Thomas R. Dickens, the director of Alien Grey: Zone-X (US-2009) has sent Undead Backbrain some rather cool images from the movie — and a new poster. In the one below, you can get a much better view of the flying beastie that I failed to capture clearly for my earlier post on the Dickins’ Alien Monster flick. Click on the image to see all the excellent details.
Likewise, here is a dynamic snapshot of an alien-engineered dinosaur attacking one of the hapless intruders into Zone X.
Finally, the latest poster for the film:
More video material has been added to the website, so go check it out.
Speaking of cryptozoology, here, just for the hell of it (and for Avery, who found some of them), is a collection of movie trailers featuring the ever popular — and often cute — lake monsters of legend:
Serpent Lake (US-[in production, 2009]; dir. Joel Trujillo)
The Water Horse (US-2007; dir. Jay Russell)
Beyond Loch Ness [aka Loch Ness Terror] (Canada-2007; dir. Paul Ziller)
Birth of a Legend: The Story of the Wawa (US-2007; dir. Steve Wiggins)
Mee-Shee: The Water Giant (Canada-2005; dir. John Henderson)
DreamKeeper (Canada/US-2003; TV; dir. Steve Barron)
Loch Ness (UK/US-1996; dir. John Henderson)
Magic in the Water (Canada/US-1995; dir. Rick Stevenson)
The Loch Ness Horror [aka Nessie] (US-1981; dir. Larry Buchanan)
The Crater Lake Monster (US-1977; dir. William R. Stromberg)
And this is the beginning of Das Wunder von Loch Ness [aka The Secret of Loch Ness] (Germany-2008; dir. Michael Rowitz):
You can go here to see the actual trailer. (Thanks, Avery!)
Brian Lonano, the man behind the elegant short SF fascist-state robot invasion film Attackazoids, has just written to me to confirm that they are indeed planning on another installment in the ATTACKAZOIDS series. He says that it will (hopefully) be ready by mid-2009.
Here is the plot synopsis:
War is declared on the off-world settlement! Everyone from suburban homemakers to super scientists are uniting to deploy an army of the giant killer robot ATTACKAZOIDS!
They will be shooting in HD and, as Brian put it, the film “will feature all sorts of fun effects and doo-dads”.
Sounds like a hoot. As soon as there are images available, you will be able to see them here!
If archeologists can be cinematic heroes, why can’t academic investigators into unknown fauna play the same role? In the excellent Scottish TV series Sea of Souls, academic researchers into psychic phenomena take centre-stage — though they do come over as convincing academics and therefore don’t show much by way of Indy’s action-hero theatrics. Still, the principle is there. And they get attacked by ghosts…
I’ve often wondered why no one has attempted to create a franchise featuring the learned and not-so-learned activities of an adventurous cryptozoologist. In reality both archeologists and cryptozoologists (and psychic researchers, no doubt) spend a lot of time not fighting, not battling Nazis, exotic Death Cultists or aliens, and not travelling to exotic places, but rather they read, catalogue, conduct intricate investigations into endless minutae, write papers and scramble for funding. Still, films deal with the more romantic side of things — and there’s lots of romance that could be extrapolated from (and inserted into) the activites of a cryptozoologist. Think Bigfoot, prehistoric survivors, Yetis, the Mothman, dragons, Big Black Cats and lake monsters of all kinds, including the most famous cryptoid — Nessie.
Then there’s the similar Canadian lake monster, Ogopogo.
The Beast of Bottomless Lake (Canada-2008; dir. Craig March) is a film about academic cryptozoologists hunting for evidence of Ogopogo.
Synopsis:
Dr Paul Moran, Cryptozoologist at the University of British Columbia, has very little left to lose. His program is losing its funding, and his tenure is about to be denied. In a last-ditch effort to save his career, Moran heads to Kelowna, a city on the shore of Lake Okanagan that has put up a $2 million bounty for proof positive that the legendary Okanagan Lake serpent, the Ogopogo, exists. Moran’s mis-matched team includes: his research assistant, Sondra Blackburn; Professor of Conspiracy theory, Dr Leslie Morgenstern; Neville Bernard Vincent St. John Honey III, a technician on loan from the Royal Commission on the Loch Ness Monster; and physicist with a secret, Stewart Murphy. Tagging along for the ride is film-student Ernie McKellar and his cameraman, documenting the teams’ not-so-glorious moments.
The trip is a disaster — denied access to a luxury resort, they end up in Paul’s loopy parent’s basement, lose an expensive prototype high-tech device on the first day, share their research vehicle with a wedding party, and get arrested. With every turn, they get further from their goal, and closer to a breakdown. The team is ripped apart.
Broken and defeated, Paul has one last, desperate chance. Will he be able to defeat the Beast within?
Not much indication here of the actual role that the monster will play, but I confess I like the dramatically realistic tone of this outline.
Provost Pictures Ltd. was founded by Keith Provost, Kennedy Goodkey and Craig March. Its aims are described thus: “Provost Pictures Ltd. is in the business of creating commercially viable digital media to an international market. By focusing on inherently Canadian stories with a broad appeal and a strong sense of artistic integrity will create a body of work that is both unique and unified. Provost Pictures challenge themselves to make excellent quality work, and to ‘let’ it be Canadian.”
Thomas R. Dickens and Mesozoic Inc. Special Visual Effects studio are in various stages in the production of two rather interesting-looking scifi monster flicks. From information currently available, they fit perfectly with all those gigantic shapes lurking around in the undead backbrain.
The first is Alien Grey: Zone-X (US-2009; dir. Thomas R. Dickens):
Unsurprisingly it involves a secret — and abandoned — Government research area that is infested not only with Alien Greys, but the assorted products of their mysterious experiments — including a giant cyborg spider, a carnivorous dinosaur, and winged space monster. In this hell-hole wanders a group of 20-somethings and a maniac who is stalking them. The intruders themselves become the subjects of alien experimentation and even acquire super-powers, which, of course, they turn on each other. Can they survive?
I tried to get a screenshot of the flying critter from the YouTube trailer for the film, but the resolution was poor and this is the best I could manage:
and
Anyway, see for yourself. They look better in action:
Dickens is the writer and director of Alien Grey: Zone-X, but his previous SFX credits are impressive. He has worked in various visual and special effects capacities on such films as Anaconda, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, What Lies Beneath, Hollow Man, Spider-Man, the Scooby-Doo movies, the US Pulse (I’ll forgive him that) and Looney Tunes: Back in Action. So he’s got SFX cred.
The second Dickens/Mesozoic Inc. film, now in pre-production, is called Vortex:
Not much information on this one yet, but the poster suggests another giant monster…
The upcoming horror comedy Bollywood Zombie (Canada-[?]; dir. Maninder Chana) has been getting a fair amount of scorn from those websites that have report on it.
But I reckon it’s about time we had singing zombies in saries! Bollywood is the biggest movie industry in the world, and though this flick isn’t genuine Bollywood, I’m sure those responsible (Toronto-based movie house Cinesavvy) will be intent on giving it the colourful and lively appearance of the archetypal Bollywood film that we in the West have flickering away in our backbrains — and that seems pretty cool to me.
Synopsis:
What seems a match made in heaven goes terribly awry when a wicked Aunt tries to sabotage her niece’s wedding day. Adding a secret potion to the buffet, she inadvertently turns the bride and her guests into zombies. Now the bride’s sister, the groom, his best man and the shady Chef have to figure out a way to save the bride before she becomes a permanent member of the living dead.
So I say, bring on the singing, dancing undead! It’s bound to be more energetic than 50% of the zombie comedies out there.
Coming Soon (Thailand-2008; dir. Sophon Sakdaphisit)
Synopsis:
What kind of scenes in a horror film scares you the most? When a ghost appears totally unexpectedly? When the main character does not see the ghost sneaking up behind him? When at the very end you find out that the main character was actually a ghost all along? But none of this compares to the feeling of arriving home alone and suddenly being stuck by a feeling of dejá vu that you are reenacting the very same scenes in the horror movie you just saw! This movie will scare you from the second you step inside the movie theatre. It will get you thinking if Something or Someone might be waiting for you to let your guard down. The horror movie that you just saw is about to happen to you in real life! Coming Soon.
The film is being directed by Sophon Sakdaphisit, who wrote Shutter, and opens in Thailand on 30 October.
The trailer looks excellent, though there are no subtitles — so bear with it.
We just noticed that there seems to be a trailer for the short robot-invasion film Attackazoids available. It includes some cool scenes, such as this one:
