Forget WALL-E and the Sisterhood of Traveling Pants 2. The big news in DVDs this week is the release of Indonesian action-horror-black magic-nationalist war cry, The Warrior, long considered the holy grail of unseen Southeast Asian sleaze. For the uninitiated, a bit of history first: Desperate to protect their movie industry from being overrun by foreign imports back in 1973, Indonesia's authoritarian government passed a law requiring film distributors to produce one local film for every three foreign imports they brought into the country. Predictably, producers soon learned that local working class audiences wanted sex, violence and horror in copious quantities. Their sales agents realized that the only Indonesian productions anyone overseas wanted were sex, action and horror flicks. And so, in a fit of pragmatism, filmmakers were given the freedom to wallow in shocking amounts of blood and skin for a Muslim country.

Continue reading "The Warrior, a Bit of Southeast Asian Sleaze, Now on DVD (Plus Two Aussie Fright Flicks)" »

What's big, rock-hard, red and horny? Get your mind out of the gutter, for crying out loud -- I'm just talkin' 'bout Hellboy and the new DVD of Hellboy II: The Golden Army.

Hellboy is a title contender in the Master Monster Hunter Tournament that's taking place right now here at AMCtv.com. He's a relative newcomer to the movie world -- the first Hellboy only came out in 2004 -- but he's also the current heavyweight champ of the horror box office and therefore, the No. 3 seed in the tournament behind Buffy Summers and The Evil Dead's Ash.

Oh, you don't think he's the heavyweight champ of the horror box office? Then I guess you haven't checked the numbers -- allow Uncle Scotty to educate you.

One would think that a production budget of $82 million means stepping up to the profitability plate with two strikes against you, but Hellboy II knocked it out of the park. Combine the $76 million U.S. take with an equal number internationally, and Big Red Part Deux has already grossed $152 million. That does not count the DVD that came out November 11. By the time the second part of this franchise stops to take a breather, expect over $200 million in gross revenue.

Continue reading "Scott Sigler - The Hellboy II DVD Showcases a Well-Spent $82 Million" »

This week Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert's Ghost House label goes direct-to-video with their release of eight (!) movies on DVD. "Over the years we were sent various movies so we could check out certain directors," says Tapert. "Later we'd check back in on some of them and find out that the movie had been picked up by some company, never released and the filmmakers had gotten ripped off. So we decided to go into the DTV consumer business ourselves." Tapert has been Sam Raimi's producer since Evil Dead; he's the executive producer of TV shows Hercules and Xena: Warrior Princess and he produced The Grudge and 30 Days of Night. We've ranked the eight Ghost House releases from worst to best, with added commentary from Tapert.

8. Brotherhood of Blood
Ken Foree (Dawn of the Dead) and Sid Haig (House of 1000 Corpses, Foxy Brown) play vampires with teeth so big they can barely close their mouths in this vampire action flick that, like a vampire, spends most of its time sucking. Haig and Foree deliver big, bloody beefsteak performances but the rest of the movie tastes like sawdust. Says Tapert: "Anyone who can actually make a movie in twelve days -- the time in which this one was made -- I'm not against trying to get that movie out there."

7. Trackman
This Russian flick kicks off with a high-octane bank robbery gone awry, but then immediately loses steam. The heavily-armed thugs retreat to a tunnel system underneath Moscow and are stalked by a killer who collects eyeballs. Like the old Soviet Union, it's bleak, boring and involves walking around aimlessly in endless corridors for untenable amounts of time. By the time the flamethrower attacks appear in the last reel, it's far too little and way too late.

Continue reading "Ghost House Underground Review - Eight Movies Handpicked by Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert" »

With hundreds of years to their credit, vampires, zombies, and ghosts have all been mined again and again for good horror games. The Legacy of Kain series is just one of many bloodsucking franchises, Resident Evil propelled the walking dead to immortal game-fame, Fatal Frame made ghosts respectable video adversaries and the Castlevania series has made use of all three monster-types.

Yet there's one archetypical creature missing from this cast of horror honorifics: The Werewolf.  A well-known creature with a rich history that -- depending on a developer's whims -- could possess freakish strength, be inhumanly nimble, or have all the built-in weaponry you could need, the werewolf should be a staple in even the laziest game developer's cast of characters. And while attempts have certainly been made, they've mostly failed.

Continue reading "Why Aren't Werewolves Better Represented in Gaming?" »

Linda Blair died for your sins. Or, rather, Linda Blair's career died for your sins. After starring in The Exorcist all she wanted to do was ride horses and maybe star in a few light comedies. She took on a couple of highly-rated, hot topic TV movies, but everyone wanted her to do an Exorcist sequel. The audience -- we -- demanded it. The studio demanded it. Her accountants demanded it. And so Linda Blair did it. Not because she wanted to, but for us. And it destroyed her.

William Peter-Blatty refused to be involved in a sequel to one of the biggest box office hits of the time. So did the original director, William Friedkin. Ellen Burstyn declined to return. Jon Voight, David Carradine, Christopher Walken and Jack Nicholson all passed. Besides Blair, only Max von Sydow and Kitty Winn (who? she plays Blair's housekeeper) returned. Directed by John Boorman, the movie also featured Richard Burton, Paul Henreid (Casablanca), Louise Fletcher (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and James Earl Jones with music by Ennio Morricone and cinematography by William Fraker (Rosemary's Baby). Now, it's possible for one of these talented individuals to have a bad day, but the odds that they would all, simultaneously, turn in the worst work of their careers is nothing short of miraculous. Exorcist II: The Heretic is just that kind of miracle.

Continue reading "With Exorcist II, Linda Blair Was Doomed to a Career of Cult Movies, Thank Goodness" »

Seed is the best Uwe Boll movie ever made. That's a sentence that qualifies itself, because while it does contain the word "best," it also contains the name "Uwe Boll" -- thus obliterating its positive qualities like a neutron bomb. Released straight to video, Seed continues to grope desperately in search cinematic success in a world that has largely rejected Boll's video game adaptations like Bloodrayne and House of the Dead. First he tried comedy with the unfunny Postal, and now he has decided that what the world really needed was his take on torture porn. And so, Boll sat down and squirted out Seed, a grubby, vile bit of nonsense that reads like what you'd find in the poetry journal of a 16-year-old school shooter.

Set in the '70s, Max Seed (Will Sanderson) is a serial killer who has murdered 666 people in six years (Oh, symbolism!). He was finally brought down by a hard-drinking cop, Matt Bishop (Michael Pare), who finds that arresting Seed has shaken his faith in humanity and all the nice things in life, like puppies and kittens. Seed is to be executed, but the electric chair needs an upgrade and so, unable to kill him, the warden has him buried alive. Bad idea: Seed crawls out of the grave and kills everyone who sent him to prison, plus some other people for good measure.

Continue reading "Seed Review - Uwe Boll Tries His Hand at Torture Porn" »

Labor Day has come and gone and with it, the hordes of gamers that descended on Seattle for Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) 2008. The annual gaming convention started by Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik draws thousands of die-hard gamers each year, but this year, a record-shattering 58,000 attendees flooded the floor. Game producers also had an unprecedented presence at PAX, offering up a veritable cornucopia of twitchy delights ranging from precious to petrifying.

Among the frightful wares available for play at PAX were Microsoft's post-apocalyptic sequel Gears of War 2, the endlessly anticipated Fallout 3 from Bethesda, EA's Dead Space, and Left 4 Dead by Seattle's own Valve Studios.

Continue reading "Left 4 Dead Proves the Most Promising at PAX 2008" »

What better material for sheer, gibbering, pants-falling-down horror can you find than the end of the world, especially as depicted in the Book of Revelations? It's got eyeball-studded calves, sword-spitting Messiahs and massive oceans of blood. Drop on top of that the right wing Christian belief that the apocalypse will leave unbelievers behind to endure seven years of rule by a One World Government headed by Satan, and you've got Invasion of the Body Snatchers + 1984 + The Omen. 

Christploitation flicks work the same way that blaxploitation movies do, playing to their base with cheap budgets and bad acting balanced by fist-pumping validation and the sheer thrill of the target audience being recognized as one deserving of its very own movies. In the late 90's, bigger stars and, relatively, bigger budgets came into the picture, as with The Omega Code (1999), starring Casper Van Dien. Cloud Ten Pictures, a Canadian outfit hoping to become a conveyor belt for End Times Christploitation flicks, turned the best-selling Left Behind book series into the lukewarm franchise starring Kirk Cameron, but before that, their first foray into filmmaking was the four-film apocalypse series: Apocalypse (1998), Revelation (1999), Tribulation (2000) and Judgment (2001), now available collectively on DVD. I previously watched the Left Behind series and was underwhelmed by its timidity. But maybe in this first series of films, real horror would rear its dripping head?

Continue reading "Apocalypse Review - Turns Out It's Not So Scary" »

After the outcry over Nintendo's performance at E3, gamers with a penchant for anything outside the realm of "family friendly" were left wondering whether the company would ever return to its "hardcore" roots. Unfortunately, it seems Nintendo won't be contributing to the creep-show, but a few choice third-party releases lurk on the horizon for those that hunger more horror on the Wii.

Continue reading "Third Party Offerings to Sate Those Hungering for More Horror on the Wii" »

Novelist Scott Sigler's horror column appears every Thursday.

One of the perks of writing this blog is I get pre-release DVDs under the guise that I am a legitimate journalist. Now I know what you're thinking, the terms "Scott Sigler" and "legitimate" don't belong together, and you're right, but what the movie companies don't know won't hurt them... at least until they read these reviews. This week, I bring you a wrap-up of three recent horror DVD releases: The killer plant flick, The Ruins: Unrated; the latest Asian horror remake Shutter; and a little humdinger called Asylum.

The Ruins: Unrated
It's a plant: Burn it. Sound simple? Well yes, it is, and yet never once does it occur to our intrepid Group of Good Looking Young People (that's right, the GGLYP) as they find themselves trapped atop a Mayan temple in dire need of some Weed-B-Gone. Despite the fact that the characters actually have a fire going on top of this Mayan temple, they don't try to burn this killer plant. Not even once. That kind of shoots the movie right in the keester. But if you can roll with such contrivances, I'd still call this DVD a must-rent. There is horror, and there is gore -- gore way off the charts. The amputation scene alone is worth the peeking-through-the-fingers rental; the rest is just gravy.

The special features add heavily to the rental factor. There's an excellent piece on how they developed the plant, from sketches to manufacturing, so even if you're not impressed with the killer plants, you will be impressed with the amount of work that went into them. The one drawback is under "Alternate Endings." One of the alternate endings is the ending you just watched, so the producers might need a little help with the definition of the word "alternate." To be fair, the actual alternate ending is worth viewing. 

Rent if: You like gore, Mayans, Gregor Mendel, botany and/or angry flowers.
My take: It's a must-rent both for the move and the special features.

Continue reading "Scott Sigler - Checking Out The Ruins, Shutter and Asylum on DVD" »