Film at Eleven

I’ve just heard that filming for 1930s set horror/thriller Carnies has now wrapped.

Sawdust in the Blood used to be a Carnie compliment…not a description of a crime scene.

There are a thousand sideshows playing thousands of small towns in 1936 when the Knuckles Brothers Show rolls into yet another town, ready to delight and dazzle the town folk with amazing acts and puzzling oddities. As they set up their tents they could not know that within days several of them would be dead, ripped savagely apart by a seemingly inhuman force, their souls stolen from their limp and bloody bodies.

Meet Helen, the owner of the Carnie, drugged out half the time, demanding all the time–is she, in her drug-addled haze, the killer? Meet Virgil, the Strong Man with a weak heart for Zoe, the fortune telling gypsy enchantress. Meet Ratty, Virgil’s friend and the Snake Handler for the show — a peculiar young man understood by few. Meet William Crowley, the Sword Swallower, who, along with Virgil and Ratty, investigates the mystery, but perhaps too late to escape the same grisly fate as his colleagues. What sinister force is slashing its way through this family of performers leaving a trail of blood and crumpled, torn, soulless bodies in its wake? Step up, step up, ladies and gentlemen, the show is about to begin…

As mentioned earlier, Dante Tomaselli’s third film, Satan’s Playground has been picked up by Anchor Bay, and we were promised DVDs packed with extras aplenty.

According to Bloody Disgusting, there is now an end in sight to the waiting. Anchor Bay will release the film on DVD August 22nd.

To get a taste of the film, click here for a stack of stills.

According to the following press release, Michele Soavi’s Cemetary Man is about to get the full Anchor Bay treatment.

Great horror films are like zombies – the best ones always come back!

On Tuesday, June 13th, Anchor Bay Entertainment, an IDT Entertainment company, will release the eagerly-awaited U.S. DVD premiere of Cemetery Man, one of the most requested horror titles of the last decade. Revered by consumers and industry critics alike for releasing classic and cult horror films, Anchor Bay continues that tradition for Cemetery Man (aka Dellamorte Dellamore) with a new anamorphic widescreen transfer, and resurrected with a SRP of $19.98.

Directed by Michele Soavi, Cemetery Man stars Rupert Everett (My Best Friend’s Wedding and the voice of Prince Charming in Shrek 2) as Francesco Dellamore, a cemetery caretaker who finds that his seemingly dead-end job has recently become a little harder. Along with his sidekick Gnaghi (Francois Hadji-Lazaro), Francesco spends his days interning corpses and his nights killing “returners” – those who have risen from their grave seven days after burial. Life changes for Francesco when he falls for a beautiful, mysterious widow (Anna Falchi). When fate intervenes, Francesco must choose between Love Eternal and the Living Dead…

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Twitch has heard from Variety that there is a live action adaptation of Blood: The Last Vampire in the works.

Ronny Yu is in the director’s chair and Bill Kong will be producing the film, which is to be largely shot in English.

This could be very good - or very bad - indeed.

Naomi Watts is to join Viggo Mortensen in David Cronenberg’s London-set Russian mob drama Eastern Promises.

From a script by Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things), the story dives into the seedy London underbelly. Watts will play Anna, a midwife working at a London hospital who is inadvertently drawn into the criminal underworld when she tries to discover the true identity of a prostitute who died during childbirth on Christmas Eve. Mortensen plays the maniacal Nikolai, who has links to one of London’s most ruthless crime families. Nikolai’s carefully calculated existence is thrown into shambles when he crosses paths with Anna.

Shooting for the film is due to start in November with an expected 2008 release date.

Guillermo Del Toro and Alfonso Cuaron are to work together on an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches.

Del Toro, who already has futuristic thriller Killing on Carnival Row and a potential Hellboy sequel on his slate, is set to write and direct, with Cuaron producing. No date is set for shooting, but Del Toro, who says the film will be “quite smaller [than Roeg’s film], but most likely very much designed”, has written 70 pages of what will likely be a 100 page screenplay.

Vinnie Jones and Shane Ritchie are to star in in a new Carry On film, the first since the disastrous Carry on Columbus was released in 1992.

Carry On London focuses on a limousine company - Lenny’s Limos - which takes celebrities to a parody of the Oscars ceremony known as the Herberts.

This is a very bad idea indeed. The Carry On films were - and still are - very popular, but they are also very much a product of their time. I do still enjoy the older films in this series, but it’s probably true to say that much of their appeal comes down to nostalgia. And trying to recapture this nostalgia by trading on such a well known series - with all of the expectations that that generates - is not only fraught with danger, but doomed to failure.

Thanks to Lisa Rullsenberg for pointing me in the direction of The Ballad of Vicki and Jake.

Director Ian Thomas Ash’s first feature documentary is the story of Vicki, a single mother struggling with addiction, and her young son, Jake. The film opens as Vicki and Jake are beginning a new chapter in their lives, moving from a homeless shelter into their own council house. But however hard Vicki tries create a home for herself and her son, she is unable to ignore old problems and avoid new ones that arise.

Shot with hard-headed honesty, Vicki and Jake combines uncompromising interviews, scenes of drug abuse and touching intimacy between mother and son. It is a film of extremes, and as Vicki finds herself losing control the story shifts to the relationship between Vicki and the film-maker, neither of whom will give up their quest for a happy ending without a fight.

The film doesn’t have a distribution deal yet, but it does appear to be on the festival circuit. So keep an eye out because it looks like a film that is well worth seeing.

Dario Argento is about to start work on The Mother Of Tears, which will form the third part of his Three Mothers trilogy (parts one and two being Suspiria and Inferno, respectively).

Best news I’ve heard all day.

Brian Grazer, in conjunction with Universal, has bought the rights to an article about the 2004 Beslan school massacre.

The siege at the Beslan school, which was overrun by Chechen terrorists, saw 300 hostages - including 186 children - and 31 of their captors killed. New York Times Moscow correspondent CJ Chivers chronicled the events, and he retuned 19 months later to interview the survivors for The School, an article in Esquire.

Grazer, the producer of A Beautiful Mind, Inside Man and The Da Vinci Code told Variety that the article captures for the first time the human aspect of a horrendous event,” and that the story “cried out to be told on the big screen.”

There is no writer, director or cast attached yet.