Bruce Campbell is used to being mistaken for his on-screen persona. The week he moved into his new home, a neighbor solicited his help. "He came up to my driveway and said, 'I understand you used to be a movie cowboy on a TV show," recalls the actor, imitating his neighbor's drawl. When Campbell confirmed he was, he was enlisted to help run a hundred head of cattle up the road, a request which didn't phase him in the least. "I said, 'Hey baby, I'm there,'" he continues. "We rode, and I bounced my ass in the saddle, and we did it -- we herded them doggies."

This sort of experience is the essence of Campbell's new film My Name Is Bruce, which has had horror fans champing at the bit for over a year. In it, a monster-afflicted small town decides the only person who can save them is the hero they've seen bravely smiting the undead in movies. The townsfolk, however, find him less helpful than Campbell's real-life neighbor did. "Mike Richardson at Dark Horse Comics and his buddy Mark Verheiden, whom he'd worked with on Timecop, pitched this concept, and they had the idea, 'What if Bruce was really just a jerk and a moron?' I think by the end of it, some people are going to be very confused by how I've portrayed myself," says Campbell who stars in and directed the movie. "That's the fun of it. There are some extreme Sunset Boulevard moments, where truth intersects with fiction just a little too roughly." It's a classic storyline, however, and one Campbell hopes will charm fans of both movies and comics. "It's really based on a '40s cartoon The Adventures of Alan Ladd. Alan Ladd the movie star gets kidnapped by pirates at one point and they think he's a swashbuckler who can help them," says Campbell. "We thought it's kind of like Galaxy Quest for the horror crowd -- I sort of owe the horror crowd something!"

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When Tobin Bell appeared in the original Saw, he had no inkling that he'd would be the linchpin of a franchise -- he was just glad to have one good scene. "The size of a part isn't what attracts me to it -- it's more about its value in the story," says the actor, who has spent more than five years playing Jigsaw, the series' murderous mastermind.

"When I read the script for Saw I thought, 'This is essentially a three character play, like a Sam Shepard play," he explains. "Now, it's lovely to be in a play of any sort, but when you're in an ensemble piece with 25 other characters, it tends to water your part down a little. If you're in a Shepard play with three characters, everybody's character has a chance to play out."

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JoBeth Williams knows a thing or two about the trials of getting movies made. The actress who made a splash in films like Poltergeist and The Big Chill (and who appears on Dexter as the tough-cookie mom of the serial killer's girlfriend) is also the director of an Oscar-winning short, and has become well acquainted with the hardship that awaits filmmakers even after deals are signed. That's why she doesn't feel particularly threatened by news that MGM has hired Boogeyman scribes Juliet Snowden and Stiles White to scratch together a new Poltergeist script.

"A lot of ideas get thrown around, writers are hired, and still sometimes the film never sees the light of day," says Williams, who is always on the lookout herself for material to direct. "There have been a couple of projects that I dearly loved where the writer and I tried to get financial backing for and they haven't happened yet. That side of production is not my strong suit -- it takes extreme patience. My friend Diane English, whose film The Women comes out this week, had that script for ten years. It was considered ready to move ahead and get made five or six times. You think you have the money, or you think you have the cast, and even then, it still takes a long, long time."

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By now virtually everyone has cracked a joke about David Cronenberg's new opera (based on his horror masterpiece The Fly). But detractors might reconsider the wisecracks after seeing the two hulking telepods on stage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. They're pretty scary and looking at them in person, you can't help but note with a shiver that before the final curtain, the audience will find itself in the same room as a real live Brundlefly, baritone or not.

The pods flank Cronenberg ominously as he speaks on the set in L.A., where his new pet project appears throughout September. Like David Hedison -- whose book The Fly at 50 comes out this fall -- the director claims that he's considered the story operatic in scope ever since he and composer Howard Shore began work on the film in the '80s. "I think the seeds for this opera were planted then, when Howard and I were talking about how we were going to do the music," says Cronenberg. "The music he's created for my movies has been relatively low-key, but it's very intense when it has to be. At the time, he thought a very operatic and theatrical approach to the music would work, because of the nature of the story... It's very heightened, very intense, very emotional, and very claustrophobic really, because it's basically three people in a room. The original Fly wasn't exactly like that, but in essence it was."

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In June I spoke to Dan Gildark about his film Cthulhu, which has finally shambled into theaters this month in very limited release. I'm pleased to report that the film is nothing more or less than Gildark promised: It's not an adaptation at all, but a bizarre tour through Lovecraftian landscapes. Critics should be less worried about whether the film is too gay and more concerned over whether its plot makes any sense at all without H.P. Lovecraft's relentlessly linear storytelling. In the meantime, those still waiting a faithful screen adaptation of their favorite early-20th-century fearmonger won't have to wait too long. Filmmakers Sean Branney and Andrew Leman, whose 47-minute silent short, The Call of Cthulhu, hewed closer to the source material, are nearing the finish line on their follow-up project, The Whisperer in Darkness.

A message on the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society (HPLHS) website says: "Yes, we're working on Whisperer. No, we don't know when it will be done. Please watch the trailer over and over again in the meantime." As the director this time around, Branney is starting to feel the heat, but the HPLHS filmmakers refuse to be rushed. "There's been a lot of goodwill toward the project. Almost every day I get a couple of emails from people asking when they can see it -- which is great, for a movie that's not actually made yet," he says.

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It must be pretty confusing to be Steve Niles: The comic book author who gave us 30 Days of Night has more projects and properties flying around than he can keep track of himself. When told that Dark Horse Comics hinted about a pending film announcement, he blanks as to what it's in reference to. "Honestly I'm doing so much stuff for Dark Horse that I'm not sure what the hell they're talking about," he says.

So for the horror fans that have been keeping track, here's what Niles can talk about:

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There's no doubt that remakes are a hot trend in horror. Fans have been moaning "Is nothing sacred?" for some time but the recent announcement that MTV is assembling a Rocky Horror Picture Show remake in time for next Halloween has raised that noise to a fever pitch. On the official Rocky Horror fansite, reactions range from disbelief to rejection. "Let the battle begin!!" commented one fan, anticipating the inevitable bickering.

Rocky Horror stands out from most remake fodder, however, in that it has its own rich, built-in performance history, a fact that some fans -- including the rock star Joan Jett -- haven't failed to overlook. The musical debuted in London in 1973 and arrived on Broadway in 1975, just months before the iconic film premiered. By the time Jett brought a "street tough edge" to the character of Columbia in 2000's Broadway revival, fans had already claimed the music and characters as their own via stagings, screenings, and singalongs. "I've been a fan of the movie since it came out," says Jett. "I guess it coincided with the beginning of my band, The Runaways, so I remember going to see it many times in Hollywood when I lived there."

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That isn't Leslie Bibb's face inside that scary sack-mask -- at least, I hope not. But Bibb does have a part in Trick 'r Treat, director Michael Dougherty's embattled love letter to his favorite holiday. She also starred in the recently unveiled Midnight Meat Train, which has accrued a pile of favorable reviews. So what's a nice girl like Bibb, whose past credits include the teen show Popular and films like Talladega Nights and Iron Man, doing in such gruesome territory? "I think you have to really sit down and start to do that -- to explore the unlikeable side of you," she explains. "In horror movies, there's always the token screaming girl running around, but we wanted to explore who she was, so it became much deeper than that."

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The world of independent filmmaking is not for the weak of heart, according to director Jay Duplass. "We sort of talk about our movies as monsters," he says. "People ask us how hard it is to work together as brothers, and we say it's easy, because we're not the enemy -- the enemy is this giant monster we've created that needs to be fed. We're trying to keep the beast moving and not let it kill us at the same time." The brother in question is Mark Duplass, and the film is their horror-hybrid Baghead, which opened last weekend. Baghead follows a quartet of would-be filmmakers into the woods where they wax cinematic while being stalked by a mysterious figure... wearing a bag on his head.

So far response has been mixed; AMC's Grady Hendrix found the feature wanting in the horror department, for example, while AV Club reviewer Scott Tobias gave it a B+ and found to be a "surprisingly effective Friday The 13th kids-in-the-woods slasher film." An IMDB discussion debates, "Is this a horror movie?"

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For months, a red-band trailer for Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead has been spreading across the Internet like a chemical spill, unsuitable for the workplace, children or the weak of heart -- watch at your own risk! This latest offering from Troma Entertainment, the world's authority on gory, cheap thrills, is now finally popping up on big screens as Lloyd Kaufman, director and president of Troma Films, personally delivers his slow-roasted vision to festivals and art houses nationwide. Kaufman is confident that such films will never go out of fashion. "I think people love movies like Poultrygeist because they're original and thought-provoking, and create some genuine emotion in the audience," he says. "In today's world of cookie cutter $100 million movies that have to be all things to all people, there's an audience out there of people who want movies that come from the heart."

This attitude -- as well as knack for smashing taboos -- has ensured the film company an evergreen crop of devotees. "I think Troma's famous for being a sort of Cuisinart of genres," says Kaufman. "Peter Jackson once suggested that we created the slapstick gore movie. In the case of Poultrygeist, we've added the musical singing-and-dancing element. I may be wrong about this, but Poultrygeist is probably the first chicken Indian zombie with singing and dancing. Also it's an anti-fast food movie," he adds. "I think that sociological satire appeals to a pretty good segment of the moviegoing population, especially young people who are not exactly happy that McDonalds is on every corner."

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