When the news recently broke that the Piranha 3D sequel Piranha 3DD was going straight to video in the UK, I speculated whether this meant that the movie wouldn’t get put into theaters anywhere at all. After all, it had already gone from an original November 2011 release date to a release of “sometime in 2012.” Doesn’t sound promising, right? Well according to Piranha 3DD co-writer Patrick Melton, it’s not yet time to panic. When talking to Daily Dead Melton said of the movie’s postponement, “To clarify, the Thanksgiving release was always overly optimistic. Marcus and I started writing the script around Thanksgiving a year prior. Making the film within that time period is plausible (we’ve done it on Saw, obviously), but it became clear very early on that our goals were not realistic because we needed sun, water slides, and bikini-clad coeds…three things not very prevalent in the United States during the months of January and February. We initially scouted Louisiana and realized that we wouldn’t be able to shoot until late March because of the cold weather. Now, with the additional FX worked needed to create/enhance the piranhas, the Thanksgiving release was out the window.” That’s certainly a reasonable excuse for why a movie would get pushed back. But what of that dreaded “sometime in 2012” release? Doesn’t that sound like a movie that is doomed to purgatory? Melton has some info on that as well.

Recently, Paramount sent around one of those pat-yourself-on-the-back sorts of press releases announcing that they made more money worldwide than any other studio last year. Of course, not one to dwell too long in the past, they also managed to slip in a little paragraph bragging about how good their upcoming 2012 looks as well: “In 2012, Paramount’s release slate highlights include World War Z, a zombie thriller starring Brad Pitt and directed by Marc Forster, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, the next installment in the global franchise starring Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Channing Tatum, a new chapter in the Paranormal Activity franchise, and The Dictator, starring Sacha Baron Cohen and directed by Larry Charles, the team behind Borat.” The interesting part of this paragraph is that, in addition to mentioning a bunch of high profile projects that we already knew about, the studio is also claiming that they have another Paranormal Activity movie in the works, which is news. All of these other movies are in various stages of post-production, but Paranormal Activity 4 is naught but a glimmer in some profit-minded executive’s eye.

As the current year comes to a close, many people focus on the symbolic birth of the upcoming new year. But horror movie fans might be more inclined to focus on the death of the old one. In particular, as 2011 winds down to its final destination, here’s your chance to raise a glass of champagne (or beer or wine) while revisiting this summer’s Final Destination 5 on DVD and Blu-ray. Forget in-depth characters and brilliant acting. Final Destination 5 delivers on some creative kills and one hell of a disaster sequence in the beginning. If you like the series, there are some good things in there to toast…much more than the last film, at least.

When the theatrical trailer was released for Paramount’s upcoming horror movie The Devil Inside, I responded to it by groaning and putting my face in my hands. There wasn’t anything in the footage that made this film look any different from the one million exorcism movies or the one thousand found footage horror movies that are already out there. Was this project really necessary? Well, the new red band trailer hints that though it might not be necessary, The Devil Inside might still be pretty fun. No, there isn’t anything revolutionary going on here that’s going to separate this film from the rest of the pack in your mind, but it’s starting to look like this one goes a few steps further than the rest of the recent exorcism films as far as big time spectacle, creepy effects work, and offensive content goes. This time around we get extended bone-crunching gymnastics, camera-splattering vaginal blood, lots of action, and a bit with a baby that’s bound to give you the willies.

Indie director turned studio comedy director David Gordon Green has been talking about doing a remake of Dario Argento’s cult horror classic Suspiria for a couple years now. Back in March of this year, he insinuated that he would be making the remake his next film after the release of The Sitter. Well, The Sitter is out now, and it’s time for Green to move on to his next project, so what’s the deal with Suspiria? The director recently told IFC, “I’ve turned in the script. We’re just looking at casting and locations and trying to figure out budget and if it works.” Fans of remakes all over the world probably just let out a cheer at the news that the script is finished, but what is that about figuring out budgets? Does it seem likely that an agreement on the price of this thing will be reached, or is this a script likely to sit on the shelf because it can’t get financing? “I’ve been trying to make it for four years and trying to find the support entity to finance it,” Green says. “It’s a very specific movie and the horror genre is in a very specific place right now that’s very much inspired by the success of movies like Paranormal Activity that show you can make a very economical killing at the box office, so to speak.” That doesn’t sound good to me. Any remake of Argento’s work is going to have to be pretty visually astounding [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]

Finally, a day that I’ve been waiting quite a while for has come. There’s word on what director Alexandre Aja’s next horror project is going to be. If you don’t know Aja, he’s the guy responsible for the incredibly gross The Hills Have Eyes remake that came out a couple of years ago as well as the ridiculously fun Piranha remake that hit last year. He’s pretty much the only director currently working in the horror genre that keeps turning my non-horror guy head, so I’m super excited to hear that he’s got something else in the works. What’s on the docket this time? A movie called Horns that is an adapted screenplay Scott Bunin wrote from a novel by Joe Hill. Though he probably gets annoyed that people keep bringing this up, it’s pretty much unavoidable, so I’ll say it anyway: Joe Hill is Stephen King’s son, so the horror is strong in this one.

We continue our journey through a month of frightening, bloody and violent films. For more, check out our 31 Days of Horror homepage. Synopsis: Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Some kids at a summer camp pull a prank that ends up having deadly consequences. But there’s a twist. The victim of the gag gone awry doesn’t actually die, he lives on as a deformed monster and one day returns to the camp where he goes about exacting brutal revenge on a group of horny, party obsessed teenagers. Sound familiar? Yeah, I thought so, but that’s not important. No matter how many of these Friday the 13th clones come out, they’re still all pretty entertaining in a cheesy way. And The Burning is definitely the cream of the crop when it comes to the pretenders, being just a notch below the genre milestones like Friday the 13th and Halloween, and certainly being better than their sequels. The killer here is Cropsy, a drunken and despised camp janitor who gets burned alive when some kids try to freak him out by putting a flaming skull in his bunk. His weapon of choice is a pair of gardening shears, which he uses to chop and slash tender young flesh. He’s silent, he’s dressed in black, and he kind of looks like a charred version of Sloth from The Goonies.

Horror director Larry Cohen has a number of memorable movies under his belt. He’s the guy responsible for cult movies like Black Caesar, It’s Alive, and the other, other werewolf movie from 1981 Full Moon High. But it’s his 1976 film God Told Me To, a movie about a series of murders committed by people who say they are following the instructions of God, that looks like it’s up for a remake. Who is trying to get their hands on the rights to a movie that deals with murder and religion like that? It’s best to let the story play out in the same words it did in a recent issue of Film Comment: “The 70-year-old Cohen mentioned that he had just come from a meeting with an interesting young Frenchman who was seeking the rights to remake God Told Me To. ‘What’s his name?’ inquired the staffer. ‘I don’t remember, but he gave me some DVDs of his films.’ The director rummaged in a bag and produced copies of Irreversible and Enter the Void.” That’s right, not only did a 70-year-old man not realize he was talking to Gaspar Noé, he now has been given copies of both Irreversible and Enter the Void, which he will watch with seemingly having no idea what to expect out of them. This story makes me smile. I hope that Cohen still has a strong love for the grotesque living inside of him.

When people are talking about the best horror movies of all time, they often use the term “horror classic.” I’m not exactly sure how that’s different from a movie that’s just a “classic,” but I think it’s somehow implying that movies where people get decapitated aren’t as good as serious dramas. I often hear the 1976 version of The Omen referred to as a “horror classic,” so I guess what that means is that it’s really good for a movie where people get decapitated. In 1993 a couple of superstar little kids named Elijah Wood and Macaulay Culkin starred in a movie called The Good Son. It’s never been called either a “classic” or a “horror classic,” but that might be because nobody gets decapitated in it.

The bad news for fans of horror just keeps piling up. Currently we’re dealing with an October that is painfully devoid of new horror releases in the theaters, and now a couple of movies that were supposed to be coming our way in the upcoming months are getting pushed back. Piranha 3DD was supposed to hit theaters on November 23rd and The Amityville Horror: The Lost Tapes was originally set to be released on January 27th, but they’re now both relegated to the vague release dates of  “sometime in 2012.” Both films are Dimension releases, so perhaps the reason for the pushback is some juggling on the corporate level, but I think we’ve all been following movies long enough to suss out what this probably means; it probably means they suck. The original Piranha 3D was great fun, but instead of bringing back the creative team from that film, Dimension instead got the hacks that collaborated on the terrible (in my opinion, argue if you disagree, I know there are some of you out there) Feast to handle this sequel. And the new Amityville movie, it’s supposed to be one of those found footage films. Anybody remember how boring Apollo 18 was? Yeah, I’m trying to forget too. I’d have to say that all signs are pointing to both of these movies turning out pretty bad. I mean, Amityville was already set to be put out in the film release wasteland of January, and now they’re not even comfortable putting [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]

We continue our journey through a month of frightening, bloody and violent films. For more, check out our 31 Days of Horror homepage. Synopsis: A small town becomes ground zero to an alien invasion, which reaches Earth in the form of alien slugs on a chunk of space rock. After the meteor lands in the woods, a local big shot Grant Grant (Michael Rooker) becomes infected with the alien parasite, which controls his body and memories. It’s a story we’ve seen many times before, and understandably so. Director James Gunn creates a loving homage to movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Blob and Night of the Creeps, in which the small-town sheriff Bill Pardy (Nathan Fillion) must battle an onslaught of infected, zombified humans while trying to stop the spread of the parasite to the rest of the world. Helping the sheriff is his long-time crush and girl next door Starla (Elizabeth Banks), who also happens to be married to patient zero.

It’s October and that means one thing in Hollywood: not releasing horror movies. It’s become sort of a yearly tradition for me to bitch about the lack of horror movies released in the month of Halloween and so far, Hollywood hasn’t yet disappointed in disappointing me. People love Halloween, they love scary movies, and they love combining the two. During the month of October, more people than ever are interested in seeing scary flicks and having fun in a theater. You can look at positively mediocre movies, like most of the Saw franchise, Rob Zombie’s Halloween movies, and Paranormal Activity, that are released in October and make oodles of money — money they wouldn’t make at any other time. It’s sort of like when poker started appearing on television, everyone started buying poker sets. Poker movies started coming out. SyFy Channel and The Asylum make a living off of making rip-off movies that play around the release of huge movies, when people are most interested in that subject. If only there were a way to know when people would be interested in what…

We continue our journey through a month of frightening, bloody and violent films. For more, check out our 31 Days of Horror homepage. Synopsis: People probably know Joe Dante best as being the guy who directed Gremlins, that movie about goofy little green monsters that still managed to be pretty creepy. But a couple of years before Gremlins got big he made a full-on creepy werewolf movie called The Howling. The main character is a news reporter named Karen (Dee Wallace). When we first meet her she’s trying to help the police in a sting operation meant to catch a serial killer. The cops plan to use Karen as bait in order to flush the killer out, but things don’t quite go according to plan and she ends up seeing something that leaves her traumatized and experiencing a slight dusting of amnesia (hint: the serial killer is a werewolf). In order to get over the traumatic experience, her psychiatrist advises that she and her husband spend some time recuperating out at this hippy commune in the woods named The Colony. That doesn’t quite go as planned either though, as the members of The Colony all have their fair share of dangerous secrets (hint: they’re all werewolves). Once things really start going south, Karen finds herself faced with the daunting task of hacking, slashing, silver-bulleting, and burning her way out of there; making her probably the most put-upon news reporter since Lois Lane or April O’Neil.

Perhaps the biggest buzz coming out of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival came from its even-better-than-usual crop of late night genre films that form their Midnight Madness program. The Midnight Madness film that kicked off this year’s slate of genre weirdness and won the Cadillac People’s Choice Midnight Madness Award was Gareth Evans‘s action extravaganza, The Raid, which has already been picked up for a Hollywood remake. That’s not all that’s been going on, though, the good news keeps on coming for the Midnight Madness films, as one of Deadline Mackville’s annoying “Toldja!” reports is saying that director Adam Wingard’s horror film You’re Next is coming out of the other end of a studio bidding war as the property of Lionsgate. You’re Next is one of those “couple gets trapped in a cabin and has to fight off invading murderers” horror movies, and Lionsgate bigwig Jason Constantine says of the acquisition, “this project represents everything that we look for in a horror film. It is a celebration of its genre, featuring top-notch performances from a sophisticated script, brilliantly directed, that will leave audiences on the edge of their seats when they’re not jumping out of them.” What does this deal mean for the movie? Well, first off, the deal took a while to be finalized, and part of that is because The Weinstein Company, Paramount, and probably a few others were also interested in picking up the film, but another part of it is because the filmmakers wanted to make sure [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]

Seeing as he is the man responsible for such seminal comedy classics as Animal House and The Blues Brothers, there is a chunk of the population at large that considers John Landis to be a comedic director. I mean, this is the guy who made Coming to America; clearly he’s the master of the chuckle. Horror fans will tell you different, however. Not only did Landis first cut his teeth on a monster movie called Schlock, he’s also the man responsible for one of the greatest horror movies of the 80s An American Werewolf in London. Why was that movie so good? Because it took Average Joe characters that we could relate to and put them into genuinely horrific circumstances, because it used top of the line practical and makeup effects to bring its creature elements to life. It didn’t show off with how much it could do using computer animation like modern horror; it stuck to giving us things that felt real and consequently made our skin crawl. For my money the monster and gore milieu never got any better than when directors like John Carpenter and John Landis were making gross movies with practical special effects, so of course horror fans must be wondering if Landis ever plans on dipping his toe back into the genre. Well, turns out, he does.

You wouldn’t expect that a movie about an Indian burial ground that brings dead pets back to life in rabid, vicious zombie form could be considered an untouchable classic, but horror fans are very protective about what they like. And Stephen King, while a horror icon on the literary shelf, has a much spottier record when it comes to film adaptations. That 1989’s Pet Sematary turned out to be one of the best King adaptations adds to its status as modern classic meant to be cherished. By now it should be clear though that nothing is sacred in Hollywood, especially horror properties. So of course a remake of Pet Sematary has been in the works for a while. The last time we heard about the project, Paramount had hired Matt Greenberg to write a script for a remake. He already had some experience adapting King work with 1408, so I guess the choice made sense. And it turns out Greenberg took Paramount’s request pretty seriously, this isn’t a goof, the man has now turned in his script. So the next step toward getting this thing off the ground is finding a director. Enter Piranha and The Hills Have Eyes director Alexandre Aja. Twitch reports that Aja is close to taking on the job. Paramount is actively pursuing him, and while Aja has a project called Cobra: The Space Pirate he’s looking to do, that film has yet to find adequate funding, and isn’t scheduled to start shooting until 2013. A [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]

A man eating, woman mauling, child munching Great White shark terrorizes beach goers off the coastline of a quaint little beach front town called Amity. It would seem a no brainer the town and tourists would be warned to stay out of the water but there’s money at stake. The shark looming out in the waters of this coastal town threatens not only swimmers, but the profitable July fourth holiday. Chief of Police, Martin Brody, Roy Scheider, is more than a little concerned when he sees the remains of the shark’s first known victim washed ashore after the first attack. But the Mayor, Murray Hamilton, doesn’t want to hear it. Too much money will be lost from tourism if the public is made aware of the man eater hunting off of Amity’s coast. A marine biologist, Richard Dreyfuss hears about the Great White and comes to warn the town of the danger they face. He’s also more than a little curious to see the giant man-eater that’s on the loose.

There have been a lot of entries in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series at this point, some of them better than others. But at the very least they have all had some chainsaws and some killings. It’s easy in this day and age to complain about how there are no new ideas in the film world, and how everything is an adaptation, a sequel, a prequel, or a remake. I really wish that the voices of today would get more of a chance to create their own enduring icons for the future. That said, it’s pretty hard to argue about a movie called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D being made.

Despite the fact that their plates are pretty full already, director Patrick Lussier and his co-writer Todd Farmer are chomping at the bit to get the opportunity to make Halloween 3. In a chat with MTV, the duo have said that once their insane dive into 3D with Nic Cage, Drive Angry 3D, gets it’s home release, and they get through work on a reboot of the Hellraiser franchise, a continuation of the new Halloween franchise that director Rob Zombie started is next on their wish list. “We would love it to go through,” Lussier said. “We would make that the second somebody said, ‘Yes, go make it,’ because it’s a script that we love and a script we’re really passionate about and it’s an amazing character and an incredible franchise, and it would just be a great experience for us to go back to the roots.”

There was a period in the early to mid-1950s where the horror genre, in hindsight, was appearing to go through somewhat of a period of transition. Not just caterpillar to butterfly in terms of the material, but also the beginnings to a passing of the torch from the Universal Pictures horror icons to the next generation of scare feature personalities.

The 1940s, arguably, began the period of movement away from the creature features of the Universal monster pictures and started to explore deeper psychological, and supernatural elements of the horror genre over the course of the decade with the output of films from the Val Lewton team of collaborators at RKO. That period could possibly mark the first time that a major studio distributed a sequence of psychological thrillers sold as horror pictures over that length of time here in the United States, and probably the most significant since the silent-era German Expressionist pictures of the 1920′s.

In the 1950′s the drive-in crowd and genre enthusiasts began to be transfixed by the earlier period of science-fiction thrillers, which boomed all throughout the decade and into the next; thus leaving a relatively barren hole for patrons looking for either that next stage of evolution on the horror ladder, or even trying to find a decent number of pictures akin to the films of the Universal monster pictures of the 30s or Lewton inspired thrillers of the 40s.

Enter Britain’s Hammer Studios who began to re-explore the classic monster characters of Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy and others in the mid-to-late 1950s. Their output would be monumental over the course of the next few decades, as well as their artistry and the performance prowess of oft-used actors Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee; and the pictures would prove to be considerably popular.

So, the Universal films enthusiasts would have their reminiscence reignited; what of the fans of the Lewton form of horror?

Enter Britain’s Robert Day with his late 1950s double-punch of Corridors of Blood and today’s entry into the Criterion Files – The Haunted Strangler