More Zombies

Posted on Sunday, July 20, 2008 by Robert Hood

Here are some newly released trailers for more entries in the apocalyptically inclined living dead zeitgeist fandango that has overtaken post-millennial independent (and mainstream) cinema:

Within the Woods (UK-2008; dir. Luke Massey)

The story takes place over 24 hours and begins with a wild animal smuggler bringing in a rare bird from the Far East and meeting with his contact on the outskirts of the forest. The bird is infected with a mutated strain of Avian Influenza H5N1 and passes on the disease when it attacks him. Later on the same day two groups of young adults (in separate story arcs) head into an isolated area of woodlands in the Warwickshire countryside. They encounter the first of the infected victims, who die and come back from the dead as ravenous zombies., and a life-or-death struggle begins. The title pays homage to a short film by Sam Raimi — Within the Woods (1978) — that later became his first Evil Dead movie.

 

Dead Threat (US-2008; dir. John Woginrich)

On the eve of his departure for college, Sam spends the day with his life-long best friend Jeff for the last time for a while. During the course of the day, however, the dead start to roam the earth forcing Sam and Jeff into hiding. Now with the [zombie] apocalypse brewing outdoors, their friendship will be confronted and put to the ultimate test. (horror-movies.ca)

 

Cottonmouth (US-2008; short; dir. Christopher P. Garetano)

Four female victims of toxic shock syndrome return from the dead for revenge. This one premieres online for Halloween. Check the website when the time comes.

COTTONMOUTH: trailer

 

2 (US-2007; dir. Andy Davis)

A zombie survivalist film that centers around two survivors in a dying world.

 

Necroville (US-2007; dir. Richard Griffin and Billy Garberina)

The story concerns the exploits of two long time friends, Jack and Alex, who lose their jobs at a mom and pop video store after trashing the establishment in a zombie attack. Without much ambition guiding either one of them, they fall into employment at the local extermination company, Zom-B-Gone. Their “mundane” adventures slaying legions of the hungry undead, nosferatu and lycanthropes never really prepare them for the real horror: Jack’s miserable gold digging girlfreind, Penny.

Thanks to Kaiju Search-Robot Avery for spreading the word.

Posted in Apocalypse, Film, Trailers, Zombies | Leave a comment

Sentient Vacuum Cleaners Attack!

Posted on Saturday, July 19, 2008 by Robert Hood

Oversexed Rugsuckers From Mars (US-1989; dir. Michael Paul Girard)

I don’t have a lot to say about this, except… well, it was the ’80s…

Overseaxed Rugsuckers from Mars poster

Tiny Martians use Earth as a laboratory to try out new life forms. They return after ten million years only to find that the human experiment is a complete failure. They decide to mate a human with a vacuum cleaner to create a species that will be better at cleaning up after itself. But a programming error by a drunken Martian sends the oversexed cleaner on a wild rampage of rape, murder and overall bad manners.

If you’re wondering how on earth you missed it, and are filled with dismay at the thought that you may never now get the chance to experience the goodness, fear not! It is being released on DVD by … no, not Troma, but Lionsgate in October.

Posted in Film, It's True! Really!, Robots | Leave a comment

A Giant Egg

Posted on Saturday, July 19, 2008 by Robert Hood

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
Posted in Animation, Giant Monsters, Teaser | Leave a comment

New South Korean Giants

Posted on Saturday, July 19, 2008 by Robert Hood

With the upsurge in international awareness of Asian genre films, collaboration has become even more desirable and will hopefully inject some originality into such subgenres as the B-schlock “rampaging giant monster” film.

Polygon Entertainment (a film production company based in Marin County, California) seems to have been set up by founders Hans H. Uhlig and Doo Jin Kim specifically to work with South Korean film companies in producing feature films for an international market.

Their July press release lists three films of interest. The first — and the one closest to completion — is Chaw. Directed by South Korean filmmaker Jeong-won Shin (who has made a couple of ghost movies, Sisily 2km and To Catch a Virgin Ghost*), Chaw is described as “an action/adventure thriller”.

* Note: Rob Keith Akin of SciFi Japan has informed via Avery that Sisily 2 km and To Catch A Virgin Ghost are the same film. Apparently Sisily 2km was marketed outside of Korea as To Catch A Virgin Ghost.

Produced by Soo Jack Films and starring Tae-woong Eom and Yu-mi Jeong, Chaw is the story of a small village being terrorized by a man-eating, mutant boar.

There seems to be a “giant mutant boar” meme doing the rounds at the moment, what with Hogzilla (US-2007; dir. Diane Jacques), The Legend of Hogzilla (US-2008; dir. Rick Trimm), Pig Hunt (US-2008; dir. James Isaac) and Cemetery Gates (US-2006; dir. Roy Knyrim) [OK, that last one’s a mutant Tasmanian Devil, but it’s close enough… as a mutation it’s in the same ball-park, surely?]. Razorback (Australia-1984; dir. Russell Mulcahy) has a lot to answer for.

So far this is the only image from the film that has surfaced on the net:

Chaw image 1

You can bet that, as in Pig Hunt, dismemberment and gore will play a significant role in proceedings!

Principal photography has apparently wrapped on the film, which is due to appear in 2009. The press release continues:

Hans Uhlig, Polygon’s founder and CEO, explains, “Although we were able to use a practical, fullscale model of the creature for some of the effects shots, the majority of these shots required computer-generated imagery. We assembled our own team of highly skilled and experienced artists who created a fully CG creature, and their work is truly amazing. Be prepared to see some really incredible, and frightening visual effects!”

Uhlig, who also served as 2nd Unit Director, added, “As the majority of the film takes place in a rural setting, we were able to shoot most of the principal photography right here in northern California.”

Soo Jack recently wrapped the remainder of the principal photography requiring Korean locations. Director Shin will soon be returning to California to edit the film at Polygon’s facility in San Rafael. “We have brand new, state-of-the-art high definition editing system,” said Uhlig, “where we will be ingesting, editing, color-correcting, and outputting the digital intermediate of the entire film. The system also allows us to export (and import) our effects shots requiring the CG elements.”

Polygon is also working with Korean company Doosaboo Films on two other SFX-heavy films:

Haeundae (directed by Doosaboo head Yoon Je-Gyun and starring Ha Ji-won and Seol Kyeong-gu), which is described as “South Korea’s first big-budget disaster movie”, centering on a tsunami that wipes out South Korea’s most famous beach. It is currently in pre-production.

Also in pre-production is the intriguing Sector 7, “a science fiction action/adventure blockbuster about the crew of an oil rig battling deep sea monsters.” This one will be shot in the United States with a Korean director and cast, and an American crew — as yet unnamed.

According to the press release Polygon will be overseeing the special effects on Haeundae, but will be providing complete production and special effects services on Sector 7.

Adds Uhlig, “We are very excited about our partnership with Doosaboo. Both of these films are extraordinary opportunities for spectacular visual effects.”

Posted in Film, Giant Monsters, News | 3 Comments

New: Showdown of the Godz

Posted on Friday, July 18, 2008 by Robert Hood

Yes, Virginia, there is a Godzilla.

As we (meaning those likely to visit the Backbrain on a regular basis) know, fans can be obsessive. Kaiju fans aren’t much different from the rest of fandom, except in the fact that their houses become museums of kaiju art — models of Godzilla, Mothra, Gamera, King Ghidorah, Ultraman … all those strange gigantic critters that Japanese filmmakers like to put on the screen and toymakers like to turn into sculptures and figurines.

Combine that with the combative nature of daikaiju eiga plotlines (Godzilla vs Mothra, Godzilla vs the Smog Monster, Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla etc.), and perhaps, then, it’s not surprising that someone would want to translate the “versus” that exists between monsters into a face-off between obsessive fans.

The result is a short (17 minute) film called Showdown of the Godz.

Showdown of the Godz (US-2008; dir. Julien Calderbank)

Showdown of the Godz poster

Jesse (David Gasman) is the world’s biggest Japanese monster movie fan. Trapped in a stultifying insurance job and a deteriorating marriage, the only bright spot in his life is his obsession with a certain Japanese monster, which he shares with his adorable 7-year-old daughter Cassie (Ayla Guttman.) Jesse’s power attorney wife Mary (Alixx Schottland) drags them into counseling, where Jesse reluctantly promises he will forgo all things monstrous for one week to focus on the family.

But when Jesse sees a rare monster toy on display at NYC’s Monster Sushi, he challenges proprietor Ono (George Takei) to a Japanese monster trivia contest. If Jesse wins, he gets the coveted toy. If he loses, he owes Ono $1,000. Ono accepts on one condition: Jesse must face “a representative from Monster Sushi”—legendary Japanese monster movie archivist Matsuhisa Jin. Jesse goes into geek overdrive preparing for the showdown. But on the eve of the event, Mary leaves him. Devastated, Jesse is a no-show. But wise Ono has one last surprise up his sleeve that may just pull the family back together…

Starring George Takei of Star Trek fame, David Gasman and Alixx Schottland, the film sounds like a real hoot.

George Takei in Showdown of the Godz

Note: When asked by George Takei “What’s so interesting about Godzilla?”, executive producer and kaiju fanboy Robert Troch apparently answered:

“My love of Japanese monster epics started as childish escapism and empowerment — something bigger than life, fun and powerful that I could identify with. Later, I grew to appreciate the other side of it — the craftsmanship, the behind the scenes stuff and yes, the art involved in creating rampaging giant beasts.”

It is, of course, a good question and one I have attempted to answer for myself in different ways many times over. So what’s your excuse?

For more on the film, its makers and where you can see it, check out the SciFi Japan website.

Posted in Daikaiju, Film, Giant Monsters, Godzilla, Posters, Weird stuff | 3 Comments

The Hotel Room

Posted on Friday, July 18, 2008 by Robert Hood

The story goes that Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy were keen to make a miniseries of it, but cost and backroom politics seem to have killed that. We’re talking about Stephen King and Peter Straub’s fantasy The Talisman here, the epic scope of which is apparently hindering the book’s translation to cinema.

But the prospect that it might get made inspired director Matthieu Ratthi to make a demo scene, hoping to encourage the Powers That Be to consider him for the job of directing a Talisman movie, should such a beast ever be unleashed. The result is called “The Hotel Room”, and in my opinion it works remarkably effectively as a stand-alone piece of cinematic “flash fiction”.

Posted in Archival, Film, Horror, Where's the Film? | Leave a comment

Terminator: Salvation Trailer

Posted on Thursday, July 17, 2008 by Robert Hood

Now this looks more like the film that the previous Terminator sequel should have been. And it’s got Christian Bale in it as John Connor. That has to make it a serious SF movie, right?

Posted in Film, Trailers | 4 Comments

New: Tales From the Dead

Posted on Wednesday, July 16, 2008 by Robert Hood

Horror-based anthology films don’t receive particularly favourable PR, though without a doubt there are several from earlier times that may be considered classics. Dead of Night (1945) is one such — a beautifully made, much-discussed supernatural portmanteau film that works both as individual stories and as a unified whole. The UK production studio Amicus (which set itself up in opposition to the highly successful Hammer Studios in the 1960s and ’70s) differentiated itself by actually concentrating on anthology films. Its achievements in this area were patchy, but it did give us such minor classics as Dr Terror’s House of Horrors (1965), The House That Dripped Blood (1971), Tales From the Crypt (1972), and …And Now the Screaming Starts! (1973), to name a few.

These days, despite the arrival of one of the best and most coherent anthology films ever — Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994) — examples of the anthology approach in the horror genre have been less-than-steller. So it’s rather heartening to see someone taking onboard the popular J-Horror aesthetic and grafting it into the anthology film á la Twilight Zone.

Tales from the Dead poster

Tales from the Dead (US-2008; dir. Jason Cuadrado) is also different because, though a US production filmed entirely in Los Angeles, it has a Japanese cast and is in the Japanese language. Director Cuadrado commented to Fangoria, “I was inspired by the wave of horror cinema that has been coming out of Asia over the last few years ..” He also refers to The Twilight Zone when discussing his film’s general atmospheric approach, rather than the in-your-face gore of more recent US horror films.

It features four stories that look at “… the quiet terror lurking inside the human soul, showing us that evil does not end when life departs. These original stories show us that life, and the inescapable agonies of the living, carry on into the next … well, life. Deception is as unavoidable as death, and so is payback….

Under the supervision of young Tamika, a medium who has heard enough ghost confessions to understand the venom and malice of human souls, we meet a range of characters whose ails begin in life and carry on in death.

  • A family, newly reunited with their estranged son, faces the remnants of the bad marriage, and evil intentions, of their home’s previous owners.
  • An old accountant, trying to set his “books” straight after a life of working for a criminal gang, takes his revenge on the man who wouldn’t let him.
  • A businessman, hungering for success and material opulence, finds that time is the only truly scarce resource – and the only one genuinely valuable.
  • Lastly, a surprise ending for Shoko, a lady of leisure, who has a deadly definition of divorce, and meets young Tamika on the wrong dark and foggy road.

Tales 1

Tales 2

Cuadrado’s approach sounds as though it may very well make for an innovative and fascinating genre experience, though it has limited the film’s appeal to US distributors and festival organisers, who see it as “not gory enough, not American enough or not Japanese enough … distributors often don’t know what to do with something this experimental.” However, Tales From the Dead is about to receive its premiere screening — on 25 July at the 2008 New York International Latino Film Festival.

Let’s hope this leads to much wider distribution. I for one am rather keen to see it.



Sources:

Posted in Film, Ghosts, News, Posters, Trailers | 1 Comment

Update: Outlander

Posted on Wednesday, July 16, 2008 by Robert Hood

Another trailer for the vikings vs alien monster movie Outlander (US-2008; dir. Howard McCain) has just surfaced. I like it even more than the previous! It emphasises the sci-fi aspects of the storyline, which just makes the whole project seem fractionally more exciting.

I’ve read a few comments by folk who find the concept of an alien hunting an alien monster/predator during the time of the Vikings too outré to work easily. But I do not understand that attitude at all. From my way of thinking, the concept offers a rich vein of visual and narrative possibility for the filmmakers to mine — and, given decent production values (which Outlander seems to have), I don’t know how this film could fail to be interesting at the very least. It’s one of those ideas that’s so obvious you wonder why it hasn’t been done before!

Posted in Film, Giant Monsters, Trailers | 2 Comments

Another One Bites the Dust

Posted on Tuesday, July 15, 2008 by Robert Hood

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!”

KK bites the dust

Posted in Comics, Daikaiju, Giant Monsters, Teaser | 1 Comment