Fan Movies

Growing up Freddy wasn't cheap, but the allure of his sinister voice and pizza face kept us coming back for more. Throughout the years there were some cuckoo products and marketing strategies to promote the five-fingered fiend, some of which you can check out after the jump. Until we can determine if Samuel Bayer's Nightmare on Elm Street remake is a complete disaster or not, enjoy this little stroll down Elm Street.

I'm going to indulge in a bit of TMI here. Full disclosure. I love Left 4 Dead. I love the running, I love the screaming. I love shoving the annoying teammate off of the roof so that they get ripped apart by the gnashing horde below. But most of all? Nothing gets me horror-hard like blasting a corpulent boomer with a shotgun, dousing the surroundings with bile. I'm sorry if that makes you uncomfortable. Click your feeble minds elsewhere. The rest of you? You're giving that knowing nod right now. You don't have to say anything. I know.

If you're a horror fan, you owe it to yourself to at least watch a game. A single match has more electrified adrenaline than most horror flicks do these days throughout their entire run time. The smash success for the XBox 360 and PC is distilled, 198 proof gameplay. There aren't complicated menus. There are no excruciating Metal Gear Solid cut scenes or complex narratives to follow. You run. You kill. You try to live. That's it.

That said, I have no idea how this can be adapted to a film. Everything that makes it so slick and streamlined as a game is every reason it can't be a good movie, not without making substantial tweaks and additions to the story. There just isn't anything there aside from zombie killing with a dash of morbid banter between the characters.

That's not stopping an enterprising cadre of fans from trying, though. They've nabbed some dopplegangers to stand in as the band of 4 from the first game and have whipped up a teaser trailer (after the jump) along with some rather polished images. All of this is laying the foundation for a full-fledged feature.

Filmmakers! Do you have a brilliant and terrifying short film wasting away in the bowels of the internet? A few dv tapes in a shoebox that you want to foist upon the world? Looking for some attention? Well, I want to see them. Shorts, experimental clips, feature films -- just make them scary! Time provided, I'll give you a little write-up here on horrorsquad. Be warned - I can't promise to be kind. No, some of you may end up placing a fatwa on my head, but hey - it will give you a bit of the spotlight you so crave.

Alternatively, if you've got news, a website, or a press release you want to get out into the ether, let me know.

Send them my way. Hit me with a DM on twitter - @CaptainMurphy - for the details, or email me at jasonsmurphy@hotmail.com. I can't wait to see what you've got. Show me your brilliance! Here's hoping this has opened a Pandora's Box of depravity. Stay scary!

Oh sweet Jesus! Kill it! Kill it!

*Ahem*.

That's my initial reaction to this little clip. I don't know what it is. I don't know what they're saying. I just know that this thing needs to be found and eradicated. Maybe these guys came across an undiscovered species, some sort of humanoid that would blow the minds of biologists 'round the globe and rewrite 'On the Origin of Species'.

I don't care. Shoot it in the face.

I don't know why they've dubbed it a 'fallen angel'. My first instinct is that it's the dreaded chupacabra. Or maybe the troglodytes from the Descent. Or is it Powder, gone feral after years of isolation in the woods of Spain?

You see, from a critical perspective, they break one of the cardinal rules of horror. They toss subtlety out the window in exchange for throwing screaming idiots in your face. With the assumption that this is completely fabricated, it could have been so much better. They had this great location - an abandoned church - and a piano, but what do they do? They pollute it with howling rednecks! If they'd only had a quiet trek through this ramshackle building and maybe heard lilts of piano chords coming out of the darkness, then this might have gone down a little easier.

I have no idea what this is. The images you'll see are subtle enough that it doesn't seem like one of the many hoaxes you'll find out there, purporting to be proof of the supernatural. It's damned sure more clear than anything shown by those clowns on Ghost Hunters, who will often point to a flicker of shadow and say, "Whoa! There it is! You're haunted, buddy!" What really sells this one are the voices, the incredulous curiosity of a Southern family seeing something they can't explain. They certainly sound genuine.

Let me just start off by saying I love the Internet. Not only does it provide me a fan-made music video for Major Lazer's song Zumbi, but it also lets me research just what in the hell Major Lazer is. Turns out, according to Wikipedia, he's "a Jamaican commando who lost his arm in a secret zombie war in 1984. He fights vampires and various monsters, parties hard, and has a rocket-powered hoverboard." Makes sense to me.

He also happens to be the cartoon embodiment of a musical collaboration between the two DJs Diplo and Switch, which, given my limited knowledge of music these days, means they are essentially just two more words I need to look up on the Internet. But how does all of this pertain to horror fans, you ask?

Well the below video for Major Lazer's song Zumbi, made by a one Troy Cummins, features a zombie sloth that happens to bring about the cutest zombie apocalypse I've ever seen. So if you'd like to see what happens when some men in lab coats experiment on a sloth - and trust me, you'll want to see it - note that NSFW language is incoming, but so is an awesome freaking zombie sloth.

By: Jessica Barnes

It's not often that two of my favorite things come together, but Tom Cruise impersonator extraordinaire/film actor Miles Fisher has managed to do just that by combining the Talking Heads and American Psycho. Over at his personal website he's launched a musical tribute to Psycho in a video for This Must Be the Place (possibly one of the best Talking Heads songs ever written, but I digress) -- and what do you know -- I don't hate it. The song is the first release off his self-titled EP, which you can download for free if you're into that kind of thing.

All your favorite moments from Psycho get a nod, including Bateman's infamous Huey Lewis and The News speech, the business cards and facials, and we even get the creepiest three-ways ever to go on film. The video stars Fisher doing a pretty decent Bale/Bateman alongside Lydia Hearst (a model/socialite who is also heir to William Randolph Hearst) filling in as the 'hooker' in the story (I'm sure Great Grandpa would be thrilled).

Read the rest and watch the clip at Cinematical

There doesn't seem to be too much story behind this teaser trailer other than it is the second of its kind created by YouTube user OEwan088. The first of the two is a little slow, but this one does a tremendous job of capturing the global scale of mayhem one should expect from the likes of the real World War Z film.

Frankensteined together from footage found in '04's Dawn of the Dead, Diary of the Dead, I Am Legend, 28 Weeks Later, Children of Men, Cloverfield and even the video game Left 4 Dead, the faux trailer is a magnificent licensing abomination. It plays like a highlight reel of the apocalpyse and even opens with Will Smith and Clive Owen voice overs that fit the confessional style of Max Brooks' renowned novel. My only suggestion for improvement would be to snip in a few audio clips from the WWZ audio book, which featured great voice talent like Mark Hamill, Rob Reiner and Alan Alda.

So until Marc Forster gets around to actually filming his take, I present for your assured approval this fan made trailer. I even dare you to watch it and resist the urge to not pop in at least one of the beauties it borrows from:

(By Jessica Barnes -- Cinematical -- 6/1/09)

So, do you want the good news or the bad news first? Well, let's start with the bad news: Its official, the A L I E N reboot has gone beyond rumor and straight into reality. But the good news is that at least it won't be a remake. Just last week, Peter broke the story that Fox was looking to revive the franchise, but at the time, none of the principals involved (original creator Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, or rumored director, Carl Rinsch) had officially commented on the status of the project. Now, though, Collider brings us news that they got the chance to speak with Tony Scott during a press event for The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 and he confirmed that Rinsch has indeed been given the nod to direct a prequel to the 1979 sci-fi horror.

Once you get over the fact that a prequel is a particularly goofy idea, it probably wouldn't be that hard to come up with a plausible story. In the original film, the story of the derelict ship that the crew of the Nostromo encountered was never really explained. That element of the unknown was always an integral part of the original film's scare factor, but you have to admit, it wouldn't be all that difficult to fill in the blanks. Scott is looking to get the film into production by the end of the year, but there is still a small matter of a script and a cast before they can think about sticking to a tentative release date of summer, 2011.

More here!