And now, a teaser trailer for Maggots, a film from unstoppable exploitation king Fred Olen Ray!
THE MOST DISGUSTING GIANT MONSTER EVER FILMED!
… though it looks a little like a giant claw (no, not THE Giant Claw)….
But wait! This title doesn’t appear on IMDB or in any of the online filmographies of Fred Olen Ray. So what’s the story?
Well, there are no visuals, but this text-based trailer manages to intrigue me nevertheless. Check it out!
Don’t forget to follow the instructions at the end.
A zombie grabbed at him from behind the breakfast cereals. He actually smelt it before he saw it – a nasty mix of rotting meat, rancid blood and something else, something deep and sorrowful. He ducked away, thinking that maybe it was time to get back to the ute. He’d left it running for a speedy getaway, but having lured the dead into the shop and away from the ute, he now had to circle back while he could get to it safely.
At that moment a door opened just in front of him and a scared face peered out. It had spiky hair and bloodshot eyes. “Mr Smith?” it said. “Is that you?”
“Who else? You the dork I talked to on the phone?”
“Sure.” Relief flooded over the kid’s face. “You came to rescue me!”
“I came for Freddo Frogs. Where d’they keep ‘em?”
Not that there was time now. A bunch of shuffling undead meatbags was approaching down aisle 3, moaning and slavering. Ellis grabbed the kid, dragged him out of the supply room and shoved him toward the front of the shop. “Get in the ute!” he yelled. “And make it quick!”
The kid tried, Ellis had to give him that. But his fear overruled any dexterity he might have been able to muster. He crashed against a shelf loaded with cans of baked beans, slipped – and a zombie tumbled onto him from a side aisle. The kid screamed, thrashing out at the dead woman chomping on his neck. Ellis started forward to drag her off, but the trolley got in the way and before he could get there half a dozen other zombies appeared. They all got stuck into ripping the kid apart. It was a feeding frenzy.
This is an extract from my latest zombie story, “Zombie au Gratin” — written for a charity book with the title Scary Food, which Cat Sparks is producing for the Paul Haines fund.
For those who don’t know, Paul Haines is an excellent and much loved Australian horror writer, who is currently fighting cancer and needs a significant amount of money for special treatments to save his life. The SF community in Australia has gotten behind the attempt to raise the money he needs, driven by Cat Sparks, Alisa Krasnostein, Tehani Wessely and Tansy Raynor Roberts. For more information go here.
The idea behind Scary Food was to produce a slim volume of stories and disgusting recipes featuring food that can only be described as horrific. Imagine a recipe called Zombie au Gratin and you’ll get the idea — though some of the recipes get worse than that and they’re not fiction! Paul Haines’ own stories veer toward the disgusting and so such a book seemed like a fitting project.
Here is the excellent cover designed by Cat Sparks:
With stories from some of Australia’s top horror writers and a kitchen-load of yucky recipes and other culinary delights from renowned experts in the field, this is a book that is so much more than a charity giveaway. You know you want a copy.
It is to be launched and will be available for purchase at Conflux in October. The book will sell for $20 and the entirety of sales will go straight to the Paul Haines’ Fund. If you won’t be at Conflux, you can buy the book online here.
Sometimes fairy tales make excellent (or at least interesting) horror films. Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) [aka El Laberinto del Fauno] is something of an epitomé of the approach, of course; but others, such as Michael Cohn’s Snow White: A Tale of Terror (1997) and Terry Gilliam’s The Brothers Grimm (2005), do a good job of translating the imagery and sensibilities of Faerie into a horror genre context. Another recent film that springs to mind is M. Night Shyamalan’s rather awkward Lady in the Water (2006) — but the less said about that, the better, I suspect.
A new independent horror film that purports to use fairy-tale elements to weave its dark magic recently premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, taking the award for “Best of the Fest”.
Spike (US-2008; dir. Robert Beaucage)
Synopsis:
A young woman finds herself trapped in a nightmarish fairy tale come true, and must rescue her friends from a strange creature who idolizes her and will have her at any cost.
“There is always some madness in love….”
Director Robert Beaucage readily lists the influences that have driven his interest in fantasy tropes as a means of examining the undercurrents of our ordinary lives. He says:
“Dreams, fantasy, and mythology have fascinated me since my early childhood. From the exploits of Theseus, Perseus, and Odysseus to the works of C.S. Lewis and Lewis Carroll; from my own vivid childhood dreams rife with werewolves, witches, and dragons to the writings of Joseph Campbell and James Frazer, I have viewed fantasy and fairy tales as vital tools to understanding life.”
These cultural influences form the basis of his film’s thematic core.
“With Spike,” he commented, “I have set out to tell a fantasy story exploring dark and dangerous possibilities of a condition we have all experienced in one way or another: romantic love. Why do we love? What causes us to love particular individuals? What is love? Can we control it, or does it control us?”
Given my usual obsessions, I’m intrigued to know what form the romantically inclined titular creature might take, and the following image from the film suggests something both unique and literally described by its name.
Creature creator Jordu Schell’s design background speaks well for the possibilities. His resumé includes Men In Black, Planet of the Apes (2001), Batman Returns, Edward Scissorhands, X-Files: The Movie, Predator II, Galaxy Quest, Evolution, My Favorite Martian, Alien: Resurrection, The Guyver and Bedazzled.
Check out the website for more pictures, bios, storyboard images, behind-the-scenes stuff and clips from the film.
Afterthought:
I note the following statement from the director’s bio with even greater excitement: “His plans for a second feature will not include a monster, but may involve ghosts, time travel, and clockwork dinosaurs.” Clockwork dinosaurs? Very cool indeed!
The Ghosts (Australia-2009 [in post-production]; dir. Mathew J. Wilkinson)
Tagline:
There are 36 claimed haunted locations in Australia.
They missed one.
Synopsis:
A family vacation in the Australian outback turns horribly wrong when the family is taken hostage by a pair of sinister outlaws inside an abandoned hotel. The group stumble upon a harrowing discovery - the hotel is alive with the spirits of the damned searching for their own escape. Isolated and cut off from the world the innocent must now join forces with the criminals in order to survive the night. Filled with old-school special effects, The Ghosts crosses Schlock Horror with the American Western to create an all-new experience to the Australian horror film.
Going on the YouTube teaser trailer (below), the new Australian ghost flick The Ghosts looks suspiciously like it might be an exercise in endurance for those affected by cinematic kinetosis. In fact the trailer makes those high-profile “found-footage” jerky flicks Cloverfield and Diary of the Dead — not to mention The Blair Witch Project before them — seem almost static. Whatever the merits of the film itself — and it definitely looks promising — this doesn’t augur well for a non-nauseating film experience.
Hopefully this extreme jerkiness is confined to the teaser and the film itself will be more considerate of delicate stomachs.
The Poster [atmospheric mix]:
The Poster [in-your-face mix]:
Given my prediliction for the spooky, The Ghosts looks like it could be a goer. At any rate the Aussie outback setting and interestingly atypical haunted house show definite promise. I’ll be keeping an eye on this one.
Speaking of the haunted house, it seems to be a real place, and, according to the director, genuinely haunted. At least, that’s the story…
Go to the film’s MySpace page for production pictures and a video of cast interviews.
Here is a brief clip from a Disney short called Glago’s Guest. Apparently the full thing will be in front of the Disney feature film Bolt, when it premiers on 26th November.
Rather intriguing. What’s in the egg, I wonder?
- Source: AWNtv.com via Kaiju Search-Robot Avery
Kaiju artist Todd Tennant has sent another great image from the next episode of Tales of King Komodo — a comic he is doing with Mike Bogue. He says:
Here’s a sneak-peek at TALES OF KING KOMODO Episode 4, which will be showing up in G-FAN #85. It’s aptly titled “KK bites the DUST!”
Click on the image to see the monsters bigger.
Source:
“He turned her on. Now she had to switch him off.”
Like Universal Soldier (1992), this Filipino exploitation flick features a dead soldier reconstructed and reanimated as an ultimate fighting machine, hence is a zombie tale of sorts. Unlike Universal Soldier, though, this one is a love story… of sorts… as well: it describes itself as “A Mechanical Love Affair”.
Killdroid (Philippines-[in production]; dir. Rico Maria Ilarde)
“A disturbed Goth schoolgirl who stumbles unwittingly across the remnants of a long abandoned military project designed to create an army of android killers from the processed bodies of dead soldiers. The girl takes on the mysteriously beautiful Killdroid as a lover, only to discover, too late, that its insatiable sexual appetite is inexorably linked with a need for slaughter.” (24Framespersecond.net)
Teaser Trailer:
This is by way of an introduction to what comic artist and writer Alan Brooks considers to be his magnum opus, Ret Romanne.
Ret Romanne is a Time Dignitary who lives and works on the Off World “Cloud City” of Earth - UNtopia. The comic series, both written and illustrated by Brooks, will be released in August 2008 from Bluewater Productions. It is a time-twisty tale of a “dead” man desperate to work out the mystery of his own very strange fate while engaged in an ongoing struggle to maintain something resembling a life.
Says Brooks, “Ret Romanne has it all — surveillance, time travel and Nazis. Just like real life! It’s a Time Travel adventure that makes all other Time Travel adventures look out of date!”
Stay tuned for exclusive updates as the release approaches!