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

[Written by Luke Mullen.]

First, there was [REC] and it was good. Then there was Quarantine which wasn't too bad and hopefully alerted some people to the existence of [REC]. And then there was [REC] 2, the long-awaited sequel that US fans are still clamoring to see. A few of the lucky ones may have been able to catch it at the Toronto film festival or here in Austin at Fantastic Fest, but the majority of horror lovers have had to patiently await some news of a US release.

Sadly, I have no such news. As Bloody Disgusting reported, after its premiere at Toronto, Sony picked up the rights to distribute [REC] 2 on home video. With no indications of a theatrical release, it looks like we're at Sony's mercy to see the sequel finally hit American shores.

But wait! There may be hope yet!

[Written by HS staffer Luke Mullen, who isn't in our system but will be soon.]

Horror Squad's own Alison Nastasi alerted eager horror fans to the impending release of a Blu-ray edition of Suspiria first announced way back in November. The new disc was released about a month ago and is currently available in the UK courtesy of Cine-Excess, a new arm of Nouveaux Pictures. I ordered a copy the day it came out and have been looking forward to really digging into it to see what it has to offer. I should mention up front that this Blu-ray disc is region B locked, meaning that it will NOT play in a US PS3 or other standalone Blu-ray players. It will ONLY play in region B machines, which are used in Europe, and in region-free players.

I'm not going to summarize Suspiria, or really talk about the film itself much at all. If you're reading Horror Squad, I would hope you've heard of it even if you may not have seen it. If by some chance you've been living under a rock for the last 30 or so years, though, Suspiria is an Italian horror film set in Germany and filmed in English directed by Dario Argento, a member of the holy trinity of Italian horror masters alongside Mario Bava and Lucio Fulci. Suspiria is easily one of Argento's best, and if you haven't seen it, you really should take the time to check it out.

What follows is a fairly in-depth look at the Blu-ray, feel free to skip to the end for a more succinct summary with less technical jargon.

[Review by Luke Mullen.]

Ogden Marsh, Iowa is a small town with a Cheers vibe. Everybody knows your name. There's just the one doctor in town, a short main drag, and a small sheriff's station. It's the kind of town you might want to raise a family in, sending your kids down the street to Ogden Marsh School, home of the Tigers. It may as well be Mayberry. That's why it's so disturbing when you see the friends and neighbors you know so well start to kill each other.

The Crazies, based on the 1973 film of the same name, isn't a zombie film, but it evokes a lot of the same fears. The people you once knew, drank beer with, watched football with, they're not themselves anymore. They've changed, seemingly capable of anything. And before it's all over, you might just have to kill a few of them to survive.

The story focuses on Sheriff David Dutton, played by Timothy Olyphant, his deputy, Russell, and his wife, Judy, the town doctor, and her teenage assistant, Becca. Dutton quickly discovers the source of the infection spreading through his town, but before he has much chance to do anything about it, the military rushes in, canvassing the town and establishing a quarantine perimeter around. The townsfolk are all rounded up and tested, the sick separated from the healthy. But, as is so often the case, things go terribly wrong.

By William Goss

Several journalists were invited to the Chicago-based set of Platinum Dunes' remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street last June, and at this point, we're all standing in the trailer where an uncomfortable Jackie Earle Haley has been sitting for the better part of what will take more than three hours.

"We've gotten [the process] down to three hours and twenty [minutes]," said make-up artist Andrew Clement. "Every day, we shave a couple minutes off of it. It had started at six hours; we were working it all out, didn't have the coloring and all of our choices done, so it was just seeing what it was all about."

When asked if he ever wanted to just run around the neighborhood with the make-up on, the future Freddy Krueger said no. "There is a strong temptation to just rip it off my face, though."

By Todd Gilchrist

The end of Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever is pretty much a disaster, but if you can get there from the beginning of the film you may not mind. Ti West's disowned sequel to Eli Roth's 2002 cult movie indisputably falls apart in its final scenes, but the writer-director of The House of the Devil has an unerring ear for naturalism, even when firmly ensconced in teen comedy territory, and makes the most of material that otherwise might not deserve such attention to detail. All of which means that this may not be the best follow-up for new fans of the filmmaker, but Cabin Fever 2 is far from the "complete disaster" status that for three years made it the black sheep of Lionsgate's often-lackluster catalogue.

The film stars Noah Segan (The Brothers Bloom) as John, a high school senior who wants to ask his friend Cassie (Alexi Wasser) to the prom but is paralyzed by the prospect of a beatdown by her psycho sometime-ex-boyfriend Marc (Marc Senter). His buddy Alex (Rusty Kelley) manages to score himself a date after comforting a forlorn stripper named Liz (Regan Deal), but their plans for a perfect night are dashed when the entire populace of the school succumbs to a bizarre, deadly disease. Fleeing from military forces determined to contain the outbreak, not mention decaying, highly-contagious members of their graduating class, John, Cassie and Alex fight to escape their school before flying bullets – or worse yet, blood – prevent them from seeing the next morning.

By Elisabeth Rappe

Historical settings are severely underused in films today. Once upon a time in a cheesier Hollywood, you could find pulpy adventures set among knights, Vikings, or cowboys. They were horribly inaccurate, but I admire and appreciate their desire to just run with another time or place. Nowadays, historical films are considered too expensive. No one makes a movie set in Rome or medieval England just for fun. But I think we're starting to see a shift towards that mentality (after all, how much more expensive are Roman breastplates over CG?) with films like Centurion, Ironclad, Season of the Witch and now a little project called Mortis Rex.

Variety has the scoop on this intriguing movie-to-be, which will be the directorial debut of Hellboy writer Peter Briggs. Mortis Rex is set in 122 A.D. (or C.E. if we want to be proper), and centers on a disgraced Roman war hero. He's given the chance to redeem his reputation when he is sent to a Roman garrison that's being besieged by unexplained and brutal killings.

Sure, it could be lame, but a supernatural thriller set in the days of Hadrian? That's something you don't see every day, and a concept I'd like to see more filmmakers run with. Movies should have as much fun and license with history as literature does. If we're going to plunder the past for new movies, we could at least go back a little further than the 1980s.

By Todd Gilchrist

Despite their self-appointed pedigree as "The Criterion of Smut," Severin Films has carved a comfortable niche for themselves over the past few years as a reliable distributor of cult classics and obscure, overlooked gems. Unquestionably, their highest-profile release to date was a domestic DVD (and later Blu-ray) for Enzo Castellari's Inglorious Bastards, which inspired Tarantino's film of the same name (albeit different spelling). But they've released and reissued a number of terrific, highly-anticipated movies, almost all of which appeal to a unique and specific audience, even if they don't always register to mainstream viewers with the same excitement or awareness.

All of which brings us to Hardware, one of the company's latest releases. Though I hadn't seen it since it was first released on home video in the early 1990s, Richard Stanley's science fiction-horror film has been celebrated over the last two-plus decades as a modest masterpiece and a true cult classic, thanks in no small part to its small budget, even smaller distribution and minuscule but fervent fan base. Unfortunately, with mainstream "cult" movies like Paranormal Activity and District 9 occupying the head-space of contemporary genre fans, not to mention a great wealth of superior films throughout movie history that explore the same ideas, Hardware is a worth film to revisit primarily to see how well it fueled our feverish imaginations before it fell to the wayside.

More at Cinematical!

By Todd Gilchrist

Sorry to break it to fans of the Saw film series, but Jigsaw, a/k/a John Kramer is a self-righteous dick. In comparison to the Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers of the horror world, whose raison d'être is causing carnage mercifully bereft of deeper moral or instructional value, Jigsaw devotes a ridiculous amount of time thinking about what other people do with themselves, and effectively (if ironically) conceives his traps as object lessons in humility, compassion, and self-awareness. Personally, I find this high-handed moralizing far more painful than any evil device he could possibly design, but then again, that's why I'm not a fan of the series; that said, the latest installment in the Saw franchise appears to fulfill all of the demands of its audience and then some, making it a worthy and faithful entry in a franchise which at this point seems essentially designed to document people dying in increasingly inventive ways.

After a cold-open sequence where two loan officers compete to dismember themselves as an alternative to being literally screwed to death, Saw VI opens as Detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) investigates Jigsaw's (Tobin Bell) latest crime – which, coincidentally, he helped execute. As he narrowly eludes discovery by his colleagues, across town a claims adjuster named William (Peter Outerbridge) becomes the victim of Jigsaw's next deadly game, while the long-deceased killer's widow Jill (Betsy Russell) carries out her late husband's final wishes. Soon, the paths of these various players intersect, but despite their various efforts to take control of their lives - and in some cases those of the others, it's Jigsaw himself who comfortably presides over all of them, even from beyond the grave. This time, though, his goal seems to be to drive his deadly game towards its ultimate conclusion.

Read the rest at Cinematical! (There's a twist at the end!)

By Elisabeth Rappe

Last December, many Goths wept and fans of the late Brandon Lee took to message boards all over our great Internet to protest Stephen Norrington's remake of The Crow. News on the project has been so scarce that you've probably forgotten all about it, or even assumed it was dead and buried. But like its supernatural character, Norrington's Crow is alive and flying and Comics2Film is reporting that Norrington's script has been "very well received" by Relativity Media, and the film is set to go forward with casting. Cue the angry rants.

While the news sparked a lot of angry comments, there were a few fans of James O'Barr's graphic novel who wanted to see a new adaptation that might stay truer to the book. But earlier this summer, Comics2Film ran a rumor that Norrington wasn't going to use the character of Eric Draven, but was inventing a completely new character and storyline for his remake / reboot. Let me stress that little item hasn't been confirmed, but if it's true, it certainly raises the question of "Why bother?" O'Barr fans want their guiding crow and self-mutilation back.

At this point, all we know is that Norrington is aiming to make it "realistic, hard-edged and mysterious, almost documentary-style." Now that I've seen more of the graphic novel (thanks, Google Images), I can't think of a poorer approach to something so deliberately introspective. But who knows? If it's truly a whole new character who just happens to have a crow as a pal, the shaky-cam approach might work just fine.

[via Bloody-Disgusting]

By Jessica Barnes

If you were one of the people who thought that another Scream movie was a bad idea (and who could blame you after the train wreck that was Scream 3), there might be a ray of hope...but I have to stress might. Over at Cinema Blend, their 'reliable source' is telling them that the man himself, Wes Craven, will return to direct the latest installment in the horror franchise.

It had been reported that Craven would be involved in some capacity with the film back when the project was first green lit, but you have to wonder what might have convinced him to get behind the camera. Maybe it was all down to nostalgia and he wanted to get together with the old gang, or maybe it was Kevin Williamson's spec script. One thing is for sure, the big empty spot in his schedule since finishing 25/8 probably wouldn't hurt either. (By the way, 25/8 was just re-named My Soul to Take.)

More at Cinematical!