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Here is a version of the theory.

[George Romero]

George Romero was a visionary. Less than a week ago he published the poster for Road of the Dead, which would have been (or may yet still be) the seventh film in his legendary Dead series. He's best known for that series, but he also directed ten other films and was involved in numerous others. Still, those numbers pale in comparison to the true impact he's had on the horror genre and pop culture in general: While Romero did not invent the concept of the zombie, he is primarily if not single-handedly responsible for the version of the zombie that has prevailed in pop culture over the past fifty years. Think of a zombie movie, comic, or TV show you like; there is a very good chance that it wouldn't exist if not for George Romero.

George died on Sunday at the age of 77 due to lung cancer. He will be missed.

[David Cronenberg's Venom (Spider-Man franchise)]

I come up with these ideas all the time, but never enough for a serious article. This thread is for posting movies you would have liked to see, why you'd have liked to see it, and responding to others' lists.


David Cronenberg's Venom (Spider-Man franchise) - I can think of nobody I'd like to see dealing with a story about an alien parasite that possesses people, changes their bodies and their personalities, and moves them 1-2 steps toward being a slasher villain. A body horror-focused R-rated Venom would be just the kick in the ass the Spider-Man franchise so definitely needs.


Wes Craven's Carnage (Spider-Man franchise) - When I think of what I'd want to see from a Carnage movie, I think of the blood geyser scene from A Nightmare on Elm Street. Craven's done a variety of horror staples over the years, and I think a movie about slasher villain Cletus Kassidy turned shape-shifting monster would be right up his alley.


Ridley Scott's Planet of the Apes - The well-known film is an enjoyable take on this story, but I think so much more could be done with it. Ridley Scott is well-known for "send a group of spacers on a deep-space trip, they come across unexpected terrors, and mayhem ensues" and would be able to make a film that's both true to the original novel and also completely different from the 1968 version.

This thread is a bit inspired by the new Child's Play movie coming out.  It's inspired me to think about Chucky in a Freddy vs Jason style movie.

The Leprechaun: Chucky and the Leprechaun have very similar personalities and senses of humor.  These two would match each other play for play, and it would be fucking awesome to have Warwick Davis vs Brad Dourif.

Puppet Master: This is pretty obvious.  The spell that created Chucky could easily fit into the Puppet Master universe.  The most frightening thing about this is that it would essentially be Chucky versus a ton of lesser versions of himself.  They could start off as allies, creating a really creepy atmosphere and situation, and then turn it into Chucky versus an army.  This would be excellent.

Chucky versus Frankenstein: This would be stupid, and ridiculous, and senseless, and one of the most entertaining things ever to be Direct to DVD.  Monster/slasher comedy at its best, no dick jokes required.  Of course, it would never get made.

Anybody else have ideas?

[Cozzilla]

Today this was brought to my attention:

This movie is known as Cozzilla, a cross between Director Luigi Cozzi and Godzilla.  It's a badly Turnerized edit of Godzilla, King of the Monsters, spliced in with actual footage of the Hiroshima bombing (which makes this a real life snuff film, but that's another matter) and other movies of the 1950s.

Considering that I just bought the Japanese and American cuts of this film, the fact that there is a 1977 special (ostensibly terrible) cut of the film that was only released in Italian theatres lights a fire under my ass.  I spent two hours this evening trying to find a way to watch this film and all I found was a dozen rare DVD sites that have never heard of it, two closed sites that hosted streams of it, four links to the American 1956 version, and four Youtube videos that were taken down for copyright reasons.  I know DVD-Rs of this are floating around out there somewhere... if anybody has any idea where to find this, I will pay real DVD price for it.

How about you?  Anybody else have any rare DVDs you're looking for?

Don't watch this if you get motion sickness from bad editing.  Sorry De, no zombies for you.

Anybody else watch this?  I'm not a huge Superman fan, so I've got to say my complaints are a bit different from that of other people.  Still, my overall score, 6/10, does not seem to be all that untrendy.

So I hear that M. Night Shyamalan has continued his trend of drawing terrible performances out of good and bad actors alike with After Earth.  I was planning to see this yesterday, but I wasn't walking to the theatre in 87 degrees to see a movie I was hearing bad things about.  Anybody watch this movie?

[Horror Film Club]

I was trying to work a way to do something new here, then it finally hit me that there was absolutely nothing new about it.

So let's bring back the Horror Film Club.

Myself, or another Staff Member, will post a thread once a month (or possibly more often, but never more than weekly) with a horror movie.  If you choose to participate, post a paragraph (more is welcome) and your score of the movie out of 10.  At the end of the month, I'll count up the scores and add the average score to my first post.  You're welcome to post afterward, but I might not be as diligent in keeping up with older threads, so it's always best to get in during the midst of the conversation rather than months later.

Film: Re-Animator (1985)
Availability: Netflix Instant, Amazon $3.99 to rent, $4.15 DVD, $7.99 Blu-Ray
Final Score so far: 7.33/10 (6 votes)


I'm going to start with a film I've been meaning to watch for a while, Re-Animator (1985).  This is based on the 1922 short story series by HP Lovecraft.  I honestly found the Lovecraft story to be more interesting, closer to scientific, and scarier- but I found the Stuart Gordon film to be more entertaining and to have excellent practical effects.  It's a bit pop horror in the way that it adds a clear villain and a more obvious conflict to the otherwise darker and more ambiguous story.  I'm trying not to punish the film for the simple fact that they chose a different tack than the original stories, though, and what does follow the story is surprisingly faithful for the manner in which it's portrayed.  End result: I'm going to give this film 8/10, pending change of mind as it sinks in and we discuss it.

[Power Rangers Super Samurai]

What shows do you have on your mind to watch, but haven't found the time to watch them yet?

My list-

Power Rangers Super Samurai - I've heard this season is a lot better than the prior season and will probably be the next one that I check out.  After that, I intend to go through the rest of the seasons I haven't watched yet.
Star Wars: Droids - I'll be watching this for review soon.  Just not sure when I'll get around to it.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars - I've been putting this off for a long time but I've heard a LOT of good things about this show.  I'm gonna marathon this some time to see what I'm missing.
Angel - I mentioned this in the other thread, but I'm about at that part of Buffy where I'll be needing to watch this.
Star Trek: The Animated Series - Assuming I can watch this, that'll be next after TOS.
Battlestar Galactica - The last "Star" series I haven't been exposed to at all.  I'll be getting to this before too long.
Stargate SG-1 - We'd be doing this instead of Universe if it was on Netflix Instant, but I'll find my way to where it all started before long.

[Doctor Who, Power Rangers Megaforce]

I almost combined this with another thread, but I figured this will have enough ongoing updates my most people to be worth keeping separate.  What shows are you watching right now?  This includes shows you've been seeking out reruns of but haven't seen before, shows that are currently airing, maybe shows that you've watched before that you feel really strongly about bringing up.

Let's keep web-only shows off of this for now.  That's not to say that professional quality shows can't be mentioned, but independent things you'd find on Youtube or Blip would probably lead to a bit too much on here and would be likely to blur the line of what is a "show".

My list:

Currently airing - Doctor Who, Power Rangers Megaforce
Currently airing on Season Break - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, My Little Pony Friendship is Magic, Legend of Korra
Older shows - Classic Doctor Who, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Trek TOS, Red Dwarf, Stargate Universe (this is the show a close friend and I watch when we get together to chill, both new to the universe), American Horror Story (I think this is still airing, but I know for a fact the season that I'm going into is over), Sherlock (almost forgot I was watching this one, and not sure if I'll bother with Season 3 if it ever comes around).

[Firefly]

I thought I'd bring in a thread about Joss and his shows, maybe some reference to his movies, etc.  Firefly, of course, is one of the cult hits of the modern era.  I'm currently watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I've got to say I have no reason other than lack of effective word of mouth that I wasn't watching this show when it came out.  I'm curious what thoughts of Dollhouse are and if I should make that one of the next shows on my list, and Angel is one that I've been led to believe I'll need to watch just to get through Buffy.

So, thoughts?

Find something awesome in the world of horror, or even outside it?  Post it here.

Chest burster cake

[I didn't include Digital Copies you didn't purchase, for obvious reasons.]

What was the last film you purchased?  I didn't include VHS, Laser Disc, or Betamax, largely because they deserve their own thread.  I didn't include Digital Copies you didn't purchase, for obvious reasons. Anyway, this was a popular thread way back, and seeing as how I just bought some DVDs recently, I thought it would be fun to bring it back.

Why did I buy DVD's?  Because each one had at least 8 films, either with classic camp value or straight-up great films/creators, in the $5 bin.  Even for public domain, I think it's worth it to have on hand.


Yes, that is the Tarantino/Rodriguez film that Shadow doesn't like at the bottom.   How the fuck Echo Bridge got their hands on such a popular film, I'll never know, especially since there's no way it's public domain so soon.


I haven't watched any of these films, but I'm never one to turn down a cult series thats managed to go on this long.


Yes, they're all probably public domain, but that doesn't mean I would have found them without looking for them.  This gives me plenty of incentive to see them- the fact that they'll be sitting in my PS2 forever- and that's good enough for me with someone like Hitchcock.

[Star Trek]

There was a request for a thread like this, but dozens of film series with over ten entries, so I wasn't sure how to make it work.  So how about this: no Googling for this thread.  You can look up information about a series you're discussing, but don't just pull information off a search for your post.  Wikipedia is a good enough database for this set of information, so I'm not going to be making any sort of article or goal for this thread.  Instead, come up with film series off the top of your head that are long that you'd like to compare or talk about.  Let's see if we can get a discussion going in lieu of a list.

So, as far as series that I follow, we've got-
Star Trek - 10 films in the first series (6 TOS, 1 crossover, 3 TNG), 1 film in the new series, with 1 in the oven.  I grew up on the first 5 films of this series, and they really defined what Science Fiction was for me growing up, along with...
Star Wars - Obviously the other 3 Sci-Fi films I watched in my childhood were from this series.  We have six numerical ordered films so far, along with three theatrical spin-offs (if you count Europe-only and animated releases at least) and a TV movie, with two spin-offs in the works.  Amazing how this is going from a game-changing trilogy to one of the largest film series in Sci-Fi.  Which I find especially ironic because I never considered Star Wars to be a film-centric franchise.
Dragon Ball Z - This is another series that I thought was long dead but has another theatrical film in the pipeline.  (I'm ignoring the live action counterparts).  This will be the 14th, not counting TV movies or Dragon Ball movies.  These films were a mainstay of my childhood as well- Toonami would play one of these every week.  And if we're talking about long-running animated series, let's go toward the flip side of the coin with a notable lack of face-punching...
Land Before Time - I've yet to meet anyone remotely near my age group that isn't at least remotely familiar with the decline of this franchise.  This has 13 films- but now that DBZ is passing them, maybe they'll try to catch up?

Yes, there is one more animated or partially animated film series with more films than either of these, and I believe they're all DTV.  I'm not mentioning them because I've never watched one.  That's right, there IS a limit to how much I will emasculate myself.

[Leprechaun]

Okay guys, we're going on down the line.  We've done 7, let's look at 6 entries.  I think we should start seeing longer lists right about now, but I might be mistaken.

   
• Leprechaun
• Ju-On
• George Romero's Living Dead Series
• Sleepaway Camp

I'm not expecting anybody to actually trash anything or anyone here, but we all pretty much have a horror sub-genre that actually disgusts us more than we want it to, or that we don't care anything for.

In the first category... I can't think of anything right now that's that bad for me, but I've got two that are close.  Pre-natal horror really gets to me; one movie is fine, but for example I couldn't watch more than an episode and a half straight of American Horror Story when they were doing that part of the story.  Rape is also something that I can't really watch, but I DO enjoy the second half of rape and revenge movies, so I can't flat out say that I dislike them.

In the second category... zombies.  Flat-out.  I don't know what it is, they've just been in so many places for as long as I can remember that I've been tired of them since before I could truly call myself a horror fan.  And, uh, if found footage can be considered a genre... yeah, don't care.  Not at all.

What Sub-genres of horror do you most enjoy watching?

I most go out of my way for slashers (preferably 80s), kaiju, and uh... is "awesome 80s horror" a genre?  The Fly, The Thing, etc.  I'm also a sucker for vampire films that I expect to actually be good (Nosferatu, Dracula, Fright Night, etc.).

[Hammer Productions Frankenstein]

Okay guys, we did the longest horror film series we could think of.  How about series with 7 entries?  So far I've actually come up with less series than 8 or 9 films had, but I imagine there are some I haven't found yet.

   
• Hammer Productions Frankenstein
• Saw
• Leprechaun
• Godzilla Heisei Series

Note: Counting only official sequels, the Nightmare on Elm Street series would also belong on this list

Would you guys count Alien (4 films, 2 versus and a spin-off)?

Anybody here use Words with Friends, or anything like that?  I'm always game for a Scrabble match.