It’s a Scott Derrickson morning at Yell! Magazine, because, along with co-writing and directing Deliver Us From Evil, the guy that brought us Sinister, and will eventually bring us a film version of the Marvel Comics character Doctor Strange, is going to be writing a big-screen adaptation of the classic TV series, The Outer Limits. Scott Derrickson is controlling transmission.

They’ll be adapting an episode originally written by Harlan Ellison, called “Demon with a Glass Hand.” The story is about a man with no memory of the past 10 days of his life, who now has his left hand replaced with a robotic computer hand. He’s also being hunted by aliens and has to deal with time travel, and if you’re thinking that it all sounds a little crazy, don’t be worried — it’s a story by Harlan Ellison. No one does “seemingly impenetrably crazy” better than Ellison.

The script is being co-written by C. Robert Cargill, who co-wrote Sinister with Derrickson. Derrickson has said that he prefers The Outer Limits to The Twilight Zone, which is an opinion that I can get behind. The Outer Limits is the UFC to The Twilight Zone’s WWE. Now, all we need is Anthony Hopkins showing up in the opening of 2017’s Alfred Hitchcock Presents movie, and we’ll be set.

More than two months remain in American Horror Story: Coven on FX before Season 3 ends in January, and the anthology horror show just wrapped up Episode 7, “The Dead,” last Wednesday. Next up is “The Sacred Taking,” penned by Ryan Murphy and directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon.

So far the season has received critical acclaim, but regardless of the show’s continuing success, we just learned that the show’s perennial attraction, Jessica Lange, who currently plays Supreme Witch Fiona, will officially step away from American Horror Story after four years. Lange and co-creator Ryan Murphy have confirmed that her last appearance will be in Season 4.

Lange also revealed why she’s leaving the show, and shows no interests in coming back in the future:

It ends up being a lot of time during the year being committed to something… I haven’t done that for a long time. It’s like doing a stage play between the rehearsal and the run. This is a six-month commitment every year. That will be four years in a row. I want to have more time to myself I guess. Once it’s over and I have a full year ahead of me with nothing to do, who knows? It might not have been the best decision. But I think four years doing something is a sufficient amount of time.

American Horror Story: Coven returns on Wednesday, December 4th, at 10 p.m. on FX.

Director, editor and screenwriter Neil Marshall stepped into the horror scene when he directed the cult hit Dog Soldiers in 2002, but his name truly resonated with fans after The Descent became his benchmark. He later directed other great films such as Doomsday and most recent Centurion, a story based on the legend of the massacre of the Ninth Legion in Caledonia in the early second century AD. Centurion was epic because it depicted extreme war violence with swords and daggers, much like Braveheart did, but more graphic in my opinion. I’ve enjoyed all of Marshall’s films so far, I’m sure you can tell, and I’m already thrilled about his upcoming movie.

According to Deadline, Marshall is on board to pen and direct a remake of the 2010 Norwegian dark fantasy film, Trollhunter. Remember it? You know that mock documentary about a group of university college students on the hunt to discover trolls? I sure as hell remember it, especially when Hans comes running back screaming “Troll!” It’s one of my favorite parts in the film and hope to see it again in the remake. Production for the new film is expected to start as early as next year with a budget of $25 million.

No word yet on casting news, but maybe Marshall will bring back Michael Fassbender in the film, which I’m hoping for. We’ll make sure to keep you updated on the Hollywood remake of Trollhunter in the near future.

Stay tuned!

Clive Barker’s Nightbreed: The Cabal Cut (2012) Review

“It’s true. God’s an Astronaut, Oz is over the rainbow, and Midian is where the monsters live.”

Despite his place among the greatest living “Masters of Horror,” Clive Barker has still only directed three movies. Sure, fans like to lump in his producing projects like Books of Blood, Midnight Meat Train, the first two Candyman flicks, and three Hellraiser sequels among his major contributions to genre cinema, but these aren’t really Clive Barker films. No, the maestro’s films push the limits of cinema in ways directors like Bernard Rose, Anthony Hickox, Tony Randel, and Ryuhei Kitamura could never manage. This isn’t a slight to these esteemed directors, but rather a compliment to Barker’s uniquely visionary style. His films are sexual, carnal, twisted, and hellacious works that invert traditional genre conventions in ways that make them impossible to duplicate without the man’s total creative control.

Think about it. Hellraiser is a Faustian domestic drama about a box that opens a doorway into hell, one dominated by S&M demon monks who intermingle pain and pleasure as they tear their victims’ souls apart. Lord of Illusions is a hard-boiled film noir about a paranormal detective investigating a Vegas magician whose parlor tricks may be rooted in a darker sorcery — one that could hold the key to a hell on earth. Nightbreed chronicles the struggle between a serial killing psychiatrist and his patient, an undead member of a society of monsters that live in a city beneath a Canadian graveyard.

Somehow, these what-the-fuck scripts were financed, produced, and distributed to theaters around the globe. Not only that, one of them, Hellraiser, evolved into a highly successful film series that continues to clutter video stores and streaming services to this day. So why hasn’t Barker continued directing these thoroughly mind-fucking, fantastical, and imaginative exercises in celluloid?

Well, to begin with, he’s more of a renaissance man than he is a straight filmmaker. He has dabbled consistently in everything from action figures to video games, but most often he tends to make his home in novels and paintings. In these mediums, he is unshackled from budgetary constraints, studio influence, compromises and concessions that are common to the filmmaking process. As evidenced in everything from his Books of Blood series to Abarat and beyond, Barker builds universes of his own accord, populated by the horrors and delights of a seemingly limitless imagination. He supplements his written works by bringing his creations to life in full vivid color, conjured by oil paints on a large canvas. With this in mind, ask yourself: If you could stand on your own financially, critically, and artistically in full control of your art and writing, would you really feel like going back to a medium as unpredictable and unwieldy as film?

Besides its cousin, television and video games, film is the only form of storytelling that can start on a blank page by one author, be re-written by a limitless number of other writers, be shot and re-shot by other directors, and then pieced back together by a completely different team of editors. Yes, it is the most popular form of storytelling the world over, but the creative cost will inevitably take its toll. Barker found this out during the production of Nightbreed (an adaptation of his short novel Cabal), which was produced and financed by Morgan Creek and Fox.

Continue reading the review of Nightbreed: The Cabal Cut on the jump…

Gallowwalkers is expected to be a sure horror crowd pleaser this year, unfortunately we still don’t have the official release date since it hasn’t been announced. Wrekin Hill Entertainment picked up the North American rights for the film back in February of 2012 that stars Wesley Snipes, Tanit Phoenix, Riley Smith, Kevin Howarth and Patrick Bergin.

A mysterious gunman, Aman (Snipes), is the son of a nun who breaks her covenant with God to ensure his survival. This act brings a curse upon Aman – all those that die by his gun will return. Soon, he is hunted by a gang of his undead former victims, led by the vicious Kansa. Aman enlists Fabulos, a new young warrior, to fight by his side.

Ok, so this is my last update for the evening, and I’m now off to watch the Oscars. Not!

Update (June 13, 2012): Yesterday, Clive Barker said on Twitter that Morgan Creek has given him permission to release Nightbreed: The Cabal Cut. OMFG. So we thought we’d bring this review back from the dead.

Clive Barker. The man. The myth. The legend. He’s not a man of subtlety or scant details in his writing, always pushing the envelope in the most fucked up, sordid, nigh-on unimaginable ways possible. There are varying opinions about whether or not his brilliance extends to his directorial career. Nightbreed should have been called Clive Barker’s X-Men. But it’s not mutants that we’re dealing with this time — it’s monsters. Barker has always had a mild fetish for monsters, his most famous undoubtedly being Pinhead from the Hellraiser films. In this movie, however, the monsters aren’t sent from hell to exact horrible vengeance on wrong doers or those just unlucky enough to play with a certain puzzle box; they’re just trying to survive in a hostile land.

The beginning of the film is a little muddled when it comes to the finer details, so here’s the basic layout: Troubled leather-jacket-wearing bad boy Aaron Boone (Craig Sheffer, A River Runs Through It) is plagued with nightmares of strange monsters that live in a long-forgotten land called Midian. His shrink, Doctor Phillip K. Decker (famed film director David Cronenberg), is intrigued with the young man’s notions of this mystical land — but is also a psychopathic serial killer who has no intention of helping Boone. He instead convinces Boone that he has been committing the string of family murders in the area that Decker is actually responsible for, gives him some “lithium” to take and 24 hours to turn himself into the police. Thrown into the mix somewhere is Boone’s wide-eyed, innocent girlfriend Lori (Anne Bobby, Bioshock).

Lo and behold, Boone pops a few of the fake lithiums, wanders down a highway and is hit by a large truck and taken to the hospital. While there, he meets the delusional Narcisse, a man who is waiting for the monsters to take him to Midian. “I’m an actor, see. There’s a face beneath this face,” Narcisse tells Boone right before he pulls a good deal of his face off with a pair of nearby surgical scissors.

Decker arrives with the police during this unfortunate scene and everyone naturally assumes that Boone is responsible for carving part of Narcisse’s face off. Boone escapes from the hospital and Decker’s intimidating yet emotionless glances, unsurprisingly accidentally fleeing to Midian, housed beneath a large cemetery.

Boone encounters Kinski and Peloquin, who proceed to have a lengthy debate as to whether or not Boone is food for the horde. Boone tries to explain that he belongs at Midian because he’s a murderer, and the monsters tell him that Decker has been lying all along. Peloquin drops this gem on us: “Shut the fuck up. You’re meat. … Everything is true. God’s an astronaut, Oz is over the rainbow, and Midian is where the monsters live… and you came to die.”

As Peloquin readies himself for the feast and bites Boone, our tragically hip, early-’90s hero flees the graveyard — or tries to. Decker has led the police to the cemetery. Boone is gunned down in what I’m presuming is an unintentionally hilarious scene of Decker telling the cops that Boone has a gun, the police shooting him what seems to be 10-plus times, and an officer screaming, “Hold your fire!” far, far too late. But Boone’s story isn’t over yet; it’s just waiting to be told.

Peloquin’s bite revives Boone from the dead at the morgue, making him a Nightbreed. He goes back to Midian where he is inducted into the ages-old monster society by Lylesberg (Doug Bradley, Hellraiser). In the meantime, Boone’s scrappy girlfriend starts to poke around for more information about what really happened to her beloved.

When you get right down to it, Nightbreed is a wonderful cult classic that isn’t just about horror and shock, it also focuses on what seems to be one of Barker’s favorite subjects — what sets man apart from monster. Humans hate or envy anything remotely different than them and are prone to destroying it, no matter how peacefully whatever it is that they’ve taken a disliking to previously was. As always, Barker roots for the supernatural team.

The lack of detail in the film is one of its major downfalls. Nightbreed would have been better served as a mini-series. There’s simply too many unanswered questions, too much potential for origin stories and background that isn’t covered here. The movie was supposed to be longer, but the studio cut at least 25 minutes of it before the release.

As far as the special effects, makeup, and blood categories go, they’re all what you’d expect from a film made circa 1990 – although I suspect that there a few of the effects that were even corny in those times. That being said, the unique look of the monsters range from campy to straight up creepy. There’s not a ton of gore in this picture and it’s not very bloody, but it doesn’t detract from the overall package.

The real highlight of the film is director David Cronenberg. He’s not a stranger to the horror genre, having directed flicks like The Brood, Scanners, Dead Zone, and Videodrome. His role as masked serial killer/psychologist Phillip K. Decker is one that could have easily gone right into a total cheese factory, but Cronenberg brings a remarkable amount of eeriness to the table. He’s easily the best part of the film, bringing a certain levity to the movie.

If your life has been lacking in monsters lately, I heartily recommend this film. With Clive Barker writing and directing, it at least has a little something to interest most horror fans. The mythology of the film could have been better expanded upon but in the end, it still makes for a decent film that doesn’t require too much thought process unless you want to actively dissect the philosophy of men and monsters in Nightbreed.

Nightbreed (1990) Trailer

Yell! Rating (x/5 Skulls):

[rating:3]

Year Released:

16 February 1990

Director:

Clive Barker

Cast/Crew

Craig Sheffer, David Cronenberg and Anne Bobby

Genre

Horror, Fantasy, Drama

Official URL:

none

For this review, I will completely cast aside any knowledge that an original Dark Shadows TV series exists. That way, I can look at the film in the most unbiased light possible. And even in that light, Dark Shadows is awful.

Starring Johnny Depp, as Barnabas Collins, and co-starring Johnny Depp looking at things and making facial expressions, Dark Shadows deals with Collins being turned into a vampire, and then being locked away for 200 years, and finally waking up in the groovy 1970s.

If you already think that you’ve guessed every single joke that will be made in this movie, based on that simple description of part of the plot, you are almost certainly right about all of them. Lava lamps! McDonald’s signs! Roads! Whether it’s a cliché of the ’70s or not, Barnabas will almost assuredly take the time to look disgustedly at it.

Johnny Depp steals the movie, if only because he is simply forced to. He’s in nearly every scene, and all the other actors seem to have been thrown haphazardly into the mix.

Dark Shadows also uses the very successful method of having a number of people that you don’t care about (mainly because the movie never takes the time for you to get to know them) and then giving them each a story. This turns the plot into an absolute mess, as nothing ever feels resolved or explained or even remotely satisfying.

Watching Dark Shadows is the equivalent of going to a restaurant and, based on things you’ve heard eavesdropping, attempting to piece together everyone’s history. It’s as if Seth Grahame-Smith wrote the screenplay, and then threw it in a dryer for editing.

Also in this film is Tim Burton regular, Helena Bonham Carter, who plays Dr. Julia Hoffman, an alcoholic psychiatrist, hired by the Collins family to help the youngest son, David. Hoffman secretly wants the immortal life that Barnabas has and does two things to get it. Secondly, she attempts to use Barnabas’ blood transfusion for herself, in a trick that doesn’t really work, considering how obvious it is.

I said “secondly” first, because the “first off” is much more ridiculous. First off, she butters him up or something, by performing fellatio on Barnabas, after he compliments her once. I’m not joking. He says some passive excuse of calling someone pretty and she, in less than 30 seconds, decides to, and starts to blow him. I can understand this logic though. It’s things like this that force every bar I go to to install condom vendors. Barnabas ends up killing Hoffman by drinking her blood, simply because he’s a vampire and vampires, when pissed off, can do that shit.

Dark Shadows treats two of the three “romantic” plot lines like this. (Yes, the aforementioned fellatio is romantic to me. Sorry, first date.) The second of these romantic plot lines deals with Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green), the angry blonde who turned Barnabas into a vampire and locked him away for two centuries in the first place.

The Collins family has always made its money off the fishing industry, and, to further her vendetta against Barnabas for not wanting to lay her in the 1700s, Angelique has also started a very successful fishing business, right next to the Collins’ one.

At one point, even while he is also taking the time to reconnect with someone whom he considers to be the embodiment of a former love, Barnabas decides to consent to having rolling wall sex with Angelique, while “You’re the First, the Last, My Everything” by Barry White plays. They destroy tables, mirrors, and desks in their attempts to prove that, while love is temporary, lust is eternal, and the comedy of them smashing everything in the damn room gets dull into the fifth second.

Discover the third romantic plot line and the verdict on Dark Shadows after the jump…

Yell! Rating (x/5 Skulls):

[rating:1]

Year Released:

11 May 2012

Director:

Tim Burton

Cast/Crew

Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jackie Earle Haley, Jonny Lee Miller, Chloë Grace Moretz, Gulliver McGrath, Christopher Lee, and Eva Green

Genre

Fantasy, Horror, Comedy

Official URL:

Dark Shadows Official

“Many, many moons ago, almost too many to count, in a small village deep within the forest, there lived a young girl with hair as red as the setting sun.” It’s not quite “In a galaxy far, far away,” but it’s the opener for 2010′s Red: Werewolf Hunter.

Normally I’m not one for werewolves, but when I saw Felicia Day’s name attached to this one, I decided that I needed to watch it at once. And that’s one of the only reasons to watch this film, believe you me – but we’ll get into that in a second. Let me preface this review by saying that this was a made-for-SyFy movie and I reckon that the actors used sandpapery one-ply toilet paper to supplement more important things like the CGI budget. But this is still a movie that sets the made-for-SyFy movie bar a little higher than usual. Then again, our first tip probably should have been the fact that it wasn’t called Sexy Wolf Hunter and MegaCroc Vs. The Lycans.

Felicia Day plays the descendant of Little Red Riding Hood, and she’s given stylish red boots in place of an actual hood. The whole werewolf hunter occupation is a family affair, and every firstborn daughter in a generation is honorarily called Red. Virginia “Red” Sullivan is bringing her workaholic fiance Nathan (Kavan Smith, TV’s Eureka) home for the first time to meet her family, which includes her wizened grandmother (Rosemary Dunsmore, Orphan), stereotypical hard-ass/jerk-ass cop and older brother Marcus (Greg Bryk, A History of Violence), and wise-cracking younger brother Jake (David Reale, TV’s Skins). All the characters are astoundingly flat; you can’t really get absorbed in the story because you can tell that these were people with bills to pay, rather than actors who were truly honing their craft and committed to bringing you the best werewolf ass-kickin’ experience that cable has to offer.

They're hunting werewolves and not hoping the Ex-Lax kicks in soon, really.

The movie would probably have been better off had the plot been a solid humorous “fiance goes home to meet the folks” story. But oh no, nothing can ever be so simple. A man is immediately mauled by a werewolf despite the fact that the full moon isn’t expected for a while, which leaves the werewolf hunters on edge and Nathan asking the usual, “What is going on here?” type of questions.

The Sullivan family is a little guarded about their background and we come to learn that there’s a nearby pack of werewolves that the Sullivans have a shaky truce with. This peace is being tested by a werewolf named Gabriel (Stephen McHattie, Immortals) who has learned to shape shift, no matter what time of the month it is. After the big reveal to Nathan about werewolves and hunters, he’s in predictable denial and decides to venture off in the forest alone. What you expect to happen, happens, and Nathan is turned into a werewolf. And only then does Red: Werewolf Hunter become personal, but not quite personal enough for the cast to be enthused about acting out this horror/romance romp that has no real heart.

Felicia Day, if you ever read this, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that you took this part, and I’m sorry that I’m being such a bitch in this review, but we both know it’s true, just like that Milli Vanilli song: “Girl, you know this shit is true.” I wish I could say that Ms. Day is the best part of Red: Werewolf Hunter, but Stephen McHattie steals the show as Gabriel, the vaguely noir-looking werewolf villain. He channels Lance Henriksen splendidly and does the best he can with the material, which is a little more than I can say for the rest of the cast.

Alright, alright, Felicia Day isn’t that bad in this role. As any of you familiar with her work will know, she’s very good at vulnerable, and she pulls it off here, but ultimately, her slightly less naive than normal portrayal of Red isn’t enough to make you want to sit through the whole movie. Red and Nathan have no real chemistry together and you almost kind of wish that one of them would die from the very start so you could be spared the inevitable romantic subplot that fuels this SyFy stillbirth.

The CGI effects that I mentioned earlier are cheap even by SyFy standards. The lack of actual action in the action sequences leaves more than something to be desired. It seems like we’re treated to a lot of scenes of the characters “gearing up” before a fight rather than putting forth any actual effort into the downfall of any werewolves. There’s a lot of rehashing of the werewolf mythos and family dynamic that comes into play, but it’s not enough to save this sinking ship from going the way of the Titanic. (Hell, Titanic With Werewolves sounds like a better movie than this.)

All that intent staring isn't going to help them find plot development…

The Verdict: [rating:2]

Red: Werewolf Hunter is a tough review for me, as I really wanted to like this movie. It would have been far better as the premise for a TV show – there’s a lot of good elements here that are handled in a rushed, forced manner. With the right cast, this would have made a great pilot. It’s one of those movies best viewed on a Saturday afternoon when you have nothing to do but recover from Friday night with a few more 40s and your funniest homeboys – because oh Lord, you’re going to want a running commentary for this.

For my closing thought: Felicia Day is pretty. That is all.

Yell! Rating (x/5 Skulls):

[rating:2]

Year Released:

30 October 2010

Director:

Sheldon Wilson

Cast/Crew

Felicia Day, Kavan Smith, Greg Bryk, Rosemary Dunsmore, David Reale, Carlyn Burchell, Argiris Karras, Victoria Robertson, and Stephen McHattie

Genre

Fantasy, Horror

Official URL:

none

A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors is, by far, the best sequel in the Nightmare franchise. Some fans may claim that 1994’s New Nightmare is better, and I must admit, it is a “deeper” film. But as a piece of entertainment, that movie could be used to euthanize dogs, with the credits playing to lull hysterical former pet-owners into slumber. It’s about as boring as watching a child learn to divide, and though it might have more thematic depth, it can’t stand up to Dream Warriors. Because Dream Warriors has “kickass” on its side, and when the chips are down, “kickass” beats “film school terms” every time.

Dream Warriors concerns a mental hospital full of teens, all on suicide watch. Apparently a few kids have killed themselves and people are, understandably, freaking out. Among the teens in the hospital are Kristen (Patricia Arquette), the main protagonist, Roland, the mute Joey, Jennifer, and Phillip. The latter two, Jennifer and Phillip, will be expanded upon later. These teens all have recurring nightmares involving the same man, revealed to be Freddy Krueger. Heather Langenkamp returns to the series as Nancy Thompson, now a hot-shot grad student studying psychology. Also returning to the series is John Saxon, as Nancy’s father, Donald. In the opening credits they list John Saxon as a “Special Appearance.”

Let me get something straight – John Saxon, whenever he appears in a film, is a special appearance. Other than the Nightmare series, John “Fuck Yeah” Saxon is best known for his role in Enter The Dragon, which cemented him as certifiably awesome in nearly every regard. Though John “Let’s Rock This Mutha” Saxon’s time in this film is limited, he does get to reenact Jason And The Argonauts and fights a sweet Freddy skeleton in a junk yard. I’m surprised that Frank Darabont, one of the writers of the film, still had enough fingers to type The Shawshank Redemption after his computer almost certainly exploded when he tried to type up that sequence.

Also in the film is fellow “Damn dude, he’s the man” Laurence Fishburne, and if you’re like me, you spend some of the film hoping that the whole Freddy plot gets dropped and that John “Your Wife Was Once Yours, But Now She Is Mine” Saxon and Fishburne will karate fight for the fate of the galaxy. Also, Saxon dies in this film, which proves that it’s a fantasy feature. Forget all the dream world antics. When John “Let’s Boogie, Satan” Saxon dies, you know that it’s nowhere near being a documentary.

Read the verdict after the jump…

Yell! Rating (x/5 Skulls):

[rating:4.5]

Year Released:

27 February 1987

Director:

Chuck Russell

Cast/Crew

Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund, Patricia Arquette, Jennifer Rubin, Bradley Gregg, Ira Heiden, Laurence Fishburne, John Saxon, and Craig Wasson

Genre

Horror, Fantasy, Thriller

Official URL:

none

As for the launch party, expect Charles Band with celebrity guests to be there, as well as a fully stocked store of movies, toys, and other merchandise from the Full Moon line. So what are you waiting for? Follow this link to make an RSVP.

Location:

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, 7:00 p.m. PT/10:00 p.m. ET
Meltdown Comics, 7518 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood
RSVP Here! Only names on the list +1 guest may attend

Charles Band - Full Moon Horror (fullmoonhorror.com)