Why Watch? In a world populated by terrifying horror movie monsters, you’ve got to organize who gets to kill on what nights, right? This short from Mark Blitch had me at the male porn star’s giggle and just kept the laughs coming. It admittedly gets into weird territory for the action, but, hey, why the hell not? This is what happens when horror gets interrupted by red tape, and the ridiculous results speak for themselves. What does it cost? Just 5 minutes of your time. Trust us. You have time for more short films.

Shuffle. Shuffle. Groan. Crawl. Shuffle. And commentary on all of it. It’s the Halloween season, so you know the zombie movies are out there in force. But we always like a few lot of laughs with our scares. What better movie to dish out both of those along with an ample helping of heart – figurative heart, as in emotion, not actual bloody hearts being tossed about, though we have that here, too – than Edgar Wright‘s Shaun of the Dead? What’s even better, Wright has brought along a familiar and jovial voice to help him recollect some of the fun and interesting times on set. Simon Pegg is helping out with the color commentary, that color being red more than likely. So it’s time to head on down to the Winchester – provided they have a DVD player – grab a pint and your best cricket bat, watch the ball go from bat to wicket – that’s a cricket reference just to show I know a thing or two. That’s two things. I’m out. – and hear what Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg have to say in this week’s Commentary Commentary. Shuffle. Crawl. Shuffle. Groan. Brains.

This week, on a very special episode of Reject Radio, we talk with director Jake Kasdan about the horror of getting Cameron Diaz all wet for Bad Teacher. Plus, The Innkeepers and House of the Devil director Ti West offers up his favorite scary movie, and we chat with a man who got a movie deal by posting on Reddit. Download This Episode

Get it! Because it’s about zombies! There’s no challenging that Zombieland dominated in every way possible. Word of a sequel was quick to surface, but that’s all it’s ever been. Movement hasn’t been swift, but now the concept that was first meant for television and then became a movie might become a television show once more. According to The Hollywood Reporter, writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick and producer Gavin Polone are developing a half hour comedy version of the movie for weekly consumption on Fox. This would add another notch to the trend of the undead hobbling around television. The Walking Dead was a door buster, and MTV has their own series that might head to a second season. What’s genius here is that it’s set up for comedy and for 22 minutes of story. With as tight as Reese and Wernick’s writing can be, there’s no doubt that they can jam a lot of bloody laughs into that amount of time. Now if they can only manage to get a solid make-up effects budget. Some might raise an eyebrow at the concept (and Fox’s involvement), but it’s incredibly cool to see anyone taking a chance on horror comedy on network TV. But if you were hoping for a movie instead, don’t worry! All television shows get promised a film version after they finish their run, and it always, always gets made.

Why Watch? This is just a bit of hellish fun. There’s no pretense to this short film. It’s a recipe stewed together to create something creepy, cobbled together from comedy and horror films of all kinds. The off-putting old toy? The busty blonde in her sleeping gear? The idiot going down to check a noise in the middle of the night? It’s no big surprise what happens here, but there’s something deeply satisfying about it all. It’s almost like writer/director Nick Everhart is slamming his fist down on the table with a smirk here to prove he knows how to construct a classic slasher with an absurd killer. What does it cost? Just 5 minutes of your time. Check out the trailer for Slash-In-The-Box for yourself:

Why Watch? It features the revenge of a household item we’ve been dumping our shit in for years. For the next week or so, we’ll be shining a spotlight on some of the short films from the ABCs of Death competition going on right now to find the 26th director for the upcoming horror anthology. Each entry starts with the letter T and has to pick a T-word to use in a deadly way. We’ve featured work from Lee Hardcastle before, and this new short has the same wicked charm and horror sensibility that manages to make you laugh while cringing. What does it cost? Just 4 minute of your time. Check out T is For Toilet for yourself:

Why Watch? Because the shopping carts won’t be pushed around anymore. From the first text that hits the screen explaining the statistics on blood-thirsty shopping carts, it’s clear that 1) the absurd is taken seriously here and 2) shopping carts are going to try to kill you and eat your flesh. The exposition is nil here, which is great, because all it really demands is the Night of the Living Dead feel matched with the stakes somehow being raised as a few people battle against rogue shopping carts. There might be a deeper meaning here about consumer culture or about the homeless or about treating your mother better or something, but I don’t care to look for it. This short film is hilarious and haunting enough as is. What does it cost? Just 7 minutes of your time. Check out Death Carts for yourself:

Why Watch? Because dry humor, zombies, lumps of clay, and Evil Dead go together surprisingly well. This short from Lee Hardcastle had its world debut at Cannes this year, and I would have given an undead right arm to be in the room when it played. Like yesterday’s zombie exploration, this is sweetly endearing for taking the abject horror of the genre and taming it with stop motion animation, tons of clay carnage, and a few simple jokes. Watch the short, and you’ll see Evil Dead all over it. What does it cost? Just 3 glorious minutes of your time. Check out A Zombie Claymation for yourself:

Why Watch? Because you were sold when you read the title. It’s refreshing to see a production take the prospect of a zombie musical seriously. The book here is filled with catchy, joyous songs about having to kill your mom after she’s turned and falling in love after the dead walk the earth. Production value is, frankly, higher than you might expect, and it’s got a distinctive Trey Parker-esque feel about it. It’s outlandish, over-the-top, and it shoves the absurdity of musicals into the insanity of running from brain-hungry hordes with delightful success. Longer than most shorts we post, but absolutely worth the investment. What does it cost? Just 32 glorious minutes of your time. Check out Rigamortis: A Zombie Love Story for yourself:

When it was announced that the newest film from eighteen-year-old director Emily Hagins, entitled My Sucky Teen Romance, was going to premiere at SxSW, I was ecstatic. Almost every member of our SXSW coverage team either lives or has previously lived in Austin and knows Emily personally. Hell, some of us even donated our time to assist in the movie’s completion. That made it slightly difficult to lend our voices to reviewing the film. So do we decline to review it? Do we expend no words on it at all? Yes…and no. There is a story here, and a damn good one at that, completely divorced from the film itself. Emily’s story. Hagins wrote her first feature-length film, Pathogen, at age 11.  The next year, she earned a grant from the Austin Film Society to produce Pathogen, effectively becoming the youngest recipient of that award. Her tireless dedication to making her first feature film, and the fact that she wasn’t even in high school yet, attracted the attention of a trio of documentary filmmakers who noticed Hagins’s casting call posted on a local website called Austinactors.net. They crafted their 2009 film Zombie Girl: The Movie around her efforts. Between 7th and 8th grade, when the biggest thing that happened to most of us was getting our first kiss at a skating party, she was hard at work on The Retelling, her second feature. And now, here at SXSW 2011, Hagins’s third film played to bright marquee lights and packed houses [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Consider originality celebrated for the day. Michael Stephenson, director of Best Worst Movie, has got his next project underway, and it’s a dark comedy called Destroy that features a vampire hunter set loose in a world where he’s taking down innocent elderly men. Well, not completely innocent. Old men have seen some things, ya know? Luckily, our human-staking hero has an assistant to help him out. Fans of the Alamo Drafthouse will be interested to know that the script was written by lead programmer Zack Carlson alongside Bryan Connolly, but the concept is enough to get me excited. It’s comedic and horrible and new, and it sounds like Don Quixote transplanted onto the world of Universal monsters. Plus, it comes at the perfect time to act as an antidote to the vampire outbreak we’ve seen in theaters. Check out the concept art by Johnny Sampson here:

The Fright Night remake is still over a year away from release, but the first image of character design from the film has already been glimpsed. David Tennant (Dr. Who) stars as a popular Las Vegas magician called upon by some uppity teens to face off against pure evil in the form of Jerry the vampire (Colin Farrell). The role is an updated version of the TV horror host played by Roddy McDowell in the original film. Anton Yelchin, Imogen Poots, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse play the aforementioned uppity youngsters. The image below is of a three-story banner hanging in the lobby of a Hard Rock Hotel & Casino where the Fright Night magic show takes the stage. Behold the mystical stylings of Peter Vincent, Mindfreak!

If you don’t know what type of film Piranha 3D is simply based on the title, then there’s no helping you. It’s interested in a few things and doing those things extremely well: being over-the-top, fun, and bloody in all senses of the word. The kills Alexandre Aja puts on-screen makes its R-rating seen mind boggling. Aja doesn’t pull his punches (similar to his previous films), but here the difference is in going more for pure fun rather than bleak horror. This is no soft R. It pushes the envelope. Aja knows exactly what type of film he made. He was interested from the beginning in telling a comedic horror satire in the vein of the films he grew up on as a teen. Aja labels it as a “guilty pleasure” film, which many will agree with, but it’s something I question him on since one shouldn’t feel at all guilty for enjoying the epic bloodbath Aja has released. This is as self-aware as films get. And while there is a political subtext similar to Aja’s previous film, The Hills Have Eyes, Piranha 3D is still all about having fun. Here’s what Alexandre Aja had to say. Beware a few spoilers.

If the remake tossed out the classic monsters, which modern monsters would you like to see replace them?

Remember when we reported this back in 2008? Apparently it’s still true. Just letting you know!

How excited am I to be attending a reparatory screening of an unsung horror film at SXSW? If you’re at all familiar with the articles I typically write for FSR, then the answer is self-evident. If you are lucky enough to have never read anything of mine, let me just say that this experience made me feel like Dr. Jones in the Egyptian desert realizing that the Nazis were digging in the wrong place.

Remember all those times that rednecks attacked you and your friends on Spring Break in the woods? Turns out you were the assholes.

Iraq War Veteran Bart comes home in a body bag, but he doesn’t stay in the ground for long. He comes to his best friend Joey for help and they both enter a life of finding human blood so that Bart can avoid decomposing.

This week on a very special episode of Reject Radio, we discuss spoilers (what they are and where to find them), zombie attacks, and why Ricky Gervais really loves being told he’s a fat slob.

If you’ve ever felt mad at the world and wanted to get back at it by punching it square in the face or if you’ve ever seen your family torn apart by a hairy monster, you definitely need to know Jack.