The Weekend Box Office and a Good Week for Horror on DVD

To be honest, I'm not terribly intrigued by anything that went on at the box office over the weekend. Not only was there nothing related to horror out, there were no real stories emerging. I think we all knew that "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" would win the weekend... the original is a classic and the return of Gordon Gekko couldn't be more timely. The financial crisis was basically a long marketing campaign for the original, as I can't count how many times I heard the line, "Greed is Good" over the last 2 years. That and I really like the idea of reviving the character, after he gets out of jail, to alert the financial community of a global economic disaster. Not sure how I feel about Shia LaBeouf, but it's not this film... it's LaBeouf in general. Other than that, "Legend of the Guardians" was a bit of a let down and "The Virginity Hit" had one of the worst opening of all time... fourth lowest grossing for a nationwide release on record. As for the week in horror on DVD, it's pretty good. As usual, you can check out the trailers on our Youtube Page and you can click on the title to be taken to their Amazon Page, where you can read more and/or buy them.

I guess the biggest thing(s) coming out this week are the Fangoria FrightFest films. Fangoria FrightFest is where Fangoria partnered with Blockbuster and Lightning Entertainment to begin a "unique, multi-tiered summer film distribution program". It consists of eight new films; "Pig Hunt", "Fragile", "Grimm Love", "Dark House", "Hunger", "Road Kill", "The Haunting" and "The Tomb". Now, I'm not sure what they mean by multi-tiered and they really couldn't have picked a worse partner than Blockbuster, but... here they are, in any case. Available on Amazon. I never saw these promoted much before this, they weren't in the theaters and I don't recall them having any online presence, so... what the hell are they talking about when they say multi-tiered film distribution? Maybe it was limited releases and, possibly, they were premiered on cable somewhere, I don't know. Really, I have no idea if any of these are any good. For more info, click on each individual title.

When I first heard of the idea behind "Frozen", I wasn't sure it would work. Three skiers get stranded on a chair lift? Could that really hold a whole movie? It's definitely out of the box for Adam Green, who did "Hatchet", "Spiral" and "Hatchet II". Then again, I remember an interview he did after "Hatchet", where he said he wanted to stick with horror, but didn't want to get pigeon-holed as a slasher director. In any case, this isn't a slasher film and this sub-genre seems to be in right now. What would you call it? Isolation horror? "Buried" has a lot of hype and this seems to be in the same vein. What I like about it is that it's tailor made for indie horror filmmakers. Very few actors, very few locations... easy to do.

I'm very intrigued by "Suck"... it's a rock-horror about a loser band that turns into vampires and then takes the world by storm. It's got a decent budget, looks great and has a wicked cast, including Dave Foley, Iggy Pop, Moby, Alice Cooper and Malcolm McDowell. Chances are it's not going to have a lot of gore or anything, but it could have great camp/cult qualities.

Now, "Nightmares in Red, White and Blue: The Evolution of the American Horror Film" could be a pretty cool documentary. I love horror docs and I don't think I've seen one that concentrates just on American horror. Lance Henriksen hosts and takes you through a history of American horror, from the earliest monster movies to modern-day slashers.

On paper, "Death Kappa" should be everything I'm looking for. It's from the producers of "Machine Girl" and "Tokyo Gore Police", two of my favorite recent Asian horror flicks, and, if you're a regular reader, you should know that I think monster movies are coming back and this is, without question, a monster movie. Having said that, it's a campy, "dudes in rubber monster suits" monster movie, but there's nothing wrong with that. There was actually a bunch of coverage on it in the latest Fangoria, I think. In any case, I'm going to be checking it out.

I can't find much about "Wake the Witch" because, believe it or not, there's various films called the same thing... or something similar. Anyhow, it's apparently inspired by J-horror and is a psychological horror/suspense. Cover art is awesome, wish I knew more about it.

"Late Fee" came out last year, but it's getting a DVD/Blu-ray release this week. It's sort of a low-budget "Tales From The Crypt", as it's an anthology of sorts... only two films, though, with a third story holding the other two together. The main story revolves around how the couple has to return the two films by midnight, as they don't want to know what the late fee's are... I like the idea and I'm always a fan anthologies.