by Dan Persons

A quartet of unemployed actors — inspired by the latest lo-fi film festival winner and retreating to a cabin in the country to plot out their own career-building debut — have the course of their project and, possibly, their lives turned around when one of them espies a mysterious, paper bag shrouded stranger in the woods. Yes, BAGHEAD is SCREAM for the brainy set: a mumblecore horror film about people making a mumblecore horror film, perpetrated by two masters of the form: Mark and Jay Duplass. Cinetantastique Online’s Dan Persons sat down with the directors Continue Reading »

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Vincent Price is rightly noted for his fine speaking voice and suave, polished presence through which he can convey eerie graduations of a sinister motivating force.

—ROGER CORMAN

My voice has sort of been my trademark and I don’t know why, because to me, I sound like everybody else in America. My brother, who wasn’t in the theater at all, had exactly the same voice I had.

—VINCENT PRICE

Introduction by Lawrence French

The following interview with Vincent Price was transcribed and edited from the radio show, THE GOLDEN AGE OF RADIO, that was first broadcast on the Hartford, CT radio station WTIC, in November of 1972 . Many years ago I got an audio tape of this broadcast from a collector, but it only included excerpts from Price’s answers. It was also, unfortunately, after CFQ published it’s special Vincent Price issue in 1989, so I couldn’t include any quotes from this interview in our special Price issue! But, even in it’s truncated form, I felt it was Vincent Price at his best, talking expansively about what he himself called his “favorite entertainment medium: Radio.”

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9 X 9: When Andrew Stanton first joined Pixar he was only the fledgling company’s ninth employee. Now, 18 years on, Stanton has delivered us Pixar’s ninth movie, WALL•E (Short for: Waste Allocation Load Lifter•Earth-Class.) Not so surprisingly, given Pixar’s track record, WALL•E is already being hailed as another animation “masterpiece.”

Below the fold are some of Andrew Stanton’s thoughts on the film (provided by Disney’s head of communications, Howard E. Green), which I have combined with an interview I conducted with Stanton at the time MONSTERS, INC. was first released. Continue Reading »

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Action-packed Russian fantasy from the director of “Wanted“

By Steve Biodrowski

This is a Russian film, the first of a “trilogy” about an eternal war between the forces of Light and the forces of Darkness, which are perfectly balanced and have forged a truce dictating that neither side interfere with humans, unless humans freely choose to join them. The “Night Watch” of the title are basically a police force that ensures the forces of darkness abide by the truce; their counterparts are the “Day Watch” (also the title of the second film) who ensure that the forces of Light abide by the truce. The members of both groups are known as “Others,” human beings with special powers that vary from person to person. NIGHT WATCH begins with Anton Gorodetsky (Konstantin Khabensky) visiting a fortune teller (actually, an ”Other”) to put a curse on the wife Continue Reading »

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Perhaps the era of the sleeper hit horror movie is over in the U.S. Once upon a time, movies like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE could come out of nowhere; foreign films like BLACK SUNDAY and SUSPRIA could pack American audiences into drive-ins and grind houses, while their more upscale brethren like ONIBABA and KWAIDAN could find audiences in the art theatres. Today, a low-budget, foreign-language horror film – no matter how good - is lucky to get a DVD release in the U.S. With little hope of selling tickets stateside, the film becomes not an end in itself but a means to an end, a calling card that can, hopefully, lead to a more lucrative gig.

This is more or less what happened with ROOM 205 (a.k.a. Kollegiet [“The College”]), an effective supernatural thriller from Denmark that impressed audiences at last year’s Screamfest Film Festival in Hollywood. Ghost House Underground, a joint venture between Ghost House Pictures (known for J-Horror remakes like THE GRUDGE) and Grindstone Entertainment Group (one of the country’s bigger direct-to-video companies), picked up the U.S. rights, including a potential American remake; by passing theatres, the film will come out on DVD later this year. Meanwhile, director Martin Barnewitz has landed a deal with Ghost House Pictures to direct THE MESSENGERS 2, a direct-to-video sequel to the 2007 film directed by the Pang Brothers (THE EYE).

ROOM 205 follows Katrine (Neel Ronholt), a young woman from a small town who moves into a dormitory when she goes to a University in the big city. She tries to fit in with her new neighbors, but her situation quickly sours into alienation. Complications take the form of a ghost, which manifests in a bathroom mirror and seems to act on Katrine’s behalf, taking revenge against those who have wronged her. Although the film ultimately comes down squarely in favor of a supernatural explanation, much of it plays like a modern homage to Roman Polanski thrillers like REPULSION, ROSEMARY’S BABY, and THE TENANT, which focused on characters who were paranoid, isolated, and/or alienated from their neighbors.

Cinefantastique Online sat down for a chat with Barnewitz when he was in the U.S. for Screamfest, before the deals for releasing ROOM 205 and directing MESSENGERS 2 had been finalized. Continue Reading »

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[EDITOR’S NOTE: In memory of Stan Winston, who died this weekend, here is a little interview I conducted with him back in June of 2001 when  he was happily producing a series of modestly budgeted monster movies for cable television.]

In honor of the Halloween season, Cinemax will be bringing you a series of five Creature Features this October: DAY THE WORLD ENDED, TEENAGE CAVEMAN, EARTH VS. THE SPIDER, HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER, and MERMAID CHRONICLES PART 1: SHE CREATURE. The titles may sound familiar, but the stories and characters will be brand new. Each takes its name from one of the low-budget sci-fi flicks turned out by American International Pictures in the 1950s, and uses that as a jumping off point for an original film. Continue Reading »

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By Dan Persons

Wait, MY WINNIPEG is a documentary? You mean all the stuff about horses freezing in the river and becoming a major attraction for strolling lovers, and the law requiring that former homeowners be permitted entry into their old abodes for the night, not to mention the rooftop homeless community and the faux Nazi invasion, all that stuff is real? Yup, the director swears it. But then again, the director is Guy Maddin, he of the dream-state narrative and the retro shooting style, the man who has made a virtue of taking incredible notions and making them feel as if they’d always been part of the landscape. Tapping pasts both personal and municipal, wrapping them in a Mobius strip fantasy about an endlessly thwarted, train-bound escape from the city of his youth, the director has created a factual film that feels no less incredible than his most surreal efforts. Cinefantastique Online’s Dan Persons had a chance to sit down with the director: Continue Reading »

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by Dan Persons

Just where exactly in The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbookdoes it say that, if you get a pedestrian lodged in your car’s windshield, you should drive straight home, get high, and fret over taking the poor bastard — still jammed on your hood and bleeding into the glove compartment — to the emergency room? That’s the actual scenario that one not-necessarily-Einstein-caliber motorist found herself in a few years ago, and it’s the core predicament of STUCK, Stuart Gordon’s newest melding of social satire, black comedy, brooding horror, and patented Gordon splooshiness. Casting Mena Suvari as the driver and Stephen Rea as her unfortunate victim, the director has managed to cross-fertilize a snapshot of life in these Bush-ravaged times with the bad decisions that sometimes ensue. Cinefantastique Online’s Dan Persons had a chance to speak to Gordon by phone:

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As noted by Steve, below, it’s quite apparent that Jack Pierce should have a star on the walk of fame, and it should be as close to Boris Karloff’s star as possible. I’m also sure Universal will be happy to spend the $5,000 or so that is needed to make this happen, once they realize that Jack Pierce created the make-up for both Henry Hull in THE WEREWOLF OF LONDON, as well as Lon Chaney’s make-up for THE WOLF MAN. The sad fact is, probably nobody at Universal even knows who Jack Pierce is these days… but I’m sure once someone like Rick Baker says to them, “You know, when THE WOLF MAN opens, why don’t we give the man who created the first THE WOLF MAN make-up for Universal, Jack Pierce, a star on Hollywood Blvd” then it may actually happen! Especially, if it can be tied in with the opening of Universal’s new WOLF MAN movie!

Meanwhile, there’s no doubt that if Boris Karloff, one of the original founders of the Screen Actors Guild, were still around, he would certainly be asking Universal to put up the small amount of money needed to honor his good friend Jack Pierce, and asking them to give Mr. Pierce a star on the Hollywood walk of fame.

Here are some of Boris Karloff’s own comments about the masterful make-ups Jack Pierce created for him, from the long interview Karloff did for Canadian radio:

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Count Yorga is a minor but amusing cult character, the subject of two low-budget exploitation films in the early 1970s entitled COUNT YORGA - VAMPIRE and THE RETURN OF COUNT YORGA. Although obviously patterned after Count Dracula, Yorga is very much his own bloodsucker, a rather sarcastic and condescending vampire. The two Yorga titles are notable for being among the best early attempts at transferring the vampire theme into a (then-contemporary) 20th Century setting. This they achieve (while avoiding the potential for audience derision) by adopting a certain tongue-in-cheek attitude, which at times (especially in the second film) approaches camp. Much of the success of the films belongs to actor Robert Quarry, who brought the modern day vampire to life with utterly condescending conviction, coupled with a ruthless sarcasm. Continue Reading »

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The Creature may finally be taking another swim in the Black Lagoon. First seen in Universal’s 1954 3-D classic,  THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, the Gill-Man appeared in two sequels, RETURN OF THE CREATURE (1955) and THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US (1956) before disappearing from the screen for over five decades. The remake was in development, with a script by Gary Ross, when the writers’ strike put it on hold. Now that the strike is over, director Breck Eisner hopes to put finishing touches on the script and get the movie before the camera as soon as he finishes another remake, of George Romero’s 1973 film THE CRAZIES.

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Here’s what George Lucas has to say about the upcoming INDIANA JONES movie:

When you make a movie like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, people automatically expect the Second Coming. They set themselves up to hate it. I went through the same thing on Star Wars. Nobody is going to be happy. When you make a movie like this, all you can do is lose.”

Is it just me, or does that sound a bit defensive and even just play wrong? When you make a movie like a four INDIANA JONES film, all you can do is make enough money to fill several battleships. That hardly counts as “losing.”

Lucas goes on to explain that, because CRYSTAL SKULL is set twenty years after the previous film, it reflects movies from the 1950s era, rather than the serials from the ’30s that inspired the original RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Among the new influences he cites is KING SOLOMON’S MINES, the 1950 adaptation of H. Rider Haggard’s novel. Actually, RAIDERS was clearly influenced by this archetypal adventure tale, so it seems odd to be pointing to this as an example of how the new films will be different.

The article takes a sympathetic view of Lucas’s defensiveness (access journalism rears its ugly head) and winds up by telling us that:

George Lucas is quite prepared for the negative reviews that are bound to come his way later this May. But he hopes that, after viewing a few of the films that served as inspiration for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, you’ll have a little better understanding of its roots in 1950s B movie lore.  

Got that? If the reviews are bad, they were bound to be, because “when you make a movie like this, all you can do is lose.” And if you don’t like CRYSTAL SKULL, it’s because you don’t understand its roots in 1950s B movie lore. So get with the program and stop complaining.

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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.

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Here, from the vast CFQ archives are Vincent Price’s “Thoughts about the horror films that made him famous.” It’s a piece I wrote for the fabulous double issue of Cinefantastique, from January, 1989 on the career of “Horror’s crown prince,” Mr. Vincent Price.

Of course, earlier today, Steve B. posted the sad news about the passing of Hazel Court, who died of a heart attack at her California home outside of Lake Tahoe. Ms. Court, starred with Vincent Price in two of Corman’s best Poe films, THE RAVEN and THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH, and appeared with Ray Milland in a third Corman-Poe film, THE PREMATURE BURIAL.

So I feel it’s only fitting I should append this short comment Mr. Price made about Hazel Court before his more detailed memories of working on the Poe movies:

VINCENT PRICE: Hazel Court was a dear, sweet lady. She was in The Raven which was one of my favorite films, mainly because of the cast… they were all divine people.

Click here to read the article Price on Poe: Thoughts on the Horror that Made Him Famous.

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NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM: TheAge.Com.Au offers an interview with Nicolas Cage, on location in Australia for KNOWING, an “apocalyptic” story about a man racing to prevent prophecies of doom from becoming reality:

“It’s subject matter that definitely makes one think about what one would do in the face of these incredible circumstances,” he said yesterday. “Where you go to find comfort, to survive it.”

Director Alex Proyas (DARK CITY) also offers his views on the subject:

Proyas said the Cold War and nuclear proliferation posed real threats to the world’s balance in decades past, which were examined by films of the era.

“You could probably argue that art exploring those ideas was partly responsible for holding us back from Armageddon. I feel it’s our duty in our era — we have other concerns, slightly different ones — to also fulfil that function,” he said.

“The older I get the more responsible I feel about making movies that have some positive effect.”

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