flavors. Hell, I just finished a package of Peeps Oreos – and yes, they do alter the color of… certain things.

Unique snack items, of course, are nothing new. Back in ’05, Hostess gave King Kong his very own Twinkies in celebration of the release of Peter Jackson’s 8-hour film; naturally, they were banana flavored. At the time, banana Twinkies may have seemed like an oddity, but if you look back through the history of the spongy cakes, you’ll realize that couldn’t be further from the truth.

The history of the Twinkie is actually quite fascinating. As is Kong’s part in it.

The golden sponge cake with creamy filling was invented back in 1930 by James Alexander Dewar, a man inspired by the strawberry shortcake’s lack of year-round availability; when strawberries were out of season, you see, strawberry shortcake could not be made, so Dewar conceived a similar treat that could be enjoyed all year-round. This is how the Twinkie was born.

And the original Twinkie, believe it or not, was banana-flavored.

From 1930 through 1940, Twinkies were exclusively made with bananas, but that changed when World War 2 began. The war, started in 1939, led to bananas being rationed, thereby forcing the Twinkie to evolve. No longer able to be made with bananas, the company switched over to vanilla creme filling; the modern Twinkie proved popular enough that they never looked back.

So what is King Kong’s place in all of this?

Well, the 2005 release of banana-flavored Kong Twinkies was a huge success for Hostess, who saw a 20% spike in sales during the four-week promotion. They had previously brought back banana Twinkies for other limited time promotions, but none of them proved to be as successful as Kong’s; so successful that Banana Twinkies were soon thereafter brought back full time.

To this day, you can find banana Twinkies on the shelf of your local grocery store. They may not feature King Kong on the packaging, but they’re there, dear friends, because of Kong.

Bow before your king. The King of the Twinkies.

The post The Story of How King Kong Changed the Twinkie Game appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

On February 7th, 2017 Universal will be releasing an Ultimate Edition of Peter Jackson’s 2005 King Kong.

“Peter Jackson’s expansive remake of the 1933 classic follows director Carl Denham (Jack Black) and his crew on a journey from New York City to the ominous Skull Island to film a new movie. Accompanying him are playwright Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) and actress Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), who is whisked away by the monstrous ape, Kong, after they reach the island. The crew encounters dinosaurs and other creatures as they race to rescue Ann, while the actress forms a bond with her simian captor.”

New King Kong Bonus Features (Blu-ray only) on the 3-disc set include:

• 2006 Introductions by Peter Jackson
• Recreating the Eighth Wonder: The Making of King Kong
• Production Diaries
• Post Production Diaries
• Deleted Scenes with Introductions
• The Eighth Blunder of the World
• The Making of a Shot: The T-Rex Fight
• Skull Island: A Natural History
• Kong’s New York, 1933
• A Night in Vaudeville
• King Kong Homage
• Pre-Visualization Animatics
• Conceptual Design Video Galleries
• “The Present”
• WETA Collectibles
• The Volkswagen Touareg & King Kong
• Trailers

On the same date, Universal is set to release The Mummy trilogy that include The Mummy, The Mummy Returns and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.

“The Mummy is a rousing, suspenseful and horrifying epic about an expedition of treasure-seeking explorers in the Sahara Desert in 1925. Stumbling upon an ancient tomb, the hunters unwittingly set loose a 3,000-year-old legacy of terror, which is embodied in the vengeful reincarnation of an Egyptian priest who had been sentenced to an eternity as one of the living dead.”

The Mummy Blu-ray Bonus Features:

• Digital Copy of The Mummy (1999) (Subject to expiration. Go to NBCUCodes.com for details.)
• Includes UltraViolet (Subject to expiration. Go to NBCUCodes.com for details.)
• Feature Commentary with Director/Writer Stephen Sommers and Executive Producer/Editor Bob Ducsay
• Feature Commentary with Actor Brendan Fraser
• Feature Commentary with Actors Oded Fehr, Kevin J. O’Connor and Arnold Vosloo
• The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor Sneak Peek
• Visual and Special Effects Formation
• An Army to Rule the World Part 1
• Unraveling the Legacy of The Mummy
• Building a Better Mummy
• Storyboard to Final Film Comparison
• Photograph Montage
• U-Control – Picture in Picture
• BD-Live Enabled
• My Scenes

In The Mummy Returns: “Ten years after the events of the first film, Rick (Brendan Fraser) and Evelyn (Rachel Weisz) O’Connell are settled in 1935 London, where they are raising their son. When a chain of events finds the corpse of Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo) resurrected, the O’Connells go on a desperate race to save the world from unspeakable evil and to rescue their son before it is too late.”

The Mummy Returns Blu-ray Bonus Features:
 
• Digital Copy of The Mummy Returns (Subject to expiration. Go to NBCUCodes.com for details.)
• Includes UltraViolet (Subject to expiration. Go to NBCUCodes.com for details.)
• Feature Commentary with Director/Writer Stephen Sommers and Executive Producer/Editor Bob Ducsay
• Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor Sneak Peek
• An Army to Rule the World Part 2
• Unraveling the Legacy of The Mummy
• Visual and Special Effects Formation
• An Exclusive Conversation with The Rock
• Spotlight On Location
• Storyboard to Final Film Comparison
• Live “Forever May Not Be Long Enough” Music Video
• U-Control – Picture in Picture
• BD-Live Enabled
• My Scenes

In The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor: “Cursed by a devious sorceress, China’s ruthless Dragon Emperor (Jet Li) and his vast army lie buried in clay for millennia. When young archaeologist Alex O’Connell is tricked into reviving the emperor, he and his famous parents (Brendan Fraser, Maria Bello) must find a way to send the ghoul back to the grave before he can awaken his vast army and take over the world.”

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor Blu-ray Bonus Features: 

• Digital Copy of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (Subject to expiration. Go to NBCUCodes.com for details.)
• Includes UltraViolet (Subject to expiration. Go to NBCUCodes.com for details.)
• U-Control – Scene Explorer
• BD-Live – My Scenes Sharing
• BD-Live – Exclusive Content
• U-Control – Know Your Mummy
• U-Control – The Dragon Emperor’s Challenge
• U-Control – Picture in Picture
• U-Control – Visual Commentary with Director Rob Cohen
• Deleted and Extended Scenes
• The Making of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
• From City to Desert
• Legacy of the Terra Cotta
• Feature Commentary with Director Rob Cohen

The post Universal Re-releasing Peter Jackson’s ‘King Kong’ and ‘The Mummy’ Trilogy appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The Ugly

Directed by Scott Reynolds
Screenplay by Scott Reynolds
Produced by Jonathan Dowling
Starring Paolo Rotondo, Rebecca Hobbs, Roy Ward, Paul Glover, Cristopher Graham, Jennifer Ward-Lealand, Caelem Pope, Vanessa Byrnes, Cath McWhirter, and Darien Takle
Released on May 1, 1998 (U.S. release)

Fresh off a career-making case, psychiatrist Dr. Karen Shumaker (Rebecca Hobbs) is sent to a scrappy asylum in Auckland, New Zealand to evaluate an inmate. That inmate, serial killer Simon Cartwright (Paolo Rotondo), has requested a re-evaluation of his mental state. Claiming that he has been cured, Simon wants a court hearing and he has specifically requested Dr. Shumaker to perform his re-evaluation. Shumaker soon finds herself in over her head as Simon’s mindgames and charismatic nature begin to take their toll. Has he been cured? Is he still insane? Or is there something even more sinister at play?

New Zealand horror is probably best known for the early films of Peter Jackson, particularly the likes of Bad Taste and Dead Alive (aka Braindead). It is also a genre-filmmaking industry that has roared back to life in recent years, with the likes of What We Do in the Shadows, Housebound, Deathgasm, Black Sheep, and more pouring out of the country and delighting horror fans around the globe. There have been others, of course, from 1984’s Death Warmed Up and 1985’s The Lost Tribe to 1993’s Jack Be Nimble and 2000’s Karl Urban-starring The Irrefutable Truth About Demons. And, of course, 1997’s The Ugly!

While the set-up of this is very Thomas Harris-y, early ‘90s “psychological thriller” territory, the film never really lives within that domain. Sure, we get hefty glimpses of Simon’s past that inform the man he has ultimately become, but the heart of the film is very much rooted within Simon himself. The title, if you’re curious, hails from Simone’s favorite book as a child: The Ugly Duckling. After a rather damaging (both physically and emotionally) run-in with some neighborhood bullies, the book is destroyed and Simone is left with a title page that is half-missing. Hence “The Ugly”, which also doubles as Simon’s name for his murderous alter-ego.

Speaking of killer instincts, The Ugly is not interested in building a mindless killing machine or a mugging malevolent baddie for the audience. Instead, it carefully spends its time letting Simon’s charms work on you and juxtaposing them with a background just tragic enough to make you feel a little sorry for him. Think less Hannibal Lecter and more Norman Bates. Not that there’s anything wrong with the former, mind you, but this just isn’t that kind of film.

Clearly crafted on a low budget, writer/director Reynolds actually uses that to the film’s advantage. What the film lacks in resources, it makes up for in style and intensity. There’s a frenetic energy to the proceedings, particularly the kills shown in the flashbacks, that is often lacking in this particular subgenre. This is conveyed through a variety of methods, from the music to hyperactive camerawork to its vibrant color palette (particularly the supremely black-ish blood).

Not simply content to let the performances (all of which are good, especially the two leads) carry the film, Reynolds set out to make the visuals match them. When Simon is depressed and falls into self-loathing, the film itself looks and feels sad. When he is in the midst of an adrenaline-fueled killing spree, the movie feels like someone drove a needle into its heart, Pulp Fiction-style.

There are some supernatural elements at play, primarily when it comes to “The Visitors”. You see, Simon’s victims continue to haunt him after their death. They appear as ghoulish bleeding corpses that taunt him to continue his murderous ways. The film also hints at times that Simon might have some psychic abilities. None of this is ever really made clear, however, so it’s ultimately up to the viewer to decide whether these elements are “real” within the story itself or simple a byproduct of Simon’s psychosis.

Looking into Reynolds’ work in preparation for this entry, I was disappointed to see that he hasn’t made many films since this feature-length debut. He has only made two features since, neither of which I have seen (although that will be rectified). Given the creativity and style on display here, it’s a shame that he hasn’t worked regularly in the (almost) two decades since The Ugly was released.

The Ugly is probably best known for being showcased in a horror film documentary 15 years ago titled Boogeymen: The Killer Compilation. While it naturally showcased the adventures of Freddy, Chucky, Pinhead, Leatherface, etc., it also managed to highlight a few less-celebrated fright flicks like The Guardian, The Dentist, Wishmaster, and…of course…The Ugly. That’s where I became aware of this underseen gem and tracked it down quickly afterwards. It’s been a favorite ever since.

High on style, packed with violence, and topped off with some great performances, The Ugly deserves a much wider audience and positive reception than it has been given to date. While some of the films I have showcased in the column so far have been more endearing in terms of their entertainment factor than actually quality, Scott Reynolds’ The Ugly is a legitimately good movie. Seek it out!

Up Next: Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1990)

Previously On…
Species | Mute Witness | Popcorn | Wishmaster | Alien 3 | Cast A Deadly Spell
Disturbing Behavior | The Sect | The Addams Family | The Ugly

The post [Exhumed & Exonerated] ‘The Ugly’ (1997) appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The film follows Frank Bannister (played by Michael J. Fox), a man who uses his abilities to see and communicate with the dead to pull cons on unsuspecting people. The film also stars Jeffrey Combs (Re-animator), Dee Wallace (The Howling), Jake Busey (Identity), John Astin (“The Addams Family”), R. Lee Ermey (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), and more. Basically, if you haven’t seen it, you don’t know what you’re missing.

Now, coming to the point of this article, one has to remember that many actors have been in TONS of films. And because they invest themselves so greatly during those few months, sometimes they find it hard to let go of previous characters. Such is the case with Fox during the filming of The Frighteners, when he kept forgetting to call Astin’s character “Judge” and instead referred to him as “Doc”, Christopher Lloyd’s character from the Back to the Future series!

Below is a clip from a behind-the-scenes reel where both Jackson and Fox discuss this and you can see the mistakes in action. It’s rather charming, in a silly way!

The post Michael J. Fox Forgot Which Movie He Was on During ‘The Frighteners’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

In order to discuss the remake (which is the second time the giant ape has been rebooted, first in 1976), I feel that it’s important to go back to the original and talk a bit about why the film is so important and still commands such a grip on audiences.

If you haven’t read about Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Shoedsack’s King Kong, I highly suggest finding some material. The techniques used in creating the film are widely considered to be some of the most astonishing and important advancements in cinema to this day. Allow me to give a few examples.

When it came to mixing real life footage with stop motion, that was a tall order back in the day. After all, how can you make it seem like Fay Wray is moving naturally while stop motion animators have to move a “25ft gorilla”? Well, one of the ways they did some of those scenes was through the use of mini projector screens. The special effects team took footage of the actors doing their thing (basically wildly gesticulating and shrieking in horror) and would project one frame onto a mini screen that was placed in the stop motion set. Then, when Kong was moved for the next frame, they also clicked the projector forward one frame, making it seem like both movements were happening at the same time. Over and over again, they did this so that the final product could be played at regular speed and seem like all the action was taking place at the same time in the same world.

Additionally, the original was known for its magnificent score by composer Max Steiner. One of the great tricks he used is known as “Mickey Mousing”, a technique by which the music matches the events and actions occurring on screen. A perfect example is when Kong is scaling the Empire State Building in New York after his escape and the music raises along with each level that he climbs. Or when the planes are shooting at him and they’re spiraling downwards, the music does the same thing.

These are only two examples of the creative majesty of the 1933 King Kong, a film that was placed in the National Film Registry and was labelled as being “culturally, historically and aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress (thanks Wiki). My recommendation is to find some literature about this movie and really read into it, especially for anyone out there who is an aspiring or even currently working filmmaker. It is considered by many, and rightfully so, to be a crowning achievement in cinema and everyone should watch it at some point in their life.

Coming to 2005’s version, I’ll fully admit that I find it to be a flawed movie. It had a lot going for it, including some of the most impressive (at the time) CGI effects ever seen on film and a cast of very notable and acclaimed stars. Additionally, they got the master of motion capture work, Andy Serkis, to portray the titular creature, which gave Kong a depth and personality that wouldn’t have otherwise been achieved.

Jackon’s King Kong was a commercial success, drawing in over half a billion dollars in worldwide box office on a $200+ million budget. It also generated over $100 million in home video sales, basically making sure that everyone and their mother had a copy on their shelf.

On top of being a commercial success, many outlets also heaped praise upon it and the film took home three Academy Awards (Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects), each of which were well deserved. It was also considered by many to be one of the Top 10 films of the year.

However, many complained about the uneven pacing and the somewhat bloated running time, which was nearly twice as long as the original film. It felt like Jackson was trying to create an epic film that took everything from the original and amplified it to new highs. But what I felt was lost in translation was that sense of magic, that wonder that comes with watching something beautiful and awe inspiring.

I enjoyed the film when it came out and I recognize that it was a passion project for Jackson, a film that he wanted to make out of sheer love for the property. And what’s not to love? It’s a magnificent story, one that shows that appearances can be deceiving, that there are things humanity should simple not meddle in, and that we shouldn’t immediately fear that which we don’t understand.

I think that’s why there is a push for new Kong movies. The messages these movies produce are rather timeless and seem to be applicable with each generation. As for Kong battling Godzilla, that’s just going to be badass. No other reason needed.

What are your thoughts on Jackson’s King Kong? Let me know in the comments if you’re a fan, a hater, or, like me, someone who was more in the middle.

The post Celebrating 10 Years of ‘King Kong’! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

I received advanced copies, already watched twice through, where I discovered a little nugget of information that was new to me (although some readers are already aware).

On the “making of” bonus feature for Demon Knight, the writers reveal that the “Tales From the Crypt Presents” theatrical run was slated for three movies, with two of the planned sequels being completed films probably in your personal library.

Which two?!

According to the doc and varied sources online, as well as confirmation from AICN’s Eric Vespe, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn was supposed to be the “Tales From the Crypt Presents” sequel, with Robert Zemeckis and Perter Jackson’s The Frighteners concluding the trilogy.

From Dusk Till Dawn was originally planned as the follow-up to Tales From The Crypt Presents: Demon Knight, but due to disagreements with producers, Tarantino and Rodriguez took the film elsewhere. (source)

On the other hand, Wiki explains that Zemeckis was to direct Frighteners, while Vespe tells us on Twitter that Jackson told him he was always going to be behind the camera.

Jackson and Walsh conceived the idea for The Frighteners during the script-writing phase of Heavenly Creatures. Executive producer Robert Zemeckis hired the duo to write the script, with the original intention of Zemeckis directing The Frighteners as a spin-off film of the television series, Tales from the Crypt. With Jackson and Walsh’s first draft submitted in January 1994, Zemeckis believed the film would be better off directed by Jackson, produced by Zemeckis and funded/distributed by Universal Studios. The visual effects were created by Jackson’s Weta Digital, which had only been in existence for three years. This, plus the fact that The Frighteners required more digital effects shots than almost any movie made up until that time, resulted in the eighteen-month period for effects work by Weta Digital being largely stressed. (wiki)

Another wiki surprise reveals that, as a follow-up to Demon Knight, producers planned to make a film titled Dead Easy (aka Fat Tuesday), a New Orleans zombie romp. “We were rewriting it, and it was getting scarier and more intense, but a lot of the humor had been lost, and we always felt that was an important part of “Tales from the Crypt” — scare people, then let them laugh.” Gilbert Adler told Fangoria in 1996. The third film that was planned, Body Count, also never found its way to the screen.

I find this infinity cool for a wide variety of reasons, mostly because both Dusk and Frighteners still feel like they could live in the “Tales From the Crypt” universe. With Bordello of Blood being a slight disappointment, and Ritual barely even finding a release here in the States, it’s fun to pretend that the Crypt Keeper could have easily been behind both of the aforementioned horror classics…

This Halloween, after watching Demon Knight and Bordello of Blood, why not follow them up with Dusk Till Dawn and Frighteners. Let’s pretend that us hardcore “Tales From the Crypt” fans received a SAGA of genre classics in the mid-90’s…

Thanks to Twitter follower Dallin A. for helping me through this.

The post ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’ and ‘Frighteners’ Were to Be “Tales From the Crypt” Sequels?! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Something else that has become incredibly memorable from the original trilogy has been composer Howard Shore‘s score, which netted him three Academy Awards. It’s been covered multiple times on multiple instruments ever since it came out and now there’s another cover that is rather impressive.

Below is Zander Zon‘s solo bass cover, which creates a medley of several of the film’s tunes. It’s fascinating seeing him play through the various tunes, especially while using a spider capo (which can fret specific strings rather than all at once) as well as an E-bow. Check it out down yonder!

The post Here’s A Very Cool ‘Lord Of The Ring’s Medley On Bass appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

That’s why the video for Thrash Or Die‘s “Wake Up And Smell The Thrash” appeals to me so much! It’s pure metal with puppets and a ton of perverse shenanigans. Check it out below for blistering puppet metal start to your weekend!

Got any thoughts/questions/concerns for Jonathan Barkan? Shoot him a message on Twitter or on Bloody-Disgusting!

The post Twisted Music Video Of The Week Vol. 69: Thrash Or Die “Wake Up And Smell The Thrash” appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Sony Pictures Classics has acquired worldwide rights to Amy Berg’s docu about the West Memphis Three, West of Memphis,” which was produced by Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, as well as first-time producers Damien Echols and Lorri Davis, says Variety.

The pic, which debuted at Sundance, “chronicles the new investigation surrounding the West Memphis Three, which ultimately broke the case open and led to the freedom of three innocent men: Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley Jr.”

Berg’s film examines the flawed police investigation into the 1993 murders of three young boys in West Memphis, Arkansas, and reveals details of Echols’ fight to save his life while sitting on death row for 18 years.

Watch the festival trailer below.

The post Sony Pictures Classics Acquires ‘West of Memphis’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

I just recently decided to delve into Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, which has since turned into a trilogy of films about the “West Memphis Three”. It appeared to have everything you could possibly need to translate into a film, but apparently it wasn’t enough.

Peter Jackson and his Wingnut Films have announced completion of helmer-scribe Amy Berg‘s West of Memphis, a docu about the West Memphis Three, who were jailed for murder and recently freed, reports Variety.

What’s interesting is that Damien Echols, one of the three, produced the film with his wife Lorri Davis. 8 years in the making, Jackson and Fran Walsh helped reinvigorate the case in 2005 when they funded a new probe into the conviction of Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelly Jr., who were teenagers at the time of the murders of three 8-year-old boys and spent 18 years in prison.

A statement from Jackson said the film reveals unknown forensic evidence surrounding the arrest and conviction of the three defendants. The new evidence prompted the Arkansas Supreme Court to overturn previous denials of appeals and allowed for a new evidentiary hearing to proceed. “This film represents the trial these men didn’t have. With the support of Damien and Lorri, along with unprecedented access to those closest to the case, we were able to make a film that shows the inner workings of the defense — the investigation, research, and appeals process, in a way that has never been shown before,” said Berg.

The state of Arkansas struck an unusual plea deal with the Three, freeing them but requiring them to plead guilty, despite their assertion of innocence. The film examines how the State Prosecutor’s declaration that the case is closed leaves the men convicted of a crime they did not commit while the murder goes unsolved.

Jackson said he hoped further investigation would lead to finding the killer and exonerating the three defendants.

Music for the film was written by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. Exec producer Ken Kamins will conduct discussions with potential distributors. The West Memphis Three have also been covered in three “Paradise Lost” docus by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. The New York Times reported Sunday that there has been jostling for access to sources between the Jackson’s camp, the “Paradise Lost” filmmakers and others making films about the case.

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