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I was in a rented lodge in Park City, Utah, several years ago, and since the snow was really bad (or maybe the Sundance options were really meh), I opted to dig through some screeners from "the other festival," Slamdance. (That's not meant as a knock. I adore Slamdance.) I was in town to review some films, so when I came across one screener that indicated a running time of 47 minutes, I got skeptical.

A 47-minute film, you see, is not a short film, nor is it a feature. So while I'd normally be elated to review a film called The Call of Cthulhu, it just didn't seem like a practical choice for "work." But I watched it anyway. And then I wrote my review about 18 minutes later. Months after that I ordered a copy of the film, and it still holds a firm place in my horror collection. Also, it's probably the finest, coolest, and most "faithful" H.P. Lovecraft adaptation I've ever seen. No disrespect meant to Stuart Gordon, but his awesome Re-Animator, From Beyond, and Dagon are "loose" adaptations, at best, whereas Andrew Leman's The Call of Cthulhu feels like it fell right out of 1931.

So what's all this got to do with you? Well hey, if you happen to be a Netflix subscriber (and I don't feel like a shill for saying you oughtta be), then you can enjoy the 47-minute Lovecraft love letter all by yourself. I'll even include the link: There. Enjoy! And then you can hit the official site and see what sort of lunatic passion inspires folks to make a 47-minute film in a resoundingly "feature friendly" universe. Hats off to the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society for putting this fine film together.

Hello, friends. We're trying out a nifty new chat service that will allow our writers and our readers to join hands in blissful movie geekery. For example, we're hoping to do our Movie Club with this service, but before we can do that ... we want to see how this Cover It Live program actually works!

So in a way, you're like Horror Squad beta testers! Go put that on your resumé!

The topic of the evening shall be "slashers," so feel free to share thoughts, links, pics, and videos to the discussion. If you have ANY questions, comments, complaints, or council (I wanted the four-way alliteration) just let us know. Here's the doo-hickey!

It doesn't surprise me to learn that Lucky McKee and Angela Bettis will be working together again. This duo has worked on a variety of projects together, most notably the quiet classic known as May. (And if you think I'm being sarcastic, try again. May is, in my opinion, one of the strangest and most captivating horror films of the past twenty years.) But this latest is a fairly unexpected one...

So remember that adaptation of Jack Ketchum's Offspring that hit the DVD shelves a few months back? I thought it had some ... problems, but overall I found it a fairly creepy and effectively nasty little indie. Well, now it seems that McKee and Bettis are re-teaming to do a follow-up called Offspring: The Woman. According to this handy Fango blog, Lucky will direct, Angela will star, and Ketchum himself will (once again) pen the screenplay. So if you're keeping score that's Off Season (Book #1, no movie as of yet), Offspring (Book #2, Movie #1), and then Offspring: The Woman (Book #0, Movie #2). But hey, at least the original author is involved, and that's what's important. (Read Off Season, horror fans. It's some rough, tough stuff.)

And hey, cool. Pollyanna McIntosh will be returning for the sequel. That's cool too. For more on this brand-new sequel news, check out the Fangoria blog.

Werewolf of London (1935), The Wolf Man (1941), Curse of the Werewolf (1961). An American Werewolf in London, The Howling, and Wolfen all showed up in 1981. Later we got Ginger Snaps and Dog Soldiers. I've skipped over stuff like Silver Bullet, Bad Moon, and Underworld because even if you think they're half-decent werewolf movies -- you probably don't think they're fantastic werewolf movies. Hell, I only included the very dry Wolfen up top because it's weird that three(!) werewolf movies came out in 1981!

Clearly my assertion is that there aren't really all that many GOOD werewolf movies. I will now take that assertion and stretch it like so much bubble gum ... and there: I now have a specious piece of logic that says MOST werewolf movies are crap.(Wolf? Blood and Chocolate? I Was a Teenage Werewolf? Cursed? Don't make me laugh. And the name of that witless "Paris" sequel will go unmentioned on this website.) Actually that's not entirely accurate either because, really, we don't really GET all that many werewolf movies these days. And I think I know why:

He's boring.

The coolest vampires are both alluring and revolting. They're fascinating and gross at the same time. Frankenstein's near-mindless monster is also intriguing: would a big mixture of body parts be able to feel human? And what would the inside of that creature's brain feel like? It's just a creepy concept. Dr. Jekyll, The Invisible Man, hell, even the boring bandage-pile known as The Mummy is more interesting than the werewolf.

Some call it The Gates of Hell. Others know it as City of the Living Dead. The Italians know it as Paura nella città dei morti viventi, which translated literally is Fear in the City of the Living Dead. My mom (and probably yours) knows it as "a disgusting zombie flick I've never heard of and will definitely never see."

It was one of those "badge of courage" horror flicks among my youthful friends and myself. Along with titles like I Spit On Your Grave, Bloodsucking Freaks, and Snuff, The Gates of Hell (as it was originally released here in the States) was one of the horror movies you had to make it all the way through if you wanted to hang with the big boys. And by big boys I mean brave 14-year-old horror nerds. Obviously.

Enough blather. Catalog polisher Blue Underground has just announced a City of the Living Dead Blu-ray, and I for one cannot wait to see what a woman vomiting high-definition intestines looks like on my television. To be released on May 25, the COTLD / TGOH blu-ray will provide three new featurettes, in addition to some previously-released marketing stuff and gory treats. Full details and cover art are available at DVDActive, which, by the way, is a fantastic resource for new DVD announcements. Just saying.

And yes, you're probably right: Zombie is most likely Fulci's finest fright flick. And then The Beyond. Or House By the Cemetery. This one just holds some nostalgia value for me. Plus it's really gross. Not even a particularly good movie, opinion be told, but lots of fun for the gorehounds.

Dang, someone at Lionsgate really delved into the vault for this one. Hell, I even saw this flick during its Philadelphia theatrical run in 1986 ... and then promptly forgot all about it. I vaguely remember there being a slick car. The film at hand is called The Wraith, and it's about an spirit(?) from another dimension who visits a small town to wreak vengeance on some murderous assheads. He does it in an ostensibly futuristic sports car, if memory serves.

Initially rated R but released as PG-13 after some trims, The Wraith does boast a pretty colorful cast: Charlie Sheen, Sherilyn Fenn, Nick Cassavetes, Randy Quaid, and (woo hoo!) Clint Howard are all involved somehow. Written and directed by Mike Marvin (whose filmography includes deliciousness like Hot Dog: The Movie and Hamburger: The Motion Picture, with a Six Pack to wash it down), The Wraith is nobody's idea of a cult classic -- and yet I'm very curious to give this flick a re-visit.

According to DVDActive, Lionsgate will unleash The Wraith on March 2, and the DVD (no blu-ray to speak of) will come with interviews, featurettes, and a Marvin commentary. Oh, and according to Dictionary.com, a wraith is "an apparition of a living person supposed to portend his or her death." I hope that's not a spoiler.

Since it's been delayed for a variety of reasons, we've been waiting to see Joe Johnston's rendition of The Wolfman for quite some time now. I'm always skeptical when someone tries to revisit the classic monsters, but I like Johnston's track record ... at least a lot more than I liked the Van Helsing director's track record. (For those who don't memorize these things, Joe Johnston also directed Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, The Rocketeer, October Sky, Hidalgo, Jurassic Park 3, and (ok, fine) Jumanji.)

We know that the new-fangled but old-fashioned remake will run 96 minutes and arrive bearing an R rating for "bloody horror violence and gore," but now comes word from BD.com that the "extended cut" (not "director's cut") will run almost twenty minutes longer. Johnston told BD: "I think it's 17 minutes longer – a lot of it's stuff up front, but there's also, throughout the film, we basically let the scenes play a little bit longer. There's a little bit of action stuff, but it's mostly bits of scenes that worked, but we cut them out to shorten the film. You know, to get down to our 96 minutes." (Click here for more.)

So there's just another reason to keep your fingers crossed on The Wolfman. If this new version (which stars Benicio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Hugo Weaving, and Emily Blunt) is rock-solid, then hooray: We get 17 minutes more of it in a few months.

Our Horror Squad pal Mike Bracken tweeted yesterday that Lionsgate has announced April 27 as the DVD release date for the long-awaited The Descent Part 2. What, you actually expected LG to release this one in theaters? After the "releases" they put together for Midnight Meat Train, Horsemen, Blood Creek, and Train? Not bloodily likely. Unless it's a Saw sequel or a festival pick-up (like Buried), our old friend Lionsgate seems to have forsaken the horror genre. (And if you're holding out some hope for Cabin Fever 2, don't. It's abysmal.)

Or maybe The Descent Part 2 just sucks eggs? The flick was released theatrically in France last October, and in the UK in December. The Independent gives the flick 2 out of 5 stars, but our pals at the genre blogs seem a little more enthusiastic: Dread Central gives it three knives out of five, Brutal as Hell goes 4 out of 5, and Quiet Earth goes all the way up to 8.5 out of 10.

All I know is that I adore the original as much as Peter Hall hates it, and if the follow-up is at least half-decent and entertaining (kinda like Halloween 2 and Jaws 2) then I'll be a happy guy. Oh, but the DVD cover is kind of a mess. I've included a piece up top, but check out DVDActive for the full pic.

Our pals over at STYD bring news of an old-school slasher re-issue that may pique your interest: Those cool dudes over at Code Red are putting the final touches on a new special edition for the 1982 "camp" slasher known as Madman. Right up there with The Burning and Sleepaway Camp as the guiltiest of 1980s hack 'em up pleasures, Madman has (as smartly noted by Shock) been in semi-heavy rotation over on IFC, and is probably worthy of a look should you dig this sort of thing. And since you're presently reading a site called Horror Squad, so I can only assume you are.

I wish I could say that Madman features early work from Jason Alexander (like The Burning) or Daryl Hannah (like The Final Terror), but nope. Not really. There is one legendary name in the cast: Ms. Gaylen Ross, best known for her fine work in George Romero's Dawn of the Dead. Word is that Code Red will retain some of the extras from the now-out-of-print Anchor Bay Madman disc, and they're also working on some new interviews of their own. At the very least it's another gory old slasher flick to cross off of your "there, now I've seen it" list. I certainly look forward to giving Madman Marz a fresh spin.

Fans of this era might want to check out the rest of Code Red's catalog. I'd start with Beyond the Door and Dead Pit.

Well here's something we didn't see coming. We all know by now that horror fan / professional filmmaker Adam Green is on the set of Hatchet 2 as we speak. And if you didn't know, now you do: Danielle Harris and A.J. Bowen are joining Green (and Kane Hodder!) on the Anchor Bay sequel ... but wait, what's this? Some rather strange news from Bloody Disgusting: Dark Sky Films has become the distributor on Hatchet 2? And they're already planning their Part 3? Hell that's weird.

A few months back The Collector went from Dimension to Freestyle, but that movie was already a finished product. Here we have a flick one week into production. Interesting! Dark Sky, for their part, are no strangers to the horror biz. They're covering the home video release of the recent (awesome) The House of the Devil, plus they've got a back catalog of horror classics (and colorful non-classics) that's pretty darn impressive.

Check out a lot more info over at BD.com, but I assume this is considered very good news for Dark Sky, for Green, and for the whole Hatchet gang. And let's hope Anchor Bay made a few bucks on the deal ... they were the guys who bankrolled the first Hatchet, after all. The Starz subsidiary will still release Green's Frozen in early February, only a few weeks after its Sundance premiere.