TRAILER TRASH: Godzilla Edition!

And Now... A Zombie Cartoon?

Everyone seems to be very excited about this minute-and-a-half of footage that's been making the rounds on the web the past few days, and it's easy to see why. It's a teaser trailer from the computer-animated zombie film A.D., currently in development. I wish I had more to add than everyone else, but I pretty much agree that this snippet looks amazing, and had to share it with the rest of you Vault dwellers in case there are any of you out there who haven't seen this yet. Check it out:



Pick your jaw up off the floor, please. Thank you. Amazing--every time I think the whole zombie thing is done to death (pardon the pun), someone comes along with a fresh idea. Something about those undead buggers brings out the creative best in a lot of people.

For those wondering, the movie is being scripted by Haylar Garcia, whom fans may best remember for his involvement in the popular 2004 fan flick Freddy vs. Ghostbusters. It's set to be directed by Ben Hibon, a UK-based animator who has done some work on horror-based video games (we'll see if that can translate to solid moviemaking). The money man is Bernie Goldmann, a producer who is probably hoping this turns out to be a better financial venture than his last zombie project, Land of the Dead.

Random Ramblings from the Vault...

• The Cyber Horror Awards are in full swing, with online horror critics and bloggers sending in ballots left and right. If you haven't yet, don't forget to do so by the first week of March, when the 2009 winners shall be announced!

• Happy belated birthday to George Romero, who turned 70 a couple days ago. As much as I love me a good zombie movie though, news of the upcoming sequel to Diary of the Dead makes me officially say, "OK George, enough with the dead people." Don't you have a romantic comedy in you, or something?

• So this Frozen pic is supposed to a big deal, eh? I see everyone talkin' about it. May just have to look into this whole brouhaha.

• I hope folks are enjoying the "Many Faces of..." photo feature here in the Vault. If you have any favorite horror actors/actresses you'd like to see featured, feel free to drop me a line!

• How crazy is this Fangoria thing? Sad to see a genre institution going through such turmoil, but can't help but agree with former Fangoria.com head honcho James Zahn that it had become hopelessly outdated, especially the magazine incarnation. Having worked for an entertainment based magazine for years, I can also sympathize with much of the shenanigans Zahn describes...

• The remake of The Crazies could very well be another one to supersede the original. Romero's film was plagued with difficulties, and the word on the street is that this new one could very well be a better picture.

• Kevin Smith seems to still have the horror project Red State on his radar. I say this is good news. It's high time Mr. View Askew directs his prodigious talents to something other than weed humor and dick jokes.

• Newly added to my list of non-horror movies that are scary as hell? 2001: A Space Odyssey. Between the sociopathic HAL, the Monolith, and that seriously tripped-out ending, it's every bit as chilling as you'd expect most Kubrick flicks to be.

• Essential geek website Fandomania is currently conducting a reader to determine the 100 Greatest Books of All Time. Never one to pass up an opportunity to pontificate, I voted last week. I encourage you to, as well.

• In the continuing effort to have absolutely no free time whatsoever, I've started one of them new-fangled Tumblr blogs. Check it out, and if you have one yourself, feel free to follow mine. It's called Proof of a Benevolent God, and basically is a daily chronicle of things that make me smile. Those things are needed some days more than others.

• Apparently there's some kind of big football game tonight? Only seen three of 'em in 35 years, not inclined to add a fourth. I have no money on it, my town's not in it, and so far no one has succeeded in explaining to me what the hell is going on on the field. Who dat? Dat's me checking out all the cool commercials tomorrow morning :-)

The Many Faces of Ken Foree

Psycho Semi-Centennial: The Man Behind the Madman

Were it not for H.P. Lovecraft, Psycho might never have come into existence. Yes, despite Lovecraft's brand of horror being the complete opposite of what Psycho represents, the godfather of the weird and supernatural can take some credit for it's existence. This is due to his mentoring of the man who wrote the novel on which the film was based: Robert Bloch.

In the early 1930s, the teenaged Robert Bloch was an avid reader of the venerable horror pulp Weird Tales, and Howard Phillips Lovecraft was his favorite contributor by far. The youngster began a letter correspondence with the legendary author, who would later encourage his own burgeoning writing efforts. HPL even featured his enthusiastic fan as a character ("Robert Blake") in his short story "The Haunter of the Dark" (he killed him off in it.) And when Bloch made his first fiction sales at the age of 17 ("The Feast in the Abbey" and "The Secret in the Tomb"), they were to Weird Tales, where his work could appear alongside that of his idol.

By the time Lovecraft passed away in 1937, his young protege was well on the way to succeeding him as America's most gifted horror storyteller. At first, his stuff was heavily Lovecraftian in tone. Yet much later, his most famous work would be nothing like anything Lovecraft would've ever put to paper.

Robert Albert Bloch was born April 5, 1917 in Chicago, Illinois, the son of bank cashier Ray Bloch and his wife Stella Loeb, a social worker. He took to reading tales of the bizarre and fantastic from a young age, and soon began writing some on his own. Genre fiction would always be his great love, and his immense body of work would eventually come to include sci-fi, horror, mystery and crime.

Following Lovecraft's death, Bloch continued writing for Weird Tales, and also started contributing to lots of other pulps, including Amazing Stories. He wrote several tales within Lovecraft's own Cthulhu Mythos. Yet by the 1940s, he had begun experimenting with a different kind of horror from that of his mentor, weaving in elements of crime fiction to create a series of stories based on the cases of Jack the Ripper, the Marquis de Sade, Lizzie Borden and others.

As his career blossomed in the 1950s, Bloch became a major force in the world of genre fandom as it then existed. He was a prolific writer, authoring 29 novels (beginning with 1946's The Scarf) and countless short stories that appeared in magazines and anthologies. He would eventually capture the Hugo award, the Bram Stoker award and the World Fantasy award for his writing, and serve as president of the Mystery Writers of America.

Bloch also branched out into the world of filmed entertainment, crafting screenplays and contributing stories that would be used on TV and in the movies. He wrote scripts for the Boris Karloff-hosted horror TV anthology Thriller, and penned the scripts for the classic Star Trek episodes "Catspaw", "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" and "Wolf in the Fold" (which dealt with Jack the Ripper). His stories also inspired movies like William Castle's The Night Walker (1964), Strait-Jacket (1964), The House That Dripped Blood (1970) and Asylum (1972).

Yet it would be Bloch's first adapted story that would become by far his most famous, and forever enshrine him in the pantheon of iconic horror wordsmiths. It began as a kernel of an idea in his 1957 short story "The Really Bad Friend", which appeared in the pages of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. Then, in 1959 he wrote the novel Psycho, based loosely on the real-life case of another famous murderer, Ed Gein.

Psycho was the ultimate development of the approach Bloch had been developing for over a decade. It was a different kind of horror story, taking place in modern urban and suburban settings, with contemporary characters, and dealing with situations based in reality, instead of the supernatural. Yet this was no crime or detective story, as previous tales of this type had been--Psycho was a horror novel, of a very different kind.

And just as it was a landmark in horror fiction, it would be adapted in 1960 by screenwriter Joseph Stefano into something that would have just as groundbreaking an effect on horror film, if not even more so. As directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Bloch's novel became one of the most well-known horror stories of all time, and his character Norman Bates--though very different from the character as presented by Bloch--would be immortalized as horror's first thoroughly modern movie "monster", and the prototype of the movie slasher.

Bloch enjoyed great notoriety from the success of Psycho, and his profile in the world of horror fandom was certainly raised to dizzying heights. He would take part in the founding of the Horror Writers Association (HWA) of America. He continued writing prolifically, evening penning two sequel novels to Psycho (unrelated to the movie sequels) in 1982 and 1990.

In 1994, the 35th anniversary edition of the novel Psycho was published--a run of merely 500 copies, all autographed by Bloch. Mere months later, on September 23, 1994 Robert Bloch passed away in Los Angeles, California at the age of 77.

Just as his mentor had done some 30 years earlier with his stories in Weird Tales, so did Bloch revolutionize the horror genre with Psycho. For all his vast body of work, Robert Bloch will forever be identified by far with his 1959 novel, and rightfully so. It stands with the likes of The Maltese Falcon, Lord of the Rings and 1984 as one of the 20th century's most important genre novels.

VAULTCAST: Conversations in the Dark... w/Sean Abley

Time once again for Conversations in the Dark, boys and girls. This week, join me and Sean Abley of (the late?) Fangoria.com's Gay of the Dead blog, as we discuss our favorite "guilty pleasure" horror movies. Sean is a really cool guy who bestowed his "Brains for Days" blog award on the VoH earlier this week, and even plugged my daughter's blog Book-Town in the process, so he's officially a big-time FoV (Friend of the Vault), and I encourage you to check his stuff out.

But tonight, From I Spit on Your Grave and Giant Spider Invasion to Slime City and Terrorvision, we delve deeply into the realm of "so bad it's good." Won't you join us in the celebration of badness?

Check it out in the embedded player below, or you can either listen in at the Vaultcast homepage, or download the Vaultcast directly...

Conversations in the Dark: Sean Abley

The Vaultcast!

Retro Review: Day of the Dead (1985)

In honor of the birthday of the zombie maestro himself, George Romero, this week's Retro Review focuses on the original Day of the Dead--the most troubled and somewhat unfairly maligned of the director's classic Living Dead trilogy.

Day of the Dead was a movie that really tanked when it first came out, even getting beaten out critically and financially by Dan O'Bannon's zombie spoof The Return of the Living Dead (and rightfully so, since it is a superior movie). Yet there was a lot of reconsidering that went on in later years, and I think later generations of horror fans were in part responsible for the film's reputation being raised.

I enjoy it very much, and always have. I don't consider it to be the horror gem that Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead are, but I always found it to be a very strong, disturbing and intelligent horror flick nonetheless. I think a big part of why later fans embraced it, however, is the fact that it has the most vivid, realistic and plentiful gore of any of Romero's films. And while I don't think this should be the end-all and be-all of a horror movie, it should be noted that Tom Savini probably did the best work of his career for this one.

Romero movies have never been acclaimed for their dramatic performances, and Day of the Dead is probably the nadir of that trend. Lori Cardille, Joe Pilato and the rest of the gang stand around screaming obscenities at each other is almost akin to bad drama class exercises. But let's face it--we forgive Romero that. OK, the guy may not be the best dramatic director, or maybe he never had the clout to draw the finest actors. No matter. The film has much more to recommend it.

For one thing, there is the one truly remarkable performance of the picture--the finest in any Romero picture, if you ask me. I'm talking, of course, about Bub. Howard Sherman crafts the single most memorable zombie of all time, and one of the most striking movie monsters ever put to the screen with his powerful, nuanced work in the role of the first zombie who becomes sentient. Every scene he's in is magic, particularly his interactions with Dr. Logan in the lab. Combine that with the single greatest individual makeup Savini ever created, and you have a character worth cherishing.

Pilato, though hammy as all hell, also does a very good job of getting us to hate his guts. And its those same guts which get graphically torn from his body in the film's climactic orgy of cannibalistic violence. Back in those days, Romero was able to totally circumvent the ratings board, and boy does it ever pay off here. As much as I do enjoy his latter-day zombie flicks, I do miss the outrageous eviscerations, I will admit.

Unfortunately, one of the problems with not playing ball is that funding is also hard to come by. For that reason, Romero infamously had to scale back on the ambitious vision he had for Day of the Dead, and the finished product is highly truncated from what the original script called for. It's a claustrophic little flick, that actually has more in common in that regard with Night than it does with its more recent predecessor Dawn. And in this way, it works. Romero manages to deftly spin his tale of the final breakdown of humanity in this little bunker. It really feels like the final progression in the downfall of the human race that has been going on up to this point (although the much later Land of the Dead would somewhat negate that).

Some find Romero's social statements to be pretentious or tired, but I say you have to put it in perspective. Yes, it may be a bit tired for Romero to still be hitting same notes some 25 years later, but his messages were bold and much-needed when he first made them in the late '60s to mid '80s. In an era when filmmakers' handcuffs were finally removed completely, he was among the first to use the horror genre to make real statements about our own world and society--something the science fiction genre had been doing for decades.

And with Day of the Dead, he really drives the hopelessness home. This is a far more depressing film than the sometimes tongue-in-cheek Dawn of the Dead. There is very little, if any, black humor here. Humanity has royally screwed itself, and Romero seems to be mourning the end of the race (a far cry from his more cynical opinion of 20 years later, when he seems to make the case that the zombies deserve the Earth more than we do).

In short, I'm glad that Day of the Dead has been reappraised since 1985, but I do think this has caused it to swing a bit too far in the other direction. No matter what the gorehounds say, I will never consider it Romero's best zombie film. It is, however, a damn good zombie movie that should be viewed by anyone who wants to see a passionate, intelligent horror director do his thing. And Bub, the modern-day Frankenstein Monster, will always have a special place in my heart.

Happy Birthday, George!

Announcing the Nominees for the 2nd Annual Cyber Horror Awards!

The time is upon us again. Long-time readers may remember this from last year, many of you are new to it. The CHAs are, to my knowledge, the only horror movie awards voted on exclusively by online horror bloggers and writers, and I'm happy to be hosting it for the second year. And they said it wouldn't last! Well, actually, no one said that. Anyway, moving right along...

Just like last year, I've enlisted the help of some of the best and brightest online horror critics and writers out there, and I'm proud to say that the number of invited voters is nearly triple what it was last year. Which reminds me--I have made every effort to include all of you, but please, if you're a horror blogger or online horror critic with whom I'm familiar, and you find that you haven't received a ballot, do not take offense. In any undertaking like this, some folks are bound to slip through the cracks. So just be so kind as to send me a gentle reminder, and I will rectify the situation post-haste!

Unlike last year, when I did all the nominating by my lonesome, this year I invited LoTT-D founder John Cozzoli and horror critic/author John Kenneth Muir to take part, as well. I think it's a pretty solid and eclectic list of nominees. For example, here I present to you the 2009 Cyber Horror Award nominees for Best Film:

• Drag Me to Hell

• Trick 'r Treat

• Zombieland

• Thirst

• Grace

For the remainder of the nominees, plus videos and photos, head over to the official site for the Cyber Horror Awards, where you'll also find the spiffy new header created by B-Movie Becky of The Horror Effect.

What will happen now is that between this week and the first week of March, ballots will be coming in. I will tally up said ballots, and announce the award winners by the end of that first week of March. Exciting, right? Also, for the voters, keep in mind when you're checking out the nominees, and find you disagree vehemently with the choices--write-ins are always more than welcome! The only requirement is that it be a film that was released--either to theaters (film festivals don't count) or direct to video--during 2009.

This year's awards are shaping up to be even cooler than last year's and I'm honored to have a bunch of really great participants to make it as legit as possible. Hell, last year I even got some thank-you responses from winners like David Hackl, which you can read on the right-hand sidebar of the awards site. So here's to recognizing the best of 2009, and celebrating the one thing that unites us all--the love of horror films!

Random Ramblings from the Vault...

• Just picked up the amazing Taschen coffee table book Horror Cinema, at the advice of Tenebrous Kate. Excellent stuff, highly recommended.

• I think it's a ridiculous travesty that the only copy of Psycho I own is the version I taped off television 15 years ago on one of those low-grade 8-hour BASF VHS tapes. This must be remedied forthwith.

• Less than two weeks to Shutter Island. Can you feel the excitement?

• How amazing is it that the legendary Famous Monsters of Filmaland cover artist Basil Gogos just did a new poster for the remake of The Wolfman?

• I'm going to put this out there, and I don't care what anyone thinks. The portrayal of the Frankenstein Monster in Van Helsing may be the most faithful to Mary Shelley's novel ever put to film.

• If I was stranded on a desert island and could only watch the horror films of a single director, I think it would probably be James Whale--even though there are only four of them. Of course that would be provided I could find someplace to plug in my DVD player.

• Confession: A large part of what got me into horror movies as a boy was the fact that the horror section at my neighborhood video store was on the other side of the shelves that contained the adult section. There, I said it. I feel so liberated!

• So when is Toho getting back into the Godzilla business? And dare I wonder if there's any truth to the CGI rumors??

• If you've voted on the current Walking Dead poll here in the Vault and are wondering who my pick is to play the lead on the TV series, I'm leaning toward Peter Krause. However, I do believe he is currently in the midst of another TV series, so that may be impossible. Sad face.

• Despite the usual attendant nonsense, it is pretty cool that Bloody-Disgusting is doing a horror blog award, and I encourage everyone who hasn't done so to head on over there and vote.

VAULT VLOG: Cyber Horror Award Nominees Coming This Week!

For more on the Cyber Horror Awards, go to the official site...

VAULTCAST: Conversations in the Dark... w/Katiebabs

Welcome to another episode of the Vaultcast, currently among the top 10 horror podcasts featured on PodOmatic.com! Tonight I bring you a special Zombie Edition of Conversations in the Dark, in which I'm joined by preeminent book blogger Katiebabs of Babbling About Books...and More. Listen in as we take a break from the zombie apocalypse to discuss all thing ghoulish. From the infamous slow vs. fast dilemma, to our real-life zombie nightmares, to the cutting edge of zombie fiction, we chat it up as the hordes of the undead fight to get inside...

Check it out in the player below, or on the Vaultcast page, or download the podcast directly right here.

Conversations in the Dark: Katiebabs

The Vaultcast!

Zelda Rubinstein 1933-2010

Zelda Rubinstein was not an actress whose career was enmeshed in the horror genre, and yet the entire horror community is currently mourning her passing with deep sadness. This is because Ms. Rubinstein brought to life one of the most beloved and identifiable supporting characters in horror movie history--the tiny medium Tangina Barrons from Poltergeist, whose trademark line "Don't go into the light" is right up there with "We all go a little mad sometimes," "They're coming to get you, Barbara," and "Here's Johnny!"

She reprised the role in both of the later Poltergeist sequels--the only character to do so besides little Carol Anne herself, portrayed by the late Heather O'Rourke. Zelda will forever live in our memories, a true horror movie icon just by virtue of this one unforgettable part--the gentle, diminutive psychic who aided the Freeling family in taking their little girl back from the clutches of the Beast.

She got her start in movies playing in the obscure 1981 comedy Under the Rainbow, in which she portrayed one of the Munchkins from the Wizard of Oz. She was a regular on the critically acclaimed 1990s TV series Picket Fences with Tom Skerritt, and ironically her last film appearance would be in a horror film, as well--2006's Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. Fun fact: She returned to the role of Tangina for a cameo in the 1995 Casper movie (as did Dan Akroyd as ghostbuster Ray Stantz), but her scene was unfortunately left on the cutting room floor.

Ms. Rubinstein suffered a heart attack late last year, and had been in grave condition ever since. Her family took her off life support some weeks ago, and yesterday she finally succumbed at the age of 76.

The Many Faces of Elsa Lanchester

Hump-Day Harangue: Bruce Campbell--What's the Big Deal?

Another guest-harangue from Marilyn Merlot, who dares to question the appeal of one of horror's most beloved thespians...

The more important question after this might be how many women are not going to be a fan of me? Yes, I’m putting it out there. I never saw the big appeal of Bruce Campbell.

I know he’s a big fan favorite with horror websites, blogs, etc. But when I started reading through the interviews for Ms. Horror Blogosphere that the handsome Mr. Solomon put together, I started to ask myself the same question that he was asking some of the lovely contestants. “So what is it about Campbell that you all like, anyway?”

So I thought about it, too. I started off like many other people, catching him as Ash in the Evil Dead movies. At first glance back then, I thought, not bad, easy on the eyes, nice body. Then I was like, okay, this is what everyone’s talking about? Here he’s supposed to be a “real man”--a hero, even. But instead, he’s this whiny little bitch who is just as scared as the girls, and screaming like one. So, if you were his girlfriend, he would be someone you cannot rely on. He would be more likely to throw you in front of himself in self-defense.

Then there is the disaster of Evil Dead II. He is fighting with a possessed hand--enough said. I’ll be honest, I actually had a hard time getting through that movie. I found it laughable at times. I understand that he is a B-movie guy and definitely a B. or maybe C-actor at best. Don’t get me wrong, I like my B-horror movies, but with Bruce and his movies it’s just the same old thing after a while.

For instance, let’s jump ahead to My Name is Bruce. Here, he is still trying to capitalize on the character of Ash from The Evil Dead. Seriously, Bruce? Ash is long gone and done with, let him go. Even Corey Feldman knew he made a mistake when he went back to make Lost Boys: The Tribe. Then, to see someone in his 50s still chasing young starlets around who may be just turning 20 is a little creepy.

When all is said and done, you have a huge fan following, Bruce Campbell, and have made a fine living out of your movies. So until the next Evil Dead movie, I will continue to laugh at your expense.

21st Century Terrors, Part 5: 2004

By the middle of the first decade of the century, the horror genre renaissance was in full effect. And perhaps no other single year was more indicative of this than 2004. A few specific movies were at the heart of it, and for various different reasons they all made a major impact on fans and critics alike. To a certain extent, we're still talking about them today as if they just came out, which is more indicative of their influence than anything.

Perhaps most ironically of all, the most beloved of these--and perhaps the most beloved horror film of the entire decade--was actually a horror comedy. Birthed from the minds of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg via their obsessive love of all things Romero, Shaun of the Dead was more than a movie--it was a movement. The zombie fad had been cooking for a couple of years already, but SOTD distilled it into a single, transcendent experience--a film that celebrated not only the zombie genre, but zombie fandom as well.

The misadventures of Shaun and Ed have since become iconic in a relatively short period of time. They were perhaps horror's finest comedy duo since Abbott & Costello tangled with the Frankenstein Monster. And the brilliance of the film was that it managed to be so genuinely funny while still being true to the genre it so blatantly worshiped. The movie works equally well as a zombie picture and as a romantic comedy, hence the now famous subgenre title, "rom-zom-com".

Shaun of the Dead was the kind of film that defines a generation of fandom, and without question represents horror in the 2000s for many people. Yet there is also another film which does that for others, and that's James Wan's Saw, the film that, for all intents and purposes, thrust the "torture porn" subgenre into the limelight (along with Hostel a bit later).

Yet ironically, the film itself doesn't quite conform to the stereotype of that subgenre, not having the trademark explicit depictions of graphic violence and sadism for the ostensible purpose of audience titillation. The original Saw, taken apart from its never-ending stream of sequels, is actually an imaginative, psychologically based thriller, which manages to put a unique spin on the slasher motif and packs one hell of a punch with its rollercoaster of a storyline.

Jigsaw is a character very much of his time, just as Dracula, Norman Bates and Freddy Krueger were of theirs. And his sinister m.o. of byzantine traps and warped morality--inspired strongly by the previous decade's Seven--definitely touched a nerve with audiences. Saw would go on to become one of the most successful franchises of the decade, becoming almost what Friday the 13th was for the 1980s--for better or worse.

The two giants of Shaun of the Dead and Saw gave horror a relatively high profile in 2004, but there was even more going on. For one thing, in addition to the Romero zombie parody, there was also a Romero zombie remake, in Zak Snyder's Dawn of the Dead. For a film that had a lot of ill will pointed toward it, Snyder's film made the most of it, and shut a lot of people's mouths in the process.

James Gunn's script upset many purists with its fast-moving zombies and the ejecting of most of Romero's social commentary, but the finished product can nevertheless stand on its own merits. It's an effective, energetic horror film with characters we can get behind, and quite possibly one of the most impressive opening sequences of all time. For a movie that seemed doomed to fail, Dawn of the Dead stands as one of the decade's triumphs.

Beyond the big triumphs, zombie cinema continued full speed ahead with no end in sight. We got the first sequel to the movie that arguably kicked off the whole craze, with Resident Evil: Apocalypse. And in addition to SOTD, there was another foreign zombie comedy, Night of the Living Dorks, which although far less inspired and extremely overrated, was another testament to the subgenre's worldwide staying power.

Sequels were also in full effect, as they always seem to be in our beloved genre. Yet just as with everything else in 2004, even the sequels seemed to stand out--although not always for the best reasons. Case in point: Aliens vs. Predator, a clunker of a film that managed to murder two adored franchises in one fell swoop. Although long followed enthusiastically by comic book fans, the battle of everyone's two favorite space monsters just didn't add up to cinematic magic.

It seemed like studios were anxious to bring back successful series and characters amidst the burgeoning interest in horror that was going on at the box office. The Child's Play franchise puttered on with Seed of Chucky, a subversive little flick that admittedly went in a completely bizarre and unique direction, delivering laughs as well as scares. Blade hit the wall with Blade: Trinity, a movie that proved that even horror comics aren't immune to the "third movie curse" of comic book franchises. Even the classic Universal monsters got back into the mix with Van Helsing, a poorly received action vehicle from Stephen Sommers, the same guy who resurrected the Mummy in similar fashion the 1990s.

And then there was the infamous Exorcist: The Beginning, the granddaddy of all troubled horror sequel/prequels. Looking to reap more financial rewards from the most successful horror film of all time, Warner Bros. commissioned a new film that would explore the origins of Father Merrin's relationship with the demon. Unfortunately, when Paul Schrader's version was a little too artsy for them, they brought in Hollywood mercenary Renny Harlin and created a whole different picture, which was a notorious disaster. In an unprecedented maneuver, Schrader's version would see the light of day the following year.

Leading the pack of foreign remakes was The Grudge, an American version of the acclaimed J-horror thriller of two years earlier. It seemed like a logical follow-up to the highly successful The Ring, yet failed to similarly capture the power of the original.

Yet don't let that mediocre final note fool you. The year 2004 was a banner one for horror films, and in some ways, it can be argued that it was highpoint of the decade.

Also from 2004:

• Dead and Breakfast
• Ginger Snaps Back
• Ginger Snaps Unleashed
• Satan's Little Helper
• The Village

Part 1: 2000
Part 2: 2001
Part 3: 2002
Part 4: 2003

TRAILER TRASH: Bruce Campbell Edition!

And stay tuned later this week for the sure-to-be-controversial guest rant from Ms. Marilyn Merlot, "Bruce Campbell: What's the Big Deal?"...

VAULT VLOG: Magazine Madness!

• For more on Cineaste Magazine, go to their official website.
• Order Midnight Echo #3 right here.
• And of course, Musings Across a Continuum can be found here.

Fun with the Post-Apocalypse!!

Just when I thought there were no more reasons for me to feel superior and arrogant as a native New Yorker, along comes the Kevin Geeks Out series at the 92Y Tribeca in downtown Manhattan. A very unique comedy-variety film clip show, it was first brought to my attention back in October by Tenebrous Kate of Love Train for the Tenebrous Empire, back when Emmy-nominated comedy writer Kevin Maher was hosting an installment of Kevin Geeks Out pertaining to Vincent Price.

Sadly, I couldn't make it to that particular event, but I did leave my suburban stronghold last night to at last take in the majesty that is Kevin Geeks Out. The subject of last night's event: Visions of the Future! And let me tell you, I never realized the future could be so hysterically funny.



Dressed as Orson Welles from when he narrated the 1981 Nostradamus "documentary" The Man Who Saw Tomorrow, Kevin regaled the unsuspecting audience with a series of vintage film clips, and brilliant presenters who walked us through various bizarre interpretations of the future from pop culture past, including lots and lots of stuff about the world being destroyed by nuclear war. In fact, Kevin's co-host, Scott Christian Carr, is an award-winning author and filmmaker whose favorite theme is the post-apocalypse.

What really got me down to Tribeca was the participation of Kate herself, who introduced some inspiredly awful clips from the Italian post-apocalypse cheese-fest The New Barbarians, featuring Fred "The Hammer" Williamson and that little boy from The House by the Cemetery. Clearly I need to track this film down post-haste and watch it from beginning to end.

But we also got Daily Show writer Elliott Kalan taking us through his own personal obsession, the 1939 World's Fair, complete with stories from his own grandmother, who attended the event. This fascinated me very greatly, as I too, had always heard the stories of this legendary futurist extravaganza, and even own an authentic collector's coin from the exhibition given to me by my grandfather.

Plus, Popular Mechanics technology editor Seth Porges was a riot dissecting his periodical's woefully inadequate attempts to predict the future over the past 100+ years. Real-life psychic Jane Doherty enthralled the crowd with some creepy Criswell-like predictions of what is to come (woman president in 2020, and a vegetarian fast food chain by 2015, who knew?) And of course, we learned all about the sad saga of Electro the smoking robot (pictured at top).

And there was much more, including perhaps most importantly of all, generous servings of Dippin' Dots, the Ice Cream of the Future, for everyone on-hand. So generous, in fact, that I was actually given the rest of the unconsumed Dippin' Dots to take home to my appreciative kids in a giant styrofoam case filled with dry ice. Said case was later mistaken for a container of body parts by a group of inebriated party-goers who spotted me walking back to my car. To prove them wrong, I happily shared my Dippin' Dots with said drunken revelers before disappearing into the night, the mysterious Dippin' Dots Guy, as I'm sure they'll forever remember me...

But back to Kevin Geeks Out. If you happen to be in the NYC area, I implore you to check this show out. You can find out more about it on the 92Y Tribeca website, where you will also learn that Kevin's next installment, Kevin Geeks Out About... Monkeys!, is coming up next month. Judging by the trailer alone, I will say it's a safe bet I will be there again. I had a blast watching the brilliant Kate do her thing, and also enjoyed the company of Emily I. from The Deadly Doll's House of Horror Nonsense, as well as Dylan and Christine of Paracinema Magazine. In short, a splendid time was had by all, and I look forward to geeking out with Kevin more... in the future!

Psycho Semi-Centennial: This Movie's for the Birds

Welcome to the first installment of a brand new feature here in the VoH that will be running through 2010, celebrating the 50th anniversary of one of the finest horror films ever made (possibly the finest), Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. And no, contrary to what you might think from reading the title of this initial post, I'm not about to bash this seminal classic. Rather, I mean what I wrote in a very literal sense.

Let me explain. I won't be the first one to break any new ground here, as anyone who's ever taken a rudimentary film course is likely to have come up against this interesting phenomenon. Nevertheless, I've always been fascinated by it, and figured this would be the perfect opportunity to expound upon it. What I'm talking about is Hitchcock's very apparent avian obsession. Because there is a bird motif about a mile wide running through his 1960 masterpiece.

Hitch was a master of symbolism, and he weaves it all in with great dexterity, but it's there--watch the flick closely a couple times and the bird imagery will start hitting you in the face like guano from the sky.

Let's break it down, shall we?

• The opening shot of the film appears to occur in mid-air, as we approach the window-ledge of an apartment building. Like a bird flying over the city.

• Our story begins in the city of Phoenix. Phoenix, get it? The legendary bird that rises from its own ashes? Myth and folklore majors, quit looking through the unemployment section and help me out here.

• Our main character (well, until she's bumped off halfway in) is named Crane.

• This same woman is later described as "eating like a bird" by Norman Bates.

• Speaking of Norman, and this is a bit more abstract, but Anthony Perkins actually is somewhat bird-like in his physical features. I'm willing to bet this was a conscious casting criterion. (Oooh--alliteration!)

• OK, where was I? Oh, Norman. Yes, our favorite momma's boy has a creepy little hobby, doesn't he? Taxidermy! Specifically, stuffing dead birds. Many of which are birds of prey.

• My favorite of all: During Norman and Marion's lunch conversation, Norman turns away from her and twists his neck in a very odd way to look up at something. The camera shoots him at such an angle that the silhouette of his neck, chin and nose actually resemble the head of a bird. Check it out if you don't believe me -------->

• During conversation, Norman mentions that his mother is "as harmless as one of these stuffed birds". Hence directly comparing her to the predators.

• Bernard Herrmann's famous score, with its instantly recognizable screeching violins, literally sounds like birds attacking. And when do we hear it most prominently? During the shower murder scene.

• And finally, what was Hitchcock's next movie? Yeah, I think you know.

And there's lots more too, including the picture of the bird that Norman knocks off the wall upon "discovering" Marion dead in the bathroom (oops, spoiler y'all! *rolls eyes*). It's all there right in front of you--birds, birds, birds. But what's it all mean?

Well, this is where the wonderful world of film criticism comes in. I'm firmly of the belief that as long as you can back it up with evidence, then any theory of interpretation is valid--whether the filmmakers intended it or not. So I can't speak for Hitchcock, or even Robert Bloch for that matter, when trying to analyze this movie. Who knows why he did it, but I do not I have my own theory.

More than anywhere else, the bird motif seems to hinge upon Norman himself. Marion may be the one with the bird name, but Norman is the one actually represented as a bird-like character. Yet, he's certainly not a mature bird--rather, he's more a child, a weak little chick, who needs to be protected by his momma, the mother bird. The mother who is not only compared to a bird, but literally stuffed like one by Norman.

This mother bird is, even after her death and living only in the mind of her offspring, out to shelter and protect him from the harsh outside world. The home, or nest, is high on a hill, elevated off the ground like an actual nest. And it's most imperative that Norman, the baby bird, be kept in that nest, that he not leave and go out into the world to become a mature adult. In this way, the bird motif serves the purpose of driving home the relationship between Norman and his mother, how it warps his development, and how it informs his sublimated murderous rage.

Just a theory, but I'm pretty convinced of it after repeated viewings. Let me know if the bird thing has ever occurred any of you as well. And if it has, what's your take on it?

VAULTCAST: Conversations in the Dark... w/T.L. Bugg

It's that time again, when I sit down with a fellow blogger and chat up some weighty topic or another. This week on Conversations in the Dark, it's the lord and master of The Lightning Bug's Lair, and we get pretty in-depth on some of the hottest projects hitting theaters within the next 12 months. So join us as we delve into the trials and tribulations of The Wolf Man, the potential of Shutter Island, and why Let Me In is just so incredibly depressing...

Listen in below, visit the Vaultcast page, or download directly right here.

Conversations in the Dark: T.L. Bugg

thevaultofhorror's Podcast

Exclusive Interview: Author and Film Buff Ron Hogan Talks '70s Horror

I've mentioned it on here before, but Ron Hogan's The Stewardess Is Flying the Plane is one of my favorite books on cinema, in no small part because it deals with my favorite era in cinema, the 1970s. Hogan is an influential force in the literary blogosphere, having founded the groundbreaking book website/blog Beatrice.com in 1995, and currently earning his keep as director of e-marketing strategy for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Mr. Hogan was recently kind enough to sit down and answer some questions I posed to him about the movie era we both love so much, the '70s. In particular, given the nature of this blog, I thought it might be a worthy idea to focus on the horror films of the '70s in particular. I'll always have a soft spot for that decade in horror filmmaking, and having read Mr. Hogan's book, I figured he'd have a lot of interesting things to say on the topic. Turns out, I was right.

I happen to be a big fan of the '70s era of film in general, which is what attracted me to your book. What is it about that decade that really distinguishes it in cinema history, and made you want to focus on it in the first place?
I was inspired by Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls--basically, if that book was about a handful of directors who transformed Hollywood, I wanted to know, well, what did the rest of
Hollywood end up looking like? And it turns out to be a quite fascinating period: The studios' motives for hiring young directors like Altman, Bogdanovich and Coppola may have been largely financial, but they (and many others like them) played an important part in making the counterculture of the late 1960s the mainstream culture of the 1970s.

You devote a chapter in your book to the horror genre. What place do you feel it had in that whole era? What part did it play? How would you characterize the effect on the genre caused by the new-found freedom of this era in terms of what you could get away with depicting?
The elimination of the Production Code in the late 1960s is absolutely essential to horror's development in the 1970s, and you see a lot of envelope-pushing throughout the decade, as filmmakers see just how explicit they can make scenes. You only have to look at the use of
tension and indirection in, say, a Val Lewton-produced film of the 1940s like Cat People, then compare it to the spectacular gory deaths of The Omen and Damien: Omen II to see the shift in emphasis.
Horror tends to take a back seat in most considerations of 1970s film; it's not a genre of Academy-recognized serious message films, nor a genre of all-access blockbusters like Star Wars or Jaws. But it was a consistently popular genre--look at how many horror films from the
1970s have been remade in the last decade, and you'll understand how these films wedged themselves into our popular imagination.

What would you say are the most important horror films of the era and why? How about the most important directors?
Most of my answers are the fairly obvious ones: Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist for pushing horror into the mainstream, directors like George Romero and Tobe Hooper for their maverick ambitions. I would like to see greater recognition for Larry Cohen--God Told Me To is
one of the most unsettling films of the entire decade.
And although it's a TV-movie, Steven Spielberg's Duel reminds us that he learned a lot about cinematic storytelling from horror movies, and what he learned about pacing and tension is used to masterful effect later on in the decade in Jaws and Close Encounters.

Do you think there was still a stigma at that time with regards to horror, or was it becoming more mainstream?
Probably a bit of both, actually: Horror WAS becoming more mainstream, but there was still a critical stigma attached to the genre, not least of all because it was one that was frequently imitated on the cheap. (Which is the same reason it took blaxploitation films, for example,
to gain enduring respect as anything more than time-period artifacts.)

What was it that led so many filmmakers to explore such intense and disturbing themes at this point in movie history? What kind of an effect, if any, would you say that horror cinema had on non-horror film during the 1970s? Taxi Driver, for example, almost feels like a horror film at times!
It was an intense and disturbing time in American history, that's the main thing--and, as I mentioned earlier, the removal of the Production Code meant that filmmakers could be more explicit, whatever they were trying to say, and they didn't have to tack on a moralistic or happy ending to make everything alright in the final reel. The pervasive loss of faith in major institutions, from the government on down, plays perfectly into horror's unsettling of the normal world, and vice versa. The visual tropes of horror were a perfect mirror for the psychological fear and uncertainty of 1970s America.

Let's talk about The Exorcist. Most consider it the finest horror film of this era (or perhaps any). Would you agree, and why do you think this opinion is so commonly held? I'd agree, because William Friedkin, working off the William Peter Blatty screenplay, works from fundamental premises: We care about the film because we care about the characters. Father Damien's crisis of faith matters to us; the visual spectacles of Regan's torment resonate more because we've come to recognize her as a character, not simply a victim of horror pyrotechnics. The film isn't a roller-coaster ride through a series of horrific set-pieces; it's a serious story that
happens to have horrific elements perfectly integrated into its emotional core.

Why was Satanism such a prevalent theme in 1970s horror?
Again, the removal of the Production Code explains a lot, but it's also worth noting the general apocalyptic tone of the Cold War era was an effective breeding ground for a "God vs. Satan" mythology. Throw in a tireless self-promoter like Anton LaVey pressing at the fringes of
Hollywood society, and the rise of explicit Satanism as a metaphor for the pervasive corruption of American society becomes a lot clearer.

Whats your opinion on the slasher phenomenon, and why do you think it arose at that particular point in time with a movie like Halloween?
When I mentioned horror films as "a roller-coaster ride through a series of horrific set-pieces" up above, I had the worst knock-offs of the slasher film in mind. Not so much Halloween--which, like most of John Carpenter's work in this period, is a testament to what a determined filmmaker can achieve on a limited budget--but dozens of films that came afterwards, where everybody comes into the theater not only knowing they're going to see a string of brutal murders, but
cheering for them. To me, I'm not even sure that's really horror--more like bread and circuses.

How would you compare the horror of the 1970s, in terms of what came after, in the 1980s and 1990s? It seems to me they became a bit more light-hearted in the '80s, and then much tamer in the '90s.
That sounds about right to me--I didn't watch much horror in the 1990s, but I firmly remember the increasing ridiculousness of '80s horror, particularly the franchises where, as I complained above, a bunch of cardboard cutouts get killed in visually extravagant ways and then maybe evil gets pushed back into its box at the end or maybe it slinks away to kill another day.

Any future projects you might want to let my readers know about?
I've been thinking a lot about action films lately...

I want to thank Ron Hogan for taking some time out to discuss one of my favorite topics. I hope you enjoyed our little talk, and if you're a fan of 1970s film in general, I encourage you to have a look at The Stewardess Is Flying the Plane. You can also follow Ron on Twitter here.