Between Twilight and Prom Night, it seems like the way to set up a successful horror movie is to end the title with "-ight." Or maybe not: Cloverfield manages to hang on the list, despite no actual news. Hey, Clover is one powerful fish-monster, what can we say?
Actually, what can you say? Think we got something horribly wrong? Or missed the biggest horror news of the week? Then talk back in the comments, and let us know what you think. This week's topic of discussion: Come up with a horror movie song parody title! As an example, "Jason's Mom," a parody of Fountains of Wayne's "Stacy's Mom." Go to it, Monsterfesters.
Horror Power Rankings
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Twilight The Twilight trailer gets released on MySpace, and quickly works it's way to become the second most downloaded trailer of all time; the number one spot isn't too far out of its sights. Hey, it's Twilight's world, we just live in it. |
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Poultrygeist Sorry non-New Yorkers, but we're the only people who get to see a theatrical "screaming" of the latest Troma masterpiece. Ron Jeremy. Lipstick lesbians. And hundreds of undead chickens. We're so there. |
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Bioshock Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean) signs on to direct the film adaptation of the mega-selling video game. Can't wait to see the Little Sisters betray each other, then form alliances, then betray each other again. Then form another alliance. |
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Cloverfield Pics from the Cloverfield 2 viral campaign turn out to be from the end of first Cloverfield viral campaign. Still, for a few hours, the Internet was all aflutter, which is good news for the monster sequel. |
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Deal With The Devil Lionsgate picks up the Alias Enterprises comic book series about a cop who teams up with a serial killer to stop a series of copycat killings. If it's anything like Rush Hour, sign us up. |
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Igor Not so much horror as horror parody, next summer's big budget, animated mad scientists vs. assistants movie gets a trailer. Who knew John Cusack had gotten so short, and fat? |
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The X-Files: I Want To Believe Mulder & Scully walk through the snow, followed by helicopters, with a big, bloody "X," in the Polish version of the X-Files 2 poster. And we still have no clue what the movie is about. |
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Frontier(s) Our reviewer thought it was a slick technical package that feels dead inside. Dead inside is just how we like our horror, isn't it? |
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Prom Night Thanks a lot for making liars of us, Prom Night. Last week we said that not only would the movie be out of the top 10, but $50mil was out of it's reach. Now, both things look to be false. Stay tuned... |
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The Strangers The Liv Tyler home invasion flick starts gearing up its marketing with some creepy TV clips. The buzz around it has been good, and whether or not it's based on true events, this might be the one to watch. |
Posted by Alex Zalben
May 12, 2008 12:04am
Filed under: Horror Power Ranking
With no new horror movies opening this weekend, the Power List gets a bit of a shake-up: Twilight grabs the top spot, and future flicks take the soft, crunchy middle. Got some beef with what we have to say here? Then talk back in the comments, and let us know what you think. What did we miss? What did we get wrong? And will we ever see a film version of Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash, for cripes sake?
Horror Power Rankings
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Twilight Word on the street is that the Twilight trailer will premiere next weekend with Speed Racer. Word on the street is also that the trailer will be the only reason most people go to see the racing flick.
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Let The Right One In The Swedish slasher movie steals all the buzz, and the top prize at the Tribeca Film Festival. So what's next? A Hammer Films remake. Uh-oh.
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The Descent 2 One of last year's best horror flicks gets a cast, which will include members returning from the original. Though Neil Marshall won't be directing, he will produce, which makes this A-OK in my book.
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Clock Tower The semi-popular video game series gets a film adaptation, with Martin Weisz, director of The Hills Have Eyes 2 at the helm. Hopefully this doesn't conflict with my killer gator script, "Croc Tower."
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Cloverfield "Roar," the end credit overture from Cloverfield, hits iTunes, and it's about time. Purchase nine and a half minutes of glory, and picture the big budget mayhem you missed the first time around.
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The House on Sorority Row The remake was already announced, but Summit, producers of P2 and Twilight, have nailed down the rights to the script, which means a sorority slasher with no nudity, and just a little blood. You know, just like horror fans like?
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The Happening M. Night Shyamalan's latest scare-fest gets a full trailer, and a fun drinking game: Every time someone says the word "happening," chug!
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High Moon The popular online werewolves vs. vampire cowboys comic returns to the Power List as it ends its second act with a bang. Or should I say, a bite? No, a bang.
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Rogue This croc doesn't rock; Rogue only makes about $771 per theater opening weekend. Yipes. Maybe, given the Michael Vartan connection, they should have called it, Never Been Bit?
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Prom Night Prom Night manages to hang out in both the B.O. top 10, and our top 10, at least for one more week. Though, at this point, reaching $50mil might be a stretch.
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Posted by Alex Zalben
May 5, 2008 12:02am
Filed under: Horror Power Ranking
Last week, there was some concern over Prom Night holding court for two weeks in a row. Well, worry no longer, as the crown has gone from a crock, to a croc... and, a giant one at that. The Ruins falls off the list this week, after a two-week stay. And, for the first time, we have several flicks cutting their way to the top of the charts. And now, I'm going to "cut" it out, before I turn into the Cryptkeeper:
Horror Power Rankings
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Rogue Horror lovers rejoice! There's, uh, one new horror film out this week. And it's about a giant crocodile. It stars the one-expressioned Michael Vartan and it's been shelved forever. Oh well, time to go see Prom Night again.
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Twilight Everyone is getting on the Twilight train all of a sudden. You can't hit the net without reading a story about the soundtrack, set visits, or Stephanie Meyer's cameo in the vamp flick.
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Friday The 13th Mrs. Voorhees gets cast, and it's Nana Visitor. Yup, Major Kira from Deep Space Nine. Your geek head can explode right now, in a subtle tribute to what will shortly be happening to Nana Visitor's head... |
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The Orphanage The Guillermo del Toro-lite Spanish horror flick The Orphanage hits DVD, and despite feeling very familiar, it is more than worth your time. Probably the best film on this list, actually... Huh. No snark. Weird. |
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Prom Night Prom Night hangs on at your local cinema, and should be in the top 10 at the B.O. for another week, earning enough money to spawn Prom Night 2: Prom Morning. God help us all. |
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Saw V Actress Meagan Good (One Missed Call, also out on DVD this week) joins the Saw five-quel. *Spoiler* Turns out, her character has done something wasteful with her life, so she gets graphically tortured for it.
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Zombie Strippers Zombie Strippers hangs on the list not for its B.O. power, but because Jenna Jameson got the fanboys slathering at New York Comic-Con. Expect it to only reappear on the Power Ranking around DVD time. |
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Hack/Slash Cassie Hack, comic books' only slasher of slashers, hooks up with her soul mates over at Suicide Girls. The scantily dressed alt-women will present a brand new horror comic from creator Tim Seeley, as well as other content. |
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Repo: The Genetic Opera The long-in-development horror/rock-opera gets an extensive, behind the scenes soundtrack page, as well as a dynamite list of performers for its soundtrack (artists from Slipknot, Korn, Guns n' Roses, and more). |
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Pathology Opening at $54,000 on 46 screens isn't that great, Milo Ventimiglia. Don't quit your day job. What, your day job is acting? Okay, quit that.
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Posted by Alex Zalben
April 28, 2008 10:55am
Filed under: Horror Power Ranking
It's week two of our rankings, and we've already seen massive upheaval in the world of horror flicks and stacks (aka movies and comics). More than half of the original HPRL entries have been bumped off by new titles bursting with bloody, slashy goodness.
Two movies manage to hang on: The Prom Night remake, and vine-based thriller The Ruins. Will they stay on the chart for yet another week? Or will one of our newcomers cut their way to the top? Only time (and your input) will tell...
Horror Power Rankings
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Zombie Strippers Is it going to be good? Nope. Is it going to make a lot of money? Nope. Does it star Robert Englund, Jenna Jameson and sport a perfect horror movie title? Hell yeah, it does. |
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Prom Night Beyond dominating the box office with a $23 million take opening weekend, Prom Night has also paved the way for more PG-13 "girls in terror" remakes, including The House on Sorority Row. Getting the worst horror film ever remade? That's power. |
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The Predator You could debate whether Predator counts as horror, scifi, action, or all three. The Blu-ray releases of Aliens vs. Predator - Requiem, AVP and the 1987 film that started it all will help you figure out which category old Crab Face belongs in.
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Midnight Meat Train Clive Barker's opus about a subway that turns into a literal slaughterhouse finally gets a new release date, parking itself opposite the new Mummy movie (Tomb of the Dragon Emperor) on August 1. The good news: It's still got a summer release date. The bad news: It's still called Midnight Meat Train. |
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Twilight Based on Stephanie Meyers popular series of vampire-romance books, the movie version of Twilight has just begun filming, but is already generating positive buzz. I bet most of you have never heard of it before, right? That's because you're not 13-year-old girls.
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Pathology Milo Ventimiglia takes a star turn in this med student horror-thriller. Alyssa Milano plays his fiancée, but that won't be enough to overcome Pathology's middling reviews and low theater count.
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The Damned Oni Press' graphic novel is making the transition to the big screen, directed by Eight Below's David DiGillio. The OGN concerns an LA detective who finds himself up against a demon Mafia.
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Friday The 13th The remake scores a female hottie lead in Danielle Panabaker. You know, from Shark? The show with James Woods in it? He's a lawyer, who defends bad guys or something? Anyway, she's in Shark, and she's going to be in Friday the 13th, so, that's going on. |
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The Ruins Who would have thought The Ruins, aka "That killer vine movie," would have bombed at the B.O.? Well, everybody, though it may still find second life in the video store. Do people even use video stores any more? Tell you what, from now on, the phrase is, "Find second life in the iTunes Store." Happy, early adopters? |
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High Moon David Gallaher and Steve Ellis' award winning comic on Zuda gets a new installment, which happens once every, pardon the pun, blue moon. Vampire Cowboys vs. Werewolf Cowboys, and it hasn't been picked up for a movie yet? |
Posted by Alex Zalben
April 21, 2008 12:00am
Filed under: Horror Power Ranking
Everyone loves lists. We make lists of our top ten movies, our favorite restaurants, body parts we'll eat first when zombies take over the world and we're trapped in our attics and starving to death. Crazy people make lists. Military dictators make lists. Paranoid maniacs make lists. Lists make the world go round.
So welcome to the Horror Power Ranking List, MonsterFest's list that ranks what's going on in horror this week, from the top five to the bottom five - the five best things and the five worst. We use science to break each item down into its basic elements in order to accurately determine its TEV (Total Entertainment Value) and then, using complex algorithms, we determine exactly where it should be ranked on the HPRL (Horror Power Ranking List). So if you disagree with our rankings, you're probably wrong. We use science. You use opinions. Science wins.
Horror Power Rankings
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The Ruins Packing the most TEV into the least amount of space is newly-released horror flick The Ruins, which is like Frito's Pie: It's disgusting yet delicious and three hours later not a trace of it is left in your system. Sure it's getting bad reviews, but so did John Carpenter's The Thing when it came out. |
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Bad Biology Basket Case auteur Frank Henenlotter premiered his latest movie in the "Danger After Dark" portion of the Philadelphia Film Festival. There's no release date or distributor yet but he scores high on the Power List because his self-described "godawful love story" is so perverted. |
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Tokyo Gore Police On June 3, the trashy, ridiculously bloody Japanese flick The Machine Girl hits DVD but that movie's production company has just released a trailer for their follow-up Tokyo Gore Police (helmed by Machine Girl's special effects director). Be warned: this video redefines NSFW. |
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The Fury Next Friday AMC dishes up Brian DePalma's psychic epic The Fury. You've probably seen it a million times, but what you might not know is John Williams (fresh off Close Encounters of the Third Kind) did the score. It's one of his best: dissonant, angry and full of synths and theremin. An influence on endless soundtracks, including The Matrix. |
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The Walking Dead Writer Robert Kirkman is interviewed in The Comics Journal this month, and while many fans have abandoned his five-year-old zombie comic book, The Walking Dead is still inarguably the best horror comic out there. The next trade collection comes out next Tuesday, April 16. |
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Cloverfield Purists expected Japan, home of Godzilla, to kick Cloverfield to the curb, but it opened there last weekend and did great business. Add to that the fact that little viral videos are already popping up online and Cloverfield resurfaces at Number 6 |
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Day of the Dead The straight-to-DVD remake of Day of the Dead hit Blockbuster this week. Starring Ving Rhames and American Beauty's Mena Suvari, it could've been a guilty pleasure instead of a blasphemous tampering with George A. Romero's trilogy if they'd simply called it Attack of the Surprisingly Fast Corpses. |
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Hellraiser The directors of the unbelievably appalling (and therefore totally great) Inside have walked off the Hellraiser remake they were helming due to contractual disputes with the studio. They are French and they are annoyed. |
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Prom Night A PG-13 remake of the original, the new Prom Night has neither Jamie Lee Curtis nor Leslie Nielsen. This one walks in the footsteps of the House of Wax remake, and the He Knows You're Alone remake, or the Halloween remake, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. Not good. |
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Rogue The good news: Rogue, the giant killer crocodile picture from the director of Wolf Creek is finally getting a limited theatrical release on April 25. The bad news: the previously announced April release of All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is postponed indefinitely. |
Posted by Grady Hendrix
April 14, 2008 12:01am
Filed under: Horror Power Ranking