A new German zombie apocalypse film — using the viral infection paradigm — is to be premiered at the film market in Cannes on the 14th and 16th of May this year. Written by Benjamin Hessler and directed by Marvin Kren for moneypenny filmproduktion — with distribution through EastWest — Rammbock doesn’t appear to offer anything conceptually original in its approach to the genre, relying for its success on the quality of its production, atmospheric photography, its ability to generate suspense and its success in engaging audiences with the characters.
Rammbock (Germany-2010; dir. Marvin Kren)
Synopsis:
Just when Michael arrives in Berlin to visit his ex-girlfriend Gabi, a terrible virus starts spreading across the city at a rapid pace, turning people into mindless homicidal maniacs. Much to Michael’s concern, Gabi’s not home; instead, he meets Harper, a teenage plumber’s apprentice at work in her apartment block. Together, they manage to barricade themselves when raging hordes of infected people swarm the building. Surrounded by these thirsty zombies, Michael and Harper have their hands full to survive – and it will take all of their ingenuity to make their way out to try and find Gabi.
Check out the newly released trailer.
Trailer:
There are more stills from the film in the Gallery below.
And now, Undead Backbrain presents the complete 1950s giant monster spoof film, King Crab Attack! (France-2010; short [6:38 min.]; dir. Gregoire Sivan).
The Backbrain first introduced you to the film via trailers, poster and assorted pictures in September last year and then, in more detail, in January this year. With giant crabs created through stop-motion animation and sporting a very funny sense-of-irony and excellent low-budget production values, the film takes the form of a spoof trailer, though it in fact gives you the full beginning, middle, climax and humorous postscript. Great stuff!
Produced by Caïmans Productions, with post-production work by Sabotage-Studio, the film stars Jean-Pierre Martins (”La Vie en Rose”), Serge Dupire, Charlotte Marin, Etienne Chicot, Martine Fontaine … and a bunch of really big crabs.
**Please note** The following article does not (and never did) say that the first two designs below are without a doubt the genuine article. A claim was made and I reported it as such, with various indications that there was doubt in my mind. Now that others have taken up the story and reported it with less skepticism, Avery and I have received rather unfair flak. I thought it was an interesting possibility. Twitchfilm (who took it up on the basis of this article) asked questions. Those troublemakers who are being rude about it all should know that (a) Avery had nothing to do with it — this is my site and I take full responsibility for what’s on it. Avery is my invaluable “news hound” — but note that I did not credit him on this article, and I always credit my sources; (b) I never claimed that I knew it was genuine and in fact expressed doubt; and (c) as Twitchfilm’s Al Young and Todd Brown point out (see their comments here), the fact that these designs were uploaded to Flickr well before the Godzilla remake was officially announced doesn’t prove that they’re not genuine. Negotiations go on for a long time and designers could get started on possible designs long before a deal was struck. So, as I said: maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Hey, probably it isn’t. I still like the design, whoever did it.
As we all know by now, Legendary Pictures have acquired the rights to do a Godzilla film in the US. It is scheduled for release in 2012. Now some images have surfaced of a design model of Godzilla that is supposed to be the one that Legendary Pictures has sent to Toho for their approval. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t — but it seems credible. Here they are:
If this is really the design of choice, I won’t be unhappy about it.
Addendum: OK, some correspondents are skeptical about the authenticity of this, probably with good reason. So, I thought I’d add some other cool Godzilla re-design sculptures, all of them definitely not put forward as originating from Legendary Pictures. This first, demonic Godzilla is by FritoFrito:
This rather bloody, vicious-looking Godzilla is byD1Ming of Mochiin Designs. It’s the aftermath of the fight between Godzilla and King Kong!
I’m less keen on the next one as a possible Godzilla design (too lizard-like and not heavy enough for my liking, rather like Godzilla ’98), but it’s a cool sculpture. I’m unsure of its origin, but the surname of the artist seems to be McVey.
Is there a horror film tradition of monstrous food? Let’s see, offhand (and ignoring cannibal movies and movies about poisoned edibles) I can think of The Stuff (US-1985; dir. Larry Cohen) [sentient killer yoghurt], The Gingerdead Man (US-2005; dir. Charles Band) and TheGingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust (US-2008; dir. Silvia St. Croix) [killer gingerbread man cookie], The Blob (US-1958; dir. Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr.) [well, it looks like raspberry jelly], Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (US-2006; dir. Lloyd Kaufman) [killer undead fast-food chickens], Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (US-1978; dir. John De Bello) and its sequels [killer tomatoes], the “Science Fiction Sketch” from Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Season 1, Episode 7 [alien blancmanges turn everyone in Britain into Scotsmen] and … well, I suppose we could throw in the Stay Puft Marshmellow Man from Ghostbusters.
Then there’s this one: a cautionary tale about leaving Chinese food in the fridge for too long:
Take Out (written and directed by Joe Douglass)
All up not a huge selection on which to build a tradition. So it’s good to see a new one getting thrown into the oven.
Happy End was once the home of the Friendly Oatmeal Factory, but is now a long-forgotten ghost town in the middle of nowhere—and an unintended stopover for six best friends who are about to discover the true meaning of terror (or so says the publicity). The Oatmeal Man is a comedy / horror film written by Jesse Gordon and directed by Sean Gordon for Pulsar Pictures. The movie has a tentative 2010 release date.
“Horror never tasted so good!”
Synopsis:
Six best friends decide to make an impulse trip to Las Vegas in the hopes of mending Santi and Annie’s dying relationship. When Clive decides to fake engine trouble so that Santi can “save the day,” his truck actually breaks down, stranding the group in the middle of a long-forgotten ghost town. But that’s only the start of their problems. There’s a high-fiber killer lurking in the shadows, and he’s got a maniacal recipe for terror. Can Clive and his friends survive the night? Or will they become just another breakfast topping?
First Teaser:
Official Trailer:
Behind-the-Scenes with the Cast:
Cast: (in alphabetical order) Al Burke, Krisondra Daigneault, Moira Dennis, Claude Foster, Sean Gordon, Ann Gotti, Kaleo, John Karyus, Nicole Kunz, Sal Perales, and Donna Marie Sergi.
Production Crew: (in alphabetical order) Richie Armstrong (Film Editor), Abbey Cardenas (Assistant Director), Diane Cardenas (Executive Producer), Desiree Chandler (Hair / Makeup), Carri Daigneault (Executive Producer), Colten Daigneault (Director of Photography), Tom Devlin 1313FX (Special Effects), Elektron, Aftershock (Unit Photography), Blake Funk (Sound Designer), Demitri Van Gelder (Sound Mixer), Jesse Gordon (Screenplay), Sean Gordon (Producer / Director), Orbit (Design Art), Team Triton (Visual Effects).
Now that pitting monsters of different species against each other has become the norm, no one feels obliged to stick to traditional match-making. Aliens, Predators, Jason, Freddy, Vikings, ninjas, mega sharks, giant octopi, Sharktopus, Dinoshark, giant komodo lizards, vixen assassins and sea monsters … they’re all grist for the mill. Chimeras (like Sharktopus), too, have been putting their claws up.
In an independent production that is about to premiere, two different chimerean mix-ups will be taking on each other — Wolf Man vs Piranha Man: The Howl of the Piranha (US-2010; dir. Dorian Knight and Steve Goldenberg)
Synopsis:
Piranha Man Versus Wolf Man: Howl of the Piranha details the epic generations-long battle between two of natures most perfect killing machines! The rivalry between the fish-like Piranha Man and the canine Wolf Man is one of brutal murder, familial kidnappings, stalking, and incest! When the decades old fight begins to effect the life of investigative journalist Lexi Glass, she finds that sometimes you need to become the story in order to report the story. She discovers the battle of a lifetime along with the horrible secret of her family’s past! Piranha Man Versus Wolf Man: Howl of the Piranha, the inter-species battle you’ve been waiting for! (Facebook)
vs.
Trailer:
It looks like quite a hoot! And premieres on 15th May in Chicago.
A quick addition to the Backbrain’s growing accumulation of muck on the old-school independent monster flick, Muckman.
Synopsis:
Deep in the Blackwoods Forest, a sexy TV host, Asia Buchanan, and her crew of Producer, Cameraman and Soundman set out in search to prove the existence of a legendary swamp creature called the Muckman. Finding concrete evidence will boost the careers of Asia, and her down-in-the-luck Creative Executive, Mickey O’Hara. Joining them are an eye witness to the creature and his two redneck cousins, all who have their own designs on the monster.
Our team uncovers strange footprints, unusual amphibious eggs in a nearby stream, and the uneasy feeling they are being watched. It isn’t long before the swamp dweller is sighted, and chased deep into the murky swamps it calls its home. Night falls and terror mounts as the creature, sensing invaders into its territory, mounts an aggressive game of cat and mouse with the helpless production crew. The hunters have now become the hunted.
In a last ditch attempt to capture the creature, the stakes are dangerously high. With the help of the locals, a trap is set and the race is on. Mayhem unfolds as the creature goes on a rampage and a fight for survival begins. Their only chance of making it through the night hinges on the strange bond the creature shares with one of the female crew members. Horror has a new home! Horror has a new name! Muckman! (Ciné Excel Entertainment)
Bits of the Muckman: the costume
Trailer:
Below is a Gallery of Pictures, many featuring the female stars:
At the bottom of Lake Michigan a sleeping terror waits. Lying dormant for centuries, now it has come ashore…
In late 2009, something huge rose from the waters of Lake Michigan and attacked the City of Milwaukee, leaving a trail of traumatised folk in its wake. The government tried to cover it all up, but Firestarter Films, aided and abetted by Jon Richter of Supermassive Studios, collected footage shot by assorted residents and put it together so that we could get some idea of what happened.
Or so the story goes.
Richter explains:
Brookfield was created for a film event that happens every other month here in Milwaukee. For each event there is a theme. Last January the theme was a parody of monster attack movies like Cloverfield. Since I own a small VFX and production company (Supermassive Studios), I was asked to create the original version so that people had an idea of what to contribute. [This is the version you can see below.]. My short also became the trailer for the event. The footprint image [above] was the shadow matte used in 3D to make the footprint hole seen in the film.
One more interesting tidbit — the orange sculpture seen flying down the street in the beginning is a notorious piece of street art here in Milwaukee called “The Sunburst”. Many people dislike it and have petitioned for it to be removed several times. We thought it was funny to have our monster throw it down the street.
The following promo was also created, adding its bit to the “mythos” of conspiracy underlying the concept. It is here that the monster is named — Lakeicane — for reasons that should become obvious.
In the finished film the monster is not seen. With the other contributions edited into it, what Brookfield represents is a collection of “footage” taken by people caught in the monster’s path.
The Compiled Film:
Source: Jonathan Richter (Chief Creative Officer, Supermassive Studios) via Avery Guerra
Things have been a bit hectic for the Backbrain, hence the slowness of new material appearing here. However, I have been adding some image-heavy updates to our sister site, Undead Brainspasm.
News on a new low-budget superhero flick from independent filmmaker Brett Kelly: Avenging Force: The Scarab (US-2010; dir. Brett Kelly).
Update on Ghost in the Shell creator Mamoru Oshii’s follow-up to his live-action sci-fi epic, Avalon: Assault Girls [aka Asaruto gâruzu] (Japan-2009; dir. Mamoru Oshii).
Below is a gallery of images from the film. The Brainspasm article includes many more, as well as the trailer and DVD artwork.
And one last snippet: Dean Devlin, who helped director Roland Emmerich perpetrate the 1998 US version of Godzilla — known without much affection by the fans as GINO [Godzilla In Name Only] — comments via Twitter on news that Legendary Pictures is to produce a new Godzilla film, one much more faithful to the spirit of the iconic King of Monsters than the Devlin/Emmerich effort: “Now I have to hear all over again how our version sucked. Arrg.” (Source) At least he has no illusions. [I should point out that, personally, I quite liked Emmerich’s Godzilla, when seen as a generic giant monster film. It was only as a Godzilla film that it sucked.] Info via Avery Guerra.
Whereas disaster films such as Roland Emmerich’s ADD exercise in visual frenzy, 2012, are about immediate survival and in-progress destruction (with thrills coming from the destruction itself), post-apocalypse tales tend to explore in a more reflective manner the aftermath of universal catastrophe. Generally speaking, they examine society and how we relate to it by destroying it and making the survivors struggle to find a way to live in what remains of it, either by rebuilding society, finding new ways of sustaining life and human interaction, or by finally giving in to the realisation that the end is inevitable.
Recently John Hillcoat’s bleak post-apocalytic film, The Road (2009) — based on the even bleaker, Pulitzer-Prize winning novel by Cormac McCarthy — showed just how dramatically effective post-apocalyptic stories can be, though of course they have been around since before the 20th century “invention” of Science Fiction as a genre. For example, Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, published in 1722, is not post-apocalyptic in the scifi sense as it takes place in the past, but its fictional depiction of one man’s experience during the year 1655 — the year in which the Great Plague hit London — has a definite fin de siècle end-of-the-world feel about it. Frankenstein author Mary Shelley’s The Last Man (1826) is set in a post-apocalyptic future — a future in which the sole survivor of a plague that has wiped humanity from the planet struggles to survive alone. Another is After London by Richard Jefferies, published in 1885 — though here the author sees the destruction of most of the population as a good thing, allowing humanity to revert to an idyllic rural lifestyle based on proper Christian principles, renouncing the evil, corrupting influences of city life.
I also recently read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel The Poison Belt (1913), which has Earth pass through a stretch of poison “ether” in space, with the result that every living thing on the planet dies, only Professor Challenger (of the earlier The Lost World fame) and friends lasting longer than most thanks to his foresight. The story is a metaphor for the cosmic fragility of Man, and the fact that once the Earth passes through the Belt the “death”-effect also passes merely adds to the sense of cautionary warning.
This Weekend Fright Film Festival features a number of short post-apocalyptic films that you may not have come across before. Most involve some sort of plague — uncontrollable disease being a particular obsession of the contemporary world, whether man-made or “natural”.
1. Netherworld
Netherworld (UK-2009; short [7:26]; dir. Steven King)
Netherworld reflects the decade’s related cinematic obsession, zombie apocalypse, though it is not actually about the carnivorous dead as such — in the post-Night of the Living Dead sense. It was made as part of the director’s Higher National Diploma film course.
2. Connected
Connected (Denmark-2009; short [7:32]; dir. Jens Raunkjær Christensen and Jonas Drotner Mouritsen)
Synopsis:
Set in the distant future, Connected is a story about survival and greed with a post apocalyptic wasteland as its backdrop. Survivors of an unknown disaster shuffle through a desolate landscape, as it quickly becomes clear that not everybody has the strength to survive.
Produced with support from Danish Film Institute / Film Workshop and consultant Camilla Ebling
Dead Weight (US-2009; short [12:12 min]; dir. John Velasco)
Synopsis:
In the harsh post-apocalyptic world, Drew must struggle with the balance between survival and responsibility to others as he journeys south to find what he is looking for.
Made as part of a moviemaking course at Marist College, NY.
4. In the End
In the End (2009; short [2:28 min.]; dir. Ahmed Ghani)
A short, surreal piece described by the director as “The Apocalypse and The Rebirth”. What does it mean? You decide…
5. The Last Man in Brooklyn
The Last Man in Brooklyn (US-2006; short [9:10 min]; dir. Roberto Bentivegna)
A post-apocalyptic romantic tragi-comedy? Warning: Contains sexual references.
Synopsis:
The world has torn itself apart with nuclear weapons. The remaining vestiges of human life cling to survival like a scared child to mother’s hand. In what’s left of Brooklyn, New York, two men live a lonely coexistence. One is scarred by the searing radiation of atomic bombs, the other a miraculously unscathed drifter bent on cruelty for his own foul pleasure.Then… SHE came along.The bitter love triangle that ensued is as timeless as a stopped watch, and as tragic as a dead puppy.
6. Peace on Earth
And finally an MGM animation from 1939 in which cartoon animals inherit the post-apocalyptic world. Warning: Contains didactic lessons.
Peace on Earth (US-1939; animation, short [8:27 min.]; dir. Hugh Harman)
Thanks, Avery , for supplying the theme for this Fright Flick Festival and the initial entry.
The Cran Brothers’ in-production giant monster flick, The Millennium Bug (US-2010; dir Kenneth Cran) — which the Backbrain highlighted on 4 April — is getting weirder as we learn more about it. Of central interest is the fact that it features a giant monster done in the old style — model-work, man-in-suit and miniature set for trashing. But it seems it has a very horror-esque scenario beyond that, as the old dark house below testifies.
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.
It seems that the film involves a family who are kidnapped by an inbred hillbilly clan, to be used as a reproductive resource and gene-pool for cleansing and extending the bloodline. But for reasons as yet unexplained a giant prehistoric bug arises and all daikaiju hell breaks loose. In terms of the destruction involved the following comment from the film’s Facebook page indicates the Cran Brothers’ admirable commitment to miniature set annihilation:
Director Kenneth Cran and producer James Cran shot 99 percent of “The Millennium Bug” inside of a 700-square foot warehouse, building and destroying several complete sets in the process… (Facebook page)
On the Set:Below — The Brothers Cran (Jim left, Ken right) with Ben Seton as “Rip” — poster-boy for the inbred Crawfords:
On the Set: Below — Model of the deformed baby used for a “very graphic birth scene”:
The birth scene: Below, with (from left) Ginger Pullman, John Charles Meyer, Ben Seton and Trek Loneman
On Set: Below, Ken Cran sculpting somebody — or something — called “Orpheus”:
On Set: Below, on the Cabin set prepping for the “gunshot-to-the-leg” effect:
Characters: Below, Trek Loneman as Uncle Hibby Crawford
Characters: Below, John Charles Meyer as Billa Crawford in a moment of musical transcendence (can you play the dueling banjo theme from “Deliverance” on a solo violin?)
Conflict: Below, with Jessica Simons as Joany Haskin the centre of attention
There are many more images from the set of The Millennium Bug in the Gallery below and on the film’s official homepage (none of the monster though… sorry).
