THE LOST - a low-budget independent film that has been figuratively lost in distribution limbo since its completion in 2005 - finally finds its way into the Laemmle’s Sunset 5 Theatre in West Hollywood, California, for a one-week run starting today. Based on a book by Jack Ketchum, who is listed as one of the executive producers, this blood-stained, melodramatic thrill-killer thriller is a character study of a hot-headed loser who gets away with murder in the prologue, then goes about his life for the next two hours of screen time, before erupting into a homicidal rampage for the final act. That’s an awful lot of down time, but gore-hungry viewers may find their patience rewarded and their thirst slaked when the blood finally starts to flow. Fans looking for a decent thriller or a frightening fear flick had best look elsewhere. Continue Reading »

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PENELOPE - the modern fairy tale about a young woman who must find true love to overcome a curse which had her born with the snout of a pig - opens today. The film has earned a 56% approval rating in a survey of 54 reviews (30 fresh, 14 rotten). That is just shy of the 60% minimum required to earn an overall “fresh” rating. Hollywood Reporter’s Kirk Honeycutt called the film a “charming, low-key fable with sly modern twists.” Buy movie tickets here.

Also worth noting: After its one-week run at the Nuart Theatre in West Los Angeles, George A. Romero’s DIARY OF THE DEAD has expanded to a few more engagements, at least in major markets like Los Angeles. Find Theatres and Showtimes here.
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By Steve Biodrowski

This retelling of the epic poem about a monster-slaying hero unites computer-generated imagery with live-action performances through the magic of motion-capture. Unfortunately, the marriage breeds a bizarre hybrid, as strange (if not quite as ghastly) as the half-human, half-demon Grendel that haunts the first act. Like that hideous monster, BEOWULF is an almost inexplicable mutant mishap,  as if the genetic synthesis combined - and somehow magnified - the worst rather than the best of both parents. The background designs are beautiful; the creatures are imaginatively conceived; the human characters are rendered in fine detail and enacted with spirited performances. And yet, the result is artificial and unconvincing, with all the life of a perfectly preserved corpse manipulated by marionette strings: no matter how deft the performer, no matter how elaborate the movments, what we are watching looks dead.

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THE POLAR EXPRESS wants to be a whimsical Christmas fantasy, but the spirit of Christmas gets taken for a ride and pummeled by a series of pointless action scenes that pad the running time while adding nothing to the story. The basic idea is simple: A young boy has reached the age when he’s beginning to doubt the existence of Santa Claus. On Christmas Eve, the Polar Express shows up at his door and takes him to the North Pole, where he meets Mr. C and learns to believe again. That’s pretty much the entire story. With clever writing, it might have made a half-hour television special, but there is no plot, no complications, nothing else on which to build a theatrical film. So the only way to stretch the feeble narrative to feature length is with gratuitous visual filler: the kid gets on top of the train as it’s about to go into a tunnel; he gets in front of the train as it’s about to go down a steep incline; the train nearly crashes on an ice lake. And the list goes on. Continue Reading »

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By John W. Morehead of TheoFantastique

“You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind; a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s the signpost up ahead – your next stop, the Twilight Zone!”

Without doubt one of the classic television programs from the late 1950s into the 1960s is THE TWILIGHT ZONE. For many, myself included, this program was a formative one whether the viewer is a child, teen or an adult. To this day it remains a source of fascination for me, as well for countless numbers of people.

For Christmas in 2006 one of the gifts I received was Marc Scott Zicree’s The Twilight Zone Companion, 2nd ed. (Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 1989). After reading through the book and enjoying it immensely I contacted Marc through his website. Marc agreed to participate in an interview, but due to his very busy schedule as a writer and producer we were like two ships passing in the night. Just recently we were finally able to connect for a phone interview. The interview at TheoFantastique makes for an interesting exploration of Rod Serling, the fantasy and science fiction writer’s craft, and the continuing legacy of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, as Zicree discusses the influences on Serling’s writing creativity, as well as the ongoing influence of the program in film and television, plus Serling’s penchant for addressing social issues in the guise of science-fiction… Continue Reading »

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Known as NIGHT OF THE DEMON in its native England, this 1957 adaptation of “Casting the Runes” by noted ghost story practitioner M.R. James has a deserved reputation as one of the most intelligent and thoughtful horror films ever made. The screenplay by Charles Bennett (with an assist from producer Hal. E. Chester) effectively updates and expands the source material, crafting a wonderful meditation on science and superstition. Although providing plenty in the way of shudders, the emphasis is at least as much on portraying a dramatic conflict between two worldviews as embodied by the protagonist (Dana Andrews’ psychiatrist) and the antagonist (Niall MacGinnis’s occultist). Jacques Tourneur, a genius for balancing the tight-rope between two worlds, the real and the imagined, handles the material perfectly, although the result is marred by the inclusion of special effects depicting the monster, which undermine the otherwise carefully wrought ambiguity. Continue Reading »

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Most viewers no doubt realize that the recent Oscar-winning film, SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET, is based on a stage musical by Stephen Sondheim, but they might be surprised to learn that the Sweeney Todd story predates the musical by over a century. It has been adapted to stage and screen many times, and long before Johnny Depp, the actor who first laid claim to the role was the aptly named Tod Slaughter. The Tod Slaughter Triple Feature, released on DVD yesterday, packages the actor’s 1936 version of SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET with two other tales of melodramatic villainy, offering an opportunity to reappraise both Tod(d)s - Slaughter and Sweeney. Although old-fashioned and even somewhat out-of-date, both of them are worth watching if your are a fan of classic horror. Continue Reading »

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Here we are for another glimpse of this week’s DVD highlights. For the past couple months, there has been a bit of a post-Christmas dry spell as far as exciting sci-fi, fantasy, and horror home video releases. Thankfully, that seems to be coming to an end this week, with the release of two high-profile theatrical features (BEOWULF and 30 DAYS OF NIGHT), plus a couple of interesting cult items (THE LIVING DEAD AT MANCHESTER MORGUE and a Tod Slaughter Triple Feature), not to mention the usual direct-to-video sludge mucking up store shelves. It is not exactly a tidal wave of new titles, but it should be enough to keep you glued to your home entertainment systems till next week. Continue Reading »

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This is a splatter-filled tale that feels like a throwback to ‘80s direct-to-video horror, when a bunch of prosthetic makeup covered in blood was all you needed to make a low-budget movie. The minimal story is about a mad scientist (WISHMASTER’s Andrew Divoff) who creates a plague that unleashes an unstoppable rage in its victims. After an accident at the lab, the disease infects some vultures, which pursue a band of teenagers coming home from an outdoor music fest. The geysers of blood that follow are so over-the-top that they are perhaps meant to be funny; instead, they are simply monotonous. The film is too obviously a showcase for the carnage, which lacks intensity or humor. At least the prosthetics are technically competent: the vultures that bedevil our heroes are rendered with unconvincing computer-generated effects that suggest old-fashioned stop-motion (complete with squawking sound effects that seem lifted from a Ray Harryhausen movie). Continue Reading »

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The debut of the thriller VANTAGE POINT easily took first place at the weekend box office with $24-million, pushing last week’s top films, JUMPER and THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES down a notch a piece.

JUMPER landed at #2 with $12.6-million, yielding a two-week total fo $56.21-million.

SPIDERWICK wove its way to #3 in its sophmore session, earning $12.6-million, which added up to $43.58-million after two weeks of release.

No other sci-fi fantasy or horror films managed to make it into the Top Ten, and it was too early to see whether Oscar wins would boost the box office for JUNO (in eighth place), THERE WILL BE BLOOD (at #10), and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (in twelfth place).

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I did not bother to watch the Oscar telecast last night, because as a lifelong devotee of cinefantastique, I just could not summon up the enthusiasm to care about an awards show that almost totally ignored the great work seen in science-fiction, fantasy, and horror films last year (which I detailed in this post). Barely any genre films were nominated, and of those the only winners were THE GOLDEN COMPASS for visual effects, SWEENEY TODD for art direction, and RATATOUILLE for animated film. Well, at least they gave SWEENEY something - it was only the best film of 2007, after all. Continue Reading »

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This is a fine horror-thriller that displays most of the strengths of writer-director Neil Marshall’s debut effort, the werewolves-vs.-grunts flick DOG SOLDIERS: it’s about a band of people (in this case, six female cave explorers) in an isolated location confronting a ravenous pack of man-eating monsters. There is a simlar sense of group dynamics, with a small batch of characters nicely drawn, some intense action, and some nifty monsters. The most obvous missing element is the clever tongue-in-cheek attitude of the earlier film; this time, Marshall wants to make a serious drama about what happens to ordinary people under extreme duress. Unfortunately, the film also lacks the well-drawn battle lines of DOG SOLDIERS, in which the character conflict was perfectly set-up in the first few minutes. THE DESCENT does a good job with characterization, but it does not hook you into its groove. Continue Reading »

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Excellent werewolf pic was “too British” to get a U.S. theatrical release

By Steve Biodrowski

With Neil Marshall’s DOOMSDAY scheduled for release on March 14, now seems an appropriate time to take a look back at his feature film debut, one of the best all-out, no-apologies, hell-bent-for-leather horror films to emerge from the beginning of the 21st century—a modestly-budgeted, action-packed effort that pits British soldiers against local werewolves with a taste for human flesh. DOG SOLDIERS is derivative of any number of previous films (reduced to its essence, one might call it a hybrid of THE HOWLING and NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD), but it works on its own tongue-in-cheek terms, fillings its dialogue with references to its antecedents. Continue Reading »

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In Part I of this chat with George Takei at the 2007 San Diego Asian Film, the actor talked with SDAFF founder and executive director Lee Ann Kim about his experience on STAR TREK and his relationship with Gene Roddenberry.  In Part II, he discussed lobbying for Captaincy in the STAR TREK movies, his memories of being forced to live in a Japanese internment camp during World War 2, why he came out of the closet, and his disdain toward Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and President George W. Bush.  In Part III he reveals his satisfaction doing the William Shatner Roast on Comedy Central, how he got involved in THE HOWARD STERN SHOW and HEROES, and how he met Bruce Lee. As with the first two parts, rather than write this as an article, I felt that it would be more respectful to share Takei’s words using Q&A format so his nothing is taken out of context. Continue Reading »

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This grim drama about a desperate attempt to save the world from extinction falls just short of being one of 2007’s best films. Although seriously flawed in a couple of ways, SUNSHINE tells its core story - of a (virtual suicide) mission to re-ignite the dying sun - with a soul-shattering conviction that is utterly engrossing. Alex Garland’s screenplay presents a refreshingly hard science-fiction approach that remains rooted in believable reality - more NASA than STAR WARS - and director Danny Boyle serves it up with an unsentimental seriousness worthy of the high-stakes storyline. Had the screenplay not descended into schlock in the third act, this might have ranked among the classics of the genre. As it stands, the film deserved Oscar nominations in technical categories: art direction, photography, and visual effects create a vision of space travel as spectacular and unique as anything ever seen on screen. Continue Reading »

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