Movies
Get Your Classic ‘Puppet Master’ Fill With Full Moon’s ‘Blitzkrieg Massacre’ [Exclusive Trailer]
The first in Full Moon’s new Bunker of Blood film series is none other than Puppet Master: Blitzkrieg Massacre, which arrives on Amazon Prime and Full Moon Streaming tomorrow, September 25th.
“It’s an all-out assault to the senses that makes A Clockwork Orange‘s “Ludivico Technique” look like outtakes from Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood!”
With the “remake” out now, you can get your classic Puppet Master fill in this sequel that takes place in an unknown dystopian future, where a drifter with an unusually high tolerance for pain is held captive in a horrific hospital by The Circle of Psycho Surgeons, a clandestine crew of M.D.’s (that’s medical deviants) who are experimenting with human suffering.
Suddenly, our shackled hero hears the call of The Gore Collector, a sadistic curator of carnage who is well past his prime and now seeks an heir to take over his evil operation. Escaping from the lurid lab, the drifter enters the underground lair of The Gore Collector – there the perverse programmer pops in a vile videotape and begins the process of trying to warp the man’s mind with what they’re calling “some of the goriest and most gruesome moments from Full Moon’s iconic film franchises.” It’s hard to argue as this exclusive trailer is blood-soaked insanity!
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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