Tag: wes craven

Horror Movie Night Episode 109: Shocker (1988)

by Saintmort
Take all the good stuff you loved about A Nightmare on Elm Street, put it in a pile, and then light it on fire, THEN use all the stuff that you didn’t love and make a piece of crap with an electric ghost and you still might have made a better film that Wes Craven provided in his 1989 flop Shocker. We can’t decide if it makes it better or worse that the man who gave us Freddy tried to burden us with Horace Pinker the serial-killer-turned-electricity-Gremlin, but the experience is made somewhat bearable by a swearing child and sweet hair metal theme song. Be careful what you stick in the light socket this week on Horror Movie Night, you pervs!

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Geekscape 435: Staying Dead Awake With Horror Screenwriter Jeffrey Reddick!

by Jonathan

‘Final Destination’ creator and screenwriter Jeffrey Reddick visits Geekscape this week to talk about his new horror film ‘Dead Awake’, premiering in theaters and on VOD this weekend! We talk about the horrors of sleep paralysis (which I suffer from), why ‘A Nightmare On Elm Street’ was not only an inspiration for the film but Jeffrey’s favorite movie of all time and his road into horror filmmaking that started when he was 14! We also answer your listener questions, including which is Jeffrey’s favorite Final Destination film and death! Enjoy!

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Horror Movie Night – Episode 33: People Under the Stairs (1991)

by Saintmort

Hey all you PUTSes (that’s short for People Under the Stairs…es), no need to fight over the scraps of human flesh thrown to you by your gross incest-y captors, cuz this week we’re discussing YOU! The guys get lost and moderately uncomfortable in the walls of the house Wes Craven built in the early 90s after reading the Boyz n the Hood script, but they somehow make it out to tell the tale – though they may never sell Boy Scout Cookies again. Cut out your tongue, cuz there’s no talking during Horror Movie Night!

Feel free to join in discussion at on our Facebook Group or in the comments below.

Do you have a movie suggestion for us or just want to tell us stories about your experiences with the movies we’ve watched? Send them to us at HMNPodcast@gmail.com

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The 15 Best Cannibal Movies (That Aren’t Cannibal Holocaust)!

by scottevil

Eli Roth’s long-awaited cannibal flick The Green Inferno hits theatres tonight, so of course I thought it’d be appropriate to list off some people-eating-people movies that may not spring to mind as quickly as the film Roth is aping – 1979’s Cannibal Holocaust. Skip the popcorn and grab one of those plastic bibs, this might get messy.

15) Soylent Green

The obvious first choice when you’re hungry is a big helping of Soylent Green. If you’ve been living under a rock since 1973, you may not know this, but the secret ingredient is people. Shocking!

14) Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUyEaYxTI2U

Human meat is a central theme in all of the TCM films, but especially so in the second installment. The current ruling member of the hungry Sawyer clan, Drayton, mixes people parts with other animal parts to make his award-winning chili. Totally ridiculous and over-the-top, this one is more about what they could get away with than how scared they could make you.

13) Motel Hell

“It takes all kinds of critters to make Farmer Vincent’s fritters!”

If you’re wondering, most of those critters are people planted up to their necks in a “secret garden” and fattened up foie gras style. If the last film didn’t make you swear off Slim Jims, this one might.

12) Cannibal! The Musical

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86rxyJMXv5o

Before hooking up with Matt Stone and creating South Park, Trey Parker wrote and starred in a musical about eating people. Thrill to the song and dance produced by consumption of human flesh, and laugh at the horror of it all. There’s gold (and half-eaten skeletons) in them thar hills!

11) We Are What We Are

It’s sort of a spoiler to put this one on the list, but yep, family of cannibals. I mean, it’s heavily implied from the very first scene, so I don’t feel bad dropping that bomb here. This is the American version, adapted from the Mexican original, which borrows heavily from the Donner Party (much like Cannibal! The Musical) and the legend of Sawney Bean.

10) Ravenous

Another tale of murder and the other white meat during the U.S.’s early days. Wendigo lore, some black humor and a drunk David Arquette make for a wholesome viewing experience. I bet that stew they made was delicious.

9) The Road

If the movies mentioned so far haven’t been sufficiently bleak for your palette, take a bite of The Road. Viggo Mortensen and his son spend 2 grueling hours evading cannibalistic gangs in a post-apocalyptic America; Guy Pearce shows up later on after apparently surviving Ravenous. Who knew? This is not what I’d consider “lighter fare,” so come to this one ready to dig in.

8) The Hills Have Eyes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edn5EzHXVBU

Didn’t get enough roaming cannibals in need of a bath yet? Then Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes should fill you up. Less bleak than Last House on the Left, it still leaves you with a similar feeling after watching. You may want to grab the Tums right about now.

7) Wrong Turn

Most of these cannibals seem to be degenerates with no understanding of basic hygiene – how are they not dying of food-borne illness? These are the thoughts I use to numb myself from the depravity inflicted upon poor Eliza Dushku in Wrong Turn. More gross hillbillies than you can shake a human femur at!

6) Wolf Creek 2

While the first installment of the Wolf Creek series dramatized actual crimes committed in the Australian Outback, this sequel serves up a juicy slice of fantasy by fleshing out Mick Taylor’s sadistic appetites. Imagine Freddy Krueger with a thick accent (but the same hat) and a lair full of booby traps, that’s all you need to know about WC2.

5) Parents

I love the use of 1950s suburbia for social commentary, so of course Bob Balaban’s Parents is perfectly seasoned for my tastes. The film is both plucky as Leave it to Beaver and as dark as blood pudding. I’m sure you’re salivating over the Blu-Ray on Amazon already.

4) The Burbs

Another suburban satire, this time helmed by the mighty Joe Dante and starring Tom Hanks, this one is low on gore and high on social commentary. If you’ve never sat down to this smorgasboard of a movie, you’re in for a treat.

3) Delicatessen

Take equal parts Amélie and Sweeney Todd, and you get 1991’s Delicatessen. The film is also directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (of later Amélie fame) and is set in a similarly abstract place and time, except everyone here is very hungry and people go missing quite frequently…

2) Silence of the Lambs

This one’s a gimme, as I’d never live it down making a list like this without Silence of the Lambs near the top. You’ve likely all seen it so there’s no point skinning the plot for you. Toss on Bach’s Goldberg Variations, let that chianti breathe and chew someone’s face off with Dr. Lecter.

1) Fried Green Tomatoes

The only cannibal movie I can say I’ve watched more than Silence of the Lambs has got to be Fried Green Tomatoes. You know the only thing better than the Whistle Stop Café’s fried green tomatoes is its open-pit barbeque – just ask that nice investigator from Georgia, he’ll tell you.

So, barring Cannibal Holocaust and the rest of the Italian exploitation flicks it spawned, how does this list hold up? Did I miss anything? Will you be checking out The Green Inferno? What does human flesh really taste like? Asking the important questions here.

Back to School Horror: 10 Movies To Get You Through September!

by scottevil

School is back in session! With it comes new things to learn and new social anxieties to realize. And if you’re especially lucky, there may be an interesting new face hanging around the fringes of your circle of friends, wanting nothing more than to get to know you (and possibly bestow some sort of witch’s curse upon you or alien slug-monster inside of you). Give your fancy book-learnin’ a rest and take a gander at these here back-to-school spookshows!

10) The Woods (2006)

When Bruce Campbell is your dad and he ships you off to a creepy all-girls school in the wilderness, you can pretty much assume that something bad is going to happen. There’s a foreboding headmistress (Patricia Clarkson, no less), mean girls and an ominous witch legend. is it just the new school jitters, or an actual curse? Imagine the setting and concept of Suspiria, mixed with the time period and character focus of Girl, Interrupted, minus the gore. For some reason, The Woods was not given a theatrical release, instead being shipped direct to bargain DVD bins everywhere and being largely forgotten, but it’s worth a watch if you can handle the slow pace.

9) Suspiria

Dario Argento’s 1977 pastel gorefest is a must for any “new kid at school” movie list. You don’t have to be a world-class ballerina to enjoy this classic Italian horror, though I’m sure it helps… I will never understand why someone at this dance academy decided it was a good idea to store all that razor wire in one room. Come on now!

8) Phenomena

Didn’t get enough Argento? Well, good, here’s another: 1985’s Phenomena. More weird Italian boarding schools, more ominous headmistresses, more Goblin soundtracks, and this time, Donald Pleasance and a razor-wielding chimpanzee. Really. Thrill at young Jennifer Connelly’s bad acting and the disturbing amounts of live bugs they used! All of the usual Argento plotholes are here, so it’s best to just sit back and not question anything. So, basically higher education in general.

7) Child’s Play 3

Time travels differently in the Child’s Play universe (much like it did during Chem 111 for me), with the third movie taking place eight years after the events of Child’s Play 2, though only a year passed in our time. Andy Barclay is understandably messed up after his previous run-ins with Chucky, and finds himself at a military academy. A newly-reassembled Chucky follows and sets his rubbery sights on a young recruit to be his new fleshsuit. It’s a thoroughly run-of-the-mill killer doll film, but worth watching if you’ve got 90 minutes to kill and a thing for foul-mouthed toys.

6) Disturbing Behavior

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vPdDyROQJM

After the death of his brother, James Marsden moves to a sleepy Pacific Northwest town with his parents and sister (Katharine Isabelle in overalls, by the way. Overalls.) Even his chiseled features can’t get him in with the cool kids, so he slums it with a paranoid stoner, a Powder stand-in, and gothy Katie Holmes. If that sentence doesn’t illustrate how insanely 90s this film is, I don’t know what would. There’s a convoluted plot about mind controlled teens too, but the plot is secondary to William Sadler’s Rainman impression. How bad does this town suck if your only romantic interest is Katie Holmes? Poor James Marsden.

5) The Faculty

As mentioned earlier, sometimes you gotta watch out for those mind-controlling alien slug monsters, though it seems odd that they would attack a small town in Ohio of all places, during an Indian summer drought of all times. I mean, this species is intelligent enough to master space travel, but not smart enough to wait until springtime when it rains every day? Kevin Williamson must’ve been a bit over-busy on Dawson’s Creek to do a logic-check on this plot, which is basically new girl shows up, stops people from beating up Elijah Wood, stops Josh Hartnett’s amphetamine business, gets gothy Clea Duvall to shower, and teaches the T-1000 to be a little easier on his football team.

4) Fright Night 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uYdPX2EG5U

Almost all the stuff you loved about Fright Night, college edition! Charley Brewster and Peter Vincent are once again thrown together to take down a sexy female vampire instead of Prince Humperdink. If you start waking up from frat parties with a killer hangover and really gross hickeys, you might want to brush up on your whittling skills and grab a couple bottles of Garlique.

3) The Craft

Sometimes the only thing that can make you feel comfortable at a new school is to join a coven of witches. Is it weird that this trope comes up 3 times on this list, or does it just show how likely this scenario really is? I never moved around, so I can’t say, but Robin Tunney sure knows how to pick her friends – or at least, her friends know how to pick her. There’s complainer-to-cutiepie Neve Campbell, token Rachel True, and trailer chic Fairuza Balk. If they were X-Men, their powers would be skin-shedding, racism-finding, and the ability to float 4 inches off the ground and kill your drunk stepdad, respectively. That’s the kind of horrors that await anyone who tries to join their clique, so you have been warned.

2) Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge

If your family moves into the town where a bunch of teens died in their sleep, CHECK THE BASEMENT FURNACE. There will invariably be a Freddy glove and directions on how to win over your crush (who looks oddly similar to Meryl Streep) by killing your classmates at her pool party. Score! I’ll never know why they went with Freddy’s Revenge instead of The Man Inside Me, but if you’re looking for tips on how to fit in as the new kid in town, look no further!

1) The Lost Boys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_lwtRMg0ts

Of all of the new towns in all of the movies listed here, Santa Clara has to be the coolest. There’s a carnival every day on the boardwalk, a well-stocked comic store, oiled-up saxophone dudes and gypsy vampires. You can have a new girlfriend with big hair and mom jeans, while your brother pals around with Corey Feldman; there is literally no downside to this scenario. Just don’t touch Grandpa’s root beers and double-thick Oreo cookies or there’ll be hell to pay.

Honorable mention:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 1 episode 1, because it’s hard to top Buffy’s first day in Sunnydale. New friends, new town, new vampire menace… Pretty standard Hellmouth stuff.

So, what do you think? Did I miss any hidden horror gems in the bottom of my moving boxes? Leave a comment!

Geekscape 381: Prepping For ‘Oktoberfest’ With Hayley Derryberry!

by Jonathan

Hayley Derryberry has been on the show before and now she makes her triumphant return to talk about her latest project ‘Oktoberfest’, the office comedy centered around an Oktoberfest beer garden that needs YOUR help to get off the ground! We talk about her real life history of working at Oktoberfest and the ridiculous drunken fights and advances that break out! We then discuss the hilarious brilliance of ‘Wet Hot American Summer: First Day Of Camp’ and the heavy pacing of ‘Fear The Walking Dead’. Assassin’s Creed and Borderlands are headed to theaters but will they be any good? I talk about visiting the Jack Kirby art gala at CSUN and all of us remember Wes Craven, who died way too early but left us with so many incredible gifts.

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Wes Craven, ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ and ‘Scream’ Director, Passes Away at 76

by Eric Francisco

Oh man. Wes Craven, the auteur who set the formula for both ’80s and ’90s horror, has passed away of brain cancer. He was 76.

Let’s not dwell on the loss of a great filmmaker. Rather, let’s celebrate the work he left behind.

To me, it’s amazing how Craven was able to create the paradigm for two entire decades of cinema horror. Teens having sex and only to get sliced in half were on its way to becoming the norm when Craven’s first feature, The Last House on the Left hit theaters. He would then go on to make The Hills Have Eyes, Deadly Blessing, and Swamp Thing (based on the DC Comics character) before changing the game with A Nightmare on Elm Street.

The slasher genre was well-tread before he brought it back like gangbusters. Freddy Kruger was a supernatural terror who felt real. He was based on a traumatic encounter with a stranger from Craven’s youth, which upon learning added to the mystique of Freddy Kruger for me. Especially since I had an encounter eerily similar to Craven’s when I was his age.

 

Beyond the genius filmmaking that drove Nightmare on Elm Street — the famous “bed blood” scene where Johnny Depp is swallowed up was filmed upside down — it set the new standard for Hollywood horror. He would do it again in the late ’90s with Scream, revitalizing the teen slasher genre with a satire that celebrated and poked fun at it.

In the end, his movies were as much about hope as they were about fear. Nancy from Nightmare embodies these truths. No matter how dark things could get, the resiliency of the human spirit can always light the darkness.

Towards the new millennium Craven kept on keeping on as an executive producer and doing the occasional cameo. He would still sit behind the camera, though those movies weren’t often up to par with his previous work. Still, he was an artist who contributed much to our understanding of what it means to feel fear, and what it means to be utterly fearless.

Saint Mort’s Nostalgia Nightmare – ‘People Under the Stairs’ Blu-Ray Review

by Saintmort

Back in the late 1990’s, when a young Matt Kelly was first discovering his love of horror movies as well the resourcefulness of the internet, he began a quest to find a movie he saw as a child. The movie I was searching for involved a kid moving into a house and the only details I remember were (1) smoke coming out of the vents (2) a couch ate someone (3) a kid getting trapped in a basement.

Now it turns out this movie was Saturday the 14th Strikes Back which wasn’t a good movie… but I didn’t find that out for many years. The first movie someone suggested it might be was People Under the Stairs. Now if you’re familiar with this movie you know that only 1 of those 3 things actually happened. So this was also my first lesson in the unreliablity of the internet.

Wes-05

I could not figure out what to make of this movie. I didn’t like it but yet… I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Was it a comedy? Was it a horror? Few films made me feel the way that People Under the Stairs made me feel. I watched it repeatedly.

As the years went by my love for this movie grew and grew. I was obsessed with its quirks. I’ve met a small handful of people who adore this movie with the same origin story as myself, but most hate it.

Rewatching this movie in its beautiful Scream Factory transfer just further reminded me of how much I love this movie. It’s a creepy flick with a wicked sense of humor. As far as Wes Craven’s “lesser” films I think this one is his hidden masterpiece.

Unknown

Scream Factory really did this Blu-Ray right. Beyond its great transfer they have finally given us a commentary track so that you can hear Wes Craven explain this insane film to us, as well as a commentary from the cast.

There’s also lots of Behind-The-Scenes footage and interviews with everyone from the actors, the special effects team, the composer and the director of photography.

People Under the Stairs is available by Scream Factory today!

Geekscape Comics: Wes Craven And Steve Niles Teaming Up For ‘Coming Of Rage’!

by Shawn Madden

Reports are comning in that Wes Craven and Steve Niles are working on a new graphic novel together titled, Coming Of Rage. It was created by Craven (The Nightmare On Elm Street, Scream) and written by Niles (30 Days Of Night, Criminal Macabre). It also appears that Live Free Or Die Hard producer Arnold Rifkin and Liquid Comics CEO, Sharad Devarajan are working on bringing it to the big screen already. The adaptation is expected to be helmed by Craven.

Coming Of Rage will be released by Liquid in 2013 as both a five-issue comic series and as a graphic novel. While there are no details at the moment as far as the story…you can tell by the promo image that it will definitely be in the horror genre. Liquid Comics plans to have additional digital elements for iPads and iPhones to compliment the publication.

Source: Deadline

This Geek in Netflix: Carnival of Souls

by Allisonnnnn

After a series of unfortunate events that caused one too many reschedulings of happy-fun-time, I was pissed.  Absolutely pissed.  Pissed and annoyed and ranting to an ex-boyfriend about the vagaries of men who can’t manage their own schedules.

So I thought that, instead of attempting to find a good movie to watch, I’d go straight to something that I could release my very pent up frustration upon.  I dug through Netflix Instant with a fervor that could be likened to my occasional desperate (and often disappointing) hunt for AAA batteries.

Probably has nothing to do with the above paragraph.

But I wasn’t ready for the level of frustration that Wes Craven’s Carnival of Souls conveyed.  Released in 1998, CoS is touted on Netflix as being the story of a young girl, Alex (Bobbie Phillips) who witnesses her mother being raped and killed by a clown (who then comes back to seek revenge on the grown trauma victim).

I now address Netflix thusly:

FUCK YOU, NETFLIX.  RAPED AND MURDERED BY A CLOWN?!  HE WASN’T EVEN IN CLOWN MAKE-UP AND THERE WAS NO GODDAMNED RAPE. FUCK YOOOOOOOOOOOU.

“Rape time?” No, Alex, it’s disappointment time.

Not only was there no rape, Alex is absolutely convinced that the clown, Louis Seagram (Larry Miller), was coming back to get her.  You know, tie up loose ends.

First off, where’s his motivation?  Look, I understand the wanting to bang both the mother and the daughter.  That’s a thing.  Hell, if I could get away with an attractive dad/son combo, I’d do it.  But he didn’t even bang the mom so it’s not like there’s this awesome double-package deal.

Secondly, it’s revealed decently early on that not only is the clown dead, but that Alex is having hallucination after hallucination with hallucinations inside the hallucinations inside those hallucinations.

It’s fucking Clown Inception.

Basically my expression throughout the film.

With all this tear-inducing madness, there are two vaguely bright rays of sunshine in here.  One, Sandra Grant, Alex’s younger sister, is played by Shawnee Smith.  That name may sound familiar if you’re a fan of the Saw franchise, as Smith plays Amanda Young, Jigsaw’s apprentince.  Two, the male love interest, Michael, is played by Paul Johansson.  In my world, he’s just boneably hot but in the OMG teen girl world, however, he’s One Tree Hill’s Dan Scott.

So if you like your movies without clownrape, this is the film for you.