By Steve Biodrowski 

It took Dario Argento – Italy’s horror icon - thirty years to complete the “Three Mothers” trilogy he began with 1977’s SUSPIRIA, his biggest international hit. A mere three years later, he gave us the first sequel, INFERNO, but since then fans have had to wait while he pursued other interests: thrillers like TENEBRE, attempts to break into the American market (TWO EVIL EYES, TRAUMA), an eccentric interpretation of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (starring Julian Sands sans makeup), even a couple episodes of MASTERS OF HORROR series. His work has had its ups and downs, and older fans have sometimes wondered whether he had lost the spark of originality that lit up his work in the ‘70s and early ‘80s.

The news that he would finally direct THE THIRD MOTHER (a.k.a. MOTHER OF TEARS) struck a note of both fascination and fear: fascination that he would at long last return to realm of supernatural (instead of psychological) horror; fear that the result could not possibly live up to nearly three decades of anticipation. Fortunately, the new film (which reaches U.S. theatres in exclusive engagements this June) is a hyper-active horror show of stunning proportions that is completely unlike what came before and yet a fully satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. Critical and fan reaction has been mixed, but that is because Argento’s take-no-prisoners approach is not calculated to avoid risks; at times, it seems not calculated at all. It’s more like an eruption of horrifying nightmares that have been kept locked up for thirty years, waiting for their chance to explode on the screen.

I recently conducted a telephone interview with Argento, who is busy working on his next film GIALLO. We spoke about returning to the world of the Three Mothers, the changes in filmmaking over the years, and his career in general. Although English is not his native language, he expresses himself well; still, there are a few places where I have made the occasional grammatical correction, to ensure that the written words represent the meaning he conveyed as he spoke.

Continue Reading »

3 Comments »

This week’s home video offerings include a a big-budget disappointment, the further adventures of Japan’s most famous mon-star, the early adventures of a long-running soap opera, and the bloody adventures of a couple of psycho killers. The high-profile release is THE GOLDEN COMPASS, New Line’s failed attempt to create another blockbuster fantasy franchise in the mode of THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Defenders tried to blame the underwhelming box office performance on religious controversy, but the film, while not too bad, has more enough flaws to make any other explanation unnecessary: it is a bit bland in its efforts to avoid offending anyone (shying away from the controversy surrounding the books), and screenplay crams in way too many plot elements that do not pay off but simply set up sequels (which now Continue Reading »

No Comments »

FACEBOOK OF “FEAR ITSELF”: There is now a Facebook entry for the upcoming NBC series. Five photos from Stuart Gordon’s episode “Eater” have been posted there.

SAFE AS HOUSES: Arbogast on Film offers an intriguing review of THEM, the 2006 film from French co-directors Davdi Moreau and Xavier Palud. It sounds worth checking out, even if (like me) you were put off by their botched remake of THE EYE.

THE LEGACY: Dinner with Max Jenke looks back with a certain nostalgic fondness on this 1978 attempt to cash in on THE OMEN. This is the film whose idea of a “creative death” is to have the Who’s lead singer Roger Daltrey choke to death (some kind of joke, I suppose). It was directed by Richard Marquand, and it is every bit as bad as his later film, RETURN OF THE JEDI.

GEEK GIRLS GONE WILD: Calgary Herald observes that female fans are showing up at conventions in increasing numbers, thanks to “the runaway success of fantasy and superhero movies.”

ESPLATTER: Lucius Gore shows us a series of stamps dedicated to Hammer horror classics like CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN.

VAULT OF HORROR points us to a piece in The Guardian, regarding DOOMSDAY, the post-apocalyptic fantasy which is being released in the U.K. after making its way through U.S. theatres earlier this year. Seems Scottish National Part MP Angus MacNeil is unhappy about the perceived subtext of the plot, in which Scotland is walled off from the rest of England:

I think it is a subliminal thought they have in England: in the dark recesses of their minds they believe that if Scotland is ever separated from London, then we will be cut off from the rest of the world for good. They think we’ll build our own Hadrian’s Wall and keep everyone out - which is of course nonsense. At 80p a brick, it will simply be too expensive.

Also at Vault of Horror, Brian Solomon adds an unexpected coda to a piece lamenting the 2006 remake of THE WICKER MAN. After noting that Edward Woodward (who starred in the 1973 original) has expressed no interest in ever seeing the new version, Solomon adds a paragraph telling us that THERE WILL BE BLOOD (although it is not a horror film) is an “astonishing achievement in film-making” that deserved the Best Picture Oscar and ranks alongside CITIZEN KANE as one of the greatest films ever made. Considering how over-rated THERE WILL BE BLOOD is, I was going to object to comparing it to CITIZEN KANE, but then I remembered that I find that film somewhat over-rated as well.

No Comments »

The Orlando Sentinel has an interview with Jon Favreau, who directed IRON MAN, the big-budget film adaptation of the Marvel Comics Superhero. Though Favreau’s previous credits (ELF, ZATHURA) are not encouraging, he says he learned from those experiences (dealing with special effects, etc), and it sounds as if he had a plan for how to deal with the character:

…he wrestled with the story’s politics. Iron Man was a 1960s creation, the story of a wealthy military ordnance manufacturer who builds himself an armored suit that flies, fires weapons and takes whatever the world’s evil-doers dish out.

“To sweep that [militaristic] aspect of the character under the rug seemed like a missed opportunity,” Favreau says. “We changed it to Afghanistan. I try not to preach too much as a filmmaker because I know my opinions might change. But I wanted to capture the anxiety we all feel and play around with what fantasy films do, which is to give complicated problems simple solutions. That’s Superman stopping the runaway train or Spider-Man rescuing the little old lady from the mugger. It’s escapism.

“I didn’t want people to have to spend their Friday night having their nose rubbed in what they see in the news every day. We’re not making In the Valley of Elah here.”

Favreau says his biggest contribution to the film was casting Robert Downey Jr.:

 ”Robert brings an authenticity to the role simply by what he’s experienced publicly, in his life. He grew up in the public eye, much as Tony Stark has, living in a fishbowl, famous.”

“…We can read all this personal history of his into it, and it allows the film to maintain a family-friendly posture and attitude. But the audience knows that personal history, what he used to be like.

No Comments »

In an interview plugging his latest movie, writer-director John Sayles briefly talks about some of his genre work. Before moving into independent art-house films, Sayles wrote scripts for low-budget exploitation efforts like THE LADY IN RED and ALLIGATORY. More recently, he has contributed drafts to big-budget fantasy films like THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES.

Of course, the drawback is that he can’t dream big when it comes to his own films – but at least he has an outlet for his imagination as a Hollywood writer-for-hire. His unproduced script for Jurassic Park IV has passed into blogger legend thanks to leaked reports that it features a race of genetically modified, machine gun-toting tyrannosaurs. He also once wrote a movie for another Corman alumnus, James Cameron. “That was great,” Sayles recalls. “I was like, wow, I can write stuff that hasn’t even been invented yet and if Cameron likes it, he’ll invent the technology. It was a pretty good science-fiction movie called Brother Termite, about how bulb-headed aliens have secretly been running the country for 50 years.”

More recently he co-wrote current fantasy hit The Spiderwick Chronicles. He’s worked on plenty of other big studio movies too, but as often happens, Sayles’s work ends up being changed to such a degree that he doesn’t always take credit.

“What happens is, I read the final script over and say: first of all, do I want my name on this? Second of all, do I deserve to be on this?” he explains. “On Spiderwick I thought, ‘Yeah, there’s enough of what I did left for me to be credited.’ But sometimes I’ve read scripts and within ten pages I know there’s nothing left. I did a couple of drafts of The Mummy when Joe Dante was going to direct it. There were 15 writers on The Mummy, including George Romero twice, and I read it and thought they did a good job, but the only thing left from my version was the sand and mummies.”

Given that credited screenwriters get residual fees, that’s a typically principled approach, especially when you consider that Sayles turned down a credit on a script he wrote for Steven Spielberg. The film? E.T.

Any regrets? He laughs. “No, no, not at all. I read that and was like, ‘Boy, this is really well written.’ Besides, any similarity to my work was because I got all the research from Steven Spielberg. It was research he’d done for Close Encounters, so it wasn’t like it was something I’d invented.”

He pauses. “Of course, it would have been nice if they’d sent me some money, but, then, a lot of people could send me money.”

RELATED ARTICLES: Jurassic Park IV - Dinosaurs for Hire?

No Comments »

Contrary to the joy expressed by fans over the news that Guillermo Del Toro will be directing two HOBBIT films, Salon.Com’s Andrew O’Hehir thinks the whole thing is a bad idea. After expressing admiration for Tolkein, Peter Jackson’s LORD OF THE RINGS films, and Del Toro, O’Hehir asks:

First of all, hasn’t anybody noticed that del Toro has repeatedly said he doesn’t like Tolkien, and that he never finished reading “The Lord of the Rings”? Here’s what he told me in Cannes in 2006, when I asked him about the influence of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis on his own work: “I was never into heroic fantasy. At all. I don’t like little guys and dragons, hairy feet, hobbits — I’ve never been into that at all. I don’t like sword and sorcery, I hate all that stuff.”

Let’s see, he doesn’t like “little guys and dragons” or hairy-footed hobbits, and “The Hobbit” would be a movie about what, exactly? Seriously, I think del Toro was speaking from the heart, and I think he’s right. His aesthetic is darker, more Gothic and more grotesque than the Tolkien-via-Jackson universe; it derives more from the medieval mire of middle-European fairy tale than from the high-toned, pre-modern northern European epics Tolkien was channeling. And I’m riding a major bummer if del Toro is shelving “3993″ (the third of his Spanish history-fantasy trilogy, after “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “The Devil’s Backbone”), his adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness” or his “Doctor Strange” blockbuster. All three of those projects are vastly better fits than the hairy-footed little guys and dragons.

Furthermore, O’Hehir thinks that Peter Jackson has morphed from a filmmaker into a tycoon with too many irons in the fire, a la Geroge Lucas, and he wonders whether Jackson and Del Toro can mesh their two sensibilities together.

I don’t know whether O’Hehir is right to worry over the last topic. with BLADE II, Del Toro showed he could walk in and do the job as a director for hire. If he could get along with the studio execs on that project, I’m sure he can find some kind of artistic truce with Jackson.

I do, however, share O’Hehir’s dubious feelings about making two prequels to LORD OF THE RINGS when one would have done just fine, thank you.  Tolkien provided some back story to fill the gap between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, but not really a plot, so the secodn prequel will not really be an adaptation so much as an original script. With such a shaky artisitic foundation for its existence,  O’Hehir suspects the film was conceived by greedy studio execs.

Oh well, I go bemoan the delay of Del Toro’s other project, particularly the Lovecraft adaptation - which is vastly more interesting than returning to Middle Earth to make more cash. But, like O’Herir, I hope to be proved wrong by the final results.

No Comments »

I didn’t make it down to the Fangoria convention, but you can read all about it at these links from Horror Movie a Day:

• Fango Con - Day 1
• Fango Con - Day 2

If (like me) you are too lazy to click through links, here are the highlights:

1. Producer Rob Tapert says that BOOGEYMAN 3 is in the editing room and production begins on GRUDGE 3 this Monday. Can’t say I’m excited about either one. Basically, the second GRUDGE sequel will have a new creative team, meaning the American producers have jettisoned those pesky Japanese filmmakers so that they can totally waterdown the franchise.
2. Clive Barker has several projects in the works, including one called DREAD, from the producer of MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN.
3. John Landis (AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON) and Larry Fessenden (HABIT) will be directing episodes of NBC’s upcoming FEAR ITSELF (sort of MASTERS OF HORROR toned down for network television)
4. Actor Tony Todd has not been signed for FINAL DESTINATION 4, but he will be back for HATCHET 2 (director Adam Green included him in the first one on the assumption that any sequel could use him to develop the back story further).

No Comments »

With no new sci-fi, horror, or fantasy films in wide release, two debut comedies, BABY MAMA and HAROLD AND KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY,  jumped to the top of this weekend’s box office, knocking last week’s winner, THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM, down to third place.

FORBIDDEN KINGDOM, the martial arts fantasy starring Jacki Chan and Jet Lie, earned an estimated $11.23-million in its sophomore session, for a two-week total of $38.26-million.

As for other returning titles of interest to fans of cinefantastique…

NIM’S ISLAND maintained its longitude at #5 for te second week in a row. The fantasy film earned $4.23-million, raising its four-week total to $28.95-million.

PROM NIGHT danced from sixth to third place in its third weekend, with a box office take of $4.4-million. that yielded a total of $38.12-million. Far from great, but better than other recent horror releases.

DR. SEUSS’ HORTON HEARS A WHO listened to the sound of $2.4-million in tickets sales, dropping from #8 to #9. After seven weeks, the film has earned $147.88-million in U.S. theatres - the only film this year to pass the $100-million mark.

NOTE: Greg McLean’s ROGUE opened in limited release this week, arriving in far too few theatres to make an appearance in the weekend Top Ten. The word “limited” turned out to be somewhat of an exaggeration: the film was not booked into theatres in New York or Los Angeles (the two biggest markets), instead appearing in only single theatres in cities like San Diego and San Francisco.

Read the complete Top Ten here.

No Comments »

The Los Angeles Times brings us the sad news that pioneering electronic composer Bebe Barron has died, at the age of 82. Along with her then-husband Louis Barron, Bebe scored the 1956 science-fiction classic FORBIDDEN PLANET. Before the modern synthesizer, the duo created music using tubes and circuits that emitted tones, which they would record and manipulate, speeding them up, slowing them down, or splicing them together. The result was a unique, futuristic sonic landscape that perfectly captured the beauty and terror of Altair IV. In fact, the avante garde soundtrack, which bridged the gap between music and sound effects, was credited as “Electronic Tonalities” rather than music. Continue Reading »

No Comments »

“Do They Ever Return to Possess the Living?”

That was the question asked in the advertising for this adaptation of Henry James’ classic novelette, The Turn of the Screw.It is a question that goes unanswered by the film itself, which true to the source material leaves the existence of ghosts unclear, forcing audiences to debate whether Quint (Peter Wyngarde) and Miss Jessel (Clytie Jessop) are really visitors from the grave or simply figments of the demented imagination of governess Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr). Imagine yourself as the young English governess, given sole responsibility for two young children growing up in an isolated country manor. Shortly after assuming this position (your first), you begin to see the ghosts of your unfortunate predecessor and her lover, a valet with an evil reputation. At first you seek to shield your young charges Continue Reading »

2 Comments »

This is a modern horror film with an old-fashioned touch, relying on suspense and the suggestion of the supernatural to generate a disturbing sense of the Uncanny. In the manner of classic haunted house movies like THE INNOCENTS (1960) and THE HAUNTING (1963), THE OTHERS uses a deliberately steady pace to increase tension, gradually drawing viewers into its mystery until they are so engaged that they completely susceptible to the effectively executed scare tactics. Although the actual shocks are few and far between, the film maintains interest with its intelligent storytelling, and the rich atmosphere sustain the mood of supernatural dread throughout, so that when the scares do come, they are worth the wait—even simple things like a slamming door are guaranteed to send you hurtling out of your seat with a scream. Of course, the pacing is a gambit, and it does not always pay off; repeat Continue Reading »

3 Comments »

Writer-director Roman Polanski’s adaptation of Ira Levin’s novel has earned a reputation as one of the greatest horror films ever made. It is easy to understand why: this is a serious effort that gradually and carefully constructs a mounting sense of paranoia that climaxes in a horrible final-scene revelation. The setting and performances are completely credible; even the basic plot line (a woman undergoing a difficult first pregnancy) has an everyday believability that invites audience identification. In short, ROSEMARY’S BABY transcends its genre trappings: viewers are not allowed to sit back and enjoy a pleasant roller-coaster thrill-ride; they are lured into the plot and set them up to be terrified and disturbed by the unfolding events And yet, despite these undeniable strengths, the film is too deliberately paced and ultimately too tame to completely justify the high regard in which it is held. It’s a horror film for people who want to be scared - but not too much. Continue Reading »

2 Comments »

By Steve Biodrowski

So, you’re a horror movie maniac. You just can’t get enough of ‘em. You love the thrill of fear, the scream of terror, the sight of blood. But you have a problem: Your boxed set of BLIND DEAD movies does not enamor your girlfriend. Your Lucio Fulci collection does not send your paramour swooning with rapture. Your unrated torture porn DVDs do not arouse interest. The midnight movie screening of GRINDHOUSE does not inspire romantic fantasies. The latest French gore-fest does not excite erotic intrigue. If anything, the woman in your life is wondering whether you’re a latent serial killer whose interest in the female body does not extend beyond seeing it torn to pieces. You are faced with a dreadful dilemma: either continue to alienate your significant other or stuff those video nasties in the back of the closet along with the real pornography and suffer through endless nights of watching mind-numbingly boring chick flicks like BED OF ROSES (a fate that frightens you far more than anything in your horror collection). Well, lucky for you, we’re here to save the day. You see, there is a way to share your love of the horror genre with a psychologically stable female partner who is not interested in watching an endless stream of blood gushing across the screen. Believe it or not, there are “chick flick” horror movies. They may not be as intense and hardcore as some of your favorite splatter flicks, but they are quite good in their own right, with plenty of appeal to both men and women. Below, we will provide our list of the Top 20 Best Chick Flick Horror Movies.

Continue Reading »

2 Comments »

Den of Geek has an interview with Michale Staininger, who is making his directorial debut with a contemporary film adaptation of Edgar Alan Poe’s “Ligeia” (which previously furnished the inspiration for 1964’s TOMB OF LIGEIA, starring Elizabeth Shepherd in the title role). The story follows a man who believes his late wife willpower was strong enough to extend beyond the grave. Taking a new bride after Ligeia’s demise, he finds himself in a life-or-death struggle as his second wife succumbs to illness, apparently expiring and reviving several times over the course of a night - until she rises from her sick bed, revealing herself to be Ligeia reborn. Continue Reading »

No Comments »

The Vault of Horror reports the sad news that actress-writer Kay Linaker has died. Linkaker has a small but significant role in horror movie history: under her pen name Kate Phillips, she co-wrote the screenplay for the 1958 version of THE BLOB, the film “That Made Steve McQueen a Star and Gave Horror a New and Ever-Changing Shape” (according to the headline for the retrospective of the film that Cinefantastique ran in the January 1989 issue).

Linaker attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and appeared Continue Reading »

2 Comments »