New Horror Out On DVD This Week, plus some industry news

Well, my PC is in the shop and I'm typing this out on my laptop... I'm keeping my fingers crossed, hoping it's just a power supply problem. However, if it's the motherboard, I'm hooped. Anyhow, not your problem and I can only rely on the power of positive thinking at this point. So, before we get to the horror that's coming out on DVD this week, I wanted to mention a few things that are going on, industry-wise. One, "The Final Destination" won the weekend at the box office and "Halloween 2" came in third... "The Final Destination" raked in over $28Million, "Inglourious Basterds" came in 2nd with just over $20Million and "Halloween 2" brought in around $17.5Million. I hate to just cut and paste from another website, but BoxOfficeMojo.com offered up an interesting quote about why they think this happened...

"Unlike The Final Destination, Halloween II (2009) was a continuation of the story of its predecessor and effectively offered the same slasher horror that audiences already experienced. It's difficult for horror franchises to maintain their audiences, because they are often ephemeral experiences and, once people get the scares, there's little reason to return. Franchises like Final Destination and Saw are exceptionally consistent, because they keep things fresh with new characters and more compelling suspense and mystery elements."

Interesting take, I never really thought about it that way... so, having a big long, continuing story arc is bad and creating a series that can consistantly be reinvented with new characters, elements and storylines is good. I'll have to mull that over for a bit, right after I look up the word 'ephemeral' on dictionary.com.

The other big news is that Disney just bought Marvel this morning. Here's a link to an article on the deal from Reuters. Disney paid around $4Billion for Marvel and, personally, I think it makes sense for Disney. Marvel's a character/franchise based entertainment company with a huge library and that's Disney's wheelhouse - they're a franchising, marketing and licensing juggernaught. Marvel's set to release a bunch of movies, including "Thor", "Spiderman 4", "The Avengers" and "Captain America" and I just hope that none of that's effected.

Anyhow, on to the horror releases, not that there's much to talk about. I found trailers for three of the films and you can check those out on our Youtube page, otherwise you can click on the titles and go to their Amazon pages to find out more about them.

First up is "Methodic", which is the self-proclaimed first 'basher movie', meaning that the killer bashes all his victims to death, as opposed to 'slashing' them... it's a low-budget indie, directed by Chris R. Notarile, and it appears to draw on the original "Halloween", as it's about a guy who kills his family, is sent to an insane asylum, but breaks out to get back into the whole killing game. The film looks great and the killer looks extremely creepy... and the film was shot over 10 days. Notarile has made various online projects, as well as made numerous short films. He's definitely an up-an-comer in the industry and I may have to reach out and try to do an interview with him.

"Earth Day" is a low-budget horror-comedy indie out of Eugene, Oregon from Faux Show Productions and it's about a group of eco-crusaders who find themselves getting slaughtered as the one year anniversary of the tragic death of their leader approaches. No offense to any hippie readers that we may have, but I always love watching hippies get slaughtered. So, as their tagline goes, "forget the whales... don't worry about the trees... just save yourself".

"Humanity's End" was directed by Neil Johnson, who also directed "Manowar: Magic Circle Festival, Volume 1" and various other Manowar videos. Not that those are his biggest works, by any means, but you have to respect a guy who's made Manowar videos. Anyhow, "Humanity's End" is his biggest film to date and it's laden with effects. In fact, on imdb.com, it says that the catering budget for this film alone exceeded the entire budget of his second film, "To Become One". I'm very interested in finding out the actual budget of it, as it looks great, but does have that distinct b-movie feel.... which I've grown to love, adore and crave.

Also out this week are: "Drifter: Henry Lee Lucas", which stars Antonio Sabato as Henry Lee Lucas, the serial killer that was originally popularized by Michael Rooker in "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer"; "To Dance with Death", a Brinke Stevens films; something called "Death Scream", as well as the rerelease double-pack "Blacula/Scream Blacula Scream".

Big Trouble In Little China

Well, I guess I was playing with fire... my home PC has been acting up a bit lately and it finally died on me this morning. I'll start by reaching out to any techie readers that we may have - the computer gets power, but won't boot up, turn off or reset. The only way to turn it on or off is by unplugging it. When I unplug it, then plug it back in, the fans start up, the lights go on, but no beeping and it's just blank... and it goes right back to not booting up, turning off or resetting. My gut reaction tells me it's the motherboard, but I don't know. The real problem is the information that's on the hard drive, which I never backed up. So, if I can't recover that, I'm in some serious shit. Any ideas?

Anyway, as I have no access to my interviews, saved links and other data, I'm going to have to pull this post together on the fly. That's not really a bad thing, as I was listening to a podcast this morning, from Creative Screenwriting Magazine, that I wanted to talk about. They usually interview screenwriters, but this one was the address that Peter Jackson, Neill Blomkamp and Wikus Van De Merwe gave at Comicon about "District 9". There was something that Peter Jackson said that was particularly interesting and I wanted to pass it on to all you filmmakers... Essentially, he said that because they were on such a low budget ($30Million) and didn't have executives telling them what to do and how to make their film, they could do the film the way they wanted. The way they wanted to do it was to cater directly to the sci-fi/horror, Comicon-type audience. That's why it's a character driven sci-fi movie with lots of gore, something that might not make too much sense to a studio executive. And what happened? Well, it kicked ass and lots of people went to see it. The moral of the story is, when you're making a low-budget film, don't think like a studio executive. Think like a gore-hound. What would YOU want to see in the film? You'll create a better film if you cater to a specific niche... and catering to a specific niche will probably create more of a crossover audience, which will make for a more successful film. Anyhow, you can find that podcast here, on the Creative Screenwriting blog, if you want to download it. The end is pretty cool, where Peter Jackson talks about how watching Blomkamp make this film gave him an itch to make a low-budget horror again... could you imagine "Dead Alive 2" or "Bad Taste 2"?

It's also a good weekend at the theater for us horror fans. Both Rob Zombie's "Halloween 2" and "The Final Destination" in 3D come out this weekend... and there's really no other big movie coming out, which means that "Inglourious Basterds" should win the weekend again. Me, though, I'm a bit torn on which to go see. Originally, I was thinking about "H2", but... I wasn't too impressed with Rob Zombie's interview on "The Wrap" yesterday, he kinda shit-talked a lot of stuff (link). That's not to mention that the first one kinda sucked. However, I'm not a huge fan of the "Final Destination" series, but "The Final Destination" is in 3D and I'm really into that 3D tech.

That's all I've got for this week... have a great weekend and wish me luck on my computer problems!