However, there exists a criminally underseen duology of films that managed to overcome the inherent difficulty of adapting Lovecraft by bypassing his original work entirely and instead replicating the pulpy thrills of a certain tabletop RPG. Naturally, I’m referring to Spain’s The Valdemar Legacy and its sequel, The Valdemar Legacy II: The Forbidden Shadow (which is really just the second half of the same movie). With the Halloween season finally upon us, I believe this is the perfect time to look back on these films as unofficial adaptations of the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game!

Despite being considered a high-profile release in Europe, The Valdemar Legacy was actually an independent passion project brought to life by the blood, sweat, and tears of writer-director José Luis Alemán. A lifelong connoisseur of Weird Fiction, Alemán wished to combine his favorite scary stories into an epic pastiche made by genre fans for genre fans.

Unfortunately, the scope (and subject matter) of such a project made it nearly impossible to guarantee funding through the government subsidies that keep Spanish cinema alive – especially after the box-office failure of Stuart Gordon’s underrated Lovecraft adaptation Dagon.

Left with no other choice, Alemán decided to risk everything and finance the picture himself, selling off assets and picking up a few loans in order to bring his ambitious screenplay to life as a two-part epic. This resulted in Spain’s first major genre film produced without government resources!

Of course, financing was only half the battle, as both parts of the story ultimately required over 19 weeks of principal photography to complete, as well as an extensive post-production process in order to sort out the visual effects. The biggest difficulty resulted from the director’s wish to portray the script’s two timelines in completely different styles, with the modern-day investigation playing out like a Stephen King novel and the flashbacks being presented like a long-lost Hammer Horror picture.

In the finished film, we follow real estate specialist Luisa Llorente (Silvia Abascal) as she unwittingly becomes part of a paranormal conspiracy involving disappearances at a decaying Victorian mansion previously owned by disgraced occultist Lázaro Valdemar (Daniele Liotti). As the film’s dual timelines unfold, we slowly uncover the tragic series of events that cursed Valdemar’s estate in the past as well as the terrifying part that Luisa is meant to play in the mansion’s dark future.

With early previews of the film being mostly positive, Alemán was shocked when the first chapter of his horrific saga released to scathing reviews and disappointing box office numbers. Not only were audiences claiming to have been cheated by the lack of Lovecraftian elements in what was advertised as a Lovecraft adaptation (with the first film’s narrative feeling a lot more like one of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations than anything resembling Cosmic Horror), but the odd structure and abrupt cliffhanger ending resulted in extremely negative word-of-mouth.

And while The Valdemar Legacy and its follow-up had been conceived (and mostly filmed) as one big story from the outset, additional shooting was required in order to fully complete the sequel – meaning that fans had to wait two years for a proper ending! Thankfully, revisiting these films today means that we can immediately head into The Forbidden Shadow, with the second film picking up right where the previous one left off and finally expanding on the Lovecraftian elements that were only hinted at before.

Watching the complete story unfold in one go made me realize that the duology has a lot more in common with the popular event series of the 90s (think Rose Red or Intensity) than actual movie franchises. Even the expansive cast and their interpersonal melodrama are far more reminiscent of what you’d expect from a serialized TV show than a feature film, and that’s why The Valdemar Legacy sometimes feels like an impeccably shot miniseries rather than two movies – or at least a long-lost Call of Cthulhu campaign where the Game Master (or Keeper) prepared an elaborate Victorian backstory but had little control over the modern-day players.

And while this chaotic mix of literary, television, and even role-playing game influences sounds like it shouldn’t work, trust me when I say that the end result is one of the most entertaining pieces of Lovecraftian fiction I’ve seen in years. At its best, the Valdemar story feels like a long-lost Stuart Gordon film, but even at its worst, it still feels like a charming made-for-TV production filled with paranormal intrigue and memorable characters (with the exception of the bland real-estate ensemble).

From the disturbed groundskeeper who keeps a family of creepy mannequins to Lázaro Valdemar himself (who is arguably the real protagonist despite mostly appearing through extended flashback sequences), there are plenty of original characters here that would feel right at home in a real Lovecraft yarn. The films also feature a number of amusing appearances from historical figures ranging from Aleister Crowley to Lizzie Borden and even H.P. Lovecraft himself – all connected by a conspiratorial web of occult intrigue involving portals to other dimensions and the infamous Necronomicon.

This is exactly the kind of historical horror that originally got me into the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game in the first place, so I appreciate how the film is set up almost exactly like a classic campaign – i.e., a group of regular people slowly uncover an eldritch threat at a cursed location only to barely escape with their sanity. Sure, this means that the modern-day “investigators” are basically cardboard cut-outs rather than actual people, but that’s par for the course with this kind of yarn.

Though these films aren’t particularly scary, the excellent cinematography, impressive sets, and extensive mythology make the Valdemar saga worth experiencing despite obvious budgetary issues. Even when things get silly (like in the case of the CGI-enhanced Ghoul or even the Cthulhu-inspired “final boss”), Alemán’s efforts feel more sincere than cheap. In fact, some of the rough edges enhance the overall pulpy atmosphere.

The only real issue here is pacing. The Valdemar Legacy should either have been a single three-hour film cutting out all of the extraneous subplots or an extended mini-series interweaving both timelines together through alternating scenes instead of lengthy chunks of story.

At the end of the day, The Valdemar Legacy duology isn’t the best Lovecraftian adaptation out there, with both films suffering from inconsistent logic and janky effects work, but there’s so much genuine love for the source material here that it’s easy to overlook these surface-level flaws and enjoy the retro thrills. That’s why I’d recommend giving this hidden gem a chance if you’re a fan of RPG-inspired scares or long-form frights!

The post Looking Back on the Lovecraftian Thrills of ‘The Valdemar Legacy’ and its Sequel appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

These fears are placed front and center in James Villeneuve‘s debut film, Pins and Needles. In the movie, Chelsea Clark (Ginny & Georgia) stars as Max, a biology grad student and diabetic. On her drive back to campus from a field research site, Max becomes trapped at the home of two murderous biohackers where her safety and insulin supplies quickly begin to run dry. Movies like Pins and Needles weaponize our bodies, reminding us that in the wrong hands or wrong situations, the delicate machinery of our anatomy can become a living nightmare.

Due to its very nature and subject matter, the subgenre of medical horror is a broad and varied one. Sometimes the horror presents as an operating theater turned chamber of terror, or as the deranged ramblings of a tech bro biohacker, or the stony detachment of a rogue doctor with a god complex. If you find yourself craving even more medical horror after watching Pins and Needles (now available on VOD), here are five more similarly themed movies that pair well with its particular brand of medical mayhem.

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)

Horror loves a final girl, and Kirsty (Ashley Laurence) from the Hellraiser franchise is one of the best there is. In this direct sequel to Clive Barker’s original classic, Hellbound: Hellraiser II descends into the shadows of medical horror, highlighting the immense power that medical professionals wield and the horrific ways that power can be used for personal gain. After being admitted to a psychiatric facility, Kirsty confides in Dr. Channard (Kenneth Cranham) and begs him to tie up the final loose end that connects this world to Pinhead’s. Rather than assist Kirsty, Dr. Channard revives Julia and becomes understandably obsessed with her. Stopping at nothing to satisfy her while simultaneously furthering his dark ambitions, Dr. Channard wields scalpels and sadism with equal precision.

Once Channard himself succumbs to the Lament Configuration’s lure, he steps into a hell of his own making as Julia’s betrayal results in a new Cenobite life for the grotesque doctor. Back in the hospital’s hallways, Kirsty must navigate contorted corridors and puzzle-box traps to rescue fellow patient Tiffany and outwit their former psychiatrist. This perversion of what it means to be a doctor serves as a reminder of why medical horror taps such primal dread. Because when science sheds its ethics, the suffering is often, indeed, legendary.

12 Hour Shift (2020)

For anyone who ever thought a night shift at a small-town hospital seemed like a tedious gig, 12 Hour Shift proves the opposite. The movie starts with Nurse Mandy (Angela Bettis) clocking in for her usual all-nighter, except that sometimes her all-nighter includes a moonlighting gig involving the procurement of organs for a shady black-market trafficker. In this hospital, the unassuming stretchers and dimly lit supply closets become stages for clandestine harvests where dead bodies become spare part machines for the highest bidder.

Written and directed by Brea Grant, 12 Hour Shift is a savagely humorous dismantling of the medical industrial complex’s shiny veneer, beautifully balancing pitch-black comedy with guts and gore. When Mandy’s sneaky routine fractures under the weight of misplaced organ coolers, organ confusion, murder, and her drug addiction, all illusions of normalcy and social acceptability get stripped away. Even more unsettling, 12 Hour Shift reveals that, more often than not, events such as these are born not from grandiose scientific delusion but from greed, opportunism, and sheer overworked desperation.

Re-Animator (1985)

There is perhaps no story more influential and iconic in the medical horror subgenre than Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Reinvented, rearranged, and retold countless times since its original publication, Dr. Frankenstein’s madness and maniacal laughter will undoubtedly echo through horror’s hallowed halls for all eternity. However, it is this Stuart Gordon-directed Frankenstein-tinged screen adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s story “Herbert West-Reanimator” that will forever be one of my personal faves.

Dr. Herbert West’s gleefully gruesome exploits in Re-Animator epitomize medical horror at its most unhinged. Nestled within Miskatonic University, West’s obsessive quest to conquer death with his glowing green serum turns cadavers into twitching puppets of chaos. Every drip of his fluorescent elixir is a dark promise of life after death. As limbs defy gravity and reanimated heads babble maniacally, the film reminds us that beneath lab coats and lecture notes lies the terrifying potential for science to cut away at the soul itself.

What makes Re-Animator a seminal entry in the subgenre is its perfect blend of mad-scientist comedy and visceral body horror. Unlike the cold cleanliness of a modern operating theater, West’s workspace is a cluttered basement where there is little room for ethics, let alone notes explaining what happened to the poor cat. It’s a cautionary tale wrapped in wry one-liners and rubber-gloved mayhem, proving that when the hippocratic oath gets swapped for hubris, the human body truly becomes the ultimate lab experiment.

Eyes Without a Face (1960)

It’s time to class up the list a little bit and discuss one of the most moving, chilling, and beautiful medical horror movies ever: Georges Franju’s film Eyes Without a Face (aka Les Yeux sans visage). In the movie, Dr. Génessier’s sprawling mansion appears to be a beautiful, picturesque resort on the outside. Yet inside, it quickly reveals itself as a macabre lab where flesh is a prized commodity. When Dr. G’s beloved daughter Christiane emerges from a car crash with a face so ravaged he can’t bear to look at it, Dr. G trades in his professional bedside manner for a butcher’s precision. To “fix” his daughter’s injuries, Dr. G begins abducting young women, removing their facial skin and attempts to graft it onto his daughter’s face.

It’s this callous calculus of “one life to save another” that cements Eyes Without a Face in medical horror’s hall of fame. Although the horrifying surgeries and rows of caged dogs howling in the night are indeed awful, the most nightmarish quality of the film is the perversion of care itself. Here, a father’s love mutates into something obsessive, clinical and monstrous, where Christiane and her actual feelings become a non-issue, a secondary thought at best. While Dr. G’s scalpel is undoubtedly sharp, it is perhaps this dismissal of Christiane’s humanity and individuality that ultimately cuts the deepest and inflicts the most pain.

Crimes of the Future (2022)

As the undisputed champion of body horror, pretty much any David Cronenberg film could be placed on this list. Scanners, Dead Ringers, The Fly, Videodrome, and Crash all explore themes of obsession, the body, and science in ways that boggle the mind and make the stomach churn. However, it is Crimes of the Future that best aligns with the biohacking, boundary-pushing science elements present in Pins and Needles that earns it its place on this specific list.

In Crimes of the Future, Cronenberg pushes medical horror into the realm of performance art, transforming bodily decay into the ultimate avant-garde spectacle. In a near-future where biotechnology and evolution begin to alter the human body in unprecedented ways, celebrity surgeon-artist Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) publicly extracts his newly sprouted organs on stage, aided by his partner Caprice (Léa Seydoux). The operating theater becomes a gallery, gleaming under spotlights rather than fluorescent tubes, with every incision choreographed.

What makes Crimes of the Future stand out even more is its subversion of the healer’s role and its thought-provoking, interconnected explorations of art, sexuality, and medical taboos. In this world, surgical tools masquerade as instruments of creative expression, internal organs and wounds as vessels for sexual pleasure. Cronenberg’s trademark detachment gleams in every pooled serum and staged extraction, reminding us that when medicine courts spectacle, the line between salvation and desecration dissolves, leaving the body itself the final, unsolvable installation.

Honorable Mentions:

— The Human Centipede (2009)
— A Cure for Wellness (2016)
— Flatliners (1990)
— Coma (1978)
— Brain Dead (1990)

Pins and Needles is now available on digital. Watch it tonight!

The post Medical Mayhem: 5 Horror Movies to Watch After ‘Pins and Needles’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

And while you’ll find your fair share of terrifying moments in films like Sin City or even Chinatown, today I’d like to discuss a quintessential example of horror-adjacent cinema, Stuart Gordon’s criminally underseen King of the Ants – a grimy little gem that I think might be more fun now than it was back in 2003.

Like many of the best Noir movies, King of the Ants is adapted from a darkly comedic novel about the seedy underbelly of ’90s Los Angeles. Written by the multitalented English artist Charlie Higson (who would later write the screenplay for the adaptation), the book was something of a moderate success, but a film version of the story would only become a reality after the project was championed by none other than the late, great George Wendt. The Cheers star personally approached his old theater friend (and master of splatter cinema) Stuart Gordon in order to develop Higson’s story into a movie, and Gordon reportedly fell in love with the novel’s strange tone.

Unfortunately, it would take over seven years for Gordon to finance the project, as the story’s disturbing elements made studios hesitant to develop a movie that they felt was too horrific for crime thriller fans and too tame for horror enthusiasts. It was The Asylum that ultimately saved the picture, with the company deciding to take a huge risk by making King of the Ants their first official production, as they had previously only acted as a distributor. Nevertheless, production went by smoothly (albeit with an extremely limited budget), and the film premiered at the 2003 edition of Seattle’s International Film Festival, with a wide DVD release scheduled for June of the following year.

In the finished film, we follow a down-on-his-luck Angeleno named Sean Crawley (Chris McKenna) as he stumbles his way into a job as an amateur hitman once contractor Duke Wayne (George Wendt) introduces him to the dangerous world of shady real estate development. Unfortunately for Sean, his employers realize that it would be much easier to simply make their bumbling hitman disappear than to actually pay him for his service, so they decide to tie up loose ends in the most horrific way imaginable.

SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?

Not only did King of the Ants sell and rent enough copies to convince The Asylum to continue producing movies, but the film also reviewed relatively well despite its low budget and lack of mass market appeal. Unfortunately, the flick’s limited distribution and niche subject matter meant that it couldn’t quite reach the same amount of genre fans as Gordon’s previous projects.

This is a huge shame, as there’s a lot to love about the movie if you can get past the low production value. For starters, the lo-fi cinematography feels even more impressive now than it did back in the day, with naturalistic lighting and real locations working together to ground viewers in an appropriately oppressive yet entirely believable depiction of a gritty Los Angeles.

The script is also deeply bizarre in all of the right ways, with the story pulling Crawley in unpredictable directions as he becomes part of a warped version of the criminal conspiracies he once enjoyed inside of pulpy paperbacks. While I wouldn’t want to ruin the experience for readers who have yet to see the film, suffice to say that a sizable portion of the runtime is dedicated to torturing our main character, with Sean only making things worse for himself by deciding to act like the exaggerated protagonists of his favorite detective stories.

This subtle meta twist only works because McKenna does such a great job of establishing the character as something of a bumbling loser during the first half of the film, with his transformation into something decidedly more animalistic feeling even more absurd when you have something to compare it too. Of course, the rest of the cast also does a great job of bringing these tropey characters to life in a believable way, with both Wendt and Daniel Baldwin delivering stand-out performances as burly criminals with a lot more going on underneath the surface than you might initially expect.

AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?

We’ve already established that Film Noir is at its best when focusing on the horrific parts of criminal activity, but it takes an experienced director to recognize precisely what common clichés can be turned into nightmare fuel without fully switching genres. That’s why it made a lot of sense for Wendt to bring King of the Ants to Gordon, as this dark genre mash-up has a lot in common with the transgressive stage-plays that used to get Gordon in trouble with the law before he began working in film.

While this is a grounded thriller at its core, the movie manages to sneak in a memorable collection of surreal scenes that harken back to the effects-heavy partnerships between Gordon and Brian Yuzna. From concussion-induced dream sequences featuring horrific monsters to literal jump-scares as our protagonist suffers from PTSD, it’s clear that Gordon is having a lot of fun with Higson’s source material despite removing a lot of the novel’s original humor.

The film may not show as much of Sean’s horrific ordeal as the source material, but King of the Ants somehow feels meaner than the original story. With the exception of the cathartic finale, almost none of the violence here is stylized, and even the initial murder feels more awkward than badass. In fact, every single punch, stab and gunshot is depicted as a messy and ugly affair, and I think this approach meshes quite well with the idea that Sean’s is being forced to confront his glamorized view of criminal life.

That’s why the torture sequence feels so effective, with Gordon even adding a body-horror element as Sean comes to terms with the fact that the thugs intend to reduce him into an animalistic prisoner trapped inside of his own body. And as uncomfortable as this is to watch, it’s almost disappointing to have the film shift gears once Sean inevitably escapes from this horrific predicament and mostly recovers from what should have been irreversible damage to both his body and mind.

King of the Ants is definitely an acquired taste, but it’s also one of Stuart Gordon’s most interesting movies – not to mention one hell of a disturbing deconstruction of Film Noir tropes. That’s why I’m not surprised that the movie still boasts a cult following, with McKenna even getting to briefly reprise his role as Crawley in Joe Lynch’s Suitable Flesh back in 2023. And while the movie suffers from awkward pacing and a severe case of tonal whiplash, I think genre fans will have a blast revisiting this strange little thriller from a time when The Asylum was content with producing movies that didn’t require over-the-top CGI to be entertaining.

The post ‘King of the Ants’ – Stuart Gordon’s Underseen Genre Mashup Is Worth Watching 20 Years Later appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Re-Animator will be playing on 271 screens in 235 markets. Check local listings now!

The 4K restoration by Ignite-Films & Eagle Rock Pictures is being theatrically released through American Genre Film Archive. The restoration is also available for Home Entertainment at the Ignite Films website, where it will be exclusively available all through this year.

You can choose from four physical media editions, exclusively at Ignite-Films.com, all of which include Newly Produced Bonus Features and Legacy Bonus Features.

Director Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator shocked audiences with his blend of grotesque horror and dark humor and became an instant cult classic upon its release in 1985.

The classic horror film follows Herbert West, a brilliant yet unhinged medical student who creates a serum that reanimates the dead with horrifying consequences. Jeffrey Combs stars as Herbert West, alongside Bruce Abbott as Dan Cain, Barbara Crampton as Megan Halsey, David Gale as Dr. Carl Hill, and Robert Sampson as Dean Halsey.

“I’m excited about the 40th Anniversary 4K UHD Blu-ray release of Re-Animator — it looks great! Especially if you have a big screen! An excellent restoration, it is like seeing it for the first time again. Stuart Gordon would have been super proud, and so happy that Re-Animator is still connecting with horror audiences and that this restoration is re-animating the movie in all its glorious madness – just as Herbert West intended!” exclaimed Brian Yuzna, Producer.

The post ‘Re-Animator’ 40th Anniversary Restoration Now Playing in Regal Cinemas & Coming to Cinemark! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Hosted by Scare You to Sleep creator Shelby Novak and Halloweenies executive producer Michael Roffman, the hour-long panel featured Barbara Crampton, Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott, Brian Yuzna, and Richard Band. Together, they shared stories from the set, how certain elements came to fruition, and why it remains a cult classic.

Stream the episode below or subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, RadioPublic, Acast, Google Podcasts, and RSS. New to the Halloweenies? Catch up with the gang by revisiting their essential episodes on past franchises such as Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Scream, The Evil Dead, Child’s Play/Chucky, and Alien!

This year? Universal Monsters!

You can also become a member of their Patreon, The Rewind, for hilariously irreverent commentaries (e.g. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Gremlins, Darkman), one-off deep dives on your favorite rentals (e.g. Phantasm, Prince of Darkness, Manhunter), and even topical spinoffs like last year’s incredible Fortune & Glory: An Indiana Jones Podcast.

Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Patreon | Store

The post ‘Re-Animator’ at 40: Live at Creep I.E. Con 2025 [Halloweenies/Scare You to Sleep Podcast] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

For the first time ever, Re-Animator returns with a stunning 4K UHD restoration, approved by producer Brian Yuzna. The restoration brings new life to this horror classic, based on H.P. Lovecraft’s twisted tale. Pre-orders were also launched today on the Ignite Films website, where it will be exclusively available for the entire 40th Anniversary Year, until 2026!

The street date is April 3, 2025. Pre-order your copy today!

“I’m excited about the 40th Anniversary 4K UHD Blu-ray release of Re-Animator — it looks great! Especially if you have a big screen! An excellent restoration, it is like seeing it for the first time again. Stuart Gordon would have been super proud, and so happy that Re-Animator is still connecting with horror audiences and that this restoration is re-animating the movie in all its glorious madness – just as Herbert West intended!” exclaimed Brian Yuzna, Producer.

“Working with Brian Yuzna on this 40th Anniversary 4K UHD release of Re-Animator has been an incredible experience. His passion and dedication to the film made the entire process a real pleasure. Seeing this horror classic look better than ever is so exciting, and we can’t wait for fans to celebrate this milestone with us. It’s a true celebration of a film that continues to captivate audiences 40 years later,” said Jim Quan, Eagle Rock Pictures.

The film follows Herbert West, a brilliant yet unhinged medical student who creates a serum that reanimates the dead with horrifying consequences. Director Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator shocked audiences with his blend of grotesque horror and dark humor and became an instant cult classic upon its release in 1985. The film stars Jeffrey Combs as “Herbert West,” Bruce Abbott as “Dan Cain,” Barbara Crampton as “Megan Halsey,” David Gale as “Dr. Carl Hill,” and Robert Sampson as “Dean Halsey.”

This 40th Anniversary release of Re-Animator from Ignite Films and Eagle Rock Pictures captures every gory detail of West’s obsession in vivid 4K and invites fans, old and new, to experience the film’s boundary-pushing terror like never before.

Fans can choose from four editions, exclusively at Ignite-Films.com, all of which include NEW and previous release extras.

The Ultimate Limited Edition Box Set includes a 4K UHD/Blu-ray combo, NEW and previous release extras, a 150-page hardcover book featuring interviews with Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, writer Dennis Paoli, and composer Richard Band, with essays by Scout Tafoya, Kate Rife, Will Sloan, Alex Kittle, and Ben Sachs, and preface by Brian Yuzna, and collector’s art cards. PLUS A LIMITED-EDITION Dr. Hill Collector’s Bobblehead – A must have for fans! With limited quantities available, this exclusive hand-painted collectible will not be restocked once it is gone.

For those who choose the Ultimate Limited Edition Box Set, some lucky fans will discover green “re-agent” in their order! That means they will receive an exclusive signed poster by Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, and Brian Yuzna, plus a special Re-Animator gift pack from Middle of Beyond.

The Deluxe Edition Box Set includes a 4K UHD/Blu-ray combo, NEW and previous release extras, a 150-page hardcover book featuring interviews with Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, writer Dennis Paoli, and composer Richard Band, with essays by Scout Tafoya, Kate Rife, Will Sloan, Alex Kittle, and Ben Sachs, and preface by Brian Yuzna, and collector’s art cards.

The 4K Standard Edition includes the 4K UHD Blu-ray, slipcover, and NEW and previous release extras.

The Blu-ray Standard Edition includes the Blu-ray, slipcover, and NEW and previous release extras.

Here’s the full rundown for each edition…

Ultimate Limited Edition Box Set

• 4K UHD/Blu-ray combo
• New and previous release extras
• 150-page hardcover book featuring interviews with Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, writer Dennis Paoli, and composer Richard Band, with essays by Scout Tafoya, Kate Rife, Will Sloan, Alex Kittle, and Ben Sachs, and preface by Brian Yuzna
• A LIMITED-EDITION Dr. Hill Collector’s Bobblehead – A must have for fans! With limited quantities available, this exclusive hand-painted collectible will not be restocked once it is gone
• Collector’s art cards
• ULTIMATE LIMITED EDITION BOX SET PRIZE BONUS: Some lucky fans will discover green “re-agent” in their order! If you are one of them, you will receive an exclusive signed poster by Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, and Brian Yuzna, plus a special Re-Animator gift pack from our friends at Middle of Beyond.

Deluxe Edition Box Set

• 4K UHD/Blu-ray combo
• New and previous release extras
• 150-page hardcover book featuring interviews with Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, writer Dennis Paoli, and composer Richard Band, with essays by Scout Tafoya, Kate Rife, Will Sloan, Alex Kittle, and Ben Sachs, and preface by Brian Yuzna
• Collector’s art cards

4K Standard Edition

• 4K UHD
• Slipcover
• New and previous release extras

Blu-ray Standard Edition

• Blu-ray
• Slipcover
• New and previous release extras

New Bonus Features

• Re-Animator at 40: A Conversation with Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, and Brian Yuzna
• Piece By Piece: Cutting Re-Animator – A New Interview with Editor Lee Percy
• The Horror of It All: The Legacy and Impact of Re-Animator
• I Give Her Life: A Look Back at Re-Animator: The Musical
• Re-Animating a Horror Classic: The 4K Restoration of Re-Animator
• The Organic Theater Company of Chicago: A 1977 documentary featuring Stuart Gordon

Previous Bonus Features

• Integral Version (105 mins)
• Isolated Score
• Audio commentary with director Stuart Gordon and actors Graham Skipper and Jesse Merlin of Re-Animator: The Musical
• Audio commentary with Stuart Gordon
• Audio commentary with producer Brian Yuzna, actors Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Bruce Abbott, and Robert Sampson
• Re-Animator: Resurrectus – Feature-length documentary on the making of the film featuring extensive interviews with cast and crew.
• Interviews with director Stuart Gordon and producer Brian Yuzna, writer Dennis Paoli, composer Richard Band and former Fangoria editor Tony Timpone
• Music discussion with composer Richard Band
• The Catastrophe of Success: Stuart Gordon and The Organic Theater – Director Stuart Gordon discusses his early theater roots and his continued commitment to the stage.
• Theater of Blood – Re-Animator: The Musical composer and lyricist Mark Nutter on adapting the cult classic for musical theater
• Extended scenes
• Deleted scene
• Trailer & TV spots
• Stills gallery
• Barbara Crampton In Conversation: The Re-Animator star sits down with journalist Alan Jones for this career-spanning 2015 interview.
• A Guide to Lovecraft Cinema: Chris Lackey, host of the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast, provides a comprehensive look at the many cinematic incarnations of Lovecraft’s work.
• Doug Bradley’s Spinechillers: Herbert West, Re-Animator actor Jeffrey Combs reads H.P. Lovecraft’s original classic story.

Bloody Disgusting has been told that there will be exciting 40th Anniversary celebrations, screenings, appearances, signings, new merch, and more, throughout 2025, which will be shared at Ignite-Films.com and on their social media. Look for an officially licensed collection of Re-Animator products to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Re-Animator coming in 2025 from Fright-Rags, which created the neon green serum 40th Anniversary Re-Animator logo.

Re-Animator was directed by Stuart Gordon, based on the short story “Herbert West, Re-Animator” by H.P. Lovecraft, with a screenplay by Dennis Paoli, William J. Norris, and Stuart Gordon. Produced by Brian Yuzna, with executive producers Michael Avery and Bruce Curtis, associate producers Bob Greenberg and Charles Donald Storey, with music composed and conducted by Richard Band, cinematography by Mac Ahlberg, and edited by Lee Percy.

Their 4K UHD restoration of Re-Animator is the second foray into sci-fi horror classic films for Ignite Films and Eagle Rock Pictures. Their 70th Anniversary 4K UHD restoration and release of Invaders From Mars was met with universal acclaim from fans and critics worldwide, and was honored with many awards, including the 2024 SATURN Award® for Best Classic Film Home Media Release. The release also won the Best Rediscovery of a Forgotten Film from the Il Cinema Ritrovato DVD Awards ®2023 and the Hollywood Professional Association’s Inaugural Jury Award® for Outstanding Achievement in Restoration.

The post ‘Re-Animator’ Returns With 40th Anniversary 4K Release; Four Editions Available! [Exclusive] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

January featured plenty of highs and lows on Horror Queers. We started with the brilliant sequel Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 (listen) and the silly subversiveness of German film Killer Condom (listen). Then we descended into trash for two weeks with The Covenant (listen) and The Roommate (listen).

Thankfully we wrapped the month on a high with Stuart Gordon‘s playful, gory and mean-spirited adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft‘s Re-Animator (1985).

Featuring a career defining performance by Jeffrey Combs, the film follows eccentric burgeoning scientist Herbert West (Combs) as he befriends/seduces aspiring doctor Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott), much to the chagrin of Dan’s girlfriend, Megan (Barbara Crampton) and her secret admirer, creepy Dr. Hill (David Gale).

As the experiments – and the corpses – begin to pile up, it’s unclear who the real villain is. Will Herbert successfully test his serum? Will Dan live to become a doctor? Or will the decapitated head/body of Dr. Hill and his undead army rule the hospital? It’s chaos!

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, and RSS.

Episode 267: Re-Animator (1985)

It’s time to revisit H.P. Lovecraft with a dip into horror comedy/exploitation territory and Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator (1985). C/W: sexual assault and the cat dies (again and again)

We’re praising Jeffrey Combs’ perfect performance, the tricky tonal balance (including the Dr. Hill/Megan assault), and the gory practical FX in this mad doctor film.

Plus: a queer reading of Herbert and Dan, multiple editions, naked fight scenes, and why the film deserves to be seen with a crowd.

Cross out Re-Animator!

Coming up on Wednesday: We’re headed back to the 40s to discuss an early adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s iconic The Portrait of Dorian Gray (1945)!

P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for 286 hours of Patreon content including this month’s new episodes on Hannibal S01E02, sharks on an underwater plane movie No Way Up, Joe Lynch’s Suitable Flesh and an audio commentary on Heathers (1988) to coincide with our episode on Lisa Frankenstein.

The post Herbert West’s Mad, Queer ‘Re-Animator’ Scientist [Horror Queers Podcast] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Heather Graham and producer Barbara Crampton star in Suitable Flesh, executive produced by Brian Yuzna (Re-Animator). Dennis Paoli, the writer of Re-Animator and From Beyond, wrote the script. 

Joe Lynch and the late Stuart Gordon’s frequent collaborators seamlessly insert Suitable Flesh into Gordon’s Lovecraftian universe (our review) but give it a slight twist in gender-flipping archetypical Lovecraft roles. Bloody Disgusting spoke with Joe Lynch, Heather Graham, and Barbara Crampton out of Tribeca earlier this year, before the SAG-AFTRA strike, where they discussed how Lynch came to direct Suitable Flesh and taking on these rare roles.

It was Barbara Crampton, a producer on Suitable Flesh, who reached out to Joe Lynch about helming the new feature. Crampton reveals that Lynch wasn’t just her top pick to direct but Stuart Gordon’s pick as well.

She explains, “Joe is a very full filmmaker. His movies are always fun. There’s always a lot going on, and I think that’s true of Stuart’s movies. I mean, they’re bold and provocative and wild and somehow a little weird sometimes, and that’s Joe stuff. When I talked to Stuart a couple of years ago, I said, ‘Who do you think is working today that’s similar to your style of stuff?’ Maybe it was a precursor to talking to him later when we got hold of the script, and we wanted to make it; he said, ‘Oh, I really think Joe Lynch is a similar type of filmmaker.‘ I had that in the back of my head, and then Joe and I became friends.”

Crampton continues, “After Stuart passed, I had a conversation with Dennis Paoli, and I said, ‘I really just want to continue my legacy of Lovecraft. Did you guys have anything that was sitting on a shelf that you never did?’ He sent the script to me; it was called The Thing on the Doorstep, as the original story is called. I read it, and I immediately loved it. Immediately.

“Joe was one of the first people I thought of. I mean, I did send it just to do due diligence to a few other directors, and we talked to a few people, but Joe was always at the top of my list, and he’s who I wanted, and if he said yes, it was going to be his. Then, when he said, ‘Yes, I want to make this movie with you guys,’ with AMP Films, who is the production company that I’ve been working with for the past few years, I said, ‘This is no longer a Stuart Gordon film, it’s a Joe Lynch film, so you have to put your stamp on it and do what you want to do.'”

Suitable Flesh follows Psychiatrist Dr. Elizabeth Derby (Graham), a wholesome career woman who has it all until Asa Waite (Judah Lewis) crashes into her life as a troubled patient suffering from an extreme personality disorder. Or does he? That encounter puts Dr. Derby on a wild body-hopping ride fueled by sex and carnage, presenting an unconventional role for Graham. It was Lynch’s idea to gender flip his lead character, which led to Graham’s casting.

Graham shares why she was so excited to play Dr. Derby: “Yeah, as a woman reading a script, it was just so exciting to get this script because Lovecraft’s story was written about a man, and he switched the character to a woman, and so it was so refreshing to get to be the protagonist of this kind of story, which is scary and a neurotic thriller, and I get this opportunity to do so many different fun things. In these stories, exploring sexuality, it’s not usually the woman’s protagonist story. Usually, they’re the object, or they’re the person being cheated on. So, to explore a woman getting herself into a bad situation from her point of view, it’s pretty rare, actually. So, I’m so grateful for having this opportunity.”

The central friendship between Dr. Derby and her colleague-turned-confidant Daniella Upton (Crampton) serves as an emotional backbone and gives both actors interesting dynamics to play with the more the horror ensues. But that very nearly might not have been the case.

Crampton reveals, “At first I wasn’t going to be in it. Then we were thinking about who we were going to cast for Heather’s friend, and then we just had multiple conversations, and somebody said, I’m not going to say who, ‘I think you should play the part, Barbara.’ I went, ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Then I asked Joe, and I said, ‘Well, what do you think? I don’t know.’

Lynch, also on hand for this interview, interjects, “All right, can I be honest?” While Crampton hadn’t initially considered herself for a role in Suitable Flesh, the director certainly did.

Lynch confesses, “I wanted to ask you since day one, but I remember you were just like, ‘I just want to be the producer on this.’ And I thought I’m not going to tell you what to do. You’re Barbara Crampton, you’re my boss now. But secretly, in the back of my head, I always wanted to see that dynamic because there are certain scenes where this becomes a showdown. To watch these two powerful women square off to each other, not just in a physical sensibility but in a mental sensibility. But we also needed two people who you could believe could be friends. That was tantamount to the entire film.”

“Early on, we were watching White Christmas, and there’s this beautiful song called ‘Sisters’ in it, and at one point, we were trying to get that in the movie, but it was way too expensive. But that sensibility of these two women who were best friends, maybe there’s more to their dynamic than is even on the page,” Lynch continues. “But we wanted to explore that. To watch these two characters and these two powerful actors embody them, it needed to be believable. The second that Barbara texted me, the relief on my face, I could tell, was just like, ‘Oh, thank God she said it and not me.’ Because it was a no-brainer at that point.”

Don’t miss Crampton and Graham in rare form when Suitable Flesh arrives in theaters and VOD this Friday.

The post ‘Suitable Flesh’ – Barbara Crampton and Heather Graham on Gender-Flipped Lovecraft Roles [Interview] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Suitable Flesh is bringing Lovecraftian madness to theaters and VOD on October 27, 2023, and the film will later be hitting Shudder for exclusive streaming in January 2024.

In Suitable Flesh, “After murdering her young patient, a once-esteemed psychiatrist helplessly watches her life spiral into a nightmarish maelstrom of supernatural hysteria and gruesome deaths, all linked to a seemingly unstoppable ancient curse.”

The film stars Barbara Crampton, Heather Graham, Judah Lewis, Bruce Davison, Johnathon Schaech, and Jonah Ray.

Dennis Paoli, the writer of Re-Animator and From Beyond, wrote the script. 

Bloody Disgusting previously spoke with Joe Lynch at Tribeca, where he teased the Lovecraft connections for Gordon’s fans and the advice Brian Yuzna gave him when making the film.

In part two of our chat, Lynch talks about casting his Lovecraft horror feature and building a Stuart Gordon Cinematic Universe.

While Lynch took care to honor Stuart Gordon with this film, he quickly made it his own, beginning with the decision to swap the protagonist’s gender.

He explains, “The original prose was a very male-skewed story. It wasn’t Elizabeth Derby; it was Edward Derby. That’s how the original script was. I wanted to bring something different to it because honestly I was like, how great would it be to take this story and not just do it just to sound progressive and cool for the time, but how can we explore sexual identity and sexual obsession from a route that we haven’t seen before, or at least I haven’t seen before? I thought how great it would be to take a woman in her late forties or early fifties because if any of this stuff happened in a movie that was set in the ’90s and starred Michael Douglas, we wouldn’t bat an eyelash.

“When we started going around with this, we kept hearing dangerous, like, ‘This is too dangerous. This is a little too provocative. This is a little too taboo.’ I’m sitting there going, ‘Stuart, this is exactly what you wanted.’ We really did feel like we were onto something when we started taking it around because we needed to find someone who not only could be able to play not just Elizabeth Derby but all those different characters in all the body swap situations. Someone who felt like they could go along for the ride and feel comfortable with the provocations, with the dangerous feel we were going for. We were going out to all these different people, and it was, I believe, Heather who came to us and said, ‘I’m really interested in this.'”

Lynch continues, “It just felt like it was the right match, especially when we started talking about the role and how she really wanted to approach this, not just from a doctor’s standpoint but someone put in the crosshairs of their own mortality. The fact that here’s a person who is completely complacent with their role in life and maybe found a modicum of success, and then all of a sudden has a new obsession. We are all human, and we go down these roads sometimes, and we make these choices that might not be the best choices in the world, but we still make them, and there are consequences to them. She just felt like the perfect fit.”

Lynch revealed that it was his Mayhem star that led to his casting of Judah Lewis.

“Then on the other side of the coin, Judah Lewis, who I kept hearing raves about from Samara Weaving because they worked together on the Babysitter movies, and Samara would say, ‘Oh, man, this guy is awesome.’ We did a very extensive search for the right Asa Waite for this, because not to get too minutia about this, but we watched a lot of noir movies, film noir movies, and there are certain character tropes in those film noir like the femme fatale, like the stoic wife at home, like the detective or the doctor, or usually the male gaze protagonist who has to traverse through all of these different characters. I thought, how great would it be to flip those? Instead of a femme fatale, we have a homme fatale. Instead of the doting wife at home, we have the doting innocent husband at home played by Johnathon Schaech, who’s like the sexiest dude in the world.“

The Easter eggs and connections to Stuart Gordon’s other Lovecraft films, starting with Re-Animator, are aplenty in Suitable Flesh. But Lynch paid tribute to the horror great beyond his Lovecraft output, marking the start of a new horror cinematic universe.

“One of my favorite Stuart Gordon movies of all time is King of the Ants. It’s an early aughts movie that was weirdly produced by The Asylum before they were doing Mockbusters,” Lynch details. “They gave Stuart the opportunity to make this crazy crime noir thriller that Chris McKenna was the star of. Then, lo and behold, Graham [Skipper] was good friends with McKenna. When he told Chris about this, Chris said, ‘I want to be in the movie.’ Without too many spoilers, you may be seeing a character from King of the Ants in Suitable Flesh as well. This is all a way not just to have a MiskatonicVerse, but to have a GordonVerse as well.”

See if you can spot all the Easter eggs when Suitable Flesh releases this Friday.

The post ‘Suitable Flesh’ Director Joe Lynch on Casting His Lovecraft Movie and Building a Stuart GordonVerse [Interview] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Suitable Flesh is bringing Lovecraftian madness to theaters and VOD on October 27, 2023, and the film will later be hitting Shudder for exclusive streaming in January 2024.

Meagan wrote in her Tribeca review, “The spirit of Stuart Gordon is alive and well in Suitable Flesh. Lynch captures the humorous, oft-sexy tone of Gordon’s ‘80s/’90s Lovecraftian horror output while putting his own stamp on it through keen instincts and modern storytelling.”

Barbara Crampton stars in Suitable Flesh, exec produced by Brian Yuzna (Re-Animator). Screenplay by Dennis Paoli, the screenwriter of Re-Animator and From Beyond!

Both films, of course, were Lovecraft adaptations, and Crampton starred in both. With Paoli, Yuzna, Crampton, and Lynch all involved, this new one is something special for fans.

In Suitable Flesh, “After murdering her young patient, a once-esteemed psychiatrist helplessly watches her life spiral into a nightmarish maelstrom of supernatural hysteria and gruesome deaths, all linked to a seemingly unstoppable ancient curse.” Heather Graham, Judah Lewis, Bruce Davison, Johnathon Schaech, and Jonah Ray also star.

Joe Lynch said in a recent statement, “When I read Dennis Paoli’s adaptation of the story, I felt like there was a fantastic opportunity to update and subvert Lovecraft’s often old-fashioned sensibilities in a way that felt modern, relevant and even dangerous, with a pinch of 90’s neo-noir and a dash of eroticism to spice up the stew. Working with Amp and such a fantastic cast – including Heather, Judah, Barbara, Bruce and Johnathon – we’re so excited that this sexy, funny, scary film isn’t just a modernized love letter to Lovecraft, but the kind of provocatively entertaining “sin-ema” I believe audiences are salivating for!”

Barbara Crampton added, “We’ve been so fortunate to work with top talent both behind and in front of the camera on our recent films. At Amp it’s about developing not only memorable, thought-provoking material for an audience, but also fresh and unusual enough to attract the very best creative collaborators. I was ecstatic when first the formidable Joe Lynch, then Heather Graham signed on – her natural charm is always in evidence, but we get to see a different untapped side of her abilities here. I’ve been thrilled to be invited to join seasoned pros at Amp, and we are only getting started.”

[Related] Joe Lynch on Honoring Stuart Gordon and Playing in the Lovecraft Universe

The post Joe Lynch’s Lovecraft Movie ‘Suitable Flesh’ Heads to Theaters and VOD for Halloween! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Barbara Crampton stars in Suitable Flesh, executive produced by Brian Yuzna (Re-Animator). Dennis Paoli, the writer of Re-Animator and From Beyond, wrote the script. 

Joe Lynch and the late Stuart Gordon’s frequent collaborators seamlessly insert Suitable Flesh into Gordon’s Lovecraftian universe (our review). Bloody Disgusting spoke with the filmmaker at Tribeca, where he teased the Lovecraft connections for Gordon’s fans and the advice Brian Yuzna gave him when making the film.

Suitable Flesh exists within the same world of Re-Animator and From Beyond. Lynch breaks down horror’s original cinematic universe and how he kept his film accessible for those unfamiliar with Gordon’s films.

Lynch explains, “Lovecraft was one of the originators of an expanded universe. Being able to have different stories in the same hospital, so to speak. Like in Miskatonic or Arkham, and have all these tropes and all this different iconography that would jump from story to story, that made you feel like this was part of a bigger world. I always loved that idea. As a fan of Stuart’s work early on in Re-Animator, when From Beyond came out and characters are talking about Miskatonic, I’m like, ‘Wait a second, does that mean that Katherine from From Beyond was also in the same hospital as Herbert West? Were they crossing paths, in a way?’ I always thought that was really cool, and that was something that I always wanted to do in my own films, but in this one especially.”

“When I got the script for this when Barbara [Crampton] reached out and said, ‘Hey, would you be interested in something like this?’… When it said Dennis Paoli, I immediately said, ‘Wait a second, holy crap,’ and it was Lovecraft. All right, there is an opportunity here,” Lynch continues. “On the first page, when you open the page, it says Miskatonic University; I got really excited over the possibilities of being able to make those connections. You don’t have to be a fan of Re-Animator or From Beyond, or even of all the different little Lovecraftian things we would put in, like five knocks, three and two, or all the little tiny hints to his work. You don’t need to be in the know, but those who are in the know would appreciate that we were trying to connect things together.

“I’ve always been fascinated with the world that Dennis and Brian Yuzna and Barbara and Mac Ahlberg, the DP of the original films, what they had created in Re-Animator. I always thought, ‘Well, what happened to Miskatonic years later?'”

Producer Brian Yuzna is no stranger to the goopy, gory world of Gordon’s Lovecraft horror. When asked if Yuzna offered any advice on making a Lovecraft horror feature, Lynch revealed a core mantra that he carried with him throughout production.

Lynch tells us, “To be honest, the only advice that he gave me was, ‘Just keep asking yourself ‘What would Stuart do?’ I wish I had a shirt, WWSD, and I used that every day on set if there was something where I felt like I was holding back too much or if there was a moment that felt like, ‘Could we find levity in this beat,’ or on the flip side, ‘Where do we make it hurt? Where do we feel like we’re going to piss some people off?’ That was an edict that I had every day, and that was something that came from Brian when we were sharing nachos that day.

“He just kept saying, ‘Just keep asking yourself, what would Stuart do,’ because he knew this project was near and dear to Stuart before he passed. That’s how it was presented to me, and I wanted to do right by him. I felt a little bit like that position that Spielberg was in when he was doing AI when Kubrick passed that project on to him. Even if I get one person to feel like this might have been something that Stuart’s spirit was infused in us, then I feel like we did our jobs right.“

Expect to hear a lot more on Suitable Flesh as it gears up for release later this year.

The post ‘Suitable Flesh’ Director Joe Lynch on Honoring Stuart Gordon and Playing in the Lovecraft Universe [Interview] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Fab Press previews, “Stuart Gordon’s final completed work is presented here unexpurgated, and fully endorsed and approved by the Gordon family trust.”

The book features a special tribute written by frequent Stuart Gordon collaborator Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator), and it’s set to be released on July 20, 2023.

“In this engaging candid memoir, horror legend Stuart Gordon gives a vivid account of his remarkable journey, from a student manning the barricades during the civil unrest of the 1960s, via an infamous stint as an experimental theater maverick, to ultimately becoming an iconic figure in cult cinema.

“While he’d started his professional career as a theater director, Gordon’s first love was cinema, and in 1985 he shocked the world with his wickedly witty debut feature Re-Animator. The film established an unofficial Gordon repertory company, including the actors Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton, producer Brian Yuzna, and writer Dennis Paoli. It also established Gordon as the pre-eminent cinematic interpreter of legendary horror author H.P. Lovecraft, a writer many had previously regarded as largely unfilmable.

“Gordon went on to undertake a succession of horror, science fiction, and thriller productions that saw him working across the globe, from Italy (Castle Freak), Hungary (Daughter of Darkness) and Australia (Fortress), to Ireland (Space Truckers) and Spain (Dagon). In these pages, Gordon recalls a wealth of anecdotes, revealing what it was like to direct acclaimed actors such as Anthony Perkins, Dennis Hopper, Oliver Reed, Edward J. Olmos, Lance Henriksen and William H. Macy. Gordon also spills the beans on working with Roy Disney and Jeffrey Katzenberg on the family comedy Honey, I Shrunk the Kids at Disney Studios.

“Stuart Gordon’s memoir is authentically funny, disarmingly honest, and unexpectedly touching – a compelling glimpse into the life of a director happiest in Hollywood’s hinterlands, pushing the limits of what the mainstream would accept. It’s the story of a bona fide original, an uncompromising artist with the common touch, and of a loving family man who delighted in disturbing us all with his restless, brilliant imagination.

“Gordon’s filmography ranges from the iconic Lovecraftian horror From Beyond (1986), to science fiction action flicks including Robot Jox (1990), gruelling period pieces such as The Pit and the Pendulum (1998), the noir thriller King of the Ants (2003), and his David Mamet adaptation Edmond (2005). Gordon’s work was distinguished by his genius for marrying apparently incompatible opposites – savage and humane, learned and lurid, disturbing and hilarious, sophisticated and accessible. He has left behind a unique, subversive cinematic legacy.”

You can pre-order your copy through Fab Press today.

The post ‘Naked Theater & Uncensored Horror’ – The Late Stuart Gordon’s Memoir Being Published This Summer appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

In fact, Yuzna knew he could sell the movie based on the title alone, so he solicited writers to pitch him on the concept. It was his old pals Stuart Gordon and Dennis Paoli — for whom Yuzna had produced Re-Animator and From Beyond — that cracked the script. Charles Finch (who went on to executive produce David Cronenberg’s Spider) was later brought in to punch it up.

Continuing the underlying social commentary Yuzna explored with Society, the film centers on hot-headed dentist Alan Feinstone (Corbin Bernsen, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang). After catching his wife (Linda Hoffman) going down on the pool boy on their anniversary of all days, the mad doctor experiences a mental break that sends him on a killing spree, all while continuing to work at his dental practice.

Low budget but high energy, The Dentist is often lumped into the slasher genre, but don’t expect a toothy Dr. Giggles rehash. Told from the killer’s point of view, the film shares more in common with American Psycho, Maniac, and The Stepfather. Bernsen delivers sanctimonious inner monologues as his mask of sanity slips, yet there’s a cartoony pull to the proceedings.

The idiosyncratic combination is interesting — a Yuzna production is nothing if not interesting — but it ultimately works to the film’s detriment. Since it’s unable to fully commit to either a psychological character study or an absurd slasher, the movie doesn’t quite succeed as either. That’s not to say The Dentist is without its merits; those lie in the casting and the practical effects.

Seeking a different kind of role after eight years on L.A. Law, Bernsen found just that with The Dentist. Much to his credit, he seems to be on the same wavelength as Yuzna, walking a tightrope between cerebral and over-the-top. His adversaries include Dawn of the Dead star Ken Foree as a detective on the case and The Terminator‘s Earl Boen as a corrupt IRS agent. Future Avenger Mark Ruffalo pops up as a beauty queen manager.

I can stomach all kinds of gore, but The Dentist‘s close-ups on teeth being drilled and extracted make my skin crawl. Although not quite as convincing under the scrutiny of high definition, the work by Kevin Yagher (Child’s Play, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2-4) remains effective. The special effects department also included artist Christopher Nelson (Halloween 2018, Suicide Squad) and future Sharknado director Anthony C. Ferrante as supervisor.

Yuzna and Bernsen re-teamed for The Dentist 2, this time working from a script by Richard Dana Smith (The Stepdaughter). It’s not as strong without a Gordon/Paoli foundation to build upon, ultimately delivering more of the same in a new location — and requiring even more suspension of disbelief — but, even with a smaller budget, the worthy successor displays a bit more scope.

After escaping from the mental institution via a blade hidden in his skin(!), Feinstone finds refuge in the idyllic small town of Paradise, Missouri, under the pseudonym Larry Caine. It’s not long before his predilection for dentistry lures him back in, with his affinity for murder in tow. Smith devises a number of outlandish scenarios for the doctor to collect more victims.

The Dentist 2 is more of a traditional slasher than its predecessor, yet it still doesn’t fit neatly into all of the subgenre’s conventions. Feinstone’s descent into madness is more gradual, with the doctor actively trying to fight against it, akin to Psycho 2. The material veers further into bonkers territory, and Bernsen embraces it wholeheartedly.

Hoffman reprises her role as Feinstone’s wife, now a mute due to her tongue being cut out, but Jillian McWhirter plays the part of the doctor’s new object of obsession. Jeff Doucette (Alien Nation) has a supporting role as a trusting local bank manager who introduces the two of them. What the sequel lacks in Foree it makes up for with Wendy Robie (Twin Peaks) and Clint Howard (Evilspeak).

The Dentist offers some inventive camerawork by cinematographer Levie Isaacks (Leprechaun, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation). The sequel, shot by Jürgen Baum (Slumber Party Massacre III), is less visually stimulating but still competent. Alan Howarth (Halloween 2-6) composed the electronic scores for both films.

The Dentist Collection collects both movies on Blu-ray together as part of Lionsgate’s Vestron Video Collector’s Series. Both features are presented in high definition with English 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio. Although the transfer specs aren’t detailed, The Dentist features some minor flecks of dust and grain (perhaps sourced from a film print rather than an original negative), but nothing too distracting. Both films are accompanied by a mouthful of new extras.

The Dentist features a commentary by Yuzna and Ferrante (whose microphone is, unfortunately, at a significantly lower volume), in which Yuzna reveals that Chevy Chase and Bruce Campbell were both considered for the titular role. A second track features audio interviews with Isaacks and Howarth along with isolated score selections. Isaacks’ chat focuses on his background in horror before digging into The Dentist, while Howarth dissects his process (including sampling real dentist instruments) and how it has evolved over the years.

Bernsen discusses both films in a new, 16-minute interview, in which he describes himself as “whacked out” while making the first movie. He also shares a sentimental story about his late mother. Paoli explains his and Stuart’s original vision for the script and how/why Yuzna opted to take it in a different direction. Ferrante and makeup effects artist J.M. Logan (Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation) break down several of the effects sequences. The trailer and a still gallery are included.

Yuzna and Ferrante also recorded a commentary for The Dentist 2, which Ferrante describes as the Empire Strikes Back of The Dentist franchise. They briefly confer about a potential third installment, among a variety of other topics. A second track features audio interviews with editor Christopher Roth (Killer Klowns from Outer Space, Hatchet) and Howarth along with isolated score selections. Roth discusses working on both movies and the discipline required to cut film in the pre-digital days, while Howarth talks about his approach to sequels, something with which he has ample experience.

The Dentist 2 also features interviews with McWhirter, who reflects on the experience with an infectiously positive attitude, and producer Pierre David (Videodrome, Wishmaster), who lays out his hard stance on producing his vision rather than taking orders from the financier. A trailer and a still gallery are also included for each film.

Between the films, the talent involved, the presentations, the special features, and the low retail price, The Dentist Collection is well worth sinking your teeth into. Given the timeless concept — as Paoli notes in his interview, dentistry is one medical need that can’t be replaced by telehealth — I suspect it’s only a matter of time before someone makes an appointment for a remake.

The post ‘The Dentist’ Collection Blu-ray Review – Vestron’s New Release Is Well Worth Sinking Your Teeth Into appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

RLJE Films will bring Castle Freak to On Demand and Digital HD December 4.

Kathy Charles wrote the remake, directed by Tate Steinsiek.

“After she’s permanently blinded in a tragic car accident, Rebecca’s receives some bizarre news: her long-lost-mother has recently passed away, leaving her their family’s ancestral castle. Traveling to the estate with a group of friends, Rebecca hopes it will be an opportunity for her to reconnect with a past she never knew—and a mother who seemingly left her behind. When mysterious happenings begin to occur and her friends begin to die, Rebecca must unravel her family’s mysterious history before she too falls prey to the Castle Freak.”

You can check out the official trailer below, which presents what looks to be a mostly faithful remake of Gordon’s film that brings some more Lovecraftian mythology into the fold.

Clair Catherine, Jake Horowitz, Chris Galust and Emily Sweet star.

Original Castle Freak star Barbara Crampton produced the new movie.

The post The Barbara Crampton-Produced Remake of ‘Castle Freak’ Releases at Home in December [Trailer] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

That’s why I’ve decided to compile a list of under-appreciated horror movies made by famous directors. There’s nothing wrong with praising outstanding works of art like The Exorcist or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but it’s good to remember that these filmmakers have been around for a while and have made some criminally under-seen gems as well.

Before we begin, don’t forget to share your own underrated favorites with us in the comments below! Now, onto the list…

5. William Friedkin – Bug (2006)

William Friedkin has a funny habit of claiming that his scary movies aren’t actually part of the horror genre. While I don’t have the guts to speak against one of the greatest directors of all time, I think that what he really means is that these movies don’t just focus on horror, and that’s certainly the case with 2006’s Bug.

Based on a stage-play, Bug is a mind-bending thriller about Agnes White, a lonely woman who becomes involved with Peter Evans, a paranoid military veteran who claims to have been experimented on by the government. As reality and delusion collide, we’re left uncertain as to the true nature of Evans’ conspiratorial ramblings, though it’s one hell of a sickening ride as we make our way towards a horrific climax.

Bug obviously doesn’t live up to something as iconic as The Exorcist, but it’s still an incredibly effective psychological labyrinth featuring intense body horror and an eerie dissection of paranoid mentality. The characters are believable and so are their fears, in no small part due to memorable performances by Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon, making this a must-watch for Friedkin buffs.

4. George A. Romero – Bruiser (2000)

Single-handedly responsible for popularizing modern zombies in media, it’s no wonder that the legendary George A. Romero is considered a titan of terror. While his filmography is mostly remembered for the Living Dead series (plus a few other cult hits like The Crazies and Knightriders), there’s one deeply personal film that most Romero fans seem to overlook.

Released in 2000, Romero’s Bruiser is an incredibly weird movie that was unfairly maligned upon release due to some misleading marketing. Fans expected something more akin to a slasher flick but were presented with a pulpy character study featuring lots of dark humor. The film actually has more in common with classics like Falling Down and Man Bites Dog rather than any of Romero’s previous work, but it still succeeds as an existential thriller.

For those who’ve never heard of it, Bruiser stars Jason Flemyng as Henry, a depressed businessman whose good nature seems to be tested around every corner. When he finds himself trapped behind a featureless mask, Henry decides to fight back against those who’ve previously wronged him, revealing his own dark side in the process.

While the picture drags in a few places and the low production value can be distracting, Bruiser is still a worthy addition to Romero’s canon, boasting a surprisingly contemporary message about the dangers of anonymity. It’s worth a watch even if you’re not familiar with the director’s other work, and I’d especially recommend it to fans of The Misfits (who make an appearance in the film and contribute to the soundtrack as a favor to Romero after he directed the Music Video for Scream).

3. John Carpenter – Someone’s Watching Me! (1978)

Halloween may have put John Carpenter on the map, but it wasn’t his first foray into the world of horror. Released on television screens back in 1978, Someone’s Watching Me! was Carpenter’s first attempt at depicting a psychotic stalker on film. Don’t be alarmed if you’ve never heard of this flick, as it was notoriously difficult to acquire on home video until a much-needed 2018 re-release, which rescued it from obscurity.

Starring Lauren Hutton as Leigh Michaels, Someone’s Watching Me! tells the story of a young woman who starts getting strange gifts and eerie phone-calls from a secret admirer. She eventually realizes that she’s become the object of a madman’s deranged affection, and struggles to fight off her voyeuristic stalker with the help of her boyfriend and a concerned co-worker (none other than Adrienne Barbeau, who would frequently collaborate with Carpenter in the future).

While there’s no escaping the made-for-TV sensibilities, this is still a classic John Carpenter experience, benefiting from a witty script authored by the director himself (supposedly based on a true story) and lots of suspense. Personally, I’m glad this one wasn’t lost to the ages, so give it a watch if you can find it.

2. Stuart Gordon – The Pit and the Pendulum (1991)

I love Re-Animator as much as the next guy (well, maybe more), but it’s always saddened me to see the rest of the late great Stuart Gordon’s filmography ignored in favor of that one classic film. If you ask me, Gordon was a master of the craft with several must-watch pictures under his belt, and The Pit and the Pendulum is one of them.

While the director is usually associated with H.P. Lovecraft, he also dabbled in Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, with this being one of my favorites. Starring Lance Henriksen, Rona de Ricci and frequent Gordon collaborators Jonathan Fuller and Jeffrey Combs, The Pit and the Pendulum is a mash-up of several Poe stories with a bit of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame thrown in for good measure.

It might not be as classy as the Vincent Price adaptation, but it’s still a schlocky fun take on classic horror. If you like this one and feel like diving into some more Poe/Gordon weirdness, I’d also recommend the Black Cat episode of “Masters of Horror,” which features Jeffrey Combs as the tormented writer himself.

1. Tobe Hooper – Toolbox Murders (2004)

From The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to Poltergeist, Tobe Hooper was no stranger to troubled productions during his time as an esteemed horror director. His popularity may have waned during the later years of his career, but Hooper never stopped trying to scare audiences to death. One of my favorites of these latter-day Hooper projects is the ill-fated remake of Dennis Donnelly’s The Toolbox Murders (which was ironically inspired by Hooper’s original TCM).

Starring the ever-lovable Angela Bettis as our inquisitive protagonist Nell, Hooper’s Toolbox Murders takes the basic premise of the original film (i.e. a series of murders in an L.A. apartment complex) and transforms it into a surprisingly effective supernatural mystery. The characters are likable, the kills are fun and the mythology behind the antagonist is intriguing, but it’s a shame that the film was never really finished.

You see, the Toolbox Murders that we got contains only 2/3 of the intended movie, as production was halted due to financial complications. Unwilling to let all that work go to waste, Hooper took it upon himself to create a watchable cut of the film with the material that they had already shot. Through some clever editing and ADR, he was able to create a Frankenstein’s Monster of a movie that’s somehow still entertaining.

The finished product is a little rough around the edges, with a rushed ending and some questionable story details, but considering what Hooper went through to finish this movie, I think it’s still a fun slasher with a likable main character and unique setting.

On a side note, Christian Bale expressed interest in playing Nell’s husband in this movie, going so far as to mail Hooper an audition tape, though he never received a response from the director.

The post 5 Under-Appreciated Horror Movies from Big Name Masters of Horror appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Welcome to Phantom Limbs, a recurring feature which will take a look at intended yet unproduced horror sequels and remakes – extensions to genre films we love, appendages to horror franchises that we adore – that were sadly lopped off before making it beyond the planning stages. Here, we will be chatting with the creators of these unmade extremities to gain their unique insight into these follow-ups that never were, with the discussions standing as hopefully illuminating but undoubtedly painful reminders of what might have been.

With this entry, we’ll be looking at House of Re-Animator, the intended fourth installment of the Re-Animator franchise. According to what fans could occasionally glean from various horror websites in the mid- to late-aughts, House would have found both Herbert West and his reluctant friend/partner-in-crime Dan Cain working in the White House (!), resurrecting then-President George W. Bush (!!), who was at the time was rumored to be portrayed by William H. Macy (!!!). Scuttlebutt abounded for years, though the movie sadly never materialized.

With the recent, all too untimely passing of horror master and intended House director Stuart Gordon, Bloody Disgusting thought it was high time to get the lowdown on one of the most fascinating sequels-that-never-was. Joining us for this talk is screenwriter Dennis Paoli – House co-writer, longtime Gordon friend and collaborator, and a writer known for such films as the original Re-Animator, From Beyond, Castle Freak, The Dentist and Dagon.

For those who haven’t yet seen the three Re-Animator films, a quick recap: Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) is a brilliant but egotistical young medical student devoted to defeating death itself with a reagent serum that reanimates the dead…albeit with horrific side effects (namely, the resurrected mostly become mindless, violent, zombie-like creatures). West eventually befriends Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott), a fellow student who becomes a reluctant assistant to West. As they attempt to experiment with and refine the reagent, the duo find themselves embroiled in a number of different gory, violent scenarios, until Herbert is eventually imprisoned for his crimes. Years pass, with West continuing his work behind bars, until a new assistant and a series of horrific events lead to a prison riot which sees West go free, escaping into the night to continue his research elsewhere.

So how did the House of Re-Animator project originate? With yourself, Stuart Gordon, or Re-Animator franchise producer Brian Yuzna? “My recollection is that it was Brian’s idea. He had been responsible to a great degree for the original Re-Animator. He was the original producer who got in touch with Stuart, and he was a producer of a number of Stuart’s other movies. Brian is a great producer to work with. Of the three of us – Stuart, Brian and I – I would say the real true believer in the genre is Brian. Stuart and I have loved horror films since [the time we’d met] in high school. But Brian was the real prime mover, and significantly dedicated himself to the genre – to the extent that he recognized that the genre is full of not just sequels, but franchises. The Frankenstein franchise, the Dracula franchise, the [Universal] Monsters franchises. But also Corman’s Poe franchise, the work Corman did in developing Poe’s work into film. Brian really saw that as a model that appealed to him, and that he was really built for. He’s very, very good at developing not only those kinds of projects, but franchises – not just a sequel, but a series of films. He was responsible for developing the Re-Animator series, the franchise including Bride of Re-Animator [and Beyond Re-Animator]. I was only involved in the original Re-Animator. Re-Animator co-writer Bill Norris and I did a treatment for Bride, but Brian decided to go in another direction. And frankly, Stuart and I were never really that interested in working on sequels, including sequels to our own work.

“But Brian came to us with this idea – and it was Brian’s original idea, we thought it was pretty good. Especially at the time that Brian first proposed it, which was back during the first Iraq War – probably about 2004. So Brian came to us pretty early in the millennium with this idea – House of Re-Animator. Notice how he’s using the Frankenstein titles – Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein and House of Frankenstein. It immediately struck a chord with Stuart. If you look at Stuart’s films, and he doesn’t always get credit for this, [but] from a particular perspective they have a political stance. While he was never about doing political films, he was a political person. He had strong political beliefs. And since he put so much of himself into his films, and he demanded so much of the selves of everybody else who worked on his films, including me, our politics were always going to be at least in the background of those films. This film was an opportunity to put politics in the foreground.

“Especially when Brian came to us and said ‘I have an idea – House of Re-Animator. And the House is the White House.’ And that sold us. We were not only happy, but anxious to get to work on the project. We were not particular fans of the Iraq War, we were not particular fans of the Bush Administration, or of certain particularly right wing political structures that have subsequently, over the course of the first couple of decades of this millennium (and going back a number of decades into the previous one), have been developing in such a way as to take control of a large wedge of American politics in a particular way. That way being [having] billionaire-backed funding to buy certain political agendas and institute them in the government. We thought that sounded like something we could use to write a Re-Animator story. Because if the House of Re-Animator is the White House, that means you have to be reanimating…well, hmm, let’s see – who would you re-animate, given that particular storyline? Of course, you’re going to be reanimating the Executive Branch. You’re going to be reanimating the President, eventually.”

This film would have been Stuart Gordon’s return to the character that began his film career, as producer Brian Yuzna had helmed the second and third films. Would House have accounted for the previous two movies, or would it have acted as more of a direct follow-up to his original film? “In the sense that Herbert was a criminal. If I’m putting the various Re-Animator stories together correctly, Herbert had become a convict, and had a criminal record, and we used that. We did wind it back to the original film, too. The dynamic of House of Re-Animator was going to be the renewed and developed relationship between Herbert West and Dan Cain. So that was going to take us back to the original Re-Animator as well.”

So – what exactly was the story of House of Re-Animator? “There are at least twelve treatments that span seven to eight years, [covering] two different administrations, and two really different approaches to what the story could be. They all have some things in common, but the original idea for the story from the early 2000s is, to some degree, quite different from the developed idea from the early part of the second decade of the 2000s, for a couple of reasons: one reason was, Stuart was really attracted to the project at the beginning because the Bush Administration looked so ripe for being characters in this particular Re-Animator story. If you remember, Bush’s Vice President Dick Cheney had heart problems. So the original treatment starts with him in a meeting with the billionaire backers of the Bush Administration and a number of oil billionaires from the petroleum industry, which turns into a celebratory party because they have gamed the system and gotten almost carte blanche backing from that administration, as oil companies have from multiple administrations. During the party, he overdoes it, and has a heart attack and dies. That was our hook.

“Brian, although he very much respected Stuart’s work and my work, and was willing to go with us in any direction we wanted to go, always had the idea and perspective that the characters should not necessarily be recognizable political figures. That the idea [should be] that the President of the United States would be reanimated. That idea alone was central to the movie, and the President (like the President in a lot of American films in which the President is a character), isn’t necessarily recognizable as any particular other President. It’s usually some generic kind of President. It’s Michael Douglas or Morgan Freeman. It’s ‘a’ President.

“We were specifically interested at the beginning of the project in making it about the Bush Presidency. We developed the story from that particular hook, with Dick Cheney dying and necessarily having to be reanimated to keep that administration stable, especially in the middle of a war. But then, as the war dragged on and as the administration changed, we would go back and revise the story. Until the last version story that we did was more generic, in the sense that it was a more generic President of the United States, and it isn’t specifically the Bush Administration or any recognizable figures from it. But the idea that the government is still at the beck and call of billionaires and power brokers was still part of the story.

“So the story developed through several different models, and eventually several different structures, but the core element of course is that the President of the United States becomes a reanimated zombie. Which, if that isn’t fundamental satire, I don’t think it exists.”

So how does West find himself in the White House? “Once the Vice President dies (and in the later versions, it’s actually the President – there’s an assassination attempt and he’s killed), there is a great pressure among the functionaries in the administration to keep power. So there is a figure or two behind the scenes in the administration that wants to keep it in power. They have, as you would imagine, an extensive knowledge of the backgrounds of important people throughout the country. When it’s reported to one of the power brokers in the administration by a functionary that the Vice President is dead, the power broker processes the news and then replies ‘No, he’s not.’ In the later version [it’s the President whose death is reported, and then denied]. Since it’s in their interest to keep the [Vice Pres or Pres] alive, and they’re aware of Herbert West and his reanimation serum, they decide to seek him out.

“But in our story, he’s disappeared. He’s on the run, and has fallen off the map. No one knows where he is. So they have to contact the next best thing – Dan Cain. So they go and essentially kidnap Dan Cain, because he’d worked with Herbert West, and have him try to redevelop and reconstitute West’s reanimating serum. He doesn’t want to do it, he’s sworn all of that off and has tried to rebuild his life. It’s taken him decades to try and put all of the terrible things that happened behind him. He’s the same idealist he was in the original Re-Animator. He wants to do what all doctors want to do – defeat death. But that idealism, in a political modality, makes him not want to support any administration that would consider putting a zombie in charge of the Executive Branch of our government! So he refuses at first, but in one of the versions [of the treatment], we have him have a family. So they threaten his family, [and] he tries to work on it, but he can’t quite get it right. There are, of course, consequences to that, and a certain amount of mayhem goes on [resulting from] his reanimating fluid which leads to certain, let’s say, unfortunate, bloody circumstances.

“When push comes to shove and they threaten Dan’s family, he says ‘I’m sorry, I don’t seem to be able to reestablish the reanimating fluid, but I do think I know how to bring Herbert West back.’ And so he has them release a press release that he, Dan Cain, is in the process of developing a serum to extend the six to twelve minute brain death, in hopes that would eventually allow for the reanimation of the dead. He knows that – one, Herbert will hear about this, and two, if we remember from the original Re-Animator, Herbert cannot stand the idea that somebody else will get credit for his work. So of course Herbert shows up to take credit, and to accost and assault Dan for taking credit for his work. Because he’s the same old egotistical narcissist that we remember Herbert was, besides being a great genius. So that’s how they get Herbert, because he injects himself into the story because of his ego.

“Once Herbert’s in the story and he’s recruited to reanimate the Vice President, there are certain story developments wherein the First Lady is killed, the President is killed, and so eventually everybody who shows for a presidential press conference or at the Kennedy Center Honors is essentially a reanimated corpse. But they’re able to recruit Herbert because they give him a great lab. They give him the best laboratory he’s ever had, and carte blanche to do what he wants. Therefore Herbert and Dan are reunited, they’re given the laboratory of their dreams, and complete power to reanimate the most powerful figures in the free world. And that’s essentially Act One of the very first version, and the better part of Act One for subsequent versions of this story.”

Though Mr. Paoli was a tad hesitant to reveal too much detail beyond this initial set up, he did give a bit of insight into where the story would have gone beyond the first act. “Several of the versions, especially during the Iraq War, focused on the cost of war. And we developed the idea of ‘zombie soldiers’. Because the war was going on much longer than they had anticipated, and there were more casualties, and they wanted to keep the casualties low because it was costing them political capital. They decided, since they had Herbert West, that they wanted him to reanimate soldiers and develop a zombie army. So they would take casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan, and bring them back, have them reanimated so they didn’t look like casualties, and they could send them back into the field. That’s a powerful and quite easy to grasp satiric perspective on the war in Iraq. The idea of the dead casualties from that war coming back [as zombies] has been done a couple of times, as in that Master of Horror episode [Joe Dante’s Homecoming], so we eventually couldn’t do that.

“That was one direction we were going to go in. The other direction being – once you’ve got a zombie President and a zombie Vice President…well, if you remember from the previous Re-Animator films, the dead reanimate pretty angrily. It’s pretty much the reptile brain that reanimates. Then you get to the power brokers. What they want is control over the politicians. Their money usually buys them control. Well, money doesn’t buy you control of a zombie. There aren’t zombie dollars. So they had to find another way to control the politicians that they had reanimated. So we looked at possibilities for developing [that idea for the second act].

“The other thing that developed over the story was this new relationship between Dan and Herbert. Herbert only sees what’s in front of him. Herbert is only moving forward, because science only moves forward. He only wants to make his reanimating fluid work better, and to reanimate more perfectly, and to develop a better serum. He’s just a mad scientist. Dan looks back. He understands that their history together wreaked havoc and ruined lives, especially the life of the woman that he loved. So he carries guilt around with him, and blames himself primarily. But when Herbert returns to the scene, he understands that he’s now responsible for making this madman even more powerful.

“So there’s a great conflict between Dan and Herbert, as there always sort of was. That’s what we bring from the first movie into this one. So we worked that out in the story as well. If that conflict is what this film is about, then one of them has to die at the end. And, of course, if one of them dies at the end, what does that mean?” Whoever survives will reanimate the other? “Yes, you have imagined correctly. And we of course investigated both of those endings [one with Herbert dying and being reanimated, the other with Dan being the one to die and get brought back]. We were willing to try both of those endings, whichever one fit the story that we eventually wrote. But even if it’s Herbert who dies – it’s a Re-Animator film! It doesn’t mean he’s dead. Let’s put it this way – it doesn’t mean it’s the end of the series.

“I think there was an Island of Re-Animator in the works at one point. Just as there was with the original Frankenstein franchise, or with the Hammer Dracula franchise, there are dozens of ways to keep the franchise going. [But] it had to be the right ending for this particular story. You want it to really function as a powerful ending. And if those two guys became the main adversaries, it would have a certain amount of character-driven story value. That, of course, would have been the ending. But it wouldn’t necessarily mean the ending of the series, of course, because it’s the Re-Animator series.”

Potentially killing off Herbert West, the titular character – that would have been one hell of a surprise! “One of Stuart’s rules was always ‘Go all the way.’ It was one of my script rules, too. ‘Go all the way.’ If you looked at some of the memorials to Stuart, one of the things that a number of people said, be they actors, people who worked on special effects, people who wrote for him (myself included)…we all had the same experience with Stuart. You’d write something if you were a writer, or you would act a scene if you were an actor, and then he would come to you and say ‘That was great, but can you give me more? More of this, or more of that?’ And you’re going ‘Well, I was going to build to this more. You were going to get that later in the script, in the scene, etc.’ And he would always say ‘No. Do it now. We’ll find something better later.’ And, you know, you always did. So the idea was to go all the way, right away. And just go all the way, every chance you got, and you would eventually find the way to top yourself. It always took the story in a new and even more mad direction. That’s what was great about working with Stuart. Especially in this genre, where you can go all the way, and you’re expected to go all the way, and to be as mad as you possibly can. It was Stuart’s style. It was the culture Stuart developed on the set, among his collaborators. You never worried about that. You never worried about ‘Oh my gosh, we’ll do something, and then we can’t undo it.’ Well, no. It’s not that you can’t undo it, it’s that you can then do it better. You can then do more. You can be more entertaining, you can be more outrageous. And that’s the principle of our work.”

Had any tentative casting been done beyond the expected return of Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West? Was Bruce Abbott up for returning as Dan Cain? And, of course, there were those rumors that William H. Macy [from Gordon’s David Mamet adaptation Edmond] would have played George W. Bush. “Bill Macy would have been George Bush in the original version! He actually even sorta looks like him a little bit. I thought he’d be great. That fit perfectly. And we had the President do some spectacularly awful things. We [also] would have of course asked Bruce to return as Dan Cain.”

So why did the project ultimately not come to fruition? “[It would have had] a larger budget than the other Re-Animator films. You’re doing a mockup of the Oval Office, you’re doing a mockup of the Rose Garden, you’re doing a highly equipped science lab. In a couple of the versions, there was a cryogenics lab where they could keep bodies fresh-frozen. There was more production value, so you were going to need a bigger budget. So it was probably a harder film to put together, [budget-wise]. Plus, it’s got political content. A lot of people don’t want to touch that. You know, you killed the President of the United States! I have an idea that, if we had made the film, we would’ve gotten on some political list some place!

“So I don’t know what the ultimate problem [really was], but it’s my experience the problem is always funding. If you get some money, you didn’t get enough. And you only have enough when you have enough, and when you have enough [you get] to make the movie. I don’t know why it didn’t get produced, but if I had to guess – it’s because they didn’t raise the money.”

Is there a possibility that the screenplay could be rewritten to account for another President in office? What does the future of Re-Animator look like? “No idea! Would I do it? In a heartbeat! Would I work with those guys again? In a minute. Now, whether it’s this project or some other project, I don’t know. But we did develop a more generic version of House of Re-Animator, which is still [possible to develop]. The danger now is that you would go back to the very specific version, that it would be a very recognizable President and Vice President you would be reanimating. But there’s a generic version too, which would work as well. But I’d love to work with those guys again.”

Very special thanks to Dennis Paoli for his time and insights.

The post ‘House of Re-Animator’: Writer Dennis Paoli Remembers the Sequel That Never Was [Phantom Limbs] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

That might be a surprising description to those who only know Gordon as the man behind grisly shockers like Re-Animator and Castle Freak. And yet, even his most viscera-filled endeavors glowed with a love for humanity.

These dueling impulses are particularly clear in Gordon’s final feature film, 2008’s Stuck. Written by John Strysik, Stuck reimagines the true story of Gregory Glen Biggs, a homeless man who died stuck in a car windshield after being hit by Chante Jawan Mallard, who drove home and let Biggs slowly bleed out while she went on with her life.

Gordon and Strysik use that premise to explore the need for empathy and the limitations of free will. Mena Suvari stars as Brandi, a Nurse’s Aide who works at a retirement home, with Stephen Rea as down-on-his-luck Tom Bardo. After a particularly bad day, Bardo finds himself homeless and looking for shelter; the same evening that Brandi and her co-workers party at a club. Despite the various substances she’s taken, Brandi decides to drive herself home, a decision that leads to the accident that leaves Bardo stuck in her windshield, begging for help.

What follows is horrifying, moving, and even comic, as Bardo tries to escape or get help and Brandi tries to go about everyday life. Aware that a drunk-driving and manslaughter conviction will cost her her job, just as she’s about to get a hard-earned promotion, Brandi searches for a way to deal with Bardo without revealing herself. Meanwhile, Bardo struggles to free himself, by honking the horn or using a cell phone, all to no avail.

That plot description might suggest that Brandi is a simple amoral murderer, who could have helped Bardo and simply decided against it. But Gordon and Strysik cast doubt on the very idea of free will. Throughout Bardo’s very bad day, he’s told that he has the ability to decide his fate. We’re introduced to Bardo as he’s being harassed by a tenement landlord, who tells him to pay rent or get out; it’s his choice. When a clerical error at the unemployment office results in Bardo losing an interview, he’s told to decide between resubmitting the paperwork or forgoing the office’s help. When a police officer tells him he cannot sleep in an empty park, he’s given the choice between going to jail or walking several blocks to the nearest shelter.

Obviously, Bardo has no agency in any of those situations. But by using the language of choice, those in power can obscure their involvement. The landlord, unemployment clerk, and police officer all can do more for Bardo than he can do for himself, but they make him take sole responsibility. Simply put, Bardo is stuck long before he collides with Brandi’s car.

Although no one is in a situation quite as dire as Bardo, no character is completely free to act, either. When Brandi asks for a weekend off, she’s given a choice by her supervisor (the director’s wife and regular player, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon): work on Saturday or lose your promotion. After a Latino neighbor boy hears a horn blaring from Brandi’s garage and spies Bardo through the window, he asks his parents for help. But his father refuses, fearing that attention from authorities will get his family deported. A police officer fails to see Brandi driving with Bardo in her windshield because he must arrest a homeless man. Even a 911 operator who Bardo finally reaches via cellphone can’t send help because Bardo does not know where he is.

Gordon intensifies the sense of hopelessness evoked by the characters’ situations with his penchant for gore. Together with cinematographer Denis Maloney and editor Andy Horvitch, Gordon presents the initial accident in hyper-real detail. We watch from multiple angles as Bardo goes through the windshield, glass and plastic slicing into his flesh.

Once stuck in his dire situation, we feel the excruciation of every movement Bardo makes. Rea twists his face to sell the pain suggested by close-up shots of a windshield wiper in the abdomen and the sound of crunching glass loud in the mix. Every push, pull, and twist Bardo tries to set himself free tears his body more and often leaves him no closer to redemption.

Despite these gory visuals, Gordon retains his gift for black comedy. Bardo’s constant failed attempts to get help feel like cosmic jokes, as when a pampered dog finds him and licks the bone protruding from his leg before returning to its self-indulged owner. Russell Hornsby shines as Brandi’s boyfriend Rashid, capturing the humor of his character’s sudden change from bragging street tough to frightened man in over his head. Even a seemingly extraneous scene in which Brandi finds Rashid in bed with another woman mixes antics with abject horror. Suvari seamlessly switches from playing Brandi as a scared victim to a hardened fighter, hitting the other woman and throwing her naked body out into the hall.

Over and over, Stuck tells the same joke, a gag that intensifies the philosophy of its horror: life is hard and no one will help you…. because they have no choice.

This bleak worldview makes the movie’s one defining act of compassion so powerful. On his first night on the streets, Bardo encounters a homeless man named Sam (Lionel Mark Smith). Even though he has next to nothing, Sam gives Bardo a drink, a shopping cart, and useful advice. More importantly, Sam gives Bardo dignity, treating him like a human being. Sam made a choice to help Bardo, even though it cost him something.

Gordon plays up the frightening stakes of that choice in the way he introduces Sam. Maloney shoots Smith from a low angle as Sam emerges from the darkness, a solemn look on his face. Low strings rise on the soundtrack as Sam approaches Bardo, holding the tension until he finally declares, “Man, I don’t know if I should ask you for change or give you some.”

Ironically, the scene only reinforces the horror of Stuck. We all need someone to make Sam’s choice, to offer help despite the cost, but nearly no one will. And yet, in that horror is a desperate plea to the audience: don’t force others to undergo that suffering. Make the hard choices and take care of each other, no matter the cost to yourself.

That’s a fitting message for the final film from a man who loved both horror and humanity.

The post ‘Stuck’: The Empathetic Horror of Stuart Gordon’s Final Film appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

“Toys are very loyal, and that is a fact.”

Toymaker Gabriel Hartwicke (Guy Rolfe) says this to Ralph (Stephen Lee) in response to the plucky protagonist’s endearing confession that he remembers every single toy he ever had as a child. The perfect statement that works as a general thesis for the entire film; these killer dolls offer danger only to those that haven’t earned their loyalty. Technically second in Stuart Gordon’s three-picture deal with Empire Pictures, Dolls marked a departure from what fans tended to expect when it came to the horror master. Instead of Lovecraftian gore, Gordon delivered an enduring horror fairy tale that provided as much bloodshed as it did earnestness.

After Re-Animator, Gordon had been gearing up for production on From Beyond when Charles Band presented him with Dolls. Penned by Ed Naha (Troll, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids), the killer doll tale was filmed in Italy with a fully assembled house that was repurposed for From Beyond. The premise was simple; a group of people caught in a storm take shelter at a nearby mansion. One that happens to be inhabited by a magical toymaker, his wife, and their haunted collection of dolls. 

Gordon drew inspiration from the book he’d been reading, Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment, which analyzed the psychology of fairy tales and how their dark horrors allowed children to work through their fears. In other words, fairy tales should be scary. Hence the perfect blend of child wonderment and gruesome horror. 

The story of Hansel and Gretel plays the most significant influence on the film, beginning with the core characters venturing into the woods until they stumble upon a mysterious and remote home, alluring for the shelter it provides from the storm. Gordon sneaks in the visceral horror he’s known for with a violent early scene. A delightful vision of little Judy Bower’s (Carrie Lorraine) teddy bear ripping apart her mean stepmom Rosemary (Carolyn Purdy-Gordon) and selfish dad David (Ian Patrick Williams) before Rosemary’s nagging snaps her out of it. Inside the mansion, they meet Gabriel and his eccentric, sweet wife Hilary (Hilary Mason). The party grows more substantial with the unexpected arrival of kid-at-heart Ralph and the two rambunctious hitchhikers he’s picked up; Isabel (Bunty Bailey) and Enid (Cassie Stuart). None are aware that, like in Hansel and Gretel, the Hartwickes are witches. 

Visually, the Grimm fairy tale makes an appearance during certain character moments, like when Hilary pinches Judy’s finger at dinner time, or when Judy reads the storybook during her bedtime. Mostly, though, it’s felt throughout in the morality of the central narrative. The dolls are ruthless and bloodthirsty in their kills, but it’s aimed solely at those who deserve it. In this case, it’s the mean-spirited that have long lost touch with their inner child who deserve death. As the awful adults fall one by one, the truth behind the cadre of killer dolls is revealed; they’re former shells of humans long zombified and rendered porcelain playthings of the Hartwickes. 

While Gordon plays up the horror of their deaths and transformation sequences, especially the memorable VHS cover box emulating the transformation of Isabel, there’s nothing to fear for Judy – her innocence and loyalty to new toy buddy Mr. Punch provide protection. She’s immediately taken under the wing of the Hartwickes. On the cusp of serious danger, however, is grown-up Ralph. The grim realities of the death surrounding him combined with his adult sensibilities put him in the danger zone, but his inner child and bond with Judy ultimately spare him from suffering the same fate as his new travel companions.

Looking back at Gordon’s output, Dolls is an outlier. His gory sense of humor has been replaced with an overt sweetness that favors whimsical fantasy over straightforward horror – though it still delivers on that front too. With its R-rating, it’s not quite suitable for children, and yet it’s the perfect formative horror film for a younger audience in spirit. It certainly played a vital role in my formative years as a horror fan. 

Fairy tales tend to exist as cautionary tales, offering moral lessons buried within the whimsical and scary. There’s a lot that the film says about basic kindness and decency, and the role parents play in their child’s life. Above all, though, Gordon’s Dolls relays the importance of keeping your inner child alive and well fed; celebrating the irreverence of youth and what made you happy as a child, toys and all. Clinging to the aspects of your personality that reacts and thinks like a child -playfulness, spontaneity, and creativity- are strengths. That Gordon conveys this through horror is demonstrative of his power as a filmmaker, too; with Dolls, he explored the challenging aspects of humanity through his inner child, wry humor and all. 

The post Toys Are Very Loyal: Stuart Gordon Embraced His Inner Child With ‘Dolls’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Stuart Gordon directed a handful of fan favorite gems within the horror genre, most notably an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s Re-Animator in 1985. He subsequently ensured his “Master of Horror” status with films like From Beyond, Dolls and Castle Freak. Gordon’s other directorial credits include Robot Jox, The Pit and the Pendulum, Fortress, Dagon, King of the Ants and Stuck. He also co-wrote the 1996 horror movie The Dentist, directed by Brian Yuzna.

Fittingly, Gordon directed two episodes of Showtime’s short-lived “Masters of Horror” television series: Season 1’s “Dreams in the Witch House” and Season 2’s “The Black Cat.”

It’s interesting to note that the 1989 family film Honey, I Shrunk the Kids features a “story by” credit to Stuart Gordon. Indeed, he and Brian Yuzna brought the project to Disney.

Most recently, Gordon directed the stage play Nevermore…An Evening with Edgar Allan Poe, which starred frequent collaborator Jeffrey Combs as Edgar Allan Poe.

Re-Animator, From Beyond and Castle Freak star Barbara Crampton wrote on Twitter, “An enormous talent, vibrant & boundary breaking, his work was in a class by itself. He created countless moments on film which were at once, funny, scary, daring & smart. He gave me my career. I lost a dear friend. I’m heartbroken. No words can do him justice. RIP Stuart Gordon.”

Stuart Gordon is survived by his wife, Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, daughters Suzanna, Jillian and Margaret Gordon, four grandchildren and his brother, David George Gordon.

The post [R.I.P.] Master of Horror Stuart Gordon Has Passed Away at 72 appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

At this point, much has been said about how the title was such a big hit that action-oriented copycats nearly destroyed AAA Survival-Horror as a whole (until indie developers redefined interactive scares years later), but today I’d like to talk about something other than the polished third-person shooting and clever level design. While these things are certainly major factors in the game’s massive popularity, what makes this sequel stand out from the rest of the franchise is how it takes a sharp turn away from the established (and honestly, convoluted) Resident Evil continuity, preferring to dive into the bizarre world of Spanish horror while sharing some very specific ideas with the works of Stuart Gordon and H.P. Lovecraft.

So today, I’d like to discuss whether or not these similarities are intentional.

For those who haven’t played this certified classic, here’s a brief rundown of the plot: Since his escape from a zombie-infested Raccoon City six years prior, Leon S. Kennedy has become a special operative for the United States Government. When the President’s teenage daughter is kidnapped by a mysterious cult known only as Los Iluminados, Leon tracks the felons to an isolated Spanish village where nothing is as it seems. It doesn’t take long for the agent to realize that there’s something wrong with the townsfolk, and so begins a perilous journey into terrifying, uncharted territory (for both the player and the RE series as a whole).

Of course, most of the story here is just set dressing, functioning as an excuse to take players from one horrific location to the next while having a clear goal in mind. However, despite some remarkably cheesy B-movie moments, there’s actually quite a bit to unpack especially where the setting and backstory are concerned.

In fact, the opening levels of the game bear an uncanny resemblance to Stuart Gordon’s Dagon, a 2001 adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s A Shadow Over Innsmouth. From the protagonist being a foreigner stranded in a remote Spanish settlement to being pitted against bizarre villagers manipulated by an ancient cult, these stories have much in common. It’s not just the setup that’s familiar, as both the look and feel of the game hearken back to Gordon and Lovecraft. Not only that, but Dagon was a Spanish production, with the setting of the original story being changed from New England to a village on the Spanish coast for both production and marketability reasons. At that point, the country had also produced another Lovecraft adaptation, Beyond Re-Animator, and would eventually develop a passionate homage to the writer in the form of the Valdemar Legacy duology. Because of this, I have a strong suspicion that the setting of Resident Evil 4 might have been chosen specifically because of Spain’s interest in this type of macabre story

With that in mind, it would also make sense for the game to abandon the corporate espionage elements from previous entries and focus instead on classic eldritch horror. Hell, even the lore behind the Ganados (the main enemies within the game, infected by a prehistoric parasite around which the cult was founded) has more roots in cosmic horror than the traditional sci-fi zombies of previous games.

And speaking of zombies, both Lovecraft and Gordon are well-acquainted with the undead menace that started this whole franchise, with the former having written the Frankenstein satire Herbert West: Re-Animator (which some claim to be the first appearance of what are now popularly known as zombies) and the latter having directed the cult-classic adaptation of the story starring Jeffrey Combs as the titular mad scientist. In fact, Gordon seems to have made a career out of adapting Lovecraft’s tales, having directed five incredibly entertaining takes on the writer’s stories.

It might seem like a bit of a stretch to associate these specific creators with the third sequel in an insanely popular videogame franchise over just a few passing similarities, but the game actually goes a bit further with these parallels. While one might argue that the sections of the game where you’re trapped in a laboratory with inhuman horrors, such as the nigh-invincible Regenerators, are actually hearkening back to the Herbert West stories, I think the greatest evidence of these influences are present in the stages where players infiltrate a medieval castle.

Encountering odd characters, chained up freaks and ancient European lineages, it’s impossible not to be reminded of another (extremely loose) Lovecraft adaptation by Gordon, namely Castle Freak. Though this film takes place in Italy instead of Spain, certain levels within the castle portion of the game look like they were ripped straight out of this underrated classic, with enemies like the tortured Garradors acting as analogs for the titular antagonist, and the Salazar family replacing the Italian Duchess. The original version of the game was actually set almost entirely within the castle itself, so this may have been the jumping-off point for the rest of the title’s ideas.

So, was Resident Evil 4 definitely influenced by any of these films or stories? While I’m almost certain that the creative team was at least subconsciously channeling elements from Dagon, there’s no hard evidence to support this. However, I find it highly unlikely that all of these similarities are just a coincidence. The developers over at Capcom (Shinji Mikami especially) have always been proud of their love of horror movies, so it stands to reason that the aesthetics here could be more than what they seem.

We may never truly know if these were intentional references or just a case of creators coincidentally drawing from the same source of inspiration, but I can’t help but imagine what a true videogame adaptation of any entry in Stuart Gordon’s filmography might look (and play) like. Now that Lovecraftian stories are popular again, both in gaming and in film, and with filmmaker/game-developer partnerships becoming more common, it would be interesting to see what insane shenanigans developers could come up with when given access to this kind of source material.

Even if we never get more games like this, at the end of the day, it’s likely that Resident Evil 4 will always be playing on a console near you. And I think that’s a good thing.

The post [Editorial] Channeling Lovecraft & Stuart Gordon in ‘Resident Evil 4’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

In post-production, Gordon and producer Brian Yuzna made a deal with Charles Band to offer services covering editing and distribution, offering Band a portion of the profits and giving Re-Animator a theatrical release through Band’s still-new Empire Pictures. The independent studio would go on to be a fondly remembered titan of ‘80s creature features and bizarre, low-budget offerings, beginning with 1984’s Dungeonmaster. 1985 saw their first real box-office success with Ghoulies, so when Band met Gordon and distributed Re-Animator, Empire was truly at the top of its game.

This kicked off a long-lasting relationship between Gordon and Band. After the success of Re-Animator, Gordon went on to immediately make two more films for Empire. Dolls shot first—though it would be released second—and is almost a complete turnaround from Re-Animator, catering much more to Empire’s in-house sensibilities. For one thing, it’s a much tamer movie, and for another it clearly shows off Band’s love for little creatures running around confined locations and killing people, setting the template for Band’s most long-running series, Puppet Master. In fact, Dolls even stars veteran character actor Guy Rolfe, who would go on to play the titular puppet master of that franchise no less than four times.

Immediately after filming Dolls, Gordon re-teamed with Brian Yuzna and Dennis Paoli for another H.P. Lovecraft reunion, From Beyond. It even re-teamed Re-Animator stars Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton. With so many of the exact same elements in place, it would have been so easy for From Beyond to just feel like the same movie, but in reality it could not be more different. While Re-Animator certainly has an element of body horror to it, From Beyond truly takes it to the next level. It’s much more about the relationship between the body and the mind, as well as the destruction of one at the cost of expanding the other. Combs and Crampton basically switch roles from Re-Animator.

Combs, this time, played the victim in over his head—even if he made a transformation toward the end. Crampton took over the role of the obsessive scientist who is willing to take huge risks, including the lives of herself and others, for the sake of discovery. From Beyond proved that the same team of people could work within the same genre and still produce something entirely different. That, if anything, is what paved the way for Castle Freak.

Gordon continued his creative relationship with Band even after Empire Pictures crumbled. Catering to the then-booming direct-to-video market, Band launched Full Moon Entertainment in 1989 with the release of Puppet Master. The budgets were even lower than they had been at Empire, but that didn’t sacrifice the quality of Gordon’s work, as he directed one of Full Moon’s absolute best, an adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum in 1991. That one featured Combs in a smaller supporting role with no sign of Crampton, as well as another actor who would be crucial to the success of Castle Freak: Jonathan Fuller, who we’ll get to in a minute.

Like most Full Moon features, Castle Freak began life with a title and a poster. Stuart Gordon was called into Band’s office and shown the poster, asked what the film was about and was essentially told that it was about a castle and a freak and other than that, he could pretty much do whatever he wanted. As always with Full Moon, the primary concern seemed to be that whatever it was, it got delivered on time and on budget. According to Gordon in an interview for the book It Came from the Video Aisle: Inside Charles Band’s Full Moon Entertainment Studio, Castle Freak came together incredibly quickly—which was not at all uncommon for Full Moon—and had a rushed production schedule. “The thing that was kind of amazing was that I met with Charlie about it in February and we were shooting it in June. It was very fast. And we shot the first draft of the script, which is something you never do.”

That in and of itself is amazing because Paoli’s script is genuinely one of his best. It’s a classic gothic melodrama with almost jarringly realistic characters adjusting to harsh realities even before the titular Castle Freak comes into the picture. It is also the most un-Full Moon movie that Band ever produced. It bears almost no similarities to other features from the company. No little monsters, no tongue-in-cheek, relatively light tone; and it is definitely not as tame as the likes of Trancers or Subspecies. Castle Freak is the goriest and darkest film Full Moon ever produced; it’s a blunt and even grimy movie, but rather than wallowing in filth, it simply portrays the realities of death and trauma.

The movie shot in Italy at Band’s own castle, which the producer regularly used as a cost-effective location and continues to use to this day. Full Moon’s sophomore effort, Meridian, had been among the first to shoot there, followed by the likes of Pit and the Pendulum, but Castle Freak truly makes the most out of the location. It’s a huge and empty place and living inside that ancient castle truly showcases what a purgatory the leads have made for themselves. They’re the main characters, and the castle looks so much like a haunted house, but this family is so defined by pain and tragedy and a lack of communication that it feels like they’re the ones haunting it.

In an interview with Birth.Movies.Death, Gordon related the themes of Castle Freak back to Dolls, despite their incredibly different tones. “There is a lot of love in that movie, I think. It’s a disturbing film, but the message in both Dolls and Castle Freak is how important it is to care for your children, and to raise them properly, really. The line in Dolls says, ‘Being a parent is a privilege, not a right,’ and I think that’s the message of both films.”

One of the absolute highlights of Castle Freak, without a doubt, is its casting. Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton are back, front-and-center as a married couple (John and Susan Reilly, respectively) who could not have possibly drifted further apart. They had both proven capable of expertly walking the line between horror and comedy in their previous efforts with Gordon, and Castle Freak casts all of that aside to allow them both to give extremely raw performances. This is the movie where it truly feels like Gordon had created a makeshift theatre company for himself, using the same actors in incredibly different roles. Combs’ and Crampton’s characters share nothing in common with what they had done in either Re-Animator or From Beyond. But it’s not even either of them who prove how diverse Gordon’s in-house acting troupe could be. It’s Jonathan Fuller.

In his feature film debut, Fuller had portrayed Antonio, the romantic lead desperate to save his wife from the clutches of the Spanish Inquisition in Gordon’s earlier movie, The Pit and the Pendulum. He gave a strong performance as a faithful and sympathetic hero. And then he worked again with Gordon as Giorgio, the title character of Castle Freak. Many directors have said that they usually would want to cast actors rather than stunt men as their lead monsters, not negating that—as proven by Kane Hodder and countless others—stunt men can give fine performances. But Castle Freak is almost unparalleled. It’s incredibly rare for someone to cast the romantic lead of one feature as the growling monster in the next. It’s especially rare considering Fuller had to don a full body prosthetic makeup for the film, something that hadn’t really been attempted since The Manitou in 1978.

This decision pays off in spades, though, as Fuller’s physical performance is incredibly unsettling. He writhes almost snakelike through the catacombs of the castle, incredibly animalistic at times, but it’s the human beats that truly make Giorgio terrifying. He inverts the innocence of Karloff’s Frankenstein Monster, who is destructive but removed from his trauma still has the heart and instincts of a curious child. It’s hard to imagine Giorgio throwing a girl into the water to see if she’d float. No, Giorgio’s instincts feel crueler, like a child pulling wings off a fly. He’s an incredibly voyeuristic character, spying on every woman he comes across, particularly Rebecca, the blind teenage daughter of Crampton and Combs. It’s hard to tell exactly how sexual Giorgio’s impulses even are, and not only because of his mangled and unusable nether-region. Even when he assaults and kills the sex worker that John brings back to the hotel in the movie’s most shocking scene, it’s a grotesque attempt to mimic an act he had just seen, apparently without any context or understanding of the act itself.

In an interview with Flickfeast, Gordon told a story of bringing his young daughter to the set, worried that she would be terrified by the Giorgio makeup. He was so worried that he even asked Jonathan Fuller to eat in his trailer instead of having lunch with the rest of the cast. When Gordon’s daughter noticed that Fuller was absent, she asked, having already known him. And upon hearing he was alone, went to eat with him in his trailer, completely unshaken by the makeup.

That makeup design, which is perhaps recognizable to people who haven’t even seen the movie but just walked by the cover in the video store, was created by the late John Vulich. A true talent in his field, Vulich worked on everything from Day of the Dead to The Lost Boys, designed the incredibly unsettling zombies for Tom Savini’s Night of the Living Dead, as well as the many monsters of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Among his horror work, though, Castle Freak might be the most unsettling, grotesque creature he ever created. It even directly influenced the design of Victor Crowley for Adam Green’s Hatchet.

Like Re-Animator and From Beyond, Castle Freak is often considered to be based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft, in this case, “The Outsider.” In reality, though, the story only provides direct influence for a single scene. In “The Outsider,” a nameless narrator thinks about his life of darkness and exile while navigating his way toward the light. In the end, he confronts a hideous figure staring back at him and reaches out to it, only to come into contact with the glass of a mirror. It’s hard to imagine Giorgio waxing poetic about his loneliness and his condition, but that ending of the story does make for a striking moment in the film, as Giorgio—after freeing himself from his dungeon cell—touches a mirror and confronts his own image for the first time in his life.

Throughout the early 1990s, Full Moon had distribution through Paramount, allowing a higher end (or at least higher budgeted) product than the kind of movies they would become known for later on. Band kept cranking out Full Moon features through that time, from sequels to franchises like Trancers and Puppet Master to creations like Dollman, Mandroid, Doctor Mordrid and tons more. There was a banner in the Full Moon offices that read “200 Films by the Year 2000,” and by all account that was a mission statement that Band wanted to hold himself to. Things were produced so quickly to the point that Paramount did not even know that Castle Freak was happening. They weren’t informed of the movie at all and did not even learn of its existence until they happened to be visiting the offices one day and saw the dailies of the scene in which Giorgio assaults the sex worker down in the dungeon.

As mentioned, Full Moon was known for relatively tame horror, the kind of thing kids could use as a stepping stone after they’d grown out of kiddie horror like Ernest Scared Stupid and Hocus Pocus, acting as a bridge to the classic adult horror most fans were already watching at that age anyway. Castle Freak was definitely not that and it was just rotten luck that the Paramount execs, who for the most part never cared nor paid much interest in what Full Moon was doing, happened to be visiting on that day. They were appalled by the footage they saw and it turned out to be one of many reasons why Full Moon lost their deal with Paramount, forcing them to later partner with the Kushner-Locke company to begin producing movies at a much lower cost than the (already low) number they’d made them for in the past.

Castle Freak wound up being the very first Full Moon movie not to have any distribution from Paramount whatsoever, but while the company was affected by that loss overall, it didn’t really impact the movie’s video rental success. Not only did Castle Freak prove to be a video hit, it also gained the company some rare accolades from genre critics. Fangoria in particular had never been all that kind to Full Moon, giving a lukewarm review to the original Puppet Master and mostly negative reviews (with a few exceptions, including Pit and the Pendulum) to just about everything that followed. Because of this, it truly felt like a victory when Castle Freak won the esteemed Fangoria Chainsaw Award for Best Limited Release/Direct-to-Video Film in 1995.

Even now, Castle Freak is one of the most successful—if not the most successful—Full Moon film that never spawned a franchise. In 1998, there was a Castle Freak action figure distributed at the likes of FYE, Suncoast and Spencer Gift. It featured a loincloth to hide his mangled nethers, but kept the rest of his body very much intact, and even came with a cat o’ nine tails and half-eaten cat as accessories. Since that time, there have been Castle Freak Halloween masks, as well as DVD and Blu-ray releases.

Within the past year, Castle Freak made its comic book debut in the pages of Dollman Kills the Full Moon Universe, with a solo miniseries announced at the same time. Cinestate, the company behind the Puppet Master reboot, is also currently working on a remake of Castle Freak. This reboot, directed by talented Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich FX artist Tate Steinsiek, is being produced by none other than Barbara Crampton herself and is said to be taking the basic concept in some surprising new directions, which much more of the original Lovecraft influences in play. I for one can’t wait to see how it turns out. But much more than that, I’m excited that this gross, nasty but deeply human movie that is so unlike anything Stuart Gordon, Full Moon or any of the cast had made before it continues to live on. Like Giorgio himself, it might get buried or tucked away for awhile, but it always breaks loose.

The post Hideous, Hungry and Loose: A Brief History of ‘Castle Freak’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

This morning, a final Indiegogo campaign was launched in support of In Search of Darkness, which will provide horror fans with their final chance to support this landmark celebration of the greatest decade in horror history. To find out more information on how you can purchase your own copy of In Search of Darkness on Blu-ray and DVD, as well as the exclusive backer rewards currently available, CLICK HERE – the doc will not be released outside of this presale, so don’t miss out on securing a copy!

“Featuring compelling critical takes and insider tales of the Hollywood filmmaking experience throughout the 1980s, In Search of Darkness will provide fans with a unique perspective on the decade that gave rise to some of the horror genre’s greatest icons, performers, directors and franchises that forever changed the landscape of modern cinema. Tracking major theatrical releases, obscure titles and straight-to-video gems, the incredible array of interviewees that have been assembled for ISOD will weigh in on a multitude of topics: from creative and budgetary challenges creatives faced throughout the decade to the creature suits and practical effects that reinvigorated the makeup effects industry during the era to the eye-popping stunts that made a generation of fans believe in the impossible.”

Fans will get to enjoy hearing from proverbial “Who’s Who” of horror throughout In Search of Darkness, including Barbara Crampton (Re-Animator, From Beyond), Don Mancini (Child’s Play, Curse of Chucky), Cassandra Peterson (iconic horror host “Elvira, Mistress of the Dark”), Mick Garris (Critters 2, The Stand), Sean S. Cunningham (producer, Friday the 13^th [1980], the House series), Heather Langenkamp (A Nightmare on Elm Street, New Nightmare), Joe Dante (Gremlins, The Howling), Bill Moseley (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, The Devil’s Rejects), Larry Cohen (The Stuff, It’s Alive), Caroline Williams (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Stepfather II), Keith David (The Thing [1982], They Live), Kelli Maroney (Night of the Comet, Chopping Mall), Tom Holland (Fright Night, Child’s Play), Stuart Gordon (Re-Animator, Dolls), Kane Hodder (Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13^th series, Hatchet), Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator, House on Haunted Hill [1999]), Lori Cardille (Day of the Dead), Lloyd Kaufman (Troma Entertainment founder), Nick Castle (Michael Myers in Halloween [1978] and Halloween [2018]), Robbi Morgan (Friday the 13^th [1980]), Andre Gower (The Monster Squad), Harry Manfredini (composer for the Friday the 13^th series), Brian Yuzna (Society, Bride of Re-Animator), Ken Sagoes (A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master), and special effects legends Greg Nicotero (Evil Dead II, The Walking Dead) and Tom Woodruff, Jr. (The Monster Squad, Pumpkinhead), and more.

Here’s the trailer with more details below:

In Search of Darkness will also celebrate many of the atmospheric soundtracks released during that time, the resurgence of 3-D filmmaking, the cable TV revolution and the powerful marketing in video store aisles, the socio-political allegories infused throughout many notable films, and so much more.

As the expansive documentary examines just what made horror entertainment throughout the 1980s so unforgettable, In Search of Darkness will also feature many notable pop culture pundits and industry experts alike: Ryan Turek (producer, Halloween [2018] and Happy Death Day), Ben Scrivens (Fright-Rags), Katie Featherston (the Paranormal Activity series), Spencer Hickman (DeathWaltz Records/Mondo), Phil Nobile Jr. (Editor-in-Chief, Fangoria Magazine), James Rolfe (YouTube creator, Angry Video Game Nerd and Cinemassacre), Cecil Trachenburg (YouTube creator, GoodBadFlicks), Michael Gingold (journalist and former Editor-in-Chief, Fangoria Magazine), Heather Wixson (Managing Editor, Daily Dead), Tom Hodge (The Dude Designs), 3-D expert Eric Kurland and celebrated horror artist Graham Humphreys.

NewRetroWave will also be curating the soundtrack for In Search of Darkness, and for fans who participate at certain levels of the campaign, they will receive either a digital or physical copy of the ISOD soundtrack. For more details on the various backer levels, or for more general information on In Search of Darkness, please check out the Indiegogo Campaign here.

Also follow the project through the official website and via Twitter, @80sHorrorDoc.

The post Epic Trailer for Horror Doc ‘In Search of Darkness’ Hits the 80s Nostalgia Sweet Spot! [Exclusive] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Arriving this summer, the documentary features Larry Cohen, Stuart Gordon, Joe Dante, Lloyd Kaufman, Sean S. Cunningham, Heather Langenkamp, Barbara Crampton and many others, with even more announcements forthcoming.

“The 1980’s exploded onto our screens in a veritable feast of blood, sweat, and chills. Madmen, killers, and evil spirits mingled with aliens, demons and cursed dolls; horrific images burnt directly onto our retinas and etched permanently into our brains.”

“For the first time in Horror history, In Search of Darkness will bring together 80’s icons, modern horror greats, popular YouTubers and Social Media Influencers to create the most complete retrospective documentary of the genre ever made. Together, they will bring their unique perspectives as we take a nostalgic journey back to revisit the unforgettable heroes, monsters, and movies that thrilled and chilled us.”

Follow the project through the official website and via Twitter, @80sHorrorDoc.

The post Watch This Ultimate 80’s Horror Mashup in Preparation for the Documentary Trailer Launch! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Dolls is what happens when you combine the writer of Troll and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Ed Naha, with the horror sensibilities of Re-Animator director, Stuart Gordon. A fairytale horror movie with teeth, Dolls follows a group of people seeking shelter at a secluded mansion from a storm, and it happens to be owned by a pair of elderly toy makers and their collection of magical, haunted dolls. It was a complete tonal shift from Gordon’s gory, gooey previously released horror films, but the irony is that Gordon worked on Dolls between Re-Animator and From Beyond. The lengthy, time consuming special effects required for Dolls meant that it didn’t see release until a year after From Beyond.

Planning and pre-production on From Beyond was already well underway when producer Charles Band handed Gordon the script, with the expectation that the small scope of the story meant Gordon would be able to knock the film out in the couple of weeks before shooting began on his current project. Gordon wanted as much actual puppetry as possible, which meant a lot of the marionette work required innovative ways to hide the puppet strings. But it was the stop-motion animation, created by David Allen, that caused the biggest strain on the production both in time and money.

Inspiration for the porcelain Victorian style dolls in the film came from Gordon’s own terrifying personal encounter. He visited the doll collection at the Wisconsin Historical Society building on campus of the University of Wisconsin, and was accidentally locked in. After a period of being in confined space, he started to get freaked out at the possibility that the dolls’ eyes were moving and watching him.

The special makeup effects were designed by John Carl Buechler (Prison, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood), but Gabe Bartalos (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, the Basket Case series) did a lot of heavy lifting on set as the chief makeup artist and onset supervisor. Like Gordon, both Buechler and Bartalos had already been hard at work prepping for From Beyond before shifting gears to hop into work on Dolls.

Just what type of horror movie Dolls was evolved a lot during production, especially in tone. It was an originally a much darker, gorier film. The death of Rosemary (Carolyn Purdy-Gordon) initially involved a doll pulling out her intestines via pitchfork but was cut when Gordon realized this was much darker fairytale that encapsulated a childlike innocence than straightforward horror-drenched in blood. Bartalos and special makeup artist John Vulich were also tasked with creating inner zombie-like skeletons of the dolls, as the process and backstory of how the Dollmaker transformed humans into dolls became more fleshed out.

Dolls tends to be more overlooked on Gordon’s roster in favor of his gorier efforts, and it’s a shame. There’s an inherent innocence and sweetness at the core of the story, and the doll designs and effects are far different from most in this sub-genre. The film also boasts a high pedigree of horror talent, with names like Guy Rolfe (Mr. Sardonicus) as the dollmaker Gabriel Hartwicke and Hilary Mason (Don’t Look Now) as his wife Hilary. Gordon at one point had ideas for a sequel that would have seen little Judy (Carrie Lorraine) receive a package from England containing the dolls of Gabriel and Hilary, but Dolls holds up well on its own as it is.

The post [It Came From the ’80s] Stuart Gordon’s Killer ‘Dolls’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Behind the films were icons of the genre, including Dario Argento, John Carpenter, Larry Cohen, Don Coscarelli, Joe Dante, Mick Garris, Stuart Gordon, Tobe Hooper, John Landis, William Malone, Lucky McKee, John McNaughton and even Takashi Miike. I doubt we ever see anything like this again.

While the series has been available to purchase online for quite some time, all two seasons have been added for free to Roku streaming devices, as well as the Tubi channel included on it. This is the perfect way to kick off fall with 26 mini-movies for the horror greats to work your way through. It will be interesting to see how time treats this show, which carried landmark episodes from both Carpenter (“Cigarette Burns”) and Miike (“Imprint”).

You can read about all of the episodes here. An uncut box set also has been made available this month.

The post Showtime’s “Masters of Horror” Streaming *Free* On Roku Devices appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

For just two seasons, Showtime’s “Masters of Horror” united some of horror’s top filmmakers for episodes that ranged from great to, well, not so great. Thanks to a review from the Instagram account @HorrorCon, we’ve just learned that the complete series, fully uncut and restored in HD for the very first time, was released over in Germany earlier this year!

Nameless Media is the company responsible for the release, and it was made available in three different forms: a special edition set featuring “bust” packaging and limited to just 222 pieces, along with “Bible” and “Artwork” Mediabook releases, limited to 333 and 444 pieces.

The set features over 20 hours of brand new bonus materials, including the long version of director Norio Tsuruta’s Season 2 episode “Dream Cruise.” It also comes with a booklet.

Over on the company’s website, the “special edition” and “artwork” releases are currently still up for grabs, so get one while you can. Just make sure you have a Region Free player!

The post German Company Nameless Media Selling Complete Uncut “Masters of Horror” Series On Blu-ray! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

In Dagon, “Residents of a fishing village tempted by greed evolve into freakish half-human creatures and must sacrifice outsiders to an ancient, monstrous god of the sea.”

In addition to a new restoration and remaster, special features include:

• Audio Commentary with Director Stuart Gordon and Screenwriter Denis Paoli
• Audio Commentary with Director Stuart Gordon and Star Ezra Godden
• NEW – “Gods & Monsters” – A discussion with Director Stuart Gordon, Interviewed by Filmmaker Mick Garris
• NEW – “Shadows over Imboca” – An Interview with Producer Brian Yuzna
• NEW – “Fish Stories” – An Interview with S.T. Joshi, author of I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft
• Vintage EPK
• Archival Interviews with Stuart Gordon, Ezra Godden, and other Cast & Crew
• Theatrical Trailer
• NEW – Conceptual Art Gallery from Artist Richard Raaphorst
• Storyboard Gallery
• Still Gallery

The post Blu-ray Trailer for Stuart Gordon’s Lovecraftian ‘Dagon’ Reminds Us That it’s an Absolutely Insane Movie [Exclusive] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Based on a 7-page short story by H.P. Lovecraft, From Beyond unleashed a loose adaptation filled with gooey creatures, phallic pineal glands, and body horror washed in neon pink haze. It also marked a reunion between director Stuart Gordon, screenwriter Dennis Paoli, producer Brian Yuzna, and actors Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton, continuing their collaboration on Lovecraft adaptations, something that Gordon had hoped to continue in a series.

Knowing how surreal he would push this creature-heavy nightmare spectacle, effects artists John Carl Buechler and John Naulin were also carried over from Re-Animator.

Filmed in Italy with a mostly Italian crew to keep the effects-heavy production budget down, there were four separate effects teams that worked on the effects in From Beyond. With roughly 86 of the film’s scenes including special effects, you can bet each and every member was vital. Mark Shostrom (Evil Dead II, DeepStar Six, Phantasm II) was in charge of creature and prosthetic design for the largest creature of the film; the ever-evolving Pretorius creature. While some of the Pretorius creature effects were animatronic, many were also actor Ted Sorel covered in prosthetics and makeup. It was a job he was excited to take on, too, being the nephew of legendary Universal monster makeup creator Jack P. Pierce (The Wolf Man, Frankenstein).

Ted Sorel’s Dr. Edward Pretorius may have been the primary antagonist, an icy scientist that becomes less and less recognizably human as the story progresses, but his Pretorius creature isn’t the only one brought forth from the multi-dimension machine, the Resonator. Once flipped on, it allows those within range to see beyond reality into another dimension, and the other dimension to see into our realm by expanding the pineal gland. It allows protagonist Dr. Crawford Tillinghast (Combs), psychiatrist Dr. Katherine McMichaels (Crampton), and Detective Bubba Brownlee (Ken Foree) to see floating eels, monstrous lampreys, and flesh-eating bugs.

The MPAA wasn’t a fan of the completed film and refused to grant it an R-rating, in part because of the gore and sexuality (namely the S&M footage). More so, the team had to convince the MPAA that the pineal gland was a thing that actually existed; the MPAA was convinced that the little squirming thing that protruded from Tillinghast’s forehead was simply a penis. Naulin and crew had to show them that the pineal gland was not only a legit part of the brain, but their animatronic effect was designed to look like the true pineal gland. Gordon did trim a few of the more extreme shots, and so the MPAA finally did grant it an R-rating.

Proving the adage that artists bleed for their work, Naulin, who handled optical water tank creature creation and special makeup effects, got his hand caught between stage doors during production and severed two fingers in the process of trying to free his hand. The viscera and blood made Gordon pass out when he saw it. Luckily, both fingers were reattached, but it’s a fun anecdote worth sharing because Naulin was waist deep in water the very next day, shooting the scene that featured Tillinghast’s encounter with the mammoth lamprey in the flooded basement.

The fun thing about Lovecraft’s writing is that the creatures that haunt his pages are vague in description, leaving a wide margin for interpretation. Gordon, Yuzna, and their frequent collaborators take their interpretation to the best possible extreme in From Beyond. It’s slimy, gooey, creative, violent, and gory by way of darkness and humor. Gordon never quite managed to get the Lovecraft series going that he intended, but every time he would team up with Combs and Crampton for a Lovecraft adaptation, it sure was magic.

The post The Slimy Creatures and Pineal Glands ‘From Beyond’ [It Came From the ’80s] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

We recently told you that Lionsgate’s Vestron Video Collector’s Series label, after a brief hiatus, was gearing up to release new genre titles, and today we’ve learned that Stuart Gordon’s 2001 film Dagon, loosely based on H.P. Lovecraft’s novella The Shadow Over Innsmouth, will be joining the collection this Summer!

The film will be hitting Vestron Video Blu-ray on July 24.

In addition to a new restoration and remaster, special features include:

• Audio Commentary with Director Stuart Gordon and Screenwriter Denis Paoli
• Audio Commentary with Director Stuart Gordon and Star Ezra Godden
• NEW – “Gods & Monsters” – A discussion with Director Stuart Gordon, Interviewed by Filmmaker Mick Garris
• NEW – “Shadows over Imboca” – An Interview with Producer Brian Yuzna
• NEW – “Fish Stories” – An Interview with S.T. Joshi, author of I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H.P. Lovecraft
• Vintage EPK
• Archival Interviews with Stuart Gordon, Ezra Godden, and other Cast & Crew
• Theatrical Trailer
• NEW – Conceptual Art Gallery from Artist Richard Raaphorst
• Storyboard Gallery
• Still Gallery

In Dagon, “Residents of a fishing village tempted by greed evolve into freakish half-human creatures and must sacrifice outsiders to an ancient, monstrous god of the sea.”

The post Vestron Video Blu-ray Series is Back With Stuart Gordon’s ‘Dagon’! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

But long before del Toro brought the crumbling world of Jaegers and Kaiju (not the rubber suited variety) to screens, a little movie from Empire Pictures had already brought the image of awe-inspiring, human controlled battle mechs to theaters. Since that fim’s release, however, it’s mostly loafed around without much in the way of box office or fanfare to make its name known. This specific deep cut of bot-sploitation comes from none other than Master of Horror Stuart Gordon.

In 1987, Stuart Gordon found himself marveling at the rampant success of Transformers. They were one of the most popular toy lines ever, and the concept of giant battle bots struck him as the perfect backdrop for a whizbang, effects laden action picture. Thanks to a failed partnership with award winning sci-fi author Joe Haldeman, Gordon knew who he wanted to bring in to help mold his concept into an full fledged screenplay. The two had met when trying to adapt Haldeman’s “The Forever War” into a mini-series. Funding for that project fell through, but the two were able to repurpose some of it into a stage production. After surviving such a tumultuous trip through development hell together, surely there next production together would be a cake walk? Hmm…

Gordon, who had a wonderful working relationship with Charles Band and Empire Pictures (Re-Animator, From Beyond), felt he could rely on Band to pick up the bill for his Transformers cartoon come to life. Not so fast. Empire was known for pushing out low budget cheapies, and Robojox (as it was originally known) was far from the confined location, quicky horror flick the studio was known for. Gordon’s vision would require extensive effects work at a price tag Band wasn’t comfortable with. It took a series of test shoots featuring stop-motion robot action to convince Empire to come on board. Of course, as thrifty as the company was, that test footage ultimately became the opening scene of the film itself. With a budget locked in around $6 million, Robojox was set to be the most expensive film Empire had ever, or would ever, produce.

With an official greenlight, Gordon and Haldeman began fighting; I mean, writing the screenplay. The story they concocted revolved around a group of elite jockeys, trained to operate giant scale mechs in one on one competitions, tournaments created to settle the disputes of opposing countries. The main point of contention between the two writers was the film’s overall tone. Gordon wanted a satirical, fun take on the material that would still manage to appeal to kids of all ages while Haldeman felt it should be more intelligent, relying upon real science instead of Hollywood hokum. In retrospect, Haldeman has summed up the situation like this, “I would try to change the science into something reasonable; Stuart would change it back to Saturday morning cartoon stuff. I tried to make believable, reasonable characters, and Stuart would insist on throwing in clichés and caricatures. It was especially annoying because it was a story about soldiers, and I was the only person around who’d ever been one.”

Gordon ultimately turned to an uncredited third party to rewrite Haldeman’s draft. When given the chance, the sci-fi author who was looking for his big break in Hollywood set fire to the bridge by writing a scathing critique of the current screenplay. He felt that it piled on all the elements he’d been fighting with Gordon to excise. A couple weeks into the film’s principal photography in Rome, Haldeman got a call. The producers agreed with much of his criticism of their current shooting script and requested he be flown out to Italy in order to help sculpt the film more towards his original concept.

The final film is certainly all over the place. There are moments of real drama interspersed with absurd action sequences (the Jox can apparently fly in space?), and scenes of horrific human casualties. All of this is set to the backdrop of Cold War paranoia. One minute it’s a super cheesy B-movie, the next is ripe with espionage or discussing a widespread infertility epidemic! Still, despite the “too many cooks in the kitchen” scenario, the production went fairly well with all parties wrapping on amicable terms. Before Haldeman left to come back home, he claims Gordon summed up their differences perfectly: “Joe, our problem is that you’re writing a movie for adults that children can enjoy, but I’m directing a movie for children that adults can enjoy!”

The large scale production proved to be too much for Empire pictures, however. The company folded in on itself, filing for bankruptcy. It took two more years for another studio, Epic Pictures, to swoop in and rescue the film. They funded the rest of the money needed to complete the picture (rumored to have ballooned to $10 million). The name was changed from Robojox to Robot Jox due to the threat of legal action from Orion who felt the title was far too close to their own RoboCop. Epic released the film to a quiet audience. It only went on to gross a little over $1 million at the domestic box office. Over the years, the film has garnered quite the cult following and managed to spin off with two Full Moon films (Crash and Burn, Robot Wars) released in some countries as Robot Jox 2 & 3; though outside of giant robots, there isn’t much to link them to Gordon’s original film.

For those who love some Saturday matinee, low-fi/sci-fi realness, Robot Jox is a blast, with impressive effects, a scene stealing maniacal villain (complete with chainsaw dick…you’ll see), and a lighting fast pace. With its focus on giant mech action, it makes a perfect double bill with Pacific Rim. In fact, Gordon has stated that had he the chance to make a Jox sequel, it would have featured the bots going up against evil aliens.

This awesome mashup from Nerd of All Trades imagines a world where the two are one in the same, cut together to form “Robot Jox of the Pacific”…

The post Before ‘Pacific Rim’ There Was Stuart Gordon’s ‘Robot Jox’! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The dolls recreate the famous scene in which Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs) has re-animated the head of Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale) in the film directed by the great Stuart Gordon.

In the 1985 classic that also starred Barbara Crampton, a dedicated student at a medical college and his girlfriend become involved in bizarre experiments centering around the re-animation of dead tissue when an odd new student arrives on campus.

“Who’s going to believe a talking head? Get a job in a sideshow.”

The post NECA Unwraps ‘Re-Animator’ Retro-style Set! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Subscribe and Listen to Past Episodes:
iTunes | Google Play | Stitcher | iHeartRadio | TuneIn | Web Player

“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, CREEPY, 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 #142: Re-Animator appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Inspired to come up with a new take on Frankenstein in a world inundated with vampire stories, a friend of Stuart Gordon suggested he read Herbert West-Reanimator. Thus, the idea for Re-Animator was born. Gordon, with his background in theater, initially thought to adapt the story for the stage, which soon gave way to adapting the story for the small screen with co-writers Dennis Paoli and William Norris. It wasn’t until Gordon was introduced to Yuzna that Re-Animator came together, with Yuzna making a solid case for the special effects that would be needed for the project. Most impressive of all was that this film was a first for both; Re-Animator was the first feature film that Yuzna produced and the first that Gordon ever directed.

The last piece of the puzzle was Herbert West himself, a blond-haired, blue-eyed scientific automaton according to the original story. Neither of which fits the description of actor Jeffrey Combs. When Combs read for the role, though, it didn’t matter. Combs was Herbert West, and no one else came close. Though Bruce Abbott’s Dan Cain may have been the everyman, it was Combs’ West that audiences gravitated toward with his dry humor and unflappable demeanor. It was Combs’ delivery of lines like, “Who’s going to believe a talking head? Get a job in a sideshow,” along with the clever writing that solidified Combs’ status in the horror genre.

It wasn’t just the dialogue and clever writing that made Re-Animator such an enduring favorite, either. The unapologetic blood and gore, pushing the boundaries of nudity and gore on screen to the point that it had to be cut to attain an R-rating for theatrical release. The uncut, unrated version made it to home release, which was Gordon’s preferred and intended vision for the film. Who can blame him? West getting choked by intestines, a severed head getting inappropriately deviant with Barbara Crampton’s Meg Halsey, and at least 25 gallons worth of blood meant that the horror and comedy were in equal balance.

The gore and comedy delivered in spades, but it was Barbara Crampton as Meg Halsey that really made you care. Tasked with both being the fixation, and then victim, of Dr. Hill’s desire, Crampton had the unenviable task of portraying Halsey as the exposed damsel as well as the straight man counter to the madness around her. Like Combs, it was a breakthrough role for Crampton.

Upon release, even hard-to-please critics like Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert couldn’t help but fall for Re-Animator’s charms, despite the way it really went for broke in gore and sexual humor at poor Meg Halsey’s expense. The practical effects, the over-the-top humor, and Jeffrey Combs’ legendary performance makes Re-Animator a classic, even 32-years later.

The post ‘Re-Animator’ Still Conquering Brain Death 32 Years Later appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Stuart Gordon sure has brought some unforgettable horror to the screen over the years, huh? Much of Gordon’s work has drawn direct inspiration from the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, including standout gems Re-Animator, From Beyond and Castle Freak.

And then there’s Dagon, released in 2001 and recently crowned by our resident Lovecraft expert Luiz H.C. as his “personal favorite Cthulhu-Mythos-inspired film.”

An adaptation of Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth, the film unleashes full-on Lovecraftian horror on a young man and woman when their boat crashes off the coast of Spain and forces them to seek refuge in a small fishing village… which they discover is in the grips of an ancient sea god and its monstrous half-human offspring.

Eventually, main character Paul meets up with Ezequiel, the last surviving human in the village. Both Paul and Ezequiel are soon captured by the worshipers of Dagon, who chain them up and demand they join the cause. When Ezequiel refuses, well, things don’t turn out so well for him.

In a highly disturbing display of hard-to-watch practical effects, the old man is literally unmasked; his face is carved up and pulled clean off his skull.

When Gordon adapted Lovecraft, things always got pretty gruesome!

The post Kill of the Week: Skinned Alive in ‘Dagon’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Despite this, the list of satisfying adaptations of Lovecraft’s work is remarkably small, with most talented fans of the author preferring to borrow elements from his tales instead of adapting them entirely. Some noteworthy directors have attempted to bring the Mythos to the big screen, but the nihilistic nature of the author’s particular brand of cosmic horror doesn’t sit very well with studio executives.

While it’s likely that we’ll never see big budget adaptations like Guillermo Del Toro’s vision for At The Mountains of Madness, there are still a few worthy translations of some of Lovecraft’s best stories. This, coupled with the Cthulhu Mythos’ 100th anniversary, is why I’ve compiled a list of the Top Six Cthulhu Mythos adaptations.

Of course, this is my personal opinion, so I’d love to hear about your favorite Lovecraft adaptations in the comments below! However, I’ll only be listing direct adaptations of Cthulhu Mythos stories, so no Re-Animator or John Carpenter films for now…

6: Necronomicon: Book of the Dead

As is, unfortunately, the case with many anthology films, Necronomicon: Book of the Dead is a hit or miss venture. The glaringly inadequate budget and perplexing script are what keep this movie on the last spot of the list, though it’s an otherwise entertaining B-Movie romp if you can stomach the cheesy shortcomings.

A collaboration between Brian Yuzna, Christophe Gans and Shusuke Kaneko, the film adapts three Lovecraftian tales, with a wrap-around segment featuring the always-excellent Jeffrey Combs as H.P. Lovecraft himself.

There isn’t a lot of substance to this schlocky collection, but it’s definitely a worthy entry in the sadly all-too-short list of Cthulhu Mythos adaptations.

5: Masters of Horror: Dreams in the Witch-House

Stuart Gordon became a horror legend due to his nearly exclusive work on Lovecraftian movies like Re-Animator and From Beyond. Hell, even his worst films manage to be amusing, though he’s directed quite a few classics as well. Dreams in the Witch-House was one of his contributions to the excellent Masters of Horror series, being one of the show’s more enjoyable episodes.

Adapted from the eponymous short story, Dreams in the Witch-House is a modern-day take on the classic tale of a Miskatonic University student who moves into an unconventionally haunted house. Despite the limited runtime and production value, the episode is a surprisingly faithful and entertaining recreation of the creepy story.

4: Cthulhu

Despite the name, Dan Gildark’s seaside thriller is actually an adaptation of The Shadow Over Innsmouth (which is something of a running theme with these movies). Though it takes quite a few liberties with the source material, Cthulhu is an unexpectedly subtle and heartfelt translation of one of Lovecraft’s most famous stories.

Low production value once again sabotages what might have been one of the most dramatic depictions of the Mythos in film, though a compelling protagonist and flawless atmosphere make Cthulhu a must-watch for fans of Lovecraftian tales.

3: Dagon

A misnomer, Stuart Gordon’s Dagon is yet another adaptation of The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Despite the altered setting and schlocky tendencies, this is arguably the most faithful adaptation of the story yet, though the small budget once again leaves a lot to be desired. Even something as simple as better digital effects could have greatly improved the film (not to mention the final reveal of the titular monster).

Nevertheless, Dagon is a legitimately thrilling experience, with suspenseful chase sequences and amazing practical effects. Despite its flaws, this remains my personal favorite Cthulhu-Mythos-inspired film.

2: The Call of Cthulhu

A risky experiment by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, The Call of Cthulhu is without a doubt the most faithful of all Lovecraft adaptations, not to mention one of the best. Directed by Andrew Leman, this peculiar feature was produced in the style of 1920s silent films, complete with Expressionist influences and clever Claymation effects.

While Lovecraft’s multilayered tale of madness and dreaming gods obviously holds up, the film is a genius attempt at replicating what might have been if The Call of Cthulhu had received the big-budget treatment back when the author was still alive. It’s definitely not for everyone, but film and literary buffs alike will surely enjoy this retro outing.

1: Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

Admittedly, this entry isn’t a movie at all, but a first-person survival horror video game from 2005. Even so, the game is (in my personal opinion) the best Cthulhu Mythos adaptation to date. Taking elements from A Shadow Out Of Time, The Call of Cthulhu, Dagon and The Shadow Over Innsmouth, Dark Corners of the Earth is a grueling journey through Lovecraft’s twisted imagination.

Largely inspired by the eponymous Tabletop RPG, the game explores the mythos’ recurring themes of insanity and fear of the unknown better than any non-interactive adaptation so far. Featuring a haunting soundtrack, clever level design and scenes ripped straight from Lovecraft’s stories, there’s a lot to love about this disturbing experience.

While the Dark Corners of the Earth does have its fair share of issues (especially now that it’s over a decade old), there’s some solace to be had in the fact that there’s a new Call of Cthulhu game in the works, which is expected to drop later this year. Only time will tell if it can improve upon this terrifying vision of cosmic horror, but until then, this is a must-play for horror fanatics in general.

The post Top Six Cthulhu Mythos Adaptations! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Back in 1917, Lovecraft had just begun his career as an author, and penned the first Cthulhu Mythos story, Dagon, inspired by a nightmare (which is something of a recurring theme with his best stories). While it probably wasn’t intended to be the start of a terrifying universe of interconnected tales, Dagon sets up a lot of what the Mythos would eventually become. The story of a man driven insane after witnessing an eldritch abomination rise out of the sea to imply mankind’s impending doom contains all of the classic Mythos tropes, and Dagon himself would become a recurring figure in later tales.

From there, the world was soon treated to further tales of Elder Gods and forgotten horrors, though it was only in 1928 that The Call of Cthulhu, Lovecraft’s most famous and influential tale, would see the light of day. The story expanded upon the established mythology (even briefly mentioning the ill-fated narrator of Dagon), and introduced the world to everyone’s favorite octopus-faced Old One, the darkly dreaming Cthulhu.

By his untimely death in 1937, H.P. Lovecraft had amassed quite the pantheon of unfathomable beings that were here long before mankind, and would undoubtedly still be around once we’re gone. Stories like The Shadow Over Innsmouth and At The Mountains Of Madness perfected Lovecraft’s iconic formula for cosmic horror, and are still referenced in modern horror to this day (though everyone is still bitter about Guillermo Del Toro’s failed adaptation of the latter tale).

While the eccentric author never shied away from grotesque monstrosities in his work (hell, he certainly created some of the scariest creatures ever described), what set Lovecraft apart from other horror writers of his time were the disturbing philosophies underlying most of his tales. His belief in an indifferent and uncaring universe resulted in complex stories that avoided the usual trappings of good versus evil and even tapped into relatively modern concepts like existential dread. For example, the Great Old Ones wouldn’t necessarily make it their business to destroy humanity, we’d just be too small and insignificant to survive their inevitable return to this world. There lies the seed of cosmic horror that has frightened so many readers over the last hundred years.

The recurring themes of insanity, suicide and suspicion over humanity’s place as the dominant species of the planet have resonated with many other artists over the years. That’s why it’s no surprise that most people now know Lovecraft from works that reference him, rather than from his original stories. Even before his death, authors like Robert E. Howard (who was a dear friend of the troubled writer) incorporated elements from the Cthulhu Mythos in their own stories, which is why some argue that the Conan the Barbarian tales take place in the same universe.

August Derleth, another one of Howard’s literary friends, went to great lengths to keep the Mythos alive after the author’s passing, going so far as to add his own spin on cosmic horror. It was only after his founding of the Arkham House of publishing that Lovecraft became a household name, as, despite limited critical acclaim, the author had previously never been able to support himself purely through writing. Thanks to Derleth, many other authors and artists gained access to Howard’s tales, which ultimately resulted in the Lovecraftian influence on nearly all facets of modern popular culture.

From Batman’s infamous Arkham Asylum to the terrifying films of John Carpenter and Stuart Gordon, it’s hard to imagine a world without Lovecraft. Could geniuses like Clive Barker or Stephen King even exist without taking lessons from the master of tentacled terror? Even bands like Metallica have devised musical homages to the Mythos’ eldritch abominations. Howard himself almost certainly couldn’t have predicted the impact his imagination would have on media as a whole when he came up with iconic monsters and objects like shoggoths or the Necronomicon.

Nevertheless, it’s important to note that, as a human being, H.P. Lovecraft was an incredibly complicated and controversial figure. It’s clear that he held several racist and xenophobic beliefs, and you couldn’t quite label him as a mentally balanced individual either. Many of these unfortunate ideals bled into his stories, and it’s easy to identify his (sadly all too-contemporary) anxieties surrounding immigration and the “invasion” of foreigners that might eventually replace the American population. However, there is evidence to suggest that, by the end of his life, the author had grown more accepting of diversity and at the very least tolerated the melting pot that the United States had become at the time.

Regardless of his personal flaws, Lovecraft has also been criticized for his overreliance on convoluted wording and repetitive formulas. Some critics even argue that once you’ve read one Lovecraft story, you’ve read them all. These are valid points, to an extent, but these flaws might also be considered some of Howard’s defining attributes. While it’s understandable that some people might be put off by these techniques, complaining about them would be like arguing that slasher movies are too bloody, or that Kubrick’s direction is too meticulous.

Whether or you love him or hate him, there’s no denying Lovecraft’s influence on culture as a whole. Hell, the fact that there are still legions of readers worldwide swearing that Lovecraft’s writings were secretly non-fiction (despite his numerous attempts at explaining otherwise) is a testament to the author’s status as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. With that in mind, why not re-watch, re-read or even re-play some of our favorite pieces of Cthulhu Mythos media in honor of this most terrifying anniversary? After all, the only side-effect is impending insanity, so what’s the worst that could happen?

The post Celebrating 100 Years of the Cthulhu Mythos! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

On July 25th, the enduring splatter-comedy classic from 1985 returns to Blu-ray in a stunning restoration jam packed with special features. Arrow Video’s 2-disc limited edition set, a US-only release, contains 2K restorations of both the Unrated and “Integral” versions of the film. The must-own release, housed in digipack packaging with brand new art by Justin Erickson, also includes a collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by writer Michael Gingold and the original 1991 comic book adaptation of Re-Animator, reprinted in its entirety.

Check out the full roster of bonus content below.

DISC 1 – UNRATED VERSION

• Unrated version [86 mins] • Audio commentary with director Stuart Gordon
• Audio commentary with producer Brian Yuzna, actors Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Bruce Abbott, and Robert Sampson
• Re-Animator Resurrectus – documentary on the making of the film, featuring extensive interviews with cats and crew
• Interview with director Stuart Gordon and producer Brian Yuzna
• Interview with writer Dennis Paoli
• Interview with composer Richard Band
• Music Discussion with composer Richard Band
• Interview with former Fangoria editor Tony Timpone
• Barbara Crampton In Conversation – the Re-Animator star sits down with journalist Alan Jones for this career-spanning discussion
• Deleted and Extended Scenes
• Trailer & TV Spots

DISC 2 – INTEGRAL VERSION – LIMITED EDITION EXCLUSIVE

• Integral version [105 mins] • A Guide to Lovecraftian Cinema – brand new featurette looking at the many various cinematic incarnations of writer H.P. Lovecraft’s work

More features will be announced soon. Take a sneak peek at the set below!

The post Check Out Arrow’s Crazy ‘Re-Animator’ Blu-ray Set; Coming in July appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

But what about those directors who enjoy film so much that they want to appear in OTHER people’s movies as well? Here are ten well-known horror filmmakers who have popped up frequently in a variety of films they didn’t make themselves.

JOE DANTE

Aside from making brilliant films himself, Joe Dante is also a curator of film history (having created Trailers from Hell) and has many friends in the film world who like to put him in front of the camera. Friend and frequent collaborator John Landis put him in front of the camera for Beverly Hills Cop III alongside Eddie Murphy.

Dante and Landis both had cameos in the recent horror anthology Tales of Halloween, and they also both appeared in Sleepwalkers, directed by friend and Masters of Horror creator Mick Garris.

Director Jack Perez, who previously directed the John Landis-produced Some Guy Who Kills People, cast Dante and Landis in cameo roles in Blast Vegas, and Landis even had an in-joke in the credits for his gangster comedy Oscar, in which Joe Dante is billed as Face on the Cutting Room Floor. There have been other small roles, a bodyguard in 1982’s A Time to Die and the cab driver in The Butterfly Room; however, one of his more memorable cameos is in the opening moments of the horror parody The Silence of the Hams, performing alongside some other famous faces as seen here:

The post 10 Horror Directors Who Appeared in Movies They Didn’t Direct appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Starting off as a deceptively simple siege movie, The Void stars Aaron Poole as Daniel Carter, a small-town cop who gets unwittingly caught up in unfathomably horrific circumstances. When Carter attempts to rescue a wounded stranger by taking him to the nearest hospital, he unleashes a chain of events that results in the hospital’s skeleton crew and patients being attacked by gruesome entities and a mysterious cult. This small group must attempt to survive the night all the while dealing with the supernatural implications of their pursuers.

Although it tackles some original concepts and boasts some truly unique (not to mention nightmarish) visuals, The Void is, at its core, a love-letter to what has become an exceedingly rare form of horror in Hollywood. Equal parts The Thing, From Beyond and some kind of hallucinogenic drug trip, this is retro filmmaking at its finest. While nostalgic looks at older styles of filmmaking can sometimes end up feeling derivative, Gillespie and Kostanski manage to inject enough of their own style to keep things consistently fresh.

Speaking of older styles of filmmaking, the practical effects in this film are some of the best (or worst, if you consider the subject matter) that I’ve seen in horror for a long time, even rivalling the work of masters like Stan Winston and Tom Savini. Even if you don’t quite appreciate the story or characters, these visuals will haunt you long after the credits roll. There is some decent usage of CGI as well, but those elements can’t really compare to the physical monstrosities gracing the screen.

While the cast does a fantastic job at reacting to the inexplicable terror around them, you can’t help but feel that these characters could have been developed a bit more. Poole makes for an extremely compelling protagonist, but he can’t quite carry the film by himself. The vastly underrated Ellen Wong also makes an appearance, which is a plus, but the script still isn’t doing anyone any favors. This is a minor gripe, however, as the film as a whole still manages to be exceptionally entertaining, not to mention terrifying.

Despite its flaws, The Void is ultimately the Lovecraftian horror movie that we’ve been hoping for. The ending might not be entirely satisfying, and the characters could have been improved, but this is still an immensely enjoyable film. The effects work and monster designs are top-notch, and the movie somehow captures that rare feeling of cosmic dread that oh-so-many horror films strive for, but few ever achieve. It may not quite reach the heights of the films that inspired it, but The Void is most definitely worth a watch.

The Void will be getting a limited theatrical release starting April 7th!

The post [Review] ‘The Void’ Captures The Essence of Cosmic Horror appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Just shy of 20 years after Herbert West debuted on the screen, the Re-Animator franchise came to a close with third installment Beyond Re-Animator, released in 2003; the film originally premiered on the Sci-Fi Channel, which is needless to say not where any franchise hopes to end up. West was subsequently brought back to life in the form of comic books and even a musical (which initially starred The Mind’s Eye actor Graham Skipper!), and at the time of writing this post, a pseudo-remake titled Re-Animator: Evolution is being actively developed.

But what about the sequels that never came to be? At one point, Bride of Re-Animator and Beyond Re-Animator director Brian Yuzna was working on an Island of Dr. Moreau-inspired sequel to be titled Island of Re-Animator, but the most interesting unmade sequel was set to, believe it or not, center on Dr. Herbest West re-animating the President of the United States!

In 2006, three years after Beyond Re-Animator, the news broke that Stuart Gordon would be returning to the franchise to direct House of Re-Animator, which would again star both Jeffrey Combs and Bruce Abbott. The story was strongly inspired by the George W. Bush presidency that was a hot topic of discussion at the time, and the basic plot of the series’ proposed fourth installment was that a Bush-like president would die in office, prompting the U.S. government to call Herbert West in to do what West does best: bring the dead back from the dead.

Spearheaded by Halcyon International Pictures, the White House-set House of Re-Animator was planned to be the first in a brand new trilogy of West stories, and franchise regulars Dennis Paoli and Brian Yuzna were on board to produce. Who was going to play the president, you ask? Reports at the time indicated that William H. Macy would call the Oval Office home.

And yes, Macy himself confirmed his involvement in the film.

A couple pieces of early promo art (below) were shown off around that time, but House of Re-Animator quickly fell of the map entirely. The reason for the project’s death seems to have been that producers were worried about ruffling feathers over at the real White House; not to mention, the topical concept was pretty much dead in the water once Bush left office in 2009.

William H. Macy as a zombified George W. Bush. Just picture that!

*Credit to Marcel Jansen for art featured at the top of this article.*

The post ‘House of Re-Animator’: The Presidential Sequel That Never Happened appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

CAST A DEADLY SPELL

Directed by Martin Campbell
Screenplay by Joseph Dougherty
Produced by Gale Anne Hurd
Starring Fred Ward, Julianne Moore, Clancy Brown, Alexandra Powers, David Warner, Charles Hallahan, Arnetia Walker, Raymond O’Connor, Peter Allas, and Lee Tergesen
Released on September 7, 1991

As much as I love horror, I’m also a big fan of various other genres. Science fiction, fantasy, westerns, you name it. It’s why I’m a lover of genre-bending films, such as Big Trouble in Little China, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Ghostbusters. Pure genre efforts are wonderful, but there’s just something about a healthy genre-mixing piece that really gets me going. All those cinematic flavors mixed together to create something different, yet also something familiar. If done right, it can be a beautiful thing.

Cast a Deadly Spell pulls it off in (Sam) Spades. A deft mixture of crime noir and horror, this HBO TV movie from the early ‘90s hails from the mind of Joseph Dougherty. Primarily working on TV shows for the majority of his career to date, Dougherty has bounced around all kinds of different series over of the past couple of decades. From “Saving Grace” to “thirtysomething” to “Pretty Little Liars”, he’s been all over the place.

What’s most interesting in the context of this piece, however, are his quartet of features at the start of the ‘90s: Steel & Lace, Cast a Deadly Spell, Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman, and Witch Hunt. All are love letters to different cult genres and, save for maybe Attack (which is a remake I have not seen), all mix various genres to craft something new. Furthermore, in the case of three of them, they are helmed by accomplished directors such as Paul Schrader (American Gigolo, Cat People), Christopher Guest (This is Spinal Tap!), and the aforementioned Martin Campbell (The Mask of Zorro, Casino Royale). It’s enough to make one pine for HBO to start making such interesting TV features again.

Cast a Deadly Spell sees a private detective by the name of Harry Phillip Lovecraft (Fred Ward) hired by a mysterious wealthy client, Amos Hackshaw (David Warner), to track down a tome that was stolen from his home. That tome, if you couldn’t guess by our hero’s tongue-in-cheek name, is the Necronomicon. What follows is Lovecraft stumbling through a conspiratorial mystery that leads him in situations involving witchcraft, an old flame (Julianne Moore), and a former friend (Clancy Brown), as well as various creatures of the night.

Martin Campbell’s direction amps up the fun, pulpy nature of Dougherty’s tale by bringing an era appropriate feel to its 1930s Los Angeles setting. The colors and settings all pop, especially in the HD version that has now finally made its way to the streaming internet avenue. Everything oozes classic detective fiction (with a horror twist) from its opening frames to its closing moments. It’s like if Stuart Gordon made a Raymond Chandler movie.

All would be for naught if the cast weren’t game to back up the visuals. Lucky for us, everyone is on point. Ward makes for a perfect down-on-his-luck slewfoot with a soft spot for hard luck cases. Moore was still in the early stages of her career here, but you wouldn’t know it from her performance. She commands her role as effectively as she would now, showcasing multiple facets of her femme fatale-esque part with nuance rarely found in such films since. As for Clancy Brown, who better to play a shady bruiser turned sleazy entrepreneur?

Those who haven’t seen this underseen gem are probably wondering just how far into horror this film dives. The answer is pretty far. In addition to the Necronomicon and uses of dark magic, there’s plenty for a horror fiend to love. There are quite a few practical monsters on parade within. Some are only on hand for short moments (werewolves, vampires, etc.), but others stick around for much longer. Brown’s Harry Bordon has a massive zombie henchman (more voodoo, less flesh-eating) and there’s a particularly nasty gargoyle that targets Lovecraft on more than one occasion. Also, given the obvious Lovecraftian elements, we are treated to an appropriately-tentacled god-fiend during the finale.

Tone-wise, if you aren’t overly familiar with noir fiction, think of it simply as this: it’s The Rocketeer, but with the Necronomicon in place of a rocket pack and Great Old One summoners in place of Nazis. Mind you it isn’t an action extravaganza like that film. After all, this is an HBO movie. Still, it’s not a cheap-looking tale and it nails that pulp adventure tone, making for a wonderfully entertaining viewing. It had a budget of $6 million to play with back in ’91, which today would be the equivalent of almost $11 million. That’s more money than most of our theatrical horror releases today get to play around with!

Previously relegated to an old VHS release, I’m happy to say that it’s now broadcasting in high-definition via Amazon’s streaming services free to Prime members. I’m not aware of any Blu-ray release for it on the horizon, but the fact that it has been given an HD upgrade bodes well for such an event in the near future. I can only hope that more similar HBO fare manages to make the jump to Amazon in HD form as well. That goes double for the aforementioned Witch Hunt, considering the fact that it is a sequel to this!

Up Next: Disturbing Behavior (1998)

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

The post [Exhumed & Exonerated] ‘Cast A Deadly Spell’ (1991) appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

See, this wasn’t a case of simply being afraid of the sequel living up to the original, oh no. That is something I don’t have a problem with. Had Stuart Gordon and Jeffrey Combs teamed up for Bride I would have been all over that. Had neither of them been involved I would have been excited. But for some asinine reason the idea that one (Combs) without the other (Gordon) didn’t jive quite right with me. Kill me on this if you must, but remember that I readily admit this is the logic of a fool.

A few years back I finally took the plunge and watched Bride of Re-Animator and it would be an understatement to say I was pleasantly surprised. I liked the movie plenty, dare I say I even loved it. Now that the film is available on Blu-ray I decided to give it another whirl and I can now say without question that I love this movie.

Bride of Re-Animator is weird in that it has a rather simple plot that also manages to be a bit convoluted and messy. On the most basic level this is Frankenstein with Herbert West. The film takes place eight months after the Miskatonic Massacre and the events from the first film. Eight months isn’t really that much time, but a lot has happened. West (Combs) and Dan Cain (Bruce Abbott) are the only two survivors of the Miskatonic Massacre and somehow managed to escape without being arrested or facing any type of legal trouble. The duo now work as medics in the Internal conflict in Peru, which is perfect because this gives them plenty of bodies to experiment with and little people to ask questions. After the tent they operate out of is attacked, they decide to return home to Massachusetts where they resume working as doctors at Miskatonic University Hospital as if nothing has happened.

While working in their hidden morgue lab, West discovers that he can not only re-animate the dead but he can re-animate individual body parts. This gives him the idea to create the perfect woman! Of course he can’t carry out this work alone and most convince Cain to help. Cain is hesitant at first, but West wins him over because he has the heart of Cain’s fiancée (Barbara Crampton’s character from the first film) and his plan is use that as the heart for his perfect woman. So while West will not be bringing Cain’s fiancée back to life, the woman will have her heart so in a way it will be her and Cain is desperate to have her back.

Aside from the typical difficulties one would anticipate from re-animating the dead, a variety of other complications arise along the way. A journalist Cain met in Peru, Francesca Danelli (Fabiana Udenio), shows up in Massachusetts and her and Cain begin to date. Naturally she gets a little freaked when she discovers all the re-animating but things get really heated once the Bride is given life because she instantly falls for Cain because of her heart and thus becomes very jealous of Francesca. Now Cain is in a really tough spot as he’s torn between the living woman he is now dating and this undead monster that has the heart of his fiancée.

If Bride of Re-Animator stopped here in terms of story and plot details we would be good to go. There’s more than enough here to build a good, engaging story, but instead we have a lot more tossed in. A police officer played by Claude Earl Jones begins snooping around the university and the home of West and Cain. The dead body of the officer’s wife was animated during the Miskatonic Massacre and he suspects West and Cain are to blame since they were the only two unaffected. His snooping results he eventually becoming a zombie. That’s not all though as Dr. Carl Hill (David Gale) somehow works his way back into the sequel even though he is just a head. As a head he really can’t do anything, but somehow he’s able to convince folks to do his bidding and he plans on coming after West, but his intentions are never really clear.

Bride of Re-Animator ends up bouncing around quite a bit. On one hand it’s a bizarre love triangle between Cain, the Bride and Francesca. Cain struggles with living behind his fiancée but he knows the Bride isn’t what she seems. Then we have the police officer trying to find justice for his wife and getting in way over his head. Finally there’s Dr. Hill trying to get revenge of some sort on West. Throughout all of this West is just trying to continue his experience in the name of science with what I think is an ultimate goal of playing God.

Personally I’m a little bummed the script wasn’t cleaned up a bit. All the stuff with Hill could have been removed. It serves no purpose and just gets in the way. The police officer could have stayed but been trimmed up a bit. All we needed for a great movie was West and Cain attempting to create the Bride while Cain struggles with the his love ordeal. That would have been great. Instead we have all these unnecessary ingredients that muddy things up a bit.

Flaws and all Bride of Re-Animator is still a ridiculous amount of fun! Combs sells West so hard. West will not be deterred and plans to carry out his experiments come hell or high water. He has a laser focus on his goal and nothing will get in his way. He’s really an asshole but there is something to be appreciated by his dedication to his craft. Herbert West is an absolute icon in the world of horror and Combs rocks it once again. Then you’ve got Cain who is such a conflicted man in pretty much all aspects of life. Cain has the same vision in West in that he can see the light at the end of the tunnel and what their studies can uncover, but unlike West he also sees the various roadblocks along the way that give him pause. Even with his hesitations it never really takes much for Cain to be convinced to go along with West’s experiments because at the end of the day he too is a man of science. The way West and Cain work together is so wonderful. A brilliant pairing perfectly brought to life by the performance of Combs and Abbott.

The real star of this film is the special effects wizardry courtesy of some of the best the special makeup effects world has to offer. If practical effects is your thing then this film is so for you. There are too many great effects people to list them all but when the guys working on your film contain the likes of Robert Kurtzman, Howard Berger and Greg Nicotero of KNB to go along with Screaming Mad George, Tony Doublin and John Buechler, well I think you kind of know you’re in for a treat. The work these masterminds accomplish in this film is amazing. The Bride looks incredible the way she’s pieced together and the way she moves is wonderful. She has these herky-jerky movements as she learns to walk. And she’s just one of many, many creations. Throughout the film we see hints of various creatures and weird designs along with your standard zombies. In the end all of these monsters come together for a finale that is pure mayhem. The car insurance company that has those mayhem commercials should use the final scene of this movie in their next ad campaign because it is complete and utter chaos that few movies are able to match.

So yeah, Bride of Re-Animator is a little overstuffed and clunky, stumbling at times as it tries to move along, sort of like the Bride herself, but it is a very worthy successor to Gordon’s Re-Animator. Much like the Demons and Demons 2 that came before it, Bride of Re-Animator is the perfect party movie.

If you’re wondering how the Arrow Video Blu-ray release holds up, I have one question for you – why would you even wonder such a silly thing? At this point Arrow has a track record you can take to the bank and they once again delivered on a breathtaking release. This limited edition 3-disc set features two Blu-rays and one DVD. You get not only the R-rated version of the film, but also the unrated version. Arrow put a lot of time and effort into this release, searching everywhere for the best possible elements. The booklet that comes with the release goes into great detail about the work Arrow put into this release and it shows. As a whole both versions look great, with the unrated version being the more even transfer. Not all elements available where in the greatest shape so there are a few moments where you see some slight color variations from scene to scene but this is all very minor. This is another gorgeous looking Blu-ray from Arrow.

If bonus features and extra content is your thing you should be more than satisfied:

DIRECTOR-APPROVED 3-DISC LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS

• Brand new 2K restorations of the Unrated and R-Rated versions of the film, approved by director Brian Yuzna
• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentations
• Original Stereo 2.0 audio (uncompressed PCM on the Blu-rays)
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Digipak packaging featuring newly commissioned artwork by Gary Pullin
• Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by festival programmer Michael Blyth
• Re-Animator: Dawn of the Re-Animator – the official comic book prequel to the original Re-Animator

DISC 1 [BLU-RAY] & DISC 2 [DVD] – UNRATED VERSION

• Brand new 2K restoration of the Unrated version
• Brand new audio commentary with director Brian Yuzna
• Audio commentary with Brian Yuzna, star Jeffrey Combs, special effects co-ordinator Thomas Rainone and the effects team including John Buechler, Mike Deak, Robert Kurtzman, Howard Berger and Screaming Mad George
• Audio commentary with stars Jeffrey Combs and Bruce Abbott
• Brian Yuzna Remembers Bride of Re-Animator – brand new featurette in which the director looks back at the making of the first Re-Animator sequel
• Splatter Masters: The Special Effects Artists of Bride of Re-Animator – brand new FX featurette with a wealth of behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with Robert Kurtzman of KNB, Screaming Mad George, Tony Doublin and John Buechler
• Getting Ahead in Horror – archive making-of featurette
• Meg is Re-Animated – deleted scene with behind-the-scenes footage
• Carnival Sequence – the cast and crew discuss this excised sequence

DISC 3 [BLU-RAY] – R-RATED VERSION – LIMITED EDITION EXCLUSIVE

• Brand new 2K restoration of the R-Rated version
• Behind-the-Scenes Reel

‘RE-ANIMATOR: DAWN OF THE RE-ANIMATOR’ – LIMITED EDITION EXCLUSIVE

• Perfect-bound booklet containing Re-Animator: Dawn of the Re-Animator, the 1992 comic prequel to Stuart Gordon’s original Re-Animator, reprinted in its entirety

All of the special features are pretty great but I was especially fond of Brian Yuzna Remembers Bride of Re-Animator. This is a short feature, coming in at less than 10 minutes but Yuzna gives a lot of info. Two things he said here in particular stood out to me. One, he talks about how Dr. Hill’s character was basically forced in because David Gale really wanted to return. This makes a lot of sense since as I said above, there really isn’t any purpose for Hill to be here. The real kicker for me though was the original idea which had West performing his experiments under the White House! Apparently they had this idea where West was going to create a super President of sorts by taking the brain of Kennedy and the heart of somewhere and else and so on. How amazing does that sound?! I sincerely hope that is a movie we get some day.

I could blabber on and on about this release. It’s surely a contender for best of the year, right up there with Pieces and The Mutilator. Instead of doing that though, I’m going to tell you to stop reading this and go look for a copy. This is a limited release and could end up being hard to find. At the time of writing this there are still some available on Amazon. Yes, they’re about $50, but it’s worth it. Trust me, better to get this for $50 now than try in a year from now when people are selling it on eBay for an even higher amount.

Bride of Re-Animator is now available on Blu-ray from Arrow Video. To order your copy from Amazon click here!

The post [Blu-ray Review] ‘Bride of Re-Animator’ is Worth Re-Animating Over and Over Again appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Now, how about we Date. Mate. Re-Animate.

Synopsis:
The success of Stuart Gordon’s hit horror-comedy Re-Animator meant that a sequel was all but inevitable. The resulting follow-up, Bride of Re-Animator – this time helmed by director Brian Yuzna (Society, Return of the Living Dead III) – would prove that there was a good deal more life (and death) left in the story of Dr Herbert West and his ghoulish exploits.
 
It has been eight months since the bloody massacre at Miskatonic Medical School. Unperturbed by the disastrous outcome of his previous meddling with the dead, Dr West (again played by Jeffrey Combs) continues his research into the phenomenon of re-animation; only this time, he plans to create life – starting with the heart of his young protégé Dan’s dearly deceased, Meg Halsey. Surely nothing could go wrong?
 
With special effects master Screaming Mad George (the man behind the infamous “shunting” sequence of Society) on hand to contribute a host of characteristically weird and wonderful creations, Bride of Re-Animator is a more than worthy successor to Stuart Gordon’s original cult classic.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED 3-DISC LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS

• Brand new 2K restorations of the Unrated and R-Rated versions of the film, approved by director Brian Yuzna
• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentations
• Original Stereo 2.0 audio (uncompressed PCM on the Blu-rays)
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Digipak packaging featuring newly commissioned artwork by Gary Pullin
• Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by festival programmer Michael Blyth
• Re-Animator: Dawn of the Re-Animator – the official comic book prequel to the original Re-Animator

DISC 1 [BLU-RAY] & DISC 2 [DVD] – UNRATED VERSION

• Brand new 2K restoration of the Unrated version
• Brand new audio commentary with director Brian Yuzna
• Audio commentary with Brian Yuzna, star Jeffrey Combs, special effects co-ordinator Thomas Rainone and the effects team including John Buechler, Mike Deak, Robert Kurtzman, Howard Berger and Screaming Mad George
• Audio commentary with stars Jeffrey Combs and Bruce Abbott
• Brian Yuzna Remembers Bride of Re-Animator – brand new featurette in which the director looks back at the making of the first Re-Animator sequel
• Splatter Masters: The Special Effects Artists of Bride of Re-Animator – brand new FX featurette with a wealth of behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with Robert Kurtzman of KNB, Screaming Mad George, Tony Doublin and John Buechler
• Getting Ahead in Horror – archive making-of featurette
• Meg is Re-Animated – deleted scene with behind-the-scenes footage
• Carnival Sequence – the cast and crew discuss this excised sequence

DISC 3 [BLU-RAY] – R-RATED VERSION – LIMITED EDITION EXCLUSIVE

• Brand new 2K restoration of the R-Rated version
• Behind-the-Scenes Reel

‘RE-ANIMATOR: DAWN OF THE RE-ANIMATOR’ – LIMITED EDITION EXCLUSIVE

• Perfect-bound booklet containing Re-Animator: Dawn of the Re-Animator, the 1992 comic prequel to Stuart Gordon’s original Re-Animator, reprinted in its entirety

The post Arrow Video Releases Full Specs on ‘Bride of Re-Animator’ Blu-ray! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

I was fortunate enough to be able to take a few minutes of Peterson’s time to chat about Halloween, horror, and some other fun and spooky topics. Hope you enjoy!

If you were to curate your own Movie Macabre of films that came out in the last 10 or so years, which titles would really stand out for you?

Oh god! Well, I like the ‘Paranormal Activity’ movies, although I think the first one is the best. I also really liked ‘Shaun of the Dead’! I was also a big fan of ‘Deathgasm’ and ‘Housebound’. I like when horror movies have some sort of humor in them. I like the rollercoaster of funny then scary and back and forth.

We know that Elvira loves Halloween but does Cassandra Peterson have the same level of passion for the spookiest of holidays? What’s Halloween like for Cassandra at your house?

Well, first of all, I grew up with my family celebrating Halloween as the biggest holiday, which was kind of bizarre back in the lat 50’s and early 60’s. Halloween wasn’t as big of a deal. It was just kids going out to trick or treat. But the reason that it was so big in my house was that my mother and my aunt owned a costume shop. So, from the time I was in second grade, I was the “costume dressing up-ist freak” you ever met! I was SO into Halloween! And I was the luckiest kid in the neighborhood because my aunt and mom would show me the most awesome costume of whatever was the most popular TV show that was on, like Miss Kitty from “Gunsmoke”, which I wore and entered a contest and won a $500 gift certificate. Later on, it was “I Dream of Jeannie” and Ginger from “Gilligan’s Island”.

So, my mom and my aunt would show me these awesome costumes while all the other kids were wearing these really dopey plastic packaged jobs from Sears. So I was the “Queen of Costumes”! People were always wondering what I was going to be wearing, you know? So, no, this started for me with Halloween being the biggest deal in the world. It continued to be my whole life. I would start putting my Halloween costume together in, oh god, Spring! I was born and raised on Halloween!

Can you tell us what you’ll be wearing this Halloween or is that a surprise?

Oh no, I can tell you right now what I’ll be wearing! I’ll be wearing “Elvira, Mistress of the Dark”! [laughs] It’s the only Halloween costume I’ve worn in 35 years! I never get to wear anything else because I always, always, always work on Halloween and I’ve never had a Halloween where I didn’t have a job. So, it’s my only costume. I always talk about if I could just wear something else for a change. I had a fantasy about it on one of my recent Movie Macabre shows where I was dreaming and I saw myself dressed as a nun, dressed in a burqa, dressed in a mumu with flip flops… Something more comfortable! [laughs]

It’s wonderful to hear that your passion for Halloween hasn’t abated after all these years!

Oh yeah! And besides that, because of Halloween connection, I got really into building the Aurora model kits of Dracula, the Mummy, the Wolfman, all that. I was just so into the horror genre. For me, it was all about Halloween, the spooky, the scary. When horror movies that I was allowed to go see, usually with Vincent Price, I was the the one sitting in the front row. I’ve been into it since I was seven or right years old.

What are some of the most entertaining horror characters that stand out for you?

Vincent Price was my number one idol. I was cutting out pictures of him and putting them on my wall. So his characters, like Dr. Phibes, or anyone that he played in the Roger Corman films that were loosely based on Edgar Allen Poe… Oh! I was a huge Poe fan, too! I had poems and books of Poe.

I did like the Universal characters. I loved the Mummy and the Invisible Man I thought was amazing and, of course, I loved Bela Lugosi’s Dracula. I was raised on the classic movie monsters. Those are the ones I still associate with Halloween and “scary”. I like the whole nostalgia throwback thing.

They all have a charm and elegance to them that I feel like we haven’t seen in horror in a while.

Yeah, there are some great characters that are lasting like Freddy and Jason, but I don’t think they’re as much fun because they’re a little hardcore. They’re great, don’t get me wrong! I love them! But for me? I like the classic horror.

It’s wonderful that you mentioned how Vincent Price was a big idol for you. Do you think there’s anyone today that could take up that kind of mantle?

Wow! Oh man, that’s a tough one! This is like taking a test! [laughs]

I can of looked for that person when I made ‘Haunted Hills’. The character I had in mind for the villain was Vincent Price, period. We were looking at other actors, like Richard Chamberlain, who has an elegant style but isn’t known for horror movies, so I thought he’d make a great choice. Also, believe it or not, Mick Jagger. And then we ended up with Richard O’Brien and I have to say that he ended up being the perfect pick. I wouldn’t really compare him to Vincent Price but he had that whole vibe down. He was elegant, he was English, although Vincent wasn’t English, and I think Richard and I really captured that feeling.

I don’t know if I can think of anyone else that could compare to Vincent Price. I love Bruce Campbell but it’s not the same vibe.

What about you? Do you have anyone you can think of?

Well, I asked the same question on Twitter recently and Stuart Gordon replied that Jeffrey Combs of ‘Re-Animator’ already has taken up that mantle.

Yeah, that’s a great suggestion! He does have that kind of vibe. That is a good one, yeah! He’s such a hard one to replace. He was so unique.

I actually not only met him but we became pretty good friends. He was such a wonderful guy. So funny and delightful and so interesting! I could sit and listen to him talk for hours without getting bored or talking back. So, his loss to me was kind of a double whammy. The loss of an actor and the loss of a friend.

His last performance in ‘Edward Scissorhands’ was just so perfect, so beautiful. What a perfect movie for him to go out on. He played this mad scientist but gentle kind man.

He played a mad scientist with the best of intentions, man with a good heart.

Absolutely.

What’s coming up for both you and Elvira?

Well, right now I’m involved with doing my show at Knott’s Berry Farm, which is the largest Halloween venue in the country. The show this year is called “Elvira’s Asylum”, which features singing, comedy, and dancing. So I’m performing four to five nights every week until the 31st. After that, I have Comikaze, which I’m involved in.

And I have a television show that I’m going to be on called “Halloween Wars” on the Food Network and it’s really funny. It has some of the best people in the business when it comes to horror and Halloween. It’s a contest for them to build scenery and food. It’s really awesome and I’m happy to be a judge on that and it’s completely fitting with my appearance.

I also just went to Vegas for the unveiling of my slot machine, which is a pretty freaking state-of-the-art awesome slot machine. It’s going to also entail clips of classic horror films in the slot machine when you hit a bonus. So you’ll see a clip with me commenting on it, which I think is just so awesome!

I’m not a gambler at all…

Neither am I.

…But that might get me to spend a few dollars! [laughs]

I know, right?! I think people are going to come out of the woodwork to play this thing. It’s 10ft tall and it’s just awesome. You can’t imagine. I’ve never seen anything like that.

Sounds like you’re going nonstop!

I definitely am!

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me! It’s been a pleasure and an honor!

Thank you!

The post Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, Talks Horror and Halloween! [Interview] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

At this point you probably know what From Beyond is all about. Crawford Tillinghast (Combs) and Dr. Edward Pretorius (Ted Sorel) develop the resonator, a device that allows humans to see beyond what is consider to be the normal perceptible reality. Good news, the resonator works! Bad news, the resonator works! As plenty of movies have taught us over the years, when humans play around with science too much, the results are often disastrous. Such is precisely the case in From Beyond.

Of course I loved this movie. Combs is splendid as always and it’s kind of fun to see how his character of Tillinghast compares to his more famous Herbert West from the Re-Animator films. Despite the two characters playing in the same ballpark, they’re both actually quite different and complex in their own ways. Tillinghast is more about doing the right thing rather than putting science first.

Barbara Crampton’s Dr. Katherine McMichaels on the other hand, was a bit more reminiscent of West. McMichaels is willing to go to great lengths in the name of science. Even when she knows the risks she can’t help but let her curiosity get the best of her. I may have been most impressed with Crampton out of everyone. Perhaps this is partly due to the fact that I’ve always considered her to be the weak link of Re-Animator. I’ve been a huge fan of her in everything else however, and From Beyond is certainly no different.

Stuart Gordon must love to get messy. His films always seem to be oozing with so much goop. As a whole Gordon may be the director with the best use of practical effects and makeup. It’s not that From Beyond or any of his other films would rank as my top choice for use of practical effects, but he may be consistently the best over the course of his career. The whole sucking brains through the eye socket is just awesome. Logically that may just be the best way to get to someone’s brain when you think about it. Going through the skull? Ugh, too hard, too much work. Just rip out the eye and suck through the socket! Works like a charm!

The plus side to waiting so long to see a classic like From Beyond is that I now get to experience it for the first time on Blu-ray which is pretty terrific. The version I watched was the German release from OFDb Filmworks. I know the film did get the Scream Factory special treatment here in the US. From what I can tell both transfers on the US and German release look to be the same, at least as far as the specs are concerned. I can’t speak for sure on behalf of the Scream Factory release, but I am very happy to say the OFDb release looked fantastic. From Beyond is a pretty colorful movie, especially when the resonator is in action and you see a lot of bold, vivid light. This all looks wonderful in HD.

The special features on this release, just like with the Scream Factory release, are loaded. From what I can tell every feature that is on the Scream Factory release is included on the OFDb release, plus there are a few more tossed in. The German release has three commentaries – one with Gordon, Crampton, Combs and producer Brian Yuzna; a second with Dennis Paoli; and then finally a third in German with Kai Naumann and Marcus Stiglegger. The extra bonus materials included on the German release are an additional 20 minute feature on the special effects (Monsters & Slime), an additional interview with Crampton (The Doctor is In), an interview with Paoli (Gothic Adaptation), an additional interview with Gordon and storyboards. These extra features could be included on the Scream Factory release, but I’m just going by what I was able to find online.

I may have been late to the party on From Beyond, but I think I can safely say most horror fans are going to want this one in their collection. Fortunately there looks to be a couple of good options out there to choose from. It doesn’t matter what region player you have or where you’re located in the world, you’ll be able to find at least one good version of From Beyond and that’s a very good thing.

From Beyond is now available on Blu-ray from Scream Factory in the US and Canada, OFDb Filmworks in German, Second Sight in the UK, Sidonis in France and Happinet in Japan.

The post [Blu-ray Review] ‘From Beyond’ Gets Messy! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Directed by Stuart Gordon and starring Jeffrey Combs, the film’s synopsis reads:

A group of scientists have developed the Resonator, a machine which allows whoever is within range to see beyond normal perceptible reality. But when the experiment succeeds, they are immediately attacked by terrible life forms.

There is no word on when the album will be released but this is a very cool title to get the vinyl treatment! If you haven’t seen From Beyond, you’re missing out on a really fucked up but fascinating 80’s gem. Definitely give it a shot!

"Something's… Coming…" #frombeyond #stuartgordon #hplovecraft #horror #waxworkrecords #vinyl #soundtrack

A photo posted by Waxwork Records (@waxworkrecords) on Aug 12, 2015 at 9:41pm PDT

The post Waxwork Records Announce ‘From Beyond’ Vinyl OST appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Lin Shaye and “Heroes’” Greg Grunberg star, while the likes of Joe Dante, John Landis, Mick Garris, Stuart Gordon, Adrienne Barbeau, and Adam Green cameo.

Also featured are Pat Healy (The Innkeepers, Cheap Thrills), Alex Essoe (Starry Eyes), Booboo Stewart (The Twilight Saga), Keir Gilchrist (It Follows), Noah Segan (Looper), Pollyannna McIntosh (The Woman), James Duval (Donnie Darko), Kristina Klebe (Halloween), Marc Senter (The Devil’s Carnival), Jose Pablo Cantillo (The Walking Dead), Grace Phipps (Dark Summer), Sam Witwer (Being Human), and Graham Skipper (Almost Human).

The ten shorts take place in the same small American town whose denizens are terrorized by ghouls, aliens, and killers one Halloween night. Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II, III and IV), Axelle Carolyn (Soulmate), Adam Gierasch (Night of the Demons), Andrew Kasch (Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy), Neil Marshall (The Descent), Lucky McKee (All Cheerleaders Die, The Woman), Mike Mendez (Big Ass Spider!), Dave Parker (The Hills Run Red), Ryan Schifrin (Abominable), John Skipp (Stay at Home Dad), and Paul Solet (Grace) are at the helm of Tales of Halloween, which follows in the footsteps of recent horror anthologies like V/H/S and The ABCs of Death.

The post The Trailer For ‘Tales Of Halloween’ Looks Awesome! #SDCC appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

In the 1987 classic, a group of people stop by a mansion during a storm and discover two magical toy makers, and their haunted collection of dolls.

Here’s what he had to say about the new release.

What are your thoughts on Scream releasing Dolls? Was it something you had been waiting for?

I’m so happy it’s available on Blu-ray now. There was so much work that was involved, detail I mean. A lot of the animation is more noticeable.

Were all of the dolls made specifically for the movie?

Most of them were, a lot were characters. There were a lot that were just for background purposes. One time both of my daughters are on set and my youngest asked “Are all these dolls bad?” and I said, “Yeah, they all are” and she asked “Even this one?” and pointed to the doll with the white buttons. I asked if she wanted that one and she nodded so I told her, “That one isn’t bad, it just fell in with the wrong crowd.” So she took it home and named it Violet. She still has it.

Are you hoping to get any other films you worked on released through Scream?

[Excitedly] I just heard that next year they are going to be releasing Robot Jox! So I’m pretty happy about that, there is a lot of animation in that one too. That’s sort of an unknown one.

So what have you been working on lately? Any hope for a new movie soon?

Well, I’ve been doing a lot of work on the Re-Animator musical, we are going to be in Las Vegas coming up in January. I’m hoping to take it on a tour, we may be in New York again.

Any chance Jeffery Combs would do a special appearance?

[Laughs] No, he’s not in it. He still does a lot of acting in films.

Are you planning any other stage adaptations? From Beyond maybe?

Actually, I’ve been told to do a From Beyond musical before. Right now I want to focus on Re-Animator but it would definitely be interesting to do something for From Beyond.

Obviously you are known for your great adaptations of HP Lovecraft stories. Is there one in particular that you are still trying to get made?

I do have a script for “The Thing on the Doorstep” and I’d love to get that made. There just isn’t money for it right now.

Have you considered crowdfunding?

I have but I think it’s just too big of a movie to raise money for. We would like to get a wide release of it when/if it gets made. Hopefully one day.

Re-Animator is your most well-known movie in the genre but what do you consider your most successful?

Well people usually forget that I was involved with Honey, I Shrunk The Kids. It was the biggest success financially and I consider it a sort of horror movie. There are giant bugs and a mad scientist type character. It’s more of a family friendly horror. Even Honey, I Blew up the Kid has a Godzilla aspect to it, and then there is the question of how to stop a giant baby.

I never thought of them as horror movies but you make a good point. The ant scene still haunts me today.

[Laughs]

To wrap up, where can we find you in the near future?

Well, I’ll be in Las Vegas in January for Re-Animator and in March I will be in Ohio at Horror Hound with my wife. You should come introduce yourself!

Thank you! I will. Thanks for taking the time to speak with me and I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for another movie.

Thank you, me too!

In addition to being an awesome filmmaker, Stuart Gordon is also the nicest guy in the world. I’ll be going out to see him in March for HorrorHound but in the meantime I must read “The Thing on the Doorstep” and get out to see Re-Animator the Musical. Has anyone seen it? And here is the trailer for Robot Jox, apparently heading to Scream! Factory next year.

The post [Interview] Stuart Gordon On ‘Dolls,’ ‘Re-Animator’ and More! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Prepare for battle when Scream Factory! unleashes Start Gordon’s awesome 1990 Robot Jox on Blu-ray next summer!

The film, which I actually saw in theaters(!), “follows Achilles, one of the “robot jox” who pilot giant mechanical machines that fight international battles to settle territorial disputes in a dystopian post-apocalyptic world. It is post-World War III. War is outlawed. In its place, are matches between large Robots called Robot Jox. These matches take place between two large superpowers over disputed territories. The main character Achilles is a pilot in one of the large Robots. The plot revolves around him and a match for the state of Alaska.”

Gary Graham, Anne-Marie Johnson, and Paul Koslo star in the film that was actually shot in 1987 but delayed due to Charles Band’s Empire Pictures going bankrupt.

The post The Great ‘Robot Jox’ Getting Blu-ray Release!!! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Re-Animator: The Musical has announced that it will be back for a Halloween run this October at the Steve Allen Theater in Hollywood, CA. The show will run October 17th through November 2nd, Fridays through Sundays at 8pm. There will also be preview shows on October 10th through 12th. Admission is $25 with the previews being $20. Tickets can be purchased here.

Head below for a lengthy description of the event, including details on cast and crew.

Re-Animator the Musical” tells the story of Herbert West, a brilliant young medical student who has created a glowing green serum that can bring the dead back to life. What should be a medical breakthrough results in hideous monstrosities and ghastly consequences. “I guess he just wasn’t fresh enough,” is West’s constant refrain in his quest for fresh subjects. Graham Skipper, who won a Best New Performer Award at the New York Musical Theater Festival for his crowd-pleasing turn, returns as the demented young genius.

And operatic Jesse Merlin is back as Dr. Carl Hill who loses his head for Meg, the dean’s beautiful daughter, only to actually lose it at the hands of Herbert West. But thanks to the glowing re-agent, Dr. Hill is still able to take his curtain call with his head tucked underneath his arm.

Also returning from the original cast are (in alphabetical order) Cynthia Carle, Brian Gillespie, Marlon Grace, and Liesel Hanson playing an assortment of doctors, nurses, and rampaging zombies.

New to the cast and Los Angeles are Darren Ritchie (veteran of five Broadway shows, including “Dracula” and “Little Shop of Horrors”) as Dan Cain, the handsome young medical student (and West’s hapless roommate) in love with the dean’s beautiful daughter, now played by vivacious newcomer Jessica Howell (recently on Showtime’s “Masters of Sex”). Ken Hudson Campbell, familiar to many for saving the world with Bruce Willis in “Armageddon,” plays the doomed Dean of the medical school whom West transforms into a mindless zombie.

Stuart Gordon, the director and co-writer of “H.P. Lovecraft’s Re-Animator,” the cult film on which the musical is based, has joined his fearless producing partner Dean Schramm to prove that anything that can be done in a movie can be a hundred times more astonishing live on stage. Gordon spent fifteen years as the founder and artistic director of the Organic Theater of Chicago, where he co-created the original production of “Bleacher Bums,” and produced and directed the world premiere of David Mamet’s “Sexual Perversity in Chicago.” Gordon recently co-created and directed the long-running and critically acclaimed ”Nevermore” with “Re-Animator” film star Jeffrey Combs as Edgar Allan Poe that is now touring the country.

Mark Nutter is composer and lyricist and his cheerfully disturbing songs have been compared to Tom Lehrer. His previous stage credits include the international hit “The Bicycle Men”; “Christmas Smackdown” (created with the equally demented Cynthia Carle): and “Wild Men.” He’s also known for his work on “3rd Rock From the Sun” and “Saturday Night Live.” His CD “Twisted Songs for Twisted Sophisticates” has been banned from the airwaves.

Special effects are from by the same team that created them for the “Re-Animator” movie: Tony Doublin, John Naulin, and John Beuchler. They all won LA Critics’ and LA Weekly Awards for their mind-boggling illusions. And the blood will flow so freely that the first row will be once again designated as a “splash zone” – so bring your raincoats!

Laura Fine Hawkes, who designed the almost-as-bloody “Lieutenant of Inishmore” at the Taper, will provide the creepy sets, Joe Kucharski the moldering costumes and Jeff Ravitz the cadaverous lighting. Stage manager Michael Lemek will be the master of the mayhem.

“Re-Animator the Musical” was developed and premiered at the Steve Allen Theater under the artistic direction of Amit Itelman who also founded Trepany House.

The post ‘Re-Animator: The Musical’ Announces Return Dates And Venue appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.