The Best Way To Head Into The Weekend? A Big, Big Day In Horror

Pour 2 oz of jack daniels into large glass filled with ice. Pour 10 oz of coca-cola into the glass. Stir lightly. This slightly complicated, yet delectable concoction will be top of mind come happy hour today. However, before I crawl into a bottle to look for my next 'big horror idea', there's a lot of cool stuff going on to take you into the weekend. It's a long post, but I promise that you'll find it all worth while. It's Friday, who does anything on a Friday? You've got time to kill, I know it.

First up, it's another horror filled weekend at the box office. It's not "The Final Destination" and "Halloween II", but it is "Sorority Row" and "Whiteout". "Sorority Row" is a remake of the 1983 film "House on Sorority Hell" and it comes from Summit Entertainment, which is quite flush these days due to their monster franchise, "Twilight". Not sure what to think about it, but it does promise sex, nudity and partying. On the other hand, "Whiteout" looks kinda forgettable. Really, I don't think I'll be waiting in line for either...

Big, big news on the indie front, though. Our buddies at Fewdio have THREE, count 'em, THREE of their short films in the Universal Halloween Horror Nights short film contest... and there was only ten accepted. This is a win/win for you, though. Because you get to check out all ten films when you head over to the site. I just watched all of them and there's some pretty damn good indie horror shorts there. Head on over to HalloweenHorrorNights.com/Chiller and you can watch all of them and vote for your favorite, which will, of course, be a Fewdio film. Here's the press release from Fewdio:

LOS ANGELES - Fewdio Horror has swept the Universal Halloween Horror Nights short film contest for 2009 by landing not one, but THREE of the top ten short horror films this year. The films, BEDFELLOWS, MOCKINGBIRD, and SHADOW PUPPET are part of Fewdio's widely popular NIGHTMARE HOUSE collection of horror shorts.

Launching onto the horror webishpere in 2008, award winning viral sensation Fewdio is a horror troupe/studio-alt collective of seven filmmakers dedicated to creating the most hellish nightmares possible in short form web content. Members include John Crye, Drew Daywalt, Paul Hungerford, David Schneider, Kirk B.R. Woller, Todd Sharp and Marshall Carr.

Shadow Puppet is written and directed by David Schneider and stars Adam Conn & Truckee the pug dog. Bedfellows is written & directed by Drew Daywalt and stars Peter Giliberti, Kerry Finlayson, and Edin Gali. Mockingbird is directed by Marichelle Daywalt & stars Donnie Jeffcoat & Stefanie Ford.

Lastly, as this is the week of the Toronto International Film Festival, the prestigious festival that kicks off the festival season... let's look at the horror that's playing at their Midnight Madness lineup. These tend to be some of the best horror films of the year...

"[REC]2" gets its premiere there, which is pretty cool... in fact, I didn't know they were making a sequel. "Quarantine" was the American remake of the original "[REC]". "[REC]" (as in 'record' on a camcorder, if you haven't figured it out) was shot entirely through the perspective of a reporters camera. "[REC]2" is filmed entirely through the perspective of the camera's that have been outfitted on the SWAT team that goes into the same building.

"Daybreakers" is from twin-brothers Michael and Peter Spierig, whose last (and debut) film was "Undead". This film takes place in the year 2019, after a plague has transformed the majority of the world's population into vampires... and they're not sexy "Twilight" or "Vampire Diaries" vampires, they're terrifying feral beasts that rule the earth's economy and social strata with an iron fist. It's got a decent cast, including Ethan Hawke, Sam Neill and Willem Dafoe.

"George A. Romero's Survival of the Dead" sure came out fast! This one is about a band of military dropouts that are seeking refuge from the endless chaos, but end up in an age-old battle between two families: the O'Flynn's and the Muldoons. The O'Flynn's believe that the only good zombie is a dead zombie, while the Muldoons think it's wrong to dispatch afflicted loved ones and they attempt to look after them until a cure is found. Only problem is that the Muldoons leave their undead chained up inside their homes, pretending to live normal lives... and that has bloody consequences.

There's been a lot of talk about "Jennifer's Body", as it's the follow up to "Juno" for writer Diablo Cody. It's an R-rated teen horror about Jennifer, a scorching-hot, boy-crazy cheerleader that gains an insatiable hunger for the succulent flesh of her male admirers and her best friend, Needy, a shy nerd, who sets out to rescue the town from Jennifer and save the prom from becoming a bloody buffet. It's hotly anticipated and it'll be interesting to see how it turns out. Early reviews are iffy...

Good God damned, Australia is turning into a hotbed of horror. "The Loved Ones" is an Aussie film about a guy who ends up accidentally killing his father, then escaping into a marijuana-fuelled world of loud metal metal music to block the pain and guilt. He has a chance to get back on track through his grounded, sweet girlfriend. However, after a series of disturbing events that take place under a mirrored disco ball, involving pink satin, glitter, syringes, nails, power drills and a secret admirer, he becomes the prom king at a macabre, sadistic event where he is the entertainment. WTF? Count me in.

Lastly, "Solomon Kane" is actually the invention of Robert E. Howard, the legendary creator of Conan the Barbarian. Directed by Michael J. Bassett and shot in a gritty style that embraces the mud, filth and blood, it's about Solomon Kane, a true rogue that blasts and slashes through a mission of pillage and plunder in war-torn North Africa in the late 1500's. Tying it all together? It's got Max von Sydow in it.

For more information on the TIFF midnight madness films (there's also comedies and some other fucked up films), you can click here.

Have a great weekend, see you next week!

Indie Filmmakers, Check This Out...

I rarely look at the analytics for the site, but I just checked them and it's really interesting to see where our readers come from. Most readers come from North America, with the U.S. being the top and Canada being second... but we do have a fair amount of readers from the UK and abroad. We even have readers in Russia, Poland, Romania... kinda cool. What's really cool is that when you look at the U.S., specifically, there's only two states where not one person has checked out our site: Wyoming and Nebraska and that got me thinking... what the fuck is going on in Wyoming and Nebraska? Actually, that's not what I was thinking. What I was thinking was the fact that half of our U.S. readers come from New York and California, with about a third of the total US visitors coming from California alone. This makes sense, as New York City and Los Angeles both have huge indie film communities, but if you flip it, that means that HALF of our U.S. readers DON'T come from New York or L.A. Now, why does that matter?

Well, imagine you're an athlete from a small town. Imagine you're pretty good and you can beat everyone there at whatever sport it is that you play. What happens when you enter a state-wide tournament? What about a national tournament? An international tournament? Well, chances are, you're not going to be as good as you think you are. Now, if you're an indie filmmaker from a market that doesn't have a big indie film scene, the only real gauge of how good you are will come from entering festivals and watching stuff that gets distributed. There's really not a lot of support from the community, I'm guessing. When you're in a town like LA or New York, you can get into the scene and work with people, see other projects in production, watch other filmmakers films, discuss ideas and prop each other up, gaining success on the backs of each other. In a way, Dead Harvey tries to be just that, a community where we can learn from each other and make each other better... and I realized that we need to show more content. More clips, trailers to indie projects, behind the scenes stuff. I mean, you can read all you want, but film is a visual medium and you need to SEE what other people are doing. You can look at their production values, see how they make that look and learn from it.

Anyhow, that's why I went through my inbox and found a few clips and links that I wanted to pass on. Further, if you've got some clips of a project that you'd like to share, shoot me an email. I'd love to check it out, pass it on to our readers and get some discussion going.

First up, click HERE to be taken to The Vampire Film Festival's Youtube page. Not only do you get to vote on what goes into the festival, you can see the trailers for all the indie films that are entered. Pretty cool... "Thicker Than Water" is in there and it's an indie film that I highly recommend. I just watched it recently, great film. More importantly, though, you can see the quality of the films that are being submitted.

Next up, Gris Grimly, who we've featured a few times, has posted some behind the scenes stuff on his new short film called "Wounded Embark of the Lovesick Mind".

Here's the teaser for the film...



For the behind the scenes stuff, here's Webisode 1, Webisode 2, Webisode 3, Webisode 4 and, finally, Webisode 5. There's some pretty cool stuff in there, I definitely recommend checking them out.

Lastly, because I just got this, this morning... Go HERE to check out the latest on George Romero's new zombie flick. No clips or anything, it's just George Romero's Myspace page.

That's it for this week, have a good one and we'll see you next week!