In addition to the usual reviews and comments you would find on a horror movie blog, this is also a document of the wonderfully vast horror movie section of the video store I worked at in my youth.

Sunday, August 30, 2015

DKTM 277


Hey all. Take a look at theses horror goodies from the week, so we can forget that this is the last weekend in August. Enjoy!

Tech Noir!

If you've coming here for a while, you've no doubt heard me talk about Lee Hardcastle, the UK-based claymation artist. His short films (including his contest winning ABC's of Death short T is For Toilet) have been taking the Internet by storm for years now. His latest piece is the VHS infused music video for Gunship song Tech Noir. With narration by John Carpenter!


All I Need Now Is A Handbasket.

The horror title I'm most looking forward to at TIFF this year - save maybe Robert Eggers' The Witch - is the Turkish horror flick Baskin. I remember being impressed by the short a few years ago, and I'm glad to see they were able to expand the idea into a full feature.


That trailer seems to insinuate Event Horizon levels of hellacious gore and madness, so bring it on I say! Here below is the blood streaked poster, as well.


TP x 25.

I'm sure you are as excited as I am about the return of Twin Peaks next year. Recently, the annual Twin Peaks banquet was held in Snoqualmie Ridge, Washington. Attending this year, were cast members, Ian Buchanan (Dick Tremayne), Kimmy Robertson (Lucy Moran), Catherine E. Coulson (Margaret Lanterman aka The Log Lady), Charlotte Stewart (Betty Briggs), Phoebe Augustine (Ronette Pulaski), Gary Hershberger (Mike “Snake” Nelson), Jonny Leppell (Pierre Chalfont) and surprise guest Jan D’Arcy (Sylvia Horne). Check out the video below from the event.


Friday, August 28, 2015

Sorpresa!


The VHS on tap this Friday is 1977's Watch Me When I Kill.


After Mara (Paola Tedesco) witnesses a man leaving the scene of a murder, she becomes a target. Her detective boyfriend Lukas (Corrado Pani) investigates and comes discovers a much larger story that could endanger them both.

So, this is another case of me not paying attention. Based on the coverbox I'd been staring at for eons, I always figured this was a Z-grade slasher in the vein of Don't Go In The Woods. Nope, Watch Me When I Kill is a freakin' giallo! If it had been marked with its alternate title The Cat With The Jade Eyes that would have been clear, though neither moniker actually has anything to do with the movie itself.

I unwittingly began watching it, but as soon as the actors starting speaking in overdubbed voices while a figure skulked around in the shadows, I was all in. This has all the Italian horror hallmarks on display; the unique kills, the convoluted sleuthery of Pani & Tedesco (who at their best reminded me of David Hemmings & Daria Nicolodi from Dario Argento's classic Profondo Rosso) and a parade of quirky characters like;

The Unhappiest Pharmacist In The World

Italian Bradley Cooper

And Guy Who Bathes In Drano.

But the real takeaway from this movie was the music, which doesn't even try to hide its influence. I can see the conversation between the producers now. “Hire a local band (in this case prog rockers Trans Europa Express,) play them some Goblin and say give me more of that!”



It's still great and one of a few pretty rocking tracks in the movie, but I just thought it was funny how blatent it was. I also have to comment on how the movie finishes, as it has one of the most abrupt endings this side of Pieces.

Watch Me When I Kill was not what I would consider in the upper echelon of the genre, but it still had its moments. And now I have another track I can add to my YouTube playlist of horror film scores.

Thursday, August 27, 2015

Horrorwood North!

Last week, Rue Morgue Magazine released the fourth volume of its Library series, Horrorwood North, a ghoulish little softcover that documents the history of Canadian genre cinema.


Horrorwood North is a longtime passion project by RM contributor James Burrell. Spurred on by a childhood viewing of Prom Night, he has since always been drawn to the output of the Great White North, and the subtle differences from our southern counterparts.

Though this book may not be as comprehensive as 2004’s They Came From Within by Caelum Vatnsdal, it is very digestible, and also has the advantage of being able to speak of the last decade of Canuck horror cinema – that brought us such pictures as Pontypool, American Mary and Hobo With A Shotgun, as well as saw the rise of Astron 6 and Black Fawn Films.

Canada's first horror film, The Mask (1961)

Horrorwood North is a nice looking package with tons of colour – if I did have one complaint about Satanic Panic, it was its monochromatic appearance – and bursting with posters, lobby cards and BTS images. Burrell utilizes the easiest way to break down Canadian genre film, sorting by the tax shelter era of the seventies and eighties and the years that came before and after.

I found this book a really pleasurable read. Naturally, I was aware of most of the stuff covered, but have to admit I didn’t realize that some mentioned were Canadian, like Humongous, The Uncanny and Grace. And my mind was blown when I read in the wonderful piece on Ginger Snaps that the title role was first offered to Scarlett Johansson. Not taking anything away from the amazing Katharine Isabelle, but holy shit, I wouldn’t mind visiting that alternate universe for a few hours…

Black Christmas (1974)

Even though Burrell does make an effort to cover as many films as possible, I was disappointed that two of my favourites – Ed Hunt’s The Brain (1988) and Robert Clouse’s Deadly Eyes (1982) were reduced to mere footnotes. And the fact that Jon Knautz’s 2010 film The Shrine wasn’t even mentioned is further evidence that it remains criminally under-appreciated.

However, I was glad that a lot of time was spent on the classics, as Black Christmas, The Changeling and the aforementioned Ginger Snaps are also given several pages of coverage. Burrell also gives special attention to Canada’s vital role in the slasher boom of the early eighties with sinewy spreads on Prom Night, Happy Birthday To Me, Curtains and My Bloody Valentine.

Ginger Snaps (2000)

So, go ahead and pick this book up. For further info on Canadian horror, check out Paul Corupe’s awesome site, Canuxploitation.com. Speaking of which, here is Corupe’s 2012 Black Museum lecture on the subject. Enjoy!




Wednesday, August 26, 2015

It Came From The Archives 25!

Supermassive Games' Until Dawn was released yesterday, but I have to wait until this weekend to dig into it. With that mind, I figured I'd unearth something a little serendipitous for this excursion into the Archives.


When it was announced that Until Dawn would take place in a wintery cabin locale, I had a flashback to some of my first stabs at writing fiction. Between the ages of eleven and fifteen - my love of slashers deeply ingrained by this point - I penned a trilogy of short stories featuring a deformed madman named Jackal Bloodthirsty, the third of which was entitled The Ski Lodge Massacre.


Here it is below. It's pretty terrible, with prose and spelling that will make you wince, but hey, at least I was being productive in my early teens. I thought I'd have to subject you to my awful handwriting as well, but seeing that it was typed made me realize that we purchased our first computer - an Atari 1040ST - earlier that year.




Looking at it now, it's funny to see how many of the kills I pilfered from Jason and Michael. I also have no idea why I wrote $#%& instead of an actual curse word. It's not like I didn't already have the mouth of a sailor by then. Anyhoo, I hope you enjoyed this latest window into my misspent youth.

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Trailer Tuesdays: Skullduggery

While I was reading the recently released book, Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980's, I saw mention of the 1983 flick Skullduggery in the chapter covering the religious backlash against Dungeons & Dragons. I remembered the cover box from back in the day...


...but up to now I didn't realize that a) it was a Canadian production and b) that D&D - or a poor facsimile thereof - was featured in the plot. I was not able to locate a trailer, but I did find a number of scenes online.



This movie... Well, I don't even know. This isn't some of the Toronto film industry's best work, let's just say that. These scenes below should give you some indication as to what we're dealing with here. 





I realize those scenes are taken out of context, but I spent most of my time while viewing them muttering “what the fuck is going on?” That is when my mouth wasn't just hanging open in utter confusion. I mean, JESUS, at least Mazes & Monsters had a coherent narrative.

But I digress. We're out of the dark ages now, and millions of people around the world now play role-playing games in some capacity. If they were indeed part of some master plan orchestrated by Old Scratch, then let me be the first to say, “well played, Sir,”

Sunday, August 23, 2015

DKTM 276


Hey all. It's a lazy Sunday afternoon here. Here's what I've got for you this week.

What A Tease!

A couple of cool videos for some upcoming music projects hit the Web recently. I'm sure you are as excited as I am about John Carpenter's collaboration with French composer Jean Michel Jarre. They will be working together on a track on Jarre's upcoming album. Check out this interview with the masters themselves.



Secondly, Videogram, the horror synth stylings of Swedish musician Magnus Sellergren, has released a teaser for a single off his upcoming LP, Pre-Cert. Here's the video for Outpost 31 Isn't Responding below.



For more info on Videogram, check out his Bandcamp page, here.

Read Along Witchcraft.

Ihorror recently linked to a cool project from Cousin Barnabas from The Collinsport Historical Society. Remember those See, Hear, Read LP's from back in the day? Well, Barnabas created a little Photoshop project positing Dario Argento's 1977 classic Suspiria in such a format.





Pretty glorious, wouldn't you say? Since Argento first envisioned the age of the girls in the academy to be much younger - you can still see evidence of this as lines like “names which begin with the letter 'S' are the names of SNAKES! Sssss! Ssssss!” do seem odd when spoken by grown women - this doesn't feel so out of place. For more stuff from Barnabas, click here.

Be Prepared.

I recently saw the Red Band trailer for Christopher Landon's Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse.



This supposed mash-up of Superbad & Zombieland does looks like it could be fun. If anything I am glad to see Landon break out of the Paranormal purgatory he's been wrapped up in for the last few years. Scouts is set to release this Halloween.

Friday, August 21, 2015

The Pallatine Massacre.

Happy Friday everyone. I wanted to unveil a new project today that I've been working away at for quite some time.


The Pallatine Massacre is a CYOA slasher in the vein of Ed Packard's old series of books. Head on over and give it a whirl by clicking on the image above or here. It is fairly robust with fourteen different outcomes (though you can meet a grisly fate in dozens of ways) so it may take you a few play-throughs to get out alive.

The title page was designed by Trevor Henderson, and I hope to add more visual content in the coming weeks.

And if you like this, also check out Laura Knetzger's beautiful CYOA Don't Go In The Greene House.

Thursday, August 20, 2015

Satanic Panic!

After snagging a copy while in Montreal, I finally finished reading Spectacular Optical's second release, Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s, an exhaustive compilation of essays that further reinforces just what a whacked-out decade the eighties truly were.


I was raised in a neutral environment when it came to religion. Well, truth be told, it may have leaned toward disdain on my father's part based on his constant mockery of said establishments. I know our address was eventually blacklisted by the Jehovah's Witnesses that used to come door-to-door. The point is that I never gave Satanism any less legitimacy than any other religion out there. Even as a kid, I knew that the extremes offered up in the horror movies I watched were just that; extremes.

Not all of us were as liberal, as I cannot understate what an accurate term “panic” truly is. The deeper I got into the book, the more fantastical it became. Several decades removed, some of the fear mongering that was going on was downright comical. The chapter by Joshua Benjamin Graham on fundamentalist readings of the occult in Saturday Morning cartoons in laughable. At worst, they were a disingenuous way to sell toys and merchandise to millions of children, but a conduit of evil? Let's get real, people.

He-Man: The Great Corrupter...

As highly visible figures like Geraldo Rivera – whose infamous 1988 “Devil Worship” special is broken down by Alison Lang – continued to fan the fire, hysteria began to take hold. 



A phenomenon called Satanic Ritual Abuse arose and several high profile criminal cases popped up around the world, the most publicized being the McMartin Pre-school Trial. As written about by Adrian Mack, due to a lack of evidence, no one was ever convicted and the media fervor over the alleged Satanic activity seemed to overshadow the real tragedy of grievous child trauma.

The book balances out these horrific chapters with some lighter fare, including the chapter by W.M. Conley on Christian evangelical VHS and Paul Corupe's piece on Jack T. Chick. I learned of Chick and his religious tracts just a few years ago around the release of Dark Dungeons.



I find this trailer highly amusing, yet I'm still not completely sure this is supposed to be satire. What is no laughing matter is the genuine alarm Dungeons & Dragons brought about in the early eighties, profiled here by Gavin Baddely. I was introduced to the world of D&D very early on through my older brother and was acutely aware when the media started portraying it in a negative light. How anything that fostered imagination and creativity (I was designing dungeons by the time I was nine) not to mention reading and math skills, could be rallied against as evil was beyond me. Alas, I distinctly remember being told by a friend that he wasn't allowed to play at my house anymore because I engaged in such activities. Such prejudices are hard for a young kid to absorb.

Still got my set. Still got my soul.

Naturally, my favourite chapters of the book were the ones about film, of which they were a few as horror has often danced with the Devil. Kevin L. Ferguson explores the integration of technology and Satanism through the eighties films Evilspeak & 976-Evil, Samm Deighan runs down the fairly robust history of “Heavy Metal Horror” & Kurt Halfyard quite astutely heralds Joe Dante's The 'Burbs as the death knell of the Satanic Panic, even if America's inherent xenophobia still lives on to this day.



When it comes down to it, the establishment is always going to look for a tangible element to pin the woes of the world on. Before heavy metal music and its “Satanic” disciples, it was comic books and now, many years later, violent video games are allegedly corrupting our youth. Sadly, the Satanic Panic happened due to a religious right having just enough clout to sway even the most supposedly objective of peers. It was a time of widespread insanity and, even putting aside the prevalent threat of nuclear annihilation, it is kind of a miracle that we all made it through to the other side and into the nineties.

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Trailer Tuesdays: Race With The Devil

Hey gang! There's something really cool coming up in a few days, so I'm gonna set the scene with a trailer from the 1975 flick Race With The Devil.



That “When you race with the devil, you better be faster than hell” tagline is the BEST. Anyhoo, see you in a few days, kiddies.

Sunday, August 16, 2015

DKTM 275


Good morning everyone! It's crazy to think I'm three-quarters of the way to three hundred of these things, but the numbers don't lie. Here's what I've got for you this week.

The Bad Man.

I've spoken here many times about the 2013 movie Found. Now director Scott Schirmer has a new nightmare in the works, a sadistic abduction horror called The Bad Man. His Indiana-based filmmaking collective already has many pieces in place, but are also looking for your help to bring this devilish little piece to life.



Schirmer has a knack for pushing boundaries, so I bet there is more to this project than meets the eye. If The Bad Man looks like something you'd be interested in seeing, you can contribute by visiting the Kickstarter page here.

Dead Love.

Here's a thing of grotesque beauty, it's the Arrow cover art for their upcoming Blu-ray release of Jörg Buttgereit’s 1991 flick Nekromantik 2.


This run, releasing November 2nd, is limited to 3000 and has a slew of extras, including a commentary track, new interviews and a making of doc. The release also includes the soundtrack with a one-hundred page booklet. For more info, check out Arrow's site here.

Crazy Love.

A trailer came through my inbox this week for Canadian director Jon Knautz's newest effort, Goddess Of Love.



Being impressed by his debut Jack Brooks, and his under-appreciated gem of a follow-up The Shrine, I am very interested to see where he is at now. Goddess will premiere at London's FrightFest later this month and then at the prestigious genre festival Sitges in October.

Friday, August 14, 2015

Netflix Pix 10.0

There were a few notable horror titles recently added to Netflix North, so I figured this lazy Friday would be a good time to showcase a few of them.


This is a film from a few years ago that sadly flew under the radar. Jamie Collet-Solla (before becoming Liam Neeson's action partner) breathed some really fresh ideas into a story that could laid there like a dead fish. In addition to some solid performances from Peter Sarsgaard & Vera Farmiga, the real standout is then ten-year-old Isabelle Fuhrman as the titular character. Much like Ellen Page in Hard Candy, she is a force to be reckoned with. Small packages don't always contain good things.


This was a huge leap forward for Rob Zombie in my opinion, as the MTV sensibilities of his previous works were abandoned for something more cinematic. The obvious love of films from days gone by is still here, but he seems much more restrained in Lords and lets pace and atmosphere take over. The cinematography and score also help to gloss over what is a fairly thin plot. I'm definitely interested to see on what side of the fence his next flick “31” falls on.


Likely my fave horror film of 2013, Oculus gave me everything I wanted. Mike Flanagan builds on the atmosphere and dread of his previous indie Absentia and weaves a very impressive tale. I feel this is one of the best examples of seamlessly juggling two different timelines within the same space. The cast is strong across the board and the scare pieces are really effective, at least to me anyway.


I just saw this a few weeks ago and was really impressed by it. Mark Duplass keeps showing his versatility having been involved in several genres, from comedy (TV's The League) to romantic drama (The One I Love) to horror (Baghead). Creep is an incredibly simple tale, with the camera pointed at Duplass for most of the film. The escalation as his antics become more uncomfortable for his interviewer is palpable and I liked that they kept finding new ways to invigorate its “found footage” narrative. That is by no means an easy feat in this day and age.

So, there you have it; four titles to keep you occupied should you feel the need to curl up with Big Red. But, for right now, GET OUTSIDE. It's beautiful out!!!

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Midnight Memories.

Now that the Midnight Madness cat has been let out of the bag for another year, here's a cool montage put together by MM videographer Robert Mitchell recounting the last eight years of the event.



I was at a good many of these screenings, and have seen all manner of creatures great and small. This video just makes me yearn for September.

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Madness '15


The films screening at the twenty-eighth edition of TIFF's Midnight Madness programme have been announced. Usually, I'd throw up posters, but some of them are so new, they don't even have Imdb listings yet.

However, we do have some returning directors this year, including Sean (The Loved Ones) Bryne with Devil's Candy and Joe (Almost Human) Begos with The Mind's Eye. Hopping over from the Vanguard programme is Jeremy (Blue Ruin) Saulnier with his new thriller Green Room. Japanese icon Takeshi Miike returns to midnight for the umpteenth time with Yakuza Apocalypse. Word on the street is that Miike may actually make an appearance this year for the first time since 2000.

The cast of Jeremy Saulnier's Green Room.

Horror heavyweight Wes Craven serves as producer on Nick Simon's The Girl In The Photographs starring genre fave Katherine Isabelle.

Adding to the list of promising anthologies out there is Southbound, featuring the talents of David (V/H/S) Bruckner and Radio Silence.

There are also two titles that were birthed from short films at this year's fest. Ilya Naishuller's Go-Pro lensed actioner has now morphed into Hardcore, and the Turkish horror Baskin has opened its window into hell even further. 


Closing out the programme will be Todd Strauss-Schulson's SXSW hit The Final Girls.

This is a pretty promising lineup and looks to carry forward the momentum built from some strong titles last year. See you in September!

Trailer Tuesdays: Brain Damage

With this year's Midnight Madness lineup being announced today, I figured I'd take a trip back in time and post a film that played the very first edition way back in 1988, Frank Henenlotter's Brain Damage.



For more info on the films that have screened at past Midnights, click here. 1990 & 1992 were mind blowing rosters, and the year the beat since I've been going is still 2003.

Sunday, August 9, 2015

DKTM 274


Good afternoon everyone. Here's some genre morsels to chew on.

Well, Hello Dolly!

Rue Morgue turned me onto the work of Bill Butler this week. Inspired by Matryoshka, the Russian nesting dolls that fit into one another, Butler decided to handcraft his own, using pop culture figures as his subjects. Though he has done dolls for Ghostbusters and various Nintendo characters, my favourite would naturally be his version of the numerous incarnations of the Voorhees clan.


Pretty neat, wouldn't you say? To see more of Butler's work, visit his website here.

The Body Count Rises.

It looks like there is another slasher-themed television show (to add to the already produced Scream and Scream Queens) in the works. Slasher will be a eight-episode event airing on Chiller in the US, and Super Channel here in Canada.

There isn't a lot known about it right now, except that it revolves around a woman who returns to a small town where her parents were murdered, only to find that copycat killings have started anew. The cast includes Katie McGrath, Brendan Jay McLaren (who also appeared in the similarly themed Harper's Island in 2009) and Alysa King. I'm hopeful for this one, as I think this subject matter is far better suited to a set length than an open ended one, as is the case with the two aforementioned projects.

For more info on the show, click here.

Short Cuts.

In the last few weeks, there's been a large influx of horror short films that have come to my attention. I mean there's never a shortage of shorts being uploaded to the Web, but there's been a few contests and articles written recently that have kept me very busy. First, there is a horror short challenge wrapping up over at Tentsquare that features several dozen entries, of which three are below.





Secondly, Matt Molgaard over at Dread Central put up a cool and in-depth post about ten offerings currently infecting the online universe. A sampling is below, but the full article is here.




Friday, August 7, 2015

Heads Will Roll.


Back in 2013, you may recall me gushing over an American indie called Found. For those who haven't seen it, the film features snippets of a fake horror film called Headless that spurs on one of the characters murderous appetites. Shortly after, the crew on Found decided to dig in and make a feature length version of Headless. I was naturally interested, and recently Mermaid Heather – God bless her – was kind enough to send me a DVD of the film.

Also, just to acknowledge it, I'm aware that Headless is not technically a VHS, but the movie is meant to be a forgotten Video Nasty from 1978, so I'm running with it.


A masked maniac (Shane Beasley) terrorizes the Midwest, abducting & killing young women for his psycho-sexual pleasures. Who will be next?

So, to quote the coverbox of Juan Piquer Simón's Pieces, “this is exactly what you think it is.” The caliber of gore is top notch and every bit as splattery as the parts eyed (see what I did there?) in Found. The filmmakers decided to load all the original footage in the credit sequence and film all new footage for the actual movie. It turned out even more nihilistic this time around, lulling me into a false sense of security about how things were going to play out.


Boy, do these guys ever have the aesthetic down. Not only does Indiana once again prove itself a veritable treasure trove of locations (a roller rink! Who knew those even still existed?), but there's also apparently an abundance of seventies vehicles still kicking around, as well. I was really impressed just how closely this resembled the old shot-on-video fare of the early eighties. Except the acting was better, and the camerawork, and.. well pretty much everything. I felt that director Arthur Cullipher & company were actually trying to create something here, not just make a buck. Like Found before it, there were visual homages throughout Headless, as well. While its predecessor showed them through the VHS and posters that adourned Marty & Steve's bedroom, Headless used visual cues that ranged from the obvious, like Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street, to the more obscure like The Town That Dreaded Sundown and Tourist Trap.

Despite all that though, I came away feeling a little cold at the end. Most of the reasons I really connected with Found were absent here, so what I was left with was a string of really gory kills. I would never complain about that, but it wasn't Found. You know? However, what you do have is a much better version of infamous titles like 555 and Spine, minus the detective subplots, which you can be damned sure I was thankful for. In its place are some really natural performances by would-be-victims Kelsey Carlisle & Ellie Church, and genuinely creepy imagery involving a skull-faced boy and a no-faced lady.


The stripped bare narrative and extreme gore will no doubt narrow its appeal, but I think that Cullipher succeeded in what he set out to do, which was tear open a portal back to a grimy, blood streaked '78 where Headless could have existed.

Thursday, August 6, 2015

Captain A.

The newest novel from Paul Cleave entitled Trust No One released this week. Even though this was his ninth book, I can't say I'd heard of him before digging into this. I guess that gives you an idea of how far my knowledge of recent genre ficton reaches beyond the name King. Regardless, when a review request dropped into my inbox several weeks ago, the familiar title and simplistic cover was enough to pique my interest.


Jerry Grey was a best selling crime novelist. That is, until Alzheimer's Disease took his thoughts away. His mind is a jumble and not only is he forgetting things, but he's also confusing the worlds he created in his books with his own. This isn't helped by the fact that he keeps waking up in strange places not knowing how he got there. Worse, his little trips outside the nursing home seem to coincide with a string of murders.

Man, Alzheimer's Disease sucks. Not that I was ever a fan, but having it presented in such a relatable context was downright frightening. As a writer, I pride myself on being able to create. Using nothing but my mind, I concentrate, move through the clutter and a story takes shape. It's a gift and the thought of that being taken away is harrowing. Writing is one of the few satisfactions I get out of life, and without control of my mind, well... what's left?

Trust No One was a really brisk read, cleverly framed within two threads. The first is in the present, where we learn about Jerry (or Future Jerry as he calls himself) and his predicament at the same rate as our protagonist as his memory is now shot. The second is through the pages of a journal – a madness journal – that Jerry (Past Jerry) started writing a few days after he was diagnosed in order to record his thoughts before they slipped away. This fractured timeline really kept me engaged, as Cleave could drop a breadcrumb in the present day that made me want to read on until the corresponding event appeared in the journal side of the tale. I also found the “if-I-could-only remember-this-one-important-thing” device - present in some of my favourite gialli - to be a source of much enjoyment.

When I discovered that Jerry wrote under a pseudonym named Henry Cutter – one that he would let take over when writing his darkest passages – I feared it may turn into Stephen King's The Dark Half, but thankfully, the story went elsewhere. With this book being a mystery thriller, it had its share of red herrings, but even though the last third came to a perhaps inevitable climax, I was certainly not expecting how it ended.

I think the real strength of this book was the storytelling, and just how tragic the character of Jerry really was. In the first half, we learn of some really ugly events just as he does, and his unfortunate situation just worsens from there. Trust No One was a good read that not only served as a solid mystery, but also shined a light on a cruel disease that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Trailer Tuesdays: They Live

I was very said to hear about the passing of Rowdy Roddy Piper last weekend. The wrestling legend and all-around cool human being left us way too soon at the age of 61. In tribute, here's the trailer for Piper's most memorable screen appearance, John Carpenter's They Live.



I was fortunate enough to see him in person at Fan Expo in 2006, and he was every bit as charismatic as you would expect, bursting with stories that stretched far beyond the hour his Q&A session allowed.

Is there anything more 80's than Mr. T fighting Roddy Piper in a boxing match?














I guess the one silver lining is that we do get one last hurrah with Piper in a genre context with Vivieno Caldinelli's Portal To Hell. The Indiegogo funded short in now in post production and should hopefully start hitting festival screens by 2016. Rest In Peace, Mr. Piper.

Sunday, August 2, 2015

DKTM 273


Hey all. I hope all my Canadian friends are enjoying their long weekend. I'm a tad hungover from celebrating Ronda Rousey destroy yet another opponent last night, but I need to get things back on track so here goes...

Soundtrack Swap.

Here's a cool little experiment I found via The Play List. The Kentucky based site The House By The Video Store (which is pretty slick and you should check out) made a video which swaps out the scores for portions of 1960's Psycho and 2014's It Follows. Check it out.



While it largely doesn't match up, it's still a very interesting video. I'd say the switch works better for It Follows than it does Psycho and that speaks to just how timeless Bernard Hermann's score really is.

Homegrown.

I was very saddened that I had to miss two Fantasia film premieres from friends of mine. From the pictures of the events and the ensuing reviews, it sounds like both films went over like gangbusters.

Trevor Juras' The Interior, a lost-in-the-forest creeper was shot last year in British Columbia. I've known producer Peter Kuplowsky for years through Toronto After Dark, which is also where I met Juras, after his awesome short The Lamp played there in 2013. Check out the trailer below.



Second was Gabriel Carrer's The Demolisher. I've rubbed elbows with Carrer and his crew over the years at various festivals and conventions and their output is staggering. Ry Barrett, the titular character, was in my short film Lively, and I couldn't be happier to see him carrying entire films as a lead.



I wish these guys all the best, and hopefully these two flicks come home to Toronto soon.

Levelling Up To Z.

For those of us disappointed in 2012 that the game Zombie U wasn't released on a decent system, fear not! Ubisoft recently announced that the first-person zombie survival game would be released on PS4 and Xbox One on August 15 as the affectionately renamed Zombi. Here's the trailer.



As I await a PS4 price drop, this is another title to add to the list. I had hoped to indoctrinate myself into the current generation by the time Until Dawn was released later this month, but it's looking like I won't be owning one until at least 2016. It will definitely be by the time Uncharted 4 drops at the latest though. I wouldn't miss that for the world!