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Context is often your most powerful ally when faced with something you don't understand. And in that vein, a little context is probably best presented before diving into a movie like A Serbian Film. Alamo maestro Tim League was disturbed and blown away by this film. Here's a guy who watches countless movies at film festivals around the globe as well as on screeners that filmmakers send him in his capacity as co-founder and head honcho for Fantastic Fest and the SX Fantastic slate that runs during SXSW. Tim's the guy who fought to get Pascal Laugier's Martyrs shown at Fantastic Fest a few years ago. The man has seen movies that have never seen the light of day in most places. And he got up on stage during this film's introduction and admitted to flinching more than once based on the heinous acts depicted in A Serbian Film.

The basic setup is that Milos, a former porn star, has retired and settled down to start a family. But his savings won't last forever, so when a former co-star approaches him with an opportunity for a big payday if he'll shoot a high-concept porn film for a mysterious producer/director, he finds himself saying yes despite his numerous reservations. Milos meets with Vukmir, the mastermind behind the plan, and he signs a contract to appear in the film, despite Vukmir's refusals to tell him much of anything about it. Vukmir is obsessed with exploring the boundaries of art and film through pornography, and even though Milos is uneasy about the arrangement, the money is simply too much to pass up. With his responsibility to provide for his family weighing upon him, Milos finds himself tumbling down the rabbit hole.

Hot rods, aliens, zombies and pin-up girls inhabit the world of D.A. Sebasstian in his first feature film, Hot Rod Girls Save the World. The campy, but stylish B-flick is dominated by a rip-roaring soundtrack, original score (recorded by the director's band KsK) and enough hot rods to make any gearhead happy. While the film is somewhat of an homage to the rockabilly lifestyle, there are some things for genre enthusiasts to sink their teeth into.

This is an awesome item that I am thrilled to bring you guys. We all know that no DVD cover will ever be able to match the beauty and genius of VHS cover art. If you haven't given Portable Grindhouse: The Lost Art of the VHS Box, Vol.1 a good thumb-through, you have to do it post-bloody-haste! Someone who needs no lecture on the superiority of VHS cover art is North Carolina horror blogger Phelpster from The Manchester Morgue.

What this warrior of lost formats has done is to retrofit DVD boxes with classic posters, logos, and one-sheets to make it look like vintage VHS. As the writer of Terror Tapes here at Horror Squad, this guy's stuff makes me want to cry. It's not only the DVDs for cult horror that get the retro treatment, but films that are so recent that they are still in theaters. I've included his cover for The Crazies remake because the thought that any theatrical horror film could be brought to us by my beloved Media Blasters is almost too exquisite. Please, please, please check out The Manchester Morgue and these multimedia masterpieces. And a big thanks to @zombiefreak for bringing this to my Twitter-tention.

If you're a fan of Tooth & Nail, one of the better selections After Dark Films has picked up for their past Horrorfest slates, take notice: director Mark Young has a new film on the horizon that you should keep an eye out for. The Killing Jar, starring Michael Madsen, Harold Perrineau, Amber Benson, Kevin Cage, Jake Busey, and Danny Trejo will be making its way to theaters in New York and LA this Friday, March 19th, with 7 other markets to follow later.

Horror Squad recently got a chance to volley some questions off of Young regarding The Killing Jar, which is about a handful of diner patrons held hostage by a psycho, only the psycho might not be as dangerous as the secret one of the patrons may or may not be hiding. Don't worry, this is all spoiler free.

Horror Squad: I'm curious where your starting point for The Killing Jar was in regards to the setting. Did you know you wanted to make a film set in one location and then wrote around that? Did you know that you wanted to tell this story and then decided it would work best set in one location?

Mark Young: I had this story in the back of my head; a handful of ordinary people trapped in a roadside diner by a mysterious man with a shotgun - sort of an Edward Hopper painting gone berserk. I had limited access to funds and a paltry budget, and knew intuitively that shooting in a single location would translate into an economical production. So I wrote to that. Midway through the writing process, I really started to embrace the novelty that the audience's point-of-view never leaves the diner. It adds to the claustrophobia.

There is a film currently generating a lot of buzz at SXSW that I just had to blurb about. The title of the movie seems a playful jest on the cinematic ambiguity of a certain region of the world but the subject of the film is apparently as playful as a round of mini-golf at Auschwitz. The film is definitively titled A Serbian Film. To be clear, I have not yet seen this film. But the reaction from the horror community here at the festival has been equal parts vocal disbelief and telling speechlessness. From what I've gleaned of the topic of the film, certain questions are forming.

What is a Serbian film? This country, as noted for its horror cinema as I am noted for my career as a professional street fighter. Go ahead, name three Serbian horror films that you've seen? Need concrete evidence? Check out this link to IMDB showing the search results of Serbia and horror. Why does this matter to anyone ever? Because from what I'm hearing about Serbian Film, the film itself may be an angry reaction to the assumption that hardcore horror is a game in which only America and/or France participate.

With the upcoming release of Romero's Survival of the Dead (review), zombie fever will once again rip through the horror community as everyone complains that the creator of the zombie has ruined his own ever-evolving creation. Naturally, no release of a film in a popular zombie franchise can be without its viral marketing materials.

To coincide with the release of Survival of the Dead in theaters on May 28th and VOD, XBOX Live, Amazon and Playstation on April 30th, Magnet has released the handy-dandy Zombie Identification Field Manual to ensure your complete safety when dealing with the zombie apocalypse. Never again will you confuse your drooling great grandfather or drunk roommate for a zombie, as the field manual highlights the attributes necessary to discern the living from the undead.

Survival of the Dead takes place in a desperate, nightmarish world where the dead walk the earth, relentlessly attacking the living. It is the story of Plum Island – a beautiful refuge whose isolation allows two powerful families to maintain a semblance of order in the wake of the zombie holocaust. But as the inhabitants slowly die off, the two clans become sharply divided: the O'Flynns believe that the undead must be destroyed without exception, while the Muldoons insist that afflicted loved ones be kept "alive" until a cure is found. The result is an escalating showdown with echoes of a classic Western stand-off that erupts in brutality and violence.

The guide can be viewed or downloaded here or by clicking the image up there in the top right. Check out more on Survival of the Dead at its official Facebook page and the official website. The red band trailer can be found here.

I was introduced to Shinya Tsukamoto's cyberpunk classic Tetsuo: The Iron Man by way of its ridiculously awesome soundtrack masterminded by Chu Ishikawa, who hails from the band Zeitlich Vergelter -- often known as Japan's Einstürzende Neubauten. Ishikawa used hand-made metal instruments, samples and other grotesquely gorgeous sounds to create one hell of a soundtrack. The film was shot on 16mm black-and-white and tells the story of a clash between two men who transform into a man/machine hybrid and whose lives become overrun by increasingly nightmarish visions and bizarre, metal-filled sexual fantasies. Think Giger and Cronenberg times twenty. As someone who was raised on industrial/noise music and horror, watching Tetsuo for the first time reigns as one of my most memorable movie going experiences ever.

Tsukamoto followed Iron Man up with Tetsuo II: Body Hammer which was done in color and was released what feels like eons ago in 1992. Finally Tetsuo: The Bullet Man has arrived and is going make its North American premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. Early reviews were lukewarm and honestly this is one of those times where I really don't care -- I'm that obsesso about these films. This will be Tsukamoto's English language movie debut and has an American man at its center point. Antony is living and working in Tokyo and married to a Japanese woman. When their son is killed in a car accident rage takes over and Antony starts to transform. Cue orgasm.

There are several genre goodies at Tribeca this year, so check out their official website for details and scheduling. Watch the Japanese trailer and International teaser after the jump.

I've been keeping my eye on the cinematic adaptation of TokyoPop's manga Priest for a long time now--from back in the days when Gerard Butler was attached to star in it. Since then, the film's had casting changes (Butler out, Paul Bettany in), landed a new director, and been bumped on its release schedule. However, as last night's Entertainment Tonight proves, the film is still coming.

ET scored an exclusive first look at the title, which finds Bettany playing a warrior priest who defies the church when vampires kidnap his niece. Cam Gigandet and Stephen Moyer co-star.

The clip finds the three stars talking a bit about their experience shooting the film and highlights some of the wire-work used to pull off the elaborately choreographed fight scenes. Moyer goes so far as to say he thinks Priest's vamps are stronger than the ones on his other foray into the land of bloodsuckers, True Blood.

Priest is set to kick off the human/vampire war on January 14th, 2011 Jump past the break to check out ET's early look at the film.

People don't usually equate Sasha Grey with the Jonas brothers but her latest film Hallows, directed by Richard O'Sullivan, has her playing a bible thumper type who takes a purity pledge refusing to have sex before marriage.

According to O'Sullivan, Grey was offered a part closer to home but she opted for virgin over whore. And opposite day continues for Hallows as producers have also signed Christina Cupo, an actress who has strong ties to the growing Christian film community but will be starring in the horror flick as a heavily pierced and tattooed goth girl with a penchant for rough sex.

In the film, "little Johnny Warlow was a nice, normal boy ... until he saw his father cut off his mother's face with a butcher knife one Halloween night. Now, after two decades in a mental institution, he's out to prove that he's all better now, even if he has to kill every man, woman, and child within a ten-mile radius to do so."

O'Sullivan gave us a sneak peek at his vision for the film:

"Hallows basically takes the standard kids-in-the-woods-running-from-a-killer genre and flips it on its ear. The deaths aren't random. They're not cookie cutter. Each character dies in a fashion relating to the way they live their life. I'm less interested in gore-for-the-sake-of-gore (although there is gore in this film and plenty of it) than the psychology behind the characters and how they react to what happens. That's why we're happy to be working with Sasha. She's more interested in the psychology behind the action than just the action itself. That's what she conveys in her work in the adult genre and that's what we're going for in this film."

Grey's other horror venture, Smash Cut, inspired by splatter fiend Herschell Gordon Lewis, will be released on March 30. Purchase it here.