Take a good hard look at your own prom picture. (Go ahead and dig it out, I'll wait.) Does it already look tragically out of date? Do you appear to be having more fun than you really were? Or is there really still a spark there, a portrait of the glory of youth?

The original Prom Night is all of these things. And still, filmmakers keep hauling Prom Night back to its feet year after year. After three sequels and now a full-fledged remake, we can't help but feel a little silly as we watch the original, but it's familiar enough that we can't look away. John Carpenter had already thrown a coming-out party for Jamie Lee Curtis two years earlier with Halloween, making her casting as Kim Hammond a tad redundant. Yet without her warm liquid eyes, beautifully grave facial expressions -- and, yes, super-freaky disco dancing -- there would be no reason to care about this slash-by-numbers affair.

Continue reading "The Original Prom Night Revisited" »

For the first time in my life, I wish I lived in Detroit.

The Motor City may be best known for great American cars and great American music, but now it's bringing back another all-American tradition -- the late night TV horror host.  The show, called Nightmare SINema hosted by "Wolfman Mac", features sketches, classic commercials, animated shorts and classic horror movies.  It started airing on Detroit public access last year and recently began airing on the local "My" affiliate on Friday nights at 1 AM.

The brainchild of local DJ Mac Kelly, Nightmare SINema recalls the days of such great Detroit horror hosts as Sir Ghastly Graves and The Ghoul. Targeted for kids and nostalgic boomers, it currently airs public domain movies like The Brain That Wouldn't Die and Little Shop of Horrors. But the hope is that if the show prospers at its new home, they will be able license a classic or two -- and maybe even move to a timeslot when most kids are actually awake.

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Sad news for classic horror fans: Ben Chapman, who played the titular Creature From the Black Lagoon, has passed away. The 82-year-old retired actor and stunt-man was admitted to the hospital on February 12th, and died peacefully in the company of his wife and son yesterday morning.

After 1954's Black Lagoon, the "Gill Man" became a horror icon right up there with Boris Karloff's Frankenstein and Bela Legosi's Count Dracula. Like Karloff, Chapman found a way to bring depth and life to his character despite being buried beneath costume special effects. His film career may have been short-lived, but Chapman's devoted fanbase and niche in Hollywood history speak for themselves.

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The horror community has been abuzz with the news that New Line Cinema and Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes would be remaking the classic A Nightmare on Elm Street. But unbeknownst to most, another remake of Nightmare is not only on the way, it's showing this Thursday at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz in Austin, TX. Just over five minutes long, it was produced for next to nothing. Check it out here.

The Alamo Drafthouse has been one of the leaders in interactive cinema over the last few years, sponsoring numerous quickie DIY filmmaking contests, but their latest may prove to be their most amibitious. Called Rewind Kindly (inspired by the premise of Michel Gondry's, Be Kind Rewind), it allows contestants to rework their favorite films in short form. Numerous classic (and several not-so-classic) films, from Gone With the Wind to The Beastmaster (a personal favorite -- the remake, not the original), have gone the remake route for a chance to win a Dell AMD-powered workstation grand prize.

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Some stories flow with a grace that translates cleanly into song -- and this isn't one of them. Nevertheless, Troma's The Toxic Avenger will soon be mucking about on stage with showstopping numbers arranged by Bon Jovi's David Bryan, according to Icons of Fright's interview with the Tromatizer himself, Lloyd Kaufman.

Fans have staged the film before, "but this is the real Toxic Avenger: The Musical with a real professional producing team, and hopefully something will happen with it," says Kaufman, who co-directed the cult classic in 1985. Producers plan to test run the Toxic musical -- in Newark, where the original movie was filmed -- before trying to float it across the river to New York. Check out the rest of the interview for more on the musical, the Toxic remake rumors, and more.

Of all the toys and action figures that made their debut at Manhattan's Toy Fair this week, none is fuglier than the Cloverfield monster. In fact, it's one of the few offerings revealed at the Fair likely to give adults an honest shock. Wake up in the middle of the night and walk into the living to encounter this gaping maw and you'll probably jump up to the ceiling -- Sylvester the Cat-style. Figures.com took this close-up photo of the expensive ($99) Hasbro toy. Despite the glare, you get the idea.

Also for sale is The Exorcist doll that looks as if Linda Blair is imitating U.S. gymnast Nastia Luikin. Not scary. Far better is Uncle Creepy from the mid-'60s Warren magazine, Creepy.

The 1920 silent version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde begins with a dire declaration: "In each of us, two nature's are at war -- the good and the evil. All our lives the fight goes on between them, and one of them must conquer." You can get all of the rest of this classic on YouTube. It's chopped up into nine segments, but the interruptions are quibbling points when you consider that this adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's short novel is probably the best.  The movie, which stars John Barrymore, was shot at New York's then brand-new Astoria Long Island Studios. Fun fact: Barrymore help out with the set design by hauling many of his potted plants to the set from his Manhattan apartment.

Call me uninformed, but I had no idea that vampire memorabilia could be worth over a million dollars. On eBay today, one auctioneer is selling a large poster promoting 1931's Dracula (with Bela Lugosi) for a whopping $1,200,000. If you're a B-movie filmmaker, you could make three films with that kind of money.

Apparently, this one-sheet is one of only two known examples in the world. As you look at it, Lugosi at once looks like he's laughing, crazed. and angry. Quite a feat. And it is, after all, the ultra-cool "story of the strangest passion the world has ever known." Still, that's a lot of cash to pay? Would you buy it if you had the money? Or is it just too much of an extravagance?

Happy Valentine's Day to all of you lovers of horror. During this ultra-romantic 24-hour period, I realize that Monsterfesters may need a break from the roses and candlelit meals for a few minutes of sheer terror. Along those lines, here's a bloody scene from Valentine with Charlie Sheen's lovely former wife Denise Richards as the ill-fated Paige Prescott. Is love dead? Well, Paige is thrown into a hot tub, locked in by the Plexiglas cover, then attacked with a huge drill by an angry guy wearing a Cupid mask.

By the way, this was one of Grey's Anatomy star Kathryn Heigl's first fright flicks. Although Knocked Up has propelled her to higher levels, she's screamed for her life in everything from Bride of Chucky to Zyzzyx Rd.

Twenty-five years ago today, a weird sci-fi/horror film from an up-and-coming genre director was given an unceremonious theatrical dumping by its studio, where it grossed a paltry $2.5 million (total) at the box office and was greeted mainly with  critical scorn. Despite Andy Warhol calling it "The Clockwork Orange of the 80s," it was yanked from theater screens after less than a month, and was treated like a forgotten stepchild for years. And then something incredible happend: The director became one of the world's most acclaimed filmmakers and the film became an eerily prophetic vision of our modern day Internet society where nearly everything is broadcast to the public. The movie? David Cronenberg's Videodrome.

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