Film at Eleven

As part of its New Filmmakers season, New York’s Anthology Film Archives will be presenting a special one-night-only screening of LovecraCked! The Movie - The Extended Cut.

Re-edited by producer/director Elias, this new version of the film features all the blood, gore, scares and laughs of the original and more, including the notorious never-before-seen Coo-coo-Cthulhu!

The screening takes place on Wednesday 7th March at 8:00pm. Head on over to www.biffjuggernaut.com for more information.

Some time ago, I mentioned that Greg Arce was looking to build a case against the makers of Saw on the basis that it is largely lifted from his 2001 film Den.

Den played at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival - where lead actress, Dana J Ryan, picked up the Best Actress award - at the same time that Leigh Whannell and James Wan were in… Melbourne.

Coincidence? Arce thinks not and had highlighted no fewer than 17 thematic similarities between the two films. And, after two years of rebuilding his finances after being bankrupted by Den, the director is talking to his lawyers again - and they believe he has a very strong case.

Another picture of Sybil Danning in Rob Zombie’s Werewolf Women of the SS Grindhouse trailer has turned up, and it looks rather tasty. I have to admit that Rob Zombie certainly knows how to do exploitation hype.

If you don’t live in an English speaking territory, you won’t get to see this part of the film. Helpfully, the Tarantino Archives have started an online petition to try and convince The Weinstein Company to not rip off their audiences.

William Winckler’s retro-horror film Frankenstein Vs. the Creature From Blood Cove is going from strength to strength and the people behind it - William Winckler Productions - are now licensing lots of merchandise based on the film.

There will be models of most of the monster characters, and main human characters from the film as both 1/8th scale resin model kits, and 1/4th scale resin bust kits. These are planned for worldwide release within the next few months.

As well as the model kits, Winckler Productions has licensed rights to other companies for collectible items such as collector cards (which will be released by Monster Wax), soundtrack CDs (to be released by Lakeshore Records), rubber masks, tee-shirts, novels, posters, and more; most of which is expected to be released within the coming months.

The film continues to sell strongly on Amazon and - if you’re in the US - is also available through NetFlix.

passes are now on sale for Scotland’s horror film festival, Dead by Dawn. And, among all the other horrific delights of the festival, the organisers are bringing back the Shit Film Amnesty.

The rules are simple.

You bring along the worst horror video or DVD you have ever acquired, and are willing to get up and tell us just how it came to be in your possession. Maybe you were so stoned you staggered into HMV and bought a copy of Munchies, thinking it was edible. Maybe you won it in a church raffle when really you were only in it for the slightly sticky packet of Spangles. Maybe you shelled out good hard-earned readies for it cos there’s a half-decent shag in it and you were too chicken to buy real porn. Whatever. We will be your judge and jury.

The audience will then vote for a winner. And when I say winner, I mean loser. But in a good way. The, ahem, “winner” gets to take home ALL the shit films entered into the competition. My advice would be to save them all up for Guy Fawkes, strap them to fireworks and twang the whole damn lot into outer space, Hunter-stylee.

The Dead by Dawn festival runs from 26th to 29th April and will, of course, be offering up some of the finest, most unpleasant, totally undiscovered gems the genre has to offer.

Linda Hattendorf’s The Cats of Mirikitani has won the Best Feature prize at this year’s Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. The jury said of the film:

“We recognize this film for the ability of cinema to transform not only the lives of the viewers who witness it, but also the transformation of the lives of the filmmaker and the subject - an impact that is often understated or denied in the documentary filmmaking process, but in this case is embraced when the events of life surpass the conventions and expectations of filmmaking itself. This is a film that renders the true depth of the importance of artists in society. This film introduces us to an extraordinary, and previously unrecognized ‘Grand Master Artist’ - Jimmy Mirikatini. His creations are both a source of coping with his tragic past and a catalyst for his salvation. We celebrate the ability of the filmmaker to show great restraint as she navigates the potential land mines of politics. The film skillfully references an aspect of America’s dark racist past and creates a poignant parallel to current events. We honor this film for its artistry, social consciousness, humanity, and for demonstrating the real impact documentary can have on people’s lives.”

The Artistic Vision Award went to Carolina Rivas’ The Colour of Olives, about which the jury said:

“This film transports us into a time and place through its artistic vision. It allows the viewer to observe from the vantage point of those living in the midst of a difficult conflict - a Palestinian family imprisoned in their own home. The film artfully conveys the truth and poignancy of this situation without the limits of more conventional filmmaking techniques.”

And the Big Sky Award went to Travis Peterson’s Salvation Mountain:

“We would like to acknowledge the wealth of important issues explored via the films in this category. We elected, however, to give the Big Sky Award to a modest yet artistically realized portrait, Salvation Mountain. It is a beautifully shot film that does not judge the artistry or convictions of its subject whose work in scale and execution could only belong to the American West.

Marilyn Braverman’s A Revolving Door won the Best Short award; JD Ligon’s Ha Ha Ha America was awarded Best MiniDoc and Wojciech Kasperski’s Seeds won the Artistic Vision Award.

The second International NoBudget VideoFilmfestival has issued it’s call for entries.

Based in Germany, and with a European tour planned, the festival is looking for independently minded narrative or fiction films from low- and no-budget film makers who want to show their work to an enthusiastic audience.

There are no fees and the deadline is 1st May, so get cracking. More details can be found here.

Lee Perkins dropped me a line on Saturday to say that Edges of Darkness has now wrapped on 3 tales of terror set against the back drop of a zombie apocalypse. Perkins plays a priest (see below) who is battling the anti-christ as the world comes to an end.

The film was written and directed by Jason Horton and Blaine Cade and Tom Devlin handled the make-up special effects.

Shoreline Entertainment have snapped up Simon Cathcart’s comedy/horror Stagknight for world wide sales.

No release date has been set yet, but we can expect to see the film some time this summer. More news and information can be found of the film’s official site but, in the meantime, here are some pictures.

One Killer Knight Out!

WTF Stagknight Babes

I’m starting to wonder whether Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’ double feature, Grindhouse, is about to disappear up its own hype. The two Grindhouse features - Death Proof and Planet Terror - will be separated by a set of fake trailers which are being made by a seceral guest directors.

One of the directors involved in making these trailers is Rob Zombie, who will be attempting to sell us the delights of Werewolf Women of the SS. The cast for this trailer will include - among others - Nicolas Cage, Udo Kier and Sybil Danning. So I’m getting press releases for a film that does not - and will never - exist.

But here’s the photos anyway.

Werewolf Women of the SS segment “Grindhouse” with Udo Kier and Sybil Danning as Franz Hess and Gretchen Krupp.

Sheri Moon and Sybil Danning as evil sisters Gretchen and Eva Krupp in WWOS