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I’ve been a fan of Dave Parker since I first saw his zombie flick The Dead Hate the Living way back in 1999 (which seems like a lifetime ago at this point). A lot of people didn’t enjoy TDHtL as much as I did, but if you were horror literate enough to pick up all the little homages and in-jokes, it was a lot of fun—and Parker was certainly comfortable behind the camera.

In the intervening decade, the filmmaker has worked on a lot of behind-the-scenes horror stuff—and I was starting to wonder if we’d ever see another feature length film with Parker’s name attached as director. So I’m sure you can imagine how excited I was when a little film called The Hills Run Red started generating buzz and I learned that Parker was the guy sitting in the director’s chair. Now that I’ve finally seen the film, I still think Parker has the potential to be one of the genre’s shining lights, but The Hills Run Red isn’t as good as I’d hoped it would be.

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I’ve been looking forward to Dave Parker’s The Hills Run Red for awhile now. I like Parker’s earlier work (I’m in the minority, but I think The Dead Hate the Living is a good zombie flick and was honestly ahead of its time), the screenplay was written by one of my favorite authors (David J. Schow–one of splatterpunk’s founding fathers) and I’m always interested in films/books that revolve around movies and novels that make people do crazy things (e.g. Carpenter’s Cigarette Burns episode of Masters of Horror and his film In the Mouth of Madness). So, I’m pretty excited to finally bring you the trailer (courtesy of IGN) and some other info about the film’s September debut.

The trailer speaks for itself. You can check it out below (or peep the high-res version here). I’ll say that finally seeing has made me more eager to view the finished product.

And when might that happen? Mark September 29th on your calendar because that’s when you’ll be able to grab the DVD. The disc is set to retail for $19.98 and will feature the film, a commentary track with director Parker, screenwriter David Schow, and producer Robert Meyer Burnett. The disc will also come with a featurette entitled It’s Not Real Until You Shoot It: The Making of The Hills Run Red.

September is shaping up to be a great month for DVDs.

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.