Horror Squad, Horror Movies, News, Trailers, and More

Spanning independent blogs and mainstream sites alike, horror podcasts seem to be the next big thing. Popular 'casts run by mainstream sites, such as Radio Disgusting and Rue Morgue Radio, are well-known, while smaller podcasts supported by cheap microphones, such as *coughshamelessplug* Dead Wrong!, the Vaultcast, and our own Jason Murphy's videocast The Deadly Debates, consistently cling to the precipice of notoriety.

The AVOD is one of those podcasts that has somehow slipped under the radar of most, save for their "fan," who is often mentioned in a hilarious self-deprecating manner. Helmed by Count Vardulon, whose long-winded yet hilarious rants can be seen on Castle Vardulon, and the Dive Mistress, whose unique brand of insight into horror films can be seen on Zombots!, the AVOD is a veritable smorgasbord of commentary, reviews, and hilarious banter, all centered around our favorite genre.

The appeal of the AVOD, which bills itself as the " Internet's first and only audio-only video podcast," lies primarily in the incredible chemistry between the Count and the Dive Mistress. Longtime friends hailing from the Great White North (though currently separated by thousands upon thousands of miles), these two intrepid film fans, forever undeterred by their unfortunately meager audience, play off each other perfectly, seamlessly going from intellectual discussions of the latest independent release to utterly hilarious non-sequiturs about their past.

"The Count and I have known each other going on half our lives, now. He was a big weirdo in highschool and he's still a big weirdo today. I guess I'm kinda weird too, so it works out. But I hide it better."

The AVOD is recorded every Tuesday and posted within a day or two. Currently on episode 64 (wherein our illustrious duo discuss Batman, Rob Zombie, and CSI: Miami), the AVOD shows absolutely no signs of slowing down. So if you're one of those people who digs listening to other people talk about movies (and of course you do, otherwise you wouldn't be here), then head on over to the official page of the online horror community's best kept secret.

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.

There appears to be a logical progression in the popularity of popular monsters in cinema. Zombies dominated the first two-thirds of of the decade, while vampires, both conventional and otherwise, have become the topic du jour for the past couple of years. The release of The Wolfman might signify a return to werewolves, though one would not be foolish if they placed their bets on vampires.

Deadline New York has reported that Summit,who is behind the popular franchise that shall not be named, has jumped on a pitch by the Brood remake and Priest writer Cory Goodman for somewhere in the range of a crap ton of money (read: six figures). Tossing around phrases like "franchise potential," the film follows the eponymous hunter of witches, one of the remaining members of a rare breed whose job is to keep the population of witches and warlocks in check. Much to the chagrin of, well, everyone, they're on the verge of experiencing a repopulation boom, and it's up the last witch hunter to prevent this from happening.

Sounds intriguing, right? Combined with Dead Snow director Tommy Wirkola's two, count 'em two upcoming witch-centered films (Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters and Kurt Josef Wagle And The Legend of the Fjord Witch), witches are poised to take over the cinema, at least until filmmakers stop overlooking the poor Mummy. Look at him, sittin' in the corner, drying his tears with his own wrappings. It's just not right.

The film will be helmed by Timur Bekmambetov, the Russian-Kazakh mastermind behind the Russian-language vampire flicks Night Watch and Day Watch, and executive produced by Adam Goldworm.

Special thanks to Dread Central for the heads up.

Joaquin Phoenix is either crazy, brilliant or crazy brilliant. Proving that there is no such thing as bad publicity, he abandoned his prolific acting career in favor of a wild beard, dark shades and a rap career that went as quickly as it came. His final film was 2008's Two Lovers, a romantic drama that I never knew existed until just now. After two years of Joaquinless cinema, Shock TIll You Drop has brought to our attention the news that Mr. Phoenix will apparently lose the crumb catcher and ditch the sunglasses for his newest role as the master of the macabre, Edgar Allan Poe.

The film will be an adaptation of the novel "The Beautiful Cigar Girl" by Daniel Stashower. The book weaves together the story of Mary Rogers, a clerk at a tobacco store frequented by popular writers who was found horribly mutilated in the Hudson River, and Edgar Allan Poe, who used the events surrounding Rogers' murder to pen his story "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt."

Not much is known about the film, as no writer or director has been attached, but the book seems like one Hell of a read, one that follows in the footsteps of The Devil in the White City, a pseudo-novelistic and historical account of the relationship between the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the country's first serial killer, H. H. Holmes.

The only bit of information we have so far comes from the India Times, which reports that Resul Pookutty, who won an Academy Award for Best Sound Mixing for Slumdog Millionaire, will be doing the sound for the film.

The other day Horror Squad's own Mike Bracken brought us an updated trailer, courtesy of Twitch, for the brutal-lookin' flick A Serbian Film. If you haven't watched the trailer yet, I highly suggest you do so. It's incredibly brutal, and incredibly not safe for work, what with all the blood, nudity, and rough sex involved. But what do you expect in a movie about a porn star whose return to porn has an added bonus of murder and mayhem?

A Serbian Film will be making an appearance at SXSW this month, but for those who unable to make it you'll have another chance only a few months later. Horror Squad just got word that Srdjan Spasojevic's debut flick will be screened with two other Serbian films as part of Fantasia Film Festival's 2010's "Subversive Serbia" block of programming this July in Montreal.

Shining a spotlight on "the blistering new wave of confrontational and edgy Serbian cinema," this series will also include the films The Life and Death of a Porno Gang, directed by Mladen Djordjevic, and Tears for Sale, which was co-written by Aleksandar Radivojevic, who also wrote A Serbian Film. Fantasia co-director Mitch David had this to say about the films:

"The voices emerging from the new wave of independent Serbian cinema are some of the rawest and most daring of any we've ever encountered" said Fantasia co-director Mitch Davis. "This is smart, confrontational filmmaking with astounding elements of shock, armed with the intelligence and the urgency to back it up. In particular, A Serbian Film and Porno Gang are, to my mind, the Clockwork Oranges of our generation. They push boundaries in ways that cinema rarely has the courage to do, and they're two of the most transgressive films I've ever seen. We can't wait to see them come to life in front of an audience here."

My inaugural foray into the Horror Squad Movie Club kicked off with the French thriller Ils, a little home-invasion flick often overshadowed by what I felt was the utterly predictable The Strangers. Of course, this film is approached in a much different way than Bryan Bertino's theatrical thriller, and while it all comes down to subjectivity, I personally feel Ils carried with it more tension and suspense than The Strangers, and for a variety of very important reasons.

Like Peter and Alison, I will forgo discussion questions and highlight what I feel are the most important aspects of the film, those crucial decisions made by the film-makers that resulted in a film that is wholly different from the big budget thrillers. Instead, I will discuss these aspects and why I feel they all add up to one Hell of an impressive little thriller, and one that surely does not receive the recognition it deserves among dyed-in-the-wool horror fans and casual fans alike.

Beware! Spoilers dwell within!

In my review for Jennifer's Body, I contextualized the film in a way that may be construed as hyperbole. While certainly viewing the Karyn Kusama-directed sophomore writing effort is, in fact, not worse than death, I can only imagine the similarity is unmistakable. Most of my time in the theater was spent with my hands placed upon head, jaw hanging open in abject bewilderment over the armageddon of suck that was unfolding on the screen before my eyes.

Naturally, there is bound to be someone who disagrees with me (though I don't really know how, since I'm always right), and that someone is Corey from the fantastic blog Evil on Two Legs. Corey, in his infinite yet questionable wisdom, considered Jennifer's Body to be the best horror film of 2009. Of course, this means debate! After about four attempts to record the damned thing, the stars aligned and Corey and I engaged in what ultimately turned out to be a fairly in-depth and analytical discussion over the relative merits of the film.

And I only dropped the f-bomb a few times

There are a view things that genuinely terrify me when it comes to horror films: 3-D, Nic Cage and Todd Farmer. Despite Nic Cage's AMAZING performance in The Wicker Man remake, where he spent a good portion of the film dressed in a bear suit and punching women in the face, the man simply does not give off a horror vibe. 3-D is, in my opinion, a complete waste of time, and Todd Farmer just bugs me. I mean, i enjoyed Jason X, but it certainly wasn't because of his script (though it was a Hell of a lot better than My Bloody Valentine 3-D.) Naturally, it was only a matter of time before the stars aligned and all three managed to find their way into the same film.

The film in question is the Patrick Lussier-helmed Drive Angry, which Shock Till You Drop reports has officially cast Christa Campbell, the uber-sexy actress who has made appearances in films such as Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep and the Day of the Dead remake, to co-star with not only Nic Cage, but David Morse and Amber Heard as well. Despite my apprehension, after reading the synopsis of the film my curiosity was piqued.

Nic Cage stars as Milton, a convicted felon whose goal is to track down those who killed his daughter and kidnapped his granddaughter. Along the way the blood flies and the body count piles up. No word on whether or not he'll ask John Malkovich to give him back the bunny.

Ridiculous? Yes. But worthy of a look if only because Nic Cage is hilarious when he tries to act angry. Cage's character is described as being driven by rage, and after watching the video below, I REALLY hope he channels that performance. "Not the beeeeeeeeeeeeeees!"



Drive angry is set to be released on February 11th, 2011, and begins shooting in Shreveport, LA this month.

Amidst the brutally violent À l'intérieur, Frontiere(s), and Martyrs, which have come to represent what has been deemed the "New Wave of French Horror," there exists a little film called Ils (Them). Eschewing egregious amounts of blood in favor of real tension, this home invasion thriller by David Moreau and Xavier Palud has remained relatively glossed over, often in favor of the widely released The Strangers, which came out two years later and sported the same home invasion theme but with the unfortunate addition of Liv Tyler. Although clocking in at only 77 minutes, Ils is a relentless film from its horrific start to its brutal, yet subtle climax, and as such serves as a delightful respite from jump-scare laden thrillers and ridiculous remakes.

Ils has come to represent precisely what I look for in a horror film: real fears approached in a minimalistic fashion that rely, in part, on the subject matter, as opposed to jump scares or a hackneyed score to frighten the viewer. Ils is pure, unbridled tension, and for that very reason it makes my inaugural film for the Horror Squad Movie Club.

I only saw the original The Eye by Darren and Oxide Pang, better known as the Pang Brothers, a few months ago, and though I'm not particularly fond of Asian supernatural thrillers, this one managed to rattle some bones and keep me hooked, all while providing a healthy dose of scares. The film was remade in 2008 with Jessica Alba, rated PG-13, and bombed at the box office. In between this time the Pang Brothers did two sequels, as well as the Sam Raimi-produced The Messengers and the 2006 film Re-cycle, which screened at Cannes in 2006. Your brief history of the Pang Brothers' career has now come to a close, and we will now introduce you to their newest foray into supernatural territory, The Child's Eye.

As Dread Central reports by way of 24 Frames Per Second, the Pang Brothers are nearing the end of production for the fourth installment of their quasi-popular franchise, with a potential release date of some time in June. The synopsis of the film is as follows:

Stranded in Thailand by a political uprising and airport closure, Rainie and her friends are unable to return home. Reluctantly, they decide to stay in an aged and shabby hotel. Among them is Rainie's almost-breakup boyfriend, Lok; Ling and her brother, Rex; and Ciwi with her beloved boyfriend, Hei. The moment they check into the hotel, they come across three weird children and a puppy that seems slightly odd. As strange and sinister things start to happen, they begin disappearing one after another...