House of the Devil

MTV was once known for playing music videos. That's changed over the years (to the point where I can't even recall the last time I saw a music video on MTV...) and now it's mostly known as the network of Real World/Road Rules crossovers and programs where Italian girls get punched in the face.

That paradigm may be changing as well. MTV has been slowly but surely inserting more horror into their programming line-up over the course of the past year. They've broadcast theatrical titles like the Scream movies, and they've even produced an original slasher flick of their own--last October's My Super Psycho Sweet 16. The latest example of how the channel might be changing from Music Television to Murder Television turned up at Bloody-Disgusting this morning.

The channel is airing a clip for a new Saturday Night Horror block of programming. Starting February 27th, at 10 PM, MTV will air a horror film every Saturday night for at least the next month. First up on the docket? George Romero's Land of the Dead. Subsequent features include The Hills Have Eyes remake (3/6), Slither (3/13), Deep Blue Sea (3/20) and Ti West's House of the Devil (3/27). These features will be edited, but B-D says the gore in the films will be left intact. I remain unconvinced.

No word on whether this is a trial run or something that's set to become a full-time Saturday night feature. Hopefully it catches on, because horror on TV is always a good thing--even when there's six minutes of commercials for every ten minutes of movie shown.

Jump past the break for the teaser promo.

Fresh off the success of House of the Devil, filmmaker Ti West is suddenly a hot commodity--and when you're hot, you have to take advantage of it because the film industry is a fickle one.

West is apparently taking that advice to heart, as Variety is reporting that he's chosen his next project, a film entitled The Innkeepers--a story about the last two staffers at a haunted hotel that's going out of business. The project appears to be in very good hands--West will direct, with Dark Sky films financing and producing in tandem with Larry Fessenden's Glass Eye Pix. That's a plethora of people who understand what makes good horror cinema.

The deal for the film was finalized at Sundance. West has commented that he wants The Inkeepers to be "a truly terrifying follow-up to House of the Devil." Here's to hoping he gets what he wants.

The Innkeepers is set to start shooting this spring. If you need a Ti West fix in the interim, House of the Devil makes its DVD debut tomorrow and West's troubled production Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever bows next month.

I found this year's collection of horror films to be relatively lackluster. In the first incarnation of this list, which was posted on my own personal site, I was only able to come up with nine films I genuinely believe should be on a Best Of... list for the year. My list is similar to Peter's, in a way, as it contains many of the same films, yet one of the films he included (Antichrist) ended up on my Worst Of... list, and I'm still in awe over how he could include the Friday the 13th redux as number one despite his explanation.

This list took some time to compile, and for the sake of conformity, I have added a tenth film. At the end I've included my Worst Of... list just so you can get an idea as to why I'm relentlessly teased for my vastly superior taste in horror films. So without further adieu, my Top 10 Horror Movies of 2009, rewritten and tweaked for Horror Squad.

10. House of the Devil My ex post facto entry to this list, House of the Devil was not an enjoyable film for me. I found it incredibly slow and lacking a sufficient payoff, all while only giving AJ Bowen approximately ten minutes of screen time. So why am I including it on this list? Because Ti West didn't make an homage to an 80's Satanic Panic film, he MADE an 80's Satanic Panic film. House of the Devil captures the look and feel of the time period perfectly, from the way it was filmed to the soundtrack. It is based on that alone that he deserves a spot on this list, even if it's number ten.

Screamfest, held annually in Los Angeles, came to a close this past Sunday, and as with all film festivals that means crowning the winners in various categories. There was no huge sweep this year, though the Spanish pre-apocalypse drama Before the Fall (Tres Dias) took home the most awards with a total of three; Best Editing (Nacho Ruiz Capillas), Best Actor (Víctor Clavijo), and Best Director (F. Javier Gutiérrez). I haven't seen the film, which was produced by Antonio Banderas and tells the story of a world with only 72 hours between itself and a planet-killing meteorite, but I've heard good things, which are now all the more confirmed by these accolades (though it's worth noting Before the Fall is not explicitly a horror movie).

Jocelin Donahue took home Best Actress, an award she certainly deserves considering she carried the excellent Satanic Panic film House of the Devil wonderfully. However, I'm not so on-board with the festival's decision to give The Human Centipede (First Sequence) Best Picture. I've seen the film about a mad doctor that surgically grafts three people together in a butt-to-mouth chain and I have to say it's nothing special. There's no question that it has a great, highly twisted concept, but it also has a weak setup, a weaker pay-off, and isn't all that challenging considering what the "plot" is. Dieter Laser is a riot as the insane man wanting to create a new kind of Siamese Twin, but beyond his performance there's little of interest to be found.

Despite not receiving a release - and a limited one at that - until October 30th, Ti West's 80's throwback The House of the Devil is receiving oodles of praise, with some touting it as the best horror film of the year. While I do not share the same sentiments (I felt the story lagged considerably), I have nothing but respect for Mr. West, as The House of the Devil is not an homage to early 80's Satanic Panic flicks, it IS an 80's Satanic Panic flick. If you were to awaken from a 30-year coma and the first thing you did was watch this film, you would think no time has passed at all.

Instead of trying to emulate this success with another film, Mr. West is venturing into cyberspace to develop a webseries with IFC called Dead and Lonely, which will premiere on October 26th. According to Shock Till You Drop, the series will star Justin Rice as a newly-single man who turns to the online dating site DateorDie.net. He connects with a young woman searching for life, but there's a catch: she's a vampire.

How do you market one of the best horror movies of the year? With the best horror movie posters of the year, of course. We already laid eyes on the gorgeous, flaming-house one sheet for The House of the Devil back at the end August, but now that Magnet is gearing up Ti West's best film to date for its limited theatrical release at the end of October (it's already available via several Video On-Demand services), a few more posters have hit the Internet, each one captivating in its own way.

I'd say that I wish all horror movie posters were this good looking, but frankly I don't. Movies like Prom Night and The Stepfather don't deserve to have this kind of quality standing behind them. Let Hollywood stick to its generic, predictable Photoshop jobs; it just makes me appreciate artwork like this all the more.

Check out all of the posters below.

Time for some rumor control. Contrary to what one would assume watching The House of the Devil, writer-director Ti West does not have the power to bend time and space to his will. Ti West is not a time lord, he is a mere mortal like the rest of us, he just happens to have the ability to make a film that lives and breathes as if it fell out of a wormhole from 1983. Plenty of horror directors attempt the throwback film, but few pull it off and even fewer pull it off as convincingly as West has with The House of the Devil.

Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) is an impossibly cute college gal dying to escape her slovenly roommate. In order to afford the too-good-to-be-true rent on an apartment she's just discovered, Samantha has to, against her better judgment, answer a Babysitter Wanted flier pinned to the ad board on campus. The man on the phone (Tom Noonan) is a little creepy and a little too eager to find a babysitter on the night of a rare full lunar eclipse, but that's just something Samantha is going to have to put up with if she wants to move out. So the ill-fated coed asks her best friend to drive her out to the isolated house in the woods, where things eventually prove to be even worse than Samantha imagined.

What follows is a remarkably restrained, expertly-maintained atmosphere of tension and dread that is in no rush to evolve from its controlled burn to full-on Satanic panic. And if there's anything that House of the Devil has going against itself, it's the fact that very little happens for long stretches of the film. Granted, this is liable to only be a problem for those who like their horror movies fast, quick and drenched in red, but for those among us who can appreciate a 95-minute film that remains wholly fascinating without exploiting any of the aforementioned qualities, House of the Devil is a near-perfect film.

We know that Ti West has been working away on a Cabin Fever sequel for quite a while now -- the first time we had production photos to show for it was back in early 2007 -- and we'd heard rumblings that perhaps Lionsgate was looking to re-cut what West had already assembled, but other than rumors, official news was sparse.

Recently, though, West spoke up at a London Frightfest Q&A for his latest film, the well-received-so-far The House of the Devil, and said that he wants nothing to do with the current cut from the studio, which removes his own idiosyncrasies such as star- and heart-shaped wipes (really?) that made CF2 more comparable to a John Waters or Todd Solondz film than Eli Roth's original (all things that he did mention in an interview with Spout's Karina Longworth earlier this year, a piece which does go into a helpful amount of detail about both this dilemma and an ordeal at Tribeca regarding House).

While West's vision seems to have been re-instated in time for House's fall release, and as much as I can understand any director wanting to make each movie his own, wouldn't it stand to reason that making a Cabin Fever sequel on the straight-and-narrow would be worth getting a shot to then follow up with something more unique and individual to add to the Lionsgate slate?

That particular bridge may be burned by now, but hopefully Ti's next project sees a lot less interference and a little more support wherever it may land, regardless of how many heart wipes it has...

[Thanks to Shock for bringing this to our attention.]

I wrote an article a few months back, expressing my displeasure regarding Ti West's The House of the Devil. Not because I disliked the film ... just the opposite, in fact. But the flick had been trimmed a bit by its producers, and the version that played the Tribeca Film Festival was not the *full* version that I'd seen (and really liked). But now we might have a chance to see that full version, and once again the horror geeks can thank Magnolia Pictures.

Yep, the U.S. distributors of Severance, Donkey Punch, The Host, Let the Right One In, and The Signal has picked up The House of the Devil for release. Obviously it's a bit too early to know many details, but here's a quote from Magnolia's Tom Quinn, as acquired by our good pals at IndieWire: "Ti West is without a doubt one of the biggest talents in horror right now," said Magnet/Magnolia SVP and Head of Acquisitions Tom Quinn. "'The House of the Devil' is smart, truly scary, and an awesome throwback to what made 80s horror great. This kind of film is what Magnet is all about."

Congrats to Mr. West! Click here for the full report.

By Eric Snider -- 5/3/09 -- Cinematical

The House of the Devil is a great name for a movie. It hearkens back to the days of grindhouse horror, when a film's title and its trailer told you basically everything you needed to know. Yet it's different from those movies, too, in that it prefers slow-building tension over frequent bloodletting and mayhem. You have to wait for "The House of the Devil" to deliver on its promises -- but when it does, holy crap. I know that isn't a very scholarly analysis, but seriously. Holy crap.

The film is set in the early 1980s, apparently, with appropriately synthesized rock on the soundtrack and lots of freeze-frames in the opening credits. Our perky young heroine, Samantha (Jocelin Donahue), is a college student who's sick of living in the dorms and is preparing to move into an apartment with her friend Megan (Greta Gerwig). Eager to earn some money to facilitate the move, Samantha responds to a flier posted on a campus bulletin board looking for a babysitter. Rather suspiciously (to me, anyway), the flier is blank except for a phone number and the words "BABYSITTER WANTED."

The clients are the Ulmans -- Mr. Ulman (Tom Noonan) is a tall, gentle-voiced man who uses a walking stick; his wife (Mary Woronov) is old-school sophisticated, a woman whose evening wear requires fur. Samantha learns when she arrives at the house -- a huge old isolated place, I needn't tell you -- that the babysitting duties will be slightly different from the norm, but it's not a deal-breaker. And the Ulmans are offering a lot of money.

Read the rest right here!