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

Hellboy scribe Peter Briggs is a busy fellow these days. We’ve known about his Roman-soldier-fights-a-supernatural-monster flick Mortis Rex for over a year, but it was only last week that we learned he has another project in the pipeline. Said project is Panzer 88, a chiller set during the waning days of World War II. A German crew inside a King Tiger tank is fleeing Russia–but Stalin’s troops are the least of their worries because they’re being pursued by an ancient creature with bad intentions…

As a sucker for anything World War II and horror, Panzer 88 has shot way up on the chart of “movies I’m looking forward to this year”. Details on the project have been pretty scarce–a plot blurb and a press release announcing that Briggs would direct and Gary Kurtz would produce–but my colleague Alison Nastasi scored an exclusive chat with Briggs that reveals what we can expect from the finished movie. I was excited about the project before–now I’m eagerly anticipating it after hearing Briggs discuss what he has in store.

If that weren’t cool enough, the interview also features two previously unseen pieces of Briggs’ storyboards for the film.

I won’t spoil the interview for you–but if you like monster movies, World War II, horror films about guys trapped in a very isolate locale, I think you’re going to be excited about this film.

Click the link to check out the full interview over at Screamstress.

Lionsgate has a disturbing new trend happening with their releases. The company’s never been bashful about putting horror movies in theaters, but over the past couple of years they’ve “dumped” some films rather unceremoniously onto a tiny number of screens (to fulfill the theatrical release part of the contract, one would guess) with no promotion and then whisked them away to DVD. In the case of Ryuhei Kitamura’s Midnight Meat Train, this mishandling on Lionsgate’s part sucked. One could make a similar argument for Joel Schumacher’s Blood Creek. Schumacher’s film isn’t as good as Kitamura’s, but it certainly deserved a better fate than what it got.

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I love any horror film that manages to work Nazis into its plot, so I’m definitely looking forward to Shaun Robert Smith’s new 3D film The 4th Reich. The movie is currently in production, and to help spark interest in the project, Smith and company have posted a slew of new production stills and shared a full length synopsis for the project. Click here to become a Facebook fan of the film and check out the photos. Read on for the synopsis…

“June 1944, after the glorious victory on D-day, the armies of the combined allied forces begin their long push to Berlin with the aim of bringing down Hitler and the despised Nazi regime of the Third Reich.

A small brigade of soldiers from 3rd Infantry Division, under the command of the battle hardened Captain Bathurst embark on an ever darkening quest to liberate Europe. Fighting their way through the French countryside, villages and war ravaged towns. Each step discovering progressively strange battles and events until they reach an abandoned research facility where the true horror begins…“

No word yet on a release date, but I’ve got my eye on this project and will keep you updated as details come into focus.

I’ve been bringing you news about Joel Schumacher’s Nazi slasher film Blood Creek for the past few months. Lionsgate gave it the Midnight Meat Train theatrical release, dumping it in a few theaters before pulling it for DVD. Said DVD is set to arrive on January 19th, but to get you in the mood, the company has released a red-band trailer for the flick.

The quality isn’t the greatest, but the movie looks interesting. Of course, I’m a sucker for anything involving Nazis and the occult, so maybe you should check the clip out for yourself before taking my word for it.

As always, here’s the synopsis:

Acclaimed director Joel Schumacher (The Lost Boys, Tigerland) takes the reins of Blood Creek, a tense supernatural horror-thriller concerning two brothers who find themselves at the center of a terrifying occult experiment. In 1936, the Wollners, a German family living in Town Creek, West Virginia, are contacted by the Third Reich to host a visiting scholar. In need of money, they accept Professor Richard Wirth into their home, unaware of the Third Reich’s practices in the occult and Wirth’s real mission that will keep the family bound for decades to come. After 71 years, in 2007, Evan Marshall’s life has stalled at 25 years old when he is left without answers after his older brother Victor’s disappearance from a camping trip near Town Creek. When Victor returns one night, very much alive, and having escaped his captors, Evan asks no questions. At his brother’s request, he loads their rifles, packs their boat and follows Victor back to Town Creek on a mission of revenge that will test them in every possible way. The DVD features audio commentary with director Joel Schumacher.

Just a quick update since it’s a slow news day here in the wake of Thanksgiving. If you think back to last month, you’ll no doubt remember me talking about Martin Bechs’ Nazi-themed slasher flick Final Solution. I did stories here and over at Horror Squad about the poster and the teaser trailer. The film is shaping up nicely from what I can tell and I’ll be really interested in viewing the finished product when it releases next year.

In the meantime, the film’s official site is now updated. There’s still not a ton of content available for your perusal, but if you’re bored and looking to avoid the holiday shopping madness of Black Friday, poking around the new content will eat up a small chunk of your day.

Final Solution doesn’t have an official release date yet, but I’ll bring you more as Bach and company make the details available.

I’ve still yet to see Joel Schumacher’s Blood Creek–because Lionsgate decided to dump it in about a hundred second run theaters for a week before pulling it out of theaters completely. I’m not sure why they continue to follow this business model, but I find it incredibly annoying–and I have a hard time bringing myself to promote their releases because of it. However, you can’t skip talking about potentially interesting movies just because the distributor sucks. And that’s why you continue to see coverage of Lionsgate releases here.

Getting off that tangent, that’s the cover art for the DVD release of Blood Creek over on the left. The short description is that it’s a horror film with Nazis. The longer description can be read in the next paragraph…

Acclaimed director Joel Schumacher (The Lost Boys, Tigerland) takes the reins of Blood Creek, a tense supernatural horror-thriller concerning two brothers who find themselves at the center of a terrifying occult experiment. In 1936, the Wollners, a German family living in Town Creek, West Virginia, are contacted by the Third Reich to host a visiting scholar. In need of money, they accept Professor Richard Wirth into their home, unaware of the Third Reich’s practices in the occult and Wirth’s real mission that will keep the family bound for decades to come. After 71 years, in 2007, Evan Marshall’s life has stalled at 25 years old when he is left without answers after his older brother Victor’s disappearance from a camping trip near Town Creek. When Victor returns one night, very much alive, and having escaped his captors, Evan asks no questions. At his brother’s request, he loads their rifles, packs their boat and follows Victor back to Town Creek on a mission of revenge that will test them in every possible way. The DVD features audio commentary with director Joel Schumacher.

The film will be available on DVD this January 19th.

Don’t look now, but Nazi horror flicks are starting to pop up all over the place. We’ve already had Dead Snow, a few days back we got a teaser trailer for Martin Bech’s Final Solution, and yesterday saw the announcement that Joel Schumacher’s Blood Creek is finally coming to DVD on January 19th.

Blood Creek has had a long and winding road to release–it’s suffered title changes, delays, and then got the Midnight Meat Train treatment from Lionsgate earlier this year (meaning they dumped it in a few theaters so it could die a quick theatrical death), but maybe it’ll find an appreciative audience at long last on DVD.

Here’s the plot breakdown:

Acclaimed director Joel Schumacher (The Lost Boys, Tigerland) takes the reins of Blood Creek, a tense supernatural horror-thriller concerning two brothers who find themselves at the center of a terrifying occult experiment. In 1936, the Wollners, a German family living in Town Creek, West Virginia, are contacted by the Third Reich to host a visiting scholar. In need of money, they accept Professor Richard Wirth into their home, unaware of the Third Reich’s practices in the occult and Wirth’s real mission that will keep the family bound for decades to come. After 71 years, in 2007, Evan Marshall’s life has stalled at 25 years old when he is left without answers after his older brother Victor’s disappearance from a camping trip near Town Creek. When Victor returns one night, very much alive, and having escaped his captors, Evan asks no questions. At his brother’s request, he loads their rifles, packs their boat and follows Victor back to Town Creek on a mission of revenge that will test them in every possible way. The DVD features audio commentary with director Joel Schumacher.

Next to Darth Vader and Hans Gruber, the Nazis are arguably the greatest villains in cinematic history. They’ve tried to clone Hitler, they’ve experimented with the occult, they ran the concentration camps, and they’ve even come back from the dead as zombies. Now, they’re set to invade slasher film territory with Martin Bech’s The Final Solution.

As a sucker for all things Nazi, I’m looking forward to this film. Dread Central got an early look at the poster (pictured above) and a lengthy plot synopsis for the film, which stars Maja Mae, Caspar Jexley Fomsgaard, Behruz Banissi, Dennis Haladyn, and Line Ystergaard.

Check out the synopsis below and then swing by the official website for the film. The first trailer is set to debut later today. I’ll bring it to you as soon as it goes up.

During the second World War in Nazi occupied Denmark, local fishermen helped Jews flee to the neutral grounds of Sweden. The trip was not cheap and came at an even higher price for the Landau family who where forced to leave their youngest daughter Emma behind. Here she would be hidden by her mothers friend, waiting for a chance to follow her family.

The Nazis employed fishermen of their own to ferry the fleeing Jews to a remote and hidden Extermination Camp deep in the dark forests of Sweden. This became the fate of Emma’s entire family.

As time passed, Emma grew up watching the Nazis lose the war, the powers in Europe shift and her mothers friend pass away. Never getting any news about her family’s fate, she decides to follow their trail and uncover what happened to them in Sweden. But what she and her friends found was evil beyond their wildest imagination.