The Horror Geek – News, Rants and Reviews From The Horror Geek!

And the drought of interesting horror news continues…I really hope this isn’t how it’s going to be til Christmas. I guess it does give me a chance to catch up on reviews, though.

Anyway, it looks like the British horror film Mum & Dad is going to be getting a theatrical release here come May 9th, courtesy of Revolver Entertainment. This will be almost six months after the film’s UK debut (December 26th)–where it will be that country’s first film to appear in theaters, on VOD, DVD, and available for rental all at the same time. Whether that turns out to be more interesting than the actual film remains to be seen…

If you’re unsure as to what the film’s about, here’s a blurb from the official site:

Mum & Dad, the impressive debut feature by writer-director Steven Sheil, is one of the most disturbing Brit-shockers to emerge in recent years.

When Lena, a young Polish immigrant working as an office cleaner at Heathrow Airport, misses her last bus home, she accepts an offer of help from friendly co-worker Birdie, who lives nearby with her ‘adoptive’ parents.

Knocked unconscious after arriving at the house, Lena soon finds herself imprisoned in a suburban House of Horrors, a living nightmare of abuse, torture and murder. Designated a ‘Mummy’s Girl’, Lena’s only options appear to be to become part of the family – and join Mum and Dad in their insanity – or die.

Lionsgate has set a release date for Saw V–clear January 20th on your dayplanner so you can rush out to pick up either the DVD or Blu-ray disc of Jigsaw’s latest adventure. The film will be available in two different ways: a traditional Unrated Widescreen edition or the more impressive Limited Collector’s Edition box (apparently not unlike the one from Saw IV according to the guys over at Bloody-Disgusting).

Extras on the disc include: Audio commentary with director David Hackl and assistant director Steve Webb, Audio commentary with producers Mark Burg and Oren Koules and executive producers Peter Block and Jason Constantine, featurette on The Pendulum, Cube, Coffin and Fatal Five Traps, Slicing the Cube: Editing the Cube Trap featurette, along with the theatrical trailer.

I guess the lesson some people will learn from this is that if you put a turd in a really pretty box, it’s still a friggin’ turd. I’m apparently in the minority though, because Saw V has raked in over 56 million dollars at the box office to date.

It’s Black Friday and the official start of the holiday season, so horror-related news that’s actually interesting is in pretty short supply. Because of this, I’m forced to bring you updates on Uwe Boll’s latest project, The Storm, courtesy of the official press release from Brightlight Pictures. And in the spirit of honesty, Boll stories allow me to post the photo of Uwe flipping off the world–which is what I imagine him doing whenever someone buys a ticket to one of his films…

According to the good folks at Brightlight, principal photography has already begun on The Storm, an original property written by Tim McGregor and starring Luke Perry, Lauren Holly, and Steve Bacic. The press release had this to say about the plot and the joy of landing an A lister like Boll to direct:

In the film a stranger named Silas (Luke Perry) emerges from a devastating storm seeking refuge with Tom (Steve Bacic) and Gillian (Lauren Holly) on their farm. As they struggle to deal with the upheaval and disaster left in the wake of the storm, Silas may be the only one who can help Tom, Gillian, and their young son survive. But as the family comes to terms with what they have lost in the storm, they are threatened by a danger that could prove even more catastrophic than the forces of nature.

“THE STORM is action-packed, suspenseful, and scary,” says producer Shawn Williamson. “We’re glad to have Uwe at the helm and we are very excited about this cast: the Silas role is an interesting departure for Luke and Lauren is a sensational Gillian. I’m also very happy to be working with Steve again,” he said, referring to his and Bacic’s joint efforts on The Guard, which recently wrapped shooting its second season for Global.

Brightlight Pictures has collaborated with Uwe Boll on a dozen movies and the slate includes the box office-success House of the Dead; Alone in the Dark, starring Christian Slater; Postal; Seed; BloodRayne and its sequel; Tunnel Rats; Far Cry; and In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, starring Jason Statham.

THE STORM films in and around Vancouver, BC until mid-December. E1 will distribute theatrically in Canada. Event Film is handling international sales.

I love the line about the “box office successes” of Uwe’s career–that’s comedy gold when you follow up a statement like that with a list of films that includes House of the Dead and In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale. I guess “success” in this case means “someone actually paid to see it and couldn’t get their money back.”

Okay, no more bagging on Uwe–it’s like boxing a dude with no arms at this point.

I was gonna post this last week, since I spoke about it briefly in the movie skinny segment of my weekly appearance on The Big O & Dukes show, but there wasn’t much say other than “writer-producer Frank Spotnitz wants to do a third and final X-Files movie.” Fortunately, Bloody-Disgusting had a chat with the man himself so you can check that out to supplement this.

Spotnitz is out doing the press tour for the December 2nd DVD release of The X-Files: I Want to Believe. Naturally, the question of a third film is one that almost everyone seems to want answered and Spotnitz has now stated several times that he’s interested in doing it. The good news is (after the fairly lackluster standalone I Want to Believe–which honestly felt better suited for Carter’s other series, Millennium) that if Fox gives the greenlight to do a third (and presumably final) movie, it will focus on the show’s 2012 doomsday date–when the alien colonization is set to commence. This is the film we fans have wanted to see for years, so hopefully it actually comes to fruition.

Spotnitz says Fox hasn’t decided one way or the other at this point–apparently waiting to see how I Want to Believe does on DVD before making any kind of decision. I Want to Believe made a disappointing 20 million dollars domestically, but went up against the juggernaut of The Dark Knight.

Head on over to B-D to read more of Spotnitz’s thoughts on the future of the franchise, why the last film didn’t perform as expected, and what it was like coming back to the world of Mulder and Scully after a long hiatus.

First off, Happy Thanksgiving. I took yesterday off from posting stuff (in case you didn’t notice the lack of updates) and I’m taking today off too. However, I wanted to pass along one thing for those of you who swing by–taking two days off made me feel oddly guilty.

One of my favorite annual lists is out–Brian Keene’s Top 10 Books of the Year. I read enough books to do a top 10 list of my own, but the problem is that I don’t read enough stuff from any given year to do it in the way Keene does it. I’m always late getting to books, so I’ll read something that came out in 2006 in 2008 or something like that, which makes the list sort of pointless. Brian is way more on the ball than I am.

I’ve not read everything on his list (I have read Severance Package and I’m about halfway done with Just After Sunset. I’ve got Lansdale’s latest in my pile, and I will be finding the David J. Schow book mentioned posthaste), but that’s the joy of the list for me–every year Keene manages to point out at least five things I either missed or was on the fence about. Hopefully some of you find it equally useful.

So, click here and check out what “The Zombie Guy” thought were the ten best books of 2008.

Good news this morning, as the folks over at DVDActive have posted official details for the release of Midnight Meat Train–including info on the extras and the release date. The grossly mishandled Ryuhei Kitamura/Clive Barker adaptation will be coming to DVD and Blu-ray on February 17th of next year.

Extras will include an Anatomy of a Murder- the Making of The Midnight Meat Train featurette, a World of Clive Barker featurette, and a Mahogany’s Bag feature. No clue what that last one is, and I’m disappointed that we’re getting “featurettes” (which generally mean “short and hastily thrown together”), but given the animosity generated between Lionsgate and Barker over the handling of this film, I guess I’ll be happy we’re getting anything at all.

Check out the pic above for a look at the cover art for the upcoming release. A special thanks to regular reader Clinton Enlow for pointing this news out to me, and congrats to my good friend Scott Weinberg for landing the coveted cover blurb spot!

I have to be honest, watching Julien Magnat’s 2002 French horror comedy Bloody Mallory was a very strange experience. To borrow the hoariest of critical clichés, it was “a rollercoaster ride” of a film-but not in the way you might imagine. Rather than being a thrill ride film like the rollercoaster line implies, it is instead an uneven piece of cinema that occasionally crests a hill into something truly unique and interesting, but then just as often drops off into the depths of pure mediocrity. There are moments in this film where you’ll wonder if you should even bother watching the rest of it-followed by instances where it hits a mark with such accuracy you’ll be disappointed that the rest of the movie is so dumb. Because of this, forming a critical opinion of Bloody Mallory is rough going-it’s not a great film by any stretch, but the good does generally outweigh the bad.

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I’ve been looking forward to checking out Alien Raiders since I first heard about it earlier this year. Now, it looks like I’m going to finally mark another goal off my “things to achieve in my lifetime” list come February 17th–when Alien Raiders makes its DVD debut courtesy of Warner Bros. Raw Feed imprint.

The film, which was produced by Blair Witch’s Daniel Myrick and directed by Ben Rock, is about a group of scientists/alien hunters trying to stop an alien invasion wherein the little green men take over their human hosts. Things culminate at a Hastings grocery store in Arizona, where the alien raiders take everyone inside hostage in order to find out who’s human and who isn’t before a complete colonization can begin.

Extras on the disc include:

• “Hidden Terror: The Making of Alien Raiders” – An in-depth look at the “hidden among us” themes in the film
• “Blood, Sweat and Fears: The Special Effects of Alien Raiders“- Behind the scenes look at creating the gory effects for the alien creatures in the film
• “Tape #9 Sterling Explains Alien” – Hand-held camera footage of Sterling (Ford) detailing the physiology of the alien parasites as well as her first meeting with Ritter
• “Tape #12 Spookie’s Job” – Hand-held camera footage of Spookie (Philip Newby) explaining how he obtained his “talent” for spotting aliens
• “Whitney Cam” – Postings from Whitney (Streets)’s blog after the Buck Lake incident
• Raw Feed trailers

Variety is reporting that French filmmaker Pascal Laugier (Martyrs) has signed on to write and direct Details for Paramount Vantage.

Based on a story by China Mieville, Details focuses on a girl who “disappears after awakening supernatural forces that inhabit the random patterns of everyday objects.”

Details makes for the second big project Laguier has joined since Martyrs started earning critical buzz in the horror community. The filmmaker is also attached to write and direct the Hellraiser remake for Dimension Extreme.

I haven’t read the Mieville story, but the concept sounds pretty cool–sort of like an updated version of Barker’s Weaveworld.

For some odd reason, I never got around to writing an official review of Ryan Nicholson’s throwback slasher film, Gutterballs. I did have this to say about it in one of my old Geeking Out blogs over at MySpace, however:

“With a title like Gutterballs, you could be forgiven if you thought I was going to talk about some weird comedy about bowling (maybe some kind of low-budget Kingpin or something). Instead, Gutterballs is a new slasher film from Ryan Nicholson (who made the entertaining stalk-and-kill flick Live Feed a few years back). Paying homage to the ’80s slasher flicks (which was the heyday of the form) Gutterballs is like a fond trip down memory lane. After a brutal rape happens at a late night bowling alley, a masked assassin (known hilariously enough as “the Bowling Bag Killer”–no doubt because he wanders around with a bowling bag on his head) begins offing the teens involved–in some truly creative and brutal ways. Filled to the brim with ’80s slasher film prerequisites (nudity, sleaze, and gore), Gutterballs is essential viewing for anyone who remembers the days when horror cinema was synonymous with masked slashers instead of torture porn. If Ryan Nicholson keeps making films like these, he’s going to become one of my favorite horror filmmakers.”

The good news is that Gutterballs is now getting a legitimate DVD release courtesy of Danger After Dark Films and TLA releasing. The film will hit retailers on January 27th of next year. No word on extras yet, but you can check out the provocative cover art (above). Old school ’80s slasher fans will definitely want to check this one out.