Movies
‘Winchester’ Clips Chime at Midnight, Reconstruct the Ghosts’ Horrors
Lionsgate and CBS Films’ Winchester: The House That Ghosts Built stars Academy Award winner Helen Mirren as firearm heiress Sarah Winchester who spent decades using her fortune to expand upon her home, and no one is quite sure why. The most common belief? She was cursed by spirits who demanded she never stop building.
Directed by Michael and Peter Spierig (Daybreakers, Predestination, Jigsaw), we were able to get our hands on a few clips, all of which help construct the story behind Winchester. This clip is probably the most relevant, as Sarah Winchester explains why she’s been building all of the rooms. The footage all the way at the bottom of this story also tours the labyrinth within, as well as gives us one of our very first scares. There’s also a great featurette that dissects the film based on the real-life haunted house.
In the film, “On an isolated stretch of land 50 miles outside of San Francisco sits the most haunted house in the world. Built by Sarah Winchester, (Mirren) heiress to the Winchester fortune, it is a house that knows no end. Constructed in an incessant twenty-four hour a day, seven day a week mania for decades, it stands seven stories tall and contains hundreds of rooms. To the outsider, it looks like a monstrous monument to a disturbed woman’s madness. But Sarah is not building for herself, for her niece (Sarah Snook) or for the brilliant Doctor Eric Price (Clarke) whom she has summoned to the house. She is building a prison, an asylum for hundreds of vengeful ghosts, and the most terrifying among them have a score to settle with the Winchesters…”
In theaters February 2, 2018, Winchester also stars Jason Clarke, Sarah Snook, and Angus Sampson.
A contemporary reimagining of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story Herbert West: Reanimator is on the way, and Deadline has unveiled the first look at the new Herbert West and the pathologist drawn to his orbit.
The original screenplay and storyline come from Jade Sandberg Wallis.
Michael Grossman (“The Originals”, “Pretty Little Liars”) directs.
The new images introduce star Joseph Morgan (“Vampire Diaries“), who plays “brilliant surgeon and scientist Herbert West, who is obsessed with creating a serum to reanimate the dead.” Katie Cassidy (Speed Demon) stars opposite as the pathologist with a troubled past who joins his efforts.
Together, they prove that conquering death may be the ultimate sin against life itself.
The film’s official synopsis: “As a child, Herbert West watches his father Peter reanimate his dead mother Judith in a secret basement lab — only for Judith to mortally wound Peter and nearly kill Herbert before Peter shoots her. The trauma leaves its mark on Herbert, but so does one final image: his mother’s finger, twitching after death. Thirty years later, Herbert West is a brilliant, secretive surgeon still chasing his father’s obsession.
“Pathologist Kate Locke arrives in town and is drawn into his orbit — first through a spark at a hospital fundraiser, then through his secret lab, where he reveals a serum capable of reanimating severed tissue. Kate, hiding a dark past of her own, is thrilled rather than horrified, and moves into West’s mansion to work alongside him. Their early experiments on a cadaver succeed only briefly. West concludes that dead tissue is the problem — they need something fresher.”
Supporting cast includes Scott Aiello, Ira J Amyx, Randall Newsome, Emma Reinagal, James D. Bryce, Kathryn A Bentley, Jack Lancaster, Amy Holland Pennell, John Pierson, Mindy Shaw, Eric Dean White, Tristan Wilder Hallet, Adrienne Lamping, Aaron Crippen, and Drew Patterson.
Makeup artist Jeff Lewis (“Star Trek: Voyager,” “Star Trek: Enterprise”) and cousin Roger Lewis are heading the production via their newly established Woodlake Entertainment.
Lovecraft’s short story, first serialized in Home Brew magazine in 1922, is the first among his works to mention the fictional Miskatonic University. It was most famously adapted into a 1985 horror movie from Stuart Gordon, starring Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West.
Herbert West: Reanimator is set in Alton, Illinois, where production is now underway.
Herbert West: Reanimator. Photo credit: Matt Lief Anderson
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