Exclusive: Rotgut Is Coming

Posted on Tuesday, April 19, 2011 by Robert Hood

You’ve no doubt seen bottles of mezcal con gusano with the worm in them? Maybe you’ve drunk the mezcal from one. Maybe you ate the worm. They told you it was safe, didn’t they? Well, maybe they lied!

Rotgut is a film that spills the alcoholic beans on worm-infested drinks — and the result is a gorefest to bring tears to the eyes of the most devoted piss-head.

Rotgut (US-2011; dir. Billy Garberina)

Synopsis:

A man walks into a bar. It’s not the start of a joke. In this case, it’s the beginning of Rotgut, a new horror film from director Billy Garberina (Necroville, Stiffed, I Heart U) and screenwriter Devin O’Leary (Stiffed, I Heart U). It’s Sunday afternoon and a group of lowlifes, sad-sacks and deadbeats have chosen to waste the day drinking their cares away at the seediest bar in downtown. Unfortunately, a wayward case of bad Mezcal, infected with mutated, brain-eating maggot creatures, has found its way into the watering hole. Now, the least-likely heroes in horror movie history must fight off this slimy infestation.

Rotgut is co-produced by Billy Garberina, Devin O’Leary and Craig Butler (Stiffed, The Righteous and the Wicked). Special effects come courtesy of Hank Carlson (Jigsaw, Psycho Holocaust, Wicked Wood). Cast includes Whitney Moore (Birdemic), Jeremy Owen (Paul, Wedding Slashers, Pornography), Billy Garberina (Taintlight, Gimme Skelter, Feeding the Masses) and Israel Wright (The Stink of Flesh, “Death By Chocolate”).

Teaser Trailer:

[youtube BeDHUlm1ZpQ]

The film is still in editing stage, but, according to co-producer Devin O’Leary, “is moving forward”.

Distribution will likely be through an established DVD company. We’ve got several interested based on previous releases. Might angle for a few midnight movie screenings in independent theaters before that, though. I do midnight movies at a local theater in Albuquerque and am in contact with several other venues around the US.

The Worms:

Above: Worms on the brain — SFX guy Hank Carlson at work

Above: SFX guy Hank Carlson greases up his large-size worm

On the subject of the monster maggots, O’Leary told Undead Backbrain:

The worm/maggot creatures in the film start out small, tequila-worm-sized. We actually used buckets of real, live mealworms for a lot of that. Once inside their host, they grow, eat their brains and then burst out looking for more food. We have a number of different effects stages — from thumb-sized up to sock-puppet-sized. Hank created some great cable rigs to manipulate the various worms. We’re working with a digital effects artist named Luke Fitch (Fugue State, Black Gold 2051) to produce some even larger full-motion digital creatures for our big finale.

About Whitney Moore:

Whit plays a fairly significant role. It’s pretty much an ensemble piece with all the characters trapped in the bar. She plays a young speed freak who gets stuck there with her white trash boyfriend after they blow a convenience store robbery. (Spoiler: she’s alive for almost all of the movie.) Whitney’s Birdemic fame is a large part of the reason we cast her. Picking through the minefield of awful that was Birdemic, we made a leap-of-faith assumption that she could actually act. Turns out she’s great. Plus, having survived Bridemic, she’s a serious trooper, up for anything. Never complains. Covered in slime, digging around in toilets. She’s game. I expanded one of the other roles in the film (a waitress) in hopes of luring her, but she turned that role down. She wanted the speed freak girlfriend role. Less dialogue, but more challenging. She nailed it in an audition and we gave her the part.

White trash lovers on the run

There should be a Rotgut website up any day now, or so we’re told. Keep your ear to the ground for more information.

For more pictures, check out the Gallery below.

Sources: Co-producer Devin O’Leary. Via Avery Guerra. Written by Robert Hood

Posted in Horror, Independent film, News | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Review: Monsters

Posted on Monday, April 18, 2011 by Robert Hood

Monsters (US-2010; dir. Gareth Edwards)

Reviewed by Robert Hood

To some extent, the title tells the story. Monsters is indeed a movie with monsters in it. They’re big, very alien and of daikaiju proportions. But is Monsters a Monster Movie? Ah, there’s the rub.

Six years before Monsters begins, a NASA probe carrying biological research material gathered from elsewhere in the solar system exploded over Central America. Strange alien life took hold across Mexico. The entire area — the “Infected Zone” — has been walled off to stop the infection from spreading.

That’s the background. The movie itself gets underway with a POV film record of a US military unit coming under attack from a huge cephalopodic monstrosity. The creature looms over buildings, smashes walls with its many tentacles, sends equipment flying and generally acts like a giant monster. This is revealed to be news footage watched in a Mexican bar by US photojournalist, Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy), who is subsequently called upon to get his current employer’s daughter Whitney (Samantha Wynden) back to America. He tries, at first reluctantly, but his plans all go awry, and they end up treading a dangerous path through the Infected Zone itself, at the mercy of profiteers, mercenaries and assorted inhabitants of the Zone. In the course of their up-river journey, through jungles and ruins, they get to know each other beyond the superficialities that initially defined them. They also get to know the alien creatures better. And that’s the point.

There’s nothing overly generic about Monsters — or rather in terms of genre it’s worth keeping in mind that the film leans as much toward road-trip drama as it does thriller or monster flick, despite the presence of elements from both. The monsters, though omni-present, play a sort of background role, albeit a resonant one — McGuffins to the protagonists’ road-trip relationship drama and to a complex of themes and metaphorical resonances that director Edwards weaves into his sci-fi travelogue. Thematically, there’s evidence of commentary on US/Mexican border relations and the problem of illegal immigrants; the tendency of US foreign policy to demonise its perceived enemies; the role of targeted bombing on foreign territory. You could almost miss references made to the consequences of bombing strikes directed against the alien creatures, but in the final analysis it’s easy to assume that much of the destruction we see may be the result of air strikes rather than the monsters themselves. The monsters don’t seem to attack except when provoked. All they want to do is survive. In the end it’s the wider theme that life is not monstrous unless we make it so that is encapsulated in the film’s final scenes.

Some critics have complained of a lack of connection between the human story and the actions of the huge, alien, awesomely beautiful creatures that take place behind it. All I can say in response is that those critics must not have been paying attention. Or they were paying the wrong sort of attention. McGuffins the monsters may be, but they and their “story” play a major role in the film’s thematic undercurrents. Yes, Monsters is a Monster Movie, its creatures affecting or reflecting on everything else in the film — but it’s not an overly generic one.

Made on a shoestring budget, filmed on location by Edwards himself (without lighting rigs or complex equipment), the film looks a little like a Discovery Channel documentary, with supporting roles undertaken by locals. There are spectacular vistas and lots of South American colour. The wreckage of human civilisation through which Andrew and Whitney wander is extensive and impressive — possibly, in real life, the aftermath of natural disasters, with a touch of CGI added here and there for effect. In fact, Monsters is a miracle of editing and direction. Not frenetic, but taut and purposeful, it conveys information with minimal dialogue — compact, multi-layered and, though non-commercial, not at all obtuse in approach. The SFX work needs no apology either; any limitations could as easily be artistic choices. The CGI creatures appear mainly in the night, but their Cthulhan presence is all the more potent for the shadowy impressionism of their attacks and their alien nature is more effectively conveyed than more costly attempts to create a sense of otherness in bigger-budgeted films.

Unlike much independent cinema, Monsters feels both expansive and multi-layered, a complex of metaphors that belies the simplicity suggested by its basic premise. Certainly there is excitement and tension, but don’t expect a thriller-style aesthetic to be at work here. What you get is a great deal of beauty, even from scenes depicting the aftermath of monstrous destruction, a sense of awe, occasional suspense and affecting, underplayed drama. Good acting, excellent cinematography and intelligent direction make Monsters a thrilling experience in whatever genre you want to place it.

The Blu-ray transfer is excellent, too, and though night scenes can be overly dark (a consequence of the on-the-spot filming), the image provides enough detail to make obscurity evocative rather than an annoyance. The lossless sound transfer is the greatest beneficiary of high-definition technology, however. The film’s soundscape, especially during the night-in-the-jungle scenes and at the climax, is both awesome and beautiful, like the monsters themselves, their growls and whale-song cries shifting from frightening to melodic as our perception of them deepens.

Monsters is released in Australia by Madman Entertainment, on DVD and Blu-ray.

Posted in Film, Giant Monsters, Independent film, Review | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

A Lovecraftian Invasion 5: The Valdemar Legacy

Posted on Saturday, April 16, 2011 by Robert Hood

With the cancellation of Guillermo Del Toro’s much-anticipated big-budget film adaptation of Lovecraft’s epic At the Mountains of Madness, the Lovecraft-inspired cinema invasion may have suffered a setback, but there are those who haven’t yet surrendered.

Spanish filmmaker José Luis Alemán is engaged in a multi-part Lovecraft-inspired film series that was begun in 2010 with the release of La herencia Valdemar, aka The Valdemar Legacy. Made for an estimated €13,000,000 [approx. US$19 million by today’s conversion rate], the film was unique in its country of origin in being the first movie in Spanish cinema history made without Spanish government subsidies. I’m not sure what the real significance of this is, but it certainly sounds significant. It was also the last film of Jacinto Molina Álvarez — better known as Paul Naschy — legendary Spanish horror film actor whose career spanned five decades, years in which he either played or came up against just about every horror icon you can name, from Frankenstein, Dracula and the Devil to werewolves, vampires and worshipers of Satan (including zombie cows and cybernetic killer rottweilers).

La herencia Valdemar [aka The Valdemar Legacy] (Spain-2010; dir. José Luis Alemán)

Synopsis:

Luisa Llorente, an expert on taxation assessment of old properties, had recently gone to the Victorian mansion Valdemar to conduct an inventory of property ownership. After she mysteriously disappeared, Maximilian, president of her company, engaged the services of a private detective to help find her. But soon they will discover that hers is not the first disappearance at Valdemar mansion. (IMDb)

How is all this relevant to Lovercraft, you may ask? Well, it seems that amongst the items set for inventory is a certain volume known to all dabblers in Lovecraftian lore — an ancient grimoire written by the Mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred, a book known as the Necronomicon.

[youtube HfI63Tukhwc]

As everything is in Spanish, it’s hard to elucidate the details, but it’s clear that being “inspired by the Universe of H.P. Lovecraft” and featuring an old ancestral house, mysterious disappearances, the dead rising and the Necronomicon, sooner or later the Great Old Ones will be putting in an appearance. Meanwhile, the character list alone is suggestive. It includes such real-world luminaries as Lissie Borden (New England’s most notorious alleged female hatchet killer), Aleister Crowley (the infamous occultist and ceremonial magician) and Bram Stoker (author of the novel Dracula).

One thing leads to another and the result is Part 2 or La herencia Valdemar II: La sombra prohibida [aka The Valdemar Legacy II: The Forbidden Shadow], in which an Old Friend arises.

Yes, it’s the Great [or Dread] Cthulhu — he of the tentacled face, widespread wings and grumpy post-sleep attitude.

Part 2 is a direct continuation of The Valdemar Legacy, with Lovecraftian tendencies reaching climactic proportions, as obsession with the Book takes over, causing Cthulhu to rise and finally put his foot down.

Trailer:

[youtube twKNOq_yOvo]

Apparently the release of the film involved a museum-like display of the film’s props and unique sets. Here are the principals on display (with director-José-Luis-Alemán on the far right):

Attendees could even have their picture taken with Cthulhu himself, as potentially soul-destroying as that may be:

There have been rumours that The Valdemar Legacy will be released in the US sometime in 2011. I hope so, because as Lovecraft films go, these look like they may be up there with the best of them.

See the Gallery below for images and alternative poster art. And though it’s in Spanish, it’s worth clicking your way through the official website (and persevering with slowish download times, depending on available bandwidth) for the great imagery.

Gallery:

Posted in Cthulhu, Film, Giant Monsters, Horror, Lovecraft, News, Trailers | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Building the Millennium Bug

Posted on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 by Robert Hood

Here’s the newly released official poster for The Millennium Bug (US-2011; dir. Kenneth Cran), the trailer for which premiered on Undead Backbrain a week or so ago:

But that’s not all. The folk from The Squire Film Shoppe and No CGI films are in the process of filling their new official Millennium Bug website (www.mbugmovie.com) with informative stuff on the film and its production. Already up is Part 1 of a “Behind the Scenes” series of postings. Part 1 details the development of the script. Just posted today is Part 2: The Monster.

With an approved script and a little seed money, the next item to tackle was a simple question to ask, but a potentially difficult one to answer: what is a Millennium Bug? What does it look like? How do you build one? And most importantly, can a monster be built inexpensively, but still look convincing?

This latest segment recounts the origin of the monster, from concept to final design, and tells all about the physical “creature” that was ultimately built and now appears in the movie. The blog post was written by the director, Kenneth Cran.

A snippet:

With the body completed, I realized that there was nothing insect-like about it. I had decided on a black and burnt orange paint scheme, like a tarantula, but the color didn’t help the fact that this Millennium Bug was more of a Millennium “What-Is-It?” I guess if you were to combine a tarantula, a wooly mammoth, and a stegosaurid dinosaur known as the kentrasaurus, you’d have the Millennium Bug’s body. It was a freight train of a monster and from my perspective, ideal. It was something big and powerful, wasn’t too fast, but had a certain ponderous grace to it. CGI monsters often defy the laws of physics by being fast and bouncy and lightweight. In a word: fake.

Check it out.

Posted in Giant Bugs, Giant Monsters, Horror, Independent film, Posters, Update | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Creeping in Reptile Flesh Reprint

Posted on Monday, April 11, 2011 by Robert Hood

It was announced today that Morrigan Books — “Specialists in Dark Fiction” — are re-printing my 2009 collection, Creeping in Reptile Flesh, as part of their e-book series, for the international market.  The distribution for the first edition was somewhat limited, so I’m hoping this will widen its impact somewhat.

You can read the announcement on Morrigan’s news site.

I’m biased, of course, but I think this is an excellent collection. The stories were chosen according to the way they reflected on a number of related thematic threads that for me are encapsulated in the title — a quotation from the work of my favourite poet, mystical visionary, William Blake:

Ah weak & wide astray! Ah shut in narrow doleful form
Creeping in reptile flesh upon the bosom of the ground
The Eye of Man a little narrow orb closd up & dark
Scarcely beholding the great light conversing with the Void
The Ear, a little shell in small volutions shutting out
All melodies & comprehending only Discord and Harmony
The Tongue a little moisture fills, a little food it cloys
A little sound it utters & its cries are faintly heard

From William Blake’s “prophetic” poem Milton (1840)

The title story — a 20,000 word supernatural thriller — is a personal favourite, though some people have been put off by its political orientation and other oddities.

Soon there may be an announcement of a special bonus feature that will come with the new edition. We’re working on that. Stay tuned. At any rate, if you’re one of the many millions who didn’t grab a copy of the first edition — or a Hood completist — don’t forget to order a copy.

Meanwhile you can read more about the book in its original incarnation here.

Critical comments on the first edition:

Robert Hood has been writing chilling, sickening, funny and thoughtful horror for longer than he cares to remember. Creeping in Reptile Flesh brings together some of the best from his twistedly evil mind including three previously unpublished works.

Robert’s writing has many shades. His heroes are often people just like you and me. Beset by the horrid and supernatural, they rise to the challenge or sink beneath the slime. Whatever happens, there’s humanity there, the best of us and the worst of us on show… There are many types of horror here to suit many tastes and all of them will please the discerning reader who enjoys good tales told well.

Keith Stevenson in Aurealis #43.

Simply a class act from the artwork to the stories contained within its pages. A must-have addition to any horror fan’s bookcase, it will have you wanting to check out more Robert Hood material.

Jeff Ritchie — review on ScaryMinds website

An impressive, very personal and thematically cohesive collection of stories from horror writer, Robert Hood, and nicely laid out by Cat Sparks. Creeping shows the significant contribution Robert has made to the Australian horror genre.

13th Annual Aurealis Awards: Best Anthology/Collection Category Judges’ Report

Hood’s collection Creeping in Reptile Flesh (Altair Australia Books) was the finest Aussie collection released in 2008. Although the book’s distribution is limited, it contains several of Hood’s best stories and spans two decades of his career.

Shane Jiraiya Cummings, Australian Shadows Award 2008 Judges’ comments

Posted in Horror, My Writing, News | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Blobs, Swamp Muck and Amorphous Things That Go Splat! in the Night

Posted on Sunday, April 10, 2011 by Robert Hood

An Essay on a Globular Sub-genre by Robert Hood

Given that violation of physical norms (being giant-sized, three-headed, lizard-scaled, part-snake/bat/bear/lion/dragon/Bobo-the-Clown, you name it) is one of the defining attributes of a monster, it’s not surprising that some of the most memorable of the clan are, in fact, of indeterminate shape. Amorphous horrors and all that. Things that go “Splat!” in the night.

The Blob? Everyone knows of the big strawberry-jelly mass of space gunk that reacts badly when poked with a stick, likes to scare cinema patrons by oozing through the screen in the middle of the movie and has a penchant for eating out at the local diner.

The Blob (US-1958; dir. Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr.) mightn’t be a great film artistically, but many of its moments have achieved cult status and it is certainly charming in its own clean-cut ‘50s way. In the opinion of many, Chuck Russell’s 1988 remake is a much better film, with good SFX, effective characters, a decent script and dramaturgically competent storytelling, while retaining (plus updating and broadening) the themes of youth rebellion and generational trust. Changing the origin of the Blob from outer-space-entity-on-the-loose to product-of-a-Government-scientific-miscalculation-and-attendant-conspiracy is very 1990s, reflecting a general cynicism that what we really have to fear might originate right here on our doorstep rather than out in the universe somewhere. Needless to say, The Blob (1988) hasn’t garnered the same level of affection as Steve McQueen’s star vehicle with its rather innocent air of ‘50s kitsch.

The original Blob even spawned an official offspring. In 1972, Larry Hagman (of I Dream of Jeanie and Dallas fame) directed a sequel/reboot of The Blob called Beware! The Blob (aka Son of the Blob). It’s more comedy than horror and isn’t considered a classic, as cheekily eccentric as it may be. What it does best is reflect the sort of sardonic humour that Hagman was good at.

Godfrey Cambridge gets consumed while watching the 1959 film on TV
… and never gets to see the ending.

The ’50s was the Age of Blobs. Coincidentally, June 1958 (a few months before The Blob premiered in the US) saw the release in Japan of another “Blob”-like movie – this one by Gojira director Ishirô Honda. Its real title is the poetically evocative Bijo to Ekitainingen (lit. Beauty and the Liquid People), but is best known as The H-Man. Nuclear tests in the Pacific create mutations that ooze about like radioactive slime and dissolve human flesh and bone. The movie is a crime flick as well as a monster picture – a particular cross-genre hybrid that appealed to the Japanese film-going public in this period and worked oddly well in practice. At any rate, though not well-known, The H-Man is an interesting take that is definitely worth your time, featuring some excellent and atmospheric horror sequences, in particular one set on a ghostly ship adrift at sea during a fog-bound night.

A more famous muck monster — one made out of a mass of animated pollution — is Hedorah, better known as the Smog Monster. In the history of Godzilla films, Gojira tai Hedora (1971; dir. Yoshimitsu Banno) [aka Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster] is the really weird one and it tends to be very divisive. The spectacle of seeing Godzilla fly through the air, tail tucked under his body and using his fire breath as a means of rocket propulsion, sends some fans into paroxysms of scorn. Yet I’ve always thought it fits into this particular movie quite well, given its theme of pollution and its hallucinatory imagery. In this particular G world, where smog can come alive and turn into a giant monster — and where Godzilla movies can have weird cartoon inserts and hippies hang about on Mt Fuji singing and dancing and generally getting stoned while the world burns — it seems entirely appropriate that Godzie could use his fire breath to propel himself through the air. This is Godzilla seen through a chemical haze — drugs being another form of pollution, after all. What with the nightclub scene where patrons turn into fish-headed monsters under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs (as in Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas) — or the scene where Hedorah sucks ecstatically on a smoking chimney as though it’s a bong — interpreting the blatant surrealism of Smog Monster as some sort of drug-induced supra-reality seems entirely appropriate!

Blob monsters were rather popular in the creature-feature comics of this period, whether or not they were “inspired” by The Blob. One that comes to mind is “The Glop” [or “Glob” in some reprints], in a story from Journey into Mystery Vol. 1 #72 (September 1961). “The Glop” features a dripping humanoid mass that “lives!” after an artist is hired to go to Transylvania to paint a monstrous statue using mystic, life-giving paint — something he hadn’t known when he started.

Another is “Taboo! The Thing from Murky Swamp” from Strange Tales #75 (June 1960). Taboo is an alien muck monster, which, though destroyed at the end of the story, returned bigger and ever more adjectivally inexorable a few months later (in Strange Tales #77, October 1960).

Amorphous monsters like these soon became part of the pantheon of monstrous villains that superheroes had to contend with, once the superhero genre took over in comics. For example, in 1969 Bruce Banner/the Hulk was forced to battle a murky sludge creature known as the Glob in The Incredible Hulk #121. The Glob makes several subsequent appearances in the Marvel universe. Coincidentally (or not), when The Blob film began production in 1958, it was being called “The Glob [That Girdled the World]”.

A shapeshifting creature made of sand called The Sandman first appeared in Journey to Mystery Vol. 1, #70 (July 1961). Though an alien here, he proved to be a prototype of William Baker (aka The Sandman) from The Amazing Spider-Man #4 (Sept 1963), who accidentally acquires the ability to shapeshift via his sandy nature and uses this ability to harass our friendly neighbourhood webslinger. The Sandman appeared in Sam Raimi’s live-action movie Spider-Man 3 in 2007, rendered via spectacular CGI.

Swamps are a fertile breeding ground for amorphous monsters, as witness Taboo’s tagline: “The Thing from Murky Swamp”. The most famous comicbook swamp monster — either a man integrated with a mass of swamp debris following his “murder” or an elemental spirit, depending on which incarnation you’re reading — is  probably DC Comics’ Swamp Thing. Swamp Thing featured in several comic series, two live-action films, a live-action TV series (directed by Tom Blomquist and Chuck Bowman) and an animated TV series. He also crops up briefly in the superlative animated series Justice League Unlimited. The first live-action Swamp Thing film was directed by Wes Craven in 1982 and though uncharacteristic of Craven’s most famous work, proved reasonably successful. The Return of Swamp Thing (US-1989; dir. Jim Wynorski) followed, but wasn’t so well received — with good reason. Swamp Thing is very much a “monster-as-hero” story, as the title character rises from the swamp to seek revenge on those who murdered him, but ends up pursuing a life of sometimes conflicted do-goodery.

Marvel’s Man-Thing series was very similar (at first), with a similar back-story involving swampy death and murky revenge, though the monster-hero is generally less sentient. The character originated in Savage Tales #1 (May 1971) — several months before DC’s Swamp Thing appeared (in House of Secrets #92, July 1971). There were murmurings of legal action (especially as the two creators were room-mates at the time), but it all came to nothing — and the two Things diverged considerably in tone and storyline as time went by. There has only been one film version of Man-Thing, a made-for-TV movie directed by Brett Leonard (2005). Much to the chagrin of fans of Marvel comic writer Steve Gerber’s surreal and rather tongue-in-cheek rendition of Man-Thing (which teams the tangle of swamp debris with Howard the Duck at one point), Leonard’s film is more a standard B-film creature feature, though it actually runs fairly close to the monster’s original appearances in comic format. If you can live with that, Man-Thing is an okay monster film, lurking somewhere midstream in the swampland hierarchy of Hollywood genre filmmaking.

The low-budget Swamp Devil (Canada-2008; dir. David Winning), on the other hand, is somewhat mired in a stagnant backwater of that particular tributary. It works a very similar scenario to those of Marvel and DC’s monster-heroes, though the titular beast is pure monster here. At any rate, there’s murder and backwoods secrets and swamp-monster violence involved. Some things never change: murder and swamps don’t mix. They end up spawning vengeful and amorphous masses of swamp debris. I must remember that — for next time.

Other types of amorphous monsters abound in the film world, often offering little more that a hive mentality in place of a single focus. The interesting monster of The Bone Snatcher (UK/Canada/South Africa-2003; dir. Jason Wulfsohn) consists of weird alien ants that swarm around random collections of bones to form into a larger, more coherent creature. In this they are rather like Grey Goo, the nano-machines that we’re often warned about by the scientifically pessimistic and monster-loving writers — tiny out-of-control robots that eat matter and sometimes form into whatever shape takes their fancy, usually monstrous (see the Justice League Unlimited story “Dark Heart” and the Gort-spawned nano-machine swarm that erupts across America in the climax of the unfortunate 2008 The Day the Earth Stood Still remake).

Above: The continually morphing nanotech “Dark Heart”
from Justice League Unlimited

Above: Gort’s nanobots sweep across America
in The Day the Earth Stood Still remake

But such collective monsters needn’t be so hi-tech. The Ruins (US/Germany/Aust-2008; dir. Carter Smith) does it rather effectively with virulent, psychic plants. From the psychotic avian menace of Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) through to the mass African bee entity of The Swarm (US-1978; dir. Irwin Allen), nature in films has willingly formed itself into an amorphous object of mass terror, inflicting clouds of death and mayhem on humanity for its sins. In The Naked Jungle (US-1954; dir. Byron Haskin, based on the story “Leiningen Versus the Ants“ by Carl Stephenson), Charlton Heston and Eleanor Parker battle a 20-mile-wide, 20-mile-long column of army ants (see below) — millions of individual ants subsumed into a mass consciousness. That’s the point here. In these cases the characters are not dealing with lots of individual creatures but a single amorphous monster made up of millions of individual units acting together.

And that’s not to forget the totally shapeless monster of the Aussie film Long Weekend (Aust-1978; dir. Colin Eggleston) and its 2008 remake, which is simply nature turning en masse against the careless vacationers. Talk about The Beast with a Million Eyes (1955). You can’t get much more formally indeterminate than that.

Posted in Article, Comics, Essay, Film, Horror, Monsters in general | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Review: Ghost in the Shell 2.0 Redux

Posted on Sunday, April 10, 2011 by Robert Hood

Ghost in the Shell 2.0 Redux (orig. Kôkaku kidôtai; Japan-1995; dir. Mamoru Oshii)

Reviewed by Robert Hood

Anyone who knows anything about anime knows Ghost in the Shell. Based on the classic manga of Masamune Shirow, Ghost in the Shell was a stunning work of SF animation in 1995 and, I’m happy to say, remains so now. It visualized and enhanced the cyberpunk aesthetic of writers such as William Gibson in his Sprawl trilogy, and directly influenced such important live-action SF as The Matrix, spawning a franchise that includes two more films (Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence and Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. Solid State Society) and two television series (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Ghost in the Shell: S.A.C. 2nd GIG). All of them are worth seeing.

Read the rest of this review on Robot War Espresso.

Posted in Animation, Review, Robots | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Exclusive: First View of The Millennium Bug Trailer

Posted on Monday, April 4, 2011 by Robert Hood

The official trailer for the hillbilly/giant monster/alien bug movie The Millennium Bug (US-2011; dir. Kenneth Cran) has just been released and you can see it first here on Undead Backbrain. Note that it’s totally free of CGI monsters. The filmmakers have utilised old-school FX, including miniature sets and a physical monster suit. Check out this Backbrain article for more details and lots of images.

The horror aesthetic of this, with dark hillybilly gore and innocents under threat, combined with actual suitmation giant monster action, looks unique and is definitely going to be one of the independent film treats of 2011. A classic in the making, I’d say!

The film is currently in post-production for a 2011 release from The Squire Film Shoppe and No CGI films.

[youtube wSKjyerM100]

Synopsis:

When the Haskin family seeks refuge from Y2K hysteria in the isolated forests of the Sierra Diablos mountains, madness and terror find them there. Abducted by a vicious hillbilly clan, the Haskins fight for survival, but neither they nor the hillbilly Crawfords can comprehend the monstrous nightmare about to erupt from the bowels of the earth.

Sources: Jim and Kenneth Cran; Official website;  Facebook page. Via Avery Guerra. Written by Robert Hood.

Posted in Giant Monsters, Independent film, Trailers, Update | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Incidental Demonic Zombie Update

Posted on Sunday, April 3, 2011 by Robert Hood

Director Mariano Cattaneo has sent the Backbrain an update on, and some extremely evocative images from, his demon/zombie film Incidente (Argentina-2011; dir. Mariano Cattaneo), which we reported on 13 February.

Cattaneo says:

Facts about Incidente:

  • We’re three independent production companies (MFA Films, Qk Films and NoDejesDeMirar)
  • We made the film from the camera’s point of view, dealing with a satanic ritual and the people trapped in this situation.
  • Most of Incidente was shot in a single uninterrupted take.
  • It’s all about how a person can deal with and survive through a horrible ordeal.
  • For the duration of the  film, the cameraman is in jeopardy (as is the audience, therefore, from their perspective). The camera has to be “on” all the time, because it’s the only proof the cameraman has that he wasn’t involved in the killing … In a way it’s a perfect set-up for the cameramen and also for the audience.

Incidente status:

  • Incidente is in the early first cut. The Producers are currently sending screeners to film festivals and also dealing with issues of distribution.

I have included the following images large-size because the detail looks gruesomely spectacular. Click on the images to view them close-up.

And here is the POV (and hence largely unseen) hero of the piece, the Cameraman himself:

Synopsis:

A Special Division police member finds videotape in the form of an unfinished documentary featuring material of a very dark and strange nature.

Years ago in the Nacan’s Factory, an employee killed 16 workers and finally himself. Investigating police could find no logical explanation for the events and the case was filed as “Incident” (a designation that police use for cases with no solution, offering no reasonable explanation).

Today cameraman Christian and journalist Romina, along with a crime specialist and a priest, will enter the building to document what really happened that day.

This is the tape of what they discovered.

Crew:

  • Director/writer/camera: Mariano Cattaneo
  • Producers: Ezio Massa and Gabriela Eugenia Valdeon
  • Cinematography: Alejandro Millan Pastori
  • SFX: Rabbid EFX

Cast:

  • Juan Manuel Rodil
  • Melisa Fernandez
  • Diego Sampayo
  • Simón Tatziel

Sources: Mariano Cattaneo; Press release. Via Avery Guerra. Written by Robert Hood

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Green Light in the Blackest Night

Posted on Sunday, April 3, 2011 by Robert Hood

Okay, now I’m definitely interested. This is suddenly looking so close to spot-on, it has completely overturned my skepticism (exacerbated by the earlier, rather indifferent trailer) that they could effectively transform the epic DC comicbook franchise into a decent movie, convincingly bringing all its bizarre alien complexity to the big screen. What is it? Edited footage from Green Lantern: First Flight (US-2011; dir. Martin Campbell) as shown at the recent Wondercon.

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Could this be the new Lord of the Rings? There’s certainly plenty of rings involved — and Campbell and his designers seem to have got the look just right. Fingers crossed in regards to the script.

Synopsis:

In a universe as vast as it is mysterious, a small but powerful force has existed for centuries. Protectors of peace and justice, they are called the Green Lantern Corps. A brotherhood of warriors sworn to keep intergalactic order, each Green Lantern wears a ring that grants him superpowers. But when a new enemy called Parallax threatens to destroy the balance of power in the Universe, their fate and the fate of Earth lie in the hands of their newest recruit, the first human ever selected: Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds). Hal is a gifted and cocky test pilot, but the Green Lanterns have little respect for humans, who have never harnessed the infinite powers of the ring before. But Hal is clearly the missing piece to the puzzle, and along with his determination and willpower, he has one thing no member of the Corps has ever had: humanity. With the encouragement of fellow pilot and childhood sweetheart Carol Ferris (Blake Lively), if Hal can quickly master his new powers and find the courage to overcome his fears, he may prove to be not only the key to defeating Parallax … he will become the greatest Green Lantern of all.

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