Why Watch? Early Tim Burton, late Vincent Price, and a stop-motion nursery rhyme for the gruesome ones. This 1982 team-up between Burton and Price was one of the director’s last short films before landing the directing gig for Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and going down the path we all know he followed. It came 11 years before The Nightmare Before Christmas, but the tones and design concepts are all there (just no Henry Selick). Instead of a skeletal hero, it’s a little boy who wants to turn his dog into a zombie. What does it cost? Just 6 minutes of your time.

MOD, or manufacturing on demand, means studios and DVD labels don’t press the DVD until you order it. MGM’s Limited Edition Collection and the Warner Archive Collection are the two big names in the MOD game right now, and each month they make dozens of titles available on DVD for the very first time. And The MOD Quad will take a look at as many of them as we can handle on a semi-irregular basis. Which will probably average out to some number divisible by four. This Halloween-themed installment includes eight horror films from the Warner Archive including one of the best made-for-TV horror films ever made (Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark), a freaky and timely movie about a madman who owns exotic animals (Black Zoo), one of the scariest TV mini-series (Salem’s Lot), the best killer pig movie to ever grace the screen (Razorback) and more.

Most cynical internet denizens will tell you that the resurgence of 3D is a mere gimmick, meant to drag more people to theaters and jack up ticket prices. (I am one of those cynical people.) Average movie-goers seem to be agreeing, with a resounding “I paid five bucks extra for this crap? I could have had nachos!” 3D has come and gone throughout film history, and each time we come to the same general conclusion: We kinda don’t like it. Until we have some kind of full immersion films (and would they even be films at that point?) we’ll probably never be satisfied. When 3D movies fell apart the first time, Hollywood just went back to doing what they had been doing before the 3D boom: Trying to make good movies. One man was not satisfied, though. William Castle, director and producer of ridiculous B-movies, had a vision. He wanted to make every single one of his films into a spectacle event (much to the annoyance of theaters that booked his movies) that drew the masses to the cinema for the experience. Here are six of his most notorious gimmicks.

Comic-Con is a fun event for film fans hoping to get their first peek at upcoming blockbusters and the stars behind them, but I’ve always been a lot more partial to film festivals. Why? Because film fests are all about actually watching films. (Yes, I know studios have recently started hosting screenings during Comic-Con but they still number in the single digits and they’re always future wide-release movies anyway.) Trailer previews and scenes are fun to watch at the Con, and while I won’t be attending this month I hope to get back again with the FSR crew next year. But a solid film festival trumps everything the Con has to offer by virtue of the number and variety of films available. The best fest, hands down, is Austin’s Fantastic Fest (which I’ll be eating, drinking, and breathing this September), but it’s not the only one worth watching…

This Indonesian horror flick/gorefest stays reliably within the comfortable realm of predictability, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

The second round of entries into the Fantastic Fest 2009 line-up have been released this morning. And it’s not the sort of thing you’re going to want to miss.