How about this for a free movie? On the LadyStalker channel on YouTube, you can watch all of director Dario Argento's 1985 film, Phenomena, in 11, nine-minute segments. (The first portion is below.) Some say the movie starts out slowly, but that's how you build suspense. Things begin to get spooky the moment after you see the girl who's missed her ride.

Phenomena was actress Jennifer Connelly's second movie. The plot surrounds the Connelly character and mysterious killings at the school she's just started to attend in Switzerland. Connelly's character is fairly odd -- a sleepwalker who can (get this) communicate with insects. She's also targeted by a nasty serial killer, who's not what you might expect as far as psychopaths go. 

Can Connelly flee the school and make it back home?

YouTube isn't known for the best editing and camera work by users. But there's something about Recagle's camera work during this trip through a wax museum that will get under your skin

The shots of serial killers, zombies, Dracula, Frankenstein and all manner of the undead are spot on great, and the darkness of each room gives an old-time movie black and white tint to the experience.

I especially love that owl, moving around the window about midway through. And the beginning, with that crazed male screaming reminds me of the so-hard-to-watch torture porn in Ellen Page's Hard Candy.

The SciFi Scanner has an excellent video round-up of Academy Award Winners in B-movie trash. Naturally, the list covers science-fiction films, but horror movies have also had their share of Oscar-winning actors in less-than-stellar roles: George C. Scott won Best Actor for Patton, but he also starred in Stephen King's Firestarter. Louise Fletcher will be best known as Nurse Ratchet in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but some of us remember her work in Mama Dracula. Michael Caine is a Jaws-alumnus, co-starring in the fourth movie in the franchise. He was unable to accept his Academy Award for Hannah and Her Sisters because he was in the Carribean filming Jaws: The Revenge.

But SciFi Scanner is right, it's Joan Crawford's TROG that really takes the cake. Check out the trailer for Ms. Crawford's final film here.

Yesterday, Picturehouse Entertainment, the fine people who gave us Pan's Labyrinth, sent over a calendar of upcoming theatrical releases. Most notable on the schedule is the fact that the company's moving the chilling horror vignettes that make up Amusement to a September 12 date. This may upset fans who were looking forward to seeing the film in April. Still, the movie about a "disturbing childhood incident linking the fate of three women terrorized by diabolical ordeals" will probably play better around the Halloween season.

To me, the postponement enhances the anticipation, already heightened by viewing the creepy trailer, which features a leering, clown-faced serial killer who keeps saying, "It's funny, right?" The psychologist who asks the terrified girl, "What's amusing you?" seems downright evil.

Uwe Boll's new film Tunnel Rats isn't what you think it is -- but that's okay, it's not what he thinks it is either. Here's the trailer to prove it. In this original (not adapted from a video game) story, Boll presents the hardships of soldiers in Vietnam forced to fight the enemy in narrow tunnels beneath the jungle. In someone else's hands, this would have been a taut military drama, but Boll is still making horror movies no matter how much Buffalo Springfield he plays in the background.

Continue reading "Tunnel Rats Trailer Reveals Brave New Boll" »

In this new clip from George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead, the director preys on our paranoid fears of law enforcement by making the local sheriff into a raging zombie. But even beyond the zombie sheriff, there's genius in the way the scene, featured on Bloody-Disgusting, is shot.

The sheer panic in the students' breathless voices, the pure, foreboding darkness of the lonely stretch of highway, and the shaky camera combine to create a sense of impending doom. Look closely and you'll see in the students' van an angry nod to our times, a time in which terror rules, and fear of authority, according to Romero, is requisite. Scary? Hell, yes.

Dread Central has gotten the jump on The Rage's Feb. 26 release, with a contest to give away DVDs and stickers, as well as a gross bust I can't imagine putting on my mantle. And Screen Media Films has granted DC an exclusive (definitely rated R) clip of the movie itself.

The Rage is about a scientist's plot gone horribly wrong. When one of his subjects escapes and is eaten by vultures, these birds of prey become infected by whatever it is that makes normally peaceful beings suddenly flip out and kill people. The clip takes us right to the heart of the matter, demonstrating that hindsight is always 20/20 when it comes to one's lack of protective headgear. If you win Dread Central's contest, you'll always have something above your fireplace reminding you to wear a helmet.

You only have to wait two weeks before The Signal hits theaters, but if you're determined to spoil your appetite, we can't stop you. On IGN you'll find a hilarious new clip from the movie to tide you over until February 22nd. Watch as three survivors kick off what has to be the most dismal New Year's Eve party ever -- as they struggle to figure out why the world is going crazy outside. When a guest arrives and shatters the silence, they may want to re-evaluate their plans for the evening...

It's rare that a video game adaptation of a movie works out well. But that is in fact the case with The Spiderwick Chronicles, Sierra Entertainment's thoughtful interpretation of the upcoming movie starring Freddie Highmore and Mary-Louise Parker (the movie hits theaters on February 14). The goblin and faerie-filled game also features some evil monsters and disturbing-looking sprites. When you check out the making-of video, you'll likely agree that the game has done justice to the supernatural beings. The game designers fleshed out the characters enough to make them seem real, not just a collection of bits and bytes. Mulgarath, the giant, shape-shifting goblin, is horrific while Thimbletack is uproariously cute in his angry, cranky, boggart mode.  

Some enterprising individual has put The Rocky Horror Picture Show on YouTube. The movie/musical parody, starring a young, beautiful Susan Sarandon and the hilarious Tim Curry, is chopped up into 34 videos. But if you have the patience and the deep, abiding, cult love for the movie, that shouldn't be a problem.

For fans, some facts: Rocky Horror also starred Nell Campbell, longtime owner of the Manhattan club Nell's, a staple of New York nightlife in the1980s and 1990s. The movie's outlandish costumes were made on a shoestring budget of only $1600. The movie itself was made for a song. Rocky Horror, budgeted at a little over a million dollars, has made $113 million in this country alone, according to Box Office Mojo.