Fall Horror DVD-Palooza!
There’s a frightening number of fall horror DVDs coming out the closer we get to Halloween. I’ve compiled a sampling in no particular order of just some of the many, many new releases coming soon to a DVD shelf near you in September and October.
Genius Entertainment will release Never Cry Werewolf (review) on September 16th. Originally premiering on the Sci-Fi Channel back in May, Nina Dobrev (“Degrassi: The Next Generation”) stars as a young woman who requires the help of a slightly inept TV hunting show host Kevin Sorbo (“Hercules: The Legendary Journeys”) in dealing with the werewolf who just moved in next door. To say that the film is derivative of Fright Night would be an understatement. Fortunately, it’s actually not all that bad. You can find out more by reading my review, the one I accidentally submitted the uncorrected version of with all manner of typos and what not that nobody bothered to alert me to for quite some time.
Starz/Anchor Bay will give you some Breathing Room on September 23rd. Any similarities between Breathing Room and Saw are purely intentional; just read the synopsis below.
Thrown naked into a desolate room with thirteen strangers, Tonya discovers that she is the final contestant in a deadly game. Restrained by lethal electronic collars, the players must utilize hints and tools from a box marked “pieces” to find both an exit and the reason for their abduction. One by one the players are eliminated. With each dead body comes another clue, which they use to discover that one of them is the killer. The question is…which one?
More info on Breathing Room and a trailer are available at the film’s official website.
Lionsgate is going to give horror fans quite a bit to chew on in September. Whether or not horror fans will like what they’re serving remains to be seen.
Up first on September 2nd will be The Morgue starring Heather Donahue (Blair Witch Project) and longtime character actor Bill Cobbs (credits too numerous to list).
Trapped between the physical world and the afterlife, between dusk and dawn, six strangers are brought together through a series of unusual events. Trapped in a morgue, their disappearance goes mysteriously unnoticed by others. In a futile attempt for survival, they latch on to each other in hopes of making it through the night. The Morgue is an intense psychological thriller with a surprise and shocking twist. More is happening at the morgue than meets the eye.
On the same day Lionsgate will once again flip the bird to the very art of cinema and all who watch it by continuing to enable Ulli Lommel – I don’t even call him a hack anymore since I can name some genuine hack filmmakers that still put out better crap than this guy – with the release of his latest real-life serial killer inspired opus, Son of Sam. From all accounts this is a no-budget fictionalized take on David Berkowitz’s killing spree filmed in that amateurishly arty Ulli Lommel style that we’ve all come to know and hate.
On September 16th Lionsgate will unveil The Legend of Bloody Mary (official site). Why does that artwork give me flashbacks to The Rage: Carrie 2?
Ryan has been plagued with nightmares for a decade since his sister’s abstruse disappearance following a seemingly harmless game of Bloody Mary. After years of sleepless nights and guilt resulting from his inability to make sense of the situation or get her back, he reaches an emotional breaking point. Ryan’s loved ones intervene and entrust Father O’Neal to break the deathly curse of The Legend of Bloody Mary before it takes them too.
You can find more info and a trailer about The Legend of Bloody Mary at its official site.
Following that up on the 23rd will be Copycat – no relation to the Harry Connick Jr. serial killer flick from years ago. There’s something funny to me about a movie called Copycat being the new film from a guy whose last film was Are You Scared, as blatant a Saw copycat as you’ll ever see.
Tormented by the desire to find the murderer who took her mother’s life, journalist Laura Nelson investigates the only clue the killer leaves behind at the scene – his diary pages. References in the blood soaked pages to Richard Ramirez, Jeffrey Dahmer and Ed Gein lead Laura to believe the murderer has been inspired by the most infamous of serial killers. Through the readings she learns more than she ever wanted to know about the motives behind these monsters and how this killer is paralleling his mentors. The closer Laura gets to finding him, the closer he gets to finding her. It’s a thrilling cat and mouse game to the deadly end.
October will be a pretty busy month for Brain Damage Films and their special brand of ultra low budget offerings. Ah, who am I kidding, every month seems to be busy for Brain Damage Films. What have they put out like 10,000 DVDs thus far this year, very, very few of which I’ve ever seen on a DVD store shelf? Mind you I’m only covering the October Brain Damage releases since these sound a bit more interesting to me than what they have in store for September. And for some reason Brain Damage has chosen to release all of these films on the same day: October 7th.
If you’ve ever longed for a Troma-esque motion picture starring the last surviving cast member of Plan 9 From Outer Space, “Maniac Cop” Robert Z’Dar, and scream queen Syn DeVil then Super Hell sounds like the movie you’ve been waiting for.
The atmosphere is in shock as strange new dimensions are opening and the dead are coming to life. Satan is walking the Earth and good people have become murderous filth; playing out their perverse and sinful desires. Follow along with Conrad Brooks (Plan 9 from Outer Space) as his depravity steers him toward the most in sane vampire ever to stalk the screen. Welcome to Super Hell!
Then there’s the one I most assuredly will be checking out, probably the only film Brain Damage has put out all year that I have any genuine interest in: Brett Kelly’s Prey of the Beast. Old fashioned rubbersuit monster movie rarely get made these days and ever more rarely get made well so I’m more than willing to roll the dice and take a chance on this one.
A group of men travel into the woods to get away from it all. A group of sexy, young women travel to the same woods for a weekend of fun in the sun. Unknown to both groups, a vicious, hulking creature awaits them in the forest – a creature with a taste for human flesh. It’s survival of the fittest as Man battles beast and Man is no longer at the top of the food chain!
Next is Return of the Curse. If you think that title sounds sufficiently generic then wait until you read the plot synopsis.
An evil curse has been passed down from generation to generation. The curse causes those infected to lose their sanity which leads to their horrific demise. Follow along on this dark journey as a pair investigates the reasons why their friends and family members are taking their own lives.
Finally, Brain Damage brings us the Australian zombie romp Dead Country, a flick I know the guys at Arrow in the Head have been anticipating.
When a space ship containing hazardous material explodes over a small rural town, a deadly virus is unleashed upon the population, turning them into zombies. Only the alien being responsible for the terrible accident and a small group of survivors can stop the epidemic from spreading. Dead Country is an exploitation, arthouse, horror, action, zombie-filled spoof set in rural Victoria. It is the first authentic, humor filled “video nasty” of the new millennium. Get ready for the greatest old/new horror movie experience you’ve ever had.
No offense to the copy editor who wrote that but shouldn’t we be the judge of that?
Maverick Entertainment’s Creep FX label has a Halloween offering (October 28th to be more exact) in the form of 13 Hours in a Warehouse. Directed by critically acclaimed novelist D?v Kaufman (writer of Lake Desire), the film has apparently won some honors at a few film festivals around the country.
After five guys pull off the perfect heist they end up in an abandoned warehouse waiting for their buyer to show up. But, it isn’t the 13 hour wait that is upsetting; it’s the strange numbers that keep appearing everywhere and the feeling like they are being watched. When they finally figure out that they are not alone, it’s too late to get out alive.
You can learn more about 13 Hours in a Warehouse and view the trailer at the film’s official website.
Sony gets in on the act with the September 30th release of Buried Alive – no relation to the Tobin Bell fright flick from last year or the Vincent Spano disaster flick from the year before that or any other movie titled Buried Alive before that. It’s really just a compilation of installments from an online web series (I’ve never heard of) strung together to form a 65-minute film.
Available for the first time – the digital series as a movie! It begins with a terrifying darkness, the sound of staccato breathing, spurts of weeping, and the horrifying screech of fingernails against metal. Someone is buried alive. Rick, a handsome, 20 year-old, is just one of the victims trapped in a coffin. Illuminated in the darkness by the flame of a cigarette lighter, the details of the scene come into focus as a night-vision camera, embedded in the corner of the coffin, captures his every move. On his left, an ominous warning: SAVE YOUR BREATH. Aiding the group above ground are two sleuths, siblings Melanie and Travis, each with a secret stake tied to the victims’ fates. The duo will piece together information gleaned from found footage and online diaries hidden on the Web, in the ultimate race against time to unravel the mystery and discover the locations of the buried coffins before time runs out.
And last but certainly not least, we’ve got brand spanking new artwork for Vipers, the Genius Entertainment release slithering to DVD on September 23rd that pits Tara Reid against a horde of genetically enhanced vipers on the loose. The website TLA Video has a most interesting synopsis posted on their webpage for this future classic:
“This atrocious entry in the Maneater series disappoints on almost every imaginable level. There’s one brief scene of a topless woman towards the beginning and then nothing. We’ve seen better CGI effects in homemade movies and Tara Reid looks worse than Jenny McCarthy ever did, or at least until recently.”
They go on to list the three reasons for seeing the film being: you’re going for that “so bad it’s worse than bad” thing for your DVD collection, you’re morbidly curious to see how ugly Tara Reid has gotten, and “Um… maybe you worked on it, but weren’t billed high enough to get a free copy?”
I’m sold.
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