LITERAL REMAINS

Here’s a bloody cool photo from Halloween 2.

With Dead Man’s Hand Charles Band has pulled a rabbit out of his hat.

Several years ago, it seems you couldn’t escape a Full Moon picture.  Full Moon Productions, Full Moon Entertainment, whatever they were calling themselves, or Full Moon Features as I think they are called now.  They were home to Puppet Master, Demonic Toys, Dollman, what have you.  Some of their movies were pretty good, some weren’t; like any movie studio and production company really.  Honestly, I didn’t know they were still around until I saw Dead Man’s Hand.  Rest assured the world is still in balance:  Charles Band is still going strong.

Dead Man’s Hand concerns itself with a young man who inherits his uncle’s old vacant casino that is haunted by the ghost’s of the traitors his estranged uncle killed.  Sid Haig is the leader of the ghastly ghouls, and while he and Michael Berryman stand around with very little to do, their presensce classes the place up a bit.

If you’re at all familiar with Charles Band and Full Moon movies, you know what to expect.  Dead Man’s Hand is a good example of Band’s work, and, surprisingly, it’s not too bad of a low budget tale.  I liked it.  I thought it was a fun little movie.  The beginning was a little slow, but it wasn’t boring; it’s laughs made up for it, the cast was likable.  For its small scale, the movie actually looks pretty decent.

For as much as this movie cribs  The Shining, don’t expect anything of Kubrickian proportions.  But for an entertaining hour and a half, check it out, you could do a lot worse.

3 out of 5
the_novacula

Lance Henriksen is probably one of the coolest people walking the planet.  Thank God for Chiller and the reruns of Millenium.  The only person who could probably give Lance a run for the title of King of Cool (other than Ken Foree) is Danny Trejo.  Now the stars have aligned, the planets have positioned themselves, and someone has probably sacrificed a goat:  Henriksen and Trejo are onscreen together at last.  It’s an eye squinting showdown.

The movie is called Necessary Evil. It’s coming to DVD July 28th.

Here’s the plot y’all:

“Deborah Fielding, seeker of the truth, will stop at nothing to uncover the layers of corruption that lie deep within the walls of Edgewater Psychiatric Institute, even if the cost is her life. In a series of twisted events, this budding investigative journalist unlocks a Pandora’s Box of deceit. As she confronts uncertainties, authorities and demons from her past, she realizes they have been dwelling closer than she thought. She finds that her seemingly perfect life is nothing more than a perfect lie.”

Hans Holzer was hunting ghosts before Jay and Grant were even twinkles in their mothers’ eyes.  He will probably be best known for the Amityville case.

His obituary can be read at the Daily Telegraph.

Holzer’s field research, usually conducted with a “trance” medium and a Polaroid camera, led him to the conclusion that “the other side” (a phrase he is said to have invented) is very like this side, only with more red tape. The dead who wish to return to earth have to get permission from “spirit guides”, then wait in a queue and register with a clerk.

If you’ve never read any of his books, do yourself a favor and search them out.

It’s been many moons since I read Stephen King’s The Gunslinger, the first book of his Dark Tower series.  That’s the only book I’ve read of series.  But I might would be interested in seeing the film version of the epic fantasy.  Lost’s J.J. Abrams is on board.

He hopes to start on the script soon.  Watch the IGN interview here.

Kevin Grevioux, most notably of Underworld fame, has chosen as his first directorial effort The Pale Horsemen, based on his graphic novel.

Check up on all his latest endeavors.

One of the most entertaining films of the last few years, and probably Bruce Campbell’s best performance since the Evil Dead series, Bubba Ho-tep is finally getting a sequel, Bubba Nosferatu.  Sadly, Campbell won’t be back.  He is being replaced by Ron Perlman.

Read more here.  Thank ya, thank ya very much.

Surprise!  Saw VI hits theaters October 23rd.

Read the plot synopsis here.

I love werewolves.  Here’s to hoping this movie doesn’t suck.

 Real love and fate collide in a small town girl’s life as Amy falls in love with a mysterious drifter who brings with him a family curse and the unimaginable horror that follows. Bender, who shares the curse with his son, brings hell to Amy’s small town. As Dan and Amy’s love is put to the test, Thibodeaux, an ex-cop from another city who has witnessed Bender’s lust for blood firsthand, Sam, the local sheriff and an ex homicide detective, and John, a local farmer and Amy’s father, head for the ultimate showdown with Bender and the evil web of terror that he has drawn them all into.

Dark Moon Rising Trailer at the New Films International website.

And I quote from Amazon.com’s details of this film:

Based on true events! When a mother is pushed too far and undergoes shock therapy she breaks the realm of reality and discovers a history of family violence. An ancient spirit is awakened and no one is safe from the evil that is about to be unleashed.

While attending the Nashville Tattoo & Horror Festival a couple weeks ago, I caught a screening of this movie.  It showed at four in the afternoon; a panel of thirty-five years of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was at five.  My friends and I saw the movie.  We wished we hadn’t.  We could have gotten up and left, but we didn’t.  There is always a hope a movie will be good, or will get better as you watch it.  Shudder didn’t.

This was…yeah, it was bad.  All around, bad.  The one good thing about it was the black guy at the end who got bit.  He was good.  Had a funny line.  The one lone bright spot.  I stayed, watching it, giving it a chance.  I kept waiting for Edwin Neal’s beard to fall in the flashback scenes.  That would have been good.  It would have been something.  No such luck.

I’m sure everyone tried their best.  But it’s just not there.  It’s confusing.  The guy in the mental hospital…I just didn’t get him and his whole place in the movie.  And in one of the flashbacks, I think, from what I could tell, one slave gets killed like twice or something, right in succession.

When you are more interested in what the movie-goers sitting behind you are talking about instead of the movie, it’s a bad sign.  When it feels like an hour has passed, and it’s only been fifteen minutes,  it’s torture.

Avoid it.

0.5 out of 5
the_novacula

Five friends get together for a weekend retreat in the country.  The townsfolk are kind of nutty, believing that a young man who escaped a mental institution decades ago and killed his parents still haunts the woods.  Every year at harvest time, the locals fashion dolls from corn husks to ward him off.  No one from the town has gone missing in the last few years, but now there are vacationers.  Sam, named for the lake in the area, has vacationed here for years and isn’t scared of the stories.

Then, naturally, people begin dying and we get fleeting glimpses of someone stalking the group.

Sam’s Lake has its share of drawbacks and routine “boo” moments.  It’s fairly routine, but it has its own charm.  I have to say I thought it was better than the Friday the 13th remake.  A couple of the “boo’s” made me jump.  There’s an interesting quality at work in the film, a throwback, even homage, to the original slasher films of yesteryear.  Overall, it was better than I expected.

The movie is, more or less, solid until the last act then it falls apart.  It’s worth a rental.  Debut writer/director Andrew Erin has made a pretty good start in his film career, and I’m interested to see more of his work from his example of Sam’s Lake.

3.5 out of 5
the_novacula

“There can’t be a worse time, economically, to open an independent horror film in the U.S. than now,” Harrison told the crowd, “so we will instead do a major cable launch on Sci Fi around September. We hope to get the movie on a few big screens before then, but it’s tough.”

Yep, the film of Clive Barker’s Book of Blood will debut on SciFi.  Or SyFy.  Huh?

I found this list of seventy possible remakes of horror movies.  Some are definite, some are rumors, some are in the planning stages.  Lets hope at least one could be worth seeing.

Click here to see if any beloved movie of yours is on the list.

Thanks to Horror-Movies.ca

I’ve posted a new story in Short Fiction, Sitting With the Dead.  Leave a comment.  Leave a comment(s) on any story, review, or post.  Good or bad, we want them all.  And if any of you have a story you want to share with us, send it in.

I thought this was interesting.  It is Thomas Edison’s film version of Frankenstein, made in 1910.  Actually, Edison had nothing to do with it, it was made by his production company.  It is the first film version of Mary Shelley’s classic.  It stars Augustus Phillips as Dr. Frankenstein, Charles Ogle as the Frankenstein’s Monster, and Mary Fuller as Dr. Frankenstein’s fiancee.  It was written and directed by J. Searle Dawley.